I have been trying to understand what happened to the Republican Party.
The Republican Party seems to have abandoned its core principles during the Trump era. Once upon a time there was a vigorous “moderate” wing of the GOP. It’s gone. Once they were the party of personal responsibility, family values, multilateralism, supportive of immigration, free trade, and reflexive anti-Sovietism. They were once deficit hawks but threw out that policy to pass Trump’s massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest individuals in 2017. Republicans believed in the rule of law and revered the Constitution They abandoned these core principles under Trump’s sway. They became the cult of Trump. So enamored of him were they that the Party didn’t bother to write a platform for the 2020 election. It was simply ”whatever Trump said last time.”
What Republicans believe today:
Trump is always right.
Republicans believe that the best medicine for the economy is big tax cuts for corporations and the richest.
At the state level, the most compelling issue for Republicans is the very existence of people who are transgender. They don’t want them to serve in the military. They don’t want them to use the bathroom of their choice, although gender-neutral bathrooms are increasingly commonplace. They would legislate them out of existence if they could. The fight against transgender people is a big state issue.
The core belief of today’s Republican Party is that the 2020 election was rigged by the party out of power (who forgot to rig races for the Senate, the House, and governorships). Trump won in a landslide, they say, but the Democrats stole the election. The absence of any evidence doesn’t change their views, nor does the fact that the Trump campaign’s claims of fraud were rejected by scores of state and federal courts, by Trump-appointed judges and twice by the US Supreme Court. Any elected Republican who thinks that Biden won in a fair election, like Liz Cheney, puts their political career at risk. The party has chosen Trump’s Big Lie over the rule of law and the Constitution.
Republicans believe that Putin is our good friend, because Trump said so.
Republicans believe that immigration is bad for America because immigrants are murderers, rapists, and drug dealers. Trump said so. Immigration is bad because most immigrants are not white, and they threaten the white identity of the country.
Republican state officials are passing laws to suppress the votes of people who might vote Democratic, especially black and brown people.
If Democrats somehow win a governorship, the legislature (if controlled by Republicans) shamelessly passes laws to diminish the governor’s power.
Republicans believe they have a duty to protect schools from “critical race theory,” even if they aren’t sure what it is. They don’t want white students or their parents to feel any responsibility for racial injustice, past or present. Republicans imagine that teachers are indoctrinating students to become socialists or Communists. This is nonsense.
Republicans want charter schools, vouchers, home-schooling, and they are willing to send public dollars to anyone who opens a school, regardless of whether it operates for profit and regardless of quality.
Republicans don’t value separation of church and state. In fact, they vigorously lobby to send public money to religious schools.
Republicans believe in strict accountability for public schools, but not for charter schools or religious schools that get public money.
The party of “family values” evaporated when Trump became their president. An affair with a porn star? Who cares? Nude photos of the First Lady all over the Internet? No problem (remember how shocked they were when Michelle Obama wore a sleeveless dress?). Multiple claims of sexual harassment? Forget the family values thing.
Republicans today are the party of Trump.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Powerful summary of an nightmare all too real.
The GOP is a libertarian/Ayn Randian/Trumpian death cult. When they talk about personal responsibility that is code for doing away with Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the ACA and the other social programs that working class Americans depend upon. I believe the GOP is the reason, for the most part, why we do not have universal health care in this country, though some corporate Democrats are part of the problem, too.
Toadying House Republicans resoundingly affirm:
Yes, we are every bit as vile, ignorant, stupid, backward, cowardly, sexist, racist, and fascist as is Glorious Leader Who Shines More Orange Than Does the Sun.
These people are flat-out nuts. No reasoning with them.
Pack the court. Forget about trying to reach these people. Reach their children instead.
I wrote a comment about Trump on The Hill. Got this reply:
you are a low IQ sub human.. so what your your subjective reality is makes no difference in true objective reality.. in other words what you think is worthless to humans. 🙂
Aie yie yie
Lovely. So sorry Carol.
markstextterminal: I’m fine. Here was my reply:
I got a Master’s degree with high honors and worked overseas for 12 years. Sorry, but being subhuman exists in your mind.
I try to avoid arguing with right wingers. Facts, logic and reality cannot sway the delusional. All they know how to do is trade insults as you have unfortunately found out.
retired teacher: It’s really amazing how horrible some of these people get in their online comments.
They don’t see any connection between their insults and how it reflects on the type of people who support the GOP.
The Hill comment thread is downright weird. About 20% of the time there’s a healthy component of centrists and liberals onboard: rwnj’s quiet down and a robust discussion ensues. But even those interesting conversations eventually get sidetracked by a persistent rwnj and end up circling the toilet.
I offer another perspective, the Republican Party has not been the party you remember since the 70’s or perhaps earlier. There has been an ongoing slow-burn assault on our country and our democracy for 40+ years, and like a coal fire that burns under the ground, eventually it reaches the surface and burst out into open flame.
This was Trump.
He will not be the only one…. he’s just the first to come above the surface.
In 1971, Lewis Powell penned “The Powell Memo” encouraging the oligarchy to start getting politically active and essentially take over American Democracy.
https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/democracy/the-lewis-powell-memo-a-corporate-blueprint-to-dominate-democracy/
Roger Ailes began his quest to build the Republican Propaganda Media complex which eventually became Fox News under Nixon. Fox now pays cable providers to carry their bile.
In 1980, Paul Weyrich (founder of the Heritage Foundation, Moral Majority, ALEC) saddressed a southern “Christian” gathering in Dallas Tx in which he said:
“Now many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome — good government. They want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” – https://youtu.be/8GBAsFwPglw
Name a Republican President since Eisenhower who had not committed a major crime or treason to become president:
• Nixon negotiated with the North Vietnamese to extend the war – offering them a better deal if he became president.
