Tag: GOP has no policy agenda

Pennsylvania Senate GOP edges toward Arizona-style election audit

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A top Pennsylvania Republican says he supports an audit of the state’s presidential election results similar to a review being conducted in Arizona, raising the potential for other states to spend taxpayer money investigating former President Trump’s false claims of improprieties and fraud.

Pennsylvania state Sen. David Argall (R), who heads the Senate State Government Committee that has oversight of election administration, told reporters he supports another look at the Pennsylvania results.

“It’s a very careful recount, forensic audit, so yeah, I don’t see the danger in it,” Argall said during a forum with reporters from Spotlight PA, a consortium of media companies from across the state. “I just think that it would not be a bad idea at all to proceed with an audit similar to what they’re doing in Arizona.”  Continue reading.

The right wing’s ‘culture war’ is built on a mountain of lies

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“The culture war” is so familiar I don’t need to explainwhat it is. It has been part of the Republican Party’s rhetorical repertoire since at least Robert Taft’s time. What most people do not understand, however, is nearly every moment in which “the culture war” flares up—over abortion, guns, sexuality, etc.—is rooted in a lie. If more people understood the centrality of lying to “the culture war,” more might understand the goal of the GOP’s “cultural war” repertoire is making some Americans seem illegitimate.

Consider the case of Mara Gay, a member of the Times‘ editorial board.1 She was on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Tuesday. The subject of table discussion was Max Boot’s new op-ed in the Post on how too many people in this country are still underestimating the dire threat posed by the Republican Party to democracy and the American union.

Joe Scarborough, the co-host, said there’s a need to stop being surprised by the GOP’s anti-democratic posturing. Gay agreed. “We need to start taking it seriously,” she said. When it comes to creating an independent bipartisan body to investigate the sacking and looting of the United States Capitol on January 6, she said the Democrats in the United States Congress should stop asking for the GOP’s permission and act alone. Continue reading.

8 Months After Election, MN GOP Refuses To Say It Wasn’t Stolen

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GOP continues to give credence to conspiracy theory that led to assault on U.S. Capitol

SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA – Yesterday, in an interview with the Rochester Post Bulletin, Minnesota Republican Party Chairwoman Jennifer Carnahan refused to affirm the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. Per the Post Bulletin:

Asked whether the election was “stolen” from Trump, Carnahan declined to say one way or the other, but said the “concerns that people have should not be overlooked.”

“If there’s ever any question or doubt, or people don’t feel that they have the full transparency on enough things, what is wrong with just looking into things and answering those things?” she said.

DFL Party Chairman Ken Martin released the following statement in response:

 “It is both disgraceful and dangerous that the Minnesota Republican Party is giving credence to a conspiracy theory that fueled an insurrection against the United States. Refusing to condemn the Big Lie will only serve to further radicalize a segment of the Republican base against American democracy.

“The reason the Republican base has questions about the election is because they have been lied to by cowardly politicians who care more about their careers than our democracy. If Republicans make questioning the legitimacy of free and fair elections a regular feature of American politics, it will lead to another attack on our government.

“Minnesota Republican leaders at all levels must denounce this inflammatory and radicalizing rhetoric from Jennifer Carnahan. This has to stop.”

The dark history behind a revealing Fox News chyron

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For decades, the GOP claimed the mantle of an economically conservative party and exploited societal issues such as racism and abortion to bolster their electoral support. Yet over the past few years, a reversal has occurred, such that the GOP’s cultural identity now eclipses any pretense of an economic agenda. As an example, just this week, Fox News declared, “Critical Race Theory Replaces Economy as Top Issue.”

Over the course of the 1980s through the 2000s, American conservative thought was often framed as primarily economically oriented. The Republican Party, however, gained electoral support by appealing to societal resentments. From Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queen” to encouraging turnout with anti-LGBTQ legislation, the GOP augmented cultural wars. It knew how to exploit culture to win elections and power.

Yet during all this time, the GOP had an economic agenda—”fiscal conservatism”—that appealed to voters less moved by resentment. This agenda revolved around deregulation of industry, reductions in government spending and tax cuts. The GOP also had an even broader vision: deconstruction of the social safety net as established by the New Deal and the Great Society. From Reagan to Newt Gingrich to George W. Bush, Republican leaders mounted attacks on the safety net, largely centered on privatization and incentives to encourage Americans to choose other options. Continue reading.

Republicans struggle to define a new governing coalition as Trump closes grip on party

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WATERFORD, Mich. — The Republican Party’s metamorphosis starkly showed this week in the faceoff between a parade float championing Donald Trump and “Mr. Perks,” an 18-foot pink pig on wheels emblazoned with the words “End Washington Waste.”

