|
Post by Lark11 on Jan 9, 2016 13:13:01 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/us/politics/for-republicans-mounting-fears-of-lasting-split.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=curFor Republicans, Mounting Fears of Lasting SplitBy PATRICK HEALY and JONATHAN MARTINJAN. 9, 2016 The Republican Party is facing a historic split over its fundamental principles and identity, as its once powerful establishment grapples with an eruption of class tensions, ethnic resentments and mistrust among working-class conservatives who are demanding a presidential nominee who represents their interests. At family dinners and New Year’s parties, in conference calls and at private lunches, longtime Republicans are expressing a growing fear that the coming election could be shattering for the party, or reshape it in ways that leave it unrecognizable. While warring party factions usually reconcile after brutal nomination fights, this race feels different, according to interviews with more than 50 Republican leaders, activists, donors and voters, from both elite circles and the grass roots. Never have so many voters been attracted to Republican candidates like Donald J. Trump and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who are challenging core party beliefs on the economy and national security and new goals like winning over Hispanics through immigration reform. Rank-and-file conservatives, after decades of deferring to party elites, are trying to stage what is effectively a people’s coup by selecting a standard-bearer who is not the preferred candidate of wealthy donors and elected officials. And many of those traditional power brokers, in turn, are deeply uncomfortable and even hostile to Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz: Between them, the leading candidates do not have the backing of a single senator or governor. “I haven’t seen this large of a division in my career,” said Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican first elected to Congress in 1982. “You probably have to go back to Ford versus Reagan in 1976. But that was only two people.” The issues animating grass-roots voters — opposition to immigration, worries about wages and discomfort with America’s fast-changing demographics — are diverging from and at times colliding with the Republican establishment’s interests in free trade, lower taxes, less regulation and openness to immigration. The fractures could help a Democrat win the White House if Republicans do not ultimately find ways to unite, as one candidate, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, warned last week. The divide was evident at a recent Greenville, S.C., gathering of bankers and lawyers, reliable Republicans who shared tea and pastries and their growing anxieties about where their party is going. In a meeting room near the wooded shore of Furman Lake, the group of mostly older white men expressed concern that their party was fracturing over free trade, immigration and Wall Street. And they worried that their candidates — mainstream conservatives like Jeb Bush — were losing. “It’s all really hard to believe that decades of Republican ideas are at risk,” said Barry Wynn, a prominent Bush donor at the meeting. The strains on Republicanism are driven home by scenes like the 1,500 people who waited two hours in 10-degree weather on Tuesday night to see Mr. Trump campaign in Claremont, N.H. And the 700 who jammed the student center of an Iowa Christian college the same evening to hear Mr. Cruz. These crowds were full of lunch-bucket conservatives who expressed frustration with the Republican gentry. “The Republican Party has never done anything for the working man like me, even though we’ve voted Republican for years,” said Leo Martin, a 62-year-old machinist from Newport, N.H., who attended Mr. Trump’s Claremont rally. “This election is the first in my life where we can change what it means to be a Republican.” This anger has transformed the quadrennial exercise of picking a Republican nominee into a referendum on the future of one of the country’s two enduring political parties. Patrick J. Buchanan, a Nixon and Reagan adviser who ran for the Republican nomination in 1992 and 1996 by stressing the economic and cultural concerns of working-class Americans, said these voters were roiling the party because they had “suffered long enough.” Mr. Buchanan cited years of job losses and wage stagnation that he blamed on free-trade deals and cheap labor from illegal immigrants, as well as hardships from foreign wars that have hit families whose children enlisted in hopes of better lives. “The chickens have come home to roost,” Mr. Buchanan said. “Putting the party back together again will be very hard after this nomination race. I think the party is going to shift against trade and interventionism, and become more nationalist and tribal and more about protecting the border.” Anger and alienation have been simmering in Republican ranks since the end of the George W. Bush administration, at first over policy and then more acutely over how the party should respond to the country’s changing demography. While party leaders like Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina say Republicans are in a “demographic death spiral” and will not survive unless they start appealing to Hispanics and young people, many voters see such statements as a capitulation. They hunger for an unapologetic brand of conservatism that would confront rather than acquiesce to the political establishment — sentiments that have been amplified by conservative talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and commentators like Ann Coulter, whose verbal broadsides influence the party’s agenda. “All the things the voters want have been shoved off to sidelines by Republican leaders,” said Laura Ingraham, a talk-show host who was a force behind the primary election defeat of Eric Cantor, then the House majority leader, in 2014. “And the voters finally have a couple of people here who are saying this table has to be turned over.” The splits within the party would be difficult to heal no matter the nominee. If an establishment candidate wins the nomination, the highly energized voters backing Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz may revolt; about two-thirds of Trump supporters would vote for him as a third-party candidate, according to a Suffolk University/USA Today poll last month — a possibility that could help the Democratic nominee. If Mr. Cruz is nominated, he will have to win over party leaders while not appearing to be selling out to his anti-establishment supporters. A Fox News poll released on Friday found that 66 percent of Cruz supporters in Iowa felt “betrayed” by politicians in their party. If party leaders backed Mr. Trump, they would have to conduct campaigns in parallel universes, supporting a candidate who has said he wants to deport illegal immigrants en masse and temporarily bar Muslims from the country, while simultaneously trying to diversify their predominantly white male base. Republican congressional leaders last week asked Gov. Nikki R. Haley of South Carolina, the daughter of Indian immigrants, to deliver the party’s response to the State of the Union speech this week, and invited King Abdullah II of Jordan, perhaps America’s closest ally in the Arab world, to address a joint session of Congress. “I know Republicans who will support Hillary if Trump or Cruz is the nominee, no question,” candlestick Thornburgh, an attorney general under the