• Ronal Reagan doing the same with the hostages held by Iran – recall the Iran / Contra scandal
• George HW Bush played a key role in Reagan’s treason, ultimately pardoning the participants for his final Christmas in the White House as the legal investigation began to close in.
• George W. Bush had a corrupted court hand him the presidency because it would essentially hurt his feelings if he lost (recall the hanging chads and the post dismissal investigation that demonstrated Gore won Florida.
Gerrymandering, ALEC, The Two Santa Claus principle (Republicans spend like drunken sailors when in power then scream about the deficit they ran up when they’re not – we are already seeing that playbook starting for Biden).
Destroying the safety nets – privatizing social security, and as you so well point out the destruction of our education system, the list goes on and on … and on.
Republicans have the will and the funds to play the long game, singularly focused on one thing, the United Corporation of America – lining the pockets of the rich, on the backs of the not rich, hiding their tracks by pitting people against each other on issues of race, and jingoist nationalism to the point of beating Captiol Police officers with flagpoles carrying the Stars and Stripes and installing the Trump flag on the Capitol.
So Trump is just the natural offspring of a movement that has been underway for nearly half of a century. The problem is, the monster the Republican Party created isn’t interested in staying on his leash. We are just fortunate that Trump is so narrow-minded, myopic and narcissistic that he missed opportunities to do even worse damage to our country, as if kids in cages wasn’t bad enough.
The Republican party has not been for family values since Eisenhower, unless we’re talking about “crime family values”.
Well said. Today the Republican Party intends to win by any means necessary in order to keep minority rule in power. Ethics are rarely a consideration in their manipulations to retain control over the country.
like a coal fire that burns under the ground, eventually it reaches the surface and burst out into open flame
A memorable and perfect analogy!!!
Thanks @Bob –
And the fire is still burning under the ground, it will erupt into the open again. The question is not if but when and where (and how big).
This is what our Flor-uh-duh Governor, Trump Mini-Me Ron DeSatan, is counting on. He and a lot of other troglodytes seeking to don the Orange Mantle in 2024.
Rob-
Excellent summary, especially identification of the Koch/Weyrich /ALEC impact. (It would have been made better by the inclusion of Leonard Leo’s impact.) At the Theocracy Watch site, the Paul Weyrich training manual that called for creation of parallel schools to destroy public schools is posted.
Jefferson said, in every country, in every age, the priest aligns with the despot. The once liberal Neuman Centers on college campuses, have turned to the conservative right. The board of the Catholic University of America is closely linked to Charles Koch. While they are two relatively small parts of the change you note, they are significant indicators of the little publicized fact that over the past few decades, many Catholic voting families who were liberals when they were have-nots, switched allegiances as they advanced on the socioeconomic ladder. They are led by an anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-common good, politically active, hierarchy of bishops. The publicly-admitted successes of the state Catholic Conferences in defeating the long established understanding of public funds for public schools has gone unnoticed when it should be being exposed. “School choice expansion among legislative successes for Indiana Catholic Conference”, (Today’s Catholic, 4-27-2021).
Linda Surely you know that the Jefferson quote that “the priest aligns with the despot” is highly abstract, narrow, and even extreme enough to completely overlook all the priests in the history that WE know of, and of every denomination, who do NOT align with despots and, indeed, who have hidden resisters, and who preach against and even die fighting fascism.
In the same vein of realizing Jefferson’s partial truth, so I think we can assume (and I know) that many in the Catholic trenches, and many who support private schooling, have little no awareness of the import of privatization on the fuller meaning of public education and its relationship to the tenets of the U.S. Constitution.
They only see the Church and religious consciousness in general, as being under great threat . . . and it is under threat . . . by the same extremism that you are quite aware of in some powerful Catholic circles, only in their case from anti-Christians and anti-whatever denominations, e.g., anti-Catholic. As a general rule, nothing good can get done when the only discourse around emerges from ignorance and extremism.
These many well-meaning people, however, share in the same ignorance that, more generally, PARENTS share . . . who have bought the systematic bad-mouthing of public education and teachers for decades, and who now see an educational panacea through the lenses of “reformers'” bells and whistles, and oligarchs’ money.
In their short-term thinking, they don’t realize the long-term political implications of privatization, even as (as you say) many in the Church hierarchy are invested in keeping that ignorance in place and, again, are far and away from anything commonly known as Christian. CBK
The religious influence that many Fox network personalities, e.g. Laura Ingraham, claim drives them is relevant to Rob’s analysis but, is unreported by media.
Linda Do you mean, the influence of perverted religion, as is related in this thread? . . . because there’s nothing remotely Christian about what the Republican Party is doing. CBK
I was prepared to comment something like this. Thanks for saving me the trouble. In summary, the Republican Party has been using splinter issues to split off portions of the electorate for years. With each step, the issues become more extreme as the country moves inexorably rightward. It is back to the future, as we now contemplate the idea of legislation that would make an idea illegal (Critical Race Theory being forbidden). Seig Heil!
Or even the “idea” that the Big Lie is just that – a lie – requires punishment.
I guess some ideas are more equal than others.
So much for “Family Values” (with family like that, who needs enemies?)
Excellent, clear, concise and on the money vis a vis the long war against democracy in the US; very impt to go back to the Powell Memorandum(1971)to see the long corporate game plan building power on the right which led to Trump with Democratic Party complicity.
Just to add, for anyone interested in more on the burning coal fire, I highly encourage you to check out Thom Hartmann’s daily radio/internet/FreeSpeechTV show (9am – Noon Pacific). He does an amazing job educating us all as to what is going on, and openly encourages the opposition to engage with him. (He’s also got some pretty excellent books)
Find out more at : https://www.thomhartmann.com/radio/listen-live
Small correction. Nixon made a deal with the South Vietnamese, Not the North Vietnamese.
And LBJ confronted him about it but did not go public.
+1 thanks for the correction!
