Tag: GOP

How the Republicans went all in on white nationalism and voter suppression — and even worse may be yet to come

Every time I go back and read my December 2015 piece on Donald Trump and the missing white voters of the 2012 election, I get a sick feeling in my stomach. I had identified exactly how the Republicans could win the 2016 election, but I just couldn’t bring myself to believe they would pull it off. In truth, that piece should be bracketed by two other pieces of analysis I did on this subject. The earliest came in July 2013 when I wrote about the Republicans’ decision to drop “the idea that they need to do better with Latinos and adopt the idea that they need to do even better with white voters.” The latter one was written a few days after Donald Trump was elected president. I called it “Avoiding the Southification of the North.”

All three articles talk about the future of the Republican Party in the context of their demographic challenges. As the country becomes more ethnically, racially, and religiously diverse, the GOP loses market share. The same happens as young people replace old people in the electorate. The Republicans could respond by abandoning some conservative principles. But they would rather try every other option first. One strategy is to use their power to shift the electorate in their favor. By making it harder for young people to vote and by using every available tool to discourage minority voting, they hope to win a few more elections before they have to actually appeal to these voters. Another strategy is to get white people to think as white people. Here is how I described this in my 2013 piece:

Accusing the Democrats of socialism, which is a race-neutral way of accusing the party of being beholden to the racial underclasses, has been proven insufficient. The only hope for a racial-polarization strategy is to get the races to segregate their votes much more thoroughly, and that requires that more and more whites come to conclude that the Democratic Party is the party for blacks, Asians, and Latinos.

View the complete May 17 article by Martin Longman from the Washington Monthly on the AlterNet website here.

Why Politics Should Be Kept Out of Miscarriages

The possible problems of a new Georgia law, including causing further pain.

Georgia’s much-discussed new law on abortion is one of the most restrictive in the nation. Abortion will be banned as early as six weeks into pregnancy — before many women even know they are pregnant.

This law goes even further, though: Although the intent of the law is to block abortion, it has opened a vigorous debate about whether women who miscarry could be questioned or even prosecuted.

The new law, which goes into effect Jan. 1, gives a 6-week-old fetus the legal status of a human being. One definition of second-degree murder in Georgia includes cruelty to children during which “he or she causes the death of another human being irrespective of malice.” This raises the question of whether a woman who miscarries because of what is perceived to be her conduct could be held liable for that conduct.

View the complete May 14 article by Aaron E. Carroll on The New York Times website here.

Protecting Trump’s family has become a core principle of the Republican Party ideology

Republicans are up in arms about the actions of one of their own. What did he do to elicit such wrath? He dared to issue a subpoena to Donald Trump Jr.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr (R-NC) sent the subpoena as part of the panel’s continuing investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. This should hardly be surprising — Trump Jr. makes multiple appearances at key points in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Russia investigation. On at least two occasions, it appears that Mueller weighed charging Trump Jr. with crimes, but decided against it. And Trump Jr.’s testimony to Congres appears to have been misleading, if not outright perjury, especially in light of Michael Cohen’s revelations about his own lies to lawmakers regarding the negotiations in 2016 by the Trump Organization to build a tower in Moscow.

But Burr’s decision to send the subpoena has caused an uproar among Republicans. They’ve been doing their best to sweep the Mueller report — including its damning revelations about the president — under the rug. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell gave a speech declaring “case closed” on the matter.

View the complete May 10 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.

A place for the GOP to mull life after Trump

The Niskanen Center promotes the “free-market welfare state”

Jerry Taylor, a former climate-change skeptic, was chatting recently about the future of the Republican Party when he sat up in his chair inside the sixth-floor offices of the center-right think tank he runs and extended his hand to two portraits flanking him, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, two giants of the Republican Party. “Our ideas are not so alien to the GOP,” he insisted.

Perhaps, but the ideas that he and his think tank, the Niskanen Center, are promoting — which they describe as the “free-market welfare state” — are still having a hard time finding a home in the party of Donald Trump.

It is a dark time for those who consider themselves either “Never Trumpers” or moderates. “That community now has been blown apart,” admitted Taylor, who assesses the prospects for the modern Republican Party thusly: “Right off a cliff and into a pile of radioactive rubble.”

View the complete May 1 article by Jonathan Miller on The Roll Call website here.

When Will The Republican Party Push Back Against White Nationalism?