first President George Bush and a former Pennsylvania governor, said of Hillary Clinton. “Trump, especially, would split the party. But many will fall in line, seeing no choice.” Mr. McCain, the 2008 nominee, and Mr. Graham, who was a presidential candidate until last month, said they would honor the will of the voters and support any eventual nominee. But Mr. Graham said the severity and impact of the party split would ultimately depend on whether a Republican won the presidency. “If Trump or Cruz wins the White House, then my side of the party has to re-evaluate who we are, what we stand for, and I’d be willing to do that,” Mr. Graham said. “But if Trump or Cruz loses the presidency, would their supporters re-evaluate their views on immigration and other issues that would grow the party? If they do that, we can come back together. If they don’t, the party probably splits in a permanent way.” Other Republicans said they believed that Mr. Cruz, if he won the nomination, would be similar to the archconservative Barry Goldwater, who was nominated in 1964, and that the party would survive the experience. The presidential historian Richard Norton Smith, who has written biographies of some of the 20th century’s leading Republicans, said a nomination of Mr. Trump would represent “a hostile takeover” of the party, and make it more difficult for old-guard party leaders to suppress the passions of a more hard-core, anti-immigration, angry base. “The nativists aren’t going away,” Mr. Smith said. “They might, if anything, become more feverish.” Some political leaders, eyeing the Republican split, are sensing opportunity. Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire media executive and former New York mayor, was intrigued enough by the prospect of Mr. Trump’s becoming the Republican standard-bearer that he commissioned a poll last month testing how he would fare against Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton, according to two sources close to Mr. Bloomberg. But he has often very publicly flirted with a run, savored the attention, then announced that he would not pursue the candidacy. Whatever Mr. Bloomberg decides, the election so far has been upended by voters who live far from his world and, for the first time in years, feel as if their voices are being heard. Dave Conger, 60, a salesman who showed up at a Cruz campaign stop last week with a Cruz pin on his chest, said he had worked to elect both President George W. Bush and his father, but “was told a lot of things and nothing ever happened.” He added, “This time I’m actually hearing somebody who’s telling me the truth; they’re actually going to go in and do something they say they’re going to do.”
|
|
|
Post by psuhistory on Jan 9, 2016 14:07:07 GMT -5
This trend raises serious questions about winning national elections, but it won't seriously threaten Republican power in the House, in particular, unless something changes in the redistricting process...
|
|
|
Post by redsfanman on Jan 10, 2016 1:42:25 GMT -5
Interesting article. So much to say, but what to say. The GOP has seemed doom for years, but so far as held together.
In my opinion Trump merely represents the next step of a party moving away from serious policy to one based around fear and hatred. Two emotions, arguably only one.... hatred, with fear coming out of that hatred. Any hope anyone might have had for a policy-centered presidential election seems to have vanished, with policy wonks struggling against unchecked extremists getting by on taglines. The GOP has, for ~7 years, fed off an intense hatred of the black guy running the country, united only by opposition to him rather than any serious policy goals, and I feel like Trump is merely the result of that miscalculation. Obama's decisions have never been judged fairly by the GOP (only in degrees of wrong, with 'worst possible decision' as the only acceptable analysis), and now Trump is leading with the same sorta extremism.
The delusional nature of Trump supporters has particularly surprised me. -Evangelicals who ignore the fact that he isn't a practicing Christian -Anti-abortion advocates who ignore his history of being pro-choice -Family-values people who ignore Trump's history of affairs, divorces, and marriages People who disqualify Hillary Clinton for Bill Clinton's infidelity, but ignore Trump's -Anti-immigrant people who don't care that he's married to an immigrant (albeit a red flag in Jeb's case) -People wanting a qualified president who ignore his complete lack of any qualifications for the presidency -Clinton haters who ignore his history of supporting, befriending, donating to, and defending the Clintons -People valuing/stressing honesty who ignore Trump's flipflops and blatant dishonesty -Policy wonks who ignore Trump's absolute lack of any serious policy proposals -People who want a successful business man but ignore his history of bankruptcies -People who want someone who's 'in touch', and consider someone who inherited millions from his parents as self-made. -People who want a leader to bring people together, while alienating everyone who doesn't look like them -People who expect Mexico to pay for the wall -People who think Hillary is too old to be president, and don't care that Trump is older -People who blindly expect things to be more successful under Trump (bomb ISIS, like we're doing) -People who think over-simplying a complex situation (Syria, ISIS) presents simple solutions -People who care about the deficit and budget, and ignore Trump's lack of any policy proposals on the matter -People who care about foreign policy, and ignore Trump's lack of any serious proposals on that, either -People who think electing Trump will make the Iran deal, the Geneva Convention, international climate agreements, just go away -People who think repealing Obamacare will miraculously fix things and make people better off, instead of throwing the industry into chaos -People who want someone who is honest, consistent, and unwavering, yet ignore Trump's absolute inconsistency (time and time again, on key issues, even on people he's known for years, hating people [or organizations/newspapers/countries/pollsters] one week [when they criticize him] and loving them the next [when they say something nice about him] -People who want to 'make America great again', but don't at all care about details of what that 'great' America looks like -People who ignore similarities between goals of Hitler and Trump
I don't think you need to be delusional to be a republican. I don't think being a republican means you're angry, or an idiot. But Trump supporters? Yikes. I've been following politics closely for a while, but wow, I've never seen anything like that. Countless time he's said things, done things, or demonstrated an inconsistency which would doom literally any other candidate ever. Yet he's remained consistently angry and spread lots of fear, and remains on top. It's just amazing.
Whether he's on the ballot as the GOP nominee or an independent, it'll be a disaster. Not only will he destroy the little hope the GOP had of beating Hillary Clinton, it should hurt the party in numerous races around the country. Even Rob Portman in Ohio, in a neutral environment I think he'd win reelection, outperforming a normal GOP presidential nominee against Clinton in Ohio, but in Trump's case? I think Trump's presence on the ballot puts the GOP's hopes of winning senate races in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Florida, Nevada, and Wisconsin in serious jeopardy.