Americans for Prosperity, a free-market group that helped propel the tea party uprising in 2009, drove in the pig to make a point at a conservative rally about federal earmark spending. The Trump rig, equipped with a sound system and pulled by an old ambulance, posed a threat.

“This event is not about Trump,” said Annie Patnaude, the Michigan director for AFP, explaining why the Trump display had to move away from the live band and full buffet tables she had set up. “This is about pork.” Continue reading.

‘Why do they tolerate Trump?’ Conservative calls on Republicans to recover some ‘dignity’ and cut ex-president loose

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Donald Trump personally insults the Republicans whose support he demands, and one conservative wonders why they keep sucking up to the twice-impeached former president.

The former reality TV star and 2024 frontrunner has infamously insulted John McCain’s military service, Ted Cruz’s wife and father and Jeb Bush’s vitality, but Republicans keep resisting any chance to cut the scandal-plagued party figurehead loose, wrote The Daily Beast’s Matt Lewis.

“The big question is: Why do they tolerate Trump?” Lewis wondered. “Why doesn’t their primal desire for pride and honor and dignity ever kick in?” Continue reading.

Larry Hogan: GOP turning into ‘circular firing squad’ over Trump loyalty

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As House Republicans prepare to oust Liz Cheney from leadership, one outspoken GOP Trump critic says the party should not swear fealty to a “dear leader.”

WASHINGTON — Gov. Larry Hogan, R-Md., criticized those within the GOP who insist they need to double down on keeping former President Donald Trump as its leader despite his loss in 2020, saying that it’s part of a “battle for the soul of the Republican Party.”

As House Republicans appear ready to remove Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., from its leadership ranks because of her criticism of Trump and his false claims that the election was stolen from him, Hogan told “Meet the Press” Sunday that the party is becoming a “circular firing squad.”

“It bothers me you have to swear fealty to the dear leader or you get kicked out of the party. It just doesn’t make any sense,” Hogan said. Continue reading.

In Turning on Liz Cheney, G.O.P. Bows to Trump’s Election Lies

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House Republicans were lobbying to replace Representative Liz Cheney, who has vocally called out Donald J. Trump’s lies, with Representative Elise Stefanik, who has embraced them.

WASHINGTON — Top Republicans moved swiftly on Wednesday to purge Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming from their leadership ranks for vocally rejecting Donald J. Trump’s election lies, laying the groundwork to install a replacement who has embraced his false claims of voting fraud.

The move to push out Ms. Cheney as the No. 3 House Republican in favor of Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, a Trump loyalist who voted to overturn President Biden’s victory in key states, reflected how thoroughly the party’s orthodoxy has come to be defined by fealty to the former president and a tolerance for misinformation, rather than policy principles.

“The Republican Party is at a turning point, and Republicans must decide whether we are going to choose truth and fidelity to the Constitution,” Ms. Cheney wrote in a searing opinion piece published in the Washington Post on Wednesday evening. She framed her fate as a referendum on the party’s future and warned that Republicans must “steer away from the dangerous and anti-democratic Trump cult of personality.” Continue reading.

Newsmax host attacks Biden for giving his wife a dandelion — and suggests it will ‘give everybody asthma’

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Newsmax host Grant Stinchfield lobbed a scientifically illiterate attack against President Joe Biden this week after the president was filmed giving a dandelion to first lady Jill Biden.

While walking to Marine One on Thursday, Biden bent down to the ground and picked up a dandelion seed head and handed it to his wife before the couple boarded the helicopter.

Stinchfield, however, thought it was inexplicable that the president would give his wife the dandelion, which he bizarrely said “hasn’t even blossomed into a flower yet.” Continue reading.

Fresh off election falsehoods, Republicans serve up a whopper about Biden

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By the time President Biden’s aides gathered for their morning meeting on Monday, the juicy whopper of a mistruth making its way around the conservative ecosphere — that Biden’s climate plan would significantly limit America’s hamburger consumption — had officially entered mainstream public discourse.

Biden’s team looked for an opportunity to quickly debunk the falsehood. White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain retweeted a CNN fact check titled, “No, Biden is not trying to force Americans to eat less red meat,” while several press aides tweeted a photo of a grinning Biden flipping burgers at a 2019 Iowa steak fry, along with the caption, “White House to the fact-challenged: where’s the beef?”

To White House aides, the wholly fictional Biden-will-ban-hamburgers story line was in part an amusing flare-up perpetuated by Republicans who have struggled to find ways to successfully attack the president. They joked privately that White House press secretary Jen Psaki should start her daily press briefing by eating a burger. Continue reading.