America's Future: Getting Rid of Trump Will Help

Increased racial hatred, increased gun violence, trade wars damaging American farmers and perhaps moving the country toward a recession, and frayed relations with long time allies.  All trace back in varying degrees to a single individual:  Donald Trump.  The main is a boil (if not a cancer) on nation and conservative columnist and former Republican Jennifer Rubin makes the case that almost anyone else would be better in the White House and would set the stage where serious, sane progress to address pressing problems could begin.   If Trump cannot be removed by impeachment, then he needs to be removed at the ballot box in November 2020.  The cancer that he embodies must be removed and not allowed to further metastasize.  True, we will still have to contend with his dangerous supporters, but his removal from office will be a much needed beginning.  Here are column excerpts:

Even if we get a Democratic president Americans don’t like all that much, or whose limitations are obvious, we’ll be in a better spot than we would be with President Trump. That’s an unsurprising assumption by Democrats. But, increasingly, independents and disaffected Republicans — as seen from their praise of former president Barack Obama’s remarks on the mass murders in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio — know this to be true. “Anyone but Trump” should be the goal for all Americans, even Republicans.

For one thing, Republicans won’t have to observe the debasement of other Republicans like Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.), who lamely tried to create some moral equivalence between Trump, who incites white nationalism of the type motivating the El Paso terrorist, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who incites no one to hatred and whose ideology — progressive capitalism — hasn’t driven anyone to kill.

Whatever the problem, things would be better without Trump even with a president whose ideology and/or performance might not thrill most Americans.

Combating domestic terrorism? Just getting rid of the instigator of white nationalism would be a plus. The Post reports:

The administration has also curtailed or disbanded a Department of Homeland Security program that had been created to counter violent extremism by working with regional authorities and organizations to identify those vulnerable to radicalization, whether by Islamist groups or the far right. . . . this presidency has come to be defined by policies that are aligned with aspects of the white nationalist agenda and his penchant for fanning racial animus.

We could curtail Trump’s presidency and rebuke the white nationalist ideology, or we could reelect the man who stoked their grievance. It’s pretty easy to figure out the best option from a national security standpoint.

The trade war with China? Trump now has seized “control” of policy, . . . And how’s that working out? Not well:

Business executives, economists, and former government officials have said the worsening conflict between the White House and China was damaging the U.S. economy. Business investment contracted in the second quarter of 2019, and a number of White House officials are worried that the economy is beginning to slow.

Get rid of Trump and you would, at the very least, have a less chaotic, less impulse-driven policy from someone who understands U.S. consumers and not China pay the tariffs.

Relations with allies? They’ll immediately improve without Trump. Human rights policy? Once Trump is gone, we wouldn’t be in the business of praising mass murderers (e.g., Kim Jong Un). Environmental policy? Even some Republicans are dumping their climate change denial, but as long as Trump is in office, any hope of progress is illusory. Russia? No Democrat or Republican likely to be elected will kowtow to Vladimir Putin.

I don’t mean to suggest that all our problems will go away if Trump does, nor do I mean to suggest it doesn’t matter who succeeds him. However, we would eliminate a slew of Trump-created problems and inanities and make it possible rationally to address issues.

It’s not hyperbole to say Trump is a threat to our democracy, to national security and to progress on virtually any issue. We want the best possible president, but we will settle for anyone who isn’t Trump.

If you care about America and the future, vote Democrat in 2020 and in Virginia's 2019 elections.

Democrat National Convention - Day One Reflections

Elections are always important, but this year's presidential election may be the most important election of my live time.  The stakes have never been higher and having ceased blogging to listen to all of the prime time speakers last night at the Democrat National Convention, the competing visions for the nation could not be starker.  Donald Trump and the Republicans offer fear, hate, division, discrimination and religious extremism that have become all the more frightening given Russia's apparent attempt to throw the election to Trump by undermining the Democrat Party and Hillary Clinton.  On the Democrat side, the vision is motivated by a desire for unity, tolerance of peoples' differences, and a government that works to protect its citizens and temper the abuses of capitalism. Stated another way, the Democrats do not view some citizens as disposable garbage whereas in Trump's world, the "losers" deserve, with much of what determines whether one is a loser being based on one's skin color, faith, national origin and/or sexual orientation. 

As noted in numerous posts, what I find so incredibly frightening is the inability or refusal of Trump supporters to recognize that Trump's campaign and some of his first promised actions mirror the tactics of Adolph Hitler in the early 1930's.  Trump may not be a new Hitler, but his utilization of hate, fear and division to gain power are beyond troubling and cannot lead to a good ending.  This reality was hit upon by a number of the speakers last night, but perhaps most eloquently by Michelle Obama who made the election a choice about what kind of future do we want to give to our children and grandchildren.  I for one do not want a future where white/heterosexual privilege is revived or a future where a madman like Trump has the nuclear codes in his possession as Elizabeth Warren so rightly pointed out.

As for Bernie Sanders, he sought to heal divisions and made the case to his supporters that a Trump victory was truly something to terrifying to ever allow to happen.  One can only hope that over the coming days of the convention Sanders supporters will realize that staying home on election day or voting for a third party with no chance of victory is not an option and will only serve to put Trump in the White House.  Despite Trump's disingenuous appeals to Sanders supporters, Trump is the antithesis of what Sanders wants for America.  

Last night made me proud to no longer be a Republican and to find myself ready to work all out to insure that Trump is defeated.  While we were watching the speakers last night, the husband made the remark that this election, we need to step things up and do more than we have ever done before.  He's right.  Quite literally the nation's future is on the line and we must make sure that it is not one ruled by Trump and his fellow fear mongers and haters. 

