Corey Stewart Aide Compared GOP Establishment to "House Negro," Disparaged Civil Rights Leaders

Lest we forget that not all insane Republicans are found in Washington, D.C., Corey Stewart's campaign is underscoring the extremism of both Stewart's agenda and how the Republican Party of old is dead and gone.  Specifically, Rick Shaftan, a spokesman and leading consultant for Stewart called "establishment Republicans" by the derogatory term of "house Negros" and then went on to attack leaders in the civil rights movement.  Like Stewart who is challenging Democrat Tim Kaine for one of Virginia's U.S. Senate seats, Shaftan makes little effort to hide his racial bigotry or his willingness to subscribe to far right conspiracy theories.  Here are highlights from CNN:

A top consultant and spokesman for Corey Stewart, the Republican nominee for US Senate in Virginia, has used the term "house negro" to criticize the GOP establishment and disparaged prominent Civil Rights figures John Lewis and Rosa Parks.

Rick Shaftan made the comments in tweets newly uncovered by CNN's KFile. The previously unreported tweets come on the heels of a report from the Daily Beast that he described majority-black cities as "sh**holes" and told his followers not to open businesses in black neighborhoods.

Shaftan's consulting firm, Atlantic Media & Research, has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Stewart's campaigns for governor and Senate, according to election records. He previously worked on Stewart's gubernatorial campaign and for a super PAC that backed Paul Nehlen, a candidate for Paul Ryan's congressional seat who has made racist and anti-Semitic posts on social media. 

Stewart, who has faced scrutiny of his own for defending Confederate symbols and publicly associating with white nationalists in the past, is challenging Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine in November.

Neither Shaftan nor the Stewart campaign returned a CNN request for comment. In response to the Daily Beast story, Shaftan wrote on Facebook, "I must have said something worse than that in all these years! They need to look harder."

A closer look reveals that in a tweet on October 2014, Shaftan wrote, "There are a lot of parallels between the 'House Negro' and the GOP Establishment."

In September 2015, Shaftan again used the derogatory term, which refers to slaves who worked in the house of their master as opposed to in the fields, implying that the slaves' loyalty lay with the master rather than with their fellow slaves.

In September 2015, he suggested that he did not admire civil rights figure Rosa Parks, tweeting, "Rosa Parks. Give me a effing break. How about PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY?" Schlafly was a conservative political activist.

Shaftan wrote of Democratic Georgia Rep. John Lewis in January 2017, "So what has John Lewis done besides get beat up 50+ years ago? #PompousAss." In 1965, a then- 25-year-old Lewis was beaten badly by state troopers while marching for voting rights in Alabama.

In other posts, Shaftan referred to Michael Brown, the black teenager shot by white police officer Darren Wilson, as a "thug", saying that he "received justice at the hands of Officer Wilson" in August 2014. In response to the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, following Brown's shooting, Shaftan tweeted, "Animals. #Ferguson" in November 2014.

In July of this year, Shaftan referred to New Jersey's attorney general, the first Sikh to hold the office, as "Turban Man," a term for which two local radio hosts were suspended last week.

In April 2017, Shaftan also hinted at the conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, joking on Facebook, "You all know we never saw the REAL Obama Birth Certificate because it had Politically Incorrect 1961 language on it."Responding to a comment saying that he thought the birth certificate might have said "illegitimate," Shaftan wrote, "Or 'bastard', or 'colored', or 'Negro', etc."

Sadly, Stewart and Shaftan now represent the face of much of the Republican Party base. It is crucial that anyone who finds this version of the GOP offensive get out and vote for Tim Kaine in November.  Stewart needs to lose by the widest margin possible. 

The Roots of Republican Dysfunction and Insanity

Today's Republican Party bears no resemblance to what it was even 15 years ago, although the roots of the party's current dysfunction and championing of hate and bigotry began much further back in time.  Richard Nixon's implementation of the so-called "Southern Strategy" put out the welcome mat for racists and white supremacists, but for many years the "adults in the room" in the party leadership were able to keep the more virulent racists under control and largely out of view other than dog whistle messaging. Next, the Christofascists were made welcome in a low key manner under Reagan and the insanity of the party base began in earnest.   Foolishly, George W. Bush threw the doors to the party wide open to religious extremists when he and Karl Rove used same sex marriage as tool to secure Bush's reelection in 2004.  From that point on, the party's embrace of ignorance and bigotry became raging torrent.  This insanity and war against modernity reach its apogee with the election of Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the GOP's descent to the ugly reality that it has become, something too many otherwise decent Republicans - I could name names but I will not - refuse to recognize as they continue to support a party that in fact no longer exists except in their own minds.  Here are column highlights:

[A]fter nine months of party control of Congress and the White House, the Republicans have accomplished essentially nothing. They have become a party without a consensus.

It would be easy to simply blame the president for the party’s disarray. Donald Trump’s aversion to policy detail, his chaotic management style and his combustible personality have all contributed to the party’s failures this year.

Yet it would also be a mistake to pin the party’s problems on Mr. Trump alone. He is not their root cause. Instead, he is an avatar of the party’s pathologies, the culmination of its cynical and shambolic trajectory over the last two decades.

Many of those issues can be traced back to the administration of George W. Bush, which functioned as an enormous political bait and switch. The 43rd president campaigned on humble foreign policy and prudent conservative solutions, but his presidency quickly became oriented almost exclusively around a political defense of the Iraq war.

This meant that domestic policy, and the realm of domestic policy expertise, became an afterthought at best, an opportunity for cynical political maneuvering at worst.

