The GOP Has Its Own Obamacare Now

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Having been actively involved in politics for over twenty years, I continue to be mind boggled by the apparent death wish of congressional Republicans when it comes to passing measures that are viewed as abhorrent by the majority of voters.  The same group who railed against Obamacare for seven straight years are about to give Democrats a gift in the form of the Trump tax bill that will likely benefit Democrats for years and at almost the very same moment that Republicans lost their majority in the Virginia House of Delegates.  Due to a single vote no less.  Ed Gillespie campaigned on a similar give away to the rich and lost the Virginia gubernatorial contest by 9 percentage points.  All of this is lost on Paul Ryan who is near orgasmic over what he has showered on the 1%.  The Trump tax bill, together with Der Trumpenführer himself (a gift that goes on giving and giving), will likely see Democrats motivated and out for electoral revenge at levels not seen in decades.  A column in the Washington Post looks at how the Trump Tax Bill will likely come back to haunt Republicans, perhaps as early as November, 2018.  Here are excerpts (with a little editorialize by me):

Congratulations, Republicans. Now you have your own Obamacare.

Emerging from their caucus meeting in the Capitol basement Tuesday morning, House Republicans were jubilant about their tax bill, which was on course to clear Congress on Wednesday.

“It’s a total winner,” said Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.). “And I never lie.” [except when his lips are moving]

Veteran Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) observed: “They’re pretty giddy in there.”

Rep. Neal Dunn (R-Fla.), a urologist, announced: “This is good medicine for America.”

And for that prescription, added Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), “you don’t need a second opinion.”

Don’t you?  The deeply unpopular bill has the support of only a third of Americans, most of whom (correctly) perceive that it’s a giveaway to rich people and big corporations. “Any concerns that this won’t translate into a political win for Republicans?” ABC News’s Mary Bruce asked House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.).

“No concerns whatsoever,” Ryan replied. He blamed the bill’s unpopularity on opponents and the media spreading “mistruths” and said opinions will improve when people experience what’s in the bill. 

Where have I heard this before? Ah, yes, it was March 2010, as Obamacare was about to clear the House. Then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said people should look beyond the “controversies” surrounding the bill, to when people experience its “very exciting” benefits. “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,” she said.

Obamacare did much of what was advertised, and its popularity grew. But it didn’t do everything that was promised, and anything Americans didn’t like about the health-care system became the fault of Obamacare, even if unrelated to the law. Now, Republicans are making impossibly high promises, and if anything goes wrong — if the economy doesn’t boom, wages don’t soar and the middle class doesn’t rebound — it will be the fault of this legislation, soon to be labeled “the Trump Tax” by Democrats.

The parallels are eerie. . . . . Actually, the Trump Tax is in worse shape than Obamacare was. USA Today reported last week that the bill had “the lowest level of public support for any major piece of legislation enacted in the past three decades, including the Affordable Care Act in 2009.” In March 2009, the Quinnipiac poll foundopposition to Obamacare exceeded support by nine points; the latest Quinnipiac poll finds opposition to the tax bill exceeding support by 29 points.

Republicans worked hard to convince Americans that Obamacare was a transfer of wealth from the middle class to the poor. Democrats can now argue, truthfully, that the Trump Tax is a transfer of income from the middle class to the wealthy and big business. Under the law, the middle fifth of American households will see an average increase in after-tax income next year of $930, while the top 1 percent get an average increase of $51,140, according to the Tax Policy Center. The rich even get a greater proportional increase in after-tax income: 2.3 percent, compared with 1.4 percent for the middle class.

While the “forgotten man” Trump lured with phony populism gets little benefit, the things that bothered the forgotten man about the tax code — a tangled mess of loopholes for businesses, the rich and Wall Street — remain intact. This will be a “bigger albatross” for Republicans than Obamacare was for Democrats, argues Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson. “They own the tax code. When you are upset about taxes, you’re going to be upset about the Trump Tax.”

On top of that, Republicans now have claimed ownership of health care. The tax bill kills the individual mandate that underpinned Obamacare, which will leave 13 million additional people without coverage.

