GOP Leaders Won’t Tolerate Trump’s Chaos Much Longer

The Republican Party of my grand parents, parents and even the first 2/3's of my life is dead and gone and, in my view, will never return given the grip Christofascists and white supremacists have on the party base.  The days when intellect, knowledge, science and some modicum of respect for morality and decency are long gone best embodied by the election of Donald Trump, a Manchurian candidate if there ever was one. Yet, as a piece in New York Magazine argues, at some point the Vichy Republicans who have colluded with Trump's assault on America - likely at the direction of Vladimir Putin - will reach a breaking point when their desire for self-preservation outweighs their fear of being subjected to a primary challenge by someone base and immoral enough to be fancied by the Christofascists and white supremacists who rule the party.  Here are column highlights:

The beginning of the end of the Trump presidency came and went a long time ago. I have never wavered from my oft-stated convictions that (a) Trump will not finish out his term, and (b), the end will be triggered by a presidential meltdown that forces the Vichy Republicans in Washington to mount an insurrection — if only to save their own asses, not the country. This week was a big step toward that endgame, and surely one of the most remarkable weeks in American history. We have a president of the United States who is moving to shut down the government at the same moment that he is inviting America’s adversaries to breach its defenses. The withdrawals in Syria and Afghanistan, combined with the exit of the last top administration official who aspired to serve the national interest rather than Trump’s, invites hostile moves against the United States from ISIS, Russia, China, North Korea, and the Taliban. This has even grabbed the cynical Mitch McConnell’s attention: He has declared himself “distressed” by Mattis’s resignation, a major step in rhetorical escalation in a party where Susan Collins’s pathetic periodic expressions of “concern” are what pass for criticism of an outlaw president. [M]ore outrage from more GOP leaders will follow. What will move them is not necessarily Trump’s hara-kiri isolationist agenda but the damage his behavior both abroad and at home is inflicting on the financial markets. The sheer uncertainty of a chaos presidency is pushing the Dow to its worst December since the Great Depression. McConnell and his humiliated departing peer Paul Ryan have tolerated Trump’s racism, misogyny, and nativism, his wreckage of American alliances, his kleptocracy, and his allegiance to Vladimir Putin. They have tolerated as well his con job on the coal miners, steelworkers, and automobile-industry workers of his base. But they’ll be damned if they will stand for a president who threatens the bottom line of the GOP donor class. The Mattis resignation is huge. It’s not that he was the last “adult in the room” but that as a retired military man and a secretary of Defense with access to both foreign intelligence and the inner workings of the White House, he knows treason when he sees it. His resignation letter stops just short of saying that Trump is actively serving the “interests” of China and Russia as they try “to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model.”

[W]ho knows where America will be or who will be in charge by the time we get to Mattis’s announced February departure date, more than two months from now. The country is going to be riveted by the televised testimony of lawyered-up Trump lackeys as they face the inquisitors of Nancy Pelosi’s Congress.

What we are likely to see in the meantime: further indictments of Trump family members and other close associates; a complete halt to governance in Washington whether there’s actually a government shutdown or not; new overt and covert threats to national security; a further effort by Trump to destabilize the Federal Reserve and assault its chairman; and perhaps, at last, an intervention by those Vichy Republicans, in the financial sector as well as in the capital, who see their own necks on the line.

But meanwhile, we have more than two weeks in store of watching an isolated madman rampaging through the gilded rooms of Mar-a-Lago, wreaking whatever damage he can on the country as the walls of justice continue to close in on him. Happy New Year!

The Atlantic - There Is No Trump Campaign

Now that President Obama has endorsed Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders after an hour meeting with Obama somewhat coyly said he will do all in his power to make sure that Donald Trump is never president of the United States, things seem to be settling down somewhat on the Democratic side of the aisle.  On the Republican side, things remain highly unsettled and Donald Trump was set to meet with major GOP donors today.  Time will tell how that played out.  Meanwhile, there is much GOP angst over the lack of any real Trump campaign organization.  Throughout the primary Trump largely relied on free media coverage and rallies with little get out the vote or grass roots organization.  Now, as Trump perhaps in some fantasy thinks he can win both California and New York, the concern in GOP circles is that Hillary Clinton and the Democrats will run circles around Trump.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at the situation which I for one will equate to a huge loss come November.  Here are highlights:

What is concerning for Trump backers and Republicans (the Venn diagram of overlap between those groups seems to be in perpetual flux) is that it [Trump's focus on New York and California] appears to be distracting from the rest of the crucial work of building a presidential campaign. For most intents and purposes, there appears to be no Trump campaign. 

