938 replies to this topic

[Progressive whisperer]

Some just figured out that the party doesn't really want to govern (as opposed to wield power, line their own pockets and fluff the donors). If they actually signed up to be part of government, they now know that won't happen.

[AnBr]

D. C. Sessions, on 20 October 2017 - 07:00 AM, said:

One wonders what their polling looked like.

I can't see Tiberi losing.

[LFC]

This could have gone under any number of threads concerning Trump, Republicans, or Evangelicals but this will do as good as any. I read this quote in an issue of The Week.

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"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices." --Voltaire

[Traveler]

Sig Line.

[LFC]

So who is the Republican front runner to replace Jeff Flake? Bold is mine.

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Former Arizona state Sen. Kelli Ward, so far the leading Republican candidate to replace Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), on Wednesday afternoon declared Flake’s retirement a “victory” and pitched herself as the “cure” for an anemic Congress.

“Jeff Flake stepping down yesterday was a big victory for voters of Arizona and the citizens of this country. Because we have got an optimistic path forward,” Ward told MSNBC’s Katy Tur.

Tur asked Ward if she agreed with Flake’s assessment that Trump is dangerous to American democracy. “I don’t,” Ward replied.

“What I agree with Sen. Flake is that there is a serious illness in Washington, D.C., and it is contagious, but it is swampitis and thank goodness we have a doctor who’s going to be coming to Washington to heal those ills,” she added, later clarifying that she is that doctor.

Ward, known for her fierce support of Trump and her willingness to engage with chemtrail conspiracy theorists, touted herself as an outsider who will prioritize Trump’s agenda.

As the subject line says, "flat out lost its mind."

[LFC]

The Speaker of the Texas State House (Republican, of course) isn't seeking reelection. He then makes a weak defense of the people who can win GOP seats.

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Republican Speaker of the Texas House Joe Straus announced on Wednesday that he would not seek re-election.

Straus, who is known for blocking extreme GOP legislation like to a bill to ban transgender bathroom rights, said that he hoped to find other ways to serve the state.

At a press conference on Wednesday, Straus was asked how his decision not to run would impact “rational Republicans” seeking office.

“I think that rational Republicans will survive their primaries just as they always have,” Straus opined. “It’s a myth that you have to be crazy to win a Republican primary for the Texas House.”

“A few don’t win,” he admitted. “But [most of them will] get re-elected.”

[AnBr]

I won't hold my breath. We are in uncharted territories.

[drdredel]

given that this has become a team sport, with all the requisite zealotry associated therein, maybe all the Democrats currently elected should just shift their party affiliation to Republican (they can continue to vote however they please). This will totally confuse the monkeys that vote for people based on the party that's running them and make room for new people to run on whatever platforms they see fit. I mean - if everyone ran within a single party then their stated agenda would actually mean something (or at least more than it does now).

[LFC]

Flake and Corker, much like Boehner, speak a bit of truth on their way out the door. Whoopee! Meanwhile the rest of the Congressional Republicans hunker down or even defend Trump. It's now indisputable that the GOP is the party of Trump.

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There was no dam break of Republican rancor against Donald Trump, a day after a pair of the party’s prominent senators denounced their president and invited colleagues to join them. Instead, most GOP lawmakers rallied around Trump and his agenda Wednesday, with one all but saying “good riddance” to Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee.

“Maybe we do better by having some of the people who just don’t like him leave, and replace them with somebody else,” Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma told The Associated Press. “And I think that’s what’s happening.”

Trump heartily agreed, declaring that both men were retiring because they couldn’t win re-election, and “I think I’m probably helped greatly in Arizona by what happened with Sen. Flake.”

Inhofe went further than most GOP lawmakers, but he had plenty of company in his refusal to echo the criticisms of Flake and Corker. Trump himself proclaimed he was leading a party unified in its pursuit of tax cut legislation.

“There is great unity in the Republican Party,” he contended as he left the White House for a hurricane briefing and other events in Texas. Claiming a show of affection at his appearance at a Senate GOP lunch a day earlier, Trump said: “I called it a lovefest. It was almost a lovefest. Maybe it was a lovefest.” He’s said repeatedly that he got multiple standing ovations.

[LFC]

I'd like to buy a vowel:

F_USTI_N B_RG_IN

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While Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) once described President Donald Trump as a “jackass” and an “idiot,” the South Carolina senior senator has recently become rather chummy with Trump, bonding over their shared efforts to repeal Obamacare with the Graham-Cassidy bill. The pair even played golf together twice in the same week.

