Tag: Republican Insurrection

Can Our Democracy Survive Trumpism?

The Daily Escape:

Bishop Creek, Eastern Sierras, CA – October 2021 photo by Scott McReynolds

CNN’s Brian Stelter asked on Sunday:

“We know what Trump will do….So what will the rest of us do?”

He’s talking about the continuing slow rolling coup inspired by the Big Lie, that’s rolling across America. Stelter presented a scenario about how Trumpism might dim our democracy between now and 2024. His perspective as a media reporter informs his view about how FOX news is reacting to the competition from OAN (One America News). He says that FOX is now simply feeding red meat to its viewers rather than reporting the news.

The result? Paranoia deepens, and Trump’s Big Lie becomes gospel to Republicans. External reality retreats into the background for the Red Hats. More from Stelter:

“There’s a clear difference between the people who pay for news…and want to know what is true, versus people who pay for views….of what they want to be true…”

Wrongo has been banging on about the state of journalism for the last few days, and not sorry, we’re doing it again.

After the attempted coup on Jan. 6, the prospect of political violence threatening a peaceful transfer of power has become a reality that America must face before it’s too late. Trumpists are dreaming publicly of violence, while a new poll by PRRI (margin of error of 2.1%), shows some scary data:

  • 67% of all Americans disagree that the election was stolen.
  • But 68% of Republicans overall, and 82% of respondents who trust Fox News more than any other news outlet, say they believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
  • That figure climbs to 97% for those who trust OAN and Newsmax more than any other news outlet.
  • 18% of all Americans think resorting to violence may be necessary to save the nation. PRRI’s question was: “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”
  • The scary part is that 30% of Republicans agreed, while just 11% of Democrats agreed.

Stelter’s apocalypse scenario is that by 2024:

“Neighbors turn on neighbors….Normally easygoing local elections turn into existential battles….Threats of violence become real violence….while MAGA-media apps, broadcasters, and commentators justify stomping all over the Constitution as an attempt to save it.”

Let’s emphasize that this is a worst-case scenario. Stelter says “We know it could happen because it has all happened before. Almost everything I have described has already happened in one form or another.”

More from the PRRI survey:

  • 80% of Republicans said America is in danger of losing its culture and identity. Of the far-right television viewers, 98% agreed with this sentiment.
  • 56% of Republicans said things have changed so much in America that they often feel like a stranger in their own country.  61% of Fox News viewers and 78% of Newsmax types agreed with this statement.

When you’ve been around as long as Wrongo you remember the 1980s, when Reagan Republicans aspired to be the Party of hope and opportunity.  They’re now the Party of blood and soil.

Much of this is made clear in the reporting by the WaPo and by others about the planning that led up to Jan. 6, and the efforts to spread the Big Lie after the attempted coup. The WaPo calls what happened in the aftermath a period of “Contagion” as Republican efforts to undermine the 2020 election began immediately after the Capitol attack. Since then:

  • Nearly a third of the 390 GOP candidates around the country who have expressed interest in running for statewide office this cycle have publicly supported a partisan audit of the 2020 vote, downplayed the Jan. 6 attack, or directly questioned Biden’s victory.
  • Election officials in at least 17 states have collectively received hundreds of threats to their personal safety or their lives since Jan. 6, with a concentration in the six states where Trump has focused his attacks on the election results.

The full PRRI survey shows that for many Republicans the culture war is front and center, and for a significant minority, it’s close to being a literal war, not just a metaphorical one. They share a vision that Democrats won’t rest until there’s a taco truck on every corner, and a drag queen story hour in every library, and so they’re ready to fight.

The Trumpist Republicans have no interest in staving off political apocalypse. They’re interested in making it happen. We’ll see over the next few years whether the will of those who cherish democracy will prevail over those who reject facts and the rule of law.

We’re going to find out soon which group’s will to survive is stronger.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – May 16, 2021

Both Houses of Congress have finally agreed to set up a committee to investigate the causes of the January 6th attack on the Capitol. Democrats wanted a Congressional investigation to reveal the causes of the insurrection so Congress could pass laws to prevent it happening again.

Republicans had been blocking its creation. Initially, they wanted to investigate all political violence in the country, including that caused by “Antifa”. Their strategy was that could water down the committee’s report and possibly obscure the role of Trump’s supporters in the insurrection.

The 10-person bipartisan commission will be evenly split between the parties. The Speaker of the House and Senate Majority leader will together appoint five commissioners, including the chair. The House and Senate Minority leaders will appoint the other five commissioners, including the Vice Chair.