But Mr. Bush’s post-Sept. 11 popularity instilled the administration with an arrogance that extended far beyond the war itself. The president’s inner circle became convinced that the Republican Party was destined for years of unbroken political domination; the ambition-spoiling concerns of the “reality-based community” no longer needed to be taken into account.

National security fear-mongering and culture war controversies, especially over same-sex marriage, were employed to rally the base and ensure its loyalty, even as dissatisfaction with Mr. Bush’s governance continued to grow.

The Bush presidency, then, was both a failure and a fraud. Instead of foreign policy restraint and modest conservative governance, the Bush administration delivered a pair of endless deficit-financed wars, cynical posturing over social issues, soaring federal spending and, eventually, a large-scale emergency intervention in the economy.

Arguably as important as the particular failures themselves, however, was the way the party infrastructure — its leaders and functionaries, its activists and operators — formed a partisan phalanx around the president, playing down his flaws, if not refusing to acknowledge them. . . . by excusing Mr. Bush’s errors, Republicans radically expanded the trust deficit, creating a yawning gap between the party’s base and its elites, one that has persisted, and grown, in the years since. . . .

Mr. Bush left many voters on the right angry, resentful and suspicious — of war, of policy, of ideology, of the very idea of political solutions and leadership.  It attracted hucksters and manipulators, in the media and in the activist sphere, and embraced a cast of unconventional and unqualified candidates. Republican Party elites were only too happy to exploit this inchoate energy as long as it was useful.

The defeats of both Mr. McCain and Mr. Romney left the party leaderless, and Mr. Bush’s shredded reputation meant it could not follow the course he had laid out. So the party became defined by what was left: its resentments and suspicions, its antagonisms and obsessions, its anger and its differences. It retreated into tribalism and anti-intellectualism. Eventually, the sideshow became the main event.

Mr. Trump, of course, is the biggest sideshow of them all. He exploited the gap between the base and the elites, embodying the dysfunction and disarray that already existed.

Mr. Trump’s goals have more to do with Twitter feuds and personal aggrandizement than any particular policies. Under Mr. Trump, the party’s chief internal debate is not so much about which governing vision to pursue but whether there should be one at all.

Republican voters, meanwhile, were attracted to shallow political entertainers and obviously unqualified candidates long before Mr. Trump threw his hat in the ring.  Mr. Trump didn’t cause any of this. He just took advantage of it. He is the most successful huckster of the bunch.

The GOP's Limited Options to Destroy Trumpism

For decades now the so-called GOP establishment held its nose and closed its eyes as it cynically and short shortsightedly welcomed one ugly constituency into the party base, always believing that the establishment could control the unwashed welcomed in in order to win short term electoral victories.  First came the Christofascists, next the white supremacist, and now the Al-Right and downright insane. The end result is the presidency of Der  Trumpenführer and a party base where truth, knowledge and objective facts are ignored - indeed, they are condemned, both by the occupant of the White House and the knuckle draggers of the base.  How this cancer is removed without the death of the GOP itself is a difficult question, with no easy solutions.  A column in the Washington Post looks at  some of the limited options.  Here are column highlights:

Nearly 150 days into the Trump era, no non-delusional conservative can be happy with the direction of events or pleased with the options going forward.

President Trump is remarkably unpopular, particularly with the young (among whom his approval is underwater by a remarkable 48 percentage points in one poll). And the reasons have little to do with elitism or media bias.

Trump has been ruled by compulsions, obsessions and vindictiveness, expressed nearly daily on Twitter. He has demonstrated an egotism that borders on solipsism. His political skills as president have been close to nonexistent. His White House is divided, incompetent and chaotic, and key administration jobs remain unfilled. His legislative agenda has gone nowhere. He has told constant, childish, refuted, uncorrected lies, and demanded and habituated deception among his underlings. He has humiliated and undercut his staff while requiring and rewarding flattery. He has promoted self-serving conspiracy theories. He has displayed pathetic, even frightening, ignorance on policy matters foreign and domestic. 

Trump has made consistent appeals to prejudice based on religion and ethnicity, and associated the Republican Party with bias. He has stoked tribal hostilities. He has carelessly fractured our national unity. He has attempted to undermine respect for any institution that opposes or limits him — be it the responsible press, the courts or the intelligence community. He has invited criminal investigation through his secrecy and carelessness. He has publicly attempted to intimidate law enforcement. He has systematically alarmed our allies and given comfort to authoritarians.

For many Republicans and conservatives, there is apparently no last straw, with offenses mounting bale by bale. . . . He is the general, so shut up and salute. What, after all, is the conservative endgame other than Trump’s success?

[H]ope for a new and improved Trump deteriorates into unreason. The idea that an alliance with Trump will end anywhere but disaster is a delusion. . . . . Both individuals and the Republican Party are being corrupted and stained by their embrace of Trump. The endgame of accommodation is to be morally and politically discredited. Those committed to this approach warn of national decline — and are practically assisting it. They warn of decadence — and provide refreshments at the orgy.

So what is the proper objective for Republicans and conservatives? It is the defeat of Trumpism, preferably without the destruction of the GOP itself. 

Creating a conservative third party — as some have proposed — would have the effect of delivering national victories to a uniformly liberal and unreformed Democratic Party. A bad idea.

A primary challenge to Trump in the 2020 presidential election is more attractive, but very much an outside shot. An unlikely idea.

It is possible — if Democrats take the House in 2018 — that impeachment will ripen into a serious movement, . . . . A theoretical idea.

A Democratic victory in the 2020 election would represent the defeat of Trumpism and might be a prelude to Republican reform. But Democrats seem to be viewing Trump’s troubles as an opportunity to plunge leftward with a more frankly socialistic and culturally liberal message.

