Ongoing US GOP Debacle Thread: Seditious Republicans march toward authoritarianism
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PhDeac
PM a mod to cement your internet status forever
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bym051d
I AM VERY IMPORTANT
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They can't tell if you're living in sin if you have an abortion.
Thanks for explaining the joke.
Deacfreak07
Ain't played nobody, PAWL!
He would never read it.
Deacon923
Scooter Banks
not to mention ol jhmd, RIP.
myDeaconmyhand
First man to get a team of horses up Bear Mountain
I'm satisfied that the results of the research support my bias, but it's a waste of time to have a good faith debate with conservatives on the topic. It's not a matter of whether single mothers NEED support, it's whether or not they deserve it. There is an endless supply of conservative arguments against wealth redistribution.
Newenglanddeac
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But for now, I really am a Republican In Name Only, because I actively want to see the Republicans defeated — soundly — in 2018 (and in 2020, if the president is not primaried out of his seat). Where I was once unaffiliated but quietly cheering on conservatives, I am now a member of a party I want to see cast into the political wilderness for a few years — or longer, if that’s what it takes to break the fever.
In terms of party loyalty, that makes me a pretty lousy Republican. On the other hand, I might argue that I am in fact a better Republican than the opportunists on the White House staff and Capitol Hill who have left the party but refuse to give up the name.
The same could be said for “Republican” voters. Do they really represent the party, or are they The Coalition of the Incoherent? Like the president himself, they have no political compass, no policy preferences, and no attachment to anything that cannot be expressed in a bumper sticker. Indeed, what seems to unite Trump voters is a generic hostility to immigrants and a demand that government resources and transfers not be shrunk but redirected — to themselves.
deactherunner
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These would be the same governments that Trump/Pubs tried to force into austerity by reducing the amount of state and local taxes you can deduct from your federal tax bill.
Deacon923
Scooter Banks
one place where i'm a big fan of "skin in the game" is infrastructure spending. Historically, uncle sam showering cash on infrastructure has resulted in a lot of bypasses and spaghetti intersections and highways built through the middle of neighborhoods (usu. minority) and water systems built to support sprawl. The uncle sam money only pays for building and not maintaining. cities and states already have more roads and pipes than they can maintain. using federal money to support state and local priorities with a large portion of local investment would be an improvement over the current system. what is unclear from the limited information available on the "trump plan" is whether the money will support repairs and maintenance (good) or building more new roads (bad).
of course i'm not happy that all of this is pure deficit spending because the GOP chose to give a massive unfunded tax cut to the wealthiest corporations and individuals.
count me skeptical that anything ever gets passed before midterms.
of course i'm not happy that all of this is pure deficit spending because the GOP chose to give a massive unfunded tax cut to the wealthiest corporations and individuals.
count me skeptical that anything ever gets passed before midterms.
ImTheCaptain
I disagree with you
sounds like the "local contractors get fat while taxpayers wonder where all the money went" plan
Deacon923
Scooter Banks
ideally, federal contracting rules will prevent that sort of backscratching by local pols. But this is Trump's America so I'm sure part of the plan is making it as easy as possible for Boss Hogs in rural Alabama to steer the cash to their good ol' boys.
Devil in the details, and there are no details on this plan yet. It's just a broad brush concept which has some overall ideas that I like. Again, doubt anything gets passed.
THE DEUCE
Well-known member
Where is the outrage from the "Tea Party"!?!?! So it really was not about the debt
ConnorEl
Well-known member
The End of the Two-Party System
Interesting analysis—if you can, go to website and read comments.
Quote
—————
In the first half of the 1990s, I worked in Europe for The Wall Street Journal. I covered nothing but good news: the reunification of Germany, the liberation of Central Europe, the fall of the Soviet Union, the end of apartheid in South Africa, the Oslo peace process in the Middle East. Then, toward the end of my stay, there was one seemingly anomalous episode — the breakup of Yugoslavia.
In retrospect, the civil war in the Balkans was the most important event of that period. It prefigured what has come since: the return of ethnic separatism, the rise of authoritarian populism, the retreat of liberal democracy, the elevation of a warrior ethos that reduces politics to friend/enemy, zero-sum conflicts.
