The Republican Party

[Grumps 3,704]

7 hours ago, homersapien said:

Obviously. 

They were rioting because Trump had constantly told them the election was stolen.  He started this whole thing, he was the only person who could have conceivably stopped it. 

That's still true.

But just as obviously, Trump didn't want to stop it.  He wanted it to succeed, as crazy as that is.  He was pleased with it.

Just so that I am clear...as these criminals were busting through windows and doors to get into the capitol, you think that if Trump had sent out a Tweet or video asking them to stop that they would have stopped? Is that what you are suggesting?

[homersapien 11,367]

On 2/17/2021 at 6:21 PM, Grumps said:

Just so that I am clear...as these criminals were busting through windows and doors to get into the capitol, you think that if Trump had sent out a Tweet or video asking them to stop that they would have stopped? Is that what you are suggesting?

I don't know if they would have stopped or not. It was certainly worth a try.

After all, their actions were being motivated solely by Trump telling them the election was being stolen and they had the power to stop it (starting with Pence).

We also know that Trump made no effort whatsoever to stop them after it was apparent they were breaking in and the violence ensued.

Is that clear enough for you? 

 

[homersapien 11,367]

Opinion: The latest GOP nonsense on Texas shows us the future Republicans want

Opinion by

Greg Sargent

Columnist

 

Texas is showing us the future Republicans want.

This isn’t intended to mean that Republicans want a future beset by the sort of power shortages that have crippled Texas, which have left millions without power in frigid temperatures and are being exacerbated by other dire conditions, such as water shortages.

No doubt many Republicans expressing outrage at the failures producing this disaster — and calling for accountability and reform — are sincere in their intentions, though we’ll see how long those demands persist.

But it’s painfully obvious that in an important larger sense, many aspects of their reaction to the Texas calamity do indeed demonstrate the future they want.

It’s a future in which the default response to large public problems will be to increasingly retreat from real policy debates into an alternate information universe, while doubling down on scorched-earth distraction politics and counter-majoritarian tactics to insulate themselves from accountability.

In response to the Texas disaster, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott blamed renewable energy sources.

“Our wind and our solar got shut down,” Abbott said on Fox News, adding that this “thrust Texas” into a “situation where it was lacking power on a statewide basis.”

Numerous other Republican elected officials made similar claims, as did many conservative and Fox News personalities.

But as a Post fact check shows, the real culprit is a combination of factors. The state is far more reliant on natural gas than on wind power. The shutdown of plants relying on natural gas caused a far larger loss of power than frozen wind turbines did.

Meanwhile, the lack of regulation of Texas’s stand-alone grid — and the faulty structure of financial incentives in the state — discouraged preparation for unexpectedly cold weather. In short, the disaster makes a strong case for more government planning for extreme weather fluctuations — a problem generally exacerbated by climate change — and for more infrastructure fortification.

The thing is that Abbott knows renewable energy isn’t to blame. Elsewhere, he has admitted that natural gas and coal failures played a key role. Yet the lure of retreating into the Fox News universe — and spewing nonsense he knows will resonate there — is irresistible.

Nothing but phony anti-elite posturing

Meanwhile, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) took the anti-elite posturing to towering heights of stupidity, claiming President Biden “is nice and warm in his fossil-fueled White House singing kumbaya with his environmental extremists while Americans are freezing to death.”

This is a strange non sequitur. After all, Biden has approved an emergency declaration for Texas, and the administration is responding to Texas’s own requests for emergency equipment.

And the grid’s failure strengthens the case for just the sort of infrastructure fortification — that is, the sort of problem solving — that Biden himself wants to undertake. But for Boebert, this is nothing more than an occasion for more empty culture-war signaling.

And former Texas governor Rick Perry said this: “Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business.”

The argument that enduring these hardships is worth it to keep federal regulation at bay is a terrible one, but one can genuinely believe it on principle. Yet Perry is also absurdly claiming that this is a cautionary tale against transitioning to sustainable energy.

So not only is Perry arguing against more federal action against future disasters, he’s also falling back on absurdities that play only inside the Fox News universe to sidestep a real debate over the actual trade-offs involved.

