Tag: Republican Party

The Destructive Cult That’s Eating The Republican Party Alive

For a certain kind of Republican, it is hard to imagine anything worse than the party founded by Abraham Lincoln transmogrified into the party of Donald Trump. Some of those Republicans have openly abandoned the once Grand Old Party, while others quietly await a reform or restoration. Only a few have acknowledged so far that the authoritarian and racist trends in their party cannot be blamed on Trump alone and were visible well before he took over.

Yet as awful and dangerous as Trump undeniably is, there may be something worse ahead for Republicans. That thing is called QAnon, the online phenomenon that has declared war on an international conspiracy of elitist pedophiles and cannibals, which, of course, doesn’t exist.

The burgeoning movement, supposedly directed by a mysterious government official known as Q, already has established itself as an alternative source of authority within the Republican Party. Congressional candidates who support or endorse QAnon, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene in Georgia, are likely to be sent to Washington from solidly Republican districts where they won primaries. It is astonishing to realize that nearly 80 QAnon supporters stood for election in this cycle, nearly all of them Republicans. Continue reading.

How the GOP Became a Cult of Personality

It started years before Donald Trump’s emergence.

As the Republican Convention kicks off on Monday, the GOP announced that they would not create a 2020 party platform. Here are the relevant statements from that resolution:

Whereas, the RNC, had the platform committee been able to convene in 2020, would have undoubtedly unanimously agreed to reassert the party’s strong support for President Donald Trump and his administration…

Whereas, the RNC enthusiastically supports President Trump and continues to reject the policy positions of the Obama-Biden administration, as well as those espoused by the Democratic National Committee today, therefore, be it Continue reading.

To my Republican friends in Washington

Will you choose Trump over America again?

Five years ago, we all had a hearty laugh when Donald Trump descended the golden escalator to introduce himself and his ugly brand of politics to the American people. We didn’t take it seriously then, and Trump rolled through the Republican field of 17 like he has all his life: By doing and saying things so outrageous and beyond the pale, all anyone could do was stare, mouth agape.

Four years ago, not enough of us believed Trump could actually beat Hillary Clinton. After all, his campaign was a shambles, he was the disastrous human being we all knew him to be, and every major poll showed him getting crushed come November. It was OK to oppose him, because he wasn’t really a Republican, and Clinton, at worst, was status quo antebellum.

Clinton was a well-known force in the insular world of D.C. politics where names and faces at the top might change, but the political bureaucrats were always in place to ensure the machinery of government and patronage sailed smoothly along. Continue reading.

Why Are Republicans Going Quazy For QAnon?

“I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration … to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.” — Air Force Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper, Dr. Strangelove

In the 1964 black comedy Dr. Strangelove, the above words are spoken by a general who is about to start World War III. His theory about the contamination of “precious bodily fluids” is the tipoff for poor Group Captain Lionel Mandrake that the general has gone certifiably cuckoo.

This week, Republican voters in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District nominated Marjorie Taylor Greene for the seat being vacated by Rep. Tom Graves. Greene is (or claims to be) a QAnon believer.

You might think that once voters were alerted to this, they’d shrink from Greene as Mandrake did from Ripper, asking her to go nicely with the men in white coats who are here to help her. Her opponent told Politico, “She is not conservative — she’s crazy.” The voters were not convinced. Greene trounced Cowan by 14 points (as of this writing). Continue reading.

I was a Republican, and I drew my red line too late. I’ll answer for my choices for years to come.

Washington Post logoI rehearsed the words over and over from the back of the black sedan, hired to take me from my red-eye flight to an event at the Republican National Committee headquarters: “We are committed to electing candidates who reflect the full diversity of our nation.”

It was June 2013. I had come from my home state to D.C., to do one job — announce a $6 million investment from the Republican Party to support candidates of color and women running at the state level.

This initiative was one of many meant to change the course of the GOP following its defeat in the 2012 presidential campaign and the subsequent release of its what-went-wrong report, known as the “Growth and Opportunity Project.” Continue reading.

How white supremacy infected Christianity and the Republican Party

Washington Post logoRobert P. Jones, chief executive and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), is fast becoming the leading expert in the values, votes and mind-set of White Christians. His work has explained how loss of primacy in American society fueled a white-grievance mentality — the same mind-set President Trump so effectively read and manipulated.

His latest book, “White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity,” is a masterful study documenting how white supremacy came to dominate not just Southern culture, but White Christianity. In it, he argues that “most white Christian churches have protected white supremacy by dressing it in theological garb, giving it a home in a respected institution, and calibrating it to local cultural sensibilities.” He also recounts ways in which White churches are moving to account for their past and explore their history with Black Americans.

Jones posits that it is not simply intermingling a celebration of the “Lost Cause” and religion that has led White Christians who do not think of themselves of racists to harbor views that reinforce racism; he also points to the theological worldview of White Christians, including “an individualist view of sin [which ignores institutional racism], an emphasis on a personal relationship with Jesus, and the Bible as the protector of the status quo.” If you want to know why White Christian ideology is the best predictor of racist attitudes (a shocking revelation for the author and likely many readers), the book is essential reading. 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.

Michael Moore explains why Trump could win in 2020 — even though the Republican Party is ‘dying’

AlterNet logoAs the Senate attempts to set rules for President Trump’s impeachment trial, at least one Republican is expressing concern about the proceedings. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said in an interview Tuesday that she was disturbed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s promise of “total coordination” with the White House. Murkowski’s comments mark a rare instance of dissent for the Republican Party, which has been unified behind President Trump until now. McConnell needs 51 votes to set the rules for the hearing. Republicans have a thin majority of 53 seats in the Senate. Last week, Oscar-winning filmmaker Michael Moore witnessed the historic vote to impeach the president from the front row of the House gallery. He joins us for the hour to discuss the impeachment process, the 2020 election and why he thinks Trump would win re-election today.

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Republicans and Democrats are continuing to battle over the terms of President Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate. The House has impeached Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has withheld sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate over concerns of an unfair trial. Democrats are demanding the Senate hear witnesses in the trial, which centers on how President Trump withheld military aid from Ukraine to pressure the Ukrainian president to investigate Trump’s political rival Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 presidential election. On Tuesday, Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski said, in an interview in Alaska station KTUU in Anchorage, that she was “disturbed” by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s promise of “total coordination” with the White House. Continue reading

‘Count me out’: Republican macroeconomist officially leaves GOP because it has ‘become the party of Trump’

AlterNet logoA long list of Never Trump conservatives, from MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough to veteran columnist George Will to Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, have expressed their disdain for Donald Trump’s presidency by leaving the Republican Party — and on Monday, Bush-era economist Greg Mankiw announced that he has left as well.

Mankiw, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, announced in an October 28 blog post that he had “switched my voter registration from Republican to unenrolled, a.k.a. independent.” While some former Republicans have joined the Libertarian Party — former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, for example — or the Constitution Party, Mankiw now lacks a party affiliation. And Mankiw, in his post, offers two main reasons why he has departed the GOP.

“First,” Mankiw explains, “the Republican Party has largely become the party of Trump. Too many Republicans in Congress are willing, in the interest of protecting their jobs, to overlook Trump’s misdeeds — just as too many Democrats were for (President Bill) Clinton during his impeachment. I have no interest in associating myself with that behavior.”

View the complete October 29 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

The Republican Party’s big problem: Its only path to political success is rooted in profound deception

AlterNet logoThe Republican Party has a problem. A big problem.

As the party of the wealthy and big business, how in the world can it convince the working class to vote for its candidates?

This is no small matter. It is not some little glitch. Rather, it is a fundamental core issue that lies at the heart of the Republican Party. It requires a grand strategy at the highest level.

View the complete October 13 article by Cody Cain from Salon on the AlterNet website here.