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Post by Lark11 on Apr 12, 2019 1:04:13 GMT -5
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/how-did-republican-party-get-so-corrupt/578095/?utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_term=2018-12-14T10%3A00%3A04&utm_content=edit-promo&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialThe Corruption of the Republican PartyThe GOP is best understood as an insurgency that carried the seeds of its own corruption from the start. DEC 14, 2018 George Packer Staff writer for The Atlantic Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, on July 19, 2016JONATHAN ERNST / REUTERSWhy has the Republican Party become so thoroughly corrupt? The reason is historical—it goes back many decades—and, in a way, philosophical. The party is best understood as an insurgency that carried the seeds of its own corruption from the start. I don’t mean the kind of corruption that regularly sends lowlifes like Rod Blagojevich, the Democratic former governor of Illinois, to prison. Those abuses are nonpartisan and always with us. So is vote theft of the kind we’ve just seen in North Carolina—after all, the alleged fraudster employed by the Republican candidate for Congress hired himself out to Democrats in 2010. And I don’t just mean that the Republican Party is led by the boss of a kleptocratic family business who presides over a scandal-ridden administration, that many of his closest advisers are facing prison time, that Donald Trump himself might have to stay in office just to avoid prosecution, that he could be exposed by the special counsel and the incoming House majority as the most corrupt president in American history. Richard Nixon’s administration was also riddled with criminality—but in 1973, the Republican Party of Hugh Scott, the Senate minority leader, and John Rhodes, the House minority leader, was still a normal organization. It played by the rules. The corruption I mean has less to do with individual perfidy than institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means. Political corruption usually trails financial scandals in its wake—the foam is scummy with self-dealing—but it’s far more dangerous than graft. There are legal remedies for Duncan Hunter, a representative from California, who will stand trial next year for using campaign funds to pay for family luxuries.* But there’s no obvious remedy for what the state legislatures of Wisconsin and Michigan, following the example of North Carolina in 2016, are now doing. Republican majorities are rushing to pass laws that strip away the legitimate powers of newly elected Democratic governors while defeated or outgoing Republican incumbents are still around to sign the bills. Even if the courts overturn some of these power grabs, as they have in North Carolina, Republicans will remain securely entrenched in the legislative majority through their own hyper-gerrymandering—in Wisconsin last month, 54 percent of the total votes cast for major-party candidates gave Democrats just 36 of 99 assembly seats—so they will go on passing laws to thwart election results. Nothing can stop these abuses short of an electoral landslide. In Wisconsin, a purple state, that means close to 60 percent of the total vote. The fact that no plausible election outcome can check the abuse of power is what makes political corruption so dangerous. It strikes at the heart of democracy. It destroys the compact between the people and the government. In rendering voters voiceless, it pushes everyone closer to the use of undemocratic means. Today’s Republican Party has cornered itself with a base of ever older, whiter, more male, more rural, more conservative voters. Demography can take a long time to change—longer than in progressives’ dreams—but it isn’t on the Republicans’ side. They could have tried to expand; instead, they’ve hardened and walled themselves off. This is why, while voter fraud knows no party, only the Republican Party wildly overstates the risk so that it can pass laws (including right now in Wisconsin, with a bill that reduces early voting) to limit the franchise in ways that have a disparate partisan impact. This is why, when some Democrats in the New Jersey legislature proposed to enshrine gerrymandering in the state constitution, other Democrats, in New Jersey and around the country, objected. Taking away democratic rights—extreme gerrymandering; blocking an elected president from nominating a Supreme Court justice; selectively paring voting rolls and polling places; creating spurious anti-fraud commissions; misusing the census to undercount the opposition; calling lame-duck legislative sessions to pass laws against the will of the voters—is the Republican Party’s main political strategy, and will be for years to come. Republicans have chosen contraction and authoritarianism because, unlike the Democrats, their party isn’t a coalition of interests in search of a majority. Its character is ideological. The Republican Party we know is a product of the modern conservative movement, and that movement is a series of insurgencies against the established order. Several of its intellectual founders—Whittaker Chambers and James Burnham, among others—were shaped early on by Communist ideology and practice, and their Manichean thinking, their conviction that the salvation of Western civilization depended on the devoted work of a small group of illuminati, marked the movement at its birth. The first insurgency was the nomination of Barry Goldwater for president in 1964. He campaigned as a rebel against the postwar American consensus and the soft middle of his own party’s