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The GOP Has Become the Party of White Backlash

A column in the Washington Post by a former member of the George W. Bush White House asks if the GOP will become the party of white backlash.  Unfortunately, that transformation of the party has already become the reality of today's GOP when you look at the open racism of the current GOP occupant of the White House and candidates such as Corey Stewart here in Virginia who is running on an unabashedly racist platform - Stewart is likely having apoplexy over a decision by the Richmond Monument Avenue Commission to remove the monument to Jefferson Davis. Country club Republicans can whine and bristle at being called racists, but as long as they remain supporters of the GOP, they are in fact racists if not those marching carrying torches and Confederate flags. They are now known by the company they keep and, as the column points out, that company is pretty ugly.  As for moral considerations of open racism, the GOP threw away morality years ago when it allowed evangelical Christians - perhaps the most immoral force in American society if one looks beyond false and feigned piety - to hijack the party base.  Here are column highlights:

It should give the advocates of Trumpism — defined by some mix of protectionism, nativism and bitter resentment of elites — pause that the strongest advocates of the creed are some of the most frightening figures in American politics. I am not necessarily referring to the politicians Trump chooses to endorse in primaries — given that the president’s favor is more based on loyalty than ideology. I am talking about that subset of Republicans who take the ideals of Trumpism most seriously. People such as West Virginia Senate candidate Don Blankenship, who, before losing the primary, ran ads highlighting the Taiwanese heritage of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s wife. Or Iowa Rep. Steve King, who argues, “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.” Or Arizona Senate candidate and former sheriff Joe Arpaio , known for extreme ethnic profiling, terrorist raids, and cruel and unusual punishment. Or Virginia Senate candidate Corey A. Stewart, who has associated with white supremacists and thrown his state party into turmoil.

The phenomenon of Republican extremism is hardly new. At the height of the tea-party movement, the GOP had candidate fitness crises in Nevada, Delaware, Colorado, Missouri and Indiana. But two things are now different. First, the GOP establishment is weaker than at any time I can remember. Second, the rhetoric of Trumpism is more explicitly racial than at any time I can remember.

For a party at its height of influence, Republicans remain in a tenuous position at the national level because of Trump. They lost the popular vote count by nearly 3 million in the 2016 presidential election, and Trump has done almost nothing to expand his appeal. Long-term demographic trends are running against the GOP, with the non-Hispanic white population declining from 76 percent to 63 percent over the past two decades and the country on track to be majority minority by 2045 .

The political challenge for the GOP, in the meantime, is to “seriously reduce immigration and encourage population growth within the country.” Which clearly means population growth in that portion of the country with less melanin.

The problem? Trump already won the white vote by more than 20 percentage points in 2016. So how does the GOP rack up even greater white support? If Trump’s political strategy is any indication, this will involve a relentless emphasis on race and immigration — on kneeling black athletes, on immigrants who “infest” our country, and on Muslims who are targeted for suspicion.

A strategy of feeding white backlash against a multicultural future worked for Trump — barely — in 2016. Will it work for Republicans in 2018 and 2020? Perhaps, if Democrats move precipitously to the left. But in the longer run, will Trumpism appeal to millennials (who now consistently give Trump around a 25 percent approval rating )? Will it work with suburban women?

And what are the moral implications of a political strategy that employs racial and ethnic antagonism as a motivating factor? Is this really the set of values that Republican leaders want their children to absorb? Will conservatives so easily abandon conservatism for white identity politics? It is an approach to public life that will indelibly stain all who employ it — and all who excuse it.

“This is the question for Republicans going forward,” Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report told me. “Will the GOP be defined not just as the party of Trump but as the party that’s hostile to non-whites?” And what if there is no difference?

Again, already there is no difference. Those still clinging to the GOP need to stand in front of a mirror and take a long look at themselves and decide whether they are racists or not.  If the answer is no, the only option is to flee the GOP and work for its defeat.  