The only worse outcome for the GOP than losing the 2016 presidential election, in my opinion, is them winning. As I said they're united only by hate, rather than any consensus policy agenda. That's been clear for years, but further confirmed by the struggles of a congress to agree on anything (wasting time getting an Obamacare vote vetoed doesn't count), despite majorities in both houses. I think once the GOP is in charge everything holding them together will collapse.
Some things a GOP administration would need to confront: -Stripping ~18 million people of health insurance, including popular aspects of Obamacare like the preexisting condition parts -The responsibility of dealing with ISIS, Syria, Russia, North Korea, and other world issues. AKA decisively winning no-win situations -Responsibility for the national debt, needing to lower it, while only decreasing revenue and increasing defense spending -Stripping people of court-established civil rights, such as married homosexuals. -Ending climate regulations and enforcement, despite many people being concerned about climate change -Bringing back coal and oil reliance as the country gradually shifts towards renewable energy -Ending financial regulations while also avoiding another financial collapse -Responsibility for confronting terrorism and mass shootings (9/11 happened under Bush, but he "kept us safe", but BENGHAZI, 4 people died... ~60 died in similar situations during the GW Bush administration, but nobody cared) -Setting a course on gun issues, despite polls NOT supporting the GOP pro-gun agenda -Outlawing abortions, over the objection of many women, and regardless of huge drops in abortion rates with expanded contraceptive coverage... simultaneously targeting women's health clinics (Planned Parenthood) for elimination. -Maintaining and improving upon economic growth under the Clinton and Obama administrations -How to address immigration issues, despite huge differences in different wings of the GOP -Addressing Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps, and other divisive issues
So, that's only a handful of big issues, there are countless more, on which the GOP is only united by it's opposition to the current course, rather than having an alternative plan that their various factions can actually unite behind. Presidential candidates regularly promise to address most of them, but the feasibility (and consequences) of doing so is a totally different issue. Frankly, a lot of Republicans dislike GW Bush for his recognition that many GOP priorities are unrealistic.
So, yeah, the GOP is doomed. United only by hate, victory in the presidential election would only focus that hatred onto eachother.
|
|
|
Post by kramer1 on Jan 16, 2016 8:45:18 GMT -5
Quit shoving your ridiculous religion down my freakin throat. Thanks. Oh, and your racism. Thanks.
|
|
|
Post by kinsm on Apr 26, 2016 2:41:54 GMT -5
www.salon.com/2016/04/25/complete_and_total_destruction_of_the_republican_party_former_reagan_official_bruce_bartlett_on_why_he_backs_trump/MONDAY, APR 25, 2016 05:59 AM EDT “Complete and total destruction of the Republican Party”: Former Reagan official Bruce Bartlett on why he backs Trump SIMON MALOY Regardless of how you feel about Donald Trump, his ascendance as the frontrunner for the Republican Party’s 2016 presidential nomination signals major changes within the GOP. Large segments of the Republican Party and the conservative movement have arrayed themselves in opposition to Trump to ward off the political reckoning his candidacy threatens, but there are some people who want Trump to win precisely because his nomination would inflict much-needed violence upon the Republican Party as it currently exists. Bruce Bartlett, a former official in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and a longtime critic of the GOP’s increasingly conservative politics, sees Trump as both a product of the Republican Party’s decline and a potential catalyst for its eventual reclamation. I talked to Bartlett about why he voted for Donald Trump, what he sees in the GOP’s future, and whether something worthwhile can be salvaged from a political party that looks to be on the verge of cracking up. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. I wanted to talk about 2016 and Trump and the future of the GOP. You are a former Reagan official, you worked for George H.W. Bush, and you voted for Donald Trump in the Virginia primary. And I was hoping if you could just explain why.I think the Republican Party is sick. It’s dying, it just doesn’t know it. And I think anything that speeds up its demise is to the good, because then it can reinvent itself and return as something healthy. Or you could use an addiction metaphor, where people have to hit bottom so that they can reach out and ask for help before they can cure themselves. I think that Trump is a symptom of a disease of rampant stupidity, pandering to morons and bigots and racists and all the sort of stuff that defines today’s Republican coalition. And I just think it’s awful. It’s terrible for the country in a great many ways that I don’t need to tell you. And I think that we need to have a healthy two-party system. We need to have a sane, functioning conservative party and a sane, functioning liberal party. And I think that half of that equation, at least, is not working, and it affects the other half. So I think it’s just bad for the country. So I think that giving Trump the nomination is the surest path to complete and total destruction of the Republican Party as we know it. And I look forward to him getting the nomination for that reason. I think he will have a historic loss. I think he may well bring in a Democratic Senate. But more importantly, my hope is, at least, that he will lead to a really serious assessment of the problems of the Republican Party, and lead to some opening of thought, opening of discussion, conversation among groups that have been sidelined for quite a long time. Mainly moderates and people of that sort who have been just pushed to the sidelines in favor of ever more rabid, nonsensical, right-wing authoritarianism. But I also don’t think it really makes all that much difference whether Trump gets the nomination, because he’s already succeeded in destroying the Republican coalition as far as the general election is concerned. Because, look, if he doesn’t get the nomination, he’ll probably do everything in his power to guarantee that whoever does get the nomination is defeated. So either way the party is looking at historic losses, historic defeat. And I think that is really, really a wonderful thing. One thing you mention, you’re talking about the effects Trump would have on down-ballot races, on Senate races in particular. One potential pitfall that I see in all this is that when you’re talking about the down-ballot races, the Republicans who would be most endangered by a Trump rout would be the moderate, blue-state Republicans who already face tougher reelection odds. Are you concerned that a Trump rout might end up purging from the party precisely the people that you say it needs to have?Perhaps. It kind of depends on how Republicans