Category: Conservatism

Republican chaos is purposefully designed to dampen voter engagement

Posted on by kos

The Washington Post ran an illuminating story on Sunday titled, “In a swing Wisconsin county, everyone is tired of politics.”

A more honest headline would’ve been, “In a swing Wisconsin county, everyone is tired of Republican politics.”

With conservative nihilists either actively destroying our institutions, like the Freedom Caucus and the U.S. House of Representatives, or promising to do so, like Donald Trump, it should come as no surprise that people are growing increasingly tired of this.

Still, traditional media outlets remain wary of ascribing proper blame, doing a disservice to people who take that “both sides do it” coverage to heart. The Washington Post article featuring people in Wisconsin’s Door County, which is between Milwaukee and Green Bay, exemplifies that. It is one of just nine counties in the country that have voted for the winning presidential candidate since 2000. Let’s take a look.

The pandemic and inflation have already rattled folks, and the broader political backdrop — the impeachments, Trump’s torrent of falsehoods about the 2020 election, the Capitol insurrection, the band of hard-right Republicans ousting their speaker — has blocked out notice of what both sides cast as accomplishments, such as the billions of dollars poured into updating the nation’s roads, bridges and ports. Even as the economy grows at the strongest pace in two years, and jobs continue to proliferate, signs of progress are easy to miss amid what voters see as screaming matches.

So what are these screaming matches voters tell the Post are distressing them? Impeachments, Trump’s 2020 lies, the insurrection, and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s ouster. What do all these items have in common?

The answer is obvious: They are all things conservatives do. Even the pandemic was exacerbated by anti-science Republicans. Yes, voters refuse to see positive news on the economy because of those Republican screaming matches, but that’s on purpose. Republicans have every interest in making sure Democrats don’t get credit for being responsible stewards of our economy.

Here is the next paragraph:

They long for compromise. They want to feel heard and understood. Most Americans, for instance, desire access to abortion, tighter restrictions on guns and affordable health care. Many wonder why our laws don’t reflect that.

Access to abortion, tighter gun restrictions, and affordable health care? Which party is fighting for that, and which one opposes all those things?

Again, the article shouldn’t be about how people are disenchanted with politics, but with how Republicans are poisoning the electorate that otherwise supports the core Democratic agenda.

Nichols, a 58-year-old caregiving service manager in the city of Sturgeon Bay, sees Biden as “not super impressive” at a time when she aches to be reassured. She wants a leader who can bring the sparring factions together — a feat no one seems to be close to accomplishing. (Her favorite thing about Biden, though: “He’s not always in the news.”) Trump, on the other hand, was guilty of “mean girl behavior,” she thought, picking fights with even his own party while racking up criminal charges.

The government in general reminded her of the reality series “Big Brother” — “with all the lies and deals behind the scenes.”

“You don’t know where to turn or who to believe,” she said.

So … she longs for a leader who can bring everyone together, but she is upset by “all the … deals behind the scenes.” Politics isn’t about facts and figures, it’s about vibes. That entire sentence is nonsensical, yet this voter absolutely believes it. It doesn’t mean she’s stupid or unsophisticated; we need to stop thinking of voters that way. (I used to do so, and I’m increasingly realizing that it is not helpful in achieving our goals.) It means Republicans have done a great job of muddling the political landscape so that it repels people who are natural Democratic supporters.

Talking about Washington, [League of Women Voters advocates] decided, isn’t the best way to nudge Door County voters to the polls. But when the group focused on hot-button issues, Kohout noticed, residents seemed eager to listen. Chairs filled up at their event focused on mental health and opioid addiction.

Investment in mental health and opioid addiction? Again, those are government investments Democrats are happy to make, and Republicans are eager to block.

Henderson had liked Trump’s outspokenness at first — she would have voted for him in 2020 but was recovering from surgery on Election Day. Now she resents his “cockiness” and wishes he and other politicians would channel more energy into addressing the soaring cost of food. Two months ago, she’d had to lift the price of every menu item by 50 cents, and now her barbecue chicken Mother Clucker sandwich cost $10.75. Customers, she knew, wouldn’t pay much more than that.

