Tag Archives: Republican Party

If You Ever Hear Anybody Say There’s No Difference Between Them

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Ordinarily, Democrats and Republicans adopt a platform at their national conventions, setting forth the goals and priorities of their presidential nominee. This is one way for voters to compare the candidates and decide who to support. Last year, the Republicans didn’t really bother to produce a platform. They simply endorsed the platform from 2016:

RESOLVED, That the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda;

RESOVLVED, That the 2020 Republican National Convention will adjourn without adopting a new platform until the 2024 Republican National Convention;

RESOLVED, That any motion to amend the 2016 Platform or to adopt a new platform, including any motion to suspend the procedures that will allow doing so, will be ruled out of order.

In other words, we are in favor of whatever the president wants to do, whatever that might turn out to be. Four years have passed, we’re in the middle of a deadly pandemic and we have nothing new to say about anything.

This week, a new Republican congressman from North Carolina sent an email to his colleagues. It said “I have built my staff around comms [“communications”] rather than legislation”. He now has a job in our national legislature, but he’s more dedicated to doing interviews and issuing statements than being a legislator. The editors of The Charlotte Observer aren’t enthusiastic about their state’s new representative:

We’re all for public officials being attentive to the “public” part of their title. It’s good for everyone when elected representatives explain what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. But on behalf of a whole lot of North Carolinians, we have a request regarding one of those officials:

Can someone please keep Madison Cawthorn away from the cameras? And the microphones? And really, most situations in which he publicly tries to turn words into meaningful thoughts?

This is the context when Republican politicians demand that President Biden address some of their priorities. The natural question is: What priorities?

Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post expands on the difference between the two parties:

The Biden administration has entered office with a whirlwind of activity. “Whole government” initiatives and executive orders on racial inequality and climate change are married with an ambitious covid-19 relief plan. There are briefings galore, with both experts and White House press secretary Jennifer Psaki, who on Wednesday gave us a peek into the sort of salesmanship the administration is employing to gain bipartisan support. The president, the vice president, the director of the National Economic Council, the domestic policy director, the chief of staff and the legislative affairs team are talking to individual lawmakers, the Problem Solvers Caucus, relevant committee members, mayors, governors and more to seek consensus on a covid-19 plan. There is no room for downtime, let alone complacency in this White House.

To many, it is stunning to see such energy, urgency and activity coming from the White House. Whereas Republicans are loath to even acknowledge crises for fear of indicting their own former president’s performance, Democrats have plans, executive orders and bills to address dozens of problems, not to mention a fleet of nominees waiting to get started.

And what are Republicans doing? Well, over in the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took days to agree on an organizing resolution to get the new session underway. The vast majority of Senate Republicans said they do not want to have a trial to hold the instigator of a violent insurrection accountable. . . . They are stalling on the confirmation of a new homeland security secretary. They have no alternative relief package for covid-19. Most of their time seems to be absorbed whining about “censorship” or claiming Democrats are being “divisive.” They are offering no response to any of the multiple crises we face (e.g., climate change, the economy, health care, racial justice, domestic terrorism). Their “big idea” is to wait and see if the pandemic and economy get worse.

For years, the Republican Party has not been about policy or governance. It is certainly not about encouraging voting or expanding its party to reach new demographics. Instead, it has become a select club of malcontents. It has created a self-perpetuating grievance machine designed to further inflame their base.

Why do Republicans even want to hold power? Aside from appointing judges, the Senate has accomplished virtually nothing of significance since the 2017 tax cut. While running for reelection, the former president was continually stumped when asked what he would do in his second term.

The party’s antagonism toward the federal government has now morphed into hostility toward truth and governing at all. Its agenda is a list of buzzwords and lies to justify why it should do nothing (Climate hoax! Socialism!), culminating in the mother of all incendiary messages: the Big Lie that the election was stolen. The GOP seems to exist solely to promote resentment and to engage in performance art for intellectually dishonest and vapid right-wing media.

Maybe Republicans should give up running for office altogether because they have no interest in policy or governing. They can cut out the time-consuming task of showing up for their day jobs and devote all their time to what really drives them — raising money, stoking anger, tweeting and appearing on right-wing media. . . .