Two horrific acts of terrorism were committed this weekend against non-Christians. One by an Islamophobic Christian supremacist terrorist mistakenly targeting Sikhs (again), and one by an anti-Semitic white supremacist terrorist spouting “replacement theory” smears.

In the first case, a man whose father was a pastor and who was suffering mental illness in part due to service in Iraq, drove into a family of Sikhs in Sunnyvale, California, allegedly believing they were Muslims. A 13-year-old girl is now in a coma and fighting for her life. The terrorist was allegedly on his way to a Bible study group and praising Jesus when authorities caught him.

In the second, a white supremacist took credit for an arsonist attack against a mosque last month, only after gunning down several people at a synagogue in Poway, California, killing one and injuring three.

View the complete April 28 article by David Atkins with The Washington Monthly on the National Memo website here.

Republicans have a post-Trump identity crisis on the horizon

What will it mean to be a Republican once the president leaves office?

Republicans are enjoying their ride in the White House and basking in the glow of a divided Democratic presidential field, but a monumental identity crisis is looming for the GOP.

Whether you think President Donald Trump won’t be president in two months, two years or six years, Republicans are going to have a difficult time moving on to the next chapter.

At this stage, the Republican Party is primarily a collection of Trump followers. While a majority of GOP primary voters didn’t support candidate Trump early in the 2016 race — some Republicans were skeptical of his conservative bona fides, and others outright opposed him — the party has since largely coalesced behind the president.

View the complete April 24 article by Nathan L Gonzalez on The Roll Call website here.

The disturbing reason Republicans deny science and embrace measles epidemic

All around the country, Democratic lawmakers are trying to stem the resurgence of measles by tightening immunization laws, efforts that are being rejected by Republicans, Politico reports.

In Washington state, where the current epidemic kicked off and which has one of most severe outbreaks, not a single Republican in the state Senate health committee voted yes on a bill to rein in vaccine exemptions. The bill passed through the committee with just Democratic votes. That scenario was repeated in Colorado and Maine. In those three states, along with three others—Arizona, New Jersey, and New York—efforts to pass legislation making it harder for parents to avoid vaccinating their kids have faced Republican opposition. Republicans are so much on the side of owning the libs by allowing preventable diseases to kill again that they’re trying to weaken strict vaccination laws in West Virginia and Mississippi.

The “reasoning” is depressingly familiar. Here’s Andrew Raia, ranking Republican on the New York Assembly’s health committee: “I’m not a religious leader, and I’m not a scientist either, so it’s my job to weigh both sides.” Not a scientist, so how is he supposed to know whether a century of progress in eradicating dread childhood diseases is a real thing? Next stop, polio.

View the complete April 17 article by Joan McCarter of the Daily Kos on the AlterNet website here.

With Polls and Private Meetings, Republicans Craft Blunt Messaging to Paint Democrats as Extreme

WASHINGTON — Republican leaders are sharpening and poll-testing lines of attack that portray Democratic policies on health care, the environment and abortion as far outside the norm, in hopes of arming President Trump with hyperbolic sound bites — some of them false — asserting that Democrats would cause long waits for doctors or make killing babies after birth legal.

The blunt messaging underscores one of the biggest challenges facing Democrats as they try to defeat the incumbent president: the need to define themselves and their ideas before Mr. Trump and his conservative allies do it for them.

The Republican National Committee has already begun polling in 16 states to assess ways to discredit ideas like “Medicare for all,” which Senator Bernie Sanders proposed in a bill this week, and build on the party’s broader argument that Democratic candidates like Mr. Sanders are promoting an extreme socialist agenda. Social conservative leaders have met with White House officials to discuss calling attention to Democratic-sponsored legislation to loosen restrictions on abortion in the second and third trimesters, like one that passed recently in New York.

View the complete April 12 article by Jeremy W. Peters on The New York Times website here.

GOP grows tired of being blindsided by Trump

Senate Republicans are getting tired of being caught off-guard by President Trump on key issues like health care and controversial nominees like Herman Cain, and say there needs to be more consultation from the White House.

Trump’s allies say they often find out about the president’s plans on Twitter or through media reports, making it almost impossible to offer the White House any advice before major decisions are announced.

“When names are floated, you guys come around and ask, ‘What about this person? What about that person?’” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of the GOP leadership team, told reporters Wednesday, saying he would like to see “more communication and collaboration.”

View the complete April 12 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.