react to and try to deal with the consequences of Trump at the top of the ticket. One of the things you hear some talk about is them literally running a third-party Republican candidate against Trump, and I think the reason is because what they’re afraid of is that the main thing that Trump will do is keep Republicans home on Election Day. That is, they’re not going to come out and say “I can’t vote for Trump, I’m going to vote for Hillary Clinton” or whatever. They’ll simply stay home on Election Day and therefore their votes will not apply to the down-ticket races, rather than going to vote and just leaving blank your vote for president and voting a straight Republican ticket. So they’re desperate to get those people out to give them some reason to go to the polls, but I don’t really know – it may be that Hillary can make inroads among Republicans. I don’t know. There may be a goodly number of Republicans who moved from being solidly Republican to being Republican-leaning independents who have been continuing to vote Republican even as their loyalty to the party has diminished. This might be enough to push them over and say “I give the fuck up, these people are hopeless, I’m just going to become a Democrat, I’m going to vote for Hillary.” So it might be that this is the tipping point. It’s simply too soon to say. Well that leads to another question. Right now you are seeing within the GOP and within the conservative movement, there is a divide. You have the #NeverTrump people on one side, and you have people like Jeff Sessions and Chris Christie and Rick Scott, people who’ve endorsed Trump. If Trump does end up getting the nomination and people who now say they are #NeverTrump, when they’re faced with a choice between Donald Trump or President Hillary Clinton, do you think that the #NeverTrump movement, the energy behind that will continue? The divide that we’re seeing now, I’m sure you’re happy to see it, but do you think it would survive in the face of a Clinton candidacy?Probably not. At least in that form. It’s possible – with super PACs and such it only takes a couple of billionaires to finance a pretty impressive operation. If they want to go around running anti-Trump ads in the general election, that’s fine by me. I’m disinclined to think that would really happen. Party loyalty and tribal loyalty are very, very intense inside the Republican coalition, and I think what you’ll get is a lot of pro-forma endorsements of Trump. But very, very few people will actually do any work to help him get elected. You’re not going to see people going around knocking on doors and putting up signs and bumper stickers and stuff like that that is very important in terms of turnout on Election Day. I think the regular Republican Party machine will do everything it can to help its House and Senate candidates. Mitch McConnell has already told Republican senators that they are free to run anti-Trump ads if they think that’s what will help them survive. And I think they’ll simply concentrate all their efforts on keeping the House and Senate, and maybe that will be enough. I don’t know. But the problem is that they’re victims of their own overselling. That is, they told people for years “just give us control of the House and Senate, we’ll fix all these problems, we’ll repeal Obamacare and take care of all that stuff.” And they’ve had control now for six years, and all these problems that they were sent to Congress to fix are still problems from their point of view. And I think it’s going to be hard to motivate the kind of turnout that got them elected in 2010 when people are saying “what the fuck, who cares, obviously it makes no difference, these guys are all part of the same problem, screw all of them, let them stew in their own juice.” That’s another possible reaction that they will get, which would help convert this election into a landslide loss for the Republicans. Let’s say that Donald Trump does take the nomination, and he goes on to get crushed in the November election. As you said, it would be an opportunity for the “sane wing” of the party to reassert control. Given that so much of the GOP has given itself over to this hardline conservatism in the Obama era, who do you see as someone emerging in that role to lead the “sane” caucus post-Trump?Well that’s a really excellent question. The bench is extremely thin, and there’s absolutely no leader for a Republican Party that I could support. I was interested to notice just today that Jon Huntsman’s family has bought the Salt Lake City Tribune. He was kind of the last guy to run for president on a genuinely moderate platform. [John] Kasich has moderate rhetoric, but his policies are just as hardline as all the others. So maybe Huntsman will reemerge as a voice of some kind in the party. For years I’d been hoping that Colin Powell would step up, but he obviously is not going to do that. I don’t know. If there’s demand, somebody will supply it. One name I wanted to bring up is that of the House Speaker, Paul Ryan, who’s been positioning himself of late as this Trump alternative, a voice of reason and rational discourse. He’s very popular within the party and seems like a natural candidate to shift into that post-Trump leadership role. Do you see any way in which someone like Ryan who has that popularity but is still extremely conservative, particularly on economic policy, do you see him as being able to effectively reform the GOP at all?No. I think Ryan is in a much more serious position than people think he is. He’s slowly sliding into the same problems that destroyed John Boehner, which is he has a bunch of lunatics in his caucus who are effectively able to be the tail that wags the dog. What Ryan would have to do is make peace with the Democrats and be willing to have a governing coalition made up of Democrats and enough Republicans to get legislation passed and be a Speaker for not just the majority party, but for some kind of fusion party. But I don’t think he’s got the support and I also don’t think it’s in his nature to be that kind of leader. The only way he could get reelected as Speaker would be with Democratic votes, and that sort of thing simply doesn’t happen. So he would just be signing his own political death warrant if he tried to do something like that, and then he would disappear from view. One last question – what policy shift would be you be looking for specifically as a sign within the GOP that it is moving towards something approximating the sanity, the moderation that you’re talking about?Well, if they could simply do their job of passing a budget that would be an enormous threshold even though it’s really nothing. It’s the lowest possible thing you could expect from people. But some recognition on the part of some people at the top that global warming is a real phenomenon, that we have to stop denigrating science and pandering to religious kooks. Things are so terrible right now that simply expecting the absolute minimum is a big threshold to cross.
|
|
|
Post by kinsm on Apr 27, 2016 19:35:16 GMT -5
If Trump wins Indiana next Tuesday then Cruz is toast. Trump's momentum will get him over the threshold.
