Tag: GOP

In my view, Fox has degenerated from providing a legitimate and much-needed outlet for conservative voices to a mere propaganda machine for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration. When prime-time hosts — who have never served our country in any capacity — dismiss facts and empirical reality to launch profoundly dishonest assaults on the FBI, the Justice Department, the courts, the intelligence community (in which I served) and, not least, a model public servant and genuine war hero such as Robert Mueller — all the while scaremongering with lurid warnings of “deep-state” machinations — I cannot be part of the same organization, even at a remove. To me, Fox News is now wittingly harming our system of government for profit.

Lt. Col. Ralph Peters (Ret.), long-time FOXnews contributor, who once claimed that Obama had been “date raped” by Vladimir Putin and likewise said (and was briefly suspended for saying that) Obama was a “total pussy.”
I take issue only with “has degenerated.” That dumpster fire started off fully degenerated and has long been the “mere propaganda machine” for a major political party: the GOP. Otherwise: yep.

The reason Trump won’t be [challenged in the primary] like Gerald Ford in 1976 or George H.W. Bush in 1992 is simple: Trump unquestionably represents what Republicanism is at this moment – certainly more than any potential challenger. The GOP is a resentment-driven party, and there’s no potential challenger who taps into that anger the way Trump does. There’s no contest.

Ford and Poppy Bush didn’t Unquestionably represent their party. They were the last two Republican presidents with greater ties to the GOP establishment than to the newer coalition of religious conservatives and resentment-driven suburban and exurban whites. It’s no surprised that they faced reelection challenges from within the party.

Maybe Trump’s voters will be disillusioned with the direction of the country in a couple of years, especially if the economy cools off or collapses (though nothing Robert Mueller is investigating will bother them) – but it’s likely that even an economic downturn won’t faze them. George W. Bush retained considerable support within his party even in the waning days of his presidency, when nearly everyone else in America had abandoned him, because he wouldn’t give up on the war, a stance GOP voters cheered because it infuriated liberals. Trump will be in a similar position in two years: We’ll still hate him, so Republican voters will continue to embrace him.

Steve M. provides some trenchant analysis over at No More Mister Nice Blog. Nothing to add to this, really, other than “Yep.”

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.

G.K. Chesterton, in his 1929 book, The Thing

Ed Kilgore has some thoughts on Democratic leadership and the need for term-limits (and specifically for Nancy Pelosi):

Ever since Democrats fell short of their 2016 goal of taking back control of the U.S. House, there’s been talk about […] leadership change in the House Democratic Caucus. And after Democrats failed to win any of the four GOP House seats where special elections were held this year, there was renewed talk about Nancy Pelosi stepping down as House Democratic Leader. The negative buzz became particularly loud after the party’s biggest special-election hope, Georgia’s Jon Ossoff, suffered a disappointing loss, in the wake of Republicans running many millions of dollars of ads linking the candidate to Pelosi.

[…]

[Pelosi] is a much bigger target for Republicans than Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell appears to be for Democrats. Part of the problem may simply be that she happens to represent a jurisdiction with rich negative symbolism (dating back at least to the attacks on “San Francisco Democrats” in 1984 after the Donkey Party held its convention in the City by the Bay) for the conservatives who are mostly the target for anti-Pelosi ads. You cannot quite imagine Democrats running ads mocking Paul Ryan’s Wisconsin or Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky in this manner.