Commissioners cannot be current government appointees and must have significant expertise in the areas of law enforcement, civil rights, civil liberties, privacy, intelligence, and cybersecurity.

This might look like a victory for the Democrats, but it isn’t. The Republicans can control the investigation through the committee’s subpoena power. To issue any subpoena, at least 6 members of the committee must agree. This gives the GOP the power to veto calling any witnesses.

It will probably result in a milquetoast committee report. The GOP’s inherent veto over the subpoena process is a flaw that potentially dooms the investigation to failure. On to cartoons.

Same as it ever was:

If the elephant’s trunk was like Pinocchio’s nose:

How business’s view changed from stimulus #1 to #2:

Fox keeps the anti-vax message going:

Market for fake IDs seems to be the gas hoarders:

Will this ever end?

Israel is losing control of the narrative because there are only so many viral videos of brutality that it can dismiss by saying, “Actually this is way more complicated than it looks.” As Caitlin Johnstone says, a nation that cannot exist without nonstop warfare is not a real nation, it’s a military operation with suburbs. This map should tell you that there is no possibility of a two-state solution. Palestine won’t be viable unless large numbers of settlers are removed, and that’s not happening:

More: Back in the Nineties, Netanyahu said that then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was “against Jewish values” for offering to withdraw from some of the occupied territories in exchange for peace. He led a mock funeral at which his followers brandished signs with Rabin’s head in the crosshairs of a gun. And when Rabin was assassinated by one of Netanyahu’s followers, he said he never condoned violence.

He’s also the guy who hasn’t been able to form a government after four tries, who’s also in danger of going to prison for corruption, assuming he can’t somehow cling to power.

The US has to think carefully about what our role should be in this conflict.

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Saturday’s (Not much of a) Soother – January 16, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Foster Bridge, Cabot, VT – photo by Michael Blanchette photography

Predictions for the year ahead are probably pointless, but 2021 could easily include more domestic terror. Biden’s inauguration will look like an armed takeover of the US Capitol, because the new president must be protected from a potential return of the mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan.6.

That group included some very serious, most likely, coordinated people who had temporary restraints and a plan. Reuters reports that US prosecutors said in a court filing that rioters intended:

 “…to capture and assassinate elected officials.”

The Trump Coupists believed that the election had been stolen, and that democracy in the US had been overthrown. It was, therefore, their duty to right the wrong that had been done, including taking captive those most responsible like Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence. The WaPo says the mob got within 100 feet of Pence’s hiding spot:

“If the pro-Trump mob had arrived seconds earlier, the attackers would have been in eyesight of the vice president as he was rushed across a reception hall into the office.”

This is a Republican problem. Here’s polling data from Quinnipiac, who surveyed 1,239 registered voters nationwide, from January 7-11:

  • 73% of Republicans say Trump is protecting, not undermining, democracy.
  • 70% of Republicans say Republicans who voted to block electors were protecting, not undermining, democracy.
  • 73% of Republicans say there was widespread voter fraud in 2020.

So what will these 50+ million Republicans out of the 74 million Trump voters who think they are disenfranchised, do? Their numbers are more than sufficient to sustain a domestic insurgency. They are geographically diverse, many are armed to the teeth. They believe they are part of a Trump movement, and it is their patriotic duty to fight in order to restore US democracy. From David Brooks:

“You can’t argue with people who have their own separate made-up set of facts…It’s a pure power struggle. The weapons in this struggle are intimidation, verbal assault, death threats and violence, real and rhetorical. The fantasyland mobbists have an advantage because they relish using these weapons, while their fellow Christians just want to lead their lives….The problem is, how do you go about reattaching people to reality?”

A distinct possibility for 2021 is a low grade insurrection, led by heavily armed true believers of the Trump movement. The challenge for America is whether these true believers can be deprogrammed and return to reality.

A return to reality requires all of us, but specifically Republicans at the local, state and federal levels to reject the Big Lie fomented by Trump. Republicans need to look in the mirror. The FT’s Janan Ganesh says: (paywalled, emphasis by Wrongo):

 “Whether we date it to the congressional midterm election of 1994, or Barry Goldwater’s White House bid in 1964, or the McCarthyite 1950s, the party has not policed its right flank for a long time. The Republican portrayal of government as inherently malign is hardly new….The impugning of opponents’ legitimacy did not commence with president-elect Joe Biden’s this winter.”

Few of us know insurrectionists. We see them on TV as armed, angry brainwashed people eager for a second Civil War. We’re all unsure if deprogramming will work, because it rarely works for cult members.