Or Republicans and conservatives could just try to outlast Trump — closing the shutters and waiting for the hurricane to pass — while rooting for the success of a strong bench of rising 40-something leaders . . . .  This may be the most practical approach but risks eight years of ideological entrenchment by Trumpism, along with massive damage to the Republican brand. A complacent idea.

Whatever option is chosen, it will not be easy or pretty. And any comfort for Republicans will be cold because they brought this fate on themselves and the country.

The last sentence is telling - all of this was self-inflicted.  The country is the real loser because of GOP irresponsibility.

Ted Cruz Drops Out of Presidential Race - What Now for the Establishment?

After losing decisively to Donald Trump in Indiana, Ted Cruz announced tonight that he was dropping out of the GOP presidential nomination contest.   As a reader commented today on an earlier post, in someways, despite Donald Trump's demagoguery and flirtations with outright fascism, Cruz was the more frightening candidate given his religious extremism and apparently belief in a Christian Dominionist agenda that in effect longs for a right wing Christian theocracy in America.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Cruz's announcement which comes after a day of insanity of the GOP side of the aisle, including Trumps's claim that Cruz's father was involved in the assassination of JFK.  Here are highlights (Politico also has coverage here):

Ted Cruz, the insurgent Texan whose presidential campaign was fueled by disdain for Washington, dropped out of the 2016 race Tuesday night, removing the last major hurdle in Donald Trump’s quest to become the Republican nominee for president.

Cruz’s decision came after losing overwhelmingly to Trump in the Indiana primary, all but ensuring that real estate mogul will claim his party’s mantle at the Republican National Convention in July.

“I said I would continue on as long as there is a viable path to victory. Tonight, I’m sorry to say, it appears that path has been foreclosed,” Cruz told a small group of supporters here Tuesday night. “Together we left it all on the field in Indiana. We gave it everything we got, but the voters chose another path.”

Cruz also said he would “continue to fight for liberty,” but did not address whether he would support Trump as the nominee.

In his last day on the campaign trail, Cruz unloaded on Trump, calling the businessman a”pathological liar” and a “narcissist” who was proud of being a “serial philanderer.” The attacks were reminiscent of the broadsides Sen. Marco Rubio launched against Trump in the waning days of his own presidential campaign — and a far cry from the lavish praise Cruz heaped on Trump for most of 2015, declaring, “I like Donald Trump.”

Meanwhile, moderate Republicans and the GOP establishment are now faced with the prospect of whether to support Trump, hold their noses and vote for a Democrat, or simply stay home and not vote.  If they chose the latter, many down ballot GOP candidates will likely be defeated.  Another piece in the Post looks at this dilemma. Here are highlights:

Anti-Donald Trump Republicans are starting to consider whether their opposition to a Trump presidency is so strong that they would be prepared to fight him in the general election — even if that means helping put an avowed enemy, Hillary Clinton, in the Oval Office.

One strategy under discussion is to focus on helping down-ballot GOP candidates while sitting out the presidential race under the belief that Trump will lose to Clinton no matter what. A more drastic and difficult option: rallying support for a third-party candidate who could uphold traditional Republican positions but would almost certainly steal votes from Trump.

“You have to bet on sanity,” said GOP strategist Stuart Stevens, who helped lead the campaign of 2012 nominee Mitt Romney. “If this is one of those moments in history where for various reasons the party has to play out nominating someone who is completely unelectable . . . so be it.”

The dilemma came into focus Tuesday night, when Trump scored a decisive victory in Indiana over Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas

“Indiana further confirmed the ‘stop Trump’ efforts didn’t work and spending even more resources in an effort keep him from the nomination will just be expensive political therapy or theatre at this point,” former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, a former Marco Rubio backer who is now neutral, said in an email.

“The GOP is going to nominate for President a guy who reads the National Enquirer and thinks it’s on the level,” tweeted Mark Salter, a former aide to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Then he added a Clinton campaign slogan: “I’m with her.”

For some Republicans, the prospect of a President Clinton is more palatable than a President Trump — not because they like Clinton, but because they could fight her on familiar terrain, rather than watching an unpredictable Trump use the power of the White House to remake the GOP.

Virginia KKK Leader Endorses Donald Trump

While the population of Virginia's increasingly liberal so-called urban crescent ranging from Northern Virginia,m, to Richmond to Hampton Roads is growing, there are large pockets of the state that are pretty scary socially and culturally.  Indeed, the KKK is alive and well in some regions of Virginia if one wanders a short distance off the of Interstate highway system, especially in southwest Virginia and the southern tier of the state.  And who is the Virginia KKK - many of whose members no doubt sit in pews every Sunday congratulating themselves on their own piety and godliness - endorsing in the 2016, presidential contest?  Donald Trump, of course.   And remember that it was the GOP establishment that welcomed these types of nasty individuals in to the party.  A piece in Talking Points Memo looks at this embarrassment.  Here are excerpts:

In a sit-down interview with a Richmond news station, the Imperial Wizard of the Rebel Brigade Knights of the Ku Klux Klan said Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump is his candidate for President.

The KKK leader, identified by WWBT only as “Imperial Wizard,” also insisted his organization is not a hate group, telling the station’s black anchor, “We don’t hate anyone.”

Asked who he was supporting in the 2016 race, the wizard replied: “I think Donald Trump would be best for the job.”

"The reason a lot of Klan members like Donald Trump is because a lot of what he believes in, we believe in. We want our country to be safe,” he said.

The leader went on to say if Trump were to drop out, he would back Ohio Gov. John Kasich before Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), saying Cruz “is not an American citizen” because he was born in Canada.

