The American Political Right Descends into Insanity

Protesters listen during a rally against face
masks being required in schools (Rick Egan/AP).

Once upon a time, certainly while I was growing up and during my period as a Republican city committee member, the Republican Party valued education, respected science and knowledge and was epitomized by "country club Republicans."  Now, it is the party of  ignorance, insane conspiracy theories, and where scientific and medical experts are trashed and undermined if the inconveniently undermine the agenda of far right extremists and, of course, the dangerous buffoon who inhabits the White House.  In the midst of an unprecedented pandemic, this transformation of the GOP is not just disturbing, it is literally life threatening and shows the extremes of the self-centered nature of so-called conservatives who care nothing about those they endanger and may infect with Covid-19. How did this happen?  As I have often stated, in my view, it began with the infiltration of the GOP by evangelicals and other "conservative Christians" - who are anything but true followers of Christ - who deny evolution and claim the earth is less than 10,000 years old and reject any form of science and knowledge that threatens the myths upon which they have based their religion and very small scale world view.  Once these forces grabbed hold of the party base it was only a matter of time before open racists and every kind of crackpot was welcomed into the GOP base.  At the same time, sane, educated people fled the GOP which is why the suburbs have shifted so strongly against the GOP.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the insanity of the GOP and far right.  Here are excerpts:

In 2018, Bob Woodward recounted then-White House chief of staff John Kelly’s view of President Trump. “He’s gone off the rails,” Kelly said. “We’re in Crazytown.”

Two years later, it feels as if the entire country resides in the Greater Crazytown Metropolitan Area.

In Provo, Utah, this week, anti-mask demonstrators, some wearing Trump 2020 paraphernalia, stormed a county commission meeting, forcing its adjournment.

In Tulsa, anti-mask protesters, some in MAGA gear, taunted, threw water and waved money at a black minister reading the Bible through a bullhorn and calling for reparations.

In Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp (R) sued to stop Atlanta from enforcing mask-wearing to mitigate the spread of the pandemic.

In Florida, longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone, after the president commuted his sentence, said of his and Trump’s opponents: “They’re satanic.”

And here in Washington, Trump surpassed 20,000 falsehoods uttered as president while his administration temporarily took coronavirus data offline, his daughter posed with a can of beans and his trade adviser published an error-laden attack on the government’s top infectious-disease scientist.

The Great American Crackup is underway.

A week ago, I argued that Trump’s conspiracy theories “are spreading faster than covid-19 among his supporters, inducing mass delusion.” So I asked scholars to put this moment into historical and psychological context.

For the first time in our history, a president and a major political party have weaponized paranoia, to destabilizing effect.

Conservatives are inherently no more conspiratorial than liberals; only low education (and, relatedly, income) predict such tendencies. The difference, Uscinski says, is “we have a president who has built a coalition by reaching out to conspiracy-minded people.”

Dartmouth College political scientist Brendan Nyhan finds that “our political elites are amplifying the fringe more than we’ve seen” in modern times, while a president mounts a “grinding attack on factual evidence.” The result, he says, is “conspiracy theories and misinformation become yoked to partisanship in increasingly powerful ways.”

There has always been what the late historian Richard Hofstadter called the “paranoid style” in U.S. politics: witch hunts, Illuminati, Red Scares. William Jennings Bryan promoted conspiracy theories. Richard Nixon believed in them. But Trump is unique in promoting conspiracy thinking from the bully pulpit, and in building a system in which elites — Republican Party leaders — validate the paranoia.

Americans, by nature, are more distrustful of authority than citizens of other advanced democracies. “You always hear Americans say, ‘I know my rights,’ but you never hear an American say, ‘I know my responsibilities and obligations,’ ” Stanford University public-opinion specialist Morris Fiorina observes. The distrust is compounded by polarization of the political system: the collapse of local media (replaced by coastal national media); the growing tendency to live, work and worship among people of similar beliefs; . . . .

An April study by Uscinski and others found Trump’s supporters were the most likely to believe the covid-19 threat was exaggerated — particularly Trump backers who paid the most attention to politics. This, the researchers said, was “likely a consequence of President Trump and other Republican/conservative elites publicly lending credence to this idea.”

And so strong Trump partisans refuse to wear masks. “The science is very clear: People take cues from political leaders,” Nyhan says. Leaders typically rejected conspiracy theories, and the public followed. Now, Trump embraces them, and his followers concur — some out of partisan solidarity, others out of genuine belief.

“Human psychology has not changed,” Nyhan says. What’s changed is we’re discovering that “democratic systems don’t work well when political elites don’t deal in factual information.”

In other words, it’s not us. It’s him.

Be very afraid as Trump tries to now hide accurate information about the pandemic and his followers are increasingly dangerous loose canons. 

