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Today's GOP - Team Misogyny

As ProPublica is reporting, at least two women in Georgia died after they couldn’t access legal abortions and timely medical care in their state.  Sadly, similar tragedies are occurring in other states with abortion bans and laws that make physicians afraid to provide care out of fear of losing their medical licenses, punishing monetary fines and/or imprisonment.  One report noted that maternal deaths were up 56% in Texas.  All of this is due Donald Trump's three Supreme Court nominees (who committed perjury during their confirmation hearings) and to Republican controlled legislatures that have passed draconian restrictions on abortion access that leave women with few alternatives and doctors fearful of being second guessed by tribunals as to the need to act to save women's lives. Here in Virginia, the Democrat controlled General Assembly have stymied Glenn Youngkin's desire to turn Virginia into Florida, but women in numerous other states have not been so lucky. All of this Republican agenda has been in keeping with evangelicals' desire to keep women barefoot and pregnant and in the home save for those running pro-Republican "ministries" and lobbying groups that support the GOP's war on women and reverse Robin Hood policies. This year's presidential contest is putting a spotlight on the consequences of the GOP's policies.  Donald Trump - who lies incessantly - claims he is against a national abortion ban, but Project 2025 shows how the 19th century Comstock Act could be used to drastically curtail women's access to necessary treatment.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the GOP's misogyny: 

In a race between a Democrat who could be America’s first female president and a Republican who has been found liable for sexual abuse, the issue of gender was always going to be inescapable.

But this week, the subject surged to the forefront of the fall contest in new and vivid ways, as Democrats found fresh fuel for their argument that today’s Republican Party is disrespectful of women and their autonomy — sometimes with dangerous consequences.

On Monday and Wednesday, the deaths of two mothers in Georgia were linked to the state’s far-reaching abortion ban in new reports from ProPublica.

On Thursday, the deeply conservative Republican nominee for governor in North Carolina scrambled to deny that he had made graphic and incendiary remarks on a pornographic forum, including about women.

And on Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris took to a stage in Atlanta to argue with new urgency that the Republican Party was infringing on some of the most personal decisions a woman can make.

“It’s clear that they just don’t trust women,” said Ms. Harris, speaking a day after joining a livestreamed event with Oprah Winfrey that attracted hundreds of thousands of viewers. “Well, we trust women.”

For years, Democrats have tried to paint their Republican opponents as anti-woman, with mixed results.

In 2012, they effectively highlighted Republican comments, like the use of the term “legitimate rape” by Todd Akin, a Senate candidate in Missouri, to press their claims of a G.O.P. “war on women.” . . . in plenty of races before and after, many Americans simply did not buy the Democratic argument that Republicans would take away abortion rights if given the chance.

But after Mr. Trump’s Supreme Court nominees helped overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, millions of Americans suddenly found themselves voting to protect or restore abortion access — and to punish Republicans.

Now, in an unpredictable presidential election shaped by a yawning gender gap and simmering concerns about the economy, Democrats hope abortion rights will be galvanizing once again. Increasingly, they are drawing voters’ attention to the cascade of disturbing stories tied to abortion restrictions that many Americans view as draconian.

“Every week, there are different examples of the harmful consequences of these abortion bans,” said Molly Murphy, a pollster for the Harris campaign. “Being able to elevate and show that this has real consequences to real people is an important part of our campaign.”

That was a goal of Ms. Harris’s appearance in Atlanta. She and other Democrats are casting abortion access as a health care matter that should be nonpartisan and that carries vast implications for a broad swath of Americans.

And when Democrats highlight Republicans’ past comments calling for strict abortion laws, they hope that voters will now take those candidates at their word.

That is why, despite the near-unprintable statements reportedly made by Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson of North Carolina that CNN uncovered this week, some national Democrats are using the scandal to emphasize his anti-abortion stance, rather than focusing on the most salacious comments.

A television ad in North Carolina, announced on Friday by the Harris campaign, called “Both Wrong,” showcased Mr. Trump’s past praise of Mr. Robinson, alternating with video clips of the North Carolinian discussing abortion. The ad shows Mr. Robinson declaring that abortions amount to “killing a child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down.”

“This is ‘War on Women’ on steroids,” said former Representative Barbara Comstock, a Virginia Republican who is voting this year for Ms. Harris, the first Democratic presidential candidate to ever earn her vote, she said.