WWBT’s interview opens with anchor Chris Taylor, trailed by a sheriff’s deputy as a precaution, driving to meet with Klansmen in a remote location in a national forest, because Taylor said the leader would only be interviewed on “his turf.”

The story was spurred by the group mounting a recruitment drive in the Richmond area, dropping fliers that read “I want you for the KKK” in mailboxes and front yards, Taylor said.

“We are not white supremacists, we’re white separatists,” the leader said on camera. “We’re not the big bad hate group people think we are.”

It's not the first time Trump has earned the support of the KKK. Former leader David Duke endorsed the Republican in February, sparking outrage over Trump's delayed response in distancing himself from Duke.

 Let's just say I hope I am never on this guy's turf.  I suspect gays are not exactly welcome in KKK circles even though could certainly use some gay style advise on their tacky costumes. 

The GOP Base - Wrath of the Conned

I and others have repeatedly said that the rise of Donald Trump is something that was created by the so-called Republican establishment which for decades now, especially over the last 15+ years, has used calls to racism, homophobia and other forms of hatred to dupe voters into voting for a party's whose agenda is diametrically opposed the the economic interests of those voters.  Moreover, in order to win short term electoral victories, every kind of right wing extremist - nasty, ignorance embracing people my Republican grand parents would never have affiliated with - were welcomed with open arms into the GOP.  Now, the so-called establishment has lost control of the monster that it nurtured and unleashed on the nation.  A column in the New York Times looks at the phenomenon and contrasts it with the Democrat experience.  Here are excerpts:

Both parties make promises to their bases. But while the Democratic establishment more or less tries to make good on those promises, the Republican establishment has essentially been playing bait-and-switch for decades. And voters finally rebelled against the con.

First, about the Democrats: Their party defines itself as the protector of the poor and the middle class, and especially of nonwhite voters. Does it fall short of fulfilling this mission much of the time?   Are its leaders sometimes too close to big-money donors? Of course. Still, if you look at the record of the Obama years, you see real action on behalf of the party’s goals.

Above all, you have the Affordable Care Act, which has given about 20 million Americans health insurance, with the gains biggest for the poor, minorities and low-wage workers. That’s what you call delivering for the base — and it’s surely one reason nonwhite voters have overwhelmingly favored Mrs. Clinton over a challenger who sometimes seemed to dismiss that achievement.

Maybe you think Democrats could and should have done more, but what the party establishment says and what it does are at least roughly aligned.

Things are very different among Republicans. Their party has historically won elections by appealing to racial enmity and cultural anxiety, but its actual policy agenda is dedicated to serving the interests of the 1 percent, above all through tax cuts for the rich — whicheven Republican voters don’t support, while they truly loathe elite ideas like privatizing Social Security and Medicare.

What Donald Trump has been doing is telling the base that it can order à la carte. He has, in effect, been telling aggrieved white men that they can feed their anger without being forced to swallow supply-side economics, too.

Yes, his actual policy proposals still involve huge tax cuts for the rich, but his supporters don’t know that — and it’s possible that he doesn’t, either. Details aren’t his thing.

Establishment Republicans have tried to counter his appeal by shouting, with growing hysteria, that he isn’t a true conservative. And they’re right, at least as they define conservatism. But their own voters don’t care.

If there’s a puzzle here, it’s why this didn’t happen sooner. One possible explanation is the decadence of the G.O.P. establishment, which has become ingrown and lost touch. Apparatchiks who have spent their whole careers inside the bubble of right-wing think tanks and partisan media may suffer from the delusion that their ideology is actually popular with real people. And this has left them hapless in the face of a Trumpian challenge.

Probably more important, however, is the collision between demography and Obama derangement. The elite knows that the party must broaden its appeal as the electorate grows more diverse — in fact, that was the conclusion of the G.O.P.’s 2013 post-mortem. But the base, its hostility amped up to 11 after seven years of an African-American president (who the establishment has done its best to demonize) is having none of it.

The point, in any case, is that the divergent nomination outcomes of 2016 aren’t an accident. The Democratic establishment has won because it has, however imperfectly, tried to serve its supporters. The Republican establishment has been routed because it has been playing a con game on its supporters all along, and they’ve finally had enough.

And yes, Mr. Trump is playing a con game of his own, and they’ll eventually figure that out, too. But it won’t happen right away, and in any case it won’t help the party establishment.

Paul Ryan Bursts the GOP Establishment Bubble

I loath Paul Ryan who I perceive as a child of privilege reverse Robin Hood.  To many in the GOP establishment who see a brokered convention as the sole route to save the party from the insanity that the establishment created by allowing lunatics to hijack the party base, Paul Ryan was to be the draft savior of the GOP.  Yesterday, Ryan basically said that there was no way, no how that he would accept the party presidential nomination if it were offered at the GOP convention this summer. If Ryan is being truthful - always a big if with the man, the GOP establishment will have to cast about for a different savior.  Meanwhile the anger and discord within the party continues to ferment and grow.  A column in the New York Times looks at the establishment's no-win situation.  Here are highlights:

If Paul Ryan really meant what he said, the Republican Party has lost its best chance to take the White House and maintain control of the Senate.

“Let me be clear: I do not want nor will I accept the nomination for our party,” Ryan told reporters on Tuesday afternoon at a news conference held in the Republican National Committee’s headquarters on Capitol Hill.

Even after Ryan’s declaration, there were some political figures who still consider Ryan a possible nominee. Harold Ickes, a top adviser to Priorities USA, the super PAC supporting Clinton, envisaged a scenario in which Ryan would find himself having difficulty turning down the nomination.

