Gillespie Lamely Blames Trump for His Gubernatorial Loss

At the moment that I write this post, the results from the Alabama U.S. Senate special election are still coming in and Doug Jones is in potential striking distance.   Time will tell, especially as the largest counties in the state - Mobile, Montgomery, Jefferson, Madison, Shelby and Tuscaloosa - come in.  Meanwhile, here in Virginia failed GOP gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie is seemingly blaming Donald Trump for his loss last month.  Yes, Donald Trump is toxic in Virginia outside of the evangelical Christian and neo-Confederates who predominate in the rural regions (especially in Southwest Virginia), but Gillespie conveniently forgets his ridiculous tax proposal that would have bankrupted the state or his racist Trump style campaign ads that many voters found to be repulsive and/or frightening.  The Hill looks at Gillespie's effort to throw blame solely at Trump.  Here are excerpts:

Republican Ed Gillespie said that President Trump may have been a "big factor" in his defeat in the Virginia gubernatorial race last month.

In an interview with CNN's David Axelrod on his podcast "The Axe Files," Gillespie said that during his race against Democrat Ralph Northam, the eventual winner of the election, he tried to separate his campaign from the president and instead make it about Virginia.  But the race was widely seen as an early referendum on Trump's presidency.

"If you're not standing up for President Trump, for his supporters, they see you as not for him," Gillespie said. "And it's not that I was not for him, it's just that I'm not against him. I wanted to be for Virginia and I wanted to keep the focus on Virginia."

"It's a tough tightrope to walk, and it may not be walkable, to be honest with you."

On the campaign trail, Gillespie appeared at times to distance himself from Trump, who remains deeply unpopular in Virginia. He said that he never asked Trump to campaign with him in the state, and that the president never offered to.

Gillespie fell to Northam by about 9 points in the state's Nov. 7 gubernatorial election, and Democrats swept statewide, picking up 16 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates.

After the results of the election, Trump tweeted that Gillespie lost because he did not fully embrace the president and his brand of politics.

Should Roy Moore lose in Alabama, it will be interesting to see if he likewise throws blame at Trump.  Ditto for Congressional Republicans. 

Trump Plays the Victim; Holds White Supremacist Rally in Phoenix

Displaying behavior increasingly reminiscent of some of Adolph Hitler's more deranged speeches, Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, went off the rails during his "rally" in Phoenix.  Not only did Trump depict himself as the biggest victim of Charlottesville, but, as one commentator stated, he literally held a white supremacist rally in Phoenix and sought to incite violence and hate against the media, immigrants, Democrats, and all of his opponents, including GOP senators.  The man is mentally ill, in my opinion.  Vanity Fair - a New York City based publication that has known the real Trump all too well over the last few decades, described the "rally" in part as follows:

Donald Trump repeatedly ditched his TelePrompTer and went off-script as he ranted about being mistreated by the media in the wake of Charlottesville, relentlessly attacked an array of enemies including both of Arizona’s Republican senators, and portrayed himself as the true victim of a violent clash between white supremacists and counter-protesters that left one woman dead. Journalists and other social media commentators watched, stunned, as he proceeded to spend the rest of his hourlong speech unloading on the mainstream press, praising a CNN pundit who was fired for tweeting a Nazi slogan, and re-litigating his entire response to Charlottesville, line by line, in what has become a hallmark of the Trump presidency: a full-on public meltdown.

Trump reveled in the opportunity to vent, after a long summer of political crises, and to set the record straight. “What happened in Charlottesville strikes at the core of America,” he said, blaming the “thugs” and the “dishonest media” for the violence in Virginia.

Then, in a truly Hitleresque  moment, Der Trumpenführer whined as follows in defense of racism:

The media can attack me, but where I draw the line is when they attack you, the decency of our supporters. You are honest, hard-working, tax-paying—and you’re over-taxed, but we’re going to get your taxes down—Americans. It’s time to expose the crooked media deceptions and to challenge the media for their role in fomenting divisions. They are trying to take away our history and our heritage.”

But there was more:

Trump spoke broadly about “liberating our towns” from undocumented immigrants, citing Joe Arpaio, pledging to purge “sanctuary cities” of undocumented immigrants and leading the crowd in a “build the wall” chant. He threatened a government shutdown if the wall he wants constructed between the U.S. and Mexico isn’t approved. And, after the White House said Trump wouldn’t pardon Arpaio during his rally in Phoenix, Trump hinted that a pardon would come.

The question thus becomes one of when will Congressional Republicans act to remove the lunatic from office.  A piece last week in the Friday New York Times drew an analogy of the Roman Senate and Caligula and what we are now witnessing by a man who is obviously unhinged.   Are tax cuts for the wealthy and pandering to huge corporations more important than protecting the country from an unfit leader?  Here are column highlights: 

Even before the media obsession with Hillary Clinton’s email server put The Worst President Ever™ in the White House, historians were comparing Donald Trump to Caligula, the cruel, depraved Roman emperor who delighted in humiliating others, especially members of the empire’s elite. But seven months into the Trump administration, we can see that this comparison was unfair.

For one thing, Caligula did not, as far as we know, foment ethnic violence within the empire. For another, again as far as we know, Rome’s government continued to function reasonably well despite his antics: Provincial governors continued to maintain order, the army continued to defend the borders, there were no economic crises.

Finally, when his behavior became truly intolerable, Rome’s elite did what the party now controlling Congress seems unable even to contemplate: It found a way to get rid of him.

Anyone with eyes — eyes not glued to Fox News, anyway — has long realized that Trump is utterly incapable, morally and intellectually, of filling the office he holds. But in the past few days things seem to have reached a critical mass.

Journalists have stopped seizing on brief moments of not-craziness to declare Trump “presidential”; business leaders have stopped trying to curry favor by lending Trump an air of respectability; even military leaders have gone as far as they can to dissociate themselves from administration pronouncements.

[R]emember, this administration has yet to confront a crisis not of its own making. Furthermore, a series of scary deadlines is looming. Never mind tax reform. Congress has to act within the next few weeks to enact a budget, or the government will shut down; to raise the debt ceiling, or the U.S. will go into default; to renew the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or millions of children will lose coverage. [W]ho’s going to ensure that these critical deadlines are met? Not Trump, who’s too busy praising white supremacists and promoting his businesses. Maybe Republican leaders in Congress will still be able to wrangle their extremist members, who see crippling the government as a good thing, into the necessary deals.

But the revelation that these leaders were lying about health care all those years has destroyed their intellectual credibility — remember when people took Paul Ryan’s pretense of policy expertise seriously? And their association with President Caligula has destroyed their moral credibility, too.

Everyone in Washington now knows that we have a president who never meant it when he swore to defend the Constitution. He violates that oath just about every day and is never going to get any better. The fact is that white supremacists have long been a key if unacknowledged part of the G.O.P. coalition, and Republicans need those votes to win general elections. Given the profiles in cowardice they’ve presented so far, it’s hard to imagine anything — up to and including evidence of collusion with a foreign power — that would make them risk losing those voters’ support. [A]ll one can say is God save America. Because all indications are that the Republicans won’t.

Be very, very afraid.

Trump Continues to Alienate All But Angry Whites

Adolph Hitler like Donald Trump continues to have diarrhea of the mouth and attack all demographics other than angry, low education whites.  After the 2012 loss of the presidential campaign, the GOP conducted a post mortem and recommended a change in course if the party was to win the presidency in the future.  Trump is seemingly ignoring ever single recommendation and  pushing a campaign best described as racist, white supremacist oriented and neo-Fascist.  Some in the Republican Party are belatedly waking up to the Trump nightmare as reported in a piece in the Washington Post.  Here are highlights:

A growing number of Republican lawmakers and strategists fear that Donald Trump’s hostile remarks about minorities and his un­or­tho­dox strategy have imperiled his campaign . . . .

Their concerns increased again Sunday after Trump said he thought a Muslim judge might treat him unfairly because he wants to temporarily ban most foreign Muslims from entering the country. The remark was an expansion on repeated assertions over the past week that an American-born judge overseeing a fraud case against him should recuse himself because of his “Mexican heritage.”

While Republicans credit Trump for making some strides after vanquishing his final GOP opponents last month, many are concerned about repeated comments singling out people for criticism on the basis of race, ethnicity or religion. The attacks in the Trump University case also underscore the extent to which Trump, who is traveling overseas later this month to visit some of his golf courses, commingles his private business interests with his presidential campaign.

Finally, many Republicans are also unnerved by Trump’s decision to continue picking fights with fellow Republicans and to spend time and resources campaigning in California and other Democratic-leaning states that he is extremely unlikely to win in November.

[T]hey see some acute problems in the way he has conducted himself in recent days.

Republican strategist Brian Walsh, a former spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, quickly took to social media after Trump’s remarks on Muslims on Sunday: “I don’t care if he’s the nominee — Republicans should loudly condemn this racist, nonsensical rhetoric by Trump,” Walsh tweeted.