We need brave Republicans who will speak out against the tyrant, and the Big Lie, regardless of the threats.

If the Big Lie persists, America could then be faced with mutually exclusive, and terrible choices: One is to become a police state. We could see more cameras, security checkpoints near state capitols, combined with more social media suppression and expanded no-fly lists. But if there are millions of armed true believers, they won’t be easily suppressed. We could face a long term insurrection, one that will not be put down, short of imprisoning many more millions of Americans.

Whether the trained and armed groups of (mostly) white men scattered all over the country, many of whom are currently in police forces or on military active duty, will coalesce sufficiently to conduct periodic quasi-terrorist actions is difficult to say. But even in the very red states where the Trump movement is powerful, there are urban centers. Those cities are much less red. And few in the Trump movement will want their family and friends getting killed for the cause.

Second, we can try peacefully to encourage the insurrectionists into the mainstream by making our politicians cut out the BS. And by creating a better society. A decent, livable America is currently out of reach for many. In that sense, we all could profit by working to make America great again.

Let’s climb down from all of the recent hysteria, and enjoy a brief moment of Saturday Soothing. Here is the Cadenza from “Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto”, with Canadian Chris Coletti on solo trumpet, conducted by Paul Haas with the Symphony of Northwest Arkansas, in October 2017. His playing is remarkable:

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Demographic Analysis of Pro-Trump Congressional Districts

The Daily Escape:

Three Sisters, Goblin Valley State Park, UT – photo by jonnyboy_wanderlust

As Wrongo writes this, the House has voted for a second Trump Impeachment. The process began with votes on rules and procedures. Most Republicans argued that impeachment would be divisive. That’s rich, given that for four years they have supported and encouraged the divisive lies and actions of Donald Trump.

But now, it’s suddenly critical that we “heal.” Of course it is.

A majority of House Republicans objected to the certification of Electoral College votes from the swing states of Arizona and Pennsylvania. Even more Republicans voted against the House motion to ask Mike Pence to begin the process required by the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office.

Now it’s on to a second impeachment. A grand total of ten House Republicans (out of 211) voted along with all House Democrats to impeach Trump. According to the WaPo, McConnell has decided not to convene the Senate for an emergency trial, meaning the trial will fall to the newly Democrat-controlled Senate after January 20.

Back to the House Republicans: Jacob Whiton wrote an interesting demographic and economic analysis of the constituencies represented by the 139 House Republicans who objected to the certification of at least one state’s Electoral College results. His aim is to clarify the demographics of where right-wing authoritarianism has taken root. Overall he found that:

“The Republican Party’s most Pro-Trump House members have been elected by…white homeowners in the fast-growing exurban fringe. They feel the social status traditionally associated with their identity as white Christians is being degraded and that left wing political movements pose a threat to their livelihoods and political power. In reaction, they have lashed themselves to a movement within the Republican Party led by President Trump that seeks to defend the privileges of property-owning white Americans in our political system, economy, and public life.”

The districts represented by the most committed Pro-Trump Republicans are fast-growing, rapidly diversifying suburbs. Places where inequalities between white homeowners and their non-white neighbors have been shrinking, and where low voter turnout has helped deliver reliable Republican victories.

Residents of objectors’ districts are more than twice as likely as residents of other Republican districts to live in “sparse suburban areas.” These districts are among the fastest-growing districts in the country, with population growth outpacing that in districts represented by Democrats or other Republicans over the last 20 years.

Almost all of this growth has been among non-white groups, specifically Latinos and Asian Americans, resulting in a dramatic shift in the demographic composition of these districts:

In the objectors’ districts, residents under the age of 18 are 3.6 times more likely to be Hispanic and 1.6 times more likely to be Black or Asian American than those over the age of 65. This means that in these districts, debates about Social Security and Medicare, public education and housing are highly polarized.

District constituents of the Republican objectors tend to have the lowest levels of formal educational attainment. In their districts, on average, 68% of white homeowners do not have a four-year degree and their median home value is the lowest:

Whites in Republican objectors’ districts are considerably more likely to own their own home and earn higher incomes than other racial groups, except for Asian Americans. But White homeowners’ perception of loss of status relative to upwardly mobile Hispanic and Asian American households is a key social context which is driving Trumpism’s nativist politics.

White evangelical Christians have been Trump’s most unwavering base of support. In more than half of Republican objectors’ districts, evangelicals account for at least a fifth of constituents, making them far more likely to represent evangelicals in Congress than other Republicans or Democrats.

White evangelical Protestants stand far apart in their politics. The Public Religion Research Institute’s 2020 American Values survey found that they are the only group where a majority expresses a preference for living in a country “made up of people who follow the Christian faith”.