Inflation is a serious issue, and arguing that the United States has the lowest inflation rate of any industrialized nation doesn’t do much to assuage those concerns. But we also know that a big part of inflation is corporate America taking advantage of it to artificially raise prices, leading to record Wall Street profits. One party would do something about that, the other wants to give corporations unfettered ability to price-gouge Americans.

The article then meanders around some Libertarians in the area, because sure, why not talk to a Libertarian about (checks notes) abortion rights, tighter gun restrictions, affordable health care, corporate price gouging, and mental health and opioid programs?

The LGBTQ+ community here is small, [Owen Alabado] said. As a gay man with Filipino roots in the overwhelmingly White town of Baileys Harbor, he stood out. It felt personal when Door County’s board of supervisors voted in September to restrict what flags can be raised on county poles, effectively banning the Pride rainbow. Then lawmakers in Washington elected a House speaker who had previously suggested criminalizing gay sex.

Alabado was sick of the division, he said. Neither party, he thought, seemed capable of fixing it. He wished he could be excited to vote for Biden, rather than feel obligated to do so to defend “basic human rights.”

“I can’t really speak to anything he has done,” he said, “because I’ve tuned it out, like a lot of people have. We’re so tired of the us-against-them politics.”

One party is banning the LGBTQ+ flag and trying to criminalize gay sex, but sure, both parties are part of the problem. And “I don’t know what Biden has done because I refuse to pay attention” is a weird flex. But again, vibes. People are fed up with the toxicity of our politics and they want to tune out. Who does this benefit? Republicans. Conservatives are doing this on purpose.

The single most successful Biden moment over the past three years hasn’t been any of his actual and very real policy accomplishments. It was the Dark Brandon meme.

We can lament the lack of sophistication among key voters, chastising them for not doing politics right, or we can understand that nihilist conservatives are destroying our institutions precisely to drive down voter participation and engagement.

If it takes Dark Brandon to combat that, sign me up. And over the next year, we’re going to have to find ways to talk to people in a way that calms and reassures them while also driving home the existential threat to our democracy that Trump represents.

Does that seem like an impossibly contradictory task? It is. But that’s what the country wants, and it will be our job as liberals and Democrats to find the solution.

Republicans are challenging labor leaders to fights and allegedly physically assaulting one another. Donald Trump says he will abolish reproductive rights entirely and is openly calling for the extermination of his detractors, referring to them as “vermin” on Veterans Day. The Republican Party has emerged from its corruption cocoon as a full-blown fascist movement.

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The GOP needs to figure out their Trump problem now

Posted on (Updated by kos

On his way out the door, right before it hit him in his ass, twice-impeached madman Donald Trump said, “Have a good life. We will see you soon.” What might’ve been a throwaway line from a person incapable of surrendering the limelight received added context when The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had discussed starting a new “Patriot Party” with his aides—a five-alarm fire that has Republicans panicking and Democrats licking their chops. In fact, it might be a major factor as Senate Republicans struggle with how to handle the impeachment trial. 

And yet I wouldn’t bet on it ever happening. 

First things first: Let’s stipulate that Trump never does anything for anyone except himself, and maybe Ivanka. While several Republicans would love to bask in its light—the Paul Gosars and Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the right-wing MAGA/Q fever swamp—Trump’s entire reason for building this party would be for the benefit of the TRUMP brand, and nothing else. And how could it not? There is no such thing as a Trump ideology (beyond “owning the libs”). There isn’t a cause that motivates him, a higher calling or purpose. He clearly didn’t even like the job of president! He barely showed up to work, didn’t read briefing papers, watched television all day, and said the dumbest shit ever said by a president … and that includes eight years of George W. Bush! 