We need a language to explain this

Democrats are finding their way toward a language to capture all this. In an excellent interview with Chris Hayes, former Housing and Urban Development secretary Julián Castro suggested that the federal government should expand its disaster response and help rebuild Texas’s grid — which stands alone, resulting in what experts decry as insufficient state regulation — to make it more reliable.

“Don’t ever put people who don’t believe in government in charge of government,” Castro said.

Yet Democrats can go further here. They can tie the general GOP hostility to governing to the Republican retreat into anti-empiricism, and to the party’s increasing commitment to making it harder to vote and to rigging electoral maps to capture a larger share of power than the proportion of votes they receive.

We’re living through the Texas power shortage, the massive governing failures resulting in nearly half a million Americans dead from a foreseeable pandemic, a horrific economic collapse, and the deep racial and economic equities the past year has stripped bare.

All these suggest a future that will require more and better government, a redoubled commitment to empiricism as the basis for governing and more in the way of serious public service genuinely oriented toward good-faith conceptions of the common good.

Instead, we’re seeing Republicans respond to large public challenges by increasingly retreating into Foxlandia — an alternate universe where empty culture-war posturing can proceed undisturbed before a hermetically sealed-off audience that is fluent in that verlan.

Meanwhile, Republicans are increasingly insulating themselves from accountability at the hands of the broad political mainstream with a redoubled commitment to voter suppression and counter-majoritarian tactics.

A good stab at the big picture came from former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke. He described Texas as a “failed state” and linked the power failure to Republicans’ broader reluctance to act on the coronavirus to fund robust financial assistance amid deepening economic misery.

“They’d like to spend more time on Hannity talking about the Green New Deal and wind turbines than they would in trying to help those who desperately need it right now,” O’Rourke told Nicolle Wallace.

This is the future many Republicans want.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/18/texas-republicans-abbott-power-shortages/

[homersapien 11,367]

The Facts of Life

The country takes priority over conservative navel gazing.

 

by William Kristol

March 1, 2021 9:11 am

 

My suggestion last week that perhaps the best way some of us who’ve been conservatives can now help the country is to help the Biden administration succeed, and help the Democratic party move to the center, seems to have stirred up a minor tempest in the conservative teapot.

I asked whether one shouldn’t “consider allying oneself with the Biden wing of the Democratic party? Aren’t the Red Dogs worth at least a thought?” And the answer, from several reasonable and honest conservatives, was, “Not really.”

That’s fine. I wrote the piece to stimulate debate and I’m glad it did. I didn’t expect everyone to abandon long-held attachments overnight, or to put aside newly enchanting other possibilities for this somewhat more mundane proposition.

But let’s go back over the available options:

You want to save the Republican party? I’m all for it. In fact, the Republican Accountability Project, of which I’m a part, is doing its best to help do so.

You’re interested in exploring whether a new, centrist party is possible, as Joe Walsh urged last week? I’m game to take a look.

I am, however, not convinced that either of those alternatives presents a viable short-term path forward—at a moment when the short term is deeply important, because our democracy faces an internal crisis.

After all, we did just fail to have a traditionally peaceful transfer of power. One of our two major parties—having failed in a coup attempt—now claims that the current administration is illegitimately elected, the result of massive, coordinated fraud. The logical extension of this position would seem to be that the American constitutional order deserving of our allegiance no longer exists.

So we are at the edge of crisis, having repulsed one attempted authoritarian power grab and bracing for another.

In light of this, I would argue that the current debate really isn’t about—or rather shouldn’t be about—how we feel we can best be true to ourselves. Or how closely we can hew to our longstanding principles. Or where this person or that policy stands in the long and interesting history of American conservatism.

For me at least, the proper debate should be about the country and the preservation of the democratic order. And the most important question is: What is now achievable and beneficial for America?

“I adhere to conservative principles so I can’t take this step” is an understandable reaction to my suggestion. But I’d say it’s not really a conservative reaction. A conservative considers the real-world consequences of her principles. A conservative considers how adherence to—or deviation from—certain principles would help or hurt the goals conservatism seeks to achieve. Because it is these goals—liberty, justice, good government, democracy, stability, and so on—that matter. Not the “-ism.” Conservatism is a means to those goals, not an end in itself.