CNN has a blockbuster report Thursday digging into this. For example, Trump has no state-level campaign director in Ohio or Colorado, two top-shelf swing states. Across the map, Republican officials say they’re just waiting to hear on what to do from either Trump or the Republican National Committee, but so far they’re hearing very little. “I'll say that as far as building the infrastructure of a campaign, the RNC has been doing it for many years,” Trump said at a press conference in May.

As my colleague Molly Ball points out in an insightful tweet storm (not a contradiction in terms!), there’s some confusion, or at least opaque wording, in the CNN piece, revolving around the difference between having state-level organization and putting together a ground game. In 2012, Mitt Romney most certainly had state offices, but he also largely left ground game to the RNC.

“The Romney campaign doesn't do the ground game,” then-RNC Political Director Rick Wiley told Ball in 2012. “They have essentially ceded that responsibility to the RNC. They understand this is our role.” (You may recall Wiley as the guy Trump recently hired, then unceremoniously fired a few weeks later.)

Perhaps the Romney 2012 campaign isn’t an example that Republicans would want to emulate, but that’s different from suggesting that what Trump is doing is unprecedented. The RNC offers a degree of continuity that a presidential campaign can’t, and disagreements between state party committees and campaigns can make for tension, as the Democrats ably showed after the 2012 campaign. Moreover, the RNC has been focused on building its ground-game capacities since the post-2012 autopsy report. To be clear: None of this means that the RNC is especially great at building a ground game. It just means Trump isn’t crazy to cede the ground to it, especially given how weak his campaign was at things like voter turnout during the primaries.

Insofar as the lack of state organization goes, is this simply a symptom of a rookie campaign? Growing pains that began after Trump clinched the nomination? Not really. Back in April, with Trump’s campaign faltering, he laid off scads of staffers in early states, whereas Clinton has maintained her organization, laying groundwork for the general. Then in May, Politico reported on the increasing heartburn of state-level Republican operatives who’d been promised cavalry from the RNC and were getting increasingly anxious about the silence from Washington.

A related and intertwined problem is Trump’s lack of fundraising. Although he once said he’d raise $1 billion, his new fundraising team—mostly constituted by the RNC, of course—is working to depress expectations, saying there’s little chance he’ll raise that much. In fact, many members told The Wall Street Journal they haven’t even done any work yet. There’s a vicious cycle at work here, which is that as donors see the Trump campaign in chaos, they’re unwilling to fork over their hard-earned cash. Why back a candidate who’s rending the Republican Party apart, doesn’t follow conservative orthodoxy, and seems to have no idea what he’s doing with the money?

Trump, naturally, says he’s unperturbed. . . . “I just don’t think I need nearly as much money as other people need because I get so much publicity. I get so many invitations to be on television. I get so many interviews, if I want them.” In an interview with The New York Times, he cited social media as a replacement: “He noted that he is nearing the ability to reach 20 million people by himself through his personal Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts, providing an alternative way to reach the public, even if it’s largely a one-way conversation.”

That seems to represent a basic misunderstanding of what campaigns do. It’s hard to imagine that Trump could replace media buys, from television to web advertising, through his simple star power and social media; using a single national portal for his message skips over the opportunity to hammer home locally important messages. And it leaves out all the other stuff that campaigns spend on, like going out and identifying prospective voters, winning them over, getting them to register, and then convincing them to vote. Let’s see a Twitter account do that!

[W]hat Trump is attempting to pull off here isn’t refining or improving best practices for what we know can win a campaign today. It’s throwing it all out the window. Since Trump is trying something so different, it’s hard to completely reject it as foolhardy. Maybe he can really pull this off. But by all of the known metrics, it makes no sense.

The flap over Trump’s racist attacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel has kept the attention away from how little Trump is doing to build up state teams and raise money, and so has his focus on places like California and New York. But he doesn’t seem to be using the time he’s bought to build up anything resembling a real presidential campaign.

As a former Republican who opposed the racism, homophobia and  celebration of ignorance that became increasingly accepted by the GOP from 2000 forward - I ultimately resigned in utter frustration - I hope Trump destroys the GOP.  I truly believe it is beyond saving.  The question is, what party will arise to replace it. 

