Why Carson and Trump Are Not Going Away

As a former Republican activist years ago, I often lament the insane asylum that the Republican Party has become.  No better proof of the party's descent into insanity exists than the continued support shown for Donald Trump and Ben Carson in polls of Republican voters.  Today's GOP base is terrified about the demographic and social changes overtaking the country and long for the bad old days of the 1950's and view anyone deemed other - read non-white, non-heterosexual, and/or non-far right Christian as a threat to themselves, their fairy tale religious beliefs, and their warped version of of what western civilization should be.  Trump and Carson more than most others in the GOP clown card have read this mood and open insanity (and racism in the case of Trump) and are riding  it to the top of the polls.  A column in the Washington Post looks at why neither of these highly undesirable candidates are going away any time soon.  Here are excerpts:

Why haven’t Donald Trump and Ben Carson faded away? Because they’re saying what much of the Republican Party base wants to hear on such emotional issues as immigration, gun rights and opposition to President Obama.

Trump and Carson are also fortunate to be outsiders at a time when the GOP is in chaos and the party establishment is discredited in the eyes of many voters. And the two improbable leaders in the race for the presidential nomination are compelling characters — Trump the brash and blustery billionaire, Carson the gentle and pious man of medicine.

According to the RealClearPolitics polling average, Carson is at 24.8 percent and Trump at 24.6 percent — a dead heat.   And they are lapping the field. Marco Rubio is a distant third at 11 percent, which is well below where he stood in May. And poor Jeb Bush, with his not-so-shiny new campaign slogan — “Jeb Can Fix It” — has slid all the way to 5.8 percent.

Trump pledged to do two things: Deport the estimated 11 million men, women and children living here without papers; and build a “great, great wall” along the 2,000-mile southern border, with the Mexican government paying for its construction. Critics immediately pointed out that neither is remotely feasible, let alone wise. Yet Trump has never wavered. In speeches, interviews and debates, he still promises mass deportation and a wall. 

Why? Because he knows that illegal immigration is a galvanizing issue for some in the GOP base. A Pew Research Center survey in September found that 73 percent of Republicans “favor building a fence along the entire Mexican border.” Pew also found that 32 percent — a third of the party — opposed any kind of legal status for undocumented immigrants.

[N]o one can get to the right of Trump on immigration. If this is an issue you really care about, and you feel betrayed by the way establishment Republicans have handled it in the past, Trump is your guy. Even if he can’t do all the things he promises, maybe he’ll do something .

Similarly, Carson has gone where others fear to tread on the issue of gun rights. A Pew Research Center survey last year found that 76 percent of Republicans believed it is more important to “protect the right of Americans to own guns” than to “control gun ownership.” . . . Carson outflanked the field when he opined that gun control laws imposed in Nazi Germany in 1938 enabled the Holocaust. This aligns nicely with the tea party argument that Americans must be armed in case a tyrant comes to power and has to be overthrown.

Majorities of Republicans do not favor deporting 11 million people, reject all gun control legislation or believe Obama is a psychopathic slave master. But enough do hold such views to make it unlikely that the Trump and Carson campaigns will collapse of their own weight. The outsiders look to be settling in for a long stay.

Wayne LaPierre is the NRA's Hit Man

The recent horrific mass shooting in Oregon has triggered another round of discussion about the need to change America's insane gun laws.  As noted in prior posts, most of the GOP sees no need for change - no doubt in large part because of the millions of dollars GOP candidates in particular receive from the NRA.  Research has shown that the real financial strength of the NRA comes from the gun manufacturers and not the hunters who allow themselves to be used as tools by the ever mercenary gun manufacturers and their hit man, Wayne LaPierre who strikes me as a totally amoral - if not immoral - individual who makes a plush living pushing policies that ultimately kill people.  A piece in Salon looks at LaPierre and the death that he and the NRA peddle.  Here are some highlights:

Although 26-year-old Christopher Harper-Mercer pulled the trigger on the gun that killed nine people at Umpqua Community College in Oregon on Thursday, Wayne LaPierre, the fanatic executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, also has blood on his hands.

LaPierre, who has worked for the NRA since 1978 and served as its top official since 1991, is the organization’s hit man when it comes to intimidating elected officials to oppose any kind of sensible gun control laws, including a federal law requiring background checks on would-be gun buyers and a national registry of guns. LaPierre likes to fulminate about gun owners’ rights. But he’s been silent on the Oregon killings, just like he’s been silent after the murders of other innocent victims of America’s epidemic of gun violence.

For decades, the NRA has fought every effort to get Congress and states to adopt reasonable laws that would make it much less likely for people like Harper-Mercer to obtain a gun. The NRA even defends the right of Americans to carry concealed weapons in bars, churches, schools, universities, and elsewhere. This poses a huge threat to police and civilians alike.

Harper-Mercer was obviously an emotionally troubled man.  . . . . Although the murderer’s psychology and motives may be fascinating, it should not be the major focus. There are plenty of deranged people in the world, but in most well-off countries they can’t easily get their hands on a firearm.

Our nation’s weak gun laws allow felons, domestic abusers, and the mentally ill to arm themselves.

In 2013, there were 33,636 deaths from firearm violence in the United States, including 11,208 homicides (31 a day) and 21,175 suicides. Firearms were used in 69.6 percent of all homicides that year. Of course, many more people are injured — some seriously and permanently — by gun violence.

According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the medical cost of treating non-fatal gun injuries totaled $3.7 billion in 2005. The direct medical costs of treating fatal gun injuries combined with the economic damages of lost lives totaled $37 billion.

The Umpqua Community College incident was the 264^th mass shooting in the country this year, according to the Washington Post, which defines a mass shooting as involving at least four people shot. In those incidents, 380 people were killed.  

The NRA has two knee-jerk responses to the epidemic of gun violence. The first is that the Second Amendment gives all Americans the right to possess guns of all kinds — not just hunting rifles but machine guns and semi-automatics. Efforts to restrict gun sales and ownership are, according to the NRA, an assault on our constitutional freedoms.

The second is the cliché that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” To the NRA, gun laws have nothing to do with the epidemic of gun-related killings. This contradicts research documenting that states with stronger gun laws have fewer gun-related deaths.

[S]ince the Newtown massacre, most new state laws have loosened, rather than tightened, gun restrictions, according to the Pew Research Center.

One of the NRA’s biggest victories occurred in 2003, when passed a law sponsored by Rep. Todd Tiahrt, a former Republican congressman from Kansas that makes it more difficult for public safety officials to shut down the illegal market in gun sales. A handful of gun dealers are responsible for most of the guns used in crimes and seized by law enforcement officials. 

Under LaPierre’s leadership, the NRA has not only dramatically expanded its ties to the gun manufacturers, but has also linked the NRA to the far right, including the Tea Party. LaPierre is a regular presence at gatherings of extreme right-wing groups, whose paranoid warnings about the threat of tyranny and Obama’s secret plan to confiscate all guns are meant to scare Americans into buying more guns and joining the NRA.

A 2014 Pew Research Center survey found that gun ownership is concentrated among older adults, rural residents, and whites, especially white Southerners. The NRA is able to mobilize a small but very rabid and vocal group of gun owners — as well as owners of gun shops — to attend rallies, write letters to newspapers and comments on blog sites, and contact elected officials.

Every American grieves for the families and friends of the people killed in Oregon this week. But until we tame the power of the NRA, we can expect more killings like this, a part of the deadly daily diet of murders throughout America committed by angry gun-toting people whose “freedom” to own weapons of mass destruction that the NRA defends.

The NRA must be defeated and, preferably, destroyed.