Compared with Mr. Akin’s remarks, Ms. Comstock said, this moment is “exponentially politically toxic because there’s nothing worse than being a hypocrite, particularly on these things that are so toxic with women.”  “It is Team Misogyny with Trump,” she added.

Republicans have plenty of advantages in this race: For many voters, Mr. Trump is seen as the change candidate. In polling, he has the edge on the economy, a top issue for many Americans. And while Ms. Harris has benefited from a surge in support from women, Mr. Trump has strong standing among male voters.

But there is a major difference between this election and all the times before when Democrats cast their Republican rivals as anti-woman.

“Back then, that’s what the Democrats had: They had outrageous statements” from their opponents to discuss, said Christine Matthews, a pollster who has worked with Republicans but opposes Mr. Trump, citing the 2012 races. “Now,” she said, “they can point to policies.”

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Birds of a Feather: Chaos in North Carolina Gubernatorial Race

Much like the Virginia Republican Party base, the base of the North Carolina Republican Party base is attracted to and typically rallies around extreme candidates that alienate moderate and suburban voters (a recent piece looked a Virginia's U.S. Senate race and the extreme GOP candidate that has even spoken about witchcraft).  Throw in an endorsement by Donald Trump and the MAGA base swarms to otherwise ridiculous candidates who do not fare well in general elections.  In North Carolina's gubernatorial race, Trump endorsed the current lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, who gives a whole new definition to crazy and bigoted.  Robinson is hostile to women, anti-LGBT in his statements  and has said some people simply need to be killed  and has been significantly trailing his Democrat opponent in polls.  What more could possibly go wrong?  A lot based on a new story broken by CNN that looks at Robinson's porn use and and even more inflammatory postings on porn sites, past voyeurism, and wish for a return of slavery so he could "buy a few" people.  Yesterday was the last day for Robinson to withdraw from the race, but he has vowed not to do so, thus leaving the North Carolina GOP with an even weaker candidate who, with luck, will reduce GOP turn out or cause some voters to vote a straight Democrat ticket come election day. A piece in The Atlantic looks at the unfolding scandal and how Robinson should never have been the GOP nominee.  Here are excerpts: 

Though it was hard to believe that Mark Robinson could stoop any lower, the Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina found a way.

A CNN report this afternoon said that Robinson described himself as “a Black Nazi” and said in 2012, “I’d take Hitler over any of the sh*t that’s in Washington right now!” Robinson also posted about his enjoyment of transgender pornography, recounted intrusive voyeurism of women showering while a teenager, and criticized Martin Luther King Jr. He wrote that “slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it (slavery) back. I would certainly buy a few.”

The comments were posted on the message board of a pornography site called Nude Africa. Robinson denies having made them and says he will not leave the race.

One sign of just how troubled Robinson’s run for governor already is was the queasy anticipation that coursed through North Carolina and national political circles much of the day in anticipation of the scoop. The Carolina Journal, a conservative publication, reported earlier in the day that CNN was preparing a damaging story and that pressure was mounting on Robinson to drop out.

The same question kept coming up as I tried to figure out what the CNN story might be: How much worse could it possibly be than what’s already known? The answer is worse, but not categorically worse. Robinson has for a long time made shockingly racist and anti-Semitic comments. . . . . If the North Carolina GOP was going to draw a line on this sort of behavior, it should have been drawn years ago.

Now, according to The Carolina Journal, some North Carolina Republicans have been privately pushing Robinson to withdraw. This is not because they are shocked by the new information, but because they can read the polls. Robinson trails state Attorney General Josh Stein, the Democratic nominee, by substantial margins. His reputation is so bad that the GOP is concerned he could be a drag on both Donald Trump, for whom North Carolina is an important state, and Republicans down the ballot. Today is the final day by which Robinson could withdraw. Even if he did, his name would still be on absentee ballots, which have already been printed.

Robinson said the story was a “high-tech lynching,” and insisted that the posts don’t sound like him. One problem is they sound extremely similar to what he’s said elsewhere. Robinson said in June that “Some folks need killing!” He previously denied the Holocaust and called the comic-book hero Black Panther a ploy by Jews “to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets.” He called Michelle Obama a man and Beyonce’s music satanic.

Robinson has a long trail of offensive Facebook comments, and throughout the campaign, reporters have turned up more damaging information. I reported last month that despite making veterans’ issues a center of his campaign, Robinson has skipped every meeting of the state Military Affairs Commission, one of his few statutory duties as lieutenant governor.