leadership. Goldwater didn’t use the standard, reassuring lexicon of the big tent and the mainstream. At the San Francisco convention, he embraced extremism and denounced the Republican establishment, whose “moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.” His campaign lit a fire of excitement that spread to millions of readers through the pages of two self-published prophesies of the apocalypse, Phyllis Schlafly’s A Choice Not an Echo and John A. Stormer’s None Dare Call It Treason. According to these mega-sellers, the political opposition wasn’t just wrong—it was a sinister conspiracy with totalitarian goals. William F. Buckley—the movement’s Max Eastman, its most brilliant pamphleteer—predicted Goldwater’s landslide defeat. His candidacy, like the revolution of 1905, had come too soon, but it foretold the victory to come. At a Young Americans for Freedom convention, Buckley exhorted an audience of true-believing cadres to think beyond November: “Presuppose that the fiery little body of dissenters, of which you are a shining meteor, suddenly spun off no less than a majority of all the American people, who suddenly overcome a generation’s entrenched lassitude, suddenly penetrated to the true meaning of freedom in society where the truth is occluded by the verbose mystification of thousands of scholars, tens of thousands of books, a million miles of newsprint.” Then Goldwater’s inevitable defeat would turn into “the well planted seeds of hope, which will flower on a great November day in the future, if there is a future.” The insurgents were agents of history, and history was long. To avoid despair, they needed the clarity that only ideology (“the truth”) can give. The task in 1964 was to recruit and train conservative followers. Then established institutions that concealed the truth—schools, universities, newspapers, the Republican Party itself—would have to be swept away and replaced or entered and cleansed. Eventually Buckley imagined an electoral majority; but these were not the words and ideas of democratic politics, with its ungainly coalitions and unsatisfying compromises. During this first insurgency, the abiding contours of the movement took shape. One feature—detailed in Before the Storm, Rick Perlstein’s account of the origins of the New Right—was liberals’ inability to see, let alone take seriously enough to understand, what was happening around the country. For their part, conservatives nursed a victim’s sense of grievance—the system was stacked against them, cabals of the powerful were determined to lock them out—and they showed more energetic interest than their opponents in the means of gaining power: mass media, new techniques of organizing, rhetoric, ideas. Finally, the movement was founded in the politics of racism. Goldwater’s strongest support came from white southerners reacting against civil rights. Even Buckley once defended Jim Crow with the claim that black Americans were too “backward” for self-government. Eventually he changed his views, but modern conservatism would never stop flirting with hostility toward whole groups of Americans. And from the start this stance opened the movement to extreme, sometimes violent fellow travelers. It took only 16 years, with the election of Ronald Reagan, for the movement and party to merge. During those years, conservatives hammered away at institutional structures, denouncing the established ones for their treacherous liberalism, and building alternatives, in the form of well-funded right-wing foundations, think tanks, business lobbies, legal groups, magazines, publishers, professorships. When Reagan won the presidency in 1980, the products of this “counter-establishment” (from the title of Sidney Blumenthal’s book on the subject) were ready to take power. Reagan commanded a revolution, but he himself didn’t have a revolutionary character. He didn’t think the public needed to be indoctrinated and organized, only heard. But conservatism remained an insurgent politics during the 1980s and ’90s, and the more power it amassed—in government, business, law, media—the more it set itself against the fragile web of established norms and delighted in breaking them. The second insurgency was led by Newt Gingrich, who had come to Congress two years before Reagan became president, with the avowed aim of overthrowing the established Republican leadership and shaping the minority party into a fighting force that could break Democratic rule by shattering what he called the “corrupt left-wing machine.” Gingrich liked to quote Mao’s definition of politics as “war without blood.” He made audiotapes that taught Republican candidates how to demonize the opposition with labels such as “disgrace,” “betray,” and “traitors.” When he became speaker of the House, at the head of yet another revolution, Gingrich announced, “There will be no compromise.” How could there be, when he was leading a crusade to save American civilization from its liberal enemies? Even after Gingrich was driven from power, the victim of his own guillotine, he regularly churned out books that warned of imminent doom—unless America turned to a leader like him (he once called himself “teacher of the rules of civilization,” among other exalted epithets). Unlike Goldwater and Reagan, Gingrich never had any deeply felt ideology. It was hard to say exactly what “American civilization” meant to him. What he wanted was power, and what he most obviously enjoyed was smashing things to pieces in its pursuit. His insurgency started the conservative movement on the path to nihilism. The party purged itself of most remaining moderates, growing ever-more shallow as it