You started too late. You seem to have forgotten Goldwater. And as Dean Baker said long before Maddow “Don’t tell me what they think tell me what they do. “
Excelent! And, if you don’t know Heather Cox Richardson (history professor) has been posting daily synopsis for the past 4 years+. Here is her’s from last night”
“Tonight, in a speech that claimed every piece of the Republican landscape since 1980, Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney launched a broadside against the Republican leaders who have shackled the party to the former president.
“Today we face a threat America has never seen before,” Cheney said. “A former president who provoked a violent attack on this Capitol in an effort to steal the election has resumed his aggressive effort to convince Americans that the election was stolen from him. He risks inciting further violence. Millions of Americans have been misled by the former president. They have heard only his words, but not the truth, as he continues to undermine our democratic process, sowing seeds of doubt about whether democracy really works at all.”
Cheney recalled the determination of those in Kenya, Russia, and Poland to risk their lives to vote for freedom, and talked of how the dream of American democracy had inspired them. She touched on religion, assuring listeners that God has favored America. She invoked Reagan, claiming that his Republican Party won the Cold War and saying that America is now on the cusp of another cold war with communist China.
This impending struggle highlighted the importance of today’s domestic struggle: “Attacks against our democratic process and the rule of law empower our adversaries and feed communist propaganda that American democracy is a failure. We must speak the truth. Our election was not stolen, and America has not failed.”
Cheney went on to claim that she stood on conservative principles Republicans like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has abandoned. The fundamental conservative principle is the rule of law, she reminded listeners, and those backing Trump’s Big Lie are denying that rule and undermining our democracy. The election is over, she said, and “Those who refuse to accept the rulings of our courts are at war with the Constitution.” It is imperative, she said, to act to prevent “the unraveling of our democracy.”
“This is not about policy. This is not about partisanship. This is about our duty as Americans. Remaining silent and ignoring the lie emboldens the liar.”
Tomorrow, House Republicans will vote on whether to keep Cheney at the number three spot in the party in the House—she is expected to be removed—and Trump’s own former deputy attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen, will tell the House Oversight Committee that after the election, the Justice Department “had been presented with no evidence of widespread voter fraud at a scale sufficient to change the outcome of the 2020 election.”
On Thursday, over 100 former Republican leaders will drop a letter saying that if party leadership does not separate itself from former president Trump, they will start a third party. They are calling themselves the “rationals” against the “radicals,” and they include former governors and representatives, as well as Republican officeholders.
This revolt against the Trump loyalists in the Republican Party signals that, no matter what leadership is saying, many Republicans—including Republican lawmakers—are not, in fact, united behind the former president. After all, he never broke 50% approval when he was president, and he lost the White House and Congress for the party. And, now that he is locked out of Twitter and Facebook, it appears he can no longer command the audience he used to. In the week since he launched a new blog, it has attracted a little over 212,000 likes, shares, and comments. The top post got just 16,000 engagements.
Meanwhile, 63% of Americans approve of the job President Joe Biden is doing.
What’s at stake in the fight over Cheney’s position in the Republican Party—admit it, did you ever think you would care about who was the third most important House Republican?—is not some obscure struggle for political seniority. It’s a fight over whether the Republican Party will wed itself to the Big Lie that a Democratic president is illegitimate, despite all evidence to the contrary. Cheney is not a Democrat by a long shot, and she is correctly calling out the danger of the Big Lie for what it is: a dagger pointed at the heart of our democracy.”….
(Apologies for the typos…. morning chaos 🙂 )
Happens to all of us, Rob. Great comment!
I actually love the word you coined: “saddressed”, and thought it was perhaps intentional, as it aptly names the brutal Weyrich quote you referenced. Sad+address = sadressed
The “happy accident” at work 🙂
It began with Reagan, of course, Trump is nothing but consummate Bonzo in Ronnie’s psych experiment on the American Populace.
The ed reform echo chamber are demanding public transparency about federal relief funding spending by public school districts.
Why are the charter and private schools they prefer exempted from this demand?
Just their ordinary bias against public schools and their belief that everyone who works in one needs constant policing by ed reformers?
If it’s about “transparency” they should be demanding it from charter and private schools too, now that they’re all publicly funded.
I don’t mind that this “movement” has an absolute ideological preference for schools that are not public, but it’s really unfair that public schools are subject to their mandates when they exempt their own schools. No one should accept any ed reform “analysis” that exempts the schools they promote and includes only the schools they hope to replace. They’re biased. Obviously.
Too bad nobody is policing the deformers that excel at waste, fraud, embezzling and hiding money overseas.
The first charter school to get renewed under California’s AB1505 just reinforced this joke. Despite clear warning flags around not only use of relief funding, the local school district called out a number of violations of the charter, that the CA State Board of Education chose to ignore. Quite sad really– showing that even if laws are passed to level the playing field (AB1505) they don’t really mean much.
Chiara The ed reform echo chamber are demanding public transparency about federal relief funding spending by public school districts. . . . Why are the charter and private schools they prefer exempted from this demand?
That’s easy: private owners and corporations are pure and good on principle, and so quite naturally above the fray that would need ethical oversight, like you and me and public institutions. CBK
The public really needs to read within the ed reform echo chamber. I think most people would be surprised at the absolute cavalier disregard bordering on contempt for public school students:
“David Osborne
If a district is willing to lease buildings to charters–even portions of buildings–and downsize its staff when students leave for charters, they can actually make money on the deal”
Everything, everything is analyzed solely from the potential benefit to charter and private school students. Public school students don’t exist in this “movement”. There are the (hated) “government schools” and the (hated) teachers unions. No students.
YOUR KIDS are never actually mentioned, except as potential charter and private school transfers. They perform no work at all on behalf of public school students. They’re never even mentioned. It’s no accident that none of these people have gotten anything done to “improve” public schools- they were never interested in public schools.
Public school kids = marketshare.
“Fordham Institute
Elementary schools must protect instructional time for science and social studies when all students return to class. It’s important on it’s own, and a broad knowledge base in these subjects prepares students to effectively participate in civic life.”