“He does not want to be seen as derailing any candidate. He plays ball, and I suspect this is the art of playing ball,” Ickes said:

If it gets down to a deadlocked convention, and party leaders come to him and say, “Paul, we are going to go down in flames, we are going to lose the Senate and lose ground in the House. Only you can help redeem the party,” it would be pretty hard for him to say no.

Without Ryan at the top of the ticket, the Republican Party faces the likelihood of disaster on Nov. 8, assuming that either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz is the nominee.

What makes Ryan’s statement painful to Republican leaders and a welcome relief to Democrats is that there is a consensus in both parties that Ryan is far better equipped to capitalize on Hillary Clinton’s vulnerabilities than either Trump or Cruz — both of whom have negative ratings that come close to or exceed Clinton’s.

The exceptionally hostile views of all three leading candidates gave momentum — at least until Tuesday afternoon — to speculation among Republican leaders about a Ryan nomination. They do not want to blow the opportunity of a winnable contest. That their speculation can no longer focus on Ryan does not mean that their speculation will end.

At the same time, all the talk split members of the Republican establishment into two camps: those who hoped to see Ryan or some other noncandidate nominated and those who see any attempt to nominate Ryan or another noncandidate as a rejection of the 14.6 million votes cast for Trump and Cruz so far.

As John Feehrey, a Republican lobbyist and party operative, told me,

People inside the beltway are dreaming. It’s going to be either Trump or Cruz. We are in a populist moment in this country. Unless Trump completely collapses in the next couple of months, he will be the nominee. Ryan doesn’t want the nomination under these circumstances.

Rich Lowry, editor of the anti-Trump National Review, believes it would be politically suicidal, given the level of support the two have received in the primaries and caucuses thus far, for the Republican Party to nominate anyone other than Trump or Cruz.

Republican voters “are not interested in someone who’s embedded in the party’s leadership, they’re not interested in someone who is donor friendly, and who’s soft on immigration,” Lowry declared on Meet the Press on April 10th. “It would be one thing if Ryan was a compromise between Cruz and Trump. He’s a rejection of both of them and of 70 percent of Republican voters.”

If no dark horse Republican candidate emerges and if Bernie Sanders does not catch up to Hillary Clinton, the election will feature either Clinton vs. Trump or Clinton vs. Cruz. In that case, the next president is likely to win not because he or she is the most loved, but because he or she is the least hated.

Will Cruz's Wisconsin Win Save or Doom the GOP?

The mud wrestling in the GOP continues in the wake f Ted Cruz's resounding win in the Wisconsin primary on Tuesday.   Some are depicting Cruz's win as the beginning of the end for Donald Trump while others see it as setting the stage for a brokered GOP convention where some non-candidate such as Paul Ryan - who I despise - can be given the nomination and, in the eyes of the so-called GOP establishment, save the party form the frightening rabble of the base that the very same GOP establishment empowered over the last 20+ years.  A piece in Politico looks at all of the maneuvering and in-fighting.  Here are highlights:

In the town of Ripon, Wisconsin, sits a small, white clapboard schoolhouse with the sign: “Birthplace of the Republican Party.” According to Wisconsin lore, the GOP was conceived there in 1853, when a small group of citizens, inspired by their opposition to the spread of slavery, came together to change “the future of our nation,” as the “Little White Schoolhouse” website puts it.

The question we face now is: Has Wisconsin done it again? That is, changed the future of the nation—or at least of the GOP? Republican elites are giddy over the trouncing of Donald Trump by Ted Cruz in Tuesday's primary, and the GOP establishment did pull off a victory when it came to slowing the Trump steamroller. For a few more weeks at least, the world has been made safe for the GOP as we’ve come to know it—aging white men who hold many of their voters in bewilderment or outright contempt and then, more often than not, go on to politely lose to the Democrats in the fall. Usually by a small enough margin that keeps the majority of GOP officeholders in power. (Which is all that really matters, right?)

But the GOP leadership is probably in deep denial. It's far more likely that the Republican Party as we know it died Tuesday night in the same state as it was purportedly born in. What’s forgotten amid the celebration is that 83 percent of Wisconsin Republicans still voted for the two candidates who are most determined to redefine the Party of Lincoln (and Ripon) and break the “establishment” hold on it. In some ways, the Stop Trump movement’s shotgun marriage to Ted Cruz—the most awkward coupling since Michael Jackson “dated” Brooke Shields—is actually a worse bet for what Cruz likes to call “the Washington cartel.” 

Cruz, a shrewd strategist, is also well aware that a number of the people who support him now really hope to force a contested convention and insert somebody more pleasing to their interests. In classic fashion, for example, Lindsey Graham used his awkward endorsement of Cruz, a man whose murder he had joked about only weeks earlier, to endorse John Kasich. The GOP’s all but powerless powers-that-be have said that Cruz is the least bad of two terrible options, with Wisconsin’s own Paul Ryan, the 2012 vice presidential candidate and current speaker of the House, emerging as the favorite dark horse (or white knight: pick your political cliché) to save the party. If the Ryan scenario—however unlikely—does in fact play out, it’s entirely probable that Wisconsin and its favorite son could someday be viewed as saviors of the GOP, or at least of the GOP establishment.

In a blistering statement issued last night that preposterously labeled Cruz an establishment “puppet,” the Trump campaign hit on that point, which will likely be its main campaign theme here on out: The evil establishment is coming for you.

Cruz himself is unlikely to tolerate the label of establishment “puppet” for long. He’ll undoubtedly find a way out of his brief marriage of convenience with the GOP hierarchy—and basically do an end run around them, a tactic at which he is has proved to be highly skilled, after all. Thus, what the Republican elites are likely to have done in Wisconsin is make an eventual arrangement of sorts between the Trump and Cruz factions of the GOP all but inevitable—if only to stop the establishment from screwing them both. And the “Stop Trump” strategists will have to decide whether such blatant defiance of the express wishes of their own voters at Cleveland with Candidate X is worth potentially destroying the GOP once and for all.