grew ever-more conservative—from Goldwater (who, in 1996, joked that he had become a Republican liberal) to Ted Cruz, from Buckley to Dinesh D’Souza. Jeff Flake, the outgoing senator from Arizona (whose conservative views come with a democratic temperament), describes this deterioration as “a race to the bottom to see who can be meaner and madder and crazier. It is not enough to be conservative anymore. You have to be vicious.” The viciousness doesn’t necessarily reside in the individual souls of Republican leaders. It flows from the party’s politics, which seeks to delegitimize opponents and institutions, purify the ranks through purges and coups, and agitate followers with visions of apocalypse—all in the name of an ideological cause that every year loses integrity as it becomes indistinguishable from power itself. The third insurgency came in reaction to the election of Barack Obama—it was the Tea Party. Eight years later, it culminated in Trump’s victory, an insurgency within the party itself—because revolutions tend to be self-devouring (“I’m not willing to preside over people who are cannibals,” Gingrich declared in 1998 when he quit the House). In the third insurgency, the features of the original movement surfaced again, more grotesque than ever: paranoia and conspiracy thinking; racism and other types of hostility toward entire groups; innuendos and incidents of violence. The new leader is like his authoritarian counterparts abroad: illiberal, demagogic, hostile to institutional checks, demanding and receiving complete acquiescence from the party, and enmeshed in the financial corruption that is integral to the political corruption of these regimes. Once again, liberals failed to see it coming and couldn’t grasp how it happened. Neither could some conservatives who still believed in democracy. The corruption of the Republican Party in the Trump era seemed to set in with breathtaking speed. In fact, it took more than a half century to reach the point where faced with a choice between democracy and power, the party chose the latter. Its leaders don’t see a dilemma—democratic principles turn out to be disposable tools, sometimes useful, sometimes inconvenient. The higher cause is conservatism, but the highest is power. After Wisconsin Democrats swept statewide offices last month, Robin Vos, speaker of the assembly, explained why Republicans would have to get rid of the old rules: “We are going to have a very liberal governor who is going to enact policies that are in direct contrast to what many of us believe in.” As Bertolt Brecht wrote of East Germany’s ruling party: Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
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Post by DocDirk on Apr 15, 2019 9:28:50 GMT -5
To me, one of the things that has become so increasingly frustrating is that we elect people based upon their extremism. And that happens frequently in both parties honestly (although I would agree that it has become more prevalent in the red side of the aisle - coming from a registered Red.)
Seriously, watch the debates and ads next primary cycle. Not even talking presidential, but governors and congresspeople. They attack people for reaching across the aisle, regardless of the result. And we pretend that we don't like the gridlock, but then we continue to elect people on the premise of following 100% along their party's ideologies (with rare exception.) When they don't, we discard them for somebody more extreme and wonder why sh*t never gets done.
John McCain somehow went from being too liberal for the conservatives (when running for primary in 2000 against Bush) to being a raving conservative mad-man according to liberals in 2008 (granted, he did give into Palin being VP on the ticket....yikes!) all while being the exact same person - a moderate. Honestly, there are too few McCain's remaining and that's part of our problem.
To be clear, I am not arguing against strong individual red or blue platforms. There are some aspects from both sides that make sense. However, compromise is what we should be rewarding, not wins and losses.
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Post by armo21 on Apr 19, 2019 19:42:14 GMT -5
you sound like me....the most under represented political group in America. The common sense party. We have let money dictate policy so much in this country that we cannot agree on the most basic common sense issues. Where is the vision for America in the Republican party? Infrastructure, Healthcare, Education, future for the next generation? There literally is no vision.
America was so disenchanted with Washington that we bought the load of crap being peddled by our current president and the Russians who helped him get elected. Even the Republicans did not want this guy as their nominee. Hell he didn't even want to be president, he was just running to improve his brand, f>cking amazing.
Now the Lindsey Grahams, Devin Nunez's, Kevin McCarthy's, Mitch McConnell's all of them, sell out their values for power. Republican values are completely flushed down the toilet. And we are left with a swamp that was promised to be drained by the guy who has lived in the swamp his whole life and flourishes in it. These idiots better wake up and realize that the world is changing, the country is changing and they better understand that in next 25 years they will not be the majority of this country. Its simple math, white majority in America is dying and will be gone in 2045. No "Wall" will change that. What can change though is a vision for a better America where all Americans have the ability to get ahead with hard work, values and integrity.
As a country we need John McCain now more than ever.
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Post by Lark11 on Apr 21, 2019 15:59:35 GMT -5
To me, this is the most important point:
The Republican Party is facing shifting demographics that do not favor their party, which left them with two choices: (1) broaden the party platform to include more views in an effort to broaden their base of support, or (2) focus on trying to shrink and disenfranchise the Democrats' base of support.
Quite obviously, they chose option 2, which necessarily means that their party is anti-democracy. This is the point that needs to be widely understood, because it's deadly serious. When you vote Republican, you are voting against democracy.
Democracy is majority rule, when you wall yourself off with a minority of the voters, you will lose in a democracy....unless you attack the norms, rules, and values of democracy itself. The only way for the Republican Party, as currently constituted, to hold onto power is to seek to consolidate it in ways that are increasingly totalitarian and authoritarian.
As of now, the Republican Party's guiding principle is to obtain, secure, and hold onto power...at any cost.
Democracy is at risk. Legitimately.
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Post by armo21 on May 1, 2019 22:23:47 GMT -5
To me, this is the most important point: The Republican Party is facing shifting demographics that do not favor their party, which left them with two choices: (1) broaden the party platform to include more views in an effort to broaden their base of support, or (2) focus on trying to shrink and disenfranchise the Democrats' base of support. Quite obviously, they chose option 2, which necessarily means that their party is anti-democracy. This is the point that needs to be widely understood, because it's deadly serious. When you vote Republican, you are voting against democracy. Democracy is majority rule, when you wall yourself off with a minority of the voters, you will lose in a democracy....unless you attack the norms, rules, and values of democracy itself. The only way for the Republican Party, as currently constituted, to hold onto power is to seek to consolidate it in ways that are increasingly totalitarian and authoritarian. As of now, the Republican Party's guiding principle is to obtain, secure, and hold onto power...at any cost. Democracy is at risk. Legitimately. "As of now, the Republican Party's guiding principle is to obtain, secure, and hold onto power...at any cost. Democracy is at risk. Legitimately." After watching Barr and the republicans today, this quote is really hit home. Absolutely amazing that the federal government is this broken. We are witnessing, what seems like in slow motion, a constitutional crisis in this country. In the past, every Tea Party Republican would quote the constitution on a myriad of issues; guns, god, economics, law etc. and now they don't even care that their party is totally shirking their constitutional responsibilities so long as they are in control. I keep thinking that we will see cooler heads prevail and we will get some sense that the system is not completely broken. After today, I really feel with all the norms that have been shattered during this presidency, the constitution and the guiding principles of this country are truly close to being gone. I remember Pat Buchanan and how far out in the "right field corner" his politics were and I would think what a "nut case".... in retrospect, looking back over the past 25 years, the republican party has been inching their way to the right field line and now are in foul territory and on their way out of the ball park. Pretty scarry to see where we are as a country right now, especially after witnessing that Fecal Matter show the republicans put on today, trashing the constitution in plain sight.
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Post by Lark11 on May 12, 2019 1:33:06 GMT -5
To me, this is the most important point: The Republican Party is facing shifting demographics that do not favor their party, which left them with two choices: (1) broaden the party platform to include more views in an effort to broaden their base of support, or (2) focus on trying to shrink and disenfranchise the Democrats' base of support. Quite obviously, they chose option 2, which necessarily means that their party is anti-democracy. This is the point that needs to be widely understood, because it's deadly serious. When you vote Republican, you are voting against democracy. Democracy is majority rule, when you wall yourself off with a minority of the voters, you will lose in a democracy....unless you attack the norms, rules, and values of democracy itself. The only way for the Republican Party, as currently constituted, to hold onto power is to seek to consolidate it in ways that are increasingly totalitarian and authoritarian. As of now, the Republican Party's guiding principle is to obtain, secure, and hold onto power...at any cost. Democracy is at risk. Legitimately. "As of now, the Republican Party's guiding principle is to obtain, secure, and hold onto power...at any cost. Democracy is at risk. Legitimately." After watching Barr and the republicans today, this quote is really hit home. Absolutely amazing that the federal government is this broken. We are witnessing, what seems like in slow motion, a constitutional crisis in this country. In the past, every Tea Party Republican would quote the constitution on a myriad of issues; guns, god, economics, law etc. and now they don't even care that their party is totally shirking their constitutional responsibilities so long as they are in control. I keep thinking that we will see cooler heads prevail and we will get some sense that the system is not completely broken. After today, I really feel with all the norms that have been shattered during this presidency, the constitution and the guiding principles of this country are truly close to being gone. I remember Pat Buchanan and how far out in the "right field corner" his politics were and I would think what a "nut case".... in retrospect, looking back over the past 25 years, the republican party has been inching their way to the right field line and now are in foul territory and on their way out of the ball park. Pretty scarry to see where we are as a country right now, especially after witnessing that Fecal Matter show the republicans put on today, trashing the constitution in plain sight. For the sake of the country, this version of the Republican Party needs to have its back broken. It needs to be completely defeated to the point that it goes back to the drawing board, revises its policy positions and tactics, and becomes a version of itself that is not fundamentally anti-democracy. I really don't know what happens to our democracy if Trump wins the next election. I don't know that our system of checks-and-balances and our constitutional norms can survive four more years.