Or to put it otherwise: When Margaret Thatcher commented that “the facts of life are conservative,” she wasn’t adding “the facts of life” to a list of arguments for conservatism. She was saying she was conservative because the facts of life are what they are.

And one of those facts of life is that a dangerous, anti-democratic faction—which pretty clearly constitutes a majority—of the nation’s conservative party is not committed in any serious way to the truth, the rule of law, or the basic foundations of our liberal democracy.

At bottom, I think we need to spend more time thinking through the challenges facing our democratic order today, and less time gazing into the navel of American conservatism.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m interested in debates about American conservatism. I’d like to save American conservatism. But I’m more interested in saving—and I have a greater sense of urgency about saving—American democracy.

https://thebulwark.com/the-facts-of-life/

[homersapien 11,367]

The MAGA phenomenon has never been about economics

Opinion by

Jennifer Rubin

Columnist

March 5, 2021 at 7:45 a.m. EST

 

Republicans like to bill themselves as a “working-class” party. But just as their refusal to take seriously the real threat behind the deaths and injuries of law enforcement personnel on Jan. 6 strips them of the pretense of being “pro police” or defenders of “law and order,” so too does their economic agenda dispense with the fiction that they are attuned to the interests of working- and middle-class Americans.

The New York Times gives the GOP too much credit when it declares that “Republicans have offered very little to advance the economic interests of blue-collar workers.” The phrase “offered very little” suggests they have been trying but just haven’t managed to come up with something. In reality, they have not been trying to enact a populist agenda.

Let’s review: Republicans backed a tax cut under the last administration that primarily benefited the rich and corporations; attempted to strip health-care coverage from tens of millions of Americans by repealing the Affordable Care Act; and insisted that front-line workers, the elderly and others prioritize the “economy” (i.e. the stock market) over their own health while downplaying the pandemic that has disproportionately affected lower-wage workers. (There are hundreds of examples, including rolling back labor regulations to deprive millions of workers of overtime pay.)

Since President Biden’s inauguration, Republicans have picked up where they left off. They opposed giving middle- and lower-class workers $1,400 checks, raising the unemployment subsidy (for fear their working-class friends would prefer lying on their couches to getting work), providing millions with food subsidies, and supporting states and localities that employ police, firefighters, teachers and other middle- and working-class employees.

It is not simply that Republicans have fallen short in advancing middle- and working-class interests; they have acted in ways directly contrary to the interests of those they claim to represent. Pretending that Republicans actually mean what they say — the party of the working class! — has proven a trap for mainstream media, affording Republicans the presumption of good faith they have not earned.

And let us be clear: The MAGA phenomenon was never about economic dislocation. In 2018, a study from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that “White, Christian and male voters ... turned to Mr. Trump because they felt their status was at risk.” An Iowa study found, “Economic distress is not a significant factor in explaining the shift in Iowa voters from Democrat to Republican between 2008 and 2016. The election outcomes do not signify [a revolt] among working-class voters left behind by globalization.”

The Post after the 2016 election reported, “Among people who said they voted for Trump in the general election, 35 percent had household incomes under $50,000 per year. … Trump’s voters weren’t overwhelmingly poor. In the general election, like the primary, about two thirds of Trump supporters came from the better-off half of the economy.” The same was true in 2020. President Biden crushed the incumbent 55 to 44 percent among voters making less than $50,000 and 57 to 42 percent among those making between $50,000 and $100,000.

The MAGA Republican Party has never represented the interests of working- and middle-class Americans; it and their cult leader have represented the “interests” of those motivated by xenophobia, racism and misogyny — whatever their economic status. We know that statistically voting for Trump correlates most closely with the belief that Whites, not African Americans, are discriminated against and with watching Fox News.

What is the GOP’s “agenda” now? Voter suppression to deter minorities from voting, angry memes that tell the base that elites have contempt for them and Jan. 6 denial. None of this has to do with working-class “interests.” It is about white supremacy.