Trump’s Lies and Trump’s Authoritarianism Are the Same Thing

By all reports, today Donald Trump secured enough delegates to win the Republican Party 2016 presidential nomination.  This event confirms that the debasement and decline of the GOP into moral bankruptcy is now complete.  What is equally disturbing is the manner in which far too many Republicans are rallying to Trump, motivated, of course out of self-promotion rather than a shred of concern about the good of the nation.  Disgustingly, Marco Rubio today joined the ranks of those prostituting themselves to Trump.  Tawdry whore have more integrity and virtue than  those in the Republican Party pledging allegiance to Trump.  Again, the parallels to what happened in 1930's Germany are chilling. The good of the citizenry and the good of the nation means nothing compared to self-promotion.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at both the lies and hypocrisy of Trump and, by extension, those seeling their souls to him.  Here are highlights:

On February 7, Donald Trump told an audience of supporters in New Hampshire that he would represent their interests, but Jeb Bush would not, because Bush was in the pocket of special interests. Trump singled out Woody Johnson, the heir to a pharmaceutical fortune, owner of the New York Jets, and contributor to Bush. Trump suggested, not unreasonably, that Johnson’s support would ensure that Bush would never allow the federal government to negotiate for lower prescription-drug prices. I don't get any money from any of these special interests, and I know the special interests — I know them better than anybody. But I don't want their money,” he said. “So tell me, let me ask you: Do you think Jeb Bush is going to make drug prices competitive?” he asked. The crowd shouted, “No!”

This week Trump announced that Johnson would serve as vice-chair of the Trump Victory Fund. “He’s a terrific guy, he’s been a friend of mine a long time,” Trump announced. It was a head-spinning move — the very man Trump had held up as the embodiment of corruption, and whose funds he pledged never to accept, would now take a prominent role as a Trump fund-raiser. Donald Trump is a wildly promiscuous liar. He also has disturbing authoritarian tendencies. Trump’s many critics have seized upon both traits as his two major disqualifications for the presidency, yet both of them frustratingly defy easy quantification. All politicians lie some, and many of them lie a lot, and most presidents also push the limits of their authority in ways that can frighten their opponents. So what is so uniquely dangerous about Trump? Perhaps the answer is that both of these qualities are, in a sense, the same thing. His contempt for objective truth is the rejection of democratic accountability, an implicit demand that his supporters place undying faith in him. Because the only measure of truth he accepts is what he claims at any given moment, the power his supporters vest in him is unlimited.

The normal rules of political lying hold that when the lie has been exposed, or certainly when it has been confessed, the jig is up. You have to stop lying about it and tell the truth, or at least retreat to a different lie. Trump bends the rules of the universe to his own will, at no apparent cost. His brazenness is another utterly unique characteristic. His confidence that he can make the truth whatever he wishes at any moment, and toggle back and forth between incompatible realities at will, without any cost to himself, is a display of dominance. Possibly Trump’s most important statement of the campaign was his idle boast that he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue without losing any votes. Finally, there is Trump’s habit of settling all disputes with his own peculiar form of ad hominem. He dismisses all criticisms of his statements and his record with an array of put-downs, and likewise confirms all endorsements with praise. Anybody who disagrees with Trump is ugly, short, corrupt, a loser, a habitual liar, a total joke, and so forth.

Truth and reason are weapons of the powerless against the powerful. There is no external doctrine he can be measured against, not even conservative dogma, which he embraces or discards at will and with no recognition of having done so. Trump’s version of truth is multiple truths, the only consistent element of which is Trump himself is always, by definition, correct. Trump’s mind is so difficult to grapple with because it is an authoritarian epistemology that lies outside the democratic norms that have shaped all of our collective experiences.

Hillary Clinton Needs to Step Up Her Game

As one whose biggest fear is a GOP win in the presidential election in November, I am dismayed at Hillary Clinton's campaign to date which has yet to energize many in the Democratic base, especially younger voters.  She is by far the best qualified candidate based on her experience, but she cannot seem to find an electrifying message that will turn out voters in November to block a GOP nightmare for the country.  A column in the New York Times looks at this issue and problem.  Here are excerpts:

Late Monday, as the unfinished vote count suggested the slimmest of victories for Hillary Clinton, she stepped to a microphone, flashed an Oscar-worthy smile of triumph and told supporters that she was “breathing a big sigh of relief.”

She wasn’t. She isn’t. And she definitely shouldn’t be.

But Iowa demonstrated, yet again, what a flawed and tarnished candidate she is. And on the Republican side, the caucuses augured the possibility of a retreat from the party’s craziness and the rise of an adversary, Marco Rubio, who could give her trouble in a general-election matchup.

She should have trounced Sanders. Yes, he communicates authenticity to an electorate ravenous for it and has given potent voice to Americans’ economic angst. But little in his Senate career suggests that he’d be able to turn that oratory into remedy.

President Obama clearly prefers Clinton. And in a poll of Democrats showing up for the Iowa caucuses, well over half said that they wanted someone who would continue Obama’s agenda — which is the precise pledge that Clinton has been making over the last few weeks — while only about one-third said that they preferred someone more liberal.

Even so, Clinton appears to have edged out Sanders by mere decimal points. How to explain it?

Perhaps with the sturdiest truism of politics: Elections are about the future. And so much about Clinton screams the past.

A rally of hers that I attended in Iowa last week actually began with a highlights reel of Clinton through time, including plenty of footage from the 1990s. . . . The retrospective underscored her extraordinary experience. But nothing in her subsequent speech looked forward as stirringly as those images looked backward.

It’s the language of drudgery and duty rather than inspiration, and she can sound as if she’s collecting on an i.o.u. and asking voters to complete her trajectory rather than begin one of their own.

Bill Clinton may well garner applause, but every time he stumps for her, it’s an implicit promise to revisit yesterday, not to chart tomorrow.

