Tag: Republicans

36 Years Later, Conservatives Finally Read The Lyrics To ‘Born In The USA’

There is a long and storied history of Republicans misunderstanding Bruce Springsteen’s “Born In The USA.” They hear the chorus and think it’s a glorious patriotic anthem, full of hope and nationalism, and totally ignore the lyrics that are about a Vietnam veteran returning home and being unable to get a job. Reagan’s use of the song in his campaign is one of the classics of the “Musician Asks Evil Republican To Stop Using Their Music” genre — and while you’d think the publicity surrounding that incident would have ceased the practice, it has continued over decades. Trump is known to play it at his rallies, including at his most recent one, despite his ongoing feud with The Boss.

At this point, it’s honestly just funny. It feels like a metaphor for the Republican Party in general — unable and unwilling to see the whole picture in any situation because they’ve latched so fiercely onto the part that makes them feel some kind of way. In fact, it has inspired me to go out and write a song that has a super patriotic chorus, but with lyrics that are a fierce condemnation of the United States healthcare system. This is what we should all be doing.

But it looks like someone over at The Federalist has read the lyrics and now, 36 years later, has noticed that they are not, in fact, very “patriotic.” Continue reading.

Trump and the GOP are blatantly sacrificing working people for political gain

AlterNet logoThe United States is currently seeing the most coronavirus infections since the pandemic began. Dr. Anthony Fauci just warned that the U.S. could soon reach 100,000 new cases each day. And across every age group, people of color, especially Black and Native people, are being infected and dying at much higher rates.

Cases are surging because we’re reopening without adequate public health protections. At least 17 states that had begun reopening are shutting back down. It’s no coincidence that the same states that were the last to shut down and the first to reopen are experiencing the most alarming spikes.

The U.S. has been hit harder by the pandemic than any other nation, largely due to a series of blunders in the Trump administration’s handling of the crisis. In response to rising cases, President Trump encouraged his team to “slow down the testing” because the numbers made him look bad.

Trump supporters hope to use conservative anger at Chief Justice Roberts to energize troubled campaign

Washington Post logoThe White House is trying to capitalize on conservative anger at Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. over his latest decisions by telling evangelical leaders and other activists that they need to turn out voters for President Trump so he can use a second term to continue nominating conservative judges to the nation’s highest court.

Some recent polls have shown a weakening in support for Trump among evangelicals, who have long been among the president’s strongest supporters. But Roberts’s role in cases advancing both gay and abortion rights is now seen in the White House as an opening to shore up that part of Trump’s political base.

Ralph Reed, the founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, said there is frustration and disappointment in evangelical ranks about Roberts’s rulings, but he said he and others are not going to walk away from Trump. Continue reading.

The GOP traded its principles for conservative judges. It was a bad deal.

Washington Post logoIf Republicans lose the White House in 2020, they’ll have to ask whether they paid too high a price

President Trump has retained support from many Republicans and conservatives thanks to a Faustian bargain: So long as Trump stacks the judiciary with friendly judges, they’ve been willing to look the other way when Trump pushes trade protectionism, ditches entitlement reform, or woos Russia’s President Vladimir Putin — positions out of step with recent conservative orthodoxy. As David Harsanyi argued for the Federalist, “The question was,” for conservatives, “ ‘What’s scarier, a Trump presidency or a progressive Supreme Court?’ ”

Former George W. Bush administration attorney John Yoo said that he had deeply conservative friends “who would normally be utterly turned off by a guy like Trump,” yet supported him “only because of [the] appointment to Justice [Antonin] Scalia’s vacancy” on the Supreme Court. Conservative fixation with judges doesn’t only include the Supreme Court, but the lower courts as well. Noting that the Supreme Court hears a tiny fraction of the cases decided by appellate judges, Washington Post columnist Hugh Hewitt challengedTrump’s conservative critics to “reconcile their vehement opposition to him with their love of the Constitution. The latter is most definitely benefiting from the president’s massive impact on the federal bench, one that extends far beyond Justice Neil M. Gorsuch on the Supreme Court.

Conservatives may have felt the bargain paid off last week, when Trump clinched his 200th judicial confirmation faster than any president since Jimmy Carter. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) tried to spike the ball when he said the milestone marked “a sea change, a generational change on the federal bench,” and that “Republicans are stemming this liberal judicial tide that we’ve lived with in the past.” Continue reading.

GOP skeptical of polling on Trump

The Hill logoRepublicans are putting their mistrust in polls as former Vice President Joe Biden widens his lead over President Trump nationally and in battleground states. 