The newly forged friendship may have something to do with Graham’s lukewarm reaction to Sens. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Bob Corker’s (R-TN) highly critical and public condemnation of Trump, his behavior and his policies in recent days.

Saying he likes Flake “a lot” and his impending retirement will be a “loss to the Senate,” Graham admitted he does share Flake’s “concerns about what the President said, about the way he behaves,” according to Vanity Fair’s Hive.

“The election is over. I’m focused on results, and that’s why I’m here. I’d rather not be a constant critic. I’ll stand up when I need to, but I’m trying to get taxes cut,” he said.

[LFC]

The tiger is here and it is ready to eat most of them. If McConnell ended up getting primaried out in 2020 my schadenfreude meter would just detonate.

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In the escalating war within the Republican Party, there is one fact that both sides increasingly agree on: The forces being ushered by Steve Bannon are currently winning.

The former White House chief strategist and chairman of Breitbart News has pledged to purge the GOP of its “squishy” establishment members—a delineation that he said extends to everyone in the Senate, save Ted Cruz. So far this cycle, even his critics concede that he’s encountered light pushback.

“Steve Bannon is like ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,” said Rick Wilson, a longtime GOP strategist who counts himself among those trying to stop the Breitbart CEO’s growing political influence. “He's funded by billionaires, he has a shallow, catchy message that appeals to marginally-educated fanatics, and until the good guys start dropping JDAMs on his people, his skill at asymmetric warfare seems formidable. Right now, the good guys are grounded from fear and inertia.”

The war over the character and makeup of the Republican Party has the potential to radically remake one of America’s two major political parties and upend the ideas and policies that emanate from it. Which is why Wilson and others are so despondent over how lopsided the fight has been to date. Already, the extent of Bannon’s triumph has prompted Republicans to wonder aloud whether it would be better to simply rid the GOP of Trump critics and fully embrace his vision.

“After what I saw and witnessed yesterday, the overwhelming loud approval and support for the president that we had yesterday at the lunch,” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), referring to a Senate GOP policy luncheon with Trump on Tuesday, told reporters on Capitol Hill, “I got to thinking, you know, maybe we do better by having some of the people who just don’t like him leave, and replace them with somebody else. And I think that’s what’s happening.”

[Progressive whisperer]

Unless the U.S. government goes full Bannon mode.

[LFC]

I don't even know what to say. So ... much ... stupid.

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A majority of Republicans believe Donald Trump is working harder than any other president since World War II despite the fact he has spent nearly one in four days playing golf.

When asked by the pollster YouGov to compare Trump’s work ethic to other Presidents, 58 percent of Republicans said that Trump is a “harder worker” than any of them, including Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower.

In the poll released Wednesday, 66 percent of those who voted for Trump called him a harder worker than any other president.

[LFC]

This guy sounds like the perfect replacement for Jeff Flake. His last attachments to reality obviously went bye-bye long ago.

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In the aftermath of the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that led to a woman’s death, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) said he believes the violent “Unite the Right” gathering is a liberal “false flag” attack funded by Hungarian investor George Soros.

“Maybe [the white supremacist rally] was created by the Left,” Gosar told Vice. “You know George Soros is one of those people that actually helps back these individuals. Who is he? I think he’s from Hungary. I think he was Jewish. And I think he turned in his own people to the Nazis. Better be careful where we go with those.”

After declining CNN’s invitations for interviews, the network decided to track him down in the House of Representatives — and were met with responses similar to those uttered by President Donald Trump.

“Stay tuned, check out my website later this evening” the Arizona Republican said when asked for his “proof” that the rally is a liberal false flag. “My proof will be coming.”

Those responses are remarkably similar to comments made by Trump earlier this month, when he strangely claimed we are living in the “calm before the storm” and then refused to clarify, only telling reporters “you’ll find out.”

After CNN’s reporter asked him again, Gosar appeared to become frustrated and said, “You’re fake news!” before running away down the House’s marble stairwell and refusing to answer more questions. “Fake news” is, of course, one of the president’s favorite epithets for news outlets who cover him and his administration negatively.

Eventually, the “proof” did appear on Gosar’s website in the form of an interview with Soros, who said that at age 14, he witnessed the seizure of Jewish property by Nazis, but did not participate in the theft as the congressman suggested. It also linked to an Arizonan right-wing radio show that promotes a variety of other alt-right conspiracy theories.

