Category: Republicans behaving badly

Tom Nichols explains why he’s leaving the GOP to become an Independent

October 8, 2018 • 1:45 pm

Tom Nichols is (or was) a “never Trumper” Republican who is a professor at the U.S. Naval War College and teaches at the Harvard Extension School. (Wikipedia also informs us that he’s “a five-time undefeated Jeopardy champion.”) He writes a lot for The Atlantic, and in its pages this week he tells us why he’s leaving the GOP (he left once before in 2012, but now is leaving for good). He’s not becoming a Democrat, but an Independent; still, this shows that some Republicans can change their minds.

And the article has a lot to say about both parties, with Nichols not leaving the Democrats unscathed. Click on the screenshot to see what he said:

His reasons are multifarious, but center on the Kavanaugh affair, which made Nichols realize that the GOP has no substantive goal beyond power itself.

It was Collins, however, who made me realize that there would be no moderates to lead conservatives out of the rubble of the Trump era. Senator Jeff Flake is retiring and took a pass, and with all due respect to Senator Lisa Murkowski—who at least admitted that her “no” vote on cloture meant “no” rather than drag out the drama—she will not be the focus of a rejuvenated party.

. . . Politics is about the exercise of power. But the new Trumpist GOP is not exercising power in the pursuit of anything resembling principles, and certainly not for conservative or Republican principles.

Free trade? Republicans are suddenly in love with tariffs, and now sound like bad imitations of early-1980s protectionist Democrats. A robust foreign policy? Not only have Republicans abandoned their claim to being the national-security party, they have managed to convince the party faithful that Russia—an avowed enemy that directly attacked our political institutions—is less of a threat than their neighbors who might be voting for Democrats. Respect for law enforcement? The GOP is backing Trump in attacks on the FBI and the entire intelligence community as Special Counsel Robert Mueller closes in on the web of lies, financial arrangements, and Russian entanglements known collectively as the Trump campaign.

And most important, on the rule of law, congressional Republicans have utterly collapsed. They have sold their souls, purely at Trump’s behest, living in fear of the dreaded primary challenges that would take them away from the Forbidden City and send them back home to the provinces. Yes, an anti-constitutional senator like Hirono is unnerving, but she’s a piker next to her Republican colleagues, who have completely reversed themselves on everything from the limits of executive power to the independence of the judiciary, all to serve their leader in a way that would make the most devoted cult follower of Kim Jong Un blush.

. . . But whatever my concerns about liberals, the true authoritarian muscle is now being flexed by the GOP, in a kind of buzzy, steroidal McCarthyism that lacks even anti-communism as a central organizing principle. The Republican Party, which controls all three branches of government and yet is addicted to whining about its own victimhood, is now the party of situational ethics and moral relativism in the name of winning at all costs.

These are truefacts, but, as I said, Nichols doesn’t spare the Democrats. And I have to admit that, as a registered Democrat, I was embarrassed at my own party’s behavior at the hearings, especially that of Dianne Feinstein, who seems to be in her dotage. For my party, too, it seemed to be more about getting revenge for their own failed Supreme Court nomination than about getting at the truth. It was grandstanding. Here’s Nichols, and I agree with him here on the Democrats’ behavior during the hearing.

As an aside, let me say that I have no love for the Democratic Party, which is torn between totalitarian instincts on one side and complete political malpractice on the other. As a newly minted independent, I will vote for Democrats and Republicans whom I think are decent and well-meaning people; if I move back home to Massachusetts, I could cast a ballot for Republican Governor Charlie Baker and Democratic Representative Joe Kennedy and not think twice about it.

But during the Kavanaugh dumpster fire, the performance of the Democratic Party—with some honorable exceptions such as Senators Chris Coons, Sheldon Whitehouse, and Amy Klobuchar—was execrable. From the moment they leaked the Ford letter, they were a Keystone Cops operation, with Hawaii’s Senator Mazie Hirono willing to wave away the Constitution and get right to a presumption of guilt, and Senator Dianne Feinstein looking incompetent and outflanked instead of like the ranking member of one of the most important committees in America.

