Wednesday, September 18, 2024
What Does It Take For Republicans To Break Up With Trump?
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.
Tuesday, September 17, 2024
Trump's BFF, Laura Loomer, Is Increasingly the Face of MAGA
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.
Monday, September 16, 2024
What Frightens MAGA Men Most
"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.
Sunday, September 15, 2024
Project 2025 Continues to Be Radioactive With Voters
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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