Politics The Elephant in the room...The GOP today

Shadowex3 · Jun 6, 2016

I think this is one of the best articles about the current state of politics I've read in a while. It's utterly unforgiving to both sides and brutally logical about our current options.

Some excerpts:

Trump is a monstrous choice for president. Monstrous. He’s a demagogue with a clear bent to authoritarianism. He’s completely politically inexperienced and has no clear idea what constitutes successful, appropriate, or even legal behavior for an elected official. He has repeatedly proven himself to be virtually incoherent on foreign policy, economics, diplomacy, and the military... It goes without saying, then, that essentially no one in their right mind should want him as President of the United States of America. The problem, however, is that America is no longer in its right mind. Major political cancers are driving it to madness...

...Of these cancers, perhaps the most significant is today’s mainline Republican Party, which is best described as being hyper-right and utterly recalcitrant (firmer critics describe it as obstructionist and seditious). Given the GOP’s grotesquely partisan behavior during the entire tenure of Obama’s two terms in office, it hardly needs detailing that the Republican flight from Eisenhower conservatism to the borderline insane far-far-Right bunker it has backed itself into is one of the greatest domestic political challenges that America currently faces.

...The Politically Correct Left is a cancer, too. It diagnoses societal symptoms far too simplistically and, largely just by calling them bigots, smears anyone who questions their moral pronouncements. Their assessment possesses no more nuance than accusing those on the Right of holding policy positions because they’re bigots: racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, xenophobic, and anything else -phobic or -ist that their imaginations allow. This impolitic attitude and the concomitant name-calling prevent honest discourse about pressing issues, such as immigration policy, health care, and the global concerns orbiting around Islamist terrorism.

...There’s little question that his incompetence, inexperience, impetuousness, and incivility would cripple both the effectiveness and reputation of American politics for as long as he held office; and the embarrassment to the American citizens, if it were to elect him, would be almost unbearable... The question to our minds, then, isn’t whether a Trump presidency would be bad for America—it unquestionably would—but whether America might survive the medicine and come out better for the noxious treatment.
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rogue49 · Jun 8, 2016

Thomas Friedman went vicious on the GOP, so much so it's spread on the web.

Dump the G.O.P. for a Grand New Party

If a party could declare moral bankruptcy, today’s Republican Party would be in Chapter 11.

This party needs to just shut itself down and start over — now. Seriously, someone please start a New Republican Party!

America needs a healthy two-party system. America needs a healthy center-right party to ensure that the Democrats remain a healthy center-left party. America needs a center-right party ready to offer market-based solutions to issues like climate change. America needs a center-right party that will support common-sense gun laws. America needs a center-right party that will support common-sense fiscal policy. America needs a center-right party to support both free trade and aid to workers impacted by it. America needs a center-right party that appreciates how much more complicated foreign policy is today, when you have to manage weak and collapsing nations, not just muscle strong ones.

But this Republican Party is none of those things. Today’s G.O.P. is to governing what Trump University is to education — an ethically challenged enterprise that enriches and perpetuates itself by shedding all pretense of standing for real principles, or a truly relevant value proposition, and instead plays on the ignorance and fears of the public.

It is just an empty shell, selling pieces of itself to the highest bidders, — policy by policy — a little to the Tea Party over here, a little to Big Oil over there, a little to the gun lobby, to antitax zealots, to climate-change deniers. And before you know it, the party stands for an incoherent mess of ideas unrelated to any theory of where the world is going or how America actually becomes great again in the 21st century.

It becomes instead a coalition of men and women who sell pieces of their brand to whoever can most energize their base in order for them to get re-elected in order for them to sell more pieces of their brand in order to get re-elected.

And we know just how little they are attached to any principles, because today’s Republican Party’s elders have told us so by (with a few notable exceptions) being so willing to throw their support behind a presidential candidate who they know is utterly ignorant of policy, has done no homework, has engaged in racist attacks on a sitting judge, has mocked a disabled reporter, has impugned an entire religious community, and has tossed off ignorant proposals for walls, for letting allies go it alone and go nuclear and for overturning trade treaties, rules of war and nuclear agreements in ways that would be wildly destabilizing if he took office.

Despite that, all top G.O.P. leaders say they will still support Donald Trump — even if he’s dabbled in a “textbook definition” of racism, as House Speaker Paul Ryan described it — because he will sign off on their agenda and can do only limited damage given our checks and balances.