Immigration Storm Bears Down on Republicans

Many of the Republican Party's problems are self-created and many stem from the party's self-prostitution to Christofascists and white supremacists (typically, the two groups overlap each other by a wide margin).  Other than perhaps abortion and gay marriage, nowhere is the toxicity of this self-prostitution worse than in the realm of immigration and immigration reform.   Despite the Bible passages on welcoming strangers and norms of common decency, nothing sets off the Christofascists and white supremacists more than the prospect of non-whites entering American, a nation stolen from Native Americans by force of arms and genocide. Insanely, one "friend" who supports Trump and his inhumane policies has lamented being called a racist even though she is, in fact a racist, given the hideous Trump/Pence agenda that she supports.  A piece in Politico looks at the no-win situation in which the GOP has placed itself on immigration.  Here are excerpts:

House Republicans left Washington last week relieved that their ugly, months-long fight over immigration was behind them. The reality? It’s far from over.

Donald Trump has been pestering Congress to send him big money for his border wall with Mexico, a demand that could lead to a government shutdown just weeks before Election Day.

And lawmakers might not even have that long to ignore the issue. A series of court rulings expected in the coming weeks on Dreamers as well as separated migrant families will crank up the heat up on GOP lawmakers and underscore their inability to govern when it comes to immigration.

Trump may enjoy campaigning on immigration, but it’s far from what Republican leaders want to highlight as they battle to keep their majorities this fall. GOP lawmakers have repeatedly shown an inability to unite behind any sort of immigration plan, and Trump has failed to lead on the matter as well — creating a constant whiplash as he changes his positions from day to day. Trump’s reversals are one of the major reasons House Republicans were unable to pass a pair of GOP immigration bills addressing the fates of Dreamers just before the July Fourth recess — even though they’d spent months negotiating among themselves. . . . It went down in a whopping defeat, 121-301, as conservatives panned the bill as “amnesty.” The vote was a rebuke to both GOP leadership, which tried and failed to reach a consensus in the conference, and the president, who endorsed the legislation in an all-caps tweet hours before the vote. The Senate, meanwhile, has been trying to come up with a bipartisan bill to keep families united. Lawmakers fear that a federal court will strike Trump’s executive order intended to ease the firestorm engulfing his administration by allowing children to be detained with their parents beyond a 20-day limit. And the Senate wants to have legislation ready if the problem boils over in July.  But even if the Senate strikes a deal, House Republicans say they won’t take up anything unless the White House fully endorses the plan.

Even as Republicans struggle to pass a modest package on immigrant families, they could face pressure to go broader. A conservative-leaning federal court in Texas is expected to rule on the constitutionality of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program as early as mid-July, pushing the issue to the fore again.

The case, brought by Texas and several other Republican-dominated southern states, could contradict a previous court’s decision that halted Trump’s move to end DACA. The result could be that Dreamers again face the risk of deportation unless the Supreme Court — or Congress — weighs in.

Should GOP leaders somehow dodge a thorny DACA and family-separation debate this summer, Republicans are still unlikely to wriggle out of an immigration fight before the election. The federal government runs out of money on Sept. 28, and Trump has made no secret of his demand for border wall funding in any spending legislation he signs. In fact, during a meeting with appropriators last week, Trump pressed Republicans to give him $5 billion as a down payment on his wall — well over the $1.6 billion senators had proposed and the $2.2 billion the House had planned.

But GOP leaders know that Senate Democrats will reject the request without relief for Dreamers, and Republicans can’t pass a single appropriations bill in the Senate without them.

It’s possible that Trump allows Congress to pass a stopgap bill that extends government funding into a lame-duck session. But Republicans know by now that it’s not easy to pin down the president. And then they could have a shutdown on their hands.

Tuesday Morning Male Beauty

Weekend Reflections - Life After Coming Out

Baylake Beach, Virginia Beach - where my parents lived for over 30 years.

Posts were down from normal levels over the weekend over the weekend and this morning.  Between PrideFest activities and a visit by family members things were pretty much non-stop in terms of activities. On Saturday, not only did the husband and I attend PrideFest in Town Point Park in downtown Norfolk, but will also attended mini-family reunion in my old neighborhood   during the period I was married and in the closet.  The good news is that my family is open and accepting, especially with my children and their cousins and now their children. Saturday was over schedule.  Yesterday was more relaxed with a outing to the beach at Fort Monroe in Hampton - I highly recommend it - and the house guests left this morning.   The image above is from the beach at my late parents' neighborhood.  Those set below are from PrideFest - yes, I was on the HR Pride Board when the first PrideFest in downtown Norfolk took place - and from the family gathering and views of the beach at Ft. Monroe in Hampton. 