In other words, the elites are still more dead than Jon Snow.  So what’s likely to happen now? 

1. The Trump ComebackFor the next few days at least, media pundits will discuss the dismantling of the Trump bandwagon with thinly disguised glee. That is, until they realize how much he helps the ratings. Without Trump dominating the news, what else are they going to talk about—issues? Probably by next week, the media narrative will feature the beginnings of Trump’s comeback.

2. The Cruz Cavalcade GrowsMeanwhile, the professional, even ruthless, Cruz campaign will continue to siphon off delegates wherever they can find them. The senator will score at least a few more victories—and maybe even have a battle to the finish in California. All of which means Cruz will have hundreds of devoted supporters descending on Cleveland with no love for the entrenched veterans of official Washington.

3. A Trump-Cruz PartnershipBoth candidates will arrive at the convention with a vested interest in permitting only one of two names to be placed in nomination—and they’ll collectively have the vast majority of delegates to enforce their will. Whether the two manage a more permanent partnership, as in a ticket together, seems almost unimaginable. But so was the idea that JFK would pick a man he despised, Lyndon B. Johnson, for vice president in 1960, among a half-dozen other odd-couple pairings in U.S. political history. 4. The Romney Do-Over Do-Over?There is one more sensible size 11 shoe that might drop. And that’s Mitt Romney deciding the third time’s the charm—making his interest in a “draft” at the convention a bit more obvious than it is already.

My prediction? Trump and Cruz, who have both come to prominence detesting and being detested by the GOP establishment, will find a way to upend that establishment once again. But whatever happens next, Wisconsin, you deserve the thanks. Or blame. We’re not sure yet.

Keep the popcorn coming.  The spectacle will continue to be interesting to watch.

The Ugliness of Donald Trump's Poor White Supporters

But for the threat it poses to the country as a whole, it would almost be entertaining to watch the civil war that is consuming the Republican Party.   Moreover, some of us would  - and do - tell the GOP leadership that all of the woe they perceive themselves to be facing in the form of Donald Trump's candidacy is a self-created problem.  For years the GOP leadership cynically pander to and inflamed the hate and misogyny of elements of the party base.  Worse yet, they welcomed the Christofascists, white supremacists and those who embraced ignorance into the party ranks and, in far too many instances, voted them onto city and county committees (I recall a local Christian Coalition leader being voted onto the Virginia Beach city committee).  Now, this rabble, if you will, is out of control  and the GOP elites are horrified at what they have wrought, although they seek to place blame on anyone but themselves.  More interestingly, they are now turning on and attacking those who they previously sought to recruit and coddle through efforts to encourage a feeling of victim hood.  A column in the New York Times looks at the phenomenon.  Here are highlights: 

Conservatives who once derided upscale liberals as latte-sipping losers now burst with contempt for the lower-income followers of Donald J. Trump.

These blue-collar white Republicans, a mainstay of the conservative coalition for decades, are now vilified by their former right-wing allies as a “non-Christian” force “in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture,” corrupted by the same “sense of entitlement” that Democratic minorities were formerly accused of.

Kevin Williamson, a columnist for National Review, initiated the most recent escalation of this particular Republican-against-Republican power struggle. In a March 13 essay, “The Father-Führer,” Williamson portrays Trump’s struggling white supporters as relying on their imaginary victimhood when, in fact, he contends:

They failed themselves. If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy — which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog— you will come to an awful realization. It wasn’t Beijing. It wasn’t even Washington, as bad as Washington can be.

Less well-off white voters have only themselves to blame, Williamson continues:

It wasn’t immigrants from Mexico, excessive and problematic as our current immigration levels are. It wasn’t any of that. Nothing happened to them. There wasn’t some awful disaster. There wasn’t a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence — and the incomprehensible malice — of poor white America.

Not satisfied to stop there, Williamson adds:

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs.

Finally, determined to blow a hole in the Trump hot air balloon, the columnist hits hard:

The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

Williamson’s bitterness over the refusal of Trump’s supporters to get in line behind a more acceptable candidate is echoed across the right.

In a prescient Jan. 14 essay, “To Attract Disillusioned Voters, the GOP Must Understand Their Concerns,” Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank, wrote:

America’s self-appointed best and brightest uniformly view the passions unleashed by Trump as the modern-day equivalent of a medieval peasants’ revolt. And, like their medieval forebears, they mean to crush it. That effort is both a fool’s errand for the country and a poisoned chalice for conservatives and Republicans.

In Olsen’s view, disparaging Trump’s lower-income white supporters “will simply intensify the masses’ rage and ensure that their political spokesmen become more intransigent and radical.” Even worse, keeping blue-collar white Americans out of political power will result in exactly what Washington elites have wanted for years: a series of grand bargains that keep the status quo largely intact and the Democratic party in power.

Only now are major party leaders and contributors beginning to recognize the full depth of this intraparty conflict.

On March 28, my colleague Nick Confessore documented in crushing detail how Republican leaders, donors and strategists disregarded the mounting discontent of white working class Republicans, thus setting the stage for the Trump campaign.

The history, Confessore wrote, is one of a party elite that abandoned its most faithful voters, blue-collar white Americans, who faced economic pain and uncertainty over the past decade as the party’s donors, lawmakers and lobbyists prospered. From mobile home parks in Florida and factory towns in Michigan, to Virginia’s coal country, where as many as one in five adults live on Social Security disability payments, disenchanted Republican voters lost faith in the agenda of their party’s leaders.