Republicans Stunned: Voters Realize Tax Bill Screwed Them

The Republican Party has become a full time insane asylum where both the party base - especially the evangelical Christians - and now the party leadership are utterly unhinged and detached from reality.  The descent to insanity began years ago and, in my view, was sparked by the rise of the Christofascists within the party.  Now it is full blown and the party is beyond saving.  Yet, it is entertaining when on occasion Republicans are hit in the face by reality.  One such instance is the revulsion that most Americans have towards the Trump/GOP tax cut that was supposed to provide a wave for GOP candidates to ride to victory in the 2018 midterm elections.  A GOP poll concluded that by a 2 to 1 margin voters recognize that the tax bill was a massive give away to the very rich and large corporations.  Similarly, independents see the truth of the tax bill by a 36% margin.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at this delicious circumstance.  Here are highlights:

[E]very once in a while, the public will actually figure something out on their own and come to an accurate conclusion about a policy. When this happens, one party or the other is bound to be deeply disappointed that their efforts at mass hornswoggling have failed.

This is the position Republicans now find themselves in, Sahil Kapur and Joshua Green report:

A survey commissioned by the Republican National Committee has led the party to a glum conclusion regarding President Donald Trump’s signature legislative achievement: Voters overwhelmingly believe his tax overhaul helps the wealthy instead of average Americans.

By a 2-to-1 margin — 61 percent to 30 percent — respondents said the law benefits “large corporations and rich Americans” over “middle class families,” according to the survey, which was completed on Sept. 2 by the GOP firm Public Opinion Strategies and obtained by Bloomberg News.

The result was fueled by self-identified independent voters who said by a 36-point margin that large corporations and rich Americans benefit more from the tax law . . .

This information is contained in a slide under the title, “But, we’ve lost the messaging battle on the issue.” Indeed they have — they lost both to the Democrats and to reality.

The reality is not in dispute. Around two-thirds of the benefits of the tax cuts went to those in the top quintile of taxpayers, with about 20 percent of the benefits going to the richest 1 percent. By 2025, when the cuts are fully phased in, the top 1 percent will get 25 percent of the benefits. (See details here.) The centerpiece of the plan, furthermore, was a gigantic corporate tax cut. Republicans promised that this cut would produce a wave of investment and wage increases for workers, but so far the only wave that has resulted is a tsunami of stock buybacks benefiting wealthy shareholders, which is exactly what liberals predicted.

What people do notice, however, is that their paychecks didn’t look much bigger after the tax cut. Maybe they’re getting a few more dollars a week, but it certainly wasn’t life-transforming.

That probably influences perceptions, but I’d contend that where Republicans really lost was not in the fact-checking and media analyses (close as those are to my heart) or even in people’s paychecks, but in the relentless Democratic messaging on this issue. It had the benefit of being 1) easy to understand, 2) consistent with what people already believed about Republicans, and 3) completely true.

So what is the Republican answer to their communication failure?

Republican leaders continue to try to sell the law. They’re planning on holding a floor vote in the House next week for a second phase of tax changes that would make the individual changes permanent. Since it has a slim chance of passing the Senate, the effort is seen as a political messaging tool to remind voters of the cuts and force Democrats to take an uncomfortable vote against tax relief for middle-class Americans.

That is no doubt what Republicans think, but it’s somewhere between questionable and ridiculous. Why would a vote to reinforce an unpopular law do Republicans any favors, and why would Democrats be uncomfortable voting against it?

I think the answer is that Republicans are so deeply committed to cutting taxes that they can’t wrap their heads around the idea that the public doesn’t agree with them. Doesn’t everyone believe taxes are too high? Aren’t tax cuts inherently good? Won’t the party that advocates them always be rewarded?

Well, no. As it happens, Americans have surprisingly nuanced views about taxes. Most people think that the amount they have to pay is fair, which makes it harder to make a direct appeal to self-interest by saying “I’ll cut your taxes!” Most importantly, when you ask people what bothers them about the tax system, the top responses are that corporations and wealthy people aren’t paying their fair share.

So if you’re going to pass a huge tax cut whose benefits go mostly to corporations and the wealthy, it would seem almost inevitable that it won’t be popular. But Republicans were so convinced of the righteousness of their cause that they convinced themselves that the public would simply have to agree with them.

Thank goodness a majority of Americans see the Trump/GOP tax cut for what it is.  I hope they loudly oppose GOP efforts to cut other programs to address budget deficits that they created with their massive give away to the rich.

Corey Stewart Brings Turmoil Virginia Republicans

Having a neo-Confederate white supremacist at the top of the state ticket this year has thrown the Republican Party of Virginia into chaos.  While some 55% of Republicans nationwide support Donald Trump/Mike Pence's cruel, inhumane policy of separating immigrant children from the parents, for many of the few remaining moderates I knew when I held a position withing the Virginia GOP, Corey Stewart's avoid racism is simply too much.  The irony, of course, is that they refuse to admit that the national party is little better except in the level of openness on the party's racism. When Stewart hopefully goes down to a humiliating defeat, one can hope that in Virginia the GOP may begin to realize that its base of Christofascist extremists and white supremacists is viewed with disgust by a majority of Virginia voters and the myth that "true conservative" candidates are the solution to the party's problems.  Here are excerpts from the Virginian Pilot:

Corey Stewart's Republican nomination for U.S. Senate from Virginia has prompted an identity crisis within the state GOP, with some donors and activists saying they are so turned off, they are willing to vote for his Democratic opponent, Sen. Tim Kaine.

Stewart, chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors, catapulted to the U.S. Senate nomination - and nearly won the gubernatorial primary last year - by celebrating guns and Confederate statues, lambasting illegal immigrants, and associating with white nationalist Jason Kessler and Paul Nehlen, a Wisconsin candidate barred from Twitter because of anti-Semitic and racist posts.

His perch on top of the ticket has roiled Republican circles inside the state. On Saturday, the head of the Virginia Republican Party resigned his post. John Whitbeck declined to say why he was stepping down. "Other political opportunities have arisen for me that I am thinking about pursuing," he told members of the party's governing board at a meeting in Richmond.

Two other party leaders have resigned, but neither will say why. . . . . The Washington Post talked to more than 50 Virginia Republicans about the Senate race and found Stewart's Trumpian antics thrill supporters but turn off traditional donors and outside groups.

Bobbie Kilberg, a northern Virginia fundraiser and veteran of three Republican presidential administrations, said she will not open her checkbook - or home - to Stewart. . . . "I don't have to agree on everything with the people I support . . . but they need to be people with whom I believe I can work, who are reasonable and rational and have a respect for others."

Kaine - with his long Virginia history as a former governor and lieutenant governor, flush campaign account, and national profile - was favored to win in November even before the GOP nominee was chosen.

But Stewart is likely to put the seat further out of reach for Republicans, extending a losing streak for a party that has not won statewide since 2009.  The trend line is startling for Virginia, where Republicans held one of its two U.S. Senate seats for 30 years and the other for a dozen years before they lost their grip.

There's already evidence Republican voters are opting out of the Senate contest. In the primary in the 10th Congressional District represented by Comstock, about 2,000 fewer voters - 4 percent - cast ballots in the Senate race than in the congressional race.

The National Republican Senate Committee and the Koch-funded group Americans for Prosperity both said they would not put any resources into the Senate race and the Republican National Committee is focused elsewhere. "Virginia is not high on the list at this point," said Garren Shipley of the RNC.

Stewart's elevation has some lifelong Republicans questioning their political identity.  "I am extremely disappointed that a candidate like Corey Stewart could win the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate," former Republican lieutenant governor Bill Bolling tweeted on the night of Stewart's primary win. "This is clearly not the Republican Party I once knew, loved and proudly served. Every time I think things can't get worse they do, and there is no end in sight."

Richard Fox, 28, resigned as a regional chair of the Albemarle County GOP committee days after Stewart won the election, and will vote for Kaine or libertarian Matt Waters. . . . "Abraham Lincoln would be rolling over in his grave if he knew that's what the Republican Party has come to," Fox said.

Many of the party's most active Republicans won't support someone other than Stewart because, under party rules, they would forfeit their positions on the GOP's governing board or on local committees.

"We lost the governorship [in 2013] when we should have won it, and it's just been spiraling down," said former Republican congressman Tom Davis.

David Wasserman, a House analyst at Cook Political Report, said Stewart's message doesn't sell in what he termed "the new Virginia," where Trump lost by 5 percent.

"The new Virginia is diverse and professional and they see an economy that's working for them," Wasserman said. "They don't agree with the Trump Republican wing's dark portrayal of immigration. They don't have much use for Confederate monuments."

The only way to save the GOP, both in Virginia, is to crush it at the ballot box. Only then will there be a possibility for sanity to save the party or let it meet a much deserved death.