Tuesday morning, Ryan declared (falsely) that the bill would “especially” benefit middle-income families. He said it would “bid up” wages, repatriate jobs, provide economic growth of 3 percent a year and create upward mobility. The bill, he said, “is what it will take to help people who are struggling.”

 And yes, in the process of giving tax cuts to the wealthy, the GOP bill will cause 13 million to lose health care coverage.  I truly am hoping for a GOP bloodbath come November, 2018. 

Poll: The More GOP Voters Hear About Bush, the Less They Like Him

I am keeping my fingers crossed hoping that Jeb Bush will soon be forced to shutdown his campaign, but the good news is that many do seem to think that Jeb Bush's hubris filled campaign may be in a final death spiral despite Jebbie's effort the "reset" the campaign.  Now, Politico is running a piece that reports that the more GOP primary voters have learned about Jebbie, the less they like him.  Admittedly, we are talking about GOP primary voters who are nowadays by definition, insane.  Here are some article highlights:

The more that Republican voters hear about Ben Carson, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, the more they like them. Jeb Bush, not so much.

A new McClatchy-Marist poll conducted from Oct. 29 through Nov. 4 found that Carson has the most appeal as voters are more exposed to him, with 67 percent expressing that favorable view, and 20 percent saying they have a less favorable view the more they hear about the retired neurosurgeon. Rubio comes in second at 58 percent to 27 percent, followed by Cruz with 51 percent to 31 percent.

But the news isn’t as good for Bush, who has been attempting a reset from flagging poll numbers and a series of underwhelming debate performances. For the former Florida governor, 58 percent of Republican voters like him less after hearing more about him, compared with 32 percent who like him more.

The McClatchy-Marist poll also found that a majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents — 59 percent to 39 percent — say it’s more important to have a candidate who stands for conservative principles than one who can win.

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, beats all candidates in hypothetical general election matchups, according to the poll, though she was just 2 percentage points ahead of Carson, 50 percent to 48 percent.

The Democrats' Demographic Advantage

Yet another article in The Atlantic looks at the growing demographic challenges faced by the Republican Party in 2016 and beyond.  Despite all the analysis that shows that angry conservative white voters are shrinking as a portion of the voting population as non-black minority groups and college educated whites - who tend to vote Democrat - are growing segments of the overall population, the GOP at the federal and state level remains in a deadly embrace with Christofascists and runs the risk of becoming a permanent minority party. As a political activist of going on 3 decades, one has to wonder why the GOP remains in denial about the changing national population and the growing revulsion more and more voters hols for the extremists of the Christian Right.   Here are article highlights:

Looking at the race through a historical lens, the odds would seem stacked against Hillary Clinton (assuming that she is the Democratic nominee). In the post-World War II era, only six times has one party held the presidency for two consecutive terms, and only once has that party kept the White House for a third—a pattern that reflects what I call the “time for a change” voter dynamic. In fact, the last Democratic president directly elected to succeed another was James Buchanan, in 1856; he followed Franklin Pierce.

But looking through a demographic lens, the modern GOP's increasing reliance on a shrinking pool of older, white, and working-class voters—and its failure to attract nonwhite voters—would seem to present an enormous obstacle to the eventual Republican nominee. In 1980, when nonwhite voters were just 12 percent of the electorate, Ronald Reagan won 56 percent of white voters and was elected in a landslide. But in 2012, when nonwhite voters accounted for 28 percent of the electorate, Mitt Romney took 59 percent of white voters—and lost the presidential race by 4 percentage points. Without a total brand makeover, how can Republicans expect to prevail with an even more diverse electorate in 2016?

Cook Political Report House Editor David Wasserman recently crunched census and exit-poll data to build a statistical model of the likely electorate in each state, breaking down voters into five distinct groups: 1) whites with college degrees, 2) whites without college degrees, 3) African-Americans, 4) Latinos, and 5) Asians/others.