For months Democrats have been heartened by the absurdity with which Donald Trump infused the Republican primary and by the prospect of him or Ted Cruz as the party’s nominee. But his second-place showing could be his twilight, and Rubio’s strong third-place finish supports the scenario that he’s the one.

He poses a bigger threat to Clinton. He understands that she, like Jeb Bush, is an awkward fit for the national mood, and he’d try to take advantage of that. He leans hard on his youth. He talks about a new generation.

Clinton needs to persuade voters that as much as they’ve seen of her, she can still lead them to a place they’ve not yet seen. She hasn’t succeeded, and she slogs on from Iowa much as she did eight years ago: with more to prove than to savor.

The GOP's Betrayal of America

I typically do not read columns by David Brooks in the New York Times because he is, in my view, generally wrong and takes a regressive position.  But even the perennially wrong can on occasion get it right as Brooks does today in a column bemoaning what has become of the Republican Party and American conservatism in general and how the trend is harming the nation and betraying its founding principles and mindset.  While he looks at the the trends in the conservative movement, he fails to look at the real root cause in my view: the rise of fundamentalist Christians within the GOP.  Personally, I generally view religion as a scourge on the soul of mankind.  But that scourge becomes a raging cancer when the religion is fundamentalist - whether Christian or Muslim - because it focuses on hatred of others and anyone and anything that threatens its ignorance embracing tenants.  The good news, if any, is that the GOP is hopefully headed towards a eventual much deserved death.  In the process its devotees are likely also hastening the decline of Christianity in America.  Here are excerpts from the column:

Today there are some conservative commentators and Republican politicians who talk a lot about American exceptionalism. But when they use the phrase they mean the exact opposite of its original meaning. In fact, they are effectively destroying American exceptionalism.

These commentators and candidates look backward to an America that is being lost. Ann Coulter encapsulated this attitude perfectly in her latest book title, “Adios, America.” This is the philosophy of the receding roar, the mourning for an America that once was and is now being destroyed by foreign people and ideas.

Out of this backward- and inward-looking mentality comes a desire to exclude. Donald Trump talks falsely and harshly about Hispanic immigrants. Ben Carson says he couldn’t advocate putting “a Muslim in charge of this nation.”

During George W. Bush’s first term there wasn’t much difference between how Democrats and Republicans viewed the overall immigration levels. Republicans were about eight percentage points more likely to be dissatisfied with the contemporary immigration flows. But now the gap is an astounding 40 percentage points. Eighty-four percent of Republicans and 44 percent of Democrats are dissatisfied with the current immigration level, according to Gallup surveys.

As Peter Wehner, a longtime conservative writer who served in the Bush administration, wrote in the magazine Commentary: “The message being sent to voters is this: The Republican Party is led by people who are profoundly uncomfortable with the changing (and inevitable) demographic nature of our nation. The G.O.P. is longing to return to the past and is fearful of the future. It is a party that is characterized by resentments and grievances, by distress and dismay, by the belief that America is irredeemably corrupt and past the point of no return. ‘The American dream is dead,’ in the emphatic words of Mr. Trump.”

It’s not exactly breaking news that this is ruinous to the long-term political prospects of the party. 

But it’s also bad for the spirit of conservatism. American conservatism has always been different than the conservatism found on continental Europe and elsewhere. There it was based on blood and soil, here on promise.

American free market and religious conservatives have traditionally embraced a style of nationalism that is hopeful and future minded. . . .But this hopeful nationalism is being supplanted in the G.O.P. by an anguished cry for a receding America.

This pessimism isn’t justified by the facts. As a definitive report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine recently found, today’s immigrants are assimilating as fast as previous ones. They are learning English. They are healthier than native-born Americans. Immigrant men age 18 to 39 are incarcerated at roughly one-fourth the rate of American men.

It is one thing to think Democratic policies are wrong. It is another to betray the essential American faith and take a reactionary attitude toward life. This is an attitude that sours the tongue, offends the eye and freezes the heart.

America's Looming GOP Freak Show

If some of the predictions for the 2014 midterm elections prove right and the GOP captures the U.S. Senate, Congressional Republicans will have to live up to the job of governing.  These later expectations are about as realistic as expectations that there will be a major change in the Catholic Church towards gays.  They are a nice fantasy, but do not expect them to actually occur.  Not with the GOP base controlled by spittle flecked Christofascists, white supremacists and other nasty elements of the under belly of society.  A piece in Salon looks at the more likely freak show that Americans will witness which hopefully make sane elements of the voting public think twice about voting Republican come 2016.  Here are highlights:

[T]he case rapidly picking up steam that another midterm loss will be good for Democrats is both silly and a little dangerous. . . . those takes rely at least in part on the notion that if Republicans gain the Senate, they’ll either have an incentive to help “govern” – or they’ll shame themselves in the eyes of the American public if they don’t. Unfortunately, neither premise is true.

Bill Scher reprised his Politico argument on MSNBC’s “Up with Steve” on Saturday, continuing to press the case that Republicans will suffer politically “if they look like a completely dysfunctional party incapable of governing.” (Scher, unlike Seib, holds out no false hope that the GOP will get its act together and compromise with Obama if it wins back the Senate.)

But Republicans already look like a completely dysfunctional party incapable of governing, and they’re on the verge of another great midterm win. A year after the government shutdown, it’s shocking even to me how little it ultimately cost the party politically. Everyone knew that October 2013 polls weren’t as important as October 2014, and that the GOP would have a year to recover – but even I didn’t believe that they would, so completely.

The Republican base is more than content to have its leaders do nothing but block and sabotage Obama. And the Democratic base still disproportionately sits out the midterms, which lets the obstructionists dominate the agenda.Seib holds out hope that a GOP Senate might be able to deliver on immigration reform. Continued Beltway optimism about that prospect is delusional.