Well, I won’t dwell on the Democrats’ missteps, as at least they were on the right side. And I’ll still keep voting for them. But if they ever want to regain power in at least one branch of the government, they have to clean up their act. Who’s running that railroad?

Lesson: there are some Republicans capable of reason and adhering to principle. They’re just very few. 

Saturday Night Live post-confirmation locker room celebration of Kavanaugh’s confirmation

October 7, 2018 • 9:45 am

Last night, just hours after Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Saturday Night Live broadcast a spoof of the Republican celebration. Appropriately, it takes place in a Senate “locker room.” (Clearly much of this was written in advance, as Kavanaugh’s confirmation wasn’t in much doubt.) It’s pretty good, though not as good as the skit with Matt Damon as Kavanaugh. Two Democrats show up at the end.

All the GOP principals (and principles) are there.

Andrew Sullivan on tribalism

September 21, 2018 • 12:30 pm

I’ve watched with approbation as Andrew Sullivan, with whom I’ve often disagreed, seems to have mellowed, becoming at least a centrist instead of a conservative, and remaining mum about his mystifying Catholicism.  Sullivan’s nice new column in New York Magazine, on tribalism, starts with Jon Haidt and Greg Lukianoff’s new book, The Coddling of the American Mind, and then goes into the bitter and acerbic polarization of the American electorate, as exemplified by the fracas around Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination (I still am unable to automatically equate accusations with fact) and the firing of the New York Review of Books editor Ian Buruma simply because he published a piece by an accused sexual assailant (Jian Ghomeshi) who was acquitted. Sometimes I feel the world has gone mad, and I no longer know where I fit in. I can’t align with the extreme Left, whose actions often seem fascistic, but I despise the ideology of the Right. I consider myself on the Left but am constantly accused of being an alt-righter.

Sullivan feels the same way:

And it’s this reflexive, reptilian sorting of in-group and out-group that has now been supercharged by social media, by Trump’s hideous identity politics, and by campus and corporate culture. There seem to be just two inalterable categories: the oppressors or the oppressed; elite globalists or decent “normal” people. You are in one camp or the other, and, as time passes, those of us who don’t fit into this rubric will become irrelevant to the discourse, if we haven’t already got there.

And one more excerpt:

Haidt and Lukianoff are particularly acute about how the generational shift has intensified the trend. Their hypothesis is that the members of the iGen generation (those born in the mid- to late 1990s) have been raised (unwittingly and with good intentions) in such a way to maximize tribal identities rather than dilute them.

They have been told, in Haidt’s and Lukianoff’s view, that safety is far more important than exposure to the unknown, that they should always trust their feelings, and that life is a struggle between good people and evil people. This infantilizes them, emotionalizes them, and tribalizes them. These kids have been denied freedom, have little experience of confronting danger and overcoming it themselves, have been kept monitored to all times. They tend to have older parents and fewer siblings. There is a reason the safest generation in history is also the most anxious, the most depressed, and the most suicidal. It is not that it’s all in their heads — prejudice and discrimination exist — but that they do not have the skills to put any of this in perspective. And so rather than rebel against their authorities, as students used to do, they cling to them like safety blankets, begging them to protect them just as their parents did.

This is what a cultural revolution feels like. It is given legitimacy by the top, but it is enforced horizontally from below. You are encouraged to denounce and expose your friends, your co-workers, and your bosses for the harm they inflict. Colleagues vie to signal that they are not guilty of being an oppressor, partly because they are not, and partly to avoid being the next scalp. Soon, silence is not enough — in fact, it’s suspicious. And so it becomes necessary to endorse the revolution, celebrate it, and enforce it, prove that you are in good standing. Examples are made of slackers — the more arbitrary the better — to keep fear alive in the minds of everyone. If you so much as quibble, you’ll be the next head on the chopping block. When the very existence of people is at stake — and it always is for the catastrophists — there is no limiting principle.

We live then in a paradox. Our society has less crime and less danger than ever, and yet we see threats everywhere. It has become more racially and culturally diverse than any society in the history of humankind, but it is plagued by “white supremacists” or “hordes of illegals.” And you cannot question these feelings because subjectivity is more important than objectivity, and sensitivity trumps reality. Gay, lesbian, and transgender people live in a world unimaginable to the overwhelming majority of humankind, and to our predecessors of only five years ago, and yet we are told by our leaders that we are “under siege.” As women kick ass in our economy and culture, as they achieve success that previous generations would have thought extraordinary, what is the response? Rage, of course! Furious rage!