All Trump cared about was the title, being the Big Man with his airplane and taxpayer-funded Big House and his precious bully pulpit, which he used to, well, bully people. For example, at a reelection rally in Ohio, Trump wasn’t making a case based on how he had improved people’s lives, or a policy vision for a second term (a question he was repeatedly asked during the campaign and he could never answer). Nay, he could only focus on the perks of being president. “[Air Force One has] more televisions than any plane in history! They’ve got televisions in closets, in bathroom, on the floor, on the ceiling.” 

So what would being a member of the Patriot Party entail beyond the further aggrandizing and enrichment of Trump himself? 

Forget any broader strategy of pressuring Republicans, again, on policy grounds. Trump is too stupid to formulate any real strategy, and too aloof to care about any outcome beyond “they better kiss my ring” and “send me more money to save America.” That last part may actually loom large. Trump saw the $200 million that he raised for his big “fight the steal” lie, and he wants more. His real estate empire is on the verge of collapse, with banks refusing to do further business with him. Mainstream television isn’t going to give him another show to bail him out financially. The MAGA rubes are his last chance. And sure, campaign finance law prohibits candidates from enriching themselves from campaign contributions, but since when has Trump cared about the law? He’d do what he wants and dare a toothless Federal Elections Commission (FEC) to do something about it. And if the FEC did act on it, he’d tie it up in the courts for years. 

Remember, Trump is a guy who couldn’t manage to get a platform for his own Republican Party convention—are we really going to pretend that his Patriot Party would have one? 

So what would the actual impact of this party have on elections? If smartly set up (ha ha), it might function as the Working Families Party, which endorses in primaries and supports candidates who back its agenda. Or maybe like the Democratic Socialists—again, focusing heavily on primaries, mostly on friendly territory, trying to push Republicans closer to Trump. There could be a “Patriots caucus” in the House that would push Q conspiracies, Putin’s agenda, and whatever other inanities whip up its white supremacist base.

At the presidential level, imagine Trump going on his own (or, hilariously, whoever emerged from the Patriot Party primary process—Don Jr. or Ivanka), splitting off critical votes from the mainstream Republican Party. If Republicans lost even 10% off their toppling (or flip it around: Trump got the bulk of base Republican support, 90% of it), this is what the electoral map would look like with a split right: 

Furthermore, Alaska and South Carolina would be competitive. And you can believe that the right-on-right rhetorical violence would be fierce in such a contest. The fireworks from a Ben Sasse vs. Donald Trump matchup could even render the Democrats an afterthought, with Joe Biden waltzing easily to reelection. It wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen to us. 

Which is why it is in Senate Republican (and minority, ha ha) Leader Mitch McConnell’s interest to nip this shit in the bud. His best way to do it? Conviction. He takes away Trump’s ability to run again, and he removes 98% of the any impetus Trump might have for this party. Will Republicans have to deal with pissed-off MAGA assholes for several years? Of course, but it should be pretty clear at this point that Republicans need some time in the wilderness to rethink who they are if they are going be competitive at the national level. 

The demographic trends that flipped Arizona and Georgia this time aren’t ebbing. Republican Texas is next, and South Carolina and Mississippi three to four presidential cycles behind. Kansas doesn’t have the racial and ethnic diversity of other transforming states, but it has higher-than-average education levels and is also moving in the Democrats’ direction. All of those states would more than offset any Republican gains in the rust belt and Minnesota. 

Just flipping Texas and North Carolina alone keeps a Republican Party wholly dependent on white non-college evangelical voters so far from a presidential majority that it is doomed to eternal minority status. Republicans need college-educated whites (both urban and suburban), and they need to do better with growth demographics (Asian, Black, Latino, and Muslim). Trump Republicanism isn’t going to get that done. 

What’s worse, the GOP advantage in the Senate will erode over time. Arizona and Georgia both went from two Republican senators to two Democratic ones seemingly overnight (though it took a decade of hard organizing to make it happen, of course). Texas came close to flipping a seat, and Democrats will hold those seats before long.  