In those intervening years there’s been an utter transformation in the unconscious mind-set within which people hold their beliefs.
Back in the 1990s, there was an unconscious abundance mind-set. Democratic capitalism provides the bounty. Prejudice gradually fades away. Growth and dynamism are our friends. The abundance mind-set is confident in the future, welcoming toward others. It sees win-win situations everywhere.
Today, after the financial crisis, the shrinking of the middle class, the partisan warfare, a scarcity mind-set is dominant: Resources are limited. The world is dangerous. Group conflict is inevitable. It’s us versus them. If they win, we’re ruined, therefore, let’s stick with our tribe. The ends justify the means.
The shift in mentalities seems like a shift in philosophy. But it’s really a shift from a philosophy to an anti-philosophy. The scarcity mind-set is an acid that destroys every belief system it touches.
For example, in the years after Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party was defined by its abundance mind-set. The key Republican narratives were capitalist narratives about dynamic entrepreneurs and America’s heroic missions. The Wall Street Journal editorial page was the most important organ of conservative opinion. The party’s views on other issues, like immigration, were downstream from confidence in the abundant marketplace and the power of the American idea.
Now, Donald Trump leads the Republican Party, the personification of the scarcity mind-set. Fox News, with its daily gospel of resentments, is the most important organ of conservative opinion. Restricting immigration has become the core Republican issue. Today’s Republicans are happy to trade away their fiscal principles if they can get their way on immigration, which is what they did in last week’s budget deal.
The Trump era has produced a renaissance in conservative writing. National Review is a more interesting magazine now than at any time in its history. But the style of politics that Trump’s scarcity mind-set demands has been a disaster for conservative governance. He insists on perpetual warfare — against all comers. Stuck fighting his wars with him, Republican politicians have had to say goodbye to most of the pillars of conservatism: rule of law, fiscal discipline, global engagement, moral decency, the idea that people should be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.
In theory, the G.O.P. restrictionist position on immigration is perfectly legitimate. But Trump has fatally entwined it with his constant race baiting. Republican politicians could have denounced the race baiting but remained silent. They allowed themselves to become fellow travelers to bigotry, and spoiled their own cause.
The fact is that the scarcity mentality and the perpetual warrior style it demands are incompatible with any civilized political creed. At first the warriors seem to be fighting for the creed but eventually they transform it.
Under the influence of this mentality, evangelicalism turns from a faith into a siege-mentality interest group that reveres a pagan immoralist. Under the influence of this mentality, liberalism goes from a creed that values individual rights and deliberation to one that values group separatism and intellectual intolerance.
The scarcity mentality always ends up eating the host philosophy because it operates on a more fundamental level of the psyche.
All of this would be survivable if the mentality was going away in a few years. But it is not going away. The underlying conditions of scarcity are only going to get worse. Moreover, the warrior mentality builds on itself. As the right pulverizes the left, the left feels the need to pulverize back, and on and on. This is a generational challenge. Trump will be succeeded by some other warrior.
Eventually, conservatives will realize: If we want to preserve conservatism, we can’t be in the same party as the clan warriors. Liberals will realize: If we want to preserve liberalism, we can’t be in the same party as the clan warriors.
Eventually, those who cherish the democratic way of life will realize they have to make a much more radical break than any they ever imagined. When this realization dawns the realignment begins. Even with all the structural barriers, we could end up with a European-style multiparty system.
The scarcity mentality is eventually incompatible with the philosophies that have come down through the centuries. Decent liberals and conservatives will eventually decide they need to break from it structurally. They will realize it’s time to start something new.
—————
Interesting analysis—if you can, go to website and read comments.
Quote
—————
In the first half of the 1990s, I worked in Europe for The Wall Street Journal. I covered nothing but good news: the reunification of Germany, the liberation of Central Europe, the fall of the Soviet Union, the end of apartheid in South Africa, the Oslo peace process in the Middle East. Then, toward the end of my stay, there was one seemingly anomalous episode — the breakup of Yugoslavia.