This is a mind-set that Haidt and Lukianoff see as very similar to a clinically depressed one, catastrophizing, paranoid, leaning into ever-escalating feelings of victimhood rather than pushing against them with reason. . .

. . . I was struck in Haidt and Lukianoff’s book by a quote that is almost a perfect inversion of today’s political conversation. “When my brothers try to draw a circle to exclude me, I shall draw a larger circle to include them,” Martin Luther King said, which is why today’s cultural revolutionaries have so little time for him. But he made a huge practical difference in moving everyone forward a little. He made things better by including more. That was also how we won marriage equality, the biggest civil rights victory of my generation. We did it by drawing larger and larger circles, by treating the other side as arguing in good faith, and appealing to a shared humanity, to what we have in common as citizens, rather than what divides us as members of a tribe. Today’s well-intentioned activists — the ones driving much of the conversation around Kavanaugh and, on a much smaller scale, Buruma — in contrast, are drawing an ever smaller, purer, more tightly policed circle, in order to wage a scorched earth war against another, ever-purer, tightly policed circle. And God help anyone who gets in their way.

Indeed. I think I’ll go feed my ducks.

h/t: Simon

EPA administrator Scott Pruitt disses evolution, espouses theocracy, doubts whether carbon dioxide causes global warming, asserts that God gave us the right to have all guns

March 4, 2018 • 1:00 pm

Politico has just revealed that Scott Pruitt, the new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), espoused some pretty bizarre and goddy views on an Oklahoma radio show in 2005. Granted, that’s 13 years ago, but have his views changed? Given his faith, probably not, and they were posted on his campaign website when he ran for Oklahoma attorney general in 2010. Nobody’s talking now, but Christian Congresspeople defend his craziness and even his right to infuse his policies with extremist Christian mores:

EPA would not say this week whether any of Pruitt’s positions have changed since 2005. Asked whether the administrator’s skepticism about a major foundation of modern science such as evolution could conflict with the agency’s mandate to make science-based decisions, spokesman Jahan Wilcox told POLITICO that “if you’re insinuating that a Christian should not serve in capacity as EPA administrator, that is offensive and a question that does not warrant any further attention.”

. . . Republicans in Congress defended Pruitt, saying his religious beliefs should factor into how he does his job.

“All of us are people of faith and obviously influenced by our faith and the role it played in our life … and continue[s] to play in our life on a daily basis,” said Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, which oversees EPA. “It’s a part of who we are.”

Sen. Jim Inhofe, a fellow Oklahoman, said Pruitt’s faith does and should play a role in his work.

“He’s a believer. He is a Jesus guy. He believes in the principles,” Inhofe said. “I think it does [have an impact], and I think it has to. Anyone who denies that that has an impact isn’t being totally honest.”

He’s of course a Republican. Two of the radio show’s statements tweeted out by Politico:

That’s scary for someone running a science-based department! Politico adds this:

Two years earlier [than the show], Pruitt had supported an unsuccessful bill that would have required textbooks in Oklahoma to carry a disclaimer that evolution is a theory. The show hosts joked that Pruitt had been compared to Adolf Hitler and the Taliban for backing the measure.

“I’m a bit better-looking than them,” Pruitt quipped. “My wife tells me so anyway.”

Should I send this joker my book?

But wait! There’s more! He thinks a judicial monarchy consistently misinterprets the First Amendment and is out to get religion:

But wait! There’s still more! His views on global warming (remember, he’s the EPA administrator):

Even some issues that aren’t explicitly faith-based, such as global warming and fossil fuel production, have often split different groups of religious believers. Some polls show that less than 30 percent of white evangelical Protestants believe that human activity is the driving factor behind climate change.

And Pruitt has echoed that sentiment, telling CNBC last year that he did not believe carbon dioxide was a primary contributor to climate change. Last week, he told the Christian broadcaster CBN News that he supports developing the nation’s energy resources, a stance that he believes aligns with Scripture’s teachings.