Which will inevitably welcome in a D president in 2017 and probably a D senate as well.
|
|
|
Post by psuhistory on Apr 28, 2016 9:43:51 GMT -5
We need to have a sane, functioning conservative party and a sane, functioning liberal party. And I think that half of that equation, at least, is not working, and it affects the other half. This is well said by Bartlett, but after this election there's going to be a struggle for the Republican party with no assurances that it won't be those who talk this way who end up in the political wilderness...
|
|
|
Post by Lark11 on Apr 30, 2016 15:57:36 GMT -5
www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/accidental-republican-candor-about-voter-id-lawsAccidental Republican candor about voter-ID laws04/29/16 10:00 AM—UPDATED 04/29/16 10:28 AM By Steve Benen The number of Republicans who are accidentally telling the truth about voter-ID laws continues to grow. Right Wing Watch reported yesterday: Jim DeMint, the former South Carolina senator and Tea Party firebrand who is now the president of the Heritage Foundation, became the latest in a string of conservatives to admit that restrictive voting laws such as voter ID requirements are an attempt to help Republicans win elections, telling a St. Louis radio host yesterday that voter ID laws help elect “more conservative candidates.” At first, I thought DeMint might have been making a more general statement about the unintended effects of the policy, but a closer read points to intent. The Republican senator-turned-activist initially complained during the radio interview about Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) restoring the voting rights of former felons, before insisting that Democrats are trying to have “illegals” vote for them. But DeMint then turned to voter-ID laws. “ t’s something we’re working on all over the country because in the states where they do have voter ID laws you’ve seen, actually, elections begin to change towards more conservative candidates,” he said. In case anyone, including DeMint, needs a refresher, the line Republicans and proponents of voter-suppression tactics are supposed to take is that voter-ID policies have nothing to do with partisanship or affecting the outcome of elections, and everything to do with the integrity of the voting process. “We’re not trying to disenfranchise Democrats,” GOP officials say, “that’s just the accidental byproduct of our policies.” The argument is obviously untrue, but at least in public, Republicans generally try to pretend that the talking points have merit. Except that’s not at all what DeMint said. Rather, the Heritage Foundation chief argued that the right is working on voter-ID policies across the country “because” these laws help elect conservatives. It’s one of those classic cases of someone making a mistake by accidentally telling the truth. And if DeMint’s misstep sounds familiar, there’s a good reason. Earlier this month, Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.), a far-right freshman congressman, admitted in a television interview that voter-ID laws will “make a little bit of a difference” in boosting Republicans in the 2016 elections. What’s more, back in June 2012, a Republican leader in the Pennsylvania legislature boasted that a voter-ID law was “gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.” (President Obama won Pennsylvania twice.) The next time someone makes the case these voter-suppression tactics have nothing to do with a partisan agenda, keep these examples in mind.
|
|
|
Post by psuhistory on May 9, 2016 9:23:21 GMT -5
Some interesting Republican speculation about the party's future after a Trump nomination and campaign... Republican Party Unravels Over Donald Trump’s TakeoverBy Patrick Healy and Jonathan Martin, NY Times, 5/7/2016 www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/us/politics/republican-party-unravels-over-donald-trumps-takeover.htmlBy seizing the Republican presidential nomination for Donald J. Trump on Tuesday night, he and his millions of supporters completed what had seemed unimaginable: a hostile takeover of one of America’s two major political parties. Just as stunning was how quickly the host tried to reject them. The party’s two living former presidents spurned Mr. Trump, a number of sitting governors and senators expressed opposition or ambivalence toward him, and he drew a forceful rebuke from the single most powerful and popular rival left on the Republican landscape: the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan. Rarely if ever has a party seemed to come apart so visibly. Rarely, too, has the nation been so on edge about its politics. Many Americans still cannot believe that the bombastic Mr. Trump, best known as a reality television star, will be on the ballot in November. Plenty are also anxious about what he would do in office. But for leading Republicans, the dismay is deeper and darker. They fear their party is on the cusp of an epochal split — a historic cleaving between the familiar form of conservatism forged in the 1960s and popularized in the 1980s and a rekindled, atavistic nationalism, with roots as old as the republic, that has not flared up so intensely since the original America First movement before Pearl Harbor. Some even point to France and other European countries, where far-right parties like the National Front have gained power because of the sort of resentments that are frequently given voice at rallies for Mr. Trump. Yet if keeping the peace means embracing Mr. Trump and his most divisive ideas and utterances, a growing number are loath to do it. The ties between Republican elites — elected officials, donors and Washington insiders — and voters have actually been fraying for years. Traditional power brokers long preached limited-government conservatism and wanted to pursue an immigration overhaul, entitlement cuts, free trade and a hawkish foreign policy, and nominees like John McCain and Mitt Romney largely embraced that agenda. Republican leaders also vilified President Obama and Democrats, stoking anger with rank-and-file conservatives. Many Republican voters trudged along with those earlier nominees, but never became truly animated until Mr. Trump offered them his brand of angry populism: a blend of protectionism at home and a smaller American footprint abroad. And he was able to exploit their resentments and frustrations because those same Republican leaders had been nurturing those feelings for years with attacks on Mr. Obama, Democrats, illegal immigrants and others. Mr. Trump, with his steadfast promises to deport immigrants who are in the country illegally and to build a wall with Mexico, may have done irreversible damage to his general election prospects. But he quickly earned the trust that so many of those voters had lost in other fixtures of America — not just in its leaders, but in institutions like Congress, the Federal Reserve and the big-money campaign finance system that Mr. Trump has repudiated, as well as in corporations, the Roman Catholic Church and the news media. And he has amplified his independent, outsider message in real time, using social media and cable news interviews — and his own celebrity and highly attuned ear for what resonates — to rally voters to his side, using