GOP Donors Hire Consulting Firm to Research Independent Presidential Bid

The hysteria over Donald Trump continues within the GOP establishment and now Politico is reporting that some major GOP donors are seeking to potentially launch an independent candidate to challenge Donald Trump and the Democrat presidential candidate.  A GOP consulting firm has been hired to research ballot access issues and, perhaps to identify a possible candidate.  With the GOP seemingly about to splinter, Hillary Clinton mast have a big smile on her face.   On a wider scale, perhaps the movement, if it continues, will be the first step in the official death of the Republican Party.  Here are article highlights:

Conservative donors have engaged a major GOP consulting firm in Florida to research the feasibility of mounting a late, independent run for president amid growing fears that Donald Trump could win the Republican nomination.

A memo prepared for the group zeroes in on ballot access as a looming obstacle for any independent candidate, along with actually identifying a viable, widely known contender and coalescing financial support for that person. The two states with the earliest deadlines for independent candidates, Texas and North Carolina, also have some of the highest hurdles for independents to get on the ballot, according to the research.

“All this research has to happen before March 16, when inevitably Trump is the nominee, so that we have a plan in place," a source familiar with the discussions said. March 16 is the day after the GOP primary in Florida, a winner-take-all contest that Marco Rubio supporters have identified as a must-win to stop Trump's early momentum.

The research points to Texas and North Carolina as early tests for running an independent, conservative candidate against Trump and the Democratic nominee. The candidate would need to gather over 79,900 valid petition signatures in Texas by May 9 and over 89,000 in North Carolina by June 9.

Only two other states have thresholds that high, and gathering petitions can be an expensive and time-consuming process. What’s more, the Texas signatures would have to come entirely from voters who did not vote in this year’s Democratic and Republican primaries.

But “with 38 electoral votes in play in Texas and North Carolina’s true swing state status, failing to qualify in either or both states would render any independent candidate non-viable,” the report's authors wrote. “This is logistically possible but will require immediate action.”

By July 15, the independent candidate would need more than 460,000 voter signatures to make the ballot in 11 states. Assuming an April 1 start date, the campaign would have to gather 4,345 valid signatures per day to maintain a steady pace.

Will Marco Rubio Change His Position on Gay Marriage?

In Iowa Marco Rubio was prostituting himself to the far right Christofascists big time in an effort to win over the evangelical vote.  Now, with a strong third place finish, his prospects look improved and some of his big money backers may be more inclined to hand over more financial backing.  One major player that Rubio may need to placate is billionaire Paul Singer who is a strong proponent of same sex marriage and gay rights.  A piece in Forward.com looks at the dilemma that may soon face Rubio.  Here are excerpts:

In an election cycle dominated by mega-donors, Sheldon Adelson, the brash, pro-Israel Las Vegas casino mogul, has become the symbol of powerful billionaires courted by candidates for their game-changing financial support.

But out on the East Coast there is another, quieter Jewish mega-donor drawing attention among Republicans: Paul Singer, the New York hedge fund billionaire, philanthropist and political player who is betting on Marco Rubio as the candidate able to lead his party back to the White House.
Now, with Rubio’s strong third-place finish in the Iowa caucus, Singer’s early backing for the Florida senator looks more important than ever for the ballast it has given his bid—and the influence that the early backing is likely to give Singer.

Singer is described as calculated and methodical, mainstream in Republican terms, and with surprising liberal streaks lining his strong fiscal conservatism. He is also known for his caution in political giving.

Moreover, Singer is anything but a single-issue donor. In fact, some of the issues close to his heart can at times seem difficult to reconcile. But Singer manages to be both a major donor of a Republican Party shifting gradually toward the right and a prominent champion of gay and lesbian rights without losing his political sway.

Singer’s net worth value is estimated at $2.1 billion, making him, according to Forbes, the 327th richest person in America.

The billionaire investor’s political involvements mirror his activist style of doing business. Not only does he put up big money himself — as much as $17 million in the past 25 years — he also makes sure to engage other donors, bundle for his candidates and strictly screen politicians before putting his dollars behind their campaigns.

Singer supports a slew of educational programs. He also provides generous support to the Human Rights Campaign, the leading national organization fighting for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights.

 Singer became immersed in gay rights issues following his gay son’s struggle to marry. He has since been an advocate for marriage equality and a key financial backer of LGBT rights organizations. In some cases, Singer has served as a bridge to conservatives and Republican donors for these groups, allowing them to connect to supporters on the right who had previously been beyond reach.

“It wasn’t just the money,” said Evan Wolfson, founder and president of Freedom to Marry. “Singer and his team were key strategic partners to win over conservatives and to use his leadership to bring in right-of-center funders.”