There’s no doubt 2016 will be much better for Democrats. The base turns out for presidential elections, and the Senate map that year will be as tough on Republicans as it is in 2014 on Democrats, forcing the GOP to defend more seats and offering their rivals more pickups. All of that is a given.

But even a 2016 rout is unlikely to force Republicans to focus on a policy agenda and commit to governing again. All they have to do is thwart the plans of President Hillary Clinton, or whomever, and reap the rewards two years later.

Until the Democrats’ structural disadvantage in voter turnout is corrected, American politics is an endless feedback loop of futility: little or no policy change leads to a discouraged electorate, which ensures little or no policy change, which guarantees more voter apathy. Democrats may yet keep the Senate, and if they do it will come down to greater grassroots and national emphasis on turning out unmarried women voters (more on that later this week). But if they don’t, there will be no silver lining.

Sure, it will be entertaining to watch de facto House Speaker Ted Cruz make life even more miserable for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. It’s a given that the 2016 Republican primary race will be as big a freak show as 2012 (and maybe even with Mitt Romney again too!) But this optimist no longer believes the GOP will pay any lasting price for more cartoonish dysfunction. But the rest of us will, for a long time.

I agree with the author.  I am also starting to believe that a majority of Americans are idiots and that perhaps just maybe they deserve the government they get, especially the Democrats who sit on their asses during the midterms.  That. of course, doesn't make watching the circus any easier for the rest of us.

 

America Ignores Its Future and Spends on the Past

The saying goes that our children are our future.  If that's true, current American policies are trashing the nation's future as disproportionate amounts are spent on aging seniors while far too little is done for the generations that are out future.  I'm not sure what the answer is but one thing is certain: more of the same and trying to maintain the status quo - and ignore the changing world and climate is not the answer.  One of the biggest obstacles to addressing the future is today's GOP which not only resists modernity tooth and claw, but wants to return the country to the Gilded Age of over a century ago when only the truly wealth had financial security and everyone else was an accident or serious illness away from financial ruin.  Add to that the GOP's refusal to even admit that something ominous is going with climate change and its a recipe for disaster.  One take away is that if younger generations want to protect their own best interests, they need to become a reliable voting block so as to offset the greed of the oldest generations.  A column in the New York Times looks at the damaged nation that is being left for the Millenials.  Here are excerpts:

Among Americans age 40 and older, there’s a pastime more popular than football, Candy Crush or HBO.  It’s bashing millennials.

We have a hell of a lot of nerve, considering the havoc we’ve wrought on theirs.

For decades they’ll be saddled with our effluvium: a monstrous debt, an epidemic of obesity, Adam Sandler movies. In their lifetimes the Atlantic will possibly swallow Miami Beach (I foresee a “Golden Girls” sequel with dinghies and life preservers) and the footwear for Anchorage in February may be flip-flops. At least everyone will be saving on heating bills.

The Obama administration did unveil a bold climate-change measure last week. Or, rather, it signaled its intent to act: We’ll have to wait and see whether Congress figures out a way to foil the president or the courts gum things up. The plan as it stands would cut carbon pollution from American power plants 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030.   But that may be too little, too late

The country’s slowness to deal with swelling seas and melting glaciers is just one manifestation of our myopia, just one metaphor for our failure to reckon with the future that we’re visiting upon today’s children, who get more lip service than legislation from us.

“If you’re going along with the status quo, it should be a crime to say that you care about our children and grandchildren, because you’re not putting your money where your mouth is,” Bob Kerrey, a Democrat who governed Nebraska for four years and represented that state in the Senate for another 12, told me recently.

This subject haunts him more and more. “If we’re trying to figure out how to advance the next generation’s future, we need to be spending more on the next generation, and we’re spending it on yesterday’s generation,” said Kerrey, 70. “I am not the future. My 12-year-old son is. But if you look at the spending, you’d think I’m the future.”

Kerrey is referring mostly to Social Security and Medicare, which, along with Medicaid, are the so-called entitlements that claim a larger and larger share of the federal budget.

He’s fixated on those sorts of numbers: According to the Congressional Budget Office, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid totaled 6.7 percent of the country’s gross domestic product in 1990. By 2010, they were 10 percent. And by 2038, such spending may represent 14.3 percent. It’s hard to see how that leaves much money for discretionary spending on infrastructure, on education, on research, on a range of investments that safeguard or improve the America that today’s young people will inherit.

The Urban Institute released a report in 2012 that looked at figures from 2008 for the combined local, state and federal spending that directly benefited Americans 65 and older versus spending that went to Americans under 19; the per capita discrepancy was $26,355 versus $11,822.

“I’m glad that my parents are living longer,” she added. “But it’s creating this budgetary math problem that we’re unwilling to look at.”

That unwillingness includes the predictable pushback from many members of Congress, from voters and from various advocacy groups when proposals are made to limit the growth of Social Security by, say, fiddling with cost-of-living adjustments. Older Americans, who would be instantly affected by such a change, turn out more reliably on Election Day than any other age group. Lawmakers are loath to cross them.

Younger voters need to assert themselves. Perhaps they’re poised to do just that. A recent poll by ABC News and The Washington Post showed a significant rise — to 66 percent now from 53 percent two months ago — of voters between the ages of 18 and 39 who said they definitely planned to vote in November.

[Older Americans] conveniently overlook how much more they’ve [Millennials] had to pay for college than we did, the loans they’ve racked up and the fact that nothing explains their employment difficulties better than a generally crummy economy, which certainly isn’t their fault.

 I truly fear for my grand children's future.  Right now their best financial hope is that the husband and I don't live too long so their inheritance can offset the disaster with which angry whites in particular will have left them.

