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America needs help right now and Americans know it. It has been enduring for many years a continuing cultural catastrophe—illegitimacy, the decline of faith, low family formation, child abuse and neglect, drugs, inadequate public education, etc

All this exists alongside an entertainment culture on which the poor and neglected are dependent, and which is devoted to violence, sex and nihilism.

As a people we are constantly, bitterly pitted against each other

A man comes out of a church after a fire-and-brimstone sermon on the Ten Commandments, pauses a moment, and then tells his wife, “At least I haven’t made any graven images!”

This is the type of praise Republicans could muster for Donald Trump’s second debate performance. He did not have a mental breakdown on stage or try to kiss anyone against their will

What Trump actually did was ensure that hardcore conservatives stay with him until the end of his political journey, when Republicans begin the search for survivors and examine the charred black box.

How did Trump reach this point, less than four weeks before the election, despite these allegations?

there are a few reasons that immediately jump out

One is hyper-partisanship, and its subsidiary, negative partisanship: Because Republicans loathe Hillary Clinton so much, and because they find her so unacceptable, they have been willing to overlook Trump’s indiscretions (and clear dissonances with longstanding GOP dogma on social issues) in order to stop her.

The irony is not lost on some of us that the loudest right-wing voices are the worst examples of post-modernist thinking: Facts are fungible; it’s all what you want to believe.

It is however disturbing that many certainly know he is lying — or out of touch with reality — and still support him.

Part of this is attributable to the false moral equivalence game. Sure, Clinton is no model truth teller, but — come on! — she’s a Little Leaguer up against the 1927 Yankees (Trump) when it comes to lying. Clinton lies mainly when she gets caught; Trump lies about himself, the world, his own statements, other people’s statements, his positions, his change in positions, etc.

Buoyed by November election results, a surge in fundraising and expectations of a massive liberal wave, Democrats are preparing for an assault on one of the GOP’s most heavily fortified positions: governors mansions.

But the atmospheric conditions have changed since then. Republicans are hampered by an unpopular President Donald Trump. Suburban voters are threatening to desert the party en masse. And Democrats have seen a massive increase in their fundraising numbers after gubernatorial wins in Virginia and New Jersey in November. The GOP is forced to defend 13 states that former President Barack Obama won — from Maine to New Mexico to Wisconsin — while Democrats are protecting just one — Pennsylvania — that fell to Trump.

Their concerns are legion: With the White House dominating the news across the country on a daily basis, pollsters are seeing signs of a prospective surge in Latino voters that could swamp Republican candidates in battleground states like Florida and Colorado, put New Mexico’s governor’s race even further out of reach and making Arizona’s competitive.

To recap then, with no public appetite for small government, the domination of the donor and business class (who were the impetus behind tax cuts) and the passage of tax-and-spending measures that unleash a torrent of red ink, the GOP is now firmly committed to very big government

The Democrats are, too, so the debate then boils down to where and how we’re going to spend the money.

That’s actually a positive political development, for it enables deal-making (as we saw from the Senate majority and minority) leaders and defangs the extreme-right wing, which can no longer hold the country and Congress hostage.

When I walked away from Donald Trump’s Republican Party, I did not walk away from conservatism. Instead, I gave up on a political party whose policies had become indefensible.

once again, I and many other reasonable conservatives find ourselves at odds with GOP — read: National Rifle Association — orthodoxy.

In District of Columbia v. Heller, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia ruled that the regulation of gun ownership was compatible with the Second Amendment. That “important limitation . . . is fairly supported,” Scalia wrote, “by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons.’ ”

it’s time to acknowledge that many Republicans view his appeals to white grievance as a positive feature. It’s behind their obsession with “Telling it like it is” — code for expressing base prejudices. The rejection of Hispanics as real Americans has become a given among state-TV hosts like Tucker Carlson.

When Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) takes to the floor to claim Democrats care more about illegal immigrants than sick kids or the military, you see how vital the race/immigrant card has become to the GOP’s unity.

In many ways, antagonism toward immigrants is the glue that binds Trump to his followers and Republicans to one another.