This Is One of Our Two Major Political Parties

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Marjorie Taylor Greene is 46 and serving her first term in the House of Representatives. She won the Republican primary for Georgia’s 14th Congressional District last year with 57% of the vote. She easily won the general election. The 14th District occupies the northwest corner of Georgia and is heavily Republican. This is what her official website says about her:

Marjorie graduated from the University of Georgia and received her Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration. Marjorie has been actively involved in her community, in her children’s schools, and been active on a national level as National Director of Family America Project.

Marjorie has a strong Christian faith and believes we must continue to protect our great freedoms and work to keep America a great country for our generations to come.

Marjorie and her husband, Perry, have been married 23 years. They have three children . . .. Marjorie believes the best part of her life is being a mother and spending time with her family.

Media Matters for America presents more information about Rep. Greene:

In another newly uncovered 2018 Facebook post, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) endorsed a conspiracy theory that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was videotaped murdering a child during a satanic ritual and then ordered a hit on a police officer to cover it up. She also liked a meme claiming that some of her now-Democratic congressional colleagues have used the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program for human trafficking, pedophilia, and organ harvesting. 

. . .  She has received heavy criticism for her recently uncovered endorsements of the conspiracy theories that the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, were staged false flags. Greene is also a QAnon and 9/11 conspiracy theorist who has promoted anti-Muslim attacks and a conspiracy theory that Jewish people are trying to take over Europe through immigration. 

Greene is also a backer of [a] violent and absurd . . .  conspiracy theory, which is linked to QAnon and Pizzagate and essentially claims that Hillary Clinton and former aide Huma Abedin sexually assaulted a child, [mutilated her] and then drank her blood as part of a satanic ritual . . .  Greene endorsed the conspiracy theory on Facebook in May 2018. . . .

Greene also liked a meme that was posted to her Facebook page in June 2018 claiming that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Clinton, former President Barack “Obama and their Democrat friends … can’t have Trump repeal DACA as it would show DACA was used by them … for human trafficking pedophilia in high places and organ harvesting.”

CNN offers more:

Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene repeatedly indicated support for executing prominent Democratic politicians in 2018 and 2019 before being elected to Congress, a [CNN] review of hundreds of posts and comments from Greene’s Facebook page shows. . .

In one post, from January 2019, Greene liked a comment that said “a bullet to the head would be quicker” to remove House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In other posts, Greene liked comments about executing FBI agents who, in her eyes, were part of the “deep state” working against Trump.

I add this piece of news without further comment:

Her Republican colleagues have selected Rep. Greene to serve on the House Education and Labor Committee.

We Shouldn’t Expect Much From Republican Senators

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How many Republican senators will vote to convict our former president and bar him from running for president again? Paul Waldman of The Washington Post says there won’t be enough of them:

Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial is coming soon. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Friday that the House will transmit the one impeachment article to the Senate on Monday, clearing the way for the trial to commence. Now begins the wrangling to determine whether 17 GOP senators might join (presumably) all 50 Democrats to convict Trump of inciting the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.

There’s been lots of discussion about what it would take to get to those 17 votes, in particular whether Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will vote to convict and bring others with him. There are almost certainly many more than 17 Republicans who in their hearts believe that Trump is guilty and would like their party to make a clean break with him. But whether they’ll take that position publicly is a very different matter.

Don’t bet on McConnell, or more than a couple of Republicans, coming through in the end. It’s a tricky political question for them, but the weight of their incentives will push them toward acquittal, no matter their personal feelings about Trump and what he has done to their party.

It’s true that there’s an effort to get them to convict. CNN reports that “dozens of influential Republicans around Washington — including former top Trump administration officials — have been quietly lobbying GOP members of Congress to impeach and convict Donald Trump.” One unnamed Republican member of Congress even said, “Mitch said to me he wants Trump gone.”

Which you might have gathered from the speech McConnell gave the day before Joe Biden’s inauguration. “The mob was fed lies,” he said. “They were provoked by the president and other powerful people.”

But it’s one thing to offer some harsh words about a specific misdeed and another to actually vote to convict the former president. As McConnell surely understands, while he other Republicans might want to make a clean break from Trump, the problem is that there will be no such thing. Any break from Trump will be painful and ugly.