Maybe elementary schools should do or not do something, but why would public elementary schools accept direction from the charter and voucher lobby?
Seems like public elementary schools should accept direction from people and entities who support their continued existence, rather than taking orders from ed reformers.
Do the private schools all these folks lobby to publicly fund follow orders from the ed reform echo chamber? Why should my public school? At minimum I would hope the people designing public school policy would actually support public schools. That doesn’t seem like an outrageous demand. Why can’t our students get it?
This is the ed reform echo chamber contribution to public schools and public school students re: the Ohio education budget:
“Enter education savings accounts—often referred to by their acronym ESAs—which satisfactorily address the sentiment of those same 66 percent of parents and the unique challenges facing families in the wake of the pandemic.
As the name suggests, ESAs are special savings accounts funded with state education dollars, which are designated for families to spend on education expenses. ESA funds can be used to pay for a wide variety of educational products and services, including laptop computers and other necessary technology for distance-learning, software, online courses, private tutoring, other support services, and curriculum enhancements.”
Their agenda has absolutely nothing to do with students in public schools and no part of it benefits them in any way.
So why do they dominate public school policy? Would ed reformers accept this situation in their own schools?
I’ll put charter and voucher opponents in charge of charter and private schools. See how far I get with that before there are howls of outrage.
Public school students should have people who support public schools setting policy in their schools. We can and should demand that. Real advocates- not charter and voucher lobbyists who are willing to put up with our schools while they work to replace them. That’s not fair to public school students.
All of the issues Diane cites above are there to distract the voters from the hand that is in their pocket. What is that feeliing you have that the paycheck you are getting has stagnated while the pigs are growing fat? Must be the immigrants, the trans movement, the communists (even the communists in China are picking the pockets of the poor these days), or perhaps the ….This is all a diversion.
Diane is correct: follow the money, for there is the power.
The tragedy is that the notion of redemption as the guiding force in society is giving way to a vindictive zeitgeist that will soon have us past the possibility of redemption. Soon the cup will overfill, and the waters of personal bitterness will overflow, roaring over our society like the Congo River pours out of the Malebo pool.
Grocery prices have increased enormously in the past few years. This is a nonissue to the wealthy and a huge one for everyone else. You are exactly right, Roy: the oligarchs and their paid bobbleheads and action figures in congress and the judiciary use abortion, guns, trans rights, and so on to distract from issues like this–THE INCREASING DIFFICULTY THAT ORDINARY PEOPLE ARE HAVING IN SIMPLY FEEDING THEIR FAMILIES.
Likewise, building materials and appliances are more expensive and harder to get from the production lag in the pandemic
The most recent data I could find on food prices excluding restaurants does not show large growth rates for food prices, but rather a much lower growth rate than, say the late 60s and early 70s. Of course the data only goes up to 2018. Of course there will be some short term increases in prices (and availability) for food and many other things due to the pandemic would have influenced prices in the last year and a half.
See https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPGDFD02USM657N
Yeah, I keep checking these figures and coming up with the same, TE. But something really fishy is going on. I haven’t changed my shopping, but I’m easily spending twice as much on groceries as I did only a couple years ago. And I notice that manufacturers are continually downsizing their containers. Same price, half the amount. There is something very fishy going on with the officially reported stats. A couple years ago, 2 liters of diet soda was regularly offered on sale at $1.00 (or, commonly, 99 cents). Now, the sale price is buy two for $2.99 and get one free. So, three dollars versus six dollars. A doubling in price. And the same goes for almost everything. The official numbers here are a lie, and it’s time for independent watchdogs to start compiling them.
So the right makes that into an issue that has all the people complaining that Michelle Obama is keeping them from getting enough food on their lunch plates. The truth is that improvements in school lunches were not funded so lunchrooms had to cut portions to stay within guidelines.
You are talking my language, Roy. The campaign playbook of the Monopoly Men will always be premised on getting lower classes to fight among themselves over the crumbs. Any disruption to the economy is their friend. Government’s response to our slow-motion manufacturing implosion has produced a banana-republic rich-poor gap; ever-increasing political extremism is the usual consequence.
It’s all fear-based, and fear has a long memory. I sometimes stumble over the departure of Dixiecrats to the Republicans, which seems on the surface purely race-motivated (after all, the economy was booming & middle class thriving). But I’m thinking the ‘60’s civil rights laws were read as a threat to economic security by rural Southern whites with a long memory of poverty.
It is also important to recall that the dixiecrats were partially a result of the generally colonial status of the south in the reconstruction period. The south was economically devastated by the Civil War, and the victorious north created a sort of economic domination that made southerners take seriously the false idea that the war had actually been a fight over economics and not morality. This was fine by the owners of the textile mills that exploited the cheap labor the south had to offer. Mixed with the scotts-irish independence born of the political struggles of the British isles, it made a good anti-union, anti-education base to keep the poor man down.
Roy Tongue-in-Cheek Alert: I thought the whole Dixiecrat thing was about States Rights and had nothing to do with slavery. CBK
It was not limited just to the South. There were integration riots in Boston . Only with rare exception NYC construction trade unions had to be dragged into federal court to accept minority apprentices.
But we can not forget the affect of de industrialization which decimated manufacturing long before NAFTA . As Europe and Japan recovered from the War and re-built their industrial base . American industry retooled to compete. The Robots that turned the the industrial Mid West into rust were here by the early 80’s, as any Billy Joel or Bruce Springsteen fan would know. Those industries first moved to new highly efficient plants in the non union South, then later out of the Country .
The Boomer Generation in these states who thought they would do better than their parents found out they wouldn’t and were open to the demagogic message of Republicans. Open to Reagan’s Welfare Queens and the next 40 years of fear and hate.
The Republican Party today is a culmination of decades of the cowed and lazy so-called “liberal” media that has elevated and amplified their lies because cowardly and lazy so-called “liberal” journalists were terrified of being called “biased”.