Really? Mr. Speaker, your agenda is a mess, Trump will pay even less attention to you if he is president and, as Senator Lindsey Graham rightly put it, there has to be a time “when the love of country will trump hatred of Hillary.”
Will it ever be that time with this version of the G.O.P.?

Et tu, John McCain? You didn’t break under torture from the North Vietnamese, but your hunger for re-election is so great that you don’t dare raise your voice against Trump? I hope you lose. You deserve to. Marco Rubio? You called Trump “a con man,” he insults your very being and you still endorse him? Good riddance.

Chris Christie, have you not an ounce of self-respect? You’re serving as the valet to a man who claimed, falsely, that on 9/11, in Jersey City, home to many Arab-Americans, “thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down.” Christie is backing a man who made up a baldfaced lie about residents of his own state so that maybe he can be his vice president. Contemptible.

This is exactly why so many Republican voters opted for Trump in the first place. They intuited that the only thing these G.O.P. politicians were interested in was holding onto their seats in office — and they were right. It made voters so utterly cynical that many figured, Why not inflict Trump on them? It’s all just a con game anyway. And at least Trump sticks it to all of those politically correct liberals. And anyway, governing doesn’t matter — only attitude.
And who taught them that?

But it does matter. I know so many thoughtful conservatives who know it matters. One of them has got to start the N.R.P. — New Republican Party — a center-right party liberated from all the Trump birthers, the Sarah Palins, the Grover Norquists, the Sean Hannitys, the Rush Limbaughs, the gun lobby, the oil lobby and every other narrow-interest group, a party that redefines a principled conservatism. Raise your money for it on the internet. If Bernie Sanders can, you can.

This is such a pivotal moment; the world we shaped after W.W. II is going wobbly. This is a time for America to be at its best, defending its best values, which are now under assault in so many places — pluralism, immigration, democracy, trade, the rule of law and the virtue of open societies. Trump will never be a credible messenger, or a messenger at all, for those values. A New Republican Party can be.

If you build it, they will come.
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Hell of a piece

ASU2003 · Jun 8, 2016

They should nominate Hillary Clinton for this GNP. She is on the center-right for many issues. Wall St., foreign intervention, oil, trade, fracking, regulation, taxes...

Shadowex3 · Jun 8, 2016

They can't because they've spent so long attacking all of those things, and the underlying values necessary to have a party standing for them, that they're incapable of getting off the crazy train now.

rogue49 · Jun 9, 2016

Actually, I think the difference will be this...the ability to BE attacked.

Hillary is already stone, granite...they've throw everything and the kitchen sink at her and ground it down to infinity...
They haven't found anything substantive...and she's used it...withstood it all.

Donald is wood, solid but flammable...he's has only gotten a taste...he's used having his background and history be vague or spun.
He's already showing cracks, a thin skin...and the skeletons are being dug out.

I project Hill will outlast Don in the word & will war.
Each vulnerable, each biting...but who can withstand the heat.

Shadowex3 · Jun 9, 2016

Haven't found anything substantive? Withstood it all? Jill Stein said it best: Lesser evilism has gotten us two of the most disliked candidates in history. People despise Hillary and would love to see the FBI finally indict her but they revile Trump even more. If it had been anyone other than a freaking /pol/ troll running for president we'd have a Republican in office by December.

rogue49 · Jun 9, 2016

Shadowex3 said: ↑

Haven't found anything substantive? Withstood it all? Jill Stein said it best: Lesser evilism has gotten us two of the most disliked candidates in history. People despise Hillary and would love to see the FBI finally indict her but they revile Trump even more. If it had been anyone other than a freaking /pol/ troll running for president we'd have a Republican in office by December.
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Indict her for what?? An email server?
Something that many govt execs did at the time...and other Secretaries of State.
They've already said nothing was classified at the time.
So what??

So how many people do you want to put in jail for pot usage or speeding??
Because that's the equivalent.

As I say with many prosecutions...give me something that REALLY matters.
Uhh...like fraud (trump), bilking normal people out of tons of money.
Not speeches to rich people.

Can we stop overreacting to nonsense?
And focus on REAL issues.

Next I know, you'll want to impeach a president for a blowjob...oops, too late.

ASU2003 · Jun 9, 2016

I think Hillary would have won against Cruz, but would have lost against Kasich, Rubio, Bush, or Walker.