Susan Collins won’t be around forever in Maine. That seat will eventually be Democratic. South Carolina and Mississippi will be more competitive in the next two decades. Statehood for Washington, D.C. and maybe Puerto Rico would further erase their built-in advantages. And again, if Republicans retreated to a white evangelical base, they could still hold an easy 30-40 Senate seats, representing a fraction of the U.S. population, but that’s not going to get them a majority.

On the other hand, if Republicans excise the Trump cancer, wander in the wilderness for one to two presidential cycles, and start winning back college whites while eating away at Democratic dominance with voters of color, then you have a national party once again. 

By all indications, that’s where McConnell’s head seems to be. He’s done playing with Trump and his cult: “The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people." It doesn’t hurt that conservative mega-donors and corporate PACs are refusing to donate to Republicans until they clean house of the insurrectionists.

So for conservatives suddenly in danger of losing control of their party to American fascists, that might not be a bad course of action. They had a good run, got themselves an ill-gained 6-3 Supreme Court majority, some nice tax cuts, a few wars, and lots of environmental degradation and higher global temperatures. None of that would’ve been possible with a truly democratic America, one in which the Senate actually reflected people, not cow country, and one in which presidents got popularly elected by a majority of the American people, not just a handful of battleground states. 

And sure, it led to an actual insurrection and occupation of the U.S. Capitol by American Nazis, but all in all, I’m sure they’d do it all over again. It’s just that the bill has come due, and they now have to pay the price. 

Then again, they can roll the die some more. They can gamble that a deplatformed Trump won’t have anywhere near the juice to maintain his level of influence. They can gamble that they can still keep control of the Trump-only hidden deplorable crowd, that it was just a few “bad apples” and antifa infiltrators who caused the Capitol insurrection. They can guess (with good reason) that Trump is incapable of managing anything well, and that his party wouldn’t be any different. Remember, this is the guy who bankrupted a casino. This is a guy whose most successful investment is the one he had nothing to do with. He’s the guy who surrounds himself with hucksters and grifters like Steve Bannon, Corey Lewandowski, and Brad Parscale.

For nearly three years we have been building a juggernaut campaign (Death Star). It is firing on all cylinders. Data, Digital, TV, Political, Surrogates, Coalitions, etc. In a few days we start pressing FIRE for the first time. pic.twitter.com/aJgCNfx1m0

— Brad Parscale (@parscale) May 7, 2020

They can try to blow kisses at Trump and hope it keeps him (and his MAGA/Q adherents) satisfied enough to keep him in the fold. This is the Sen. Lindsey Graham approach. "I hope people in our party understand the party itself. If you're wanting to erase Donald Trump from the party, you're gonna get erased," Graham said on Fox News. "Most Republicans like his policies, a lot of Republicans like his style. A lot of people are disappointed with him personally at times but appreciate the outcomes he's achieved for our country." Maybe if they stroke his ego enough, Trump will be stay happy until he loses interest and heads off to the golf course. 

And is there really that much danger? Trump can’t tweet his threats, and he doesn’t have a White House press office to distribute his proclamations. He was never able to generate small-dollar donations for other candidates, including his preferred primary choices. (Not that Trump would ever direct his supporters’ dollars anywhere but into his own pocket.) And anyone betting that this party will ever get off the ground and have enough juice to seriously impact Republican politics would be taking one hell of a risk. I wouldn’t take that bet. Trump just doesn’t have a track record of success.

But for Republicans, it’s an existential question: Do they cut the Trump cancer out, wander in the wilderness for a few cycles, then rebuild in the image of today’s America (more diverse, more educated, more secular), or do they keep going down the same path that cost them the House, the Senate, the White House, and the critical support of key growth demographics (not to mention, Arizona, Georgia, and soon, Texas), while at the same time remaining beholden to the whims of an egotistical madman? 

If I were them, I’d rip off the Band-Aid and start rebuilding today. 