Hate-Filled, Irrational Roy Moore Wins Alabama GOP Senate Primary

Moore waving a gun at a campaign rally

I continue to be shocked and appalled over what has become of Alabama since I lived in that state in the late 1970's and early 1980's.   The state has become so insane that George Wallace (who I once met) could not win election if he were to return from the grave. He'd be considered "too liberal" since he did not denounce objective facts and reality.  Now, Roy Moore, a man twice removed from the Alabama Supreme Court because of his refusal to comply with U.S. Supreme Court rulings, has won the GOP primary for the special election to replace Jeff Sessions (who looks saner and reasonalby compared to the insane Moore).  Of course, the fact that Moore was ever elected to that Court is a testament as to why elected judges is never a good idea.   Moore holds the rule of law in contempt, is the minion of the most toxic elements of the evangelical scamvangelists, and in my opinion, is probably certifiably insane.   Even more frightening than his primary victory is the reality that Moore will likely win the general elction now that drug laced Kool-Aid seems to have replaced the water supply in broad areas of Alabama.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the horrific primary outcome:

Democrats might be tempted to crack a smile at Roy Moore’s Tuesday night victory in Alabama’s GOP Senate primary runoff. The Republican base is so nuts that even President Trump’s late intervention could not persuade GOP primary voters to support sitting Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.), who is merely an extreme Trump supporter. Instead, they had to pick one of the most divisive figures in American politics to represent them.

This is an embarrassment for the GOP and a loss for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), whom the White House may shortly blame. If Moore wins the general election, the likely result would be even more chaos in the Senate, with McConnell even less able to marshal his caucus to pass Republican bills. That may not seem so bad to Democrats, for whom a gridlocked Senate may be preferable to a functional one at the moment. Alternatively, Moore’s fringe-ness could help Democratic candidate Doug Jones win the Senate seat that Jeff Sessions vacated to become attorney general.

[L]ike Trump, Moore would make an unusually toxic addition to Washington. A man who brandished a revolver in one of his recent campaign rallies, Moore touts politics that are raw and identity-based, appealing to those who believe that conservative Christian religious culture should infuse the civic institutions that govern all of us.

Moore captured national attention with his campaigns for religious symbols on public property and against same-sex marriage. Support for the former and opposition to the latter are unremarkable in GOP circles. But Moore went much further than others who share his beliefs: As the chief of the Supreme Court of Alabama, he rejected federal court orders based on his apparent view that his personal religious convictions superseded the nation’s civil law. Moore’s refusal to distinguish the public interest from his private agenda was a brazen assault on the country’s core institutions, the likes of which even Trump has not matched.  Moore’s empowerment will encourage zealotry and lawlessness.

Unburdened by a sense of responsibility or institutional tradition, Moore will have opportunity to use the considerable powers that individual senators possess to mangle the process of government. When votes will be needed to keep the government open, pass a budget or respond to a natural disaster, Moore is likely to join bomb-throwers 

Roy Moore stands for anarchy, disorder, disunity and conflict. His platform just got higher, and his power more considerable. Every minute he is in a position of national prominence, the country loses.

The GOP IS Now the Party of the Grotesque

I actually did not come up with the caption for this post.  It derives from arch conservative columnist and pundit George Will.  It reflects the reality that increasingly the Republican Party and its agenda have become something hideous.  Between the party's growing - and much more explicit  - racism and religious extremism and its growing desire to harm millions of citizens, I find it dumbfounding that  otherwise seemingly decent people continue to support the GOP.  Especially those who attend "liberal" religious denominations which outwardly support a social gospel message.  Donald Trump and many of his appointees embody the grotesqueness of the party - e.g., Betsy De Vos, Jeff Sessions, the list goes on and on.  Will uses Alabama's senatorial primary as a demonstration of the party's growing moral bankruptcy.  Here are highlights:

Southern Gothic is a literary genre and, occasionally, a political style that, like the genre, blends strangeness and irony. Consider the current primary campaign to pick the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions. It illuminates, however, not a regional peculiarity but a national perversity, that of the Republican Party.

In 1986, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III — the name belongs in a steamy bodice-ripper, beach-read novel about Confederate cavalry — was nominated for a federal judgeship. Democrats blocked him because they considered him racially “insensitive.” In 1996, he got even by getting elected to the Senate. Twenty years later, he was the first senator to endorse Donald Trump, who carried Alabama by 27.7 points. Sessions, the most beloved Alabaman who is not a football coach, became attorney general for Trump, who soon began denouncing Sessions as “beleaguered,” which Sessions was because Trump was ridiculing him as “weak” because he followed Justice Department policy in recusing himself from the investigation of Russian involvement in Trump’s election.
 On Aug. 15, Alabama’s bewildered and conflicted Republicans will begin picking a Senate nominee. (If no one achieves 50 percent, there will be a Sept. 26 runoff between the top two.) Of the nine candidates, only three matter — Luther Strange, Roy Moore and Rep. Mo Brooks. Strange was Alabama’s attorney general until he was appointed by then-Gov. Robert Bentley to Sessions’s seat. Bentley subsequently resigned in the wake of several scandals that Strange’s office was investigating — or so Strange’s successor as attorney general suggests — when Bentley appointed him. The state Ethics Commission, which had scheduled an Aug. 2 hearing into charges of campaign finance violations by Strange, recently postponed the hearing until Aug. 16, the day after the first round of voting. Twice Moore has been removed as chief justice of the state Supreme Court. In 2003, removal was for defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court regarding religious displays in government buildings. Reelected, he was suspended last year for defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision regarding same-sex marriages.