Nor does it stretch credulity that Robinson would have been hanging out on a porn site. Earlier this month, the North Carolina publication The Assembly reported on Robinson’s frequent patronage of porn shops in the 1990s and 2000s. Robinson denied having visited the stores, but employees and fellow customers attested to his frequent presence, and the owner of one provided a photo of himself with Robinson.

Perhaps most embarrassing for the Robinson campaign is how these old comments cut against his campaign message of highly religious social conservatism. That too, has already happened in other instances during this campaign. Robinson is a hard-liner on abortion and said he wants to outlaw it completely, although his wife obtained an abortion early in their marriage. In recently revealed 2022 comments, he said the way to empower women was to “get this under control,” waving his hands over his groin.

Another staple of his campaign has been attacks on transgender people, who he has warned, “If you’re a man on Friday night, and all the sudden Saturday, you feel like a woman, and you want to go in the women’s bathroom in the mall, you will be arrested, or whatever we gotta do to you.”

On Nude Africa, however, Robinson took a different view. Not only did he boast about illegally peeping on women in restrooms, but he wrote about consuming transgender porn. “I like watching tranny on girl porn! That’s f*cking hot! It takes the man out while leaving the man in!” Robinson wrote. “And yeah I’m a ‘perv’ too!”

Politico also reported today that Robinson’s email address was used on Ashley Madison, a site for people to connect for extramarital sex.

The hypocrisy—like the bigotry—is staggering, but it’s hardly new. Republicans now appear to be stuck with Robinson in the gubernatorial race. They can’t say they weren’t warned.

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Meet the GOP’s Gift to Tim Kaine and Democrats

With the exception of Glenn Youngkin who ran a deceptive campaign portraying himself as a moderate and a major gaffe by his opponent, Republicans running for statewide office have not done well since Bob McDonald won election. True, Youngkin pulled his ticket mates across the finish line, but I suspect that was a fluke and a repeat performance is unlikely since once elected Youngkin showed his true colors and his ticket mates are both extremists that play to the MAGA base and alienate suburban voters in the so-called urban crescent running from Northern Virginia down through Richmond and then to the cities of the Hampton Roads area.  Now, in 2024, the GOP candidate for U.S. Senate running against Senator Tim Kaine is a throwback to the GOP's failed pattern of running far right crazies that simply do not appeal to the suburban voters so crucial to state wide victory.  That candidate, Hung Cao has run a few ads but otherwise is largely missing from the campaign trail and appears to be offering a full MAGA style platform.  With Donald Trump urging the House GOP to shutdown the federal government and the hapless Mike Johnson unable to control his caucus and pass a spending bill, it's as if the Republicans are going out of their way to alienate Virginia's large number of federal employees and huge numbers of the members of the U.S. military who would suffer most in a shutdown.  Hung Cao may play well with the lunatic base of the Republican Party of Virginia, but as a column in the Washington Post lays out, he seemingly is a gift to Tim Kaine and Virginia Democrats.  Here are column highlights (for disclosure, I have known Kaine since 2002 and have contributed to his 2024 campaign):

After Glenn Youngkin won the race for governor in 2021, piercing the myth that Virginia had become a solid-blue splotch on the map of the South, Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine had every reason to be a bit anxious about which suburb-friendly Republican would seek to block his bid for a third term.

He got Hung Cao.  Kaine is one lucky man.

Look at the arc of Kaine’s Republican opponents through the years. First, in 2012, came George Allen, the former governor and senator who knew and loved Virginia, football and classic conservative policies. Kaine won, 53 percent to 47 percent.

Next, in 2018, came Corey Stewart, a proud bomb thrower who sneered at the “Virginia gentleman” notion that the state boasted a better brand of politics. Stewart, whose mantra was “I was Trump before Trump was Trump,” was the top elected official in Prince William County, where he won national attention for cutting off undocumented immigrants’ access to public services. Kaine dispatched him, 57 percent to 41 percent.

Now comes Cao, relatively new to politics, as is the fashion these days, a military man with 25 years in Special Operations, a Vietnamese immigrant who went to the top-shelf Thomas Jefferson High School in Alexandria and the Naval Academy.

Cao, 53, is running a mystifying campaign. He has turned down all but one invitation to debate Kaine. Cao is so scarce on the campaign trail that Kaine’s opposition trackers show a near-empty calendar for him. No one has even bothered to create a Wikipedia page for the man.

What Kaine has faced through the years isn’t an arc of Republican challengers. It’s a nosedive.