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searay
Bid McPhee
Posts: 1,122
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Post by searay on May 21, 2019 8:13:36 GMT -5
To me, this is the most important point: The Republican Party is facing shifting demographics that do not favor their party, which left them with two choices: (1) broaden the party platform to include more views in an effort to broaden their base of support, or (2) focus on trying to shrink and disenfranchise the Democrats' base of support. Quite obviously, they chose option 2, which necessarily means that their party is anti-democracy. This is the point that needs to be widely understood, because it's deadly serious. When you vote Republican, you are voting against democracy. Democracy is majority rule, when you wall yourself off with a minority of the voters, you will lose in a democracy....unless you attack the norms, rules, and values of democracy itself. The only way for the Republican Party, as currently constituted, to hold onto power is to seek to consolidate it in ways that are increasingly totalitarian and authoritarian. As of now, the Republican Party's guiding principle is to obtain, secure, and hold onto power...at any cost. Democracy is at risk. Legitimately. This is not much different than the Dem party. Everything they're doing now is to stymie the Republican President and gain power in 2020. They keep investigating even though they know nothing will come of it. I don't understand folks who think there's one devil party and one angelic party. They're not that different. One party nominated Trump to represent them. One nominated Hillary. Hillary has been associated with corruption for 30 yrs. Now Democrats seem to be led by an old white guy who'll be pushing 80 by the time Election Day 2020 comes along. Other than Biden, they're led by Bernie Sanders, Schumer and Pelosi. Seriously? Is this all the better the Dems can do? You can't give us any young blood? As a voter, we lose.
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searay
Bid McPhee
Posts: 1,122
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Post by searay on May 21, 2019 8:34:34 GMT -5
"As of now, the Republican Party's guiding principle is to obtain, secure, and hold onto power...at any cost. Democracy is at risk. Legitimately." After watching Barr and the republicans today, this quote is really hit home. Absolutely amazing that the federal government is this broken. We are witnessing, what seems like in slow motion, a constitutional crisis in this country. In the past, every Tea Party Republican would quote the constitution on a myriad of issues; guns, god, economics, law etc. and now they don't even care that their party is totally shirking their constitutional responsibilities so long as they are in control. I keep thinking that we will see cooler heads prevail and we will get some sense that the system is not completely broken. After today, I really feel with all the norms that have been shattered during this presidency, the constitution and the guiding principles of this country are truly close to being gone. I remember Pat Buchanan and how far out in the "right field corner" his politics were and I would think what a "nut case".... in retrospect, looking back over the past 25 years, the republican party has been inching their way to the right field line and now are in foul territory and on their way out of the ball park. Pretty scarry to see where we are as a country right now, especially after witnessing that Fecal Matter show the republicans put on today, trashing the constitution in plain sight. For the sake of the country, this version of the Republican Party needs to have its back broken. It needs to be completely defeated to the point that it goes back to the drawing board, revises its policy positions and tactics, and becomes a version of itself that is not fundamentally anti-democracy. I really don't know what happens to our democracy if Trump wins the next election. I don't know that our system of checks-and-balances and our constitutional norms can survive four more years. Their back broken? Have you seen the economy? Arguably it's never been better. Why is that? I can speak personally that Republican policies have helped me immensely while Dem programs have hurt. The Trump tax cut with its 20% pass through deduction helps a small business like mine big time. Here in Ohio, I used to set aside a thousand bucks a quarter for my state taxes. Now I pay a $150 CAT tax and nothing else. This is thanks to Gov Kasich and the Republican legislature. So my state taxes went from many thousands per yr to $150. The Democrats big legislation is Obamacare. In 2008 my health insurance premium was $487 with a thousand dollar deductible. Now it's $1700 with a $7K deductible. Obamacare funded free and subsidized healthcare for others on my back. I'm not voting for that. So as you can see, we're not talkin' just a few bucks. Republicans have saved me thousands per month over Democrats.! Thousands per month. This goes a long way towards helping the economy and me personally. Now Democrats want to go towards socialism. No way. I'm voting Republican.