The Republican Party has realized that they can say any lie and even if the NYT or one of the networks actually points out the lie, the very same NYT will for the next 364 days quote those very same lying Republicans on other issues as if people who blatantly lie still have credibility on ANY issue!
The Republicans pay no price for lying. They pay a price for NOT lying. And when the mainstream media starts treating every last one of them as untrustworthy, things will change.
“Ted Cruz, why should Americans believe anything you say then you keep lying to them?” “Known liar Josh Hawley is criticizing Democrats again.”
I would love to hear Jen Psaki answer all reporters questions about Biden negotiating with Republicans by asking the reporter – do you think any American would make deals with people who lie to their face again?
Democrats can succeed if they make the next 2 and 4 years into an issue of trust. The left can help the Republicans continue to help the Republicans’ assault on democracy itself by continuing to confuse having policy differences with a politician or a politician changing his or her mind on a policy issue with blatant lies in which the truth is presented as a lie and lies are presented as fact.
The left has helped the right wing by normalizing their lies by claiming that Democrats lie also. But Democrats don’t blatantly lie, or if they do they get called out. Democrats don’t tell voters that up is down and left is right. There is a difference.
The Republicans have gained power — and will continue to gain even more power – until their lies stop being normalized by the left who helps push the narrative that the Republicans’ blatant lies are no different than the Democrats.
^^My apologies, I just reread my comment and it reads as if I am saying “the left” is at fault, and that isn’t true. I love how AOC and the squad and Bernie and Jamaal do not fall into the Republican trap in which they are asked by the media to help them push the pro-Republican false narrative that the blatant lies of Republicans are just like the Democrats supposedly lies. I have seen AOC deftly turn around that false narrative. But there are a few non-politicians on the left who seem to specialize in writing articles in which they try to paint Democrats as the same as Republicans. Those are the ones who are helping push the pro-Republican narrative and who are either willingly or unwillingly being used by the far right to help empower them.
NYC public I was listening to Mitch McConnell this morning . . . and thinking the same thing . . . why expect Mitch to keep his promises (about the budget, in this case) when he has a track record that includes mobilizing goalposts.
Democrats are so naive-optimist. . . . Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown. Democrats continue to wrongly project integrity onto Republicans while Republicans wrongly project their own bad-actor stuff onto Democrats; and when we do remark on some nefarious Republican acts, they just throw the same criticism back at us . . why not, when there is no regard for truth in the whole GD Republican camp.
What they did to Liz Cheney this morning defies my understanding. Like Diane, I still wonder how it could have gotten so bad; and I agree that Trump is just the puss pouring out of the infected wound. CBK
The media are reporting that a number of influential Republicans are considering forming a new party. If they do it, it would be helpful to the Democrats in the midterms.
CBK,
I love that Charlie Brown analogy.
Can you imagine if Charlie Brown finally decided to stop kicking the football when Lucy held it?
The mainstream media — cowed by Lucy and her very rich parents (and their friends) into having convenient amnesia about all Lucy’s past actions — would keep asking Charlie Brown “Why aren’t you working together with Lucy, you are so partisan, Charlie Brown, how dare you not keep working with Lucy and kicking that football when Lucy holds it for you?”
The networks would invite Lucy on to explain that Charlie Brown was not keeping his promise to be bipartisan and the NYT would publish op eds by Lucy and her parents that attack Charlie Brown for not continuing to kick the football whenever Lucy orders him to do so.
If Trump has his way with the former Republican Party and Trump returns to power instead of shattering the GOP, will be as a president for life (the only way Trump would see himself as president is for life), history will repeat itself.
The German Nazi Party controlled by a Trump-like monster named Adolf Hitler declared war not just on the Jewish people living in Germany and other countries the Nazis conquered and controlled. Since birds of a feather flock together, who came first, Hitler or Trump. History says Hitler came first. If Trump ever has the power to rewrite history, it will be recorded that Trump came first.
“During the era of the Holocaust, German authorities also targeted and killed other groups, including at times their children, because of their perceived racial and biological inferiority: Roma View This Term in the Glossary (Gypsies), Germans with disabilities, and some of the Slavic peoples (especially Poles and Russians). Other groups were persecuted on political, ideological, and behavioral grounds, among them Communists, Socialists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals.
“Because the Nazis advocated killing children of “unwanted” groups, children—particularly Jewish and Romani children—were especially vulnerable in the era of the Holocaust.”
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/documenting-numbers-of-victims-of-the-holocaust-and-nazi-persecution
I think it is safe to say that in a country called Trumplandia (the former United States since anything Trump owns or controls has his last name plastered on it), Trumpists would do the same thing to transgenders and others like anyone labeled by the term “liberal” and ship them off to concentration camps, too.
Would the 1.4 million adults in the U.S. identified as transgender be the first to go or the 2nd behind illegal immigrants that Trump’s goons arrested during his automatic presidency and stuffed into concentration camps to linger, rot or die?
https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/trans-adults-united-states/
Short answer?
Nothing
Not “nothing.” They do stand for enriching the privileged and giving baloney to the middle class and working class.
Well, yes. Some wag suggested that they should wear suits, like NASCAR drivers, with the logos of their corporate sponsors on them. But that could be a bipartisan sartorial decision.
Diane: They do stand for enriching the privileged and giving baloney to the middle class and working class.
Example: I wanted to get my taxes done this year. [We all have to do that.] The company where I have done my taxes had closed two of their offices. Many people had quit.
I had to search online and eventually found where the one office which is still open is located.
They told me that the federal government is millions behind in doing taxes. My company said they were swamped and couldn’t get to mine before May 17. Many tax people had quit.
I had to file an extension for federal taxes. The secretary at this tax place told me over the phone to pay the same tax amount that I paid last year….it is an estimated amount since my taxes wouldn’t be done to ascertain the correct amount.