Cao’s supporters wonder where he is: “When are you coming to Henrico County?❤️” one woman asked on Instagram (where Cao has about 6,400 followers, compared with Kaine’s 110,000.)  . . . . A third urged Cao, “Come to Charlottesville! People need to hear your vision and story! Get into the lion’s den, it’s only half as bad as you imagine!”

Having Cao atop its slate this year does not bode well for the party of Donald Trump in the cradle of American democracy.

“The Democratic brand in Virginia during [Sens.] Mark Warner and Tim Kaine’s years in office has been moderate, centrist, relatively pro-business, inoffensive,” said Chris Saxman, a former Republican Virginia House delegate who now runs Virginia Free, a nonprofit that advocates pro-business policies. “Republicans used to have a great brand, too, with George Allen, John Warner, candidates who appealed to Virginia’s heavily suburban voters.”

Suburbanites just want stuff done, Saxman said: “They pay for things to work. That’s why they moved here. Then I go to Republican meetings, and all I hear is ‘We need someone more conservative.’ The environment just doesn’t exist now to attract the money you’d need or to attract a candidate with the talent and caliber of Tim Kaine.”

Saxman, who said he has reached out to Cao but got no reply, looks “at Hung’s campaign, and I’m going, ‘Are you running?’ I mean, nice guy, great story. But where is he? The campaign seems to be like a ‘Seinfeld’ show — a campaign about nothing. Why is he doing this?”

Cao seems to be appearing primarily at events starring Youngkin, Trump or others from the Trump orbit.

Cao told a TV reporter that he turned down most invitations to debate Kaine because “I don’t need more than one to defeat him.” Cao seems to think he can gain steam by posting on Facebook (13,000 followers, compared with Kaine’s 294,000) and X (about 71,000 followers against Kaine’s 935,000), where he slams Vice President Kamala Harris and dispenses tired Trump-lite riffs about purportedly dangerous vaccines or immigrants committing crimes.

Cao faces the same problem plaguing other lesser GOP candidates around the country. They mimic Trump’s rage and complaints, but because they lack the former president’s celebrity Teflon, their rhetorical excesses stick to them.

So when Cao calls Staunton, a west-central Virginia city that’s more populous than Fairfax City or Herndon, “Podunk,” or when he compares abortion to the Holocaust, or when he goes on a Christian nationalist’s YouTube show and frets that witchcraft has “taken over” Monterey, Calif., and “we can’t let that happen in Virginia,” he comes off not as a populist entertainer like Trump but as a strange, unknown extremist.

Cao paints Kaine as “a beta male” because the senator got stuck on I-95 during a snowstorm. Virginians “want hard men,” Cao said. “We need alpha males. We need meat eaters right now.” (For the record, Kaine is a burger and fries guy. We’re here for the essential issues of our times, folks.)

A Washington Post-Schar School poll this month found Kaine ahead of Cao 53 percent to 41 percent. As Harris pushed past Trump by eight percentage points in the poll, Cao seemed to be losing his preferred path to victory — being lifted by Trump’s coattails.

Cao might want to try an alternate route: He could campaign for the job.

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What Does It Take For Republicans To Break Up With Trump?

As noted before on this blog and Facebook and elsewhere I am at a loss to understand how people I once thought to be decent and moral can be enthusiastic Trump supporters and even in some cases attack those who see him as both a danger to the nation and the personification of evil.   I have found myself pushed to block people - most acquaintances rather than true friends - or unfriend people because I simply cannot take the batshit craziness of their support for Trump and their willingness to embrace every insane conspiracy pushed by Fox News, its imitators, and, worse yet, lunatic podcasters.  As I see the 2024 presidential election, it is not a disagreement about politics, but instead a matter of basic morality.  If you support a man whose stock in trade is hatred of others - primarily non-whites, gays and religious minorities - constant lies and outright misogyny, its a testament to one's own immorality no matter how much one wears religion on their sleeve or talks about being "Christian."  All of which brings me to a piece at Bearing Drift, which calls itself Virginia's conservative voice, that calls out Bill Bolling, a former lieutenant governor of Virginia who once upon a time was deemed a moderate, decent and commonsense Republican.  Like my reaction to Trump supporters I know, the author ask what would it take for Bolling to disavow Trump and reembrace decency and morality.  Here are column highlights:

For much of the time I’ve been here on Bearing Drift, Bill Bolling has been here with me. Unlike me, he has stayed with Donald Trump and his party throughout the decade, as late as yesterday. As it happens, I was in the hospital yesterday so I missed his latest post. Now that I’ve caught up, I can only ask him….