The last chance for Republicans to denounce Trump has passed. Now it no longer matters

Posted on by Hunter

It's Election Day, and Republicans are still being spineless little weasels. Donald Trump has been repeatedly suggesting, in public, that he will not abide by the results of the election but will instead launch both polemics and legal maneuvers to sabotage the counting of votes. He's offered up the bizarre theory that states should declare a winner on election night—something that never happens, as many states need days or weeks to fully count all ballots received and the official certification of results typically happens on dates set by each state.

None of this is abnormal or even remotely conspiratorial; there is a reason the Constitution specifies an early November date as Election Day, but sets the inauguration of the winner to be late January. Nonetheless, the hopelessly incompetent, forever lying malignant narcissist who functions as Republicanism's rotting head is quite certain that it is all a conspiracy against him, personally, and is therefore willing to sabotage democracy itself to keep presidential immunities that will expire upon the next president's swearing-in.

When Politico's Ryan Lizza and Daniel Lippman went to query top Republican lawmakers about Trump's threats to block vote counting and plunge the country into still another constitutional crisis, however, they couldn't find anyone willing to condemn or even criticize Trump.

"Many Republicans insist they are disgusted by Trump’s threats, they just aren’t willing to say so publicly. Dozens of quietly anti-Trump members on Capitol Hill, or who left the Trump administration, usually in disgust, are willing to torch the president—but only under the cloak of anonymity," reports Politico.

There will be no other opportunities to put nation over party for these Republicans. Whether or not elections in the United States will still be considered legitimate, and whether or not votes that go against Dear Leader and his allies will be considered legitimate, it will be decided in the next several days. This is it. It is akin to Trump threatening to sell off a state to a foreign power, or to Trump declaring that he is dissolving the House of Representatives as retribution for impeachment. No matter what argument is offered up, what Trump is proposing is a sabotage of the Constitution.

So far, every public Republican reaction has been to back Trump's conspiratorial pronouncements. A sea of Republican functionaries have launched legal battle after legal battle, already, demanding that votes cast by mail (during a deadly pandemic) or votes at early polling centers (during a deadly pandemic) be nullified. Republican members of the House and Senate, however, have zipped their own mouths shut and have little to say on the schemes.

Instead, they would have us believe that they do indeed have principles, behind the scenes. Not ones they are willing to share out loud, or ones they will offer up with their own names attached. These are principles anonymously held—tossed into the ether as temporary placeholder, meant as ephemeral foothold for later declaring, to the same reporters, that they did indeed have principles all along.

It doesn't count. A principle you are unwilling to act on is not a principle. Whatever you later claimed you did when your nation's democracy was under attack doesn't matter.

When the Constitution conflicted with Dear Leader's visions of grandeur, Republican lawmakers offered no resistance. Not a scratch. If they distance himself from Trump only after voters did the hard work of ejecting him themselves, they are frauds, each and every one. They should be treated as such.

History will record that every Republican lawmaker assisted Trump despite him being openly corrupt, contemptuous of his oath of office, catastrophically incompetent, authoritarian-minded and authoritarian-fixated, racist, a steadfast promoter of white nationalism, and a propagandist not just willing, but obsessive in his efforts to disinform our citizens to acquire and preserve his power.

Trump is a fascist, and they backed his fascist tendencies and demands. Whether they privately were offended by them does not matter. The backers of fascism are called fascists, and there is no qualifying adjective that they can pin to their chests afterward, if their own Dear Leader figure is defeated, that will turn them into retroactive heroes.

Trump didn’t just break the GOP, he broke conservatism

Posted on by kos

Remember when you could all describe, in one succinct sentence, what the Republican Party was all about? “Family values, lower taxes, and a strong national defense.” Democrats spent decades trying to come up with their own pithy slogan and failed. We are just too diverse a coalition to condense into a single sentence. And turns out, we don’t need to, because the head of the conservative movement, Donald Trump, has exposed just how empty that statement of values always was. 

