Tag: GOP

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of people who paved the way for Trump

AlterNet logoThe folks at Atlantic Studios have produced a video that demonstrates Trump’s lack of leadership on the coronavirus crisis by comparing him to the leaders of other Western democracies. It’s brutal.

Commenting on the video, Anne Applebaum writes this:

Americans, as a rule, rarely compare themselves with other countries, so convinced are we that our system is superior, that our politicians are better, that our democracy is the fairest and most robust in the world. But watch this video and ask yourself: Is this the kind of leadership you expect from a superpower? Does this make you feel confident in our future? Or is this man a warning signal, a blinking red light, a screaming siren telling all of us, and all of the world, that something about our political system has gone profoundly awry?

Continue reading.

Freed by Court Ruling, Republicans Step Up Effort to Patrol Voting

WASHINGTON — Six months before a presidential election in which turnout could matter more than persuasion, the Republican Party, the Trump campaign and conservative activists are mounting an aggressive national effort to shape who gets to vote in November — and whose ballots are counted.

Its premise is that a Republican victory in November is imperiled by widespread voter fraud, a baseless charge embraced by President Trump but repeatedly debunked by research. Democrats and voting rights advocates say the driving factor is politics, not fraud — especially since Mr. Trump’s narrow win in 2016 underscored the potentially crucial value of depressing turnout by Democrats, particularly minorities.

The Republican program, which has gained steam in recent weeks, envisions recruiting up to 50,000 volunteers in 15 key states to monitor polling places and challenge ballots and voters deemed suspicious. That is part of a $20 million plan that also allots millions to challenge lawsuits by Democrats and voting-rights advocates seeking to loosen state restrictions on balloting. The party and its allies also intend to use advertising, the internet and Mr. Trump’s command of the airwaves to cast Democrats as agents of election theft.

Swing-state Republicans warn Trump’s reelection is on shaky ground

Attacking Joe Biden will only get the president so far, they say: Ultimately, the election will be a referendum on him.

Donald Trump has made clear he will attack Joe Biden unmercifully in order to ensure the election is a choice between him and Joe Biden — rather than an up-or-down vote on the president’s handling of the coronavirus.

Scott Walker has a different view, at least when it comes to Trump’s chances in the all-important battleground of Wisconsin.

“I think it still boils down to a referendum on the president. They’ll beat up on Biden and they’ll raise some concerns,” said the former two-term Republican governor of Wisconsin, who lost his seat in 2018. But in the end, if people felt good about their health and the state of the economy, Trump will probably carry Wisconsin. If not, Walker said, “it’s much more difficult” for the president. Continue reading.

Trump’s failure to grapple with the COVID-19 problem is rooted in the hollow gospel of ‘individualism’

AlterNet logoDuring Donald Trump’s daily press conference (and, wait — wasn’t he going to quit those?) on Wednesday, the president was unable to hide his irritation at coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci, and pooh-poohed the latter’s concerns about re-opening schools and universities.

Fauci had testified in front of the Senate on Tuesday and was asked about the possibility of educational institutions opening in the fall. He did not actually weigh in on this policy issue, but just observed, “Even at the top speed we’re going, we don’t see a vaccine playing in the ability of individuals to get to school this term.” Without rigorous testing, he said, there’s “a real risk that you will trigger an outbreak that you might not be able to control.”

Trump, who’s always furious at any hint that he actually be working at his job, and is overtly hostile to the concept of expanded testing, became visibly angry about Fauci’s comments. Continue reading.

Burr problem grows for GOP

The Hill logoSen. Richard Burr’s (R-N.C.) decision to temporarily step down as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee amid an FBI probe into his stock transactions shook Senate Republicans on Thursday.

While Republicans praised Burr for standing down and offered support for a colleague, they acknowledged the FBI’s seizure of Burr’s cellphone created difficult optics for Republicans battling to retain their Senate majority.

One Republican senator who requested anonymity to comment on the political problem created by the FBI raid said the best-case scenario would be for Burr to be exonerated by the Justice Department before the Nov. 3 elections. Continue reading.

Coronavirus Exposes a G.O.P. Divide: Is the Market Always Supreme?

New York Times logoA growing push by lawmakers and policy experts on the right is challenging some of the small-government, free-market tenets at the heart of the Republican Party’s agenda.

Questions over whether the government should play a more active role in protecting Americans from global shocks like the coronavirus pandemic have exposed a widening divide in the Republican Party over whether the small-government, free-market brand of conservatism at the heart of its agenda — and a top priority of its biggest donors — is out of step with the times.