Since Trump got elected, the USPS no longer is reliable. I had to pay $7.20 to send by certified mail my 1.] extension request and 2.] a small check to the U.S. Treasury. I would never pay the same amount [estimated for this year] that I paid last year because if by some chance my federal tax was lower I’d never get my money back.
The GOP has fired people in the IRS so now it doesn’t work. I understand that the IRS actually closed for a number of months during this last year. If there is an audit, it is done to hit middle class people. The wealthy can afford expensive tax lawyers so they will never be held accountable.
I had $6,600 in medical expenses that won’t be counted this year and had $8,000 in medical expenses that weren’t counted last year. [I really don’t see the ‘middle class’ being helped in the “greatest tax cut for the middle class ever” that was pushed through in the middle of the night by McConnell, the GOP and endorsed by Trump.]
Summary:
IRS doesn’t work. Not enough people work there.
USPS isn’t reliable. [I sent a Christmas card with a $5.00 gift card inside. My friend in Miami never got the card and it was never returned to me. It was STOLEN while being sent by regular first class USPS mail.] DeJoy did his job to destroy the efficiency of the USPS.
Tax cut works beautifully if you are wealthy or are a corporation.
“David Osborne
Yep. Monopolies have never liked competition, and they never will. Too bad the antitrust laws don’t apply to public institutions.”
These are the people who want to manage and police everything that happens in public schools.
People who have absolute contempt for public schools and want them abolished.
Why should public school students get stuck with that? They should have people who support them and their schools just like the ed reform echo chamber supports charter and private schools and those students. Public school students should have advocates, too.
+1 @Chiara
Simply, Public schools are not businesses. The “free market” has no business in public schools.
Diane’s summary is on the mark. With a handful of exceptions the GOP is nothing but the party of Trump. Dissenters are targeted if they report the truth, that Trump lost the election. No one is spared, including Mitt Romney, once a high ranking member of the GOP.
Dissenters are not allowed. Lies have morphed into a direct attack on the very idea of living in a democracy.
Dana Milbank wrote today in the Washington Post that Republicans love to complain about “cancel culture,” but they canceled Liz Cheney for speaking truth
Republicans invented the Culture Wars in large part as a distraction from an economic agenda. Then they object to being “cancelled ” for their views.
Is a more accurate portrayal of complex historical figures cancel culture? Or is the attempt to maintain a myth cancel culture?
Thomas Friedman said this today (NYT column 5/12) while analyzing the L Cheney ouster. He refers his first foreign correspondence covering the Lebanese Civil War reporting 40yrs ago.
“I saw close up what happens when democratically elected politicians think that they can endlessly abuse their institutions, cross redlines, weaken their judiciary and buy reporters and television stations — so that there is no truth, only versions, of every story. And they think that they can do it endlessly — cheat just one more time, break one more rule, buy one more vote — and the system will hold until they can take it over and own it for their own purposes. Then one day — and you never see it coming — the whole system breaks down. Whatever frayed bonds of truth and trust that were holding it together completely unravel.”
It’s a bit apocalyptic for my taste as a statement on the nation (or is it?), but I think it describes pretty well what’s been going on in the Republican party for over a decade [at least].
I think the wrong preposition is used in the title of this post. It should be “on,” not “for.” It stands on the metaphorical necks of democracy, justice, fairness, opportunity, diversity, decency, objective fact, history, and, most tellingly, the American constitution. They are, to paraphrase our friend Duane, GAGA Good Americans.
All true, Diane. But they started down this road long ago. Trumpism is the extreme culmination. Remember, Barry Goldwater opposed civil rights legislation and every Republican president or nominee since has harnessed racism, opposition to abortion, and every available divisive social issue to divide people in order to advance the interests of the wealthy. Ironically, they’ve simultaneous been the party of personal liberty for some folks and authoritarianism for others for decades. They understood all along that they needed to dominate in political power and in ideas. At the same time, demographics and shifting values of many Americans has made them a minority, So democracy has now become an explicitly expendable principle.
Well stated . It did start with Goldwater. A time trip back to the 1964 GOP convention would not look any less vile than the 2016 or 2020 convention. All that was missing was chants of lock him up , instead they booed Rockefeller off of the stage.
Love the headline of the top story on HuffPo right now: RUNAWAY GOP: CHENEY CRUSHED BY THE MONSTER SHE HELPED CREATE
As our friend Charles Blow at the Times said :
The current head of the Family Research Council (an anti-LGBTQ organization) was formerly a military leader. He’s in the news today because he was one of 124 former military leaders who signed an open letter that pushes election lies. Lt. General William Boykin is the Republican Party. It’s dangerous for the U.S. to have military leaders who say, “I know that my God (the Christian God) was bigger than his (referring to the Muslim God). Boykin also said that Bush was put in the WH by God. Presumably Boykin meant his God.
Hello Linda I’m not questioning your quote in this paragraph, but would like to know its source? Thanks, CBK
“Lt. General William Boykin is the Republican Party. It’s dangerous for the U.S. to have military leaders who say, ‘I know that my God (the Christian God) was bigger than his’ (referring to the Muslim God). Boykin also said that Bush was put in the WH by God. Presumably Boykin meant his God.”
Baltimore Sun, 10-23-2003, Ellen Goodman, “General’s words echo our enemies’ ”
Esquire, 2-20-2014, Robert Bateman, “He will rule with an AR-15”
Boykin’s statements and his subsequent views, delivered in public addresses, have been reported extensively. A search of Boykin and “God is bigger” will assist in finding the deluge of other citations.
Linda Not good, even from 2014. But have you understood anything I have said? CBK
The tone of the letter has been described as “shocking” because it targets the entire Democratic Party.
Don Boldac also signed the letter. He is running for U.S. senator from N.H. Bolduc thinks Gov. Sununu should support a bill banning CRT. He is endorsed by Sen. Tom Cotton and by a former CEO of the NRA.