communication strategies similar to those deployed in the Arab Spring uprising or in the attempts by liberals and students to foment a similar revolution in Iran. “Trump leveraged a perfect storm,” said Steve Case, the founder of AOL, in an email message. “A combo of social media (big following), brand (celebrity figure), creativity (pithy tweets), speed/timeliness (dominating news cycles).” Mr. Trump is an unlikely spokesman for the grievances of financially struggling, alienated Americans: a high-living Manhattan billionaire who erects skyscrapers for the wealthy and can easily get politicians on the phone. But as a shrewd business tactician, he understood the Republican Party’s customers better than its leaders did and sensed that his brand of populist, pugilistic, anti-establishment politics would meet their needs. After seething at Washington for so long, hundreds or thousands of miles from the capital, many of these voters now see Mr. Trump as a kind of savior. Even if he does not detail his policies, even if his language strikes them as harsh sometimes, his supporters thrill more to his plain-spoken slogans like “Make America Great Again” than to what they see as the cautious and poll-tested policy speeches of Mr. Ryan and other Washington Republicans. “I love the death out of Paul Ryan, but honestly, I’m going to vote for Trump anyways,” said David Myers, 49, who attended a campaign rally for Mr. Trump in Charleston, W.Va., on Thursday night. “Because Paul Ryan, and I love him to death, but he’s one of those career politicians.” Mr. Trump now feels so empowered that he does not think he needs the political support of the party establishment to defeat the likely Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton. He is confident that his appeal will be broad and deep enough among voters of all stripes that he could win battleground states like Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania without the support of leaders like Mr. Ryan, Mr. Trump said in an interview on Saturday. Although he plans to meet with Mr. Ryan and House Republican leaders on Thursday, Mr. Trump said he would not materially change his policies or style to win their endorsements. “Everything is subject to negotiation, but I can’t and won’t be changing much, because the voters support me because of what I’m saying and how I’m saying it,” Mr. Trump said. “The establishment didn’t do anything to make me the nominee, so its support won’t really make much difference in me winning in November.” (Mr. Trump will, though, be somewhat dependent on the party’s fund-raising muscle since he has indicated he will not fully self-finance his general election campaign.) One reason Mr. Trump takes a skeptical view of establishment support is that he does not believe much in the power of the Republican elite. He is the party’s presumptive nominee, after all, because the political forces that once might have halted his rise have been enfeebled. Leaders such as Mr. Romney warned in the direst terms that Mr. Trump’s nomination would stain the party and lead it to ruin. Venerable media outlets on the right, like National Review, sought to reprise their role as arbiters of who is fit to carry the banner of conservatism. Their pleas fell on deaf ears. Mr. Trump’s arsenal was far more fearsome. Combining modern-day fame and an age-old demagogy, he bypassed the ossified gatekeepers and appealed directly to voters through a constant Twitter stream that seemed interrupted only by television appearances. In doing so, he seemed to grasp that a new twist on direct democracy was in the offing: that disaffected voters who tune out the traditional modes of political communication might be reachable through their smartphones, and Twitter messages or Reddits might be more relevant to those voters than the findings of a more scientific poll. On the left, too, Senator Bernie Sanders has built his own movement with millions of voters, and $210 million in fund-raising, by using online tools as simple as email to seek support. Yet Mr. Trump’s celebrity has been an enormous asset with voters who feel gratified and inspired that he would lavish them with attention and bluntly express some of the ideas and attitudes they share. For 12 consecutive years, polls have indicated that Americans believe the country is on the wrong track, and Republicans have been especially vulnerable to a political campaign like Mr. Trump’s that seeks to channel voter anger. In every state where the question was asked in exit polls during the primary season, 50 percent or more of Republicans said they felt betrayed by their leaders. The adhesive that once held Republicans together — a shared commitment to a strong national defense and limited government — was weakened by the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. But internal divisions were papered over when new, unifying threats emerged after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. It was not until near the end of President George W. Bush’s second term that those fissures broke open again, first with Mr. Bush’s attempt at an immigration overhaul, including a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and then after the financial rescue of big banks from the 2008 financial collapse. Alongside the turbulent economy were signs of something more profound plaguing blue-collar white communities, which have increasingly become core Republican constituencies: an increase in children born to single parents, higher rates of addiction and suicide, and shortened average life spans. “The economic deprivation of the last 30 years for working-class whites, combined with growing social isolation, was really dry tinder,” said Robert D. Putnam, the Harvard political scientist who wrote “Bowling Alone.” And Mr. Trump, Mr. Putnam contended, “lit a spark.” “He constructed a series of scapegoats that these folks would find plausible,” said Mr. Putnam, citing Mr. Trump’s attacks on Muslims and immigrants. “He was willing to say things that might have always been popular, but you couldn’t say it.” With Mr. Trump now saying it loudly and clearly, many Americans feel deeply unsettled by the nation’s politics. Not since Mr. Bush invaded Iraq have so many liberals been murmuring about moving to other countries. And many Republican officials and donors just hope to get through the election with their party intact. “The party has never been more out of touch with our voters,” Vin Weber, a former Minnesota congressman, said of the two factions, acknowledging that Republicans could splinter completely after this election. “I don’t know how you reconcile a lot of them.” Mr. Weber expressed hope that Mr. Trump and Mr. Ryan would find some common ground. But few in the party now deny that the threat of an enduring split is real. “I think there’s a pretty clear Trump wing of the party coming to life,” said Barry Wynn, a prominent fund-raiser who supported Jeb Bush for president and has not yet fallen in behind Mr. Trump. “But I have to think that four or eight years from now, the Trump wing will be a little more traditional, a little less hard-edged, and will be blended into the party just like the evangelical Pat Robertson voters were after the 1988 election.” “At least,” he added, “I hope that’s what’ll happen.”