Why are you doing this, Bill Bolling?

If I could, I’d ask that of every Republican who is still defending Trump; I just can’t speak to all of them. I can speak to Bill, however, through this medium. So I’m giving it my best shot.

Last week, Donald Trump parroted an insane, ridiculous, and racist lie about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio (WaPo). In response, he and his running mate, JD Vance, “sound like a radical deconstructionist in a 1990s faculty lounge, appealing to the ‘larger reality’ of immigrant crime that is so true that the facts of the particular case, even if shown to be untrue, are beside the point” (Russell Moore via The Atlantic).

Ohio is a Republican state, with a longtime Republican Governor who completely debunked the nonsense:

Ohio Gov. DeWine on ABC says “absolutely not” when asked if he’s seen any evidence of Haitian migrants eating pets and adds, “The Haitians who are in Springfield are legal. They came to Springfield to work. Ohio is on the move and Springfield has really made a great resurgence.”

That didn’t stop Trump from lying anew, declaring that the Haitian refugees were “illegal” (ABC News) and claiming Kamala Harris will “bring back the draft.” Vance continued to press the lie on CNN.

This is the pair you want in the White House? Really?

Policies? What Policies?

In Bill’s attempt to justify his decision, he cites Harris’ “far-left agenda” and “the failed economic policies of President Biden.” I’ve spent quite a bit of bandwidth on the mistakes of Bidenomics and I’ve already noted Harris’ economic plans are far from perfect. But last I checked, only one candidate is demanding a $350 billion tax increase – and it’s not Kamala Harris.

This is why I fail to understand the impulse to claim “policies” as a reason to support Trump. What exactly are you supporting here? His massive tariff plans? His willingness to let Russia carve up Ukraine (WaPo)? What could possibly justify this?

Remember Who These People Are

I get the pull of tribalism and the need to belong. But is this Republican Party really yours, Bill? Has it ever been?

Lest we forget, this was the same party that told you not to run for Governor in 2009 in favor of a candidate who won fewer votes than you did. Four years later, you were told to do it again. The party to which you have given loyalty has not given it back to you. Now they are asking you to support the most spendthrift, tax-hiking, and isolationist president in the party’s history.

You don’t have to do this. Dick Cheney isn’t doing this. Former Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales isn’t doing this. George Will isn’t doing this. Hundreds of former Republicans, including Reagan alumni, aren’t doing this.

If you’re still willing to support Trump after all of this, what does that say about you?

I ask this same question of "what does supporting Trump say about you" to those I know who remain supportive of a man (and Vance is proving to be no better) who is the epitome of moral bankruptcy and frankly cares nothing about others, only himself.

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Trump's BFF, Laura Loomer, Is Increasingly the Face of MAGA

If one can bear to listen to Donald Trump's (and JD Vance's) constant lies - e.g., the continued lies about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio - the overall theme is always about hatred and disparagement of others and, with Trump promises of retribution against anyone who opposes him or calls out his moral bankruptcy and misogynistic words and behavior.  Trump's only real motivation for seeking re-election is his desire to end the federal criminal against him should he regain the White House.  Yes, power and renewed grifting opportunities are added attractions, but avoiding prison is the real driving push.  To win, there are no limits to Trump will say and do.  Hence, his blaming Democrats for the disgruntled former Republican would be shooter at Trump's Palm Beach golf course when his own anti-Ukraine positions may have been the shooter's axe to grind with Trump - Trump ignores his own irresponsible behavior of being on a difficult to secure golf course in the first place.  Meanwhile, Trump continues to embrace individuals who the Republican Party of old would never have allowed into the party leadership circle.  White supremacists, neo-Nazis, "Christian" religious extremists, anti-Semites, and outright crazies are all welcomed in today's Trump dominated GOP.   Perhaps no one represents this welcoming of deplorable individuals more than total crackpot and bigot, Laura Loomer, Trump's new BFF.  A column in the Washington Post looks at Trump and this toxic woman who epitomizes the hatred and conspiracy theories that consume today's Republican Party and MAGA world. Here are excerpts:

It’s impossible, unproductive and, frankly, tedious to respond to every Trump outrage. So I try to pick my shots and spare readers what would otherwise be an unbearable barrage. But the moment has arrived again — this time in the repulsive form of Laura Loomer, the far-right bigot, conspiracy theorist and, in recent days, campaign trail companion of the former president.