These setbacks have provided fertile recruiting opportunities for Republicans. David Wasserman, writing at fivethirtyeight.com in December 2015, found that of five voting groups (whites with college degrees, whites without college degrees, African-Americans, Latinos and Asians/others), whites without college degrees are “Republicans’ best group by far.” In 2008, John McCain carried these voters by 14 points, and in 2012 Mitt Romney won them by “a whopping 26 points.”

The virulent attacks on less affluent Republican voters by Williamson et al raise the question: As a matter of practical politics, how can a party that is losing ground in virtually every growing constituency — Hispanics, Asians, single women and the young — even consider jettisoning a single voter, much less the struggling white working class?The Republican Party has seen its core — married white Christians — decline from 62 percent of the population of the United States to 28 percent in 2015, according to the Public Religion Research Institute.

Trump has won his biggest primary margins among less financially secure, less educated voters, turning the traditional winning coalition in Republican primaries upside down. 

The comparatively low levels of support for Trump among college-educated Republicans, women, young voters and those with incomes above $100,000 suggest that these voters are most likely to sit out the election or to vote Democratic if Trump is the nominee. Conversely, groups that gave him higher than average support in the primaries — the less well educated, those with incomes below the median, men and rural voters — are likely to deliver his best margins in the general election.

If there are two key themes in the election so far, one is Trump’s ability to enrage; the other is his ability to exceed expectations. The disregard of liberal and conservative elites for working and middle class voters has manifested itself in a consistent underestimation of the anger, resentment and pessimism of these voters — and hence of their electoral power.

It is an irony of history, then, that [Martin Luther] King’s language [about the two Americas]  perfectly describes the conflict today between the privileged establishment and the hard pressed rank and file of the overwhelmingly white Republican Party — a conflict between haves and have-nots that is taking the Republican Party to a place it has never been.

GOP Establishment on the Ropes

As Hillary Clinton begins her pivot toward the general election in November, the so-called GOP establishment finds itself on the ropes and seemingly in a death spiral as the lunatic party base that it nurtured for years and whose ugliness was ignored with winks and nods continues to rally to Donald Trump.  While last nights primary results kept Ted Cruz and John Kasich in the GOP nomination contest, the chances of stopping Trump seem to be fading.  Having watched Trump's fact free, ego filled "speech" last night, it is hard to believe how low logic, reason, and objective reality have disappeared from the GOP.  A piece in Politico looks at the desperate situation of the so-called GOP establishment.  Here are excerpts:

The Republican establishment is just about out of candidates — and if the delegate math is tough for Donald Trump, it’s far worse for everyone else.

The donors who pumped millions into an anti-Trump campaign are now assessing whether to continue the fight. And while some mainstream Republicans are girding for a likely floor fight at the July convention, others are losing their resolve.

“Only in the minds of the delusional DC establishment is there a brokered convention at this point,” said Tony Fabrizio, a longtime GOP pollster who advised Rand Paul’s campaign. “And if the elites try and steal the nomination from Trump, the riots at the ’68 Democratic Convention will look like a garden party.”

By taking Florida, along with Illinois, North Carolina and the North Marianas Islands (Missouri was still too close to call), Trump racked up more than 200 additional delegates, increasing his lead and further dimming the hopes of those desperate to stop him.

Tuesday night delivered more carnage for mainstream Republicans when Trump steamrolled Marco Rubio, long thought to personify the party’s future, in the senator’s home state of Florida.

“The goal for most of us at this point is to keep delegates away from Trump, and it really doesn’t matter who wins them,” said Charlie Black, a longtime GOP operative who just signed on as an adviser to Kasich’s campaign as it approaches a contested convention. “There are delegates who will be bound to Trump on the first ballot or the first two ballots who aren’t going to be for Trump once they’re free. If you get to a third ballot, the world changes.”

The Republican Party’s #NeverTrump movement, after spending $15 million in Florida and not putting so much as a dent in Donald Trump’s armor, has only a few unpalatable options left: uniting behind Cruz, long a loathsome thorn in the establishment’s side, or pinning their hopes on a long shot like Kasich and girding for a messy fight at the RNC’s convention that could further fracture the GOP beyond repair.

“With Kasich winning Ohio, a contested convention is more likely than ever,” said one Republican operative in Washington. “The backside shadow campaign for delegates who will come to you on the second and third ballots begins.”

the party is not about to roll over for Trump, especially with his negatives rising higher amid a spate of violent skirmishes between his supporters and protesters at several recent rallies. In fact, there’s rising chatter on Capitol Hill that the party could nominate Ryan himself at the convention.  “He probably wouldn’t [do it] but everyone thinks he’s Republican Jesus,” said one GOP Senate staffer.

A number of prominent Republican Party donors who funded the anti-Trump campaign, including New York City hedge fund manager Paul Singer and the Chicago Cubs-owning Ricketts family, plan to gather in Florida later this week for a private meeting.

But many establishment Republicans aren’t convinced Cruz’s chances in a general election are any better than Trump’s. With Rubio’s collapse, they’re coming to grips with the fact that the party’s best chance of taking back the White House may come not in November of 2016 but 2020.

Trump Supporter: "Go To Fucking Auschwitz"

As one who loves history and who has read a fair amount about the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany in the early 1930's, I candidly find Donald Trump and his supporters to be increasingly frightening.   Like Hitler, Trump is playing to economic and social unrest and perhaps is unleashing a nightmare.  Here's a brief summary of what happened in 1930's Germany:

At the beginning of the 1930s, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party exploited widespread and deep-seated discontent in Germany to attract popular and political support. There was resentment at the crippling territorial, military and economic terms of the Versailles Treaty, which Hitler blamed on treacherous politicians and promised to overturn. . . . . the Nazi party offered strong leadership and national rebirth. From 1929 onwards, the worldwide economic depression provoked hyperinflation, social unrest and mass unemployment, to which Hitler offered scapegoats such as the Jews. . . . . the regime was against cultural modernism and supported the development of an extensive military at the expense of intellectualism.