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Post by Lark11 on May 21, 2019 11:28:38 GMT -5
For the sake of the country, this version of the Republican Party needs to have its back broken. It needs to be completely defeated to the point that it goes back to the drawing board, revises its policy positions and tactics, and becomes a version of itself that is not fundamentally anti-democracy. I really don't know what happens to our democracy if Trump wins the next election. I don't know that our system of checks-and-balances and our constitutional norms can survive four more years. Their back broken? Have you seen the economy? Arguably it's never been better. Why is that? I can speak personally that Republican policies have helped me immensely while Dem programs have hurt. The Trump tax cut with its 20% pass through deduction helps a small business like mine big time. Here in Ohio, I used to set aside a thousand bucks a quarter for my state taxes. Now I pay a $150 CAT tax and nothing else. This is thanks to Gov Kasich and the Republican legislature. So my state taxes went from many thousands per yr to $150. The Democrats big legislation is Obamacare. In 2008 my health insurance premium was $487 with a thousand dollar deductible. Now it's $1700 with a $7K deductible. Obamacare funded free and subsidized healthcare for others on my back. I'm not voting for that. So as you can see, we're not talkin' just a few bucks. Republicans have saved me thousands per month over Democrats.! Thousands per month. This goes a long way towards helping the economy and me personally. Now Democrats want to go towards socialism. No way. I'm voting Republican. So, a few more bucks in your pocket is worth more than our democracy??? This thread isn't about the individual issues advanced by the Republican party, it's about the attacks on democracy they are using to do it. For simplicity, let's take the discussion up to a more generalized level by removing any reference to political party. Then, let's consider the following issues: Do you support voter suppression laws that disenfranchise citizens? Do you support outgoing, lame-duck state legislatures and executives of one party trying to drastically change the state laws to prevent the incoming party from governing? Do you support hyper-gerrymandering by a party to increase its political power over and above what the popular vote would reflect? Do you support a party refusing to hold a confirmation hearing on a lawfully nominated Supreme Court justice until after the results of a distant future election? These aren't inherently political issues, even if they are almost exclusively being conducted by one party. These are governmental issues that go to the heart of our system of government. These are "country before party" issues. These are fundamental issues of governance on which all citizens, regardless of political ideology, should (and frankly MUST) agree. The Republican party is breaking the rules to advance their platform, but it would be wise to keep this in mind: "without the rules, the game is nothing." Rome is burning, but at least you have a few more bucks in your pocket.
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Post by schellis on May 21, 2019 12:29:13 GMT -5
You act like the democrats have never ever broken any laws.
I'll take another 50 years of Trump before I'd vote for any of these candidates even if they were just running for a week in office. They're all horrible and what they want to do would cripple this country.
Yes college cost a ton and its putting those that attend in debt for pretty much their entire life. Not everyone needs to go though and many would be far better served taking up a trade like plumbing, electrical or construction. Perhaps if we guided the youth of this country to courses that actually had a end game of a actual job it would be better. We all can't be CEOs after all.
Yes healthcare is horribly expensive there needs to be control on that something that cost a dollar at Walmart shouldn't be 20 dollars in a hospital or more (I know this is true I did the charges when I worked at one) I have no idea how to fix it, but Obamacare wasn't it. High premiums and high deductibles basically left it as worst case care
A problem I have is with my company, they claim poverty but yet the CEO gets a 20-40 million dollar bonus when a merger happens.
The democrats never really explain where all this money is going to come from for all the stuff they promise and socialism has proven time and time again to not work
I've also had to prove that I'm a US citizen just for my current job no less then 6 times, if I have to do that I have no issues at all with people who wish to vote having to prove the same.
If you are illegal you shouldn't have the right to vote. If you are in prison you shouldn't have it either.
I'm also extremely tired of the Russia crap. The money that has been spent on that could have actually been used on something beneficial.