As with other Trump provocations — abjuring the intention to be a dictator “except for day one”; calling for the “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution” to deal with supposed election fraud; praising those charged in the Jan. 6 insurrection as “hostages” — his association with Loomer is not an aberration but an illustration. It demonstrates who Donald Trump is and underscores the danger he poses.

Loomer is no outlier in Trumpworld. Rather, she is a particularly pungent example of the types of people with whom Trump has chosen to ally himself, from Stephen K. Bannon to Roger Stone to Stephen Miller. This is a man who dined at Mar-a-Lago with white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, whom Trump described as “a guest whom I had never met and knew nothing about.”

Loomer, though, might take the cake. The 31-year-old twice-failed congressional candidate, professional provocateur and self-described “investigative journalist” has proclaimed herself a “#ProudIslamophobe,” termed Islam a “cancer on society” and said “Muslims should not be allowed to seek positions of political office in this country.” She posted a video on X that labeled 9/11 an “Inside Job,” although she didn’t use the phrase herself. She responded to a news story about the drowning deaths of 2,000 migrants with a hand clap emoji and the words “Good. … Here’s to 2,000 more.”

How extreme is Loomer? So extreme that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) described her as “mentally unstable and a documented liar” and spoke with Trump about Loomer. . . . . Loomer’s statements are “beyond disturbing,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told The Post.

“Laura Loomer is a crazy conspiracy theorist who regularly utters disgusting garbage intended to divide Republicans. A DNC plant couldn’t do a better job than she is doing to hurt President Trump’s chances of winning reelection. Enough,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) wrote on social media Friday. The Wall Street Journal editorialized to express its dismay about Trump’s “Loomer Tunes,” wondering, “Is he trying to lose the election?”

And for good reason. Because Loomer’s extremism — her breathtaking offensiveness and undisguised racism — is not an artifact of the past. It’s in the present tense. . . . In a July post, she labeled Harris “a drug using prostitute.” Urging Republicans to go after Harris for not having biological children, the childless Loomer added: “I’m willing to bet she’s had so many abortions that she damaged her uterus.

Loomer’s extremism isn’t limited to going after Harris. On a podcast in June about whether Democrats should be prosecuted and jailed if Trump wins the election, Loomer interjected, “Not just jailed, they should get the death penalty. You know, we actually used to have the punishment for treason in this country.”

Any sane politician — any decent human being, for that matter — would stay as far away from a person like this as possible. Not Trump. There was Loomer on the plane with him Tuesday en route to his debate with Harris. There was Loomer by his side again the next day, at events in New York and Pennsylvania to commemorate the attack.

Hence the Greene-Graham-Tillis-WSJ agita. . . . “I disagree with the statements she made,” Trump wrote, “but, like the many millions of people who support me, she is tired of watching the Radical Left Marxists and Fascists violently attack and smear me, even to the point of doing anything to stop their Political Opponent, ME!”

[A] video Loomer filmed last month with Trump at his Bedminster, N.J., country club offers a revealing glimpse into why Trump likes having her around. “You are a very opinionated lady, I have to tell you that,” Trump says to Loomer, “and in my opinion, I like that.” For Trump, all sins can be forgiven for those who heap enough praise on him. But also, for him, Loomer’s offensiveness isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.

All of which is to say, the real problem here isn’t Laura Loomer. It’s Donald Trump. A man who invites this woman on his plane is not a man we should allow back inside the White House.

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What Frightens MAGA Men Most

Over the weekend Donald Trump posted that he hates Taylor Swift no doubt because of her reasoned and rational endorsement of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, but also for another reason, a reason Trump shares with many, many of MAGA men: they are afraid of and dislike smart, independent and successful women who not define their lives by having a man telling them what to think and what to do. Liz Cheney's response to Trump's post "Says the smallest man who ever lived."  As more women work and achieve career success and as women increasingly exceed men in academic success, men with tiny egos and evangelical "Christian" men who want women subordinate to them are increasingly fearful of/outraged by women who simply do not need them to define themselves (I suspect MAGA men similarly dislike gays who do not need their approval to have a sense of self-worth).  I am not sure what the cure is for such men, but Trump seems to channel their anger towards all those they blame for their own unsatisfactory lives.  A piece in Salon looks at the phenomenon"

"With love and hope," Taylor Swift signed her endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, "Childless Cat Lady."