“It’s very toxic for other Republican campaigns and for the party as a whole,” he said. “It’s very concerning.”

In the latest sign of the separation down-ballot Republicans are seeking from Trump, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.) responded to Trump’s latest comments with a strongly worded statement to The Washington Post.

“This is one of the worst mistakes Trump has made, and I think it’s inexcusable,” said Gingrich. He added: “If a liberal were to attack Justice Clarence Thomas on the grounds that he’s black, we would all go crazy.”

Rick Wilson, a longtime GOP operative who has been one of the most aggressive critics of Trump, penned a column to fellow Republicans this weekend warning that candidates up for election will be yoked to Trump: “You own his politics. You own his policies, even the ones that only last as long as the next contradiction. You own the racial animus that started out as a bug, became a feature and is now the defining characteristic of his campaign. You own every crazy, vile chunk of word vomit that spews from his mouth.”

Republican concerns over Trump’s campaign extend beyond his comments to his strategy. After cementing his claim to the nomination after the May 3 Indiana primary, Trump has taken long stretches off the trail and, when he is campaigning, has focused his time on blue states that still have primaries to come but are virtually unwinnable for a Republican in the general election. 

Trump shows little sign of changing course and continues to champion policies that Ryan and other establishment Republicans oppose. At his Redding rally last week, for example, Trump led one of his regular chants on building a massive wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.  “Build that wall!” Trump said to the cheering crowd.

With luck, Trump will come to define the GOP for a generation and make it into a permanent minority party. 

The Tea Party's Revenge on Marco Rubio

Today may usher in the end of Marco Rubio's presidential quest - and perhaps his political career.   Expectations are that he will fair poorly in the Florida primary, taking a third place finish.  The irony is that it is the forces he rode to power that are not determined to end his career.  I make no pretense about my dislike of the so-called Tea Party and its embrace of ignorance and thinly veiled racism.  Rubio at one time prostituted himself to the Tea Party faction and now he is about to face the consequences of his heresy of once supporting comprehensive immigration reform.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at his likely payback today.  Here are excerpts:

If Marco Rubio’s campaign flames out in Florida tonight, as polls suggest, it will be delicious revenge for the Tea Partiers who have been waiting years to embarrass the senator in his home state.

“We’re going to have a sweet taste in our mouths tomorrow when little Marco gets embarrassed by those he betrayed. He betrayed all of Florida, but mostly he betrayed people like me who worked hard to get him elected,” said Dan Ray, a founding member of Tea Party group in The Villages, a large retirement community in Florida, where Rubio campaigned earlier this week.

When Rubio joined with the so-called Gang of Eight to propose a bipartisan, comprehensive immigration reform bill, Tea Party groups saw it as akin to an act of treason. They had supported the young lawmaker, preferring him to the alternative, Gov. Charlie Crist (who later became a Democrat). They had also trusted him on the issue of immigration—and worked as foot-soldiers to get him elected.

The people who elected him in 2010 don’t trust him anymore.”  

Like Ray, Hall had supported Rubio in 2010, volunteering as a liaison for his staff with conservative activists. She now says she is “ashamed” that she worked so hard for him.

Jack Oliver, the legislative director for Floridians for Immigration Enforcement, can recite the date, from memory, where he believes he was sold a bill of goods. It was Dec. 22, 2009, he said: the day when Rubio “conned us all... and then went out to con the rest of the citizens of Florida.”

Instead of a resounding victory on home turf, polls seem to indicate a humiliating defeat is in Rubio’s very near future. A number of public polls show billionaire businessman Donald Trump leading Marco Rubio by double digits, in some cases by more than 20 percentage points. A Quinnipiac University poll published Monday shows Trump leading Rubio in the senator’s home state, 46 percent to 22 percent.

Florida’s Tea Partiers have found at least one unifying theme to rally against once more: Repaying Rubio on Tuesday night—by making sure he loses big.

And Oliver couldn’t be more pleased: “I expect him to lose by double digits… The informed voters aren't buying his B.S. anymore.”

I have little sympathy for Marcoot who has shown that his is only too willing to say anything that he thinks will play well with the ugliest elements of the GOP base.   Selling one's soul can carry a very high price.