Think of it this way: What does McConnell have to gain from voting to convict Trump, and what does he have to lose? He really has nothing at all to gain, even if he could gather 16 other Republicans to join him. That wouldn’t make his whole party turn the page and walk proudly into its post-Trump future. It would just touch off an internecine war, one that nobody would win.

Loyalty to Trump is still intense within the GOP. “If you’re wanting to erase Donald Trump from the party, you’re going to get erased,” said Trump advocate Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), adding that trying to move forward without Trump would be “a disaster for the Republican Party.”

Graham may be wrong on the second part, but he’s right on the first. If McConnell were to vote to convict and bring others with him, he’d immediately be hit with a tsunami of rage from the right. Talk radio and Fox News would mobilize their audiences to pour down contempt upon a figure that they never much liked or trusted anyway. Enterprising Republican politicians would demand he be removed from leadership.

That’s already happening to Rep. Liz Cheney. In the days since the third-ranking member of the House Republican leadership voted to impeach Trump, she has earned a primary challenge from the right for her reelection. According to Politico, more than 100 House Republicans “have communicated to the leaders of that effort that they would support removing Cheney from leadership on a secret ballot.”

But standing up and saying it was just fine and dandy that Trump spent two months lying to his supporters, culminating with his incitement of a violent attack that could have resulted in the deaths of some of the very people who will be voting on impeachment, is not all that appealing. So Senate Republicans are coalescing around a plan: They can avoid defending what Trump did by finding safe harbor in a procedural objection.

The problem, more and more of them are saying, is that the Constitution doesn’t allow for the impeachment of a president who has left office, and therefore there shouldn’t be any trial at all.

In fact, the Constitution doesn’t say that the president can’t be impeached once he departs. While some legal scholars insist otherwise, the weight of opinion is that his impeachment would be perfectly fine.

But that doesn’t matter; for Republicans it’s an argument of convenience. And it’s one McConnell will eventually join.

When the vote comes, McConnell will deliver a dramatic speech finally revealing his position. He’ll reiterate his criticisms of Trump, for lying about the election and whipping up the crowd.

However, he’ll say, all that’s in the past now. Trump is no longer president. And Democrats are just wasting time trying to score political points when they should be addressing the country’s problems. Therefore, he’ll say with sadness, I feel I have no choice but to vote to acquit.

In so doing, he’ll save himself a lot of grief. The alternative is a gesture that won’t get him what he wants — a truly post-Trump party — but will threaten his own authority and deepen the GOP’s internal divisions. It’s not even a close call.

Unquote.

It’s not true McConnell would have nothing to gain from convicting him. McConnell could immediately insure that the creep couldn’t run for president again, even as a third party candidate. Some Republican senators would love that to happen. But these same senators would prefer that 17 other Republicans vote to convict and prohibit the malignant narcissist from running. They don’t want to be on record voting against their party’s favorite demagogue.

PS: A small group of Democrats [is] pushing the idea of passing a resolution stating that Txxxx violated the 14th Amendment — which forbids federal officials from ever holding office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the government — and ban him from running again for president in that manner.

Making a Difference in People’s Lives

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The transition to a new president and a new Congress is always a significant moment, but it’s especially significant this year, there being such a stark difference between the old and the new. Paul Krugman discusses the current state of our politics and a piece of legislation that would make an important difference in the lives of millions of Americans:

. . . Biden will take office in a political environment polluted by lies.

Most important, of course, is the Big Lie: the claim, based on nothing whatsoever, that the election was stolen. Has there been anything in U.S. history like the demand from leading Republicans that Biden pursue “unity” when they won’t even say publicly that he won fairly? And polls showing that a large majority of rank-and-file Republicans believe that there was major election fraud are deeply scary.

But not far behind in importance is what I think of as the Slightly Smaller Lie — the almost universal insistence on the right that the mildly center-left leaders of the incoming administration and Congress are, or at least are controlled by, radical socialists. This allegation was almost the entire substance of Republican campaigning during the Georgia Senate runoffs.

One response to this bizarre claim — and it’s not a bad response — would be a Bidenesque “C’mon, man. Get real!” But I’d like to do a somewhat deeper dive by focusing on one particular issue: Biden’s call, as part of his economic recovery plan, for an increase in the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Republicans raising objections to Biden’s plan have singled out the minimum wage hike as a prime reason for their opposition, although we all know that they would have found some excuse for objecting no matter what he proposed. What’s striking about this fight — let’s not dignify it by calling it a debate, as if both sides were making real arguments — is that it shows us who the real radicals are.

For what counts as a radical economic proposal? One possible answer would be a proposal that flies in the face of public opinion.

By that criterion, however, Republican politicians are definitely the radicals here. Raising the minimum wage is immensely popular; it’s supported by around 70 percent of voters, including a substantial majority of self-identified Republicans. Or if you don’t believe polls, look at what happened in Florida back in November: even as Trump carried the state, a referendum on raising the minimum wage to $15 won in a landslide.

So the G.O.P. is very much out of step with the public on this issue — it’s espousing what is almost a fringe position. Oh, and it’s a position that is completely at odds with the claim by many Republicans that they’re the true party of the working class.

What if we define radicalism not by opposition to public opinion but by a refusal to accept the conclusions of mainstream economics? Here, too, Democrats are the moderates and Republicans the radicals.

It’s true that once upon a time there was a near-consensus among economists that minimum wages substantially reduced employment. But that was long ago. These days only a minority of economists think raising the minimum to $15 would have large employment costs, and a strong plurality believe that a significant rise — although maybe not all the way to $15 — would be a good idea.

Why did economists change their minds? No, the profession wasn’t infiltrated by antifa; it was moved by evidence, specifically the results of “natural experiments” that take place when an individual state raises its minimum wage while neighboring states don’t. The lesson from this evidence is that unless minimum wages are raised to levels higher than anything currently being proposed, hiking the minimum won’t have major negative effects on employment — but it will have significant benefits in terms of higher earnings and a reduction in poverty.

But evidence has a well-known liberal bias. Did I mention that on Friday, just days before their eviction, Trump officials released a report claiming that the 2017 tax cut paid for itself?

Voodoo economics may be the most thoroughly debunked doctrine in the history of economic thought, refuted by decades of experience — and voters consistently say that corporations and the wealthy pay too little, not too much, in taxes. Yet tax cuts for the already privileged are central to the Republican agenda, even under a supposedly populist president.

On economic policy, then, Democrats — even though they have moved somewhat to the left in recent years — are moderates by any standard, while Republicans are wild-eyed radicals. So why does the G.O.P. think that it can get away with claiming the opposite?

Part of the answer is the power of the right-wing disinformation machine, which relentlessly portrays anyone left of center as the second coming of Pol Pot. . . .

In any case, let’s be clear: There is indeed a radical party in America, one that, aside from hating democracy, has crazy ideas about how the world works and is at odds with the views of most voters. And it’s not the Democrats.

When Seeing Is Not Believing

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In case we were thinking that a violent insurrection encouraged by the president to overturn the results of an election he lost might serve as a wakeup call for our Republican friends, here are the opening paragraphs of “How Republicans Are Warping Reality Around the Capitol Attack” (New York Times):

Immediately after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, all corners of the political spectrum repudiated the mob of President Txxxx’s supporters. Yet within days, prominent Republicans, party officials, conservative media voices and rank-and-file voters began making a rhetorical shift to try to downplay the group’s violent actions.

In one of the ultimate don’t-believe-your-eyes moments of the Txxxx era, these Republicans have retreated to the ranks of misinformation, claiming it was Black Lives Matter protesters and far-left groups like Antifa who stormed the Capitol — in spite of the pro-Trump flags and QAnon symbology in the crowd. Others have argued that the attack was no worse than the rioting and looting in cities during the Black Lives Matter movement, often exaggerating the unrest last summer while minimizing a mob’s attempt to overturn an election.

The shift is revealing about how conspiracy theories, deflection and political incentives play off one another in Mr. Txxxx’s G.O.P. For a brief time, Republican officials seemed perhaps open to grappling with what their party’s leader had wrought — violence in the name of their Electoral College fight. But any window of reflection now seems to be closing as Republicans try to pass blame and to compare last summer’s lawlessness, which was condemned by Democrats, to an attack on Congress, which was inspired by Mr. Txxxx.