Yet Brooks is the focus of ferocious attacks on behalf of Strange, who ignores Moore. The attacks are financed by a Washington-based political action committee aligned with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). This Washington Republican establishment strenuously tried but fortunately failed to defeat now-Sens. Marco Rubio and Ben Sasse, of Florida and Nebraska, respectively, in their 2010 and 2014 primaries. . . . .  The attacks stress some anti-Trump statements Brooks made while chairman of Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign in Alabama. For example, Brooks criticized Trump’s “serial adultery,” about which Trump has boasted.

Yet the PAC’s theme is that Brooks’s support of Trump is insufficiently ardent. Such ardor is becoming the party’s sovereign litmus test.

A runoff seems certain, and if Moore (sometimes called “the Ayatollah of Alabama”) is in it and wins, a Democrat could win the Dec. 12 general election.

“Anything that comes out of the South,” said writer Flannery O’Connor, a sometime exemplar of Southern Gothic, “is going to be called grotesque by the Northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.” But, realistically, Alabama’s primary says more about Republicans than about this region. A Michigan poll shows rocker-cum-rapper Kid Rock a strong potential Republican Senate candidate against incumbent Debbie Stabenow. 

Is this Northern Gothic? No, it is Republican Gothic, the grotesque becoming normal in a national party whose dishonest and, one hopes, futile assault on Brooks is shredding the remnants of its dignity.

 Alabama is truly more dysfunctional and insane than when I lived there over 30 years ago. The major cities seem to have modernized while the rest of the state has drifted back to the Jim Crow era. 

Did Trump Just Sink the GOP?

Making it clear that he holds American democracy and wants to "crown himself king" to quote one headline at Politico, many are saying that Donald Trump has increased the chances for an electoral catastrophe up and down the GOP ticket.  Frankly, I hope the prediction proves accurate and that the GOP suffers horrific defeats.  For decades now, the Republican Party has been a festering swamp of insanity and rejection of objective reality and facts.  Lead by the Christofascists who live in a fantasy world, science has been rejected as has all respect for science and knowledge.  Donald Trump is but one example of where the embrace of ignorance and bigotry has taken the GOP.  A piece in Politico looks at the initial reactions to Trump's devastating performance during last night's debate.  Here are excerpts:

Donald Trump’s rocky performance on the final debate stage did little to allay his party’s concerns that the GOP is headed for an electoral catastrophe up and down the ticket.

In interviews with over a dozen senior Republican strategists, not one said Trump did anything to change the trajectory of a contest that is growing further out of reach. And many said they were deeply distressed by Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the Nov. 8 election, an eyebrow-raising moment already dominating headlines.

With Trump’s prospects for securing 270 electoral votes growing dimmer by the day, many Republicans have turned their focus to the gritty, unpleasant task of protecting the party’s congressional majorities. Trump, they said, did little to buttress the GOP ticket — and may have worsened its position by repeating his claim that the election is rigged, something congressional Republicans are sure to be pressed on in the days to come.

Immediately after Trump’s remark, several party higher-ups, including South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, took to Twitter to distance themselves from it.

“The biggest loser tonight was not Trump, the presidential race is over,” said Robert Blizzard, a GOP pollster who is working on a number of congressional races. “Instead, down-ticket Republicans lost tonight — they needed some help and got absolutely none.”

While many candidates have taken a hit since the release of the bombshell “Access Hollywood” tape, party operatives maintain that the bottom hasn’t completely fallen out and that a down-ballot landslide isn’t necessarily in the cards.

Yet many Republicans were eager to see Trump deliver a steady performance, something that would stabilize his poll numbers at a time when surveys show him losing ground in traditionally conservative states like Arizona, Georgia, and Utah.

Steve Schmidt, who guided John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, said that Trump’s refusal to commit to accepting election results would overshadow any other strong moments he had.

“It’s the one and only headline that matters coming out of the debate,” said Schmidt. “It’s absolutely unprecedented for any presidential candidate in the history of the country.”

To some, the performance represented what’s gone awry with the Trump campaign. After exhibiting moments of discipline early on, he squandered it later — with his remarks on the election, with his refusal to criticize Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, and with his comment that Hillary Clinton is a “nasty woman.”  That Trump would go so far as to criticize Ronald Reagan . . . on trade policy, left some Republicans aghast.

[T]he debate could have longer-term repercussions, potentially increasing the urgency with which down-ballot Republicans begin presenting themselves as a “check and balance” to a Clinton presidency. In doing so, they would all but concede that Trump is destined to fall short.