First, the good news for Democrats: If the electorate evolves in sync with the Census Bureau's estimates of the adult citizen population (admittedly, a big if), the white share of the electorate would drop from 72 percent in 2012 to 70 percent in 2016; the African American share would remain stable at 13 percent; the Latino portion would grow from 10 percent to 11 percent; and the Asian/other segment would increase from 5 percent to 6 percent. If the 2012 election had been held with that breakdown (keeping all other variables stable), President Obama would have won by 5.4 percentage points rather than by his actual 3.85-point margin.

In addition, the group with which the GOP does best—whites without college degrees—is the only one poised to shrink in 2016. President Obama won just 36 percent of these voters in 2012, while 42 percent of white voters with college degrees pulled the lever for him. But if the electorate changes in line with census estimates, the slice of college-educated whites will grow by 1 point, to 37 percent of all voters, while the portion of whites without degrees will shrink 3 points, to just 33 percent of the total. In other words, the GOP doesn't just have a growing problem with nonwhites; it has a shrinkage problem as well, as conservative white seniors are supplanted by college-educated millennials with different cultural attitudes. 

[T]he bottom line is that demographic trends, while helpful to Democrats, are no guarantee that the party will hold the White House beyond 2017. 

Survey: Christianity Experiencing Sharp Decline in America

Yet another Pew Research Center survey builds upon what other surveys and studies have shown: Americans are leaving Christianity in droves.  Personally, I suspect there are many reasons for the sharp decline, not the least of which is the growing negative connotations of what it means to be a "Christian" thanks to the Christofascists who seemingly hate virtually everyone other than themselves and who seek to trample on the rights of others when not demanding special rights for themselves.  Americans' increased mobility and the easy access to information and other views via the Internet are also likely reasons.  An article in the Washington Post looks at what to me is a welcome phenomenon given the undeserved and divisive influence religion has had in public policy.  Here are article excerpts:

Christianity is on the decline in America, not just among younger generations or in certain regions of the country but across race, gender, education and geographic barriers. The percentage of adults who describe themselves as Christians dropped by nearly eight percentage points in just seven years to about 71 percent, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center.

“It’s remarkably widespread,” said Alan Cooperman, director of religion research for the Pew Research Center. “The country is becoming less religious as a whole, and it’s happening across the board.”

At the same time, the share of those who are not affiliated with a religion has jumped from 16 percent to about 23 percent in the same time period.

Here are three key takeaways from Pew’s new survey.

1. Millennials are growing even less affiliated with religion as they get older 

The older generation of millennials (those who were born from 1981 to 1989) are becoming even less affiliated with religion than they were about a decade ago, the survey suggests. In 2007, when the Pew Research Center did their last Religious Landscape Survey and these adults were just entering adulthood, 25 percent of them did not affiliate with a religion, but this grew to 34 percent in the latest survey.

“Some have asked, ‘Might they become more religiously affiliated as they get older?’ There’s nothing in this data to suggest that’s what’s happening,” he said.


2. There are more religiously unaffiliated Americans than Catholic Americans or mainline Protestant Americans

The numbers of Catholics and Protestants have each shrunk between three and five percentage points since 2007. The evangelical share of the American population has dropped by one percentage point since 2007.

There are more religiously unaffiliated Americans (23 percent) than Catholics (21 percent) and mainline Protestants (15 percent).
Thirteen percent of Americans were raised Catholic but are no longer Catholic, compared with just 2 percent of Americans who are converts to Catholicism. . . . . There are 3 million fewer Catholics today than there were in 2007.

Pew estimates there are about 5 million fewer mainline Protestants than there were in 2007.

3. Those who are unaffiliated are becoming more secular

The “nones,” or religiously unaffiliated, include atheists, agnostics and those who say they believe in “nothing in particular.” Of those who are unaffiliated, 31 percent describe themselves as atheists or agnostics, up six points from 2007.

And people in older generations are increasingly disavowing organized religion. Among baby boomers, 17 percent identify as a religious “none,” up from 14 percent in 2007.