As the primary season begins in earnest with the Iowa caucuses, Singer intends to continue helping his candidate, Rubio, win over donors and voters. Singer, the source close to him said, has “real concerns” regarding the other candidates’ prospects of winning the general elections. This includes Donald Trump, the current leader of the GOP pack, who, in Singer’s eyes, “is not a Republican.”

Of course, if any of the gay rumors currently be circulated about Rubio are true, he'd be wise to moderate his positions to avoid being outed at an inopportune time.

Republicans’s Sad Last Resort: Jeb and Mitt the 2016 Saviors?

As the GOP has become more insane and extreme, the so-called GOP establishment and the GOP donor class find themselves casting about for 2016 saviors who can prevent some demagogue Tea Party favorite from capturing the 2016 presidential nomination.With Bob McDonnell ready to go on trial under federal indictments, Chris Christie still caught up in "Bridge Gate" and even Scott Walker under possible criminal charges, the field of would be saviors is more than just a little barren,  Adding to the problem is the likelihood that what few sane Republicans there still are in the party, most are probably reluctant to face the grueling primary process where their very sanity would be an impediment to winning the nomination.   The solution in some minds?  Bring back Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush, neither of whom stir the hearts of the GOP base.  A column in Salon looks at the establishment's predicament.  Here are excerpts:

Only last week, it seemed as if scandal-dogged GOP Govs. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Scott Walker of Wisconsin might be back in the 2016 game. At Mitt Romney’s Utah summit, Christie told big donors that his troubles are “over, it’s done with and I’m moving on.” Walker’s supporters crowed that in May, a judge put an end to the second John Doe probe he’s faced, this one into illegal coordination between his anti-recall campaign and outside conservative groups like Club for Growth.

Then came Thursday, when shoes dropped for both men. An Esquire report alleged that U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman has close Christie confidants talking about all the New Jersey scandals, not just Bridgegate, and he may be close to indictments. The same day a Wisconsin judge released documents showing that John Doe prosecutors believed Walker was at the center of a “criminal scheme” – two words no governor wants to see attached to his name.

Walker may not face any further legal trouble here. But his political trouble keeps getting worse. The most stunning piece of evidence was an email from Walker himself to Karl Rove, boasting about his political operation, which seems to indicate some effort to coordinate with outside groups like Rove’s American Crossroads – though in the end, Rove did not wind up getting involved with the Wisconsin races.

At any rate, the continuing flow of bad news out of New Jersey and Wisconsin has to terrify GOP donors and the rumored “establishment.” It’s increasingly unlikely that either governor can emerge as a “pragmatic,” pro-business 2016 alternative to Tea Party zealots like Sens. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. This ups the pressure on former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to run – and may even swell the ranks of Republicans reassuring two-time loser Mitt Romney that the third time’s the charm.

Don’t laugh: Romney is the runaway front-runner in a New Hampshire primary poll released Thursday night, crushing Christie and Paul and the rest of the field. OK, it’s one of Romney’s many “home states,” but that’s got to have Romney admirers thinking “what if?” The Romney-convened summit that hosted Christie last week also featured lots of wistful thinking about what a President Romney might be doing now – as well as what President Romney could do in 2017.

“It was intended to be a passing of the torch to the Republican Party’s would-be saviors,” the Washington Post’s Phillip Rucker wrote Monday. Instead, it “became a Romney revival.”
[L]eading Romney fundraiser Harold Hamm told Rucker, “Everybody realizes we’re devoid of leadership in D.C. Everybody would encourage him to consider it again.”

Meanwhile on Monday Jeb Bush heads to Cincinnati to headline a Republican National Committee fundraising dinner, a visit to a crucial swing state his brother carried in 2004 that’s been lost to Republicans ever since.

Still, a man who describes some illegal immigration as “an act of love” is inarguably out of step with the GOP primary base,

Cantor’s loss aside.Some Republicans have floated Bush as a smart choice for vice president, especially if the nominee is a green Tea Partyer from a Red State. “Jeb could be a safe choice for anybody,” Stuart Spencer, who helped push Ronald Reagan to pick Bush’s father for V.P., told the National Journal.

[B]ig GOP donors can’t be reassured by either governor [Christie or Walker].  The party’s hopes now rest with two flawed candidates, one of whom insists he won’t run again, while Bush only equivocates. Reporters who are busy inventing rivals for Hillary Clinton in 2016 ought to put their imagination into coming up with presidential candidates for a party that truly needs them.