People have already made their mind up on Hillary for the most part. If the election was held tomorrow, I doubt that 2% of the votes now would be different in November, barring any major news or scandals. Well, that is 2% of the independent/registered Republican vote switching, not the Bernie Sanders left votes.

rogue49 · Jun 12, 2016

The Indelible Stain of Donald Trump

A good article summing up the real question...Trump is the antithesis of the classic conservative.
All he does is represent their rage (& racism).

Why would you allow your party to be taken over by such a person??
Are your ideals not betrayed?

I've always said I've got some conservative values...but I won't vote for the GOP mostly, because of what they've become.
Find your soul again...get back your integrity.

What is the cost of winning?

rogue49 · Jun 13, 2016

Here’s how to wreck the Republican Party

Gotta love the sarcasm

I really don't know if I can keep up with all the "Trump is terrible" articles.
They're like bacon fat...bad in most any volume, but you can't stop tasting.

rogue49 · Jun 16, 2016

Donald Trump Tells GOP Critics to 'Be Quiet' or He'll Go It Alone

You heard him GOP..."Just please be quiet. Don't talk, please be quiet"

And I gotta agree with Paul Ryan this time...
"You know, you can't make this up sometimes."

rogue49 · Jun 17, 2016

Never Trump may be coming back to life...
#NeverTrump gets liftoff: Delegates speak up

Question is, will the GOP as a whole actually reject a mainrunner.
They seem to keep to the script always, even if it seems to be a disaster. (then again, the Dems do too)

That being said...I wonder if politicians can actually do something for the right choice, even if different...or just trying to save face from being wrong beforehand.
I think the public would give them the benefit of the doubt.
The media, wouldn't though...they like "gotchas" too much.

rogue49 · Jun 21, 2016

Will Trump Swallow the G.O.P. Whole?

Good question...but I think I just wanted to post this image up. It's magnificent.

rogue49 · Jun 23, 2016

It's just too easy...Late Night bit writers and comedians are just having screaming orgasms after 8 years of solid Obama and now boring Hillary.
Shit just writes itself...

Trump’s 'great' memory draws fire in Trump U deposition

“So you don't remember saying that you have one of the best memories in the world?” Forge asked.
“I remember you telling me, but I don't know that I said it,” Trump replied.
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Did you know that there is now a conspiracy theory that Trump is shill for the Dems, a Manchurian Candidate??
Some are saying that he's a ploy by the Dems, to get the GOP to have such a bad non-conservative nominee...that it submarines the party and allows the Dems to win by avalanche from the backlash.
- LINK

You just can't write this shit...a step beyond.

Levite · Jul 4, 2016

rogue49 said: ↑

NO, Trump is NOT Hitler.
Godwin's law not withstanding.

Even if I'm disgusted DT for his antics and words...he's not even close to Hitler or Putin or any other tyrant.
Nor do I believe that he has it in him to harm or murder anyone. (other than allowing torture, that is)

His overkill will be tons of Executive Orders and doing what he can get away with, if he became president.
And we'd get in constant verbal and legal battles with Congress and the Courts, allowing nothing to get done.

His real scary capability would not be direct murder...but with his ego, mouth, bigotry and inability to back down...he'd get us into war after war.
Potentially triggering a nuclear scenario.

He's a mouth, not a villain.
A scammer, not a gangster.

He's like the BMOC/Party Guy that decides it would be cool to speed down the road in the rain while plastered. Not a mugger with a knife.
However, the latter may get just you killed.
The former will get others killed. (MANY others, in case of war and nukes)

And God knows how much money lost, even if lives aren't.

Evil he's not.
Just stupid.
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I think this is an extraordinarily optimistic evaluation. Hitler didn't look like a Hitler before he ascended to power. People thought he was a joke. Nobody thought he was evil. At worst, a thug with a big mouth.

Evil pretty much never wears a name tag.

Nobody just trips and whoopses and bumbles into being heavily supported by neo-Nazis, white supremacists, the KKK, Christian militias, and xenophobic demagogues of all sorts. Nobody is just innocently dumb-fucking their way into galvanizing hundreds of thousands of people with racist, misogynistic, homophobic, bigoted rhetoric.

I don't believe Trump has the kind of specific, horrifically precise plans for genocide that Hitler did. But that in no way means that he would not be perfectly amenable to rounding people up, and perhaps killing a lot of people.

A Trump Rally in Greensboro "Anger in here is palpable" (with tweets) · case_face · Storify
Donald Trump aide: 'Not every six-sided star is a Star of David' - CNNPolitics.com
Why The New Child Rape Case Filed Against Donald Trump Should Not Be Ignored

These are not stories that describe a stupid yet not evil man's campaign.