|
|
|
Post by kinsm on May 13, 2016 23:38:01 GMT -5
www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-05-13/the-decline-of-the-white-male-voterThe Decline of the White Male Voter Donald Trump can't rely on the once-powerful demographic to ensure victory. By Susan Milligan | Staff Writer May 13, 2016 WOODBRIDGE, Va. – If there ever was an award for achievement of the immigrant American Dream, Carlos Castro is a top contender. He escaped war-town El Salvador in 1979, making a risky trip over the U.S. border with the help of a smuggler paid to bring people in the country illegally. Caught, put in a detention center and deported, Castro tried again, this time making it eventually to the Washington, D.C. region, where he worked as a dishwasher. Later, Castro would get documentation, a construction job, a college degree and his U.S. citizenship. And in 1990, Castro opened "Todos," a 2,500-sq. ft. grocery store that is now a 60,000-sq. ft. supermarket and megastore serving this northern Virginia exurb's exploding Latino population. Once a low-paid laborer serving others, Castro is now serving the Hispanic community here, employing nearly 200 people at his two stores, selling food and clothing and services such as cell phones, money transfers and, recently, Virginia's first bilingual U.S. Post Office. He pays his workers more than the minimum wage, and is planning to install in his megastore a cafeteria, rides for kids and a venue for baby showers and other celebrations for his customers to use. Castro is the face of the new Northern Virginia, a region of this once-ruby red, former slave state that is now home to burgeoning populations of Latinos, Asians, Middle Easterners and other non-white residents. It's a voter base any candidate needs to win statewide in the fall elections, and one, theoretically, either major party ought to be able to woo. Castro, for one, understands the struggles of a small business entrepreneur, a prototype celebrated by the Republican Party. And at one time, he says, "I used to admire Donald Trump," the billionaire businessman and presumptive GOP presidential nominee. Then, Castro notes of Trump, "he opened his mouth." Trump trashed Mexican immigrants, calling them "rapists" and "criminals" before qualifying it by saying "some of them" were OK. He talked about building a wall with Mexico, about banning Muslims from entering the U.S., and about closing mosques. Castro felt attacked as an immigrant taking American jobs – and baffled by it. "Not only are we not taking jobs, we're providing jobs," Castro says, gesturing towards the bustling aisles of his store. This year, Castro says, he's getting involved in politics, helping to register fellow Latino voters so they can stop the man Castro calls "a con artist." While Hispanics have typically had lower turnout on Election Day than other voter groups, this year, the year of Trump, "we have to convince the Hispanic community that now it is our opportunity to really make a statement," Castro says. That draft statement is potentially much more powerful now, as it is for other minorities. The white male voter, experts say, is on the decline. Minority groups are becoming pluralities or even majorities in some regions, shaking up the political landscape. Female voters continue to be a majority of voters and are more likely than men to vote for Democrats, a trend that began in 1980. "We have seen tremendous change. We are a much more pluralistic society," says Terry Clower, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University. "There's not any one group from any major metro area where one group is more than 50 percent of the population," he says. "From a political perspective, inclusiveness is the path to success," he says. Six states – Texas, California, Hawaii, Maryland, Georgia and New Mexico – will have eligible voter populations this fall that are at least 40 percent minorities, according to States of Change, a report done by researchers at the Center for American Progress, the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution. Nationwide, 16 percent of eligible voters were minorities in 1980. That percentage has grown to 30 percent this year and will be 50 percent by 2052. The U.S. Census Bureau projects that the country as a whole will be majority-minority by 2044. In places like Virginia, those changes are already evident in the neighborhoods, the schools, the shopping malls – and, perhaps most significantly, the voting booths. Northern Virginia has seen a 60 percent increase in the Hispanic population and a 40 percent increase in the Asian population in the last 8-10 years, Clower says. Annandale, a town in suburban DC's Fairfax County, has its own "Koreatown," with at least 10,000 Koreans living in the area called Sully. There are at least three Korean-language daily newspapers available in Fairfax County. The Korean population became influential enough that in 2014, the community successfully pressured the Virginia legislature to amend school textbooks to include the Korean name "East Sea" to describe the body of water otherwise known as the "Sea of Japan." In the bedroom community of Prince William County, the government of El Salvador has a consulate in a strip mall. Aside from the Todos stores in Woodbridge and Dumfries, there is another massive grocery, "Global," that includes not only Latino foods, but different brands of rice preferred by Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese and Japanese shoppers. Eden, an enormous shopping mall in Falls Church with restaurants, hairdressers, retail shops and services, caters to a pan-Asian clientele. Initially, immigrant groups settled in border states or points of entry. But economic opportunities – such as the construction jobs available in Northern Virginia during the home-building boom here – have drawn immigrant groups who then stayed, started businesses and raised families here, Clower says. But the trends bode poorly for Republicans in general and Trump in particular, experts say, since those groups historically have voted Democratic. President Barack Obama took 71 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2012, up from 67 percent in 2008. African-Americans vote overwhelmingly for Democrats (Obama got 93 percent of the African-American vote in 2012, and John Kerry won 88 percent of that vote in 2004). Asians, who were the fastest-growing ethnic group between 2000-2010, have tended Democratic this century, with 73 percent voting for Obama in 2012. Complicating matters further is that the percentage of Virginia's non-college educated white voters – a group more likely to vote Republican – dropped from 64 percent in 1980 to 44 percent now, Clower notes. It's not clear why these ethnic groups have stayed so loyal to the Democratic Party, says Robert Griffin, a demographics expert with the Center for American Progress. But in Northern Virginia, Republicans have nearly given up, barely running candidates for local office, says former Rep. Tom Davis, a Republican from the area. When he represented the region, Davis managed to draw support from the minority groups by paying attention to such matters as keeping temporary legal status. But now, "that's not part of the formula the party has chosen to pursue," Davis says, calling it a bad "long-term strategy" for the GOP. "It's tough," Davis says when asked about the GOP's chances of putting Virginia back in the red column this fall. "I think it's going to