Wall Street Talks Gay Rights at Davos

Paul Singer

While the Bible thumpers, theocrats at The Family Foundation, and Tea Party Neanderthals in Virginia are already shrieking and whining over Attorney General Mark Herring's decision to seek to have the Marshall-Newman Amendment and state statutory gay marriage bans invalidated, some of the most powerful players on Wall Street were taking their support for gay equality to the world stage.  The reality is that outside of ignorant regions of the world - e.g., parts of Africa and Middle Eastern nations - and dictatorships like Russia, the world is changing and it is time for the GOP and modern businesses to wake up.  Truth be told, the opponents of gay equality are today's equivalent of the racists who vowed "segregation forever" and clung to professed religious belief to support bigotry.  The New York Times looks at events in Davos.  Here are highlights:

When the World Economic Forum made “inclusiveness” one of its pillar themes, it was safe to assume the assembled corporate leaders would discuss economic issues.

But two of the busiest activist hedge fund managers on Wall Street spent 90 minutes on Thursday morning debating the state of gay, lesbian and transgender rights with an international array of activists. (You can watch video of the event.)

The financiers, Daniel S. Loeb of Third Point and Paul E. Singer of Elliott Management, were among the presenters and sponsors of the event. During their part of the debate, both men spoke of the seeming unlikelihood that prominent investors would take a stand on gay rights.

Mr. Singer recounted how his son told him he was gay at the age of 21, prompting him to examine the issue of gay rights. Despite being one of the biggest donors to the Republican party — as the host, the journalist Fareed Zakaria, jokingly put it, the financier is both politically conservative and “really rich” — he has become one of the most active gay marriage proponents in finance.

When asked if he used his influence on politicians to push a pro-gay-marriage agenda, however, Mr. Singer demurred. But he added that would-be political beneficiaries are aware of his work.

For Mr. Loeb, whose wife’s best friends are a lesbian couple and who was enlisted into the fight by Mr. Singer, the playbook for gay-rights campaigns was little different from the battles he has waged at companies like Sotheby’s and Yahoo. There’s the financial lever, spending money to promote one’s agenda; the legal lever; and then there’s social pressure to advance one’s cause. “It’s not cool to be anti-gay,” he declared.

“As an activist, it resonated to see the levers that can be pushed,” Mr. Loeb said.

Chad Griffin, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, called for a little activism at the Forum.

“Fifty feet across the street is President Jonathan,” he said. “He wants your business. Ensure that you ask the questions.”

Thursday’s discussion drew in an array of high-profile attendees of the Forum, including Sir Richard Branson; William Browder, the head of the hedge fund Hermitage Capital Management and a critic of the Kremlin; and Brad Smith, Microsoft’s top in-house lawyer.

Divisions in the Virginia GOP Intensify

In the wake of Ken Cuccinelli's loss on Tuesday, watching the Virginia GOP's circular firing squad is seemingly going to be most entertaining to watch.  Already it is clear that the Kool-Aid drinkers of the Party's Christofascist/Tea Party base will never concede that it was their nomination of extremists (and in the case of "Bishop" Jackson, a total lunatic) that lies at the root of the GOP defeat.  Hence, they will blame anyone and everyone other than themselves.  Meanwhile, the so-called GOP establishment types show little willingness to take blame for the doings of the far right loons.  The same holds true of the GOP donor class.  They will soon learn - if they haven't already - that you cannot reason with crazy people.  Their only real solution is to sit out several election cycles and allow the Christofascists/Tea Party to run the GOP into the ground before launching a coup to oust the "godly Christian" crowd and the white supremacist elements of the base. A piece in the Washington Post looks at the fray.  Here are highlights:

If lessons emerged from Tuesday’s vote, they were almost instantly lost in the volley of finger-pointing that began even before the polls closed. Republican Ken Cuccinelli II’s narrow loss, despite what opinion surveys had consistently called a comfortable lead for McAuliffe, left the candidate’s camp accusing national party organizations of abandoning their man in the closest major race in the nation this year.

Party officials said it was Cuccinelli who had failed to raise money from mainstream Republican sources skeptical of his hard-line rhetoric and uncompromising conservatism.

“The lesson is that a party divided is going to lose,” said Pete Snyder, a Northern Virginia technology entrepreneur who served as Cuccinelli’s finance chairman. “The Democrats weren’t happy with their candidate, but they were united. Ken Cuccinelli had to deal with Melrose Place.”

“A resounding defeat would have allowed the business wing of the Republican Party to make the case against the social conservative wing that we need to moderate our appeal,” Kidd said. “But with this result, the tea party wing gets the energy to say, ‘Well, we didn’t do as badly as you said we would.’ ”

Tea party activists indeed made that case, complaining that this was only the latest example of national GOP leaders betraying the grass roots.

