Tag: Republicans

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.

Paul Krugman explains how the GOP’s disdain for workers will tank the economy

AlterNet logoThere was no shortage of terrible news coming from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday, May 8, when the BLS reported that unemployment had reached 14.7% in the United States in April and that the country had lost 20.5 million more jobs last month — that is, in addition to all the jobs lost in March thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. And Friday’s jobs report doesn’t take into account the jobs that have been lost in May so far. Despite all that, Republicans are hardly going out of their way to help all the Americans who are struggling badly — and liberal economist Paul Krugman calls them out for it in his New York Times column.

“COVID-19 has had a devastating effect on workers,” Krugman explains. “The economy has plunged so quickly that official statistics can’t keep up, but the available data suggest that tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs through no fault of their own, with more job losses to come and full recovery probably years away. But Republicans adamantly oppose extending enhanced unemployment benefits.”

Krugman adds that because “most working-age Americans receive health insurance through their employers,” millions of Americans are — during a deadly pandemic —  losing their health insurance when they lose their jobs. 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 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.

Red states may be facing a perfect storm of illness and death from COVID-19

AlterNet logoRural, conservative-leaning states have so far been spared widespread outbreaks of COVID-19. But experts say that they’re simply behind the curve of denser, more urban states like New York and Florida. The New York Times reported this week that “many communities that watched the pandemic unfold in faraway places are now experiencing the crisis firsthand. More than two-thirds of rural counties have confirmed at least one case.” Forty-two states now have over 1,000 confirmed cases of the disease, and many red states are among those conducting the fewest tests.

We know red states are vulnerable to rapidly spreading outbreaks in large part because of political polarization. Polls consistently find that Republicans–especially those who watch Fox News regularly–are more likely than Democrats to believe that COVID-19 is similar to the seasonal flu, and that the media and Democrats are hyping the seriousness of the pandemic to harm Donald Trump’s prospects in November. While most of them have so far practiced social distancing and taking other measures to avoid infection despite those beliefs, this week’s spate of fake grassroots protests against various governors’ shelter-in-place orders highlights the problem.

But there’s another reason to believe that red states are likely to be hit hard as the virus spreads: Many of them are leading the country in risk factors for severe illness and death from COVID-19. Continue reading.

The dangerous conservative campaign against expertise

Washington Post logoIt is perhaps inevitable that a problem as large and complex as covid-19 should result in a pandemic of motivated reasoning. It is a human tendency to interpret disasters as confirmation of our existing beliefs. So the coronavirus outbreak proves the need for a border wall. Or it demonstrates the urgency of Medicare-for-all. Or it resulted, in the words of Franklin Graham, from “a world that has turned its back on God.”

Not every argument is strained or spurious. The pandemic has given our health-care system an X-ray, revealing disturbing racial inequities that need to be understood and addressed. But on the whole, we are right to be wary of people who claim great tragedies as the confirmation of pet theories and previous prophesies. The convenience of an argument is often inversely proportional to its credibility.

Motivated reasoning is usually just tiresome. At its worst, it can be dangerous. Sometimes drawing the wrong lesson badly obscures a right and necessary lesson. Sometimes the interpretation of a crisis is so dramatically mistaken, so ludicrous and imprudent, that it can worsen the crisis itself. Continue reading.

Trump Keeps Talking. Some Republicans Don’t Like What They’re Hearing.

New York Times logoAides and allies increasingly believe the president’s daily briefings are hurting him more than helping, and are urging him to let his medical experts take center stage.

WASHINGTON — In his daily briefings on the coronavirus,President Trump has brandished all the familiar tools in his rhetorical arsenal: belittling Democratic governors, demonizing the media, trading in innuendo and bulldozing over the guidance of experts.

It’s the kind of performance the president relishes, but one that has his advisers and Republican allies worried.

As unemployment soars and the death toll skyrockets, and new polls show support for the president’s handling of the crisis sagging, White House allies and Republican lawmakers increasingly believe the briefings are hurting the president more than helping him. Many view the sessions as a kind of original sin from which all of his missteps flow, once he gets through his prepared script and turns to his preferred style of extemporaneous bluster and invective. Continue reading.

Bill Moyers: Republicans admit they lose when elections are fair and free

AlterNet logoBill’s guest in this episode is the journalist David Daley. His best-selling first book, RATF**KED-WHY YOUR VOTE DOESN’T COUNT  showed how Republicans used gerrymandering to lock up control of many state and local government for years, possibly   decades – and remains their  strategy.  In his  most recent book – UNRIGGED –HOW AMERICANS ARE BATTLING BACK TO SAVE DEMOCRACY he travels  America to report on the grassroots activists devoted to voting rights for all citizens.

He and Bill talked by phone on the eve of the Wisconsin primary where the governor of Wisconsin tried to postpone the election to help protect voters from the pandemic only to be blocked by the conservative dominated state supreme court and then by the five Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court.

There’s a link to David’s Rolling Stone report on analysis of the Wisconsin fracas at billmoyers.com.