The media should stop acting surprised when the GOP’s populist results are negligible. Republicans use White grievance to rile their base while pursuing economic interests that benefit the wealthy donor class. It is not an anomaly; it is standard operating procedure for the party of White grievance.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/03/05/maga-has-never-been-about-economics/

[wdefromtx 3,159]

Her opinion makes about as much sense as folks on the right saying the entire Democratic Party is communist/socialist. 
 

Keep feeding that bias. 

[TexasTiger 12,835]

13 minutes ago, wdefromtx said:

Her opinion makes about as much sense as folks on the right saying the entire Democratic Party is communist/socialist. 
 

Keep feeding that bias. 

She was a lifelong Republican until Trump. Routinely skewered Obama.

[wdefromtx 3,159]

20 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

She was a lifelong Republican until Trump. Routinely skewered Obama.

Aaaaannnddd? That doesn't make her an expert to cast the entire right as "white nationalists" anymore that if someone jumped ship from the left and out there saying the democrats are a bunch of socialists. 

[TexasTiger 12,835]

26 minutes ago, wdefromtx said:

Aaaaannnddd? That doesn't make her an expert to cast the entire right as "white nationalists" anymore that if someone jumped ship from the left and out there saying the democrats are a bunch of socialists. 

She’s not doing it “from the left.”

[wdefromtx 3,159]

1 hour ago, TexasTiger said:

She’s not doing it “from the left.”

Who said she was? I never did. Regardless, if people buy into her and others BS that the republicans are the "party of white nationalist" then they are about as brainwashed as the ones on the right talking about the left. I guess everyone needs their daily dose of confirmation bias.

[DKW 86 7,419]

2 hours ago, wdefromtx said:

Who said she was? I never did. Regardless, if people buy into her and others BS that the republicans are the "party of white nationalist" then they are about as brainwashed as the ones on the right talking about the left. I guess everyone needs their daily dose of confirmation bias.

You are about to get the Tex patented 50 inane questions he doesnt really care to know the answers to routine. 

[homersapien 11,367]

On 3/5/2021 at 3:45 PM, wdefromtx said:

Who said she was? I never did. Regardless, if people buy into her and others BS that the republicans are the "party of white nationalist" then they are about as brainwashed as the ones on the right talking about the left. I guess everyone needs their daily dose of confirmation bias.

She isn't talking about the "entire right", she's talking about the "MAGA movement" (Trump cultists). 

To your point, there are gobs of conservatives who see Trump for what he is and what he is doing.  They are typically called "never Trumpers". But, - since you apparently haven't been paying attention - the Republican Party is "all in" with MAGA and Trump.

So if the shoe fits, put it on.  Otherwise, you'll need to either switch parties or wait until the Republican party snaps out of it's trance (if it ever does). 

[wdefromtx 3,159]

12 minutes ago, homersapien said:

She isn't talking about the "entire right", she's talking about the "MAGA movement" (Trump cultists).  There are gobs of conservatives who see Trump for what he is and what he is doing.  They are typically called "never Trumpers".

(And since you apparently haven't been paying attention, the Republican Party is "all in" with MAGA and Trump.)

So if the shoe fits, put it on.  Otherwise, you'll need to either switch parties or wait until the Republican party snaps out of it's trance (if it ever does). 

No need to switch parties, considering both have done enough to alienate many in the middle class such as myself. I’ve found it easier not to buy into the BS rhetoric of each of the major parties. 
 

I guess some forget the left is just as chock full of racist old white guys too. Perfect example is Biden....the leader. But, y’all don’t want to talk about that. 

[TexasTiger 12,835]

3 hours ago, wdefromtx said:

Who said she was? I never did. Regardless, if people buy into her and others BS that the republicans are the "party of white nationalist" then they are about as brainwashed as the ones on the right talking about the left. I guess everyone needs their daily dose of confirmation bias.

You initially drew that analogy:

 

•  

Her opinion makes about as much sense as folks on the right saying the entire Democratic Party is communist/socialist. 

•  

[wdefromtx 3,159]

2 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

You initially drew that analogy:

 

 

•  

Her opinion makes about as much sense as folks on the right saying the entire Democratic Party is communist/socialist. 