Cuccinelli’s chief strategist, Chris LaCivita, said the Republican National Committee and other party groups had doomed the campaign by pulling back on their support when polls in early October showed the candidate losing badly. 

Even though Virginia’s population continues to grow more ethnically mixed, urban and transient, the state remains so evenly divided politically that the people who run campaigns often conclude that the path to victory lies in rallying their party’s core voters rather than reaching out to moderates.

The RNC warned after the 2012 election that Republicans could win only if they found a way to “in fact and deed be inclusive and welcoming” to nonwhites, immigrants and young voters. “If we are not,” an RNC report said, “we will limit our ability to attract young people and others, including many women, who agree with us on some but not all issues.”

Tuesday’s exit polls suggest that Republicans have made little or no headway in appealing to nonwhites or single voters.

Some Republicans who steered clear of Cuccinelli during the campaign said privately that they had hoped for a clear loss to purge the party of its tea party flank and restore power to its more business-oriented, socially moderate core.

Cuccinelli grew incensed by what he perceived as disloyalty as he found himself unable to pay for TV ads to counter the Democrats’ relentless negative ad campaign, according to two Republican insiders who spoke on the condition of anonymity about internal campaign conversations. That anger flowed into election night, when Cuccinelli refused to make the traditional congratulatory phone call to McAuliffe.

Despite Cuccinelli’s personal appeals to RGA chairman Bobby Jindal (La.) and RNC chairman Reince Priebus, the RGA decided against any major new investment, two Republicans said.  

As I said, it will make for interesting spectator sport.

Powerful Donors Seek to Make the GOP Gay Friendly

With the Republican Party effectively in control of Christofascists - e.g., hate group leader Tony Perkins helped write the GOP's 2012 platform - the task of making the Party gay friendly will not be easy.  Or at least not until a few more generations of white evangelical Christian homophobes literally die off.  But this fact is not deterring some major Republican donors from trying to remake the GOP into a more moderate party not dominated by spittle flecked hate merchants.  Leading the charge is billionaire Paul Singer who this blog has mentioned in the past.  Here are highlights from a piece in the Washington Post that looks at this much needed effort:

Few elected Republicans support giving gays the right to marry. The party’s influential social-conservative wing sees “traditional marriage” as a defining issue. And while most major Democrats are rushing to embrace same-sex marriage, none of the most prominent potential Republican presidential candidates have taken that step.

But a powerful group of Republican donors, who see the GOP’s staunch opposition to gay rights as a major problem, is trying to push the party toward a more welcoming middle ground — where candidates who oppose marriage rights can do so without seeming hateful.

The behind-the-scenes effort is being led largely by GOP mega-donor Paul Singer, a hedge fund executive whose son is gay, and former Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman, who revealed his homosexuality in 2010, long after he had left the GOP leadership.

Singer’s advocacy group, the American Unity Fund, has been quietly prodding Republican lawmakers to take a first step toward backing gay rights by voting for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. The measure, which is expected to come to the full Senate for a vote as early as this month, would ban workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Singer’s group recently hired as lobbyists two former GOP lawmakers, Tom Reynolds (N.Y.) and Norm Coleman (Minn.), who say they oppose same-sex marriage but support workplace protections for gays.

A softer GOP approach, they argue, would boost the party’s chances with young voters, women and centrist independents, all of whom tend to be supportive of gay rights and have drifted away from the party.

One poll-tested sound bite being suggested to candidates references the Golden Rule — to “treat others as we’d like to be treated, including gay, lesbian and transgender Americans.” The line, according to a memo from a GOP polling firm hired to guide the campaign, wins support from 89 percent of Republican voters.

“The Republican image, unfortunately, is one in which we have an empathy gap,” Coleman said. “That impacts us across the board. An issue like this, which is about being against discrimination, feeds into the long-term future of the party.
“But we’re telling Republicans, ‘If you think you can’t get there on marriage, here is a safe list of things you can support,’ ” said Jeff Cook-McCormac, senior adviser to Singer’s advocacy group.

Organizers say they are confident that the Senate will pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). The Republican-led House, they say, is a taller order, though they note that Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), the party’s 2012 vice-presidential nominee, has voiced support for workplace protections in the past.

Social-conservative leaders say the effort by gay rights backers won’t work.   “Regardless of how much money [Singer and his allies] bring to the table, it is not to the advantage of Republican officeholders politically to support his agenda,” said Peter Sprigg, senior fellow for policy studies at the Family Research Council, one of the major evangelical groups opposing the ENDA. “Particularly in Republican primaries, the Republican Party is still strongly socially conservative. These are core convictions that people have.”