But wait! With all of that, and the steak knives, and the potato peeler, you get this, too!:

In the 2005 recordings, Pruitt also backed a broad interpretation of the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms, saying it derives from a divine mandate and thus cannot be limited.

“If you can tell me what gun, type of gun, I can possess, then I didn’t really get that right to keep and bear arms from God,” he said. “It was not bequeathed to me, it was not unalienable, right?”

Yes, of course Pruitt has the right to be religious, and espouse his views in public. He just doesn’t have the right to impose them on others. And that’s the problem with evangelical Christian lawmakers like him.

Has Trump appointed one qualified person to any high post in government? Reader/cartoonist Pliny the in Between has the answer:

 

h/t: cesar

Today’s Daily News headline

December 13, 2017 • 2:00 pm

Here’s the headline of that New York paper:

Moore is still contesting the election and demanding a recount, but I think the Senate Republicans are actually breathing a sigh of relief. They may have lost a seat, but avoided some nasty hearings, and they’ll probably reclaim that seat in a few years.

h/t: Tom

Trump defends Roy Moore

November 21, 2017 • 3:38 pm

Even Republicans have distanced themselves from the hyperconservative creationist Alabaman Roy Moore, now accused of sexual assault and harassment, and previously infamous for installing the Ten Commandments in front of the Alabama Supreme Court and having been removed from a state Supreme Court judgeship not once, but twice. As you probably know, he’s now running as a Republican for Jeff Sessions’ Senate seat. The Republicans have run away from Moore faster than if he were a skunk with his rear pointed at them, and even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has floated the possibility of expelling Moore from the Senate for immorality and unfitness for office were Moore to be elected.

When someone’s seen by Republicans as a a discredit to their own party, you know he’s a disaster. Yet, according to CNN, Trump has just “all but endorsed” Moore:

President Donald Trump on Tuesday defended embattled Alabama Republican Roy Moore, all but endorsing the Senate candidate who has been accused of sexual assault.

“He denies it. Look, he denies it,” Trump said of Moore. “If you look at all the things that have happened over the last 48 hours. He totally denies it. He says it didn’t happen. And look, you have to look at him also.”
Several women have come forward and accused Moore of pursuing romantic relationships with them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s, and several others also have accused him of assault.

. . . “We don’t need a liberal person in there, a Democrat, Jones. I’ve looked at his record. It’s terrible on crime. It’s terrible on the border. It’s terrible on military,” Trump said. “I can tell you for a fact we do not need somebody who’s going to be bad on crime, bad on borders, bad for the military, bad for the Second Amendment.”

Trump on Tuesday left the door open to campaigning with Moore.

“I’ll be letting you know next week,” he said, when asked whether he will campaign with Moore.

Trump repeatedly emphasized that Jones has denied the allegations brought against him.

Trump declined to say whether he believed Moore’s denials, but when asked he again pointed to the denials.

“Well, he denies. I mean, he denies. I mean, Roy Moore denies it. And by the way, it is a total denial. And I do have to say 40 years is a long time. He’s run eight races and this has never come up. Forty years is a long time,” Trump said, pointing to the amount of time that has passed since the alleged behavior.

And indeed, Moore does deny it, so I, at least, wouldn’t immediately pronounce him guilty of the initial count, and can’t really rule him unfit for having asked out women of legal age when he was older. But I believe that other allegations of sexual assault have come forth since I’ve been in Mexico and without the American news.

Regardless, though, even if he’s completely innocent of the accusations, he’s still unfit to serve. The man is simply a brainless ball of right-wing ideology marinated in evangelical Christianity. It’s a recipe for disaster, even for Republicans. If  Trump had any brains (a debatable issue), he wouldn’t endorse or campaign for Moore. But who has ever praised the neuronal complement of The Donald? So while the Republicans are destroying themselves through a lack of cohesion and an inability to get anything done, even with a Republican legislature, President, and Supreme Court, the Democrats have a chance to pull together. Sadly, we’re just as riven by identity politics as the GOP is by various degrees of cluelessness and stupidity.

Where is our candidate: the Democrat who can win in 2020?