Alabama GOP Sen. Richard Shelby is confronting a fierce backlash from conservatives over his refusal to support Roy Moore in last month’s special election — with Moore backers pushing a censure resolution and robocall campaign targeting the powerful lawmaker. Moore’s supporters are furious with Shelby over his remark days before the Dec. 12 election that he “couldn’t vote for Roy Moore,” a controversial former state judge who was facing allegations of child molestation. Instead, Shelby said he would write in the name of another unnamed Republican.

The censure resolution is unlikely to gain traction against Shelby, an iconic figure in Alabama politics who skated to a sixth and probably final term in 2016. But it shows how a race that dominated national politics for months and badly embarrassed President Donald Trump, who gave Moore his full-throated endorsement, continues to tear at the party.

“It is unfortunate to hear that instead of unifying the party ahead of its important 2018 election cycle, people within the Alabama GOP are making a shortsighted attempt to divide the party over Sen. Shelby’s noble stance,” said the senator's spokeswoman Blair Taylor. The censure resolution is expected to come before the state Republican Party’s resolutions committee later this month. A majority of the seven-person panel is needed for it to pass. If it fails, Moore supporters can bring it up at next month’s Alabama Republican Party executive committee meeting, where it would need two-thirds support.

the West Virginia GOP primary confirms that this sort of vulgar demagoguery is becoming routine. Trump’s election was no aberration. Rather, he exploited deep problems in American politics that had been building for years — and others, following his example, will exploit those same problems after he’s gone.

Before Trump, there was Sarah Palin, the tea party movement, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), the Republican Study Committee, the Freedom Caucus. The Republican Party tried to harness the rage of the nativist right but ultimately couldn’t contain it.

Now we have Blankenship, Roy Moore, Joe Arpaio and a proliferation of name-calling misfits and even felons on Republican ballots. They are monsters created by the GOP, or rather the power vacuum the GOP has become.

President Ronald Reagan’s coalition had been constructed from three primary groups — orthodox Christians, free-market types and defense hawks — plus a broad sprinkling of not-particularly-ideological folks who vaguely hated the Soviet Union, along with anyone who seemed too sympathetic to Russia. As with any coalition, there were inevitable tensions between each group’s goals. But they all agreed on one thing: atheistic, statist, expansionist Soviet Communism was terrible.

With crime falling and communism safely buried on the ash heap of history, however, Republican divisions began to outweigh commonalities

Only a series of historical accidents kept them from ripping the party apart sooner than they did — most notably, 9/11. After Iraq turned into a quagmire, Republican leadership managed to check the disjuncture for a few more years by simply ignoring dissenters. But this wasn’t a long-term solution, as can be proven in two words: President Trump.

The California primary next Tuesday could serve as a sentinel indicating whether the House of Representatives is truly in play in the midterms. 

Democrats could be a victim of their own success in the primary. President Trump fueled a flood of Democratic House candidates all over the country. Democratic interest surged in Democratic strongholds. Still, the party struggled to unify behind one or even two candidates in some of these districts. That means that Democratic voters will likely speckle their ballots for an array of candidates instead of just one.

California is a Democratic state. With immigration and DACA front and center, Democrats are angling for the seats held by retiring GOP Reps. Ed Royce and Darrell Issa. Democrats came close to knocking off Issa in 2016. Then there are also major races against GOP Reps. Steve Knight, David Valadao, Jeff Denham, Mimi Walters, Dana Rohrabacher and Duncan Hunter Jr.

“Before I conclude, I want to touch on what I consider my top priority … my top political priority, my top issue,” Stringer said at around the video’s 15-minute mark.

He warned that because of the volume of immigration into the U.S. over the last several decades, states including Texas, Florida and Arizona have “flipped” or “are imminently going to flip to become minority majority states.” Stringer then called attention to the proportion of minority children attending Arizona’s public schools

“Sixty percent of public school children in the state of Arizona today are minorities,” he said. “That complicates racial integration because there aren’t enough white kids to go around.”

President Trump did not create the coronavirus, but his failure to act swiftly and implement extensive testing and contact tracing left us with one option: extreme social distancing.

And naturally, social distancing meant the economy ground to a halt. In that sense, the recession is a product of Trump’s mismanagement and willful ignorance. And that recession will be frightfully severe.

“The past two weeks have erased nearly all the jobs created in the past five years, a sign of how rapid, deep and painful the economic shutdown has been on many American families who are struggling to pay rent and health insurance costs in the midst of a pandemic.”