Add caption

Family gathering at th Alanton-Baycliff pool, Virginia Beach, where
I served on the board of directors and as president for 2 years.

    

Ft. Monroe, Hampton, Virginia - why fight the crowds at Oceanfront when one can have this?

All said and done, it was a wonderful weekend. And while it might shock the Christofascists and Trump base, most gays have a wide range of supportive family members and friends, all of whom vot faithfully. 

The Trump/Pence Regime’s Potemkin Economy

Despite Trump lies, U.S. Steel is not opening plants.

Canada has announced a new round of tariffs on American products in further retaliation for the ill-conceived Trump tariffs.  The Trump/Pence regime's response to growing evidence of harm to American jobs is to lire - the regime's main approach to anything and everything.  Trump even claimed that U.S. Steel would be opening six new plants - the announcement came as a surprise to the corporation which had had NO communications with Trump.  Yet, the lie is typical of what the white Christian extremist/nationalist base eats up and is too stupid to confirm independently. A column in the New York Times looks at Trump's "wake economy" which brings to mind the myth of "Potemkin villages" in Russia. The difference, of course, was no fool while the same cannot be said of Trump's base which is too happy to embrace lies.  One can only hope harsh reality hits this base very, very hard.  Here are column highlights:

According to legend, Grigory Potemkin, one of Catherine the Great’s ministers (and her lover), created a false impression of prosperity when the empress toured Ukraine. He supposedly did this by setting up fake villages, or possibly just facades, along her route, then dismantling them after she passed, and setting them up again further down the road.  

There probably isn’t much if any truth to the story — among other things, Catherine was too smart and tough-minded to be that easily deceived — but never mind: the legend has become a byword for the general idea of prettifying reality to please a tyrannical ruler.

And it seems highly relevant to some of the economic “news” coming out of the Trump administration the past few days. Just to be clear, the U.S. economy is still doing quite well overall, continuing the long expansion that began during Obama’s first term. . . . But Trump’s actual policy initiatives aren’t doing so well. His tax cut isn’t producing the promised surge in business investment, let alone the promised wage gains; all it has really done is lead to a lot of stock buybacks.

Reflecting this reality, the tax cut is becoming less popular over time. And the early phase of the trade war that was supposed to be “good, and easy to win” isn’t generating the kinds of headlines Trump wanted. Instead, we’re hearing about production shifting overseas to escape both U.S. tariffs on imported inputs and foreign retaliation against U.S. products. It’s really worth reading the submission by General Motors to the Commerce Department, . . . . In other words, “Don’t you understand global supply chains, you idiot?”

But meanwhile, how is the administration responding? By making stuff up. Now, making stuff up is actually standard operating procedure for these guys. We’re talking about an administration that’s taking children away from their parents and putting them in cages in response to a wave of violent immigrant crime that doesn’t, you know, actually exist. Trade policy itself is being driven by claims about the massive tariffs U.S. products face from, say, the European Union — tariffs that, like the immigrant crime wave, don’t actually exist.

But these are negative fictions, tales of wrongdoing by others. When it comes to Trump’s own economic policies, by contrast, it’s all puppies and rainbows — happy stories with no basis in reality.

Some of these come from Trump himself. For example, he declared that the head of U.S. Steel called him to say that the company was opening six new plants. It isn’t, and as far as we can tell the phone call never happened.

Meanwhile, reports say that the Council of Economic Advisers did an internal report concluding that Trump trade policy will cost jobs, not create them; Kevin Hassett, the chairman, pressed on these reports, said that he could neither confirm nor deny them; in other words, they’re true.

But the most Potemkinesque story of the past week was the declaration by Larry Kudlow, the administration’s top economic official, that the budget deficit is “coming down rapidly” as “those revenues come rolling in.”  Actually, the deficit is rising fast, mainly because of a plunge in corporate tax receipts — the direct result of the tax cut . . . .

Trump and company are making claims about the results of their policies that bear no relationship to reality. But reality has a well-known liberal bias. Will Trump’s habit of making things up, and his advisors’ willingness to celebrate imaginary policy triumphs, make any difference?