 

•  

No, you made that conclusion on your own. Good grief Charlie Brown!! 
 

The fact that is all you got out of what and your response says a lot. You are heavily invested in that Kool-Aid. I could care less if she is still on the right or switched to the left, it still makes as much sense as folks on the right that claim democrats are socialist/communist...which is none. 
 

 

 

[TexasTiger 12,835]

9 minutes ago, wdefromtx said:

No, you made that conclusion on your own. Good grief Charlie Brown!! 
 

The fact that is all you got out of what and your response says a lot. You are heavily invested in that Kool-Aid. I could care less if she is still on the right or switched to the left, it still makes as much sense as folks on the right that claim democrats are socialist/communist...which is none. 
 

 

 

Yeah, I’m deep in the kool aid! Swimming in it! See all my crazy left-wing posts!

Keep chatting with David. Y’all belong together. 

[wdefromtx 3,159]

16 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

Yeah, I’m deep in the kool aid! Swimming in it! See all my crazy left-wing posts!

Keep chatting with David. Y’all belong together. 

Less of your crazy left wing posts and more of your blind loyalty to a party that doesn’t give a rats @$$ about you or anyone else for that matter. 

[TexasTiger 12,835]

4 minutes ago, wdefromtx said:

Less of your crazy left wing posts and more of your blind loyalty to a party that doesn’t give a rats @$$ about you or anyone else for that matter. 

Blind loyalty!  The fact that you “see” that in my posts suggests you be drinking something yourself. I have zero confidence in Republicans. Prefer Democrats purely by default. If a third party cranks up, I’m listening.

[wdefromtx 3,159]

16 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

Blind loyalty!  The fact that you “see” that in my posts suggests you be drinking something yourself. I have zero confidence in Republicans. Prefer Democrats purely by default. If a third party cranks up, I’m listening.

Just need enough people from each party to deflect and rally up a legitimate third party. 
 

Zero confidence and trust of either party. 

[SaltyTiger 7,793]

1 hour ago, TexasTiger said:

If a third party cranks up, I’m listening.

To bad Tex

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-politics-conservatives-trump/trump-says-he-has-no-plans-to-form-third-party-idUKKCN2AS0QA

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Donald Trump told a conservative audience on Sunday he has no plans to start a new party 

[TexasTiger 12,835]

1 hour ago, SaltyTiger said:

To bad Tex

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-politics-conservatives-trump/trump-says-he-has-no-plans-to-form-third-party-idUKKCN2AS0QA

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Donald Trump told a conservative audience on Sunday he has no plans to start a new party 

No need. He already owns one. Got a great deal on a old jalopy.

[homersapien 11,367]

The Republican Party is making Jim Crow segregationists proud

 

Eugene Robinson

Columnist

March 1, 2021

 

The Republican Party’s biggest problem is that too many people of color are exercising their right to vote. The party’s solution is a massive push for voter suppression that would make old-time Jim Crow segregationists proud.

The Conservative Political Action Conference circus last week in Orlando showed how bankrupt the GOP is — at least when it comes to ideas, principles and integrity. Some might argue that the party, in buying into the lie that last year’s election was somehow stolen, is simply delusional. I disagree. I think Republican leaders know exactly what they’re doing.

The GOP may have lost the White House and the Senate, but it remains strong in most state capitols. So far this year, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, Republicans in 33 states “have introduced, prefiled, or carried over 165 bills to restrict voting access.” The thrust of virtually all these measures is to make it more difficult for African Americans and other minorities to vote.

These efforts at disenfranchisement are more numerous, and more discriminatory, in several of the swing states President Biden carried narrowly: Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia. That should come as no surprise. GOP officials who had the temerity to follow the law and count the November vote honestly, such as Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, have been all but excommunicated by their state Republican Party organizations.

In Georgia — where not only did Donald Trump lose to Biden by 11,779 votes, but also two incumbent GOP senators were defeated by Democratic challengers — Republicans are using their control of the statehouse to try to eliminate all early voting on Sundays. That would put an end to “Souls to the Polls,” a popular Sunday get-out-the-vote initiative in which Black churches help parishioners get to polling places and cast their ballots.