Another signee is Maj. Gen. Joe Arbuckle who is opposed to gay marriage equality. Evidently he is comfortable describing people as “liberal, socialist pansies.”
Another signee is the highly-criticized John Poindexter. Interestingly, his wife joined a more conservative church after rejecting the Episcopalian church that allowed her, as a woman, to hold a position as a priest in the church.
To Linda and all FYI: From the Washington Post:
“German priests defy Pope Francis with blessings of same-sex unions”
By Luisa Beck and Chico Harlan/May 10, 2021 at 8:23 a.m. PDT
“BERLIN — German priests across more than 100 churches have blessed gay relationships in recent days in a coordinated — and sometimes live-streamed — defiance of a Vatican order signed by Pope Francis.
“For gay Catholics who have long felt marginalized by Catholic teaching, the events have been celebratory, marked by sermons on inclusivity and rainbow church decorations. But the events also amount to an open rebellion — and a test for a pontiff whose tenure has been marked by divisions over hot-button issues, especially the church’s stance on homosexuality.
“The rainbow is a political sign,” one priest, Hans-Albert Gunk of the Dominikanerkloster St. Albertus Magnus, told congregants at one of the first events in the multiday procession of ceremonies, culminating Monday. “God excludes no one from his love,” he said.
“One by one, couples including Alexander Langwald, 42, and his partner walked up to Gunk to receive a blessing.
“It’s about equality, that we all belong to God’s creation, no matter in which relationship we live,” said Langwald, who grew up Catholic, and who, though married to his partner, had never until Saturday been blessed by the church.
“Pope Francis says priests cannot bless same-sex unions, dashing hopes of gay Catholics.
“The German ceremonies were performed two months after Francis signed off on a declaration barring priests from blessing same-sex unions. Though the Vatican decree reaffirmed old teaching, it nonetheless sent shock waves through the church, as it marked a jarring message from a pontiff who has generally sought to welcome gays, and who famously said, “Who am I to judge?”
“Vatican watchers have tried to make sense of the document and Francis’s motivations. Many interpreted the order as a warning to Catholic leaders in Germany, who are holding a years-long series of meetings — to the alarm of conservatives — reexamining several major issues inside the church, including the role of women and teaching on sexuality.
“The decree, issued by the Vatican’s doctrinal body, leaned on language that gay Catholics have long found alienating. It said that God “cannot bless sin” and said that acknowledging homosexual unions, for a priest, is ‘illicit.’”
Without input from religious leaders, all members of the LGBTQ community would feel equal in the present and would have felt equal in the past. Laws would not have been written to shame them. Society wouldn’t have harbored negative opinions about them. That makes the case for keeping religion out of the public square.
If there are individuals who take solace that members of an organization which continues to discriminate against women is now fighting against a religious hierarchy that opposes the blessing of gay unions, I see it as a profoundly sad comment about vulnerable people’s need for acceptance from unfair judges, former bullies and those who were complicit in the bullying.
Linda: The list of churches that accept LGBT people is quite long and includes churches from all over the world, including the U.S.
List of Christian denominations affirming LGBT
From Wikipedia
Some Christian denominations do not consider homosexuality or transgender identity to be sins. These include entire religious denominations, as well as individual churches and congregations. Some are composed mainly of non-LGBT members and also have specific programs to welcome LGBT people, while others are composed mainly of LGBT members.
Additionally, some denominations which are not LGBT-affirming have member-organized groups which are not officially sanctioned by the denomination. There are also ecumenical or para-church programmes that are explicitly outreaches to LGBT people, but do not identify with any particular faith tradition or denomination.
Today some Christian denominations are accepting of homosexuality and transgender identity and inclusive of homosexual and transgender people, such as the United Church of Christ and the Metropolitan Community Church. Formed in 1991, The Evangelical Network is a network of evangelical churches, ministries and Christian Workers that are a part of the LGBT community. The Evangelical Network holds an annual conference and provides education, ministerial support, and networking capabilities.[1]
In 1946, Archbishop George Hyde of the Eucharistic Catholic Communion (a small denomination not in union with the Roman Catholic Church) celebrated mass for gay men in Atlanta. In 1956, the Church of ONE Brotherhood was founded in Los Angeles by a gay-rights activist.[2] In 1962, a Congregationalist pastor began an overt pastoral ministry to gay people in New York City. The first gay and transgender-specific denomination, as opposed to individual congregations, was the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches in 1968.[2]
Some congregations are merely non-discriminatory and LGBT-affirming while others are specifically oriented toward gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender persons.[2] Some local congregations, especially those designated as “Welcoming churches” in the Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, United Church of Christ, Methodist, Episcopal, and Brethren/Mennonite denominations, may consist of a majority of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender members.[2]
While Unitarian Universalism is no longer explicitly a Christian religion, it does have Judeo-Christian roots. Both the Unitarian Universalist Association[3] and the Canadian Unitarian Council[4] have officially affirmed LGBT people and have openly advocated for gay rights.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denominations_affirming_LGBT
Yet- American religious schools continue to fire gay teachers, the Family Research Council continues to successfully politic, celebrities continue to describe how difficult it is to come out, blackmail attempts
against closeted gay people continue, SCOTUS sets new precedent by denying civil rights protections in religious schools…
What an unburdening there would be if Christian leaders, in unison, all said, “We were wrong to use religion to make homosexuality a hell on earth for gay people”. Then, they could follow-up with, “Women are equal, too!” Then, they could unify in a fight against the Christian imagery and rhetoric that is present in white nationalism.
The Christian leaders could back the ERA amendment and could fight to include sexual orientation as a protected class in civil rights legislation. Considering the battle over CRT, progressivism doesn’t seem all that assured. Considering the nation’s recent flirtation (understatement) with fascism…
“Texas passes bill that would create anti-abortion vigilantes”
This is not a blog about foreign affairs or the Defense Department. Read elsewhere.