Quote of the Day: Sarah Palin and the Swamp Fever of the GOP

Few individuals can so thoroughly sum up what is wrong with today's GOP by their mere presence than Sarah Palin.  The woman, in view, belongs in a mental ward, and as long as individuals like Palin are not only welcome but held in high esteem by the Republican party base, the GOP will remain a party that rational, decent people should want to avoid like the plague.  I suspect that for many, Palin's rise in the GOP has been the straw that broke the camel's back and made exiting the GOP appear to be the only sane approach.  Palin and much of the base of today's GOP base are extremely dangerous because they are too stupid to recognize their own idiocy. A column in Esquire by Charles Pierce looks at Palin's lunacy and the sickness of the GOP.  Here are excerpts:

By now, and by god, it should have settled permanently in the consciousness of the nation what a huge and untoward gamble with the country John McCain and his campaign took in 2008 when they elevated Sarah Palin from her rightful place on the tundra to the political celebrity she currently enjoys. McCain should pay a heavy price for unleashing this ignorant, two-wheeled bilewagon on the country's politics. If you think she's a legitimate political leader, you're an idiot and a sucker and I feel sorry for you.

Yesterday she gave a wildly received speech to ring down the curtain at CPAC. The applause, as far as I know, may still be going on. It was as singularly embarrassing a public address as any allegedly sentient primate ever has delivered. It was a disgrace to politics, to rhetoric, to the English language, and to seventh-grade slam books everywhere.

[W]ith Palin, and watching the hysterical reception her puerile screed received, there is something more serious going on. She is the living representation of the infantilization of American politics, a poisonous Grimm Sister telling toxic fairy tales to audiences drunk on fear, and hate and nonsense. She respects no standards but her own. She is in perpetual tantrum, railing against her betters, which is practically everyone, and volunteering for the job of avatar to the country's reckless vandal of a political Id. It was the address of a malignant child delivered to an audience of malignant children. If you applauded, you're an idiot and I feel sorry for you.

The Tea Party is Ruining Conservatism

Yet another conservative columnist is making the case that I have made many times: The Tea Party - which is basically a recast cover for the Christofascists - is ruining conservatism and by extension, the Republican Party.  There are indeed things that government needs to do - perhaps must do.  Simply being an obstructionist and blocking all policies isn't governing.  This time, the columnist making the case for government programs and involvement is Michael Gerson, who once served as President George W. Bush's chief speechwriter from 2001 to June 2006,and  as a senior policy advisor from 2000 through June 2006.  Here are highlights from Gerson's Washington Post op-ed:

One of the main problems with an unremittingly hostile view of government — held by many associated with the tea party, libertarianism and “constitutionalism” — is that it obscures and undermines the social contributions of a truly conservative vision of government. 

[G]overnment should, as the first resort, set the table for private action and private institutions — creating a context in which civil society can flourish. This goal has moral and cultural implications.  

Government has a necessary (if limited) role in reinforcing the social norms and expectations that make the work of civic institutions both possible and easier.

But conservatives also need to take seriously the economic implications of this governing vision. Just as citizens must be prepared for the exercise of liberty, individuals must be given the skills and values — human capital — that will allow them to succeed in a free economy.

This is the essence of equal opportunity. But it is not a natural social condition. And many conservatives have failed to recognize the extent to which this defining American promise has been hollowed out.

Economic mobility has stalled for many poorer Americans, resulting in persistent, intergenerational inequality. This problem is more complex than an income gap. It involves wide disparities in parental time and investment, in community involvement and in academic accomplishment.

Where are the creative conservative policy ideas to strengthen civil society and private enterprise in places where the playing field of equal opportunity is scandalously tilted? 

This history highlights the current conservative divide. Many in the tea party and libertarian wings, if left to their own devices, would say almost nothing about these matters. Yet a number of Republican governors and members of Congress — see recent efforts by Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.) — promise a more constructive spirit of governance.

The appeal of conservatism as a governing vision now depends on the transformation of this nascent effort into a movement that is strong enough to redefine a party.

The GOP is Out to Destroy America

Yes, the caption of this post invites a reaction.  But, even as America faces pressing issues and problems, rather than pass new legislation to move the nation forward the Republican party is focused solely on obstruction, repealing needed legislation and sending the nation back into a reprise of the Gilded Age before unions had helped raise the condition of workers and regulatory reforms improved safety and health.  An op-ed in the Washington Post looks at the slash and burn efforts of the GOP and its crazed, unwashed base of Christofacists, white supremacists and those motivated first and foremost by greed notwithstanding the lip service given to "Christian values."  Here are column excerpts:

[W]hen you look at the actions of the Republican Party, particularly its members in Congress, my headline seems appropriate.

Three different pieces highlighted how the GOP is grinding just about every sector of the federal government to a halt. And it is doing it through a cynical combination of obstruction, saying no and failing to have viable alternative proposals worthy of national debate. Whatever political gains Republicans achieve in the short-term come at the long-term expense of the country. That’s simply unacceptable.

the GOP is “The Party of Zilch,” as Ron Fournier so accurately described.

Rather than be the party of solutions in a gridlocked capital, appealing to a leadership-starved public, the GOP is the party of obstruction, ensuring that its putrid approval ratings nose dive apace with Obama’s.

The country needs sensible immigration reform that brings 11 million or so undocumented residents out of the shadows. No, says the GOP.

The country needs to tame a massive debt that will be 100 percent of the gross domestic product by 2038 unless Congress raises revenue and trims entitlements. No, says the GOP.

The country needs fair debate and compromise around existential issues such as climate change, income inequality, and a deteriorating 20th century infrastructure. No, says the GOP.