I applaud Singer's efforts, but candidly think he'd get farther by backing gay friendly Democrats and targeting anti-gay Republicans for defeat.  Today's white Evangelical Christians are defined by hate, bigotry and selfishness.  They make a mockery of the Gospel message.  I also wish the Washington Post would start recognizing that FRC is a hate group and identifying it as such in news articles.

Republican Donors' Frustration with Christofascist/Tea Party Dominated GOP Mounts

I have been saying for a long time that the so-called GOP establishment created a Frankenstein monster when it willingly - or at least by default - allowed the Christofascists and then the Tea Party to infiltrate and ultimately take over much of the Republican Party grass roots, driving out sane and rational Republicans from the Party in the process.  I saw it happen first hand in Virginia Beach, Virginia where I finally resigned from the GOP City Committee when I could no longer close my eyes and hold my nose to the Christofascists batshitery that sought to fuse the GOP with the extremist dogma of the far right Christian extremists.  At the time, the establishment types  foolishly thought they could control the unwashed cretins and demagogues of the Christian Right.  Now, the monied powers that be - or more aptly, used to be - are discovering just how uncontrollable the Christofascists and spittle flecked Tea Party minions are in fact.  A piece in Politico looks at the angst and frustration of the GOP mega donors.  Here are excerpts:

Republican donors were horrified in November after pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into campaigns for president and Congress with nothing to show for it. A year later they’re appalled by how little has changed, angered by the behavior of Republican lawmakers during a string of legislative battles this year capped by the shutdown, and searching for answers.

Some donors are looking to take matters into their own hands.

New York City GOP mega-bundler Paul Singer has held a series of informal, and a few very formal, discussions in recent months with other extremely wealthy donors about how best to spend their cash in 2014, including debating the idea of forming a new entity to play a serious role in the midterm races. Its focus would be on improving the quality of Republican candidates in the hopes of avoiding more Todd Akin-like candidates who blow eminently winnable races.

“He wants to win,” one donor who attended a session said of Singer. The donor stressed that the hedge fund billionaire’s meetings, like other informal gatherings among the monied class this year, were taking place well prior to the government shutdown.

Still, some donors think the reluctance about giving among their ranks may have reached an inflection point over the way a number of Republicans in Washington acquitted themselves the past few weeks.

Donors and business leaders, whose words used to carry great weight with candidates ever worried that the money spigot might be turned off, now face a new reality. It’s a Frankenstein syndrome of sorts, in which the candidates they’ve helped fund, directly or indirectly, don’t fear them, and don’t think they need them.

Many business leaders are exasperated by their diminished influence among congressional Republicans since the 2012 election, and by the rising clout of groups like the Senate Conservative Fund, which have run ads against incumbent Republican senators for not taking enough of a hard line on the shutdown.

At issue is not just the shutdown, but legislative battles earlier this year, such as the stymied attempt at immigration reform. Several Republican donors said watching that effort run into headwinds among conservative House members, combined with the tortured standoff over the government shutdown and potential debt default, had left a sour taste in their mouths.

Some expressed frustration that the national party has not taken a strong stand. That sentiment extends to the RNC, whose chairman, Reince Priebus, wrote shortly before the shutdown that he would “stand with Ted Cruz any day” against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).  Fred Zeidman, a Texas-based bundler who supported Mitt Romney and George W. Bush, is among those who don’t want to give to party committees right now.

“Why do I want to fuel a fire that’s going to consume us?“ he asked.  Singer, meanwhile, is considering a do-it-yourself approach.

Despite his business background, Singer’s issue is not with the tea party per se — he has been a major donor to the Club for Growth, which has backed Cruz, a progenitor of the movement to defund Obamacare — but with the GOP at large losing race after race.

[A] senior Republican familiar with an event planned in New York on Nov. 4, also with Wall Street donors, said the response has been tepid.

In November, Priebus faced an angry group of donors who demanded changes to the party’s primary calendar and, according to sources present at the meeting in New York, asked him to try to shrink the influence of Iowa on the presidential nominating process.

Instead, the grass roots — with its ability to raise money in low-dollar amounts online and spread a message through self-selected conservative-leaning media — have only demonstrated to major donors the limits of the national party’s influence.

Al Hoffman, a mega-donor and former U.S. ambassador to Portugal, said conservative activists have delivered an unmistakable message to donors and business leaders who warned about a potential default on the debt: “We don’t care.”