be very hard for Trump to take." Corey Stewart, chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors and head of Trump's Virginia campaign, says that while the new makeup of the region “presents some challenges for Republicans, it is possible to win minority voters.” Stewart himself rankled some minority voters when he pushed successfully for a law in 2007 that requires police to check the immigration status of people they arrest (originally, the law made the demand only if police suspected the person was here illegally). But Stewart notes that he has continued to be elected county-wide. “Despite being hard on illegal immigration, I was elected in a minority community and I believe Mr. Trump will be able to do the same thing,” Stewart says, adding that Trump’s focus on blue-collar jobs can attract minority voters. But veteran Republicans are clearly worried about the impact of minority voters. In a meeting with Trump on Thursday, Texas Sen. John Cornyn says, he talked to the presumptive nominee about "the importance of the Hispanic vote and distinguishing between legal immigration and illegal immigration." Without specifically remarking on Trump's tone, Cornyn says he also underscored "the respect people expect and deserve when you're talking about very emotional issues." And in recent elections, the Republican nominee has not fared so well with minority voters, and it’s not just Virginia. Other states are experiencing similar population changes that could shake up the election or just make it more challenging for a Republican to win. In Florida, for example, nearly a fourth of residents are Hispanic, compared to 17 percent in 2000. A Republican candidate could counter the demographic trend by taking away some of the white vote from the Democratic nominee, according to the trio of think-tanks that studied the demographics. If five percent of white voters who voted Democratic in 2012 flipped to the GOP this year (making a 10-point difference, since Republicans would gain five percent, and Democrats would lose that amount), the Republican would win, the demographers projected. But even that model assumes there would not be a corresponding increase in turnout among minority voters. That's where Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton could be wildcards, experts say. "If the primary is a preview, it's going to activate the minority community," Griffin says of Trump's approach. "This is someone who's actively demonized them." Indeed, the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, a bipartisan group, has projected a 17 percent increase in Latino voter turnout from 2012 – largely because of the number of people reaching voting age. And entities such as Univision are actively trying to register Hispanic voters. But Clinton, too, has shown weaknesses in the primary campaign, analysts note. The very fact that she is still fighting to get the nomination against a once relatively unknown democratic socialist, Sen. Bernie Sanders, is a sign she does not have the party rank and file enthusiastically behind her. "Hillary Clinton is a flawed candidate. This is no slam-dunk for her. There's still time to recover," Davis says. For both Trump and Clinton, demographics may be destiny this fall.
|
|
|
Post by FoulBalz on May 17, 2016 14:38:05 GMT -5
Idiots can riot in the steets and yet the media and other jellied hearted souls feel their pain.
Men dressed as woman complain about bathroom access and the media and jellied hearted souls feel their pain
Millions want their voices heard, feel the government is going the wrong way, feel that both parties have left them and yet so many in the media and other self purported intellectuals say Trump supporters are nothing but idiots and hillbillies
ANY OTHER GROUP esp a group as large as the Trump supporters would not be dismissed so quickly and demonized.
He is not my first, second, third, etc choice but their views should be heard and changes should be made.
|
|
|
Post by psuhistory on May 17, 2016 16:06:09 GMT -5
I don't view Trump or his supporters as demonic and haven't intentionally posted anything that stereotypes them. But I have heard and considered this idea of building a wall on the US/Mexico border, and I think it's stupid...
I'm not saying Trump or others who support the idea are stupid, but the idea is a stupid one...
Speaking from experience, you don't have to be stupid to do a dumb thing for bad reasons...
|
|
|
Post by tnredsfan on May 18, 2016 1:39:56 GMT -5
At this point, I think the GOP leadership is more or less conceding the White House to Hillary. I suspect there's a lot of "circling the wagons" internal memos floating around, with the idea being that the GOP fights to hold the House and Senate and tries to make HRC a 1-term president by running Paul Ryan against her in 2020.
I loathe Donald Trump and everything about him, really, but you have to admit, he's run (so far) one of the most brilliant political campaigns in modern history. When was the last time that someone so completely unqualified for the office of President of the United States been nominated by a major party?
And I agree with FoulBalz point: Trump may be a fool and a blowhard, but the concerns of his loyalists are not to be dismissed, nor are the concerns of the Bernie Sanders loyalists on the left. (and there's a lot of overlap between the two, really.)
|
|
|
Post by psuhistory on May 18, 2016 6:59:16 GMT -5
And I agree with FoulBalz point: Trump may be a fool and a blowhard, but the concerns of his loyalists are not to be dismissed, nor are the concerns of the Bernie Sanders loyalists on the left. (and there's a lot of overlap between the two, really.) I don't think anyone's concerns should be dismissed, and because I'm not sure who's doing it, I don't see how to engage with that part. But awareness of concerns and the ability to address them are obviously very different things. For example, American manufacturing jobs are gone and aren't coming back (and it wouldn't be a good idea to take them even if they were offered). The economy is and has been a global one, driving large scale movements of people, goods, services. Given this, how do you actually address the concerns of groups that want to build walls, exclude foreigners, and generally return to a kind of America First protectionism (whether from the political right or left)? Paying people, basically, not to work might ease some of the economic pressure fueling the political anger. But a lot of Americans don't want to hear this and "demonize" it as socialism...
|
|
|
Post by tnredsfan on May 18, 2016 23:23:08 GMT -5
I'm talking about the general feeling that the voice of the "little guy" is not being heard, that it's a rigged game, and that we're basically in a state of oligarchy. Those are very valid concerns.
As far as "paying people not to work," if you're referring to the guaranteed basic income concept, I think that's where we're headed, sometime in the next 20-30 years. It's a tough sell, but it has some backing amongst conservatives (because it would eliminate all existing welfare programs) as well as liberals. The fact is, there's simply not going to be enough work for people to do, as efficiency and automation march on. And you're absolutely right: Trump (and to some extent, Sanders) are selling a bill of goods on that whole "bring manufacturing jobs back" thing. They aren't coming back. It's over. The world is changing and we have to adapt to that change.
|
|