Sound familiar?  Trump's entire platform boils down to a coordinated use of hatred towards others, and opposition to modernity and social changes, and discontent to rally extremely ugly elements in the GOP base.  This hatred and discontent has been cynically nurtured for many years by the so-called GOP establishment for electoral purposes.  Now, it seems that a raging conflagration has been ignited that will be difficult to control.  In 1930, few Germans foresaw what the Nazi's would ultimately unleash on that nation or the world.  Closing one's eyes and telling one's self that the ugliness will pass is not an answer.  Trump, and to a similar extent Ted Cruz, and what he represents MUST be opposed and stopped.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the growing threat and societal cancer posed by Trump and his supporters.  Here are excerpts:

An already ugly presidential campaign has descended to a new level — one where the question is no longer whether Donald Trump can be stopped on his march to the Republican presidential nomination, but whether it is possible to contain what he has unleashed across the country.

Violence at Trump’s rallies has escalated sharply, and the reality-show quality of his campaign has taken a more ominous turn in the past few days.

On Saturday, a man charged the stage in Dayton, Ohio, and a swarm of Secret Service agents surrounded the GOP front-runner.

Later Saturday at a Trump rally in Kansas City, the candidate was repeatedly interrupted by protesters, who were then removed from the venue. Outside the rally, police said they used pepper spray to control crowds. Kansas City police said that two protesters were arrested.

The racially tinged anger that has both fueled Trump’s political rise and stoked the opposition to it has turned into a force unto itself. It has also brought a reckoning from his three remaining rivals for the Republican nomination, who are shedding their fear of provoking Trump and of alienating the raging slice of their party’s base that has claimed him as its leader.

But Trump should not be viewed in isolation or as the product of a single election, President Obama said Saturday at a fundraiser in Dallas.  Obama said those who “feed suspicion about immigrants and Muslims and poor people, and people who aren’t like ‘us,’ and say that the reason that America is in decline is because of ‘those’ people. That didn’t just happen last week. That narrative has been promoted now for years.”

A low point came Friday night. Where Trump has delighted in mocking hecklers — and condoning attacks on them by his supporters — he was forced to cancel a rally at the last minute after protesters turned up by the thousands. That set off a chaotic scene in the arena at the University of Illinois at Chicago that left a handful injured and thousands agitated.

[Trump's] candidacy and the sentiment it provokes have also stirred disturbing historical comparisons.

GOP political consultant Stuart Stevens, who was a top strategist for 2012 nominee Mitt Romney, said Trump’s rhetoric is “almost verbatim” what segregationist George Wallace was saying in his third-party 1968 presidential campaign.   “What did the Democratic Party do with Wallace? They rejected him.”

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said Saturday. “This is a man who at rallies has told his supporters to basically beat up the people who are in the crowd and he’ll pay their legal fees. Someone who’s basically encouraged the people in the audience to rough up anyone who stands up and says something he doesn’t like.  “I still at this moment continue to intend to support the Republican nominee, but it’s getting harder every day.”

Ohio Gov. John Kasich condemned Trump for creating a “toxic environment” that has led supporters and protesters to “come together in violence,” but he, too, stopped short of saying he would not support his Republican rival if Trump secures the party’s presidential nomination.

[T]he outbreak of violence in Chicago had again drawn focus to Trump’s temperament and character, as well as whether he has played a role in inciting his supporters.

Asked about the criticism from other Republican candidates following the Chicago cancellation, Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski mocked them: “Do they have protesters at their events? Do they have any people at their events?”

Lewandowski — who has been accused of and denies manhandling a female reporter at a Trump event — also said his candidate does not plan to do anything to calm his supporters.

“The American people are angry,” Lewandowski said. “They’re upset at the way this country has been run. They’re upset that this country is being taken advantage of by every other country in the world. And they’re tired of not being proud to be Americans.”

“My people are nice,” Trump said at his rally in Dayton. “Thousands and thousands of people, they caused no problem. They were taunted, they were harassed by these other people. These other people, by the way, some represent Bernie, our communist. . . . He should really get up and say to his people: ‘Stop. Stop.’ ”

Sanders retorted in a statement issued by his campaign:  . . . . “What caused the protests at Trump’s rally is a candidate that has promoted hatred and division against Latinos, Muslims, women, and people with disabilities, and his birther attacks against the legitimacy of President Obama,” Sanders added, referring to Trump’s false assertions that Obama was born in Africa and was therefore disqualified to be president.

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton also jumped into the fray.  “The ugly, divisive rhetoric we are hearing from Donald Trump and the encouragement of violence and aggression is wrong, and it’s dangerous,” she said at an appearance in St. Louis. “If you play with matches, you’re going to start a fire you can’t control.”

Clinton is right, Trump and his supporters are dangerous.  As for his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, he apparently views himself as a modern day  Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Minister of Propaganda.  Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo summed up what Trump is doing well:

What we have seen over the last two weeks isn't just an escalation of chaos and low level violence but a progressive normalization of unacceptable behavior - more racist verbal attacks, more violence. . . . The climate Trump is creating at his events is one that not only disinhibits people who normally act within acceptable societal norms. He is drawing in, like moths to a flame, those who most want to act out on their animosities, drives and beliefs. It is the kind of climate where someone will eventually get killed.