“So many in the House are hard-right reactionary tea party,” he told POLITICO during the shutdown. “And those Republicans, it appears, are ready to self-immolate, and are willing to risk the destruction of the party by risking the destruction of the economy, by risking a default.”

There's more worth a read.  I for one, have zero sympathy for the GOP large donor class.  They allowed the swamp fever to over take the party and are reaping what they sowed.  Frankly, they need to cease ALL donations to the GOP, allow it to crash and burn and come in after the fact and rescue the party, kicking the Tea Party loons and Christofascist extremist to the curb in the process.  The GOP will never resurrect it self unless and until ignorance embracing lunatics, out right racists and bigots no longer can control the party either nationally of locally.

GOP Donors Revolt Against GOP Led Government Shutdown

Large GOP donors largely sat on their hands as the so-called GOP establishment allowed evangelical Christians - i.e., the Christofascists - and their equally mentally disturbed Tea Party cousins to infiltrate and ultimately hijack the Republican Party.   It's still not clear if these donors were asleep at the wheel or foolishly thought that they would be able to control the Frankenstein monster that was created.  Either way, the educated donor set now is seeing the results of their indifference and/or arrogance as the GOP shuts down the federal government and now threatens a U.S. debt default. A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the far too late revolt among the large GOP donor class.  Here are some highlights:

On a Monday last month, Rep. Greg Walden, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, met with some top GOP donors for lunch at Le Cirque on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. The donors, a youngish collection of financial industry types and lawyers, had some questions for Walden, a mild-mannered lawmaker from eastern Oregon known for speaking his mind.

Why, they asked, did the GOP seem so in the thrall of its most extremist wing? The donors, banker types who occupy the upper reaches of Wall Street’s towers, couldn’t understand why the Republican Party—their party—seemed close to threatening the nation with a government shutdown, never mind a default if the debt ceiling isn’t raised later this month.

“Listen,” Walden said, according to several people present. “We have to do this because of the Tea Party. If we don’t, these guys are going to get primaried and they are going to lose their primary.”

Walden asked how many of those seated around the table were precinct captains. These were money men, though, not the types to spend night after night knocking on doors and slipping palm cards into mailboxes. “A lot of the people there didn’t even know what a precinct captain was,” said one attendee.
 
I hear this complaint all the time,” Walden said. “But no one gets involved at the local level. The Tea Party gets involved at the local level.”

It is unlikely that the gilded power brokers in the Republican Party are likely to join their local county political club any time soon, but as the stock market wobbles amid the government shutdown and the continued demand for an Obamacare delay, a number of GOP donors are wondering if it is time for a little outside counter-pressure to sap the Tea Party of some of its energy. 

[S]everal top GOP donors say figuring out a way to “break the fever”—as Obama once put it—or at least keep their fellow party members from damaging the economy any further has become Topic A in their social set.

“We are finding a marvelous way to grab defeat from the jaws of victory,” said Fred Zeidman, a Houston-based businessman who was a major donor to both of George W. Bush’s presidential campaigns. “The way we are handling this has been a mistake from the beginning. I think we misread where the country was.”

“The Tea Party is not looking at the big picture,” he said. “In the long run it will have deleterious effects on the whole party when we could have taken the high road. There is so much going on right now with Obamacare, and no one is saying a word about it.”

“I am not writing a check to anyone,” he added. “That is not working for the American people.”  Bobbie Kilberg, a Republican fundraiser who has worked for four Republican presidents, echoed Zeidman.. . . . “When you have a small segment who dictate to the rest of the party, the result is what we have seen in the last two days,” she said. “People need to stand up and not be afraid of the Tea Party.” “This may be a turning point,” she predicted. “People may say, ‘Enough already.’”

[T]here is still a sense among the donor class that some countervailing force is needed to push back against the furthest edges of the party, regardless of what it is called.

“I have raised a lot of money, but I am not raising any more for House candidates,” said Munr Kazmir, a New Jersey-based businessman and major donor to George W. Bush. “I am angry. I am embarrassed to be a Republican sometimes, I tell you.”

I'm sorry, but withholding money isn't the answer.  Walking away, funding Democrat challengers and guaranteeing repeated GOP defeats are the only thing that will ultimately force change in the GOP.  This way, the GOP has to change or die.  Here in Virginia some wealthy GOP donors have finally recognized this reality and are backing Terry McAuliffe for governor because they recognize that Ken Cuccinelli is the product of the metastasizing cancer the Christofascists and Tea Party represent.