Baraka_Guru · Jul 4, 2016

Levite said: ↑

I think this is an extraordinarily optimistic evaluation. Hitler didn't look like a Hitler before he ascended to power. People thought he was a joke. Nobody thought he was evil. At worst, a thug with a big mouth.

Evil pretty much never wears a name tag.

Nobody just trips and whoopses and bumbles into being heavily supported by neo-Nazis, white supremacists, the KKK, Christian militias, and xenophobic demagogues of all sorts. Nobody is just innocently dumb-fucking their way into galvanizing hundreds of thousands of people with racist, misogynistic, homophobic, bigoted rhetoric.

I don't believe Trump has the kind of specific, horrifically precise plans for genocide that Hitler did. But that in no way means that he would not be perfectly amenable to rounding people up, and perhaps killing a lot of people.

A Trump Rally in Greensboro "Anger in here is palpable" (with tweets) · case_face · Storify
Donald Trump aide: 'Not every six-sided star is a Star of David' - CNNPolitics.com
Why The New Child Rape Case Filed Against Donald Trump Should Not Be Ignored

These are not stories that describe a stupid yet not evil man's campaign.
Click to expand...

You'd think the promises of mass deportations, building a 2,000-mile wall, and monitoring/banning a group of people based on their religion would be early warning signs, no?

His so-called "plans" are recipes for disaster for literally millions of people.

Levite · Jul 4, 2016

Baraka_Guru said: ↑

You'd think the promises of mass deportations, building a 2,000-mile wall, and monitoring/banning a group of people based on their religion would be early warning signs, no?

His so-called "plans" are recipes for disaster for literally millions of people.
Click to expand...

Yeah. Let's not forget that Hitler's "announced" agenda at the start wasn't to kill all the Jews and other "undesirables," it was to "resettle" them or force them to emigrate, and/or to strip them of some of the rights of "regular" citizens and deprive them of their wealth.

Perhaps Trump would never advance much beyond his "announced" agenda-- and that alone, as you note, would be disastrous. But I see zero reason to trust that, once given power, he and his associates would not make free to push past their "announced" agenda, and I have zero faith in his restraint, given that he appears to be blissfully free of empathy and compassion, and deeply inclined to scapegoat and dehumanize.

Baraka_Guru · Jul 4, 2016

Levite said: ↑

Yeah. Let's not forget that Hitler's "announced" agenda at the start wasn't to kill all the Jews and other "undesirables," it was to "resettle" them or force them to emigrate, and/or to strip them of some of the rights of "regular" citizens and deprive them of their wealth.

Perhaps Trump would never advance much beyond his "announced" agenda-- and that alone, as you note, would be disastrous. But I see zero reason to trust that, once given power, he and his associates would not make free to push past their "announced" agenda, and I have zero faith in his restraint, given that he appears to be blissfully free of empathy and compassion, and deeply inclined to scapegoat and dehumanize.
Click to expand...

The unbelievable thing that ties this all together: According to PolitiFact, Trump tells the truth only 16% of the time, which is an incredibly low rate even by politician standards.

I don't know how anyone can trust him on anything.

Chris Noyb · Jul 5, 2016

Shadowex3 said: ↑

Haven't found anything substantive? Withstood it all? Jill Stein said it best: Lesser evilism has gotten us two of the most disliked candidates in history. People despise Hillary and would love to see the FBI finally indict her but they revile Trump even more. If it had been anyone other than a freaking /pol/ troll running for president we'd have a Republican in office by December.
Click to expand...

I'm not seeing the hatred for Hillary. Many people dislike her because they see her as an insider with the considerable baggage that comes along with being an experienced politician.

In 2012 the Republicans had a very good opportunity to unseat a vulnerable Obama. They couldn't get their shit together to support their strongest candidate, and now in 2016 their candidate is a blowhard they don't like.

rogue49 · Jul 5, 2016

from Fark...

FBI's Comey says 'no reasonable prosecutor' would bring a case against Clinton for emails.

GOP, challenge accepted.
Click to expand...

I can't wait...
*grabs the popcorn*

Just in time after the 7th Benghazi hearing.
Geez, I thought I'd be bored.

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Politics The Elephant in the room...The GOP today

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Politics The Elephant in the room...The GOP today

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Levite Levitical Yet Funky

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Chris Noyb Get in, buckle up, hang on, & be quiet.

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