“Souls to the Polls” eliminates barriers to voting that thousands of Black Georgians otherwise might face, such as transportation for the elderly or finding time during the workweek for others. Georgia Republicans want to put those barriers back up — and raise them even higher.

Other proposals being pushed by Georgia GOP state legislators include getting rid of no-excuse absentee voting, which has been allowed for decades; eliminating the use of convenient drop boxes for casting absentee votes; and abolishing automatic voter registration at the Department of Driver Services offices where Georgians go to renew their driver’s licenses and vehicle registrations.

Trump’s wild and false claims of election fraud aren’t the only things driving these efforts; Republican efforts to restrict voting are hardly new. Republican officials in Georgia know the state’s electorate at a granular level and are capable of performing basic addition and subtraction. They see how the populous suburbs around Atlanta, once GOP strongholds, have been steadily trending Democratic. They may not be able to halt that process. But perhaps they can compensate by suppressing the African American vote in economically disadvantaged areas of Atlanta proper; in the wide “Black Belt” stretching southwest across the state, roughly from Augusta to Columbus; and in the heavily African American area around Savannah.

In strongly Hispanic Arizona, which Biden won by 10,457 votes and where the Brennan Center tallies 19 voter-suppression bills filed since the election, the state Senate has rejected — for now — a Republican measure that would have stricken roughly 200,000 names from a list of voters who automatically receive mail-in ballots. That courtesy is considered the primary reason most Arizonans cast their votes by mail.

But another still-pending measure would require early ballots to be hand-delivered to a polling place rather than returned by mail, negating the benefits of mail voting. And another proposed bill would simply disregard the will of the voters altogether, allowing the GOP-controlled state legislature to appoint its own slate of presidential electors. Democracy, after all, can be so inconvenient.

Elsewhere across the country, Republican legislators are trying to tighten voter-identification laws that are already too restrictive. And they are trying to find ways to disqualify more mail-in ballots — perhaps for future occasions when GOP candidates need to “find” enough favorable votes, or lose enough adverse ones, to deny victory to a Democrat.

It amounts to an outrageous and shameful attempt to establish and perpetuate minority rule in a nation in which the Republican candidate for president has won the popular vote only once in the past eight elections.

At the state level, Democrats must fight these efforts relentlessly. And at the federal level, they should use any means necessary — including eliminating or suspending the Senate filibuster — to pass H.R. 1, the “For the People Act,” which would invalidate much of the most anti-democratic legislation the GOP is trying to enact.

And voters of color must resolve not to be deterred. This is not a “Whites only” democracy. Not anymore.

 

[homersapien 11,367]

On 3/5/2021 at 6:18 PM, wdefromtx said:

No need to switch parties, considering both have done enough to alienate many in the middle class such as myself. I’ve found it easier not to buy into the BS rhetoric of each of the major parties. 
 

I guess some forget the left is just as chock full of racist old white guys too. Perfect example is Biden....the leader. But, y’all don’t want to talk about that. 

Define "the left" and "chock full".

[DKW 86 7,419]

On 3/5/2021 at 6:42 PM, TexasTiger said:

Blind loyalty!  The fact that you “see” that in my posts suggests you be drinking something yourself. I have zero confidence in Republicans. Prefer Democrats purely by default. If a third party cranks up, I’m listening.

BS!!!!!!! Dude, you are one of the True Believers on here when it comes to the DNC. 
We have kids in cages again now. No one on the Left here on this forum gives a **** about those kids. It would damage Biden and therefore no one is going to talk about it but maybe me. If I talk about it, I am going to get 2-3 facepalms and open derision from 2-3 and end of case. Because on this forum, you cannot have anyone that varies a **** hair from the party dogma. It just cant be allowed to happen. 

But KNOW this. No one gives a **** about those kids in cages. Dont now, and didnt during the Obama Admin either. It was a tool to beat Trump with, as it should have been to beat Obama and Biden with, but...like I said, NO ONE gives a **** about those kids. . 

[DKW 86 7,419]

The Republican Party is making Jim Crow segregationists

Democrats proud.

FTFY...