“Trump was already behind,” said Bill Kristol, a Trump critic and the editor-in-chief of the conservative publication The Weekly Standard. “He didn't help himself tonight, indeed he hurt himself. He's very likely to lose, and to lose badly. He'll drag the Senate and House down with him unless Senate and House candidates can make the case they're needed to check and balance Hillary.”

The moral?  Never nominate someone who is mentally ill to be your party's standard bearing.  The GOP deserves whatever catastrophes that may be the result of such irresponsible behavior and actions. 

Missouri - A Case Study in Republican Insanity

With gun deaths now exceeding deaths caused by auto accidents, one would think that even those only loosely connected with sanity and objective reality would agree that some sort of focus on increased gun safety is sensible.  Especially among supposedly "pro-life" Republicans.  Sadly, however, such is not the case and the only times Republicans worry about protecting life is before a child is born or when it comes to banning doctor assisted suicide for the terminally ill.  New levels of GOP are now on display in Missouri where the Missouri Republicans have wiped out sane and rational gun safety laws.  Frankly, the GOP has become akin to a pack of rabid dogs, lead by lunatic and scam artist in chief, Donald Trump.  An editorial in the New York Times looks at this latest form of GOP distemper.  Here are highlights:

In an alarming victory for the gun lobby, Missouri’s Republican-controlled Legislature voted Wednesday to override Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto and enact a wholesale retreat from gun safety in the state.

The law will let citizens carry concealed weapons in public without a state gun permit, criminal background check or firearms training. It strips local law enforcement of its current authority to deny firearms to those guilty of domestic violence and to other high-risk individuals. And it establishes a dangerous “stand your ground” standard that will allow gun owners to shoot and claim self-defense based on their own sense of feeling threatened.

The measure has drawn no great national attention, but it certainly provides further evidence that gun safety cannot be left to state lawmakers beholden to the gun lobby. Democrats opposed to the Missouri bill called it a “perfect storm” of lowered standards for the use of deadly force and an invitation for people to be armed without responsible controls. The measure was enacted by the Republicans, despite strong public opposition and warnings about the threat to public safety from the state Police Chiefs Association. Everytown for Gun Safety, one of the groups fighting the gun lobby, noted that stand-your-ground laws result in disproportionate harm to communities of color.

Mr. Nixon, a Democrat, vetoed the measure in June, saying it would allow individuals with a criminal record to legally carry a concealed firearm even though they had been, or would have been, denied a permit under the old law’s background check. Mayors Sly James of Kansas City and Francis Slay of St. Louis warned against restricting the power of the local police to deny guns to those who commit domestic violence. They cited sharp spikes in domestic violence homicides in their cities, and they noted that the police would be left at greater risk by this bill.

Missouri is joining 10 other states that loosened gun laws to allow concealed firearms in public without the need for a permit. Federal gun controls still require background checks on buyers, but only at federally licensed dealers. Unfortunately, there is a separate and busy uncontrolled market where buyers at gun shows and on the internet do not have to undergo background checks.

In the presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton has called for extensive gun safety measures, including a ban on the assault weapons favored by mass shooters, closing background-check loopholes, ending the gun industry’s outrageous protection from civil damage suits and denying guns to risky suspects on the government’s no-fly lists.

Yep, America is exceptional alright - exceptional in its stupidity and careless disregard for the lives of law abiding citizens.

 

Are We Witnessing the End of the Republican Party?

Ever since I resigned from the GOP, I have been on record advocating the the GOP must either die or suffer such horrific electoral loses that it will finally jettison the Christofascists, white supremacists and other misogynists who have hijacked the party.  Given the vast numbers of the know nothings and mentally and intellectually challenged who now make up the party base and the spinelessness of "leaders" such as Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, more and more, death appears to be the only viable way to end the madness that has become the Republican Party of today.  The nation needs at least two sane and viable political parties.  The GOP no longer fits this description.  It needs to die so that something rational can grow in its place.  A piece in Esquire looks at the GOP's seemingly accelerating death spiral.  Here are excerpts:

In Friday's New York Times, the former director of the CIA wrote something that's going to leave a mark even through nine layers of spray-on tan.

Mr. Putin is a great leader, Mr. Trump says, ignoring that he has killed and jailed journalists and political opponents, has invaded two of his neighbors and is driving his economy to ruin. Mr. Trump has also taken policy positions consistent with Russian, not American, interests—endorsing Russian espionage against the United States, supporting Russia's annexation of Crimea and giving a green light to a possible Russian invasion of the Baltic States. In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.