“Other than hard partisans on the left and right, the majority of the public—moderate, fix-it Americans who simply want a sensible government—now have nowhere to turn, because the GOP is the party of nothing,” Fournier correctly concludes.

 

That congressional Republicans have no “governing vision or even a legislative agenda” was proven in a Politico story on Sunday. The headline said it all: “House GOP 2014 agenda starts with blank slate.”

Last Thursday, a group of House Republicans filed into Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s Capitol office suite and received a blank piece of paper labeled “Agenda 2014.”

The judicial branch is crippled as qualified nominees go unconfirmed due to “unfair hurdles in the Senate.” As a result, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the nation’s second-highest court, has three vacancies on the 11-seat court that handles cases involving federal regulations and national security. Half of the legislative branch is in thrall to a band of right-wing zealots unmoved by facts as much as they are motivated by hatred of the president. As a result, the threat of government shutdowns and default is constant. Inaction on pressing issues is now routine. And the executive branch finds its agenda held hostage by an opposition that schemed against it since before its inauguration in 2009, even though said agenda was approved by the American people — twice.  

Ours is a government that requires two functioning parties that produce good public policy through the necessary friction of governing. Neither party is perfect nor has all the ideas or the answers. But no good comes from a party that gives up completely on governing.

Is The Tea Party A Religion?

I have espoused the view many times that the Republican Party's descent into insanity began when the far Christian Right - what I call the Christofascists began to infiltrate and take over local city and county committees and caucuses.  At least 15 years ago, it became clear to me that their goal was to force their religious beliefs and social views on all citizens.  While not all members of the Tea Party are Christofascists, some 85% of them identify as "conservative Christian."  This reality means, reason, logic and acceptance of objective reality is anathema to far too many of them. They are in open rebellion against modernity, changing racial demographics and a decline of white privilege that allowed many of them to feel good about themselves.  Andrew Sullivan correctly views the Tea Party as a quasi-religious cult.  Ultimately, it is this religious fanaticism that must be defeated if we are to regain a balanced constitutional government.  Here are excepts:

I believe that you cannot understand the current GOP without also grasping how bewildered so many people are by the dizzying onset of modernity. The 21st Century has brought Islamist war to America, the worst recession since the 1930s, a debt-ridden federal government, a majority-minority future, gay marriage, universal healthcare and legal weed. If you were still seething from the eruption of the 1960s, and thought that Reagan had ended all that, then the resilience of a pluralistic, multi-racial, fast-miscegenating, post-gay America, whose president looks like the future, not the past, you would indeed, at this point, be in a world-class, meshugganah, cultural panic.

When you add in the fact that the American dream stopped working for most working-class folks at some point in the mid 1970s, and when you see the national debt soaring from the Reagan years onward, made much worse by the Bush-Cheney years, and then exploded by the recession Bush bequeathed, you have a combustible mixture. It’s very easy to lump all this together into a paranoid fantasy of an American apocalypse that must somehow be stopped at all cost. In trying to understand the far-right mindset – which accounts for around a quarter of the country – I think you have to zoom out and see all of this in context.

The first black president could, perhaps, clean up some of the mess of his predecessor, but as soon as he moved on an actual substantive change that he wanted and campaigned on, he was deemed illegitimate. Even though that change was, by any standards, a moderate one, catering to private interests, such as drug and insurance companies; even though it had no public option; even though its outline was the same as the GOP’s 2012 nominee’s in Massachusetts, this inching toward a more liberal America was the casus belli. It still is – which is why it looms so large for the Republican right in ways that can easily befuddle the rest of us.

But it is emphatically not the real reason for the revolt. It is the symptom, not the cause. My rule of thumb is pretty simple: whenever you hear a quote about Obamacare, it’s more illuminating to remove the “care” part. And Obama is a symbol of change people cannot understand, are frightened by, and seek refuge from.

That desperate need for certainty and security is what I focused on in my book about all this, The Conservative Soul. What the understandably beleaguered citizens of this new modern order want is a pristine variety of America that feels like the one they grew up in. They want truths that ring without any timbre of doubt. They want root-and-branch reform – to the days of the American Revolution. And they want all of this as a pre-packaged ideology, preferably aligned with re-written American history
And given the apocalyptic nature of their view of what is going on, it is only natural that they would seek a totalist, radical, revolutionary halt to all of it, even if it creates economic chaos, even if it destroys millions of jobs, even though it keeps millions in immigration limbo, even if it means an unprecedented default on the debt.

This is a religion – but a particularly modern, extreme and unthinking fundamentalist religion. And such a form of religion is the antithesis of the mainline Protestantism that once dominated the Republican party as well, to a lesser extent, the Democratic party. 

It also brooks no distinction between religion and politics, seeing them as fused in the same cultural and religious battle. Much of the GOP hails from that new purist, apocalyptic sect right now – and certainly no one else is attacking that kind of religious organization. But it will do to institutional political parties what entrepreneurial fundamentalism does to mainline churches: its appeal to absolute truth, total rectitude and simplicity of worldview instantly trumps tradition, reason, moderation, compromise.

[T]his is not just a cold civil war. It is also a religious war – between fundamentalism and faith, between totalism and tradition, between certainty and reasoned doubt. It may need to burn itself out – with all the social and economic and human damage that entails. Or it can be defeated, as Lincoln reluctantly did to his fanatical enemies, or absorbed and coopted, as Elizabeth I did hers over decades. But it will take time. The question is what will be left of America once it subsides, and how great a cost it will have imposed.

I view the Christofascists and their Tea Party cousins to be a clear and present danger to America.  More citizens need to recognize this reality and these foul forces which are motivated by hate and fear of anyone deemed "other" need to be defeated completely and utterly discredited.