Trump lags Biden in national surveys by almost 10 points and trails him in battleground states like Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Meanwhile, Biden is making inroads in some GOP-leaning states like Georgia, where one poll has him running neck and neck with Trump.

With the realization that Trump is unlikely to change up his leadership style between now and Election Day, GOP senators are banking on a repeat of 2016, when polling suggested Trump would lose to Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Continue reading.

Republicans once again face questions about why Trump isn’t tougher on Russia

Washington Post logoSenate Republicans are calling for a tougher posture against Russia following reports that the country’s military spy unit offered to pay Taliban-linked militants to attack U.S. troops in Afghanistan — putting the GOP lawmakers once again potentially at odds with President Trump over how to combat Moscow’s aggression toward the United States.

Trump and the White House repeatedly denied Monday that the president had been briefed on the efforts against coalition forces in Afghanistan, which are believed to have led to the deaths of several U.S. service members. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Trump had not been told of the intelligence because it had not been verified and declined to say if the president had been briefed since news of the bounties became public.

But on Capitol Hill, Republican senators demanded more information from the administration and called for Russia to be punished if reports from the New York Times, The Washington Post and other media outlets were deemed accurate. The Republicans took a notably tougher public tone than Trump did, although they mostly avoided the question of whether the president should have been aware of the intelligence. Continue reading.

Republicans once again face questions about why Trump isn’t tougher on Russia

Washington Post logoSenate Republicans are calling for a tougher posture against Russia following reports that the country’s military spy unit offered to pay Taliban-linked militants to attack U.S. troops in Afghanistan — putting the GOP lawmakers once again potentially at odds with President Trump over how to combat Moscow’s aggression toward the United States.

Trump and the White House repeatedly denied Monday that the president had been briefed on the efforts against coalition forces in Afghanistan, which are believed to have led to the deaths of several U.S. service members. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Trump had not been told of the intelligence because it had not been verified and declined to say if the president had been briefed since news of the bounties became public.

But on Capitol Hill, Republican senators demanded more information from the administration and called for Russia to be punished if reports from the New York Times, The Washington Post and other media outlets were deemed accurate. The Republicans took a notably tougher public tone than Trump did, although they mostly avoided the question of whether the president should have been aware of the intelligence. Continue reading.

Trump, GOP place big bet on economy for 2020

The Hill logoRepublicans are betting on the economy as they try to hold on to the Senate and the White House in November.

The spread of the coronavirus and the subsequent economic fallout have rattled the party’s 2020 message and sparked a round of dismal poll numbers for President Trump and Republicans in key battleground races.

But GOP senators are hoping a potential upswing in growth heading into the fall, combined with fundamental policy differences that contrast with Democrats, will allow them to save a key piece of their campaign strategy. Continue reading.

GOP fears Biden’s low-key campaign is paying off

The Hill logoJoe Biden hasn’t held a press conference in 77 days, but Democrats aren’t feeling much pressure to put their presumptive presidential nominee front and center at the moment.

Biden has, for the most part, kept a low profile throughout the coronavirus pandemic and weeks of demonstrations for racial justice across the country. Over that time, Biden has built up a healthy lead in the polls and emerged as the heavy favorite for now to be the next president.

Meanwhile, Republicans have watched with growing alarm as President Trump’s polling numbers have fallen to frightening new lows for an incumbent. Continue reading.

Fox News Personalities Uniformly Defend Monuments To Treason

In 2015, after a white supremacist gunned down nine Black worshipers in a Charleston, South Carolina, church and calls to dismantle the symbols of racism and slavery grew louder, Fox figures rallied around the Confederate flag. When state leaders, led by then-Gov. Nikki Haley, ordered the flag’s removal from public buildings, Bill O’Reilly used his Fox prime-time perch to say it “represents, to some, bravery in the Civil War because the Confederates fought hard.” Then-Fox personality Kimberly Guilfoyle speculated about whether the American flag would be next.

In 2017, when a white supremacist mowed down a crowd of protesters at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia — which was spuriously organized around the city’s plan to remove a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee from a local park — the same pattern emerged. Fox figures defended President Donald Trump’s false equivalence between white supremacists and the counterprotesters at the rally. And they asked whether book burning or removing the U.S. Capitol stone by stone would come next.

Today, the Confederate battle flag and other racist monuments are back in the news. Amid continued nationwide protests over police brutality against Black Americans in the wake of George Floyd’s killing, protesters have begun toppling statues of Confederates and colonizers alike. Continue reading.