The New York Post stands for the Republican Party (the “controversies” section at Wikipedia explains). Daily Beast has an interesting article about the NY Post’s op ed editor, “Sohrab Ahmari’s strange journey from communist to theocrat.” One of Ahmari’s quotes is , “Sometimes reactionary politics are the only salutary path.”
Minor correction: In Indiana at least, a REPUBLICAN Governor even had his powers curtailed by a Republican-majority General Assembly.
PS: Happy to see you on the road to recovery, long as it will likely be. ❤️
The EPA partly blamed climate change on humans. It’s the first time the US Environmental Protection Agency has publicly said so, in a report that was suppressed by the Trump administration since 2017.
I think it’s actually simple. The purpose of the Republican party is to GET AND HOLD POWER.
Policy only matters insofar as it empowers your friends or weakens your enemies. That’s it. Everything else falls into place naturally.
Daring a metaphor, the purpose of sports is to win. It doesn’t really matter if you can run faster in a circle or put the ball through the hoop more times. It’s not like building things, healing people or educating children. The purpose is simply to win.
How and when Republicans came to be like that is it’s own question. But here we are.
Their goal is to win (by any means necessary). I haven’t given up, and Biden is great … but right now I’d score them as winning.
This sounds like the Democrats and not Republicans.
Dr. Frankenstein reflects on his choices …
https://truthout.org/articles/liz-cheney-plays-the-martyr-but-she-helped-build-the-monster-that-is-the-gop/
Maybe they should just rename it the Donner Party now …
Here is what Senator Mike Braun [R-in] billionaire has to say about inequalities. It is ‘government overreach’ to expand the Civil Rights act of 1964 to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation.
……………………………………
Thank you for contacting my office regarding the Equality Act. I appreciate hearing from you on this piece of legislation.
What does the other party stand for? Intercept reported about a Pentagon working group created in the wake of the Capitol riots. A list of prospective representatives included a conservative Christian group- First Liberty Institute. At the Institute’s website, we see the group took a stance against LGBTQ rights. The Institute argues against government influence on religious schools (problematic given the Espinosa decision). The Institute also weighed in on a case in which a juror said he received guidance from the Holy Spirit in considering the case before him.
Religion in the public square
First Liberty Institute’s management team (site photos) show 8 members, 7 are men and there’s one pretty blond leading HR.
Three of the members are former military.
First Liberty Institute Exec. V.P. quoted, “I think that the U.S. military should be closely tied to religious faith…faith is a constraining and regimenting force.”
Too bad that American civilian women will have to overcome the “regimentation” of conservative religion in order to gain equality/liberty.
The Institute’s V.P. presumes that without religion, the army will become mercenary. Now, that’s quite a leap.
Linda “The Institute’s V.P. presumes that without religion, the army will become mercenary. Now, that’s quite a leap.”
First, AND AGAIN, I’d like to see some links to your quotes. Second, they could take lessons in “leaping to conclusions” from you.
But third, about your presumption of a presumption above: the cutting of the upward-reaching thread that connects our religious questions to many long-accepted religious principles in all religions, . . . such cutting . . . can easily open the door to nihilism and to mercenary thought, and so to the emptying out of even one’s ingrained habits of conscience.
It’s not a necessary given . . . there are branches of secular atheism and atheists who are what I would call morally sound, both in feeling and in their embrace of principle.
The upshot is that you are right, . . .there is allot wrong with religions and with religious thought, and in particular, with Christianity and Catholicism and those who belong to these groups; but you are wrong that these are ALL WRONG.
Your need for the Absolute, and your unwillingness to understand nuance and to give arguments their dialectical due, is outrun by the religious right-wing as well as whatever Q-anon is about, but not by much. CBK
First Liberty Institute, News tab, 5-24-2019, “F-4 Dogfighter to Defender of Religious Liberty: How David Holmes’ Faith Helps Him Stay on Mission”
Sourcewatch describes First Liberty Institute as an associate member of the Koch’s State Policy Network which has links to ALEC. Sourcewatch identifies the Institute’s first president and founder, Kelly Shackleford (male) as a Gold Circle member of the secretive Council for National Policy.
The American oligarchs’ men stoke fear about attacks on religion while at the same time, the GOP politicians funded by libertarian billionaires, pass legislation creating vigilantes to persecute those whose faith differs (see new Texas law that attempts to deny termination of early term pregnancy).
The religious-addled choose not to understand that vigilantes attacking and violating the rights of people of color has a counterpart
in the attacks and violation of women’s rights. Deplorables support institutions that scheme to return women to coat hangar abortions, distancing the U.S. from every other developed nation.
Linda the point is, your interpretive sieve through which you omit, choose, and “wash” religious information is partly blocked and wholly distorted. CBK
CBK
The decades-long, widespread, unreported priest abuse of children
characterizes the opposite view which is prevalent. Repeatedly, media exposes Christian evangelicals but doesn’t cover the Oklahoma Catholic Conference which posts the bogus, “Catholic schools are better” claims of Pat Buchanan’s former national campaign manager. If women, main stream protestants and, minority religious like those of the Jewish faith aren’t frightened by the politics of and who is funding the conservative theocrats, they should be.
**Linda says:” The decades-long, widespread, unreported priest abuse of children
characterizes the opposite view which is prevalent.
No it doesn’t. CBK
This is bs. Everything she has said is backwards. Republicans are against ILLEGAL immigrants ONLY!!! We don’t mind what your sexual preferences are, that’s your business, we believe in liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We believe in the Constitution in it’s entirety and we believe that we the people are in charge of the country, not the government in charge of us. Tax cuts were for everyone’s benefit. This is just to name a few of the things that this woman and her Marxist (called the democrats at one time) followers want you to believe. Yes Trump helped bring the best in us that is why the democrats hate him and those that love this country and all it stands for…one Nation under God.