They are the only group for whom abortion and terrorism rank in their top three most important issues. They are also the least likely to agree that President Trump has encouraged white supremacist groups, although a majority of Americans overall do.

Whiton found that workers in the Republican objectors’ districts are more likely to be employed in sectors of the economy Trump has routinely identified as most threatened by the political left: mining and oil and natural gas extraction, heavy manufacturing, and law enforcement.

Whiton concludes with a note of optimism: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“The fact that Republican objectors command the least popular support among their own constituents of any congressional elected officials in the country is both a testament to their effectiveness in entrenching their own power and also the foundation on which we must ground our hopes for political change to end minority rule.”

Perhaps we should focus our voter turnout activities in these Republican objectors’ districts.

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The Worst Person in the World (this week): Lindsay Graham

The Daily Escape:

Lighthouse in Husavik, Iceland – photo by Milonade. Husavik is the center of whale watching in Iceland.

Lindsay Graham has never been a favorite of Wrongo’s. Often, he gets the same treatment here as does John McCain, and for similar reasons. But the 62-year old who replaced Strom Thurmond in the Senate in 2003 hit a new low in an interview on BBC World Service radio show, Hard Talk. Graham was with McCain attending an economic conference in Lake Como, Italy, when he sat down with the BBC’s Steven Sacker for an interview. (transcription and emphasis by Wrongo)

At 4:08 into the interview, Sacker asks Graham:

Isn’t that the point that he (Trump) right now looks like a president who is polarizing the US in a way that we have not seen before?

Graham:

I would say that the country has been polarized for quite a while, just like your country. Brexit is a result of disenchantment with globalization. There would be no Donald Trump if President Obama had brought us together.

There, right there. Its Obama’s fault that Trump won the Republican nomination for president, because Obama didn’t bring us together. Graham implies that Republicans are uniters, but the Kenyan socialist just wouldn’t help them out with that.

Wait – the Republican Party didn’t want Trump, but Obama nominated him?

To say Obama created Trump is a poor projection. The GOP created Trump. Trump’s political success is the logical result of decades of efforts by the GOP to discredit government, and more recently, by their acceptance of virulent, and in some cases, racially tinged opposition to Obama.

The GOP wanted Obama to fail. Time’s Michael Grunwald reported on the Republican plot to obstruct Obama even before he even took office. He uncovered secret meetings led by then-House GOP whip Eric Cantor, and then-Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell in 2009 where they laid out their “no-honeymoon” strategy of all-out resistance to the President-elect.

Remember that was a time of national economic emergency.

The Republican’s active resistance also tried to demonize Obama as a “king”, or a kind of Hitler. They fought against most of his policies. They shut down the government. Policy differences are understandable, and expected. What was unexpected and unacceptable was the unified GOP effort to make Obama fail as president.

The big Republican move to elect an anti-immigrant nationalist was fueled by the Tea Party surge in 2010, which was also in opposition to Obama. And it isn’t just the Tea Party. Republicans have long-struggled with various anti-establishment, ultra-conservative insurgencies seeking to upend the party.

Trump wasn’t the first to tap into the anger of disaffected white voters. Pat Buchanan challenged Bush in the 1992 primaries and again in 1996, when he led a populist revolt he described as “peasants with pitchforks.” Buchanan ran on a platform similar to that of Trump: anti-free trade, tough on immigration and focused on the plight of the white working-class.

So, Republicans own Trump now and forever, despite what Sen. Graham wants people to think. Graham’s contention about Obama is irrelevant to today’s situation, where Trump has failed to even try to unite America on any issue. And specifically, he failed to call out the evil posed by fringe Nazi groups, or show us how a president should deal with a national disaster.

When will the lying stop?

Since this is the first column since Saturday, here is a pro-labor song from the Rolling Stones, “Salt of the Earth”, written by Mick Jagger & Keith Richards, the closing track on the 1968 album’ “Beggars Banquet”:

Sample lyrics:

Raise your glass to the hard working people
Lets drink to the uncounted heads
Lets think of the wavering millions
who need leaders but get gamblers instead

Spare a thought for the stay-at-home voter
His empty eyes gaze at strange beauty shows
And a parade of the gray suited grafters
A choice of cancer or polio

 

Spare a thought for the stay-at-home voter: They brought us Donald Trump.

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Monday Wake Up Call – April 3, 2017

The Daily Escape:

(Anna’s hummingbird with bees, California, 2016 – photo by Toshiyasu Morita)

The White House faces a yuuge pