Tag: Republican hypocrisy

‘The epitome of hypocrisy’: 17 Tennessee Republicans accepted PPP loans — but want to slash unemployment benefits

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During the COVID-19 pandemic, liberal economists such as Robert Reich (former secretary of labor in the Clinton Administration) and the New York Times’ Paul Krugman have applauded enhanced unemployment benefits as good for the U.S. economy — stressing that those who receive that money are likely to spend it immediately. Republicans, however, have been claiming that enhanced unemployment benefits from the CARES Act of 2020 or the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 encourage Americans not to look for work. But in Tennessee, according to reporter Jackie DelPilar, some of the same Republicans who now rail against unemployment benefits received payments from the CARES Act’s Paycheck Protection Program.

Reporting for Fox 17 Nashville, DelPilar explains, “A FOX 17 News investigation found 17 state lawmakers who supported the unemployment cuts also accepted PPP loans for their businesses. They accepted a combined $12.4 million.”

Rep. Gloria Johnson, a Democrat who serves in the Tennessee House of Representatives, is calling out the hypocrisy of those lawmakers. DelPilar quotes Johnson as saying, “That’s wrong on so many levels…. It is the epitome of hypocrisy to say ‘I’m going to get this federal help, but you don’t deserve it. You need to go back to work.'” Continue reading.

Confronted with leaked phone call, Alabama Republican John Merrill admits to affair, drops Senate bid

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On Wednesday morning, Alabama Secretary of State John H. Merrill went on a local conservative radio show to deny a story posted by a right-wing blog claiming he had an affair with a legal assistant, who also accused him of using racist language. The story was a false smear designed to end his bid for U.S. Senate, he said.

“People are attempting to use this to either advance the candidacy of other people, or they are doing it primarily to harm me and my family,” he said on the radio. “It’s very frustrating and very sad.”

Hours later, when an AL.com reporter confronted him with a recording of an explicit phone call between Merrill and the woman, the politician changed his story. Merrill acknowledged the affair — and said he would drop his plans to run for Senate. Continue reading.

Why some Republicans switched votes on bills they previously supported

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Lawmakers changed positions on legislation about policing, guns, immigration, anti-discrimination

Twenty House Republicans switched from voting “yes” last Congress to “no” this year on Democrat-led bills dealing with issues such as gun sales, women’s rights and immigration.

Of roughly a dozen bills Democrats brought back to the House floor this year because they died in the GOP-controlled Senate last session, most still received some GOP support. But seven saw at least one previous Republican supporter drop off.

The rise in GOP opposition may seem connected to the 2022 midterm elections, when House Democrats’ tenuous hold on power is at stake and Republican moderates may face heat in primaries. But in interviews and statements, the vote-switchers mostly cited policy and process, saying Democrats dropped GOP-backed provisions from some bills and declined to incorporate Republican input into others. Continue reading.

N.C. Republicans censured their senior senator for voting against Trump. But they are silent on Rep. Madison Cawthorn.

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North Carolina’s Republican Party acted quickly last month to censure one of its most senior members, Sen. Richard Burr, for voting to convict President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial. Burr’s vote was “shocking and disappointing,”  said Michael Whatley, chairman of the state party.

But the state GOP has shown no interest in exploring a similar action against one of its youngest elected leaders, Rep. Madison Cawthorn, a pro-Trump freshman who is accused by a number of women of sexual harassment and has a record of making false statements and baseless claims.

“I don’t want to talk about that on the record,” Whatley said twice in a brief phone conversation when asked about Cawthorn. Continue reading.

Dear Republicans: No More Fiscal Hypocrisy, Please

Nothing is more predictable than Republicans complaining about budget deficits and federal spending — as soon as a Democrat enters the White House.

Wasteful fiscal decisions, especially cutting taxes for their wealthiest donors, never trouble these self-proclaimed “conservatives” in the slightest. But let a liberal spend a few dollars on a hungry child’s breakfast or a teacher’s salary and suddenly their hair catches fire.

So now that their old friend Joe Biden is president, Senate Republicans are roaring with indignation over his restrained, sensible proposals to lift America out of the deep hole dug by former President Donald Trump. Once a fiscal hawk himself, Biden has tried to explain that spending more now is required to defeat the pandemic, maintain vital services, save our people from starving — and eventually pay down the debt. Continue reading.

Brace yourselves for a whole lot of moaning about “divisiveness”

Republicans are in something of a predicament these days. The party willingly hitched its wagon to a horse that, in addition to being loose in a hospital, has managed to drag the GOP firmly out of the White House and decidedly, albeit narrowly, into the congressional minority as well. And now, out of power and stuck with an ex-president who would just as readily blow them up as he would help them out, Republicans are stuck navigating their way through a Scylla and Charybdis of their own making.