In retrospect, the civil war in the Balkans was the most important event of that period. It prefigured what has come since: the return of ethnic separatism, the rise of authoritarian populism, the retreat of liberal democracy, the elevation of a warrior ethos that reduces politics to friend/enemy, zero-sum conflicts.
In those intervening years there’s been an utter transformation in the unconscious mind-set within which people hold their beliefs.
Back in the 1990s, there was an unconscious abundance mind-set. Democratic capitalism provides the bounty. Prejudice gradually fades away. Growth and dynamism are our friends. The abundance mind-set is confident in the future, welcoming toward others. It sees win-win situations everywhere.
Today, after the financial crisis, the shrinking of the middle class, the partisan warfare, a scarcity mind-set is dominant: Resources are limited. The world is dangerous. Group conflict is inevitable. It’s us versus them. If they win, we’re ruined, therefore, let’s stick with our tribe. The ends justify the means.
The shift in mentalities seems like a shift in philosophy. But it’s really a shift from a philosophy to an anti-philosophy. The scarcity mind-set is an acid that destroys every belief system it touches.
For example, in the years after Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party was defined by its abundance mind-set. The key Republican narratives were capitalist narratives about dynamic entrepreneurs and America’s heroic missions. The Wall Street Journal editorial page was the most important organ of conservative opinion. The party’s views on other issues, like immigration, were downstream from confidence in the abundant marketplace and the power of the American idea.
Now, Donald Trump leads the Republican Party, the personification of the scarcity mind-set. Fox News, with its daily gospel of resentments, is the most important organ of conservative opinion. Restricting immigration has become the core Republican issue. Today’s Republicans are happy to trade away their fiscal principles if they can get their way on immigration, which is what they did in last week’s budget deal.
The Trump era has produced a renaissance in conservative writing. National Review is a more interesting magazine now than at any time in its history. But the style of politics that Trump’s scarcity mind-set demands has been a disaster for conservative governance. He insists on perpetual warfare — against all comers. Stuck fighting his wars with him, Republican politicians have had to say goodbye to most of the pillars of conservatism: rule of law, fiscal discipline, global engagement, moral decency, the idea that people should be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.
In theory, the G.O.P. restrictionist position on immigration is perfectly legitimate. But Trump has fatally entwined it with his constant race baiting. Republican politicians could have denounced the race baiting but remained silent. They allowed themselves to become fellow travelers to bigotry, and spoiled their own cause.
The fact is that the scarcity mentality and the perpetual warrior style it demands are incompatible with any civilized political creed. At first the warriors seem to be fighting for the creed but eventually they transform it.
Under the influence of this mentality, evangelicalism turns from a faith into a siege-mentality interest group that reveres a pagan immoralist. Under the influence of this mentality, liberalism goes from a creed that values individual rights and deliberation to one that values group separatism and intellectual intolerance.
The scarcity mentality always ends up eating the host philosophy because it operates on a more fundamental level of the psyche.
All of this would be survivable if the mentality was going away in a few years. But it is not going away. The underlying conditions of scarcity are only going to get worse. Moreover, the warrior mentality builds on itself. As the right pulverizes the left, the left feels the need to pulverize back, and on and on. This is a generational challenge. Trump will be succeeded by some other warrior.
Eventually, conservatives will realize: If we want to preserve conservatism, we can’t be in the same party as the clan warriors. Liberals will realize: If we want to preserve liberalism, we can’t be in the same party as the clan warriors.
Eventually, those who cherish the democratic way of life will realize they have to make a much more radical break than any they ever imagined. When this realization dawns the realignment begins. Even with all the structural barriers, we could end up with a European-style multiparty system.
The scarcity mentality is eventually incompatible with the philosophies that have come down through the centuries. Decent liberals and conservatives will eventually decide they need to break from it structurally. They will realize it’s time to start something new.
—————
avalon
Antwan Scott
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ConnorEl
Well-known member
Reagan’s ‘Party of Ideas’ Is Down to Just One: Tax Cuts
Brooks is just a little late leaving the party. The writer of this piece left in 2011.