Emphasis added by me because Kilgore completely discounts the most important information in his several paragraphs. The demonization of Pelosi has nothing to do with her having been in the arena for too long, being a woman, coming from San Francisco, or anything else. Those are all useful pegs for the GOP to build their messaging on and around, but they aren’t themselves decisive or even all that interesting. Anyone serving as minority leader will immediately come under sustained and focused attack from the right wing and their stenographers in much of the media. It’s Cokie’s Law: if information, factual or otherwise, is “out there” then it must be discussed uncritically. Thus the media happily carries the GOP messaging machine’s water on Pelosi and anybody else in the cross-hairs that day. There’s just no getting around it, and The Democrat not only doesn’t have anything like this, they aren’t even on the same planet with the scale and coordination of this operation. Unless and until they create a sustained messaging attack on McConnell and Ryan, those two can continue right on doing what they’re doing. Just to focus on McConnell, he’s likely the most destructive force in government today, but most people would be hard pressed to name him, much less know what he’s been up to and why it is dismantling the way our government has, until recently, functioned.
That’s simply not the case for Pelosi, and that has nothing to do with the fact that she’s from San Francisco and everything to do with a sustained, targeted, and years long messaging attack that salts the Earth and leaves useful framing tools for any GOP hopeful to pick up and use, readymade. Democrats try to build the machine from scratch with every individual election, every cycle. How’s that working out for them?

Lastly, if you like the ACA, thank Nancy Pelosi. Period. That doesn’t mean she gets a pass to serve in party leadership forever, but she did that lift more or less with her own political momentum and within the context of the sustained, entirely negative noise machine and well after perceptions about her in the media were set in stone. Think on that as you try to show her the door.

To me it feels like [Republicans] have fallen prey to a Donald Trump cult.They are ceding their loyalty not to the constitution, not to the country, not to their constituents but to this president of their party but who wasn’t even a Republican until a few years ago. They’ so desperate to want to play, to want to be invited to dinner at the white house that they are willing  to remain silent in the face of a president who is attacking our institutions.

I thought what James Clapper said yesterday, that our institutions are being attacked both externally and internally, was spine chilling. And it’s something that we should take so seriously. This president started off by attacking the Intelligence Community. He has tweeted against judges. He has tweeted intimidation to Sally Yates on the day of her testimony. He has tweeted a veiled threat to the former FBI Director.

So I have to ask Republicans over and over again. What is it going to take for you to wake up and recognize your duty is to country and not to this one man. How far does it have to go? What does he have to do for you to wake up and speak up and do what you need to do?

Ana Navaro, sometimes Republican strategist, asks the right questions before any of the Trump-leaked-secrets information hit later in the day. Some member of the GOP that has the courage to stand is going to be the one that gets to pick up the pieces. I’m starting to think that person is currently outside government…

The Center for American Progress helpfully worked through a few common preexisting conditions among, oh, all of them that will be newly surcharged should the AHCA pass. I think my favorite is completed pregnanct with no or minor complications; that’ll be an additional $17,060 atop your existing fees. Makes perfect sense to me.

The GOP’s health care plan is and always has been: sick individuals should endure bankruptcy for themselves and their families and then, when the money’s gone, kindly go die in the streets. If you don’t have the money to go bankrupt keeping yourself alive in the first place, then don’t get sick (because people who live a good life just don’t get sick) or just go die in the streets. Period.

And, of course, who is not subject to these exciting new ideas? That’d be Congress. I’ve said it before and will say it again: Congress and their dependents should be automatically enrolled the lowest coverage health care allowable by law with no recourse to outside insurance and no Congressional Clinic with 24/7 full service walk-in care for ~$500/year either. Such a law could be about two sentences long (which seems to be the limit for the GOP’s attention) and would greatly clarify these debates.

I was struck last night by a comment that I heard made by Speaker Ryan, where he called this [Affordable Care Act] repeal bill ‘an act of mercy.’ With all due respect to our speaker, he and I must have read different Scripture…The one I read calls on us to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to shelter the homeless, and to comfort the sick. It reminds us that we are judged not by how we treat the powerful, but by how we care for the least among us. There is no mercy in a system that makes health care a luxury. There is no mercy in a country that turns their back on those most in need of protection: the elderly, the poor, the sick, and the suffering. There is no mercy in a cold shoulder to the mentally ill. This is not an act of mercy. It is an act of malice.

Joe Kennedy III (D. MA) doing it the right way