There are Republicans — the Matt Gaetzes and Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the caucus — who see the way forward as a wholehearted embrace of, if not Trump himself, at least his legacy, and the sizable MAGA base that comes with it. Others — your Mitt Romneys and Mitch McConnells and the like — believe the best thing they can do for the party is to treat Trump as an aberration and try to put him in their rearview mirrors as quickly as possible without pissing off his base too much.

There’s no “right” answer here. And like all things Trump, the GOP is damned if they do, and damned if they don’t. With that in mind, get ready for four years of bad-faith Republican attacks on Democrats for irrevocably dividing the country, simply by not being Republicans. In fact, it’s already begun.  Continue reading.

Devin Nunes complains that Republicans are being censored — while talking to about 1.5m viewers

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Devin Nunes, a man who has sued Twitter to stop freedom of speech, went on Fox News Sunday to tell the world that Republicans—like Devin Nunes—have lost their freedom to communicate with one another. He said this on Maria Bartiromo’s Sunday Fox news show that is watched by around 1.5 million people every week. Nunes is specifically talking about Parler, the right-wing alternative social media site that Nunes was an early devotee of. At the end of last week, Twitter, Facebook, Apple, Google, and others shut down Trump’s social media accounts. Trump is still the president of the United States and has all kinds of avenues from which he could shriek his brand of narcissistic bigotry, but for many conservatives, this was the last straw in the war against conservatism. 

Nunes tells viewers that there is “no longer a free and open social media company of site for any American to get on any longer.” The power-abusing Nunes, a man who may have used his position on the House Intelligence Committee to investigate political opponents like Hillary Clinton using super dubious actors like Giuliani associate Lev Parnas wants you to know that he’s lost 3 million followers on Parler. Saying that this act is “clearly a violation of antitrust, civil rights, the rico statue,” Nunes called on the government to open “a racketeering investigation on all the people who coordinated this attack on not only a company but on all of those like us, like me, like you, Maria.”

The next best part of this push for Parler as the true right-wing conservative Republican utopia of freedom of speech is this tremendous statement by Nunes: “Unlike the fake social media sites, we know that everybody that’s on Parler, because you get certified. it’s actually a very safe platform and if you break the law on Parler, the FBI can subpoena to find out who those people are.” This is an interesting point coming from the Second Amendment touting, the-government-is-trying-to-register-everybody-with-a-microchip-and-arrest-you conservative. It’s almost like his whole ideology is bullshit and he’s mostly just stressed out that whatever revenue he was pulling in from his Parler successes has been cut down. Continue reading.

Merrick Garland was historically snubbed — but he’s emerged more respected than ever

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f the secret to life is good timing, then Judge Merrick Garland was the right man at the wrong time. ¶ Garland will be remembered as the Supreme Court nominee who dangled in the wind for eight months in 2016, waiting for a Senate hearing that never came. To Democrats, it was an outrage and a raw display of political power. To Republicans, it was an election-year gamble that paid off. Four years later, with the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, his name is back in the headlines — once again the rallying cry for a process critics say has been corrupted by partisanship and hypocrisy. ¶ “He is a martyr of the judicial wars,” says Ilya Shapiro, author of “Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court.” In the nation’s history, Garland’s nomination was one of only 10 that the Senate refused to consider.

Even Republicans who blocked Garland’s confirmation never had a bad word to say about the man. In fact, they made a serious effort to recruit him as director of the FBI after President Trump fired James B. Comey in 2017 — arguing, without irony, that they wanted a man of unimpeachable integrity who would receive bipartisan support in the Senate.

Garland declined and stayed on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the second-most powerful court in the country. The past four years have been an ongoing vindication, of sorts, filled with honors and accomplishments. Most failed confirmations shrink the person; Garland may be the first in modern history who emerged with his reputation not only intact but enhanced. Continue reading.

Born-again fiscal conservatives are sign of Trump’s weakening hand in Congress

Washington Post logoA growing number of Senate conservatives have provided the latest sign of President Trump’s weakening hand on Capitol Hill.

From the presidentially ambitious Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), to onetime deficit hawks like Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.), conservatives are abandoning the president as his top aides struggle with negotiations on a pandemic relief bill that is Trump’s last, best chance to pass legislation that could help his floundering reelection bid.

Ignoring their own record of support for adding trillions of dollars to the national debt, these conservatives have signaled that they think, in a post-Trump Republican Party, that deficits will return to the forefront just as they did in the first years of the Obama administration. Continue reading.

GOP Legislators Complain About Drug Prices But Voted Against Reducing Cost

At least two dozen House Republicans have called on Congress to address the rising costs of prescription drugs after voting against legislation to rein in the rising costs of prescription drugs.

The most recent to do so was Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA), who went on Fox Business Monday morning demanding the House address the issue — which was addressed in December.

“The American people want to see us put a budget together. They want to see drug pricing taken care of,” he added. Continue reading.