10 Bald-Faced Lies from the Republican Debate

One way in which one can tell that the Republican Party has become largely controlled by the Christofascists is the fact that the truth no longer matters.   No one lies more than the "godly folk" so it should come as no surprise that GOP candidates have adopted the same truth free agenda and see themselves as having a license to say whatever furthers their cause, namely power and upward movement in polls of GOP ignorance embracing voters.  And the focus of many of the untruths is to pander to the bigotry and racism of the GOP base which seemingly will believe anything so long as it plays to its widely held prejudices.  A piece in Salon looks at some of the top lies from Tuesday night's debate.  Here are highlights:

Another GOP debate, another steaming pile of half-truths, lies and pseudo-facts. The Republican Party seems to be almost entirely post-truth at this point, and if you call them out, you’re the liberal media! It’s a brilliant racket and one that led us to the current state of affairs where facts aren’t just dispensable, but a political liability. Without further ado, here are the top lies and distortions from tonight’s debate.

1. Ben Carson and Ted Cruz: “We cannot vet refugees.” A popular refrain in the wake of the Paris and San Bernadino attacks is that the U.S. government (or more specifically President Obama) cannot properly vet Syrian refugees. This has been repeatedly debunked as hysterical posturing, yet remains a popular trope among the far right. In addition to a rather thorough takedown by John Oliver two weeks ago, PoliticoFact rated this claim, “Mostly False” . .

2. Marco Rubio claims Assad created ISIS.  This is an old canard, and one that even nominally lefty outlets like Vox like to push, but it has little to do with reality. In an effort to shore up his neocon credentials, Rubio has doubled down on regime change in Syria while other GOP candidates like Paul and Cruz – as well as Bernie Sanders – have run away from this position. To do this Rubio has pushed the conspiracy theory that the reason ISIS grew in Syria is because the U.S. didn’t back the rebels opposed to Assad when in fact the CIA, according to documents revealed by Edward Snowden, spent $1 billion a year arming, funding and assisting the opposition.

3. Donald Trump cites bogus poll that 25% of Muslims condone acts of violence.   A popular trope among the nativist wing of the Republican Party (aka the Republican Party), the bogus stat that 25% of Muslins support violence is thrown around quite often. But it originates from noted Islamophobic “think tank” Center for Security Policy.

4. Chris Christie insists he was appointed U.S. Attorney on Sept 10, 2001.  Why does Christie keep repeating this lie? It’s been debunked several times and it’s a matter of public record. It’s a great soundbite to be sure, and if true, would put Christie in the heart of the most significant foreign policy crisis of the past 20 years. But the reality is that George W. Bush nominated Christie on Dec. 7, 2001, as one can clearly see from a White House press release.

5. Ted Cruz claims George W. Bush deported 10 million people.  Geroge W. Bush deported 1.8 million people. Obama deported 2 million. It’s unclear where Cruz is getting this number from.

6. Donald Trump keeps saying he self-funds, but we know that’s demonstrably false.  This is another assertion that’s completely disproven and easily searchable online (which raises the question of why CNN hasn’t bothered doing this). Trump has received, according to the last available FEC filings, upward of $3.9 million from individual donors compared to using only $101,000 of his own money. 

7. Moderator lie: CNN’s Wolf Blitzer claimed terrorism fears are higher than they’ve been since 9/11.  That’s not true. A recent Gallup poll shows terrorism fears have spiked recently, but are the same as in 2005 and nowhere near as high as after 9/11.

8. Lie by omission: Why was the attack on Planned Parenthood not mentioned in a debate about terrorism?  . . . . non-Muslim terrorism was completely absent. The recent Planned Parenthood terrorist attack carried out by a man who claims to be a “warrior for babies” wasn’t discussed in the broader context of terrorism. Why this is so remains unclear.

9. Lie by cliche: What the hell is Fiorina talking about?   Fiorina keeps referencing “building up the sixth fleet” because presumably it sounds like some important walk-and-talk dialogue in the West Wing, but it actually makes no sense. Several experts have chimed in on this strange refrain and pointed out that it’s basically nonsense. As military magazine Stars and Stripes noted:

Her meaning wasn’t immediately clear — the U.S. 6th Fleet is less a collection of ships than a command structure for operating American warships in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. Moreover, the fleet is one of the few growing military commands in Europe.

10. Several candidates keep claiming the Iran deal “gives $150 billion to Iran.”  As the LA Times notes, it’s not “giving” $150 billion to Iran, it’s relieving sanctions that will ultimately unfreeze more than $150 billion in assets to Iran, but the funds were already Iran’s to begin with. No one is “giving” Iran anything.

As for condoning the use of violence, I would argue that the group most in favor of using violence is evangelical Christians who seemingly cannot wait to see the slaughter of Muslims by American forces.  They probably like to see some gays slaughtered as well since they claim we are a threat to Western Civilization.