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Ongoing US GOP Debacle Thread: Seditious Republicans march toward authoritarianism

Trump's slow-motion staff 'shakeup' stunts 2019 planning

McConnell’s hands-off edict also puts off-limits candidates whom Trump has previously considered for cabinet posts, including Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a potential replacement for Defense Secretary James Mattis, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, a potential replacement for both Mattis and Sessions. Trump interviewed Cotton to be his Pentagon chief during the presidential transition before ultimately tapping Mattis for the job and has developed a close relationship with Graham over the past two years.
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Tom Cotton or Lindsey Graham as Defense Secretary, holy shit.
 
 
The NY Times article below discusses an issue that I remember some conservative posters kept talking about after the 2016 election: we shouldn't have elections decided simply by national popular vote because then we'd all be ruled by California and New York and some other blue states. What that argument really means in effect is what this article is saying: the GOP thinks that urban voters don't count as "Real Americans" - only rural voters can claim that title, and so their votes should count more than urban ones. I love the logic in this quote from the GOP's Wisconsin House Speaker, Robin Vos: "If you took Madison and Milwaukee out of the state election formula, we would have a clear majority." So, if you take away all the places that vote for our opponents, then we'd win every election. Apparently, Madison and Milwaukee aren't "Real Wisconsin", only the rural areas are, so the Democratic victories in statewide elections last month don't really count, as they won only because of urban votes. I expect the GOP in nearly every red or purple state to try and do what they've done in WI and MI if/when they finally lose power. They don't want rural areas to simply "have a voice" in government, they want the rural areas to have the only voice. City folk don't count.

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/upshot/wisconsin-republicans-rural-urban-voters.html#click=https://t.co/8WDB7ptkA1
 
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Newenglanddeac said:
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As if the MAGA crowd even believes or cares about the shit on that list. Where were Tom Nichols reservations and complaints when his fuckin elitist Beltway Republican friends were bilking the same ignorant racist voters since the Reagan-era? Tom and the rest of the never Trump Republicans are full of shit. Trump says the quiet shit out loud and THATS the problem.
 
Highland Deac said:
The NY Times article below discusses an issue that I remember some conservative posters kept talking about after the 2016 election: we shouldn't have elections decided simply by national popular vote because then we'd all be ruled by California and New York and some other blue states. What that argument really means in effect is what this article is saying: the GOP thinks that urban voters don't count as "Real Americans" - only rural voters can claim that title, and so their votes should count more than urban ones. I love the logic in this quote from the GOP's Wisconsin House Speaker, Robin Vos: "If you took Madison and Milwaukee out of the state election formula, we would have a clear majority." So, if you take away all the places that vote for our opponents, then we'd win every election. Apparently, Madison and Milwaukee aren't "Real Wisconsin", only the rural areas are, so the Democratic victories in statewide elections last month don't really count, as they won only because of urban votes. I expect the GOP in nearly every red or purple state to try and do what they've done in WI and MI if/when they finally lose power. They don't want rural areas to simply "have a voice" in government, they want the rural areas to have the only voice. City folk don't count.

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/upshot/wisconsin-republicans-rural-urban-voters.html#click=https://t.co/8WDB7ptkA1
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You just described NC state politics.
 
Deacfreak07 said:
You just described NC state politics.
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No doubt. You can argue that the efforts of Art Pope, Phil Berger, Thom Tillis, and McCrory from 2011 to 2015 was a kind of dry run for other state GOPs. I'm sure that Berger and other rural NC GOPers feel the same way about Charlotte and Raleigh and Asheville that Wisconsin rural pubs do about Madison and Milwaukee.
 
Senate Republicans are responsible for the most unethical and incompetent administration ever


Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), in a letter to the editor published in the Wall Street Journal, blasted the paper’s editorial board for dismissing concerns about Thomas Farr, a judicial nominee with a track record of support for voter suppression schemes:

I am saddened that in the editorial “Democrats and Racial Division” (Dec. 1) you attempt to deflect the concerns regarding Thomas Farr’s nomination to the federal bench. While you are right that his nomination should be seen through a wider lens, the solution isn’t simply to decry “racial attacks.”

Scott makes a key point that should go well beyond Farr or judicial nominees: “We should stop bringing candidates with questionable track records on race before the full Senate for a vote.”

That raises a broader question: Why is the Senate bringing and confirming candidates with questionable track records — on race or otherwise — to a vote on the floor?

Consider the people brought to the floor and confirmed: judges rated “not qualified” by the American Bar Association; an oil executive, Rex Tillerson, with no government experience, as secretary of state; a lawyer, Alex Acosta, whose supervision of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division was roundly criticized and who participated in the atrociously lenient plea deal for serial child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein; Ben Carson, a man utterly lacking in government experience or housing expertise, as secretary of housing and urban development; former congressman Tom Price for Health and Human Services despite his record of trading “shares worth more than $300,000 in about 40 health-related companies” while he was sitting on the House Ways and Means Committee and “working on measures that could affect his investments”; Steven Mnuchin, who had no government experience and had failed to disclose $100 million in assets, as treasury secretary; Wilbur Ross, who also lacked government experience and had been “forced to pay fines to the government several times, including as recently as August of 2016 to the SEC for failing to disclose fees his firm was charging … [and had] sat on the board of a company that agreed to pay over $2 billion in a settlement over its handling of subprime loans,” as commerce secretary; Scott Pruitt, who had repeatedly sued the Environmental Protection Agency and collaborated secretly with private industry to defeat federal regulations, as EPA administrator; and a hodgepodge of unqualified cronies for ambassadorships (a sin other administrations are guilty of as well).

Now, when Trump nominates Heather Nauert for ambassador to the United Nations — a woman who was until a year ago a Fox News personality and as a State Department spokesperson with zero experience in diplomacy — we can expect that, once more, the Republican-controlled Senate will issue its stamp of approval.

We shouldn’t be surprised that the least qualified president in history -- with a long record of bankruptcies, refusal to pay his bills and schemes such as Trump University -- should select unqualified and ethically challenged advisers and/or retain those whose ethical misdeeds and incompetence become apparent once in office. However, we cannot blame Trump alone for lousy appointments and staffing the government with unfit characters. The Constitution provides a check on the president’s ability to put shady characters in positions of power. It’s the current Republican Party that rejects that role and decides its job description is to enable Trump’s worst instincts. Just as House Republicans proved themselves incapable of fulfilling their oversight responsibilities, Senate Republicans prove themselves incapable of fulfilling their advice-and-consent duties.

The GOP would do well to heed Scott’s advice not only with regard to judges and not only with respect to race. It shouldn’t be so hard to reject unqualified nominees and those whose records suggest they’ll be poster boys for corruption in government. Moreover, if Senate Republicans started dinging just a few of the lousy nominees, the White House would get the message and be compelled to find more-qualified people. Senate Republicans would do themselves a favor (diminishing the perception they are invertebrates) and Trump a favor as well if they started saying “no” once in a while.
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Can somebody post Scott’s editorial?
 
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