“There’s a continuing religious disaffiliation among older cohorts. That is really striking,” Smith said. “I continue to be struck by the pace at which the unaffiliated are growing.”

The long term implications for the Republican Party ought to be terrifying as the GOP continues to prostitute itself to the ugliest elements of the Christofascists who are making Christianity itself increasingly toxic in the minds of more and more Americans.  The GOP seemingly has a death wish.  Meanwhile the "godly folk" who would save Christianity are the ones doing the most to kill it. 

Immigration Reform and the GOP’s Anti-Gay Suicide Mission

In a follow up to previous posts, I remain amazed at the Republican Party's opposition to immigration reform and in particular any reform legislation that might protect same sex couples.  Just today at my law office, I received a call fro a bi-national couple seeking advice on what to do about the visa status of the non-U.S. citizen member of the couple.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at what appears to be the GOP's death wish/suicide pact over anti-gay bigotry.  Even here in knuckle dragging Virginia, EVERY would be Democrat candidate for statewide office supports gay marriage and LGBT employment non-discrimination protections.  Here are some highlights from the Daily Beast article:

According to The New York Times, key Senate Republicans threaten to sink the entire immigration reform initiative if it includes a provision allowing gay American citizens to bring their life partners into the country. “It’s a deal-breaker for most Republicans,” Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) told the Times. In a radio interview (quoted by the Times), Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who is considered reform’s indispensable Republican, was blunt: “If that issue is injected into this bill, this bill will fail. It will not have the support. It will not have my support.”

Really? Republicans will deep-six the entire effort and demolish themselves with Latino voters, business interests, and young people to prevent gay people from having someone to take care of them?

Even to write those words is to wonder whether they can possibly be true. Surely Republicans know that, according to many polls, support for same-sex marriage has tipped above the majority level and is rising. Perhaps some also know that, according to a recent Huffington Post poll, partner immigration enjoys solid 7-percentage-point support. They certainly know that, from a political point of view, the perception among younger voters that a pro-Republican vote is an anti-gay vote is toxic to the GOP brand.
 

These days, opposition to gay equality is heavily concentrated among white evangelical Protestants, who are heavily concentrated in the Republican base. But they are increasingly isolated from the electorate as a whole. Even a solid majority of Catholics now supports gay marriage. And Republicans themselves are split down the middle on the more general question of whether “same-sex couples should have the same legal rights as heterosexual couples.”  Even among Republicans, in other words, the constituency for policies disadvantaging gay and lesbian couples is withering. And this is where Senate Republicans want to make their stand?

Back in the day, advocates of gay equality used to shake their heads ruefully over the willingness of many politicians, many Democrats as well as almost all Republicans, to throw gays under the bus for political expediency. But today’s opponents of allowing residency for gay partners fail even the expediency test. If the idea is to demonstrate that the Republican Party is hostage to a declining and increasingly isolated share of the Republican base, or to make the party seem more irrelevant and intolerant to the younger voters on whose future it depends, one could hardly imagine a better way to do it. Or a better way to improve the political prospects of liberals and Democrats.

If you are the kind of social conservative who wants to discourage gay people from having stable, committed relationships—a very intolerant and inhumane and unconservative thing to want, but just supposing you do—then breaking up other people’s marriages might seem to make sense. But it will not encourage marriage, gay or straight. It will not encourage commitment. It will not encourage family values. Instead it causes gay misery, discourages personal responsibility, and increases the burden on society.

Even from a conservative point of view—in fact, especially from a conservative point of view—it makes no sense to distort and disrupt gay families by depriving binational couples of the tools they need to care for each other. It makes even less sense to do that while providing aspiring newcomers with the tools they need to work, providing businesses with the tools they need to hire, and providing children who grew up in America with the opportunity to live as Americans. Unless your policy goal is to distort and disrupt gay families.

The GOP indeed seems to have a death wish and, given the GOP's current incarnation, nothing would be better for the nation that to see the GOP die a speedy and decisive death.  Now that the GOP is basically a far right Christian sectarian party with a  strong element of white supremacy.  The GOP indeed needs to die.