 

Time Magazine Cover Captures Tea Party Goal

While the United States Constitution contemplates that the civil and religious rights of minorities are to be protected from the tyranny of the majority, in the general course of governance the idea was that majority consensus would be controlling, both in terms of election decisions and in terms on Congressional action.  This latter concept is what the Republican Party/Tea Party is seeking to destroy.  The cover of Time Magazine, above, sums it up well.   Daily Kos elaborates further:

Yes, this image perfectly encapsulates the current government shutdown, in which a fringe band of GOP representatives in the House have effectively held the federal government hostage (with the help of the GOP's spineless leadership).

However, this image also perfectly encapsulates, unintentionally, the extent to which our elected officials truly represent America's citizenry today. For as mainstream pundits yap about which monuments might close, the wealth gap between those who have, and those who have not, is larger than it's ever been.

New Yorkers with two jobs are increasingly becoming homeless. Metropolises are becoming income distribution wastelands. Things are getting worse for so many.

And today, a small collection of lawmakers is focused on shutting down the government, rather than ensure it functions for those who need it most.  The majority is not ruling. In so many ways.

Very well said.  And very disturbing.

GOP Donors Revolt Against GOP Led Government Shutdown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our Democracy Is at Stake

As numerous columnists and pundits have opined, the current federal government shutdown has been brought about by extreme elements in the Republican Party who in effect seek to over throw America's form of government.  The Affordable Health Care Act was passed by Congress, upheld by the United States Supreme Court and Republicans failed to win either the White House or control of Congress in 2012.  They lost and the system put in place by the Founding Fathers worked.  But that's not good enough for the poisonous elements in the GOP.  They seek to nullify elections, court rulings and Congressional action in their quest to inflict their views and beliefs on all Americans.  Indeed, one could argue that the recalcitrant Republicans have broken their oath of office and given their attempts to undermine the government are guilty of treason.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the threat these extremists pose to America's democracy.  Here are excerpts:

This time is different. What is at stake in this government shutdown forced by a radical Tea Party minority is nothing less than the principle upon which our democracy is based: majority rule. President Obama must not give in to this hostage taking — not just because Obamacare is at stake, but because the future of how we govern ourselves is at stake. 

What we’re seeing here is how three structural changes that have been building in American politics have now, together, reached a tipping point — creating a world in which a small minority in Congress can not only hold up their own party but the whole government. And this is the really scary part: The lawmakers doing this can do so with high confidence that they personally will not be politically punished, and may, in fact, be rewarded. When extremists feel that insulated from playing by the traditional rules of our system, if we do not defend those rules — namely majority rule and the fact that if you don’t like a policy passed by Congress, signed by the president and affirmed by the Supreme Court then you have to go out and win an election to overturn it; you can’t just put a fiscal gun to the country’s head — then our democracy is imperiled. 

How did we get here? First, by taking gerrymandering to a new level. The political analyst Charlie Cook, writing in The National Journal on March 16, noted that the 2010 election gave Republican state legislatures around the country unprecedented power to redraw political boundaries, which they used to create even more “safe, lily-white” Republican strongholds that are, in effect, an “alternative universe” to the country’s diverse reality. . . . . In other words, while the country continues to grow more racially diverse, the average Republican district continues to get even whiter.” 

According to Cook, the number of strongly Democratic districts decreased from 144 before redistricting to 136 afterward. The number of strongly Republican districts increased from 175 to 183. “When one party starts out with 47 more very strong districts than the other,” said Cook, “the numbers suggest that the fix is in for any election featuring a fairly neutral environment. 

[Second] Meanwhile, the Supreme Court’s inane Citizens United decision allowed a single donor, Sheldon Adelson, to create his own alternative universe.

Finally, the rise of a separate G.O.P. (and a liberal) media universe — from talk-radio hosts, to Web sites to Fox News — has created another gravity-free zone, where there is no punishment for extreme behavior, but there’s 1,000 lashes on Twitter if you deviate from the hard-line and great coverage to those who are most extreme. When politicians only operate inside these bubbles, they lose the habit of persuasion and opt only for coercion. After all, they must be right. Rush Limbaugh told them so. 

These “legal” structural changes in money, media and redistricting are not going away. They are superempowering small political movements to act in extreme ways without consequences and thereby stymie majority rule. If democracy means anything, it means that, if you are outvoted, you accept the results and prepare for the next election. Republicans are refusing to do that. It shows contempt for the democratic process. 

President Obama is not defending health care. He’s defending the health of our democracy. Every American who cherishes that should stand with him. 

The cloumn is right.  Much more is at stake than just Obamacare.  The GOP MUST be defeated for the sake of our democracy.

The Tea Party’s Revolt Against Reality

It's no coincidence that close to 85% 0f members of the so-called Tea Party identify as "conservative Christians."  In my view, that overlap is a key element in understanding the irrationality and extremism of the Tea Party.   The Christian Right - or Christofascists as I prefer to call them - base their lives and entire outlook on a fantasy world view.  Facts, objective reality - nothing matters.  It's all about protecting their house of cards faith system and seeking to institutionalize their many prejudices and hatreds towards those they deem "other."  In a column in the Washington Post Michael Gerson, someone who is no liberal, slams the GOP/Tea Party for its disconnect with reality.  Here are column excerpts:

If you can judge people by the quality of their enemies, one quality shared by many opponents of the tea party is their conservatism. Like many ideological factions, tea-party activists display a special intensity in fighting the “near enemy” — other elements on the right that don’t share their tactics. President Obama may be their ultimate foe, but conservative pragmatists are their rivals. And rivals are the more immediate problem.

So the Senate Conservatives Fund runs ads against Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and other solid Senate conservatives for opposing a counterproductive strategy to defund Obamacare. The circle of tea-party purity is drawn so tightly that it excludes Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and John Cornyn (R-Tex.) — some of the most reliably conservative members of Congress.