Most decent people with any insight have left or are considering leaving. I left when it became obvious that the priority was to simply oppose, demonize, and delegitimize everything "Obama" rather than even attempt to do anything good for our nation. When it became apparent to me that lies were more important, expedient, and preferred to truth. I mean, fantasy has its place in the world, but generally not in attempting to govern, IMO.
I agree that a good bit of the now more nakedly destructive Republican "philosophy" of government has been germinating for quite some time. But it has reached a tipping point, I think and hope, with the current debacle.
Quote:
----------
It is a sign of our slide toward banana republic status when the president of the United States, leader of the world’s foremost democracy, publicly brands Democrats who failed to applaud his State of the Union address as un-American and treasonous. The largely partisan audience was fine with it.
What has become of the Republican Party, which I once served on Capitol Hill and which I now consider a dangerous extremist movement on a par with the ruling Fidesz party in neo-fascist Hungary? Where did its principles go? What became of Ronald Reagan’s “party of ideas”?
One by one, those ideas were tossed aside for expediency and power — except the tax cut. A time traveler from the Reagan era would no longer recognize the Republican Party, but most Republican politicians feel no embarrassment supporting policies they once condemned.
Since World War II, Republicans have styled themselves the party of national defense. Yet under President Trump, they have unsettled our alliances and professed a strange new respect for Vladimir Putin.
The Republicans were once the party of global free trade, a system with major flaws but one that requires reform, not ham-handed overthrow. Yet the president believes he can bully longtime allies and force them to accept bilateral trade deals on his terms. A likely result is that the allies associate with trade blocs like the European Union or the revised Trans-Pacific Partnership so that they can better resist his bullying.
Despite Mr. Trump’s protectionist talk, the offshoring of jobs has increased slightly during his presidency. And the latest figures show the trade deficit rising to a nine-year high, with imports from China and Mexico, his main boogeymen, reaching record levels. His tariffs on Chinese solar panels, supposedly to assist our domestic producers, will cost an estimated 23,000 United States jobs.
An enduring caricature of the old-time Republican is the penny-pinching deficit hawk. In truth, this philosophy was honored mostly in the breach, as the Reagan and George W. Bush presidencies revealed. But it was alive enough that George H. W. Bush, channeling the fiscal prudence of Dwight Eisenhower and Gerald Ford, sacrificed a second term to achieve deficit reduction.
Under Mr. Trump, who has extolled leveraging other people’s money while declaring that debt is good, the party is no longer even half pregnant. His tax act, passed exclusively with Republican votes in both the House and the Senate, increases the national debt by over a trillion dollars and awards 62 percent of its monetary benefits to the richest 1 percent of Americans.
Paul Ryan, the House speaker, sees the tax act as a bonanza for the working stiff: He tweeted that a public school secretary would see a whopping $1.50 a week extra in her paycheck. It’s touching that the secretary can now afford an extra McDonald’s coffee every week, but the deficit, thanks partly to the tax cut, is projected after years of decline to explode to a trillion dollars annually.
Tax cuts, regardless of the deficit, are an obsession with Republicans and a source of shameless hypocrisy. During the recent shutdown crisis, the House Freedom Caucus balked at a deal to avert an impasse because it contained additional domestic spending, while in the Senate, Rand Paul of Kentucky held up the vote because the spending creates debt that threatens “the livelihoods of our children.” Yet the senator and every single Freedom Caucus member enthusiastically had voted only a few weeks before for a fiscally irresponsible tax bill.
Republicans were once the party of conservation and the environment: from Abraham Lincoln, who set aside Yosemite for what later became a national park, to Theodore Roosevelt, preserving 230 million acres of public land, to Richard Nixon, who signed the Clean Air Act and created the Environmental Protection Agency.
Now the E.P.A. is being systematically gutted. Its administrator, Scott Pruitt, has named as chairman of its science advisory board a person who criticizes the E.P.A.’s standards for exposure to mercury (a neurotoxin causing severe brain damage) and believes ozone pollution rules are unnecessary because Americans spend most of their time indoors. Another of the board’s “alternative” scientists is a man who has stated that “modern air is a little too clean for optimum health.”
Republicans always counted themselves as strong supporters of law and order. Whenever a crime bill was considered in Congress, I used to joke with my colleagues that any minute, a Republican would offer an amendment proposing the death penalty for jaywalking. But the president’s high-decibel smear campaign against the professionals of the F.B.I. destroys the party’s pretense of being a friend of law enforcement, as does the administration’s dismantling of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency and its rules against consumer fraud. The fact that Mr. Trump and his senior appointees are scofflaws regarding conflict-of-interest statutes does not enhance their reputation as straight arrows.
So what do Republicans have left? The tax cut, the sole important legislation from the Republican Congress, shows that catering to its rich contributors is the party’s only policy. The rest of its agenda is simply tactics and trickery.
As the party has become unmoored from positive belief, it has grown manipulative, demagogic and contemptuous of truth. This was foreshadowed in 2004 when a senior adviser to George W. Bush boasted that “we create our own reality.” It has culminated in the president’s counselor Kellyanne Conway’s appealing to “alternative facts,” meaning lies, on behalf of her boss, who has made an average of 5.6 false or misleading claims a day since his inauguration.
Today’s Republican Party is incapable of honest and coherent governance, with “right” or “wrong” reduced to a question of whether it helps the party. Its agenda is little more than institutional vandalism and a thumb in the eye.
A few Republicans protest the president’s disgraceful behavior, but never in a way that matters. Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona has become famous for sanctimonious speeches denouncing the latest outrage, but he votes with machine-like consistency in favor of the president’s destructive agenda and unqualified nominees.
Ultimately, the party’s spiritual sickness isn’t about Mr. Trump. Eight years ago, did Republican officeholders shut down the nonsense that Mr. Obama was a secret Muslim? For that matter, a quarter-century ago, did they quash the idiotic charge that the Clintons murdered Vince Foster?
Donald Trump merely aggravated what has long been building up in the party of Lincoln. In 2011, when House Republicans threatened to drive the government into default to extort political concessions, I left the party. Seven years later, it has become so extreme that I fear it is endangering the stability of the republic.
----------
Brooks is just a little late leaving the party. The writer of this piece left in 2011.
Most decent people with any insight have left or are considering leaving. I left when it became obvious that the priority was to simply oppose, demonize, and delegitimize everything "Obama" rather than even attempt to do anything good for our nation. When it became apparent to me that lies were more important, expedient, and preferred to truth. I mean, fantasy has its place in the world, but generally not in attempting to govern, IMO.
I agree that a good bit of the now more nakedly destructive Republican "philosophy" of government has been germinating for quite some time. But it has reached a tipping point, I think and hope, with the current debacle.
Quote:
----------
It is a sign of our slide toward banana republic status when the president of the United States, leader of the world’s foremost democracy, publicly brands Democrats who failed to applaud his State of the Union address as un-American and treasonous. The largely partisan audience was fine with it.
What has become of the Republican Party, which I once served on Capitol Hill and which I now consider a dangerous extremist movement on a par with the ruling Fidesz party in neo-fascist Hungary? Where did its principles go? What became of Ronald Reagan’s “party of ideas”?
One by one, those ideas were tossed aside for expediency and power — except the tax cut. A time traveler from the Reagan era would no longer recognize the Republican Party, but most Republican politicians feel no embarrassment supporting policies they once condemned.
Since World War II, Republicans have styled themselves the party of national defense. Yet under President Trump, they have unsettled our alliances and professed a strange new respect for Vladimir Putin.
The Republicans were once the party of global free trade, a system with major flaws but one that requires reform, not ham-handed overthrow. Yet the president believes he can bully longtime allies and force them to accept bilateral trade deals on his terms. A likely result is that the allies associate with trade blocs like the European Union or the revised Trans-Pacific Partnership so that they can better resist his bullying.
Despite Mr. Trump’s protectionist talk, the offshoring of jobs has increased slightly during his presidency. And the latest figures show the trade deficit rising to a nine-year high, with imports from China and Mexico, his main boogeymen, reaching record levels. His tariffs on Chinese solar panels, supposedly to assist our domestic producers, will cost an estimated 23,000 United States jobs.