The polls have gone so utterly sour on the Republican presidential nominee over the past week that many Very Serious People inside the Beltway have developed an even more devastating night-terror than El Caudillo de Mar-A-Lago with a nuclear arsenal at his beck and call—namely, that Hillary Rodham Clinton will get elected and then try to govern according to the progressive platform that was hashed out with so much sturm und drang with the Democratic primary process. This likely is also true of the many billionaires who have rushed to her side as the GOP nominee cratered.

There already is a strong undertow pulling HRC toward "reaching out" to the GOP, toward governing from "the middle," and toward not accelerating the now-rapid descent of the Republican Party into the final madness of the prion disease it has welcomed so warmly into itself ever since the late 1970s.

Professor Krugman has knocked down most of the arguments in favor of this rainbows-and-unicorns idea. First of all, it's insane politics. It will divide the Democratic Party just as the Republicans are engaging in what is bound to be an entertaining interlude of public fratricide.

Second, it would be an act of astonishing bad faith that would set in concrete all of the most unflattering opinions held about HRC by the people who trust her the least.

Third, it assumes Democratic control of the Congress, which remains a long shot. As long as the Republicans still hold the House of Representatives, where all the bills involving federal spending are born, and assuming that the Democrats aren't gifted with a supermajority in the Senate, it's logical to expect that the GOP won't be any more willing to cooperate with a President Clinton II in governing the country than they were with either President Clinton I or Barack Obama.

And, finally, and this is something Professor Krugman touches on only briefly, there is a more important reason for a President HRC to press her advantages on all fronts to put in place the policies she committed herself to run on: For the good of the nation, the Republican Party as it is presently constituted has to die.

Ever since the late 1970s, when it determined to ally itself with a politicized splinter of American evangelical Protestantism, having previously allied itself with the detritus of American apartheid, the Republican Party has been reeling toward catastrophe even as it succeeded at the ballot box, and taking the country along with it. Crackpot economic theories were mainstreamed in the 1980s. Crackpot conspiracy theories and god-drunk fantasies were mainstreamed in the 1990s. Crackpot imperial adventures abroad were mainstreamed in the 2000s. And all of these were mainstreamed at once in opposition to the country's first African American president over the past eight years.

It long has been the duty of the Democratic Party to the nation to beat the crazy out of the Republican Party until it no longer behaves like a lunatic asylum. The opportunity to do this, to act unilaterally in returning sanity to the Republic, never has been as wide and gleaming as it is right now. To argue that responsible government requires that you treat sensibly a party that has gone as mad as the Republicans have is to argue for government by delirium.  Trump doesn't need an intervention. His party does.

 To my former GOP colleagues. I have to say: I haven't changed, the party has changed.  When are you going to stop drinking the "Kool-Aid" and open your freaking eyes?

Texas State Board of Education Candidate Embodies the GOP's Embrace of Ignorance

Coming from a family with a long history of Republican ties and having myself been a city committee member and precinct chair for nearly eight (8) years, I continue to be shocked by how low a political party that once thought of itself as educated, moderately cultured and respectful of science and knowledge has become the home base for fringe lunatics and those who frankly need mental health interventions.  On the national scene these low intelligence, low education masses in the GOP base are rallying to Donald Trump's racist and fascist themed campaign.  Shockingly, at the local and state level, things are even scarier.  Texas is seemingly ground zero for such lunacy and a candidate for the state board of education reflects just how sick and ignorance worshiping the Republican Party has become.  The candidate, Mary Lou Bruner, has claimed on social media, among other things, that President Obama had worked as a gay prostitute in his youth, that the United States should ban Islam, that the Democratic Party had John F. Kennedy killed and that the United Nations had hatched a plot to depopulate the world.  Frighteningly, many in today's GOP see nothing wrong with Bruner's insanity.  Moreover, here in Virginia, the Virginia GOP is controlled by many who hold Bruner's beliefs.  Here are highlights from the New York Times:

On Super Tuesday, Dale Clark voted for a local Republican who claimed on social media that President Obama had worked as a gay prostitute in his youth, that the United States should ban Islam, that the Democratic Party had John F. Kennedy killed and that the United Nations had hatched a plot to depopulate the world.

Mr. Clark, 75, was unaware that the candidate he had supported — Mary Lou Bruner, 68, a former kindergarten teacher running for a seat on the State Board of Education — held such views. But as he sat with his wife eating lunch in this East Texas city, Mr. Clark was ready to give Ms. Bruner the benefit of the doubt.

“I would not discount her on the basis of having those beliefs,” said Mr. Clark, a retired pilot. “It convinces me, though, that she’s quite conservative, and if I were going to err either way, I would want to err toward the side of the conservative.”