It was quite the feat, actually, to take the one man with inarguably the worst record on “family values,” and then rally around him with zero sense of irony or shame. Trump had multiples and then cheated on them with pornstars while ignoring his children. He didn’t (and doesn’t) go to church, give to charity, or show any semblance of humility. In fact, the did the opposite of charity—he used a charity to grift. 

In fact, has any one man ever embodied the seven deadly sins more perfectly than Trump? Pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth. He is a wretched human being, morally bankrupt and ethically corrupt. And through it all, evangelical Christians have stuck with him, proving that they never ever cared about any actual morality. 

On national defense, Republicans have acknowledged that Trump is a puppet of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. The current House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy, a solid Trump ally, who was recorded saying back in 2017, “There’s …there’s two people, I think, Putin pays: [California Rep. Dana] Rohrabacher and Trump … [laughter] … swear to God.” Then-Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, another Republican, thought that was funny, ““This is an off-the-record … [laughter] … NO LEAKS … [laughter] … alright?!”

Hilarious. 

We went through a whole impeachment process in which Trump’s attempts to enlist foreign governments to help his reelection campaign were fully exposed, and Republicans did nothing but shrug. 

But nothing tops revelations that Russia paid Taliban fighters in Afghanistan a bounty for every dead American they killed, and Trump couldn’t be bothered to give a damn. Instead, Putin’s loyal lapdog keeps checking in with Moscow every month, to discuss who knows what. You’d think Republicans would care about America’s top historical geopolitical opponent encouraging the murder of our troops, but nah. 

They did get to the “lower taxes” bit, however. Nothing like destroying our nation’s finances in order to justify the cutting of our social nets to really get Republicans excited. … Then again, “bailing out billionaires” isn’t particularly the most populist and popular policy plank on which to hang all your electoral hopes. 

So we know that all of this has utterly crushed the GOP, and we’re headed toward another anti-Republican wave election this fall. But now we’re seeing evidence that this goes deeper than simple anti-GOP sentiment. By exposing its flimsy pretenses, Trump is breaking conservatism itself. Check out Gallup’s polling on self-identified ideology over the course of this year:  

American’s ideology Jan/Frb mar/Apr May/Jun Conservative Moderate Liberal
40 37 34
34 36 36
22 23 26

That’s a stunning collapse in such a short period of time, while the long-demonized term “liberal” is making a strong comeback. (Many Democrats prefer the safer-sounding “moderate,” as you can see if you follow the link above. Black, young, Latino Americans all prefer “moderate” to “liberal,” when we know they are politically liberal.)

More Gallup:

The decline in self-identified conservatism in 2020 has been seen about evenly among men and women, and among all political party groups.

However, it was more pronounced among adults in upper-income households as well as among middle-aged adults (aged 35 to 54) than their counterparts.

The conservative falloff has also been stronger among White and Hispanic Americans than Black Americans. Relatively few Black Americans (25%) identified as conservative in January/February, and thus there may have been less opportunity for the rate to decline.

Among those who earn more than $100,000, the number of self-identified conservatives dropped 11 points, from 40% to 29%. And since we’ve tracked suburban voters so closely for the last several cycles, they are also leaving the conservative fold, from 36% to 28%. In fact, and this is crazy—there are fewer conservatives now in the suburbs than in cities (33%)!

Still, don’t count out rural areas, getting hit harder and harder by COVID-19. They’ve gone from 50% conservative to 43%. That’s why states like Alaska, Iowa, Montana, and Ohio are suddenly back in play at both the presidential and Senate levels. 

Republicans exist only insofar as conservatives exist, as they and Trump fight to make their tent even smaller and unwelcome to anyone who isn’t ideologically pure. Seeing at close range the kind of rampant hypocrisy, corruption, mismanagement, and incompetence inherent in conservatism, Americans are ditching the label and, with it, their votes for Republicans. 

And they still have a lot further to fall.