An enduring caricature of the old-time Republican is the penny-pinching deficit hawk. In truth, this philosophy was honored mostly in the breach, as the Reagan and George W. Bush presidencies revealed. But it was alive enough that George H. W. Bush, channeling the fiscal prudence of Dwight Eisenhower and Gerald Ford, sacrificed a second term to achieve deficit reduction.
Under Mr. Trump, who has extolled leveraging other people’s money while declaring that debt is good, the party is no longer even half pregnant. His tax act, passed exclusively with Republican votes in both the House and the Senate, increases the national debt by over a trillion dollars and awards 62 percent of its monetary benefits to the richest 1 percent of Americans.
Paul Ryan, the House speaker, sees the tax act as a bonanza for the working stiff: He tweeted that a public school secretary would see a whopping $1.50 a week extra in her paycheck. It’s touching that the secretary can now afford an extra McDonald’s coffee every week, but the deficit, thanks partly to the tax cut, is projected after years of decline to explode to a trillion dollars annually.
Tax cuts, regardless of the deficit, are an obsession with Republicans and a source of shameless hypocrisy. During the recent shutdown crisis, the House Freedom Caucus balked at a deal to avert an impasse because it contained additional domestic spending, while in the Senate, Rand Paul of Kentucky held up the vote because the spending creates debt that threatens “the livelihoods of our children.” Yet the senator and every single Freedom Caucus member enthusiastically had voted only a few weeks before for a fiscally irresponsible tax bill.
Republicans were once the party of conservation and the environment: from Abraham Lincoln, who set aside Yosemite for what later became a national park, to Theodore Roosevelt, preserving 230 million acres of public land, to Richard Nixon, who signed the Clean Air Act and created the Environmental Protection Agency.
Now the E.P.A. is being systematically gutted. Its administrator, Scott Pruitt, has named as chairman of its science advisory board a person who criticizes the E.P.A.’s standards for exposure to mercury (a neurotoxin causing severe brain damage) and believes ozone pollution rules are unnecessary because Americans spend most of their time indoors. Another of the board’s “alternative” scientists is a man who has stated that “modern air is a little too clean for optimum health.”
Republicans always counted themselves as strong supporters of law and order. Whenever a crime bill was considered in Congress, I used to joke with my colleagues that any minute, a Republican would offer an amendment proposing the death penalty for jaywalking. But the president’s high-decibel smear campaign against the professionals of the F.B.I. destroys the party’s pretense of being a friend of law enforcement, as does the administration’s dismantling of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency and its rules against consumer fraud. The fact that Mr. Trump and his senior appointees are scofflaws regarding conflict-of-interest statutes does not enhance their reputation as straight arrows.
So what do Republicans have left? The tax cut, the sole important legislation from the Republican Congress, shows that catering to its rich contributors is the party’s only policy. The rest of its agenda is simply tactics and trickery.
As the party has become unmoored from positive belief, it has grown manipulative, demagogic and contemptuous of truth. This was foreshadowed in 2004 when a senior adviser to George W. Bush boasted that “we create our own reality.” It has culminated in the president’s counselor Kellyanne Conway’s appealing to “alternative facts,” meaning lies, on behalf of her boss, who has made an average of 5.6 false or misleading claims a day since his inauguration.
Today’s Republican Party is incapable of honest and coherent governance, with “right” or “wrong” reduced to a question of whether it helps the party. Its agenda is little more than institutional vandalism and a thumb in the eye.
A few Republicans protest the president’s disgraceful behavior, but never in a way that matters. Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona has become famous for sanctimonious speeches denouncing the latest outrage, but he votes with machine-like consistency in favor of the president’s destructive agenda and unqualified nominees.
Ultimately, the party’s spiritual sickness isn’t about Mr. Trump. Eight years ago, did Republican officeholders shut down the nonsense that Mr. Obama was a secret Muslim? For that matter, a quarter-century ago, did they quash the idiotic charge that the Clintons murdered Vince Foster?
Donald Trump merely aggravated what has long been building up in the party of Lincoln. In 2011, when House Republicans threatened to drive the government into default to extort political concessions, I left the party. Seven years later, it has become so extreme that I fear it is endangering the stability of the republic.
----------
WFFaithful
Well-known member
So true