The debate traces some of the same ideological fault lines that run through the party over President Trump’s economic and trade policies, which excite many of the voters who are drawn to his nationalist appeals but alarm the party’s more traditional, pro-business wing.

In one of the most ambitious proposals from this group of new nationalists who are challenging a generation of Republican orthodoxy, Congress would mandate that certain products deemed essential to the national interest — like medicine, protective equipment including masks, and materials used to build telecommunications infrastructure — are manufactured in the United States. Continue reading.

Republicans made a deal with the devil — and the bill is coming due

AlterNet logoDonald Trump’s approval ratings over the coronavirus pandemic are in free fall, having tumbled 10 points over the last month, to 39% in a new Emerson poll. This comports with the FiveThirtyEight tracking of Trump’s overall approval, which shows that after a short rally-round-the-flag response to the coronavirus, the public is starting to understand that the man who goes on TV and suggests injecting household cleaning products is a complete imbecile. Moreover, he’s the principal reason the U.S. has a massive shortfall in testing and four times as many official cases of COVID-19 as the second most hard-hit country, Spain. (This is without taking into account, unfortunately, how much the Chinese government may have fudged that nation’s numbers.)

That said, Trump’s overall approval numbers still aren’t dipping below his baseline of about 42%, which appears to be immovable. That’s because Trump’s base voters care about sticking it to the liberals more than they care about anything else, including their own health, their jobs or protecting our country from total collapse.

That puts Republicans running in 2020, especially endangered incumbents in swing states, in quite a bind. Yes, we’re talking about you, Susan Collins — along with other precarious GOP senators like Cory Gardner of Colorado, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Martha McSally of Arizona. To align themselves fully with the orange overlord is to alienate the possible swing voters who aren’t too keen on the “inject disinfectants” platform. But if they try to distance themselves from President Clorox Chewables too much, they risk bringing down Trump’s Twitter wrath unto them and alienating those base voters they will absolutely need to have any hope of surviving what looks to be a tough election cycle for their party. Continue reading.

GOP Gov. Brian Kemp’s elevation of pseudostupidity is a Trump characteristic that endangers us all: clinical psychiatrist

AlterNet logoGov. Brian Kemp (R) dumbfounded and dismayed many recently with his decision to allow nonessential businesses to reopen in Georgia when even Trump said this move is too soon. It followed Kemp’s astonishing announcement earlier this month that he had not known asymptomatic people could transmit the highly contagious coronavirus, although every governor in the country had previously been briefed on this. His behavior left many wondering if Kemp really could be that clueless or whether something else is going on.

As a clinical psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, I am often faced with untangling questions like these: Are people genuinely unable to grasp a concept, or are they hiding knowledge from themselves for some reason unknown even to them, or are they aware they know better but are simply pretending not to know? Bluntly, are they just plain stupid (genuinely of low intelligence) or more insidiously pseudostupid—feigning a lack of understanding that can serve various motives and purposes? As a concerned Georgia resident, Kemp’s handling of this pandemic has resurfaced this question for me front and center.

Kemp ran as a gun toting conservative and may truly believe no invisible enemy is going to get the better of him or his constituents. This would be an example of a kind of everyday denial—”I can smoke all I want, cancer’s never going to get me.” That’s just plain stupid. Or he may understand fully the risks of his decision but realize his political survival depends on the success of his gamble. His preposterous disclaimer in early April followed now by his decision to throw caution to the wind then would exemplify pseudostupidity. Continue reading.

GOP faces pressure to get tougher with Trump

The Hill logoRepublicans in the Senate are under growing pressure to take the administration to task for its response to the coronavirus.

GOP senators, with a few exceptions, have been reluctant to criticize the administration, but they are starting to re-evaluate that kid-glove treatment amid public frustration over the lack of virus testing kits and protective equipment and reports of taxpayer dollars going to questionable causes.

Some GOP strategists say it would be smart for Republican senators to use oversight to distance themselves from some of the administration’s problems and to burnish their reputations with independents. Continue reading.

The GOP’s electoral fortunes are dim — and cracks of dissension are emerging from the party’s ranks

AlterNet logoRepublicans who aren’t completely delusional can read the polls as well as I can. They know that if the election were held today, Biden would win and the Senate GOP majority would be threatened. That is leading to signs of dissension among the ranks of some Republicans.

As an example, Majority Leader McConnell had previously resisted any attempt to help states cope with a serious reduction in revenue as a result of the coronavirus crisis. He even went so far as to suggest that individual states should consider the possibility of filing for bankruptcy.

But there is a contingent among Republican senators that is parting ways with their leadership. Continue reading.