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Post by Lark11 on May 21, 2019 12:50:52 GMT -5
You act like the democrats have never ever broken any laws. I'll take another 50 years of Trump before I'd vote for any of these candidates even if they were just running for a week in office. They're all horrible and what they want to do would cripple this country. Yes college cost a ton and its putting those that attend in debt for pretty much their entire life. Not everyone needs to go though and many would be far better served taking up a trade like plumbing, electrical or construction. Perhaps if we guided the youth of this country to courses that actually had a end game of a actual job it would be better. We all can't be CEOs after all. Yes healthcare is horribly expensive there needs to be control on that something that cost a dollar at Walmart shouldn't be 20 dollars in a hospital or more (I know this is true I did the charges when I worked at one) I have no idea how to fix it, but Obamacare wasn't it. High premiums and high deductibles basically left it as worst case care A problem I have is with my company, they claim poverty but yet the CEO gets a 20-40 million dollar bonus when a merger happens. The democrats never really explain where all this money is going to come from for all the stuff they promise and socialism has proven time and time again to not work I've also had to prove that I'm a US citizen just for my current job no less then 6 times, if I have to do that I have no issues at all with people who wish to vote having to prove the same. If you are illegal you shouldn't have the right to vote. If you are in prison you shouldn't have it either. I'm also extremely tired of the Russia crap. The money that has been spent on that could have actually been used on something beneficial. Right, so you're a Republican, but the real question is whether you would support your party undertaking anti-democratic measures in order to advance its political platform? Do the ends always justify the means?
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Post by schellis on May 21, 2019 13:24:13 GMT -5
You act like the democrats have never ever broken any laws. I'll take another 50 years of Trump before I'd vote for any of these candidates even if they were just running for a week in office. They're all horrible and what they want to do would cripple this country. Yes college cost a ton and its putting those that attend in debt for pretty much their entire life. Not everyone needs to go though and many would be far better served taking up a trade like plumbing, electrical or construction. Perhaps if we guided the youth of this country to courses that actually had a end game of a actual job it would be better. We all can't be CEOs after all. Yes healthcare is horribly expensive there needs to be control on that something that cost a dollar at Walmart shouldn't be 20 dollars in a hospital or more (I know this is true I did the charges when I worked at one) I have no idea how to fix it, but Obamacare wasn't it. High premiums and high deductibles basically left it as worst case care A problem I have is with my company, they claim poverty but yet the CEO gets a 20-40 million dollar bonus when a merger happens. The democrats never really explain where all this money is going to come from for all the stuff they promise and socialism has proven time and time again to not work I've also had to prove that I'm a US citizen just for my current job no less then 6 times, if I have to do that I have no issues at all with people who wish to vote having to prove the same. If you are illegal you shouldn't have the right to vote. If you are in prison you shouldn't have it either. I'm also extremely tired of the Russia crap. The money that has been spent on that could have actually been used on something beneficial. Right, so you're a Republican, but the real question is whether you would support your party undertaking anti-democratic measures in order to advance their political platform? Do the ends always justify the means? If one side has something that would work, but is stonewalled by the other simply because it wasn't their side that came up with it then yes any means necessary. I'm tired of one side saying the sky is blue only to have the other claim its more a greenish teal. I'm tired of hearing how everything needs to be free for everyone and how we must save this or that....none of that is bad by any means....but nobody ever seems to have the how. Politicians all seem to be tell everyone what they want to hear then get into office and either push through something all sorts of horrible or counter with I don't recall promising that I'd do it just that I would look into it. Your in my league...you know I'll bend rules to get something to work the way it should and once I feel something needs to be done I will take care of it. So while I wouldn't go extreme to get it done, I would want the laws of the land enforced (illegals not needing to be here sucking down resources) and I would want stuff that wasn't workable to be brushed aside. There are more jobs now, more people employed and I believe that things are improving.