Most of the global star's Instagram post praising the Democratic presidential nominee and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, was thoughtful and earnest. She thoughtfully laid out her frustrations with Donald Trump for falsely claiming she backed him, writing immediately after Tuesday night's debate, "It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter." Swift heralded Harris as "a steady-handed, gifted leader," and lauded Walz for "standing up for LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman’s right to her own body for decades."  . . . . The cheek only came at the end of Swift's endorsement, with a pithy "childless cat lady" callback. Well, that and Swift's photo of her hugging one of her enviably adorable cats. 

At this point, it's impossible to keep track of how many clips have been unearthed of Vance raving about how much he hates and fears childless women, who, in typical MAGA projection, he calls "miserable" and "sociopathic." Vance has insisted such women hate children and that shaming them is necessary to set them straight. . . . . Swift trolled Vance and all the sad MAGA men who want to believe calling women "cat ladies" is fresh humor. 

She deftly mocked what scares and enrages MAGA men most: women who don't care what they think.

Despite Trump's prediction that "she’ll probably pay a price for it in the marketplace," Swift is going to do her thing, write the music she wants, date the men she likes, and live her life as she sees fit. If men don't like it, well, too bad. They can cry about it online, and boy, they never seem to stop. But their lame insults don't matter to her. 

Obviously, the MAGA fury isn't really about Swift, who is just one person. She's a symbol of a much larger social change. There are metrics we can use to gauge women's liberation, from the closing of the gender pay gap to increased levels of female education to later marriage and motherhood ages. Swift, however, puts a face to the shifting social dynamics between men and women that these tangible gains have allowed. Simply put, millions of women have been liberated from having to care what stupid men think of them — and boy, are a lot of men mad about it. 

Vance's compatriot in the club of wealthy men who can't seem to overcome the stench of sexual insecurity, Elon Musk, made himself the avatar of this impotent MAGA rage.

It's painful to give this pathetic trolling any attention, but necessary because it so perfectly illustrates a crucial point. Musk embodies what is often called "toxic masculinity." As his tweet demonstrates, it's often too pitiable to warrant a word as powerful as "toxic." Other Trump supporters, like podcaster Dave Rubin, resorted to the more familiar right-wing fearmongering . . . .

There's a flailing quality to this behavior of men lashing out because they can't force women to care what they think. Swift will almost surely wrinkle her nose and say, "ew," of course. But so will most other women. 

It wasn't always this way. . . . . Instead of simply bowing their heads and begging for forgiveness, young women revolted.

The "cat lady" discourse reflects this profound, if immeasurable, change. Vance and his bitter male comrades keep reaching for the term "cat lady" because they have a lingering memory of when that phrase had power. But nowadays, it says more about the man flinging it than the woman being so labeled. The image of a lonely spinster comforting herself with cats has been replaced with, well, Taylor Swift: a sexy and successful woman who has cats because she likes them and because no man can tell her otherwise. And it makes MAGA men fume. 

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Project 2025 Continues to Be Radioactive With Voters

As the presidential campaign moves into the home stretch, Republicans have numerous problems, not the least of which is Donald Trump's continued spouting of insane lies and pushing bizarre and false far right conspiracy theories and memes, a prime example of which is Trump's continue allegations that Haitians are eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio.  Thanks to this ongoing batshit craziness, that small city has had numerous bomb threats - including threats that have sent the local hospitals into lockdown. Then there is Trump's surrounding himself with some of the worse lunatics of the far right - think Laura Loomer.  Indeed, the Wall Street Journal editorial board said the following in a column entitled "Donald Trump and Looner Tunes":

Is he trying to lose the election? Ms. Loomer is usually described in the press as “far right,” but that’s unfair to the fever swamps.

People in the Trump campaign are trying to get her out of the former President’s entourage, to no avail. . . . They know Mr. Trump’s association with Ms. Loomer feeds the concern among voters that Mr. Trump listens to crazy courtiers who flatter him and play to his vanity. Is this who the next four years are going to feature?

A growing segment of the American right is populated by, and susceptible to, cranks and conspiracists. A movement that used to admire William F. Buckley Jr. and Thomas Sowell now elevates a pseudo-historian who blames Winston Churchill for World War II and media personalities who sell falsehoods as a triumph for free speech.