[LFC]

Another Republican calling out Trump from the cheap seats after being up to his ears in the system that helped create him. Yeah, a big eff you to you, Tom.

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Former Sen. Tom Coburn, who for years worked as an obstetrician before getting into politics, has made something of a psychological diagnosis of President Donald Trump.

In an interview with the New York Times, the former junior Republican senator from Oklahoma made an alarming statement about Trump’s mental health when asked about what it would take to make the GOP detach itself from the president.

“We have a leader who has a personality disorder,” Coburn said.

However, the former senator also believed that the Republican base would not abandon Trump despite his apparent psychological affliction because “he’s done what he actually told the people he was going to do, and they’re not going to abandon him.”

[LFC]

Meanwhile TDB's pet conservative realizes what everybody at TRS knew years ago; Republicans aren't ready to govern. Welcome to reality.

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When a supporter once told Adlai Stevenson that “all thinking people” were voting for him, the Democratic presidential nominee responded: “That’s not enough. I need a majority!” Such is the state of today’s Republican Party. All the thinking Republicans might have been for Jeff Flake, but that only serves to explain why he was forced to announce his retirement.

It would be convenient to blame this all on Donald Trump, but this problem predates him. Trump isn’t leading the base, but he is exploiting a pre-existing condition within the GOP.

My theory is that the Republican Party won too soon. As liberal commentator Bill Scher has argued, it often takes three consecutive presidential losses for a political party that is truly in the wilderness to have a “come to Jesus” moment. After Jimmy Carter’s loss to Reagan, Democrats nominated liberals like Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis before they were finally willing to settle on New Democrat Bill Clinton. The fact that Republicans were still adrift, facing an identity crisis, and unready to actually govern, suggests they weren’t ready to lead. Donald Trump upset the normal order of things.

We’ve seen what happens when promising young conservatives (see Dan Quayle and Sarah Palin) are thrust into the spotlight prematurely. I think that’s a microcosm of what happened to the GOP.

My eyes rolled so hard over that last sentence that I think I sprained them. This is a bit more interesting. Basically Pew has determined that there's little room for people like Flake in the GOP now.

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Don’t take my word for it. Pew Research just issued a “typology” report breaking down the various categories that exist within the political parties. According to Bill Scher, Jeff Flake represents a segment called “New Era Enterprisers,” which composes “about one-sixth of ‘politically engaged’ Republicans.”

That’s not to say the other five-sixths of GOP voters are hard-core Trumpkins. But it is to say that conservatives like Jeff Flake are dramatically less in touch with the average Republican voter than is a casino magnate who donated to Nancy Pelosi and invited Hillary Clinton to his wedding.

Jeff Flake didn’t have to wait until 2018 to see how this was going to go down. It was pre-ordained.

The Pew report in general is interesting. I don't know if I really agree with their categories but it's worth a look.

[LFC]

Another mainstream Republican candidate.

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Former congressman and 2018 House hopeful Michael Grimm (R-NY), formerly known as inmate No. 83479-053, wants everyone know that President Donald Trump really does have big hands. “Massive hands,” in fact.

In an interview with New York Magazine, Grimm mentioned meeting Trump at his Trump Tower office and recalled being awestruck by the President’s hands and physical size in general.

“I remember saying to myself, I never realized what a large man — I mean stature-wise, he’s a big man, with massive hands,” Grimm said. He then outstretched his own hands in demonstration as he explained, “I don’t have small hands, but when I shook hands with him, the first time I shook hands with him, I realized he was a big man.”

The former congressman emphatically claimed that he was being completely honest. “I thought he had a big, strong grip. I’m dead serious,” he insisted.

Grimm represented Staten Island in Congress before he pleaded guilty to tax evasion in 2015, leading to a seven-month stint in prison. He is also known for threatening to throw a NY1 reporter off a balcony.

In September, Grimm announced that he would run for his old seat. His campaign has hitched onto the #MAGA train, which included hiring a former Trump campaign adviser and a meeting with ex-White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. Since leaving the White House, Bannon has pledged to target the Republican establishment by backing far-right candidates.

Hand size has proven to be a sensitive topic for POTUS.

[LFC]

This just boggles the mind.