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searay
Bid McPhee
Posts: 1,122
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Post by searay on May 21, 2019 13:26:35 GMT -5
Their back broken? Have you seen the economy? Arguably it's never been better. Why is that? I can speak personally that Republican policies have helped me immensely while Dem programs have hurt. The Trump tax cut with its 20% pass through deduction helps a small business like mine big time. Here in Ohio, I used to set aside a thousand bucks a quarter for my state taxes. Now I pay a $150 CAT tax and nothing else. This is thanks to Gov Kasich and the Republican legislature. So my state taxes went from many thousands per yr to $150. The Democrats big legislation is Obamacare. In 2008 my health insurance premium was $487 with a thousand dollar deductible. Now it's $1700 with a $7K deductible. Obamacare funded free and subsidized healthcare for others on my back. I'm not voting for that. So as you can see, we're not talkin' just a few bucks. Republicans have saved me thousands per month over Democrats.! Thousands per month. This goes a long way towards helping the economy and me personally. Now Democrats want to go towards socialism. No way. I'm voting Republican. So, a few more bucks in your pocket is worth more than our democracy??? This thread isn't about the individual issues advanced by the Republican party, it's about the attacks on democracy they are using to do it. For simplicity, let's take the discussion up to a more generalized level by removing any reference to political party. Then, let's consider the following issues: Do you support voter suppression laws that disenfranchise citizens? Do you support outgoing, lame-duck state legislatures and executives of one party trying to drastically change the state laws to prevent the incoming party from governing? Do you support hyper-gerrymandering by a party to increase its political power over and above what the popular vote would reflect? Do you support a party refusing to hold a confirmation hearing on a lawfully nominated Supreme Court justice until after the results of a distant future election? These aren't inherently political issues, even if they are almost exclusively being conducted by one party. These are governmental issues that go to the heart of our system of government. These are "country before party" issues. These are fundamental issues of governance on which all citizens, regardless of political ideology, should (and frankly MUST) agree. The Republican party is breaking the rules to advance their platform, but it would be wise to keep this in mind: "without the rules, the game is nothing." Rome is burning, but at least you have a few more bucks in your pocket. First of all, it's not just a few bucks. It's thousands, not per year, per month! That's a lot of money. The rest of your post is nothing but Dem spin. Requiring an ID when you vote is sane policy; not disenfranchising voters. The Gerrymandering is being dealt with and both parties do it when given the chance. Dems have been at a disadvantage 'cause these things are set at the time of the census and Obama was so horrible, it led to a landslide for the GOP in 2010 like we've never seen before. As for Merrick Garland, my preference would have been that they vote him down but the end result would have been the same. Am I going to vote Dem to make a statement on not voting for or against Garland? Hell no. That's small potatoes
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searay
Bid McPhee
Posts: 1,122
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Post by searay on May 21, 2019 13:30:07 GMT -5
Right, so you're a Republican, but the real question is whether you would support your party undertaking anti-democratic measures in order to advance their political platform? Do the ends always justify the means? If one side has something that would work, but is stonewalled by the other simply because it wasn't their side that came up with it then yes any means necessary. I'm tired of one side saying the sky is blue only to have the other claim its more a greenish teal. I'm tired of hearing how everything needs to be free for everyone and how we must save this or that....none of that is bad by any means....but nobody ever seems to have the how. Politicians all seem to be tell everyone what they want to hear then get into office and either push through something all sorts of horrible or counter with I don't recall promising that I'd do it just that I would look into it. Your in my league...you know I'll bend rules to get something to work the way it should and once I feel something needs to be done I will take care of it. So while I wouldn't go extreme to get it done, I would want the laws of the land enforced (illegals not needing to be here sucking down resources) and I would want stuff that wasn't workable to be brushed aside. There are more jobs now, more people employed and I believe that things are improving. You bring up a great point that as Republicans we support the rule of law. This doesn't make us racists. Dems are not helping the public discourse by spinning it that way. The border is a huge political win for Republicans. Americans aren't buying the racist BS
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Post by schellis on May 22, 2019 10:03:22 GMT -5
No one is saying shoot them on sight, but people who come to this country that can't speak the language and don't have a skill set that could support even themselves let alone a family are going to be nothing but a drain on the country.
I fee that the immigration process here is a costly and over complicated one....I really don't care if they know the history of the country there are plenty of people here that would tell you that James Brown was president when presented with a list of James Polk, James Buchanan, and James Brown.
What I care about is that they can function here...speak the language and not immediately go on welfare. If you can do that welcome. If your English is as good as my Spanish and all you know is a set statement that was drilled into your head and skill set is minimum wage work then I would say probably not.
I rather see this country take care of their own before adding to the problem by letting these types immigrate to the country.
Years ago the democrats wanted this wall, most of them I'm sure have walls around their homes and armed guards. Just because it isn't their plan now doesn't mean that it isn't still a viable one. Both sides have good ideas, both sides have horrible ones, the goal should be to work together and meld the best of these ideas into one workable system. This has been done many times before, there is no reason why it can't be done now.
The system is broken because both parties can't allow the other to have even the simplest win. Trump could throw out a law to create a new national forest park that he privately funds and the democrats would have issues with the trees that he was planting.
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