Tea-party populism, however, moved quickly beyond this point. We are no longer seeing a revolt against the Republican leadership, or even against the Republican “establishment”; this revolt is against anyone who accepts the constraints of political reality. Conservatives are excommunicated not for holding the wrong convictions but for rational calculations in service of those convictions. 

At least, the argument goes, Ted Cruz has some backbone. It is the political expression of pent-up anger. “If we’re going to fight,” says Michele Bachmann, “we need to fight now.” Few believe any longer that Republicans will be able to defund Obamacare in this session of Congress; it is the fight that counts. This is a word that crops up frequently in tea-party discourse. Not winning. Not strategy. Not consequences. The fight. 

Under normal circumstances, this faction — composing less than 20 percent of the House Republican caucus — might exercise a marginal influence. But we have the peculiar situation of a divided Congress and a weak president. The tea-party faction holds the margin of victory in a slim Republican House majority. Boehner has kept some semblance of order by appeasing it — an approach of diminishing utility. 

The problem for Republicans . . . . . is that factions are seldom deterred by defeat. Every loss is taken as proof of insufficient purity. Conservatives now face the ideological temptation: inviting an unpleasant political reality by refusing to inhabit political reality.

Once Thinking Republicans Are Turning Into Pod People

As a former Republican it continues to distress me to see a once largely responsible, intelligence revering party turned into a nest of spittle flecked Christofascists and Tea Party Neanderthals.  Equally upsetting is seeing once reasonable and thinking Republicans - i.e., those who haven't already fled the GOP - act as if they have had lobotomies and been turned into zombies who recite the mantra dictated by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh regardless of what objective reality and hard facts indicate to the contrary.  I have one former colleague in particular that I can't believe has been turned into a mindless sound bite reciting robot.  WTF happened?  I attribute some of it to unspoken racism brought to the fore by Barack Obama's election to the White House, but that doesn't fully explain the problem.  A piece in Politico looks at the frightening phenomenon. Here are excerpts:

In the classic 1956 sci-fi film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, an alien race comes to Earth and begins turning humans into “pod people.” Their bodies are left intact, but their minds are regrown, rending them humanoid robots under the aliens’ command. Unrecognizable to neighbors, the pod people take over until nothing is left of human society.

At the time of its release, the film was seen as a metaphor either for communist takeover (according to conservatives) or an ironic criticism of the irrational fears of communist takeover (according to liberals). Today, we think the body snatchers conceit perfectly fits another trend: the takeover of the responsible conservative movement — or least what is left of it. A small faction-within-a-faction — government-decrying, religious-fanatic, anti-science — have turned thinking Republicans into pod people.

There is growing concern that while Republicans may dominate off-year congressional elections, their ability to win a presidential election is diminishing. The crisis on the right revolves around two issues: demographic trends working against the GOP in the general election, and insanity working against the GOP in the nomination process. Extremist outliers now dominate both the public face and internal organization of the Republican Party.

The evidence of Republicans at war with themselves and with reality mounts daily. Even those recognized as seemingly “rational” Republican and conservative voices, both in elected office and the punditocracy, are pandering to religiously radical, inward-focused factions. The result is a GOP fixated on the roughly 10 million people who listen to conservative radio and television pundits, instead of projecting messages of inclusion and hope to 230 million registered voters.
It was not always this way.

Into this vacuum stepped faith-based Republicans, also known as “TheoCons.” The TheoCons, including national politicians and the religious coalitions backing them, entered GOP circles during the 1978 off-year elections. Many were evangelicals who supported Jimmy Carter in the 1976 presidential election, hoping that Carter’s devout Christianity would usher in policies friendly to their Christian worldview. Their disappointment led them into the Republican Party.

The TheoCons used their time in waiting to methodically take control of the Republican Party at the county and state levels. Their fervor for biblical policies and evangelical beliefs easily overwhelmed the waning legions of GOP Cold Warriors and independent libertarians.

Fast forward to 2012, and the Republican Party of the 21st century looks more like 16th-century Europe, when doctrinaire Catholicism and fervent Protestantism were literally fighting over hearts and souls amid the Reformation. Science and medicine were locked in the realm of superstition. Absolute dictators ruled everywhere. It would take another 100 years before the beginnings of rational thought, scientific inquiry, and liberal democracy took root.

That is the fundamental problem of today’s Republican Party: Its philosophical “outliers” have become its activist core. This has infected Republicans at all levels, from the state house, to the Congress, governors, and the presidential contenders. Virtually any Republican candidate who wants to run and hold office, must at least give lip service to an activist government based on biblical imperatives. We know from personal experience, over recent years, that in some circles, in order to obtain the GOP nomination, raise funds, and attract campaign volunteers, Republicans must not only embrace biblical creationism, but also go on the record supporting the concept of a “young Earth” — the creationist belief that our planet was formed in seven days, starting on March 18, 3952 B.C. (though dates vary). They must also agree to expand the size of government to enforce biblically based policies, like the absurd anti-sodomy debate going on in Virginia.

The TheoCon body snatchers have turned a Party of the Enlightenment and liberty into the pod people of science fiction movies. Many meetings among Republican fundraisers, caucuses, and party leaders have enforcers — local activists — ready to alert their fellow pods to heresy. Shrinking numbers and electoral defeat only strengthens the pod people’s hold on the party. More and more Republicans fall asleep under their spell, only to awake and join them.

 The invasion of the GOP body snatchers is not just hurting the legacy of the Republican Party and conservative movement. It is hurting America’s ability to conduct a civil and sensible national debate. When the process of positive political dialogue is invaded by pod people, it ceases to be possible. Everyone has an interest in fighting the invasion.