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“We’ve been reporting this shouldn’t happen in a church,” Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt said during an interview with Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Monday morning following the deadliest church shooting in U.S. history on Sunday. But after talking with some of her Christian co-workers at Fox, she added. “We were saying there’s no other place we would want to go other than church, because I’m there asking for forgiveness. I feel very close to Christ when I’m there. So, I’m trying to look at some positives here and know that those people are with the lord now and experiencing eternity and no more suffering, no more sadness anymore.” In response, Abbott stressed the “necessity for us to come together under one God to purge evil and to rely upon the love that God provides.” According to the most recent reports, approximately half of the 26 people killed in Sunday’s shooting were children.

Hey asshole. Sometimes there is no silver lining. As for "shouldn't happen in a church", why is that any better than a concert, a restaurant, or a block party? This is the type of "thinking" you get when people go beyond normal religious belief into zealotry.

[LFC]

This article discusses Trickle Down Trump. Conservatives have almost entirely bailed out, been pushed out, or have chameleoned into acting like RWNJs. The upshot is that the entire party is only going to get worse. Trump is just another step down a path they've been on for decades. The example below is of Ed Gillespie running for governor of Virginia.

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“Ralph Northam will take our statues down,” the narrator tells us as an image of a statue honoring Confederate General Robert E. Lee fills the screen. Virginia GOP gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie then appears speaking directly to camera: “I’m for keeping them up and he’s for taking them down,” referring to his Democratic opponent, Ralph Northam. Gillespie adds, “And that’s a big difference in November.”

And that’s where we are in 2017 America—a Republican candidate for governor saying the “big difference” in the election is that he’s on side of those who glorify people who committed treason against the United States and fought and killed to defend slavery.

But in the time of Trump—a man who infamously declared that there were “very fine people” on the side of the white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August—this comes as little surprise. In fact, the day after this ad was released, Trump cheered his protégé Gillespie as well as praised the Confederate statues as “great” with the tweet: “Ed Gillespie will turn the really bad Virginia economy #’s around, and fast. Strong on crime, he might even save our great statues/heritage!”

In reality, Trump had radicalized Gillespie long before that late October ad. In September, Gillespie unleashed a commercial that went after one of Trump’s go-to targets: Latino immigrants. In this ad, we see Latino men in prison as the street gang MS-13’s motto flashes across the screen: “Kill, Rape, Control.” The narrator tells us: “MS-13 is a menace, yet Ralph Northam voted in favor of sanctuary cities that let dangerous illegal immigrants back on the street, increasing the threat of MS-13.”

Here's the before and after of Ed Gillespie:

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What might surprise some is that Gillespie was not the “mini-Trump” in the GOP primary for Virginia governor. Rather that was the person Gillespie beat, Corey Stewart, who had publicly defended Confederate statues while his supporters openly waved Confederate flags. In fact, it’s likely that most Trumpers would view Gillespie, a former RNC chair and a big-time Washington lobbyist, as part of the dreaded swamp they want Trump to drain.

Add to that, Gillespie in past years had been vocally critical of Republicans who were anti-immigrant. He even wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed in 2006 titled, “Populists Beware,” warning: “The Republican Party cannot become an anti-immigration party.” He added, “Our majority already rests too heavily on white voters, given that current demographic voting percentages will not allow us to hold our majority in the future.”

But that Gillespie is gone. Instead the Gillespie we see today has been radicalized by Trump to embrace bigotry and hate.

There are examples from New Jersey in the piece as well. And this sums up where Republicans have taken us as a nation.

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In 1981, the late Republican strategist Lee Atwater gave a famous interview where he explained the evolution of conservative politicians using racism to win over white voters: “You start out in 1954 by saying ni**er, ni**er, ni**er.” But Atwater noted that over time you needed to be subtler: “By 1968 you can’t say ni**er—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract.”

Well on this Atwater spectrum, in the time of Trump we are actually moving closer to Republicans openly using the N-word. And here’s the reality: If Gillespie, Guadagno, or others like them win in 2017 using these tactics, we can expect Trump to radicalize even more Republicans to copy his playbook of appealing to white supremacy and fearmongering in 2018.

[D. C. Sessions]

LFC, on 26 October 2017 - 10:29 AM, said:

The tiger is here and it is ready to eat most of them. If McConnell ended up getting primaried out in 2020 my schadenfreude meter would just detonate.

If it does, I'll send flowers. No meter ever gave its windings in a better cause.