Another albatross is Project 2025 released by the Heritage Foundation and involving a huge number of Trump 1.0 personnel. Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, but his denials are less than believable - like almost everything coming out of his mouth - and the 900+ page plan for taking America backwards in time has been a gift to Democrats. The majority of Americans simply do not want a total abortion ban, rolling back LGBT rights, building more obstacles to voting, and a new version of Jim Crow, and political ideologues devoid of expertise and credentials replacing qualified civil servants, among other things.  A piece in Politico Magazine looks at Project 2025's toxicity:

Whenever Vice President Kamala Harris mentions Project 2025 — the Heritage Foundation’s now-toxic blueprint for the next Republican administration — blood starts throbbing in the temples of certain conservative Heritage veterans. Like think tank leaders across the spectrum, the professionals are cringing at the tone-deaf naivete of an organization that touted such a polarizing document as an election-year gospel without realizing it might blow up on their own side.

“We now have a very good example of what not to do,” said Heritage alum Tim Chapman, who leads Mike Pence’s Advancing American Freedom nonprofit and is a former chief of staff to Heritage founder Ed Feulner.

“I cannot think of a study that has done more damage,” said Ken Weinstein, a one-time former President Donald Trump appointee and former head of the conservative Hudson Institute. “It’s the exact opposite of the Harris approach of don’t say anything about what you’re doing.”

Not long ago, the current Heritage president, Kevin Roberts, was triumphantly promising a “second American revolution” and darkly declaring that it would be bloodless “if the left allows it to be.” Steve Bannon floated him as a possible White House chief of staff.

That was before Project 2025 was turned into a campaign issue by Harris — and disavowed by Trump. Last weekend, the 922-page playbook became quite possibly the first think tank paper in American history to appear in TV spots during NFL games, naturally via a scathing negative ad.

For the Heritage old guard, the bill of complaints against Project 2025 dovetails with broader gripes about Roberts, a culture-war intellectual who has dramatically reoriented the foundation in a populist, pro-Trump direction.

[T]he bitterness these days focuses on a new house style that allegedly enabled the current embarrassment: an elevation of marketing over research; a chest-thumping tendency to assert dominance within the Trump-era right; an inability to distinguish partisan agitation from policy advocacy because “engagement on X, positive feedback from Slack channels or mentions in their news feeds” have become paramount, in the words of one conservative activist who watched Project 2025 take shape.

To critics in the old Heritage diaspora, it’s all a byproduct of how the foundation operates under Roberts: While other policy outfits claim to be devoted to an abstract idea, Heritage has increasingly tied its image to a specific person. Roberts told an interviewer earlier this year that the mission was “institutionalizing Trumpism.” Heritage fundraising bragged about the large percentage of the think tank’s previous ideas that were implemented by Trump. Roberts also claimed Project 2025 spoke for the movement, boasting that “never before has the American conservative movement been this unified around a set of possible policy prescriptions.”

“For six months before this came out, I knew more than several people who were nervous about the press that was out there,” one former Heritage staffer said, referencing Trump world’s anxieties about Project 2025’s media image. “They were like, ‘They’re not listening to the signals’” telling its sponsors to quit claiming to call the shots. “It’s in their DNA, a real desire to prove you’re at the center of things.”

Anyone who needs to raise money for a think tank, of course, knows that telling people you’re at the center of things is how you get folks to write checks. . . . . For the broader public, meanwhile, those very same imperatives helped turn Project 2025 into a big, fat “kick me” sign.

There was also the matter of timing. Notably, the hugely influential original version of Heritage’s quadrennial Mandate for Leadership, which laid out ideas for Ronald Reagan’s presidency and served as a model for Project 2025’s book of the same name, was published in January 1981 — after Reagan had won the 1980 election but before he’d taken over. That’s a logical timetable if you want to sway policy, but not if you’re trying to swagger around and play election-year kingmaker.

Indeed, in conversations with think tank graybeards, one theme that emerged across the spectrum was a kind of professional amazement that any serious policy organization could put itself in a position of becoming the story.

“It’s not just that they were thumping their chest, but they were sticking out their chins,” said Patrick Gaspard, who runs the liberal Center for American Progress, an organization that was famously close to the Obama and Hillary Clinton campaigns — but never a household name that could be bogeymanned to a mass audience.

[T]he confounding thing about Project 2025 is that it actually is full of policy ideas about even obscure corners of the federal government. Some of them are shockingly radical, like the idea of replacing thousands of professional public servants with political loyalists, but many of them are familiar conservative boilerplate.

Mario Cuomo famously said that you campaign in poetry but govern in prose. But the upshot of Project 2025 was that it managed to tie Trump to 922 pages of often radioactive prose right when the moment called for something lyrical.

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