But who will tell him how things are really going? Given what we’ve seen the past few days, they’ll respond to plant closings and economic disruption with fantasies of triumph, while Trump will dismiss reports of problems as fake news. Reality will take a long time to break through, if it ever does. And by then the world trading system may be broken beyond repair.

Again, I wish every economic misfortune possible on states like Michigan, Iowa and Wisconsin that should have know better than to embraces racism and lies.  They deserve immense economic pain. 

Monday Morning Male Beauty

Ivanka Trump Prototype Dies at 88

There continue to be parallels between 1930-1940's Germany and 2018 America.  One is that both Germany of that era and America today had/have their "blonde princess" who brazenly refused to admit the ugliness and evil of their fathers.  For Germany, it was Gudrun Himmler, the true-believing daughter of Heinrich Himmler (for Fox News viewers, Hitler's second in command).  For 2018 America, it is Ivanka Trump Kushner.  The Washington Post looks at the death of Himmler's daughter who remained unrepentant to the end and denied the existence of the Holocaust and helped provide money and comfort to former Nazis convicted or suspected of war crimes.  After a visit to Dachau, Himmler's daughter described the experience as :very nice."  Under the regime of her father, Ivanka looks the other way as toddlers are ripped from their parents and now are being hauled before deportation courts alone and unaccompanied by adults known to them. Here are highlights from the Post coverage of the death of Himmler's daughter:

Gudrun Burwitz, the true-believing daughter of Heinrich Himmler, the architect of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany’s highest-ranking official after Adolf Hitler, died May 24 in or near Munich. She was 88.

 Mrs. Burwitz, who was sometimes called a “Nazi princess” by supporters and detractors alike, remained unrepentant and loyal to her father to the end. Although she had visited a concentration camp, she denied the existence of the Holocaust and, in later years, helped provide money and comfort to former Nazis convicted or suspected of war crimes. 

At the time of her birth in 1929, her father was consolidating power as leader of the elite Nazi paramilitary corps known as the SS. Himmler also commanded the German secret police, the Gestapo, and established the system of prison and concentration camps in which more than 6 million people — primarily Jews but also Roma (or Gypsies), homosexuals and others — would perish.The only person who outranked Himmler in the Nazi hierarchy was Hitler himself.

Throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, the bespectacled, undistinguished-looking Himmler enjoyed having Gudrun at his side, as a blond, blue-eyed symbol of Aryan youth. In a diary later seized by Allied authorities, she noted that she liked to see her reflection in her father’s polished boots. She attended Christmas parties with Hitler, who gave her dolls and chocolates. 

When she was 12, Gudrun accompanied her father to the Dachau concentration camp, which was the site of Nazi medical experiments and the execution of tens of thousands of people.Gudrun recalled the visit in her diary: “Today we went to the SS concentration camp at Dachau. We saw everything we could. We saw the gardening work. We saw the pear trees. We saw all the pictures painted by the prisoners. Marvelous.  “And afterward we had a lot to eat. It was very nice.”

Gudrun Margarete Elfriede Emma Anna Himmler was born Aug. 8, 1929, in Munich. Except for a brief interview in 1959, she is not known to have spoken in public about her father or her later life.

She did, however, often wear a silver brooch given to her by her father, depicting the heads of four horses arranged in the shape of a swastika. She was also known to be active in a group called “Stille Hilfe,” or silent help, which was formed in the 1940s to help Nazi fugitives flee Germany, particularly to South America, and to support their families.

The organization is “closely linked to a number of outlawed neo-Nazi movements and actively promotes revisionism — the notion that the Holocaust never happened and Jews caused their own downfall,” Andrea Roepke, a German authority on neo-Nazis, told Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper in 1998.

Among followers of the group, Mrs. Burwitz was “a dazzling Nazi princess, a deity among these believers in the old times,” according to German author Oliver Schrom, who wrote a book about Stille Hilfe.

Mrs. Burwitz attended underground reunions of Nazi SS officers, often held in Austria, possibly as recently as 2014. . . . Mrs. Burwitz also provided support, through Stille Hilfe, to convicted Nazi war criminals, including Klaus Barbie, an SS officer dubbed the “Butcher of Lyon,” and Anton “Beautiful Tony” Malloth, who was convicted of killing prisoners at the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

Am I being too harsh on Ivanka?  I don't believe so. 

Corey Stewart Brings Turmoil Virginia Republicans

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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