Ms. Bruner’s anti-Obama, anti-Islam, anti-evolution and anti-gay Facebook posts have generated national headlines and turned an obscure school board election into a glimpse of the outer limits of Texas politics. In a part of the state dominated by conservative Christians and Tea Party activists, Ms. Bruner’s candidacy has posed a question no one can answer with any certainty — how far to the fringe is too far for Texas Republicans?

Because of the board’s clout in selecting textbooks for all of the state’s schools, it can influence the content of textbooks produced nationwide.

Here in Ms. Bruner’s hometown, Mineola, and elsewhere in intensely conservative East Texas, her views fit a widely accepted anti-Obama and conspiracy friendly antigovernment mind-set. Inside Kitchens Hardware and Deli, the combination hardware store and diner where Mr. Clark was eating, a sign on a shelf read, “Hillary for Prison 2016.” A woman in a nearby store who declined to give her name said she would not hold Ms. Bruner’s Facebook posts against her, and spoke at length about her belief that the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 was a government-staged hoax.

Tammy Blair, the chairwoman of the Republican Party in nearby Cherokee County, said there were differing definitions of extreme, adding that she was sympathetic to the movement to have Texas secede from the United States.  “At the end of the day, is Mary Lou a wacko extremist? No,” Ms. Blair said. 

On her Facebook page, Ms. Bruner called Mr. Obama “Ahab the Arab,” and wrote that he “hates all white people and all wealthy people because to him wealthy means white.” Although she condemned the Ku Klux Klan in one posting, she wrote positively of its roots, writing that it started “as citizens trying to fight back against a corrupt government when there were corrupt officials or no officials at all to keep law and order in the rural areas.” Of Mr. Obama’s youth, she wrote: “I heard from a reliable source that Obama was also a male prostitute for a while when he lived in New York with his male ‘partner.’ How do you think he paid for his drugs?”

Other Republicans have expressed shock and disgust at Ms. Bruner’s comments and primary victory, and have vowed to vote for Mr. Ellis in the May runoff. Her critics include the superintendents of several East Texas school districts.

“Some of the statements that she has made make you question her ability to hold an office,” said Mary Ann Whiteker, the longtime superintendent of the Hudson Independent School District in Lufkin. “It’s very, very frightening to think that she could be giving input on what we ought to be teaching our students.”

Trump Victory Speech Doubles Down on Extremist Nonsense

As noted in the last post, Donald Trump's victory speech - if one can even grace it with the term speech - was frightening and showed how little Trump offers in terms of actual policies and plans.  It's was all sound bites and pandering to the lunatic elements of the GOP base.  It was a pep rally of know nothing jingoism.  It is terrifying that almost a third of Republicans voted for the man.  A piece in Salon looks at the narcissism, demagoguery and insanity.  Here are highlights:

A triumphant Donald Trump entered the stage at his New Hampshire primary victory rally to the sounds of “Revolution” by the Beatles, positively bursting with joy that the universe had righted itself and his singular excellence, an excellence that is greater than the excellence of all excellent people who came before him (though he is grateful for all their hard work), has finally been recognized.

A lot of corners of the media are still reeling from the shock that a clown like Trump can win anything, much less a prominent Republican primary. The Huffington Post’s front page was bristling with outrage [see image above].

But the remarkable thing about Trump’s speech is it’s not actually that different from boilerplate Republican nonsense: Claiming that foreign policy is mostly about belligerence, demanding an end to Obamacare, accusing Democrats of wanting to give away free stuff, pandering to gun nuts, dark suggestions that Obama is lying about the economic turnaround, taking a swipe at Common Core, and implying that foreigners are sneaking over the Mexican border to kill us all with terrorism and heroin.

The main difference is that Trump is just more, well let’s say, boisterous about it.

“I’m going to be the greatest jobs president that God ever created,” he bellowed, before going on to declare that the media is lying about declining unemployment and that it could be as high as 42 percent. The gist of the claim— that Obama and the media are in cahoots to hide the truth about the economy, but your noble Republican candidate will fix it all — is no different from what other GOP candidates are saying. Trump’s just abandoned the pretense of making his arguments sound plausible at all. 

On the drug addiction issue that’s so prominent in New Hampshire, Trump promised to fix it all by blaming his favorite scapegoat, Mexico. “We’re going to end it at the southern border,” he declared, suggesting the epidemic is mostly due to “cheap” heroin. 

On guns, Trump reached for a common talking point among Republicans, which is that more guns will actually reduce gun violence. He used the Paris attacks, which happened in a city with strict gun control, as an example. Calling the terrorists who shot up the Bataclan “these animals,” he said, “If there were bullets going in the other direction, believe me, it would be a whole different story.”

If you want to know why Trump is doing so well with Republican voters, this is the answer. He’s not, despite mainstream media narratives suggesting otherwise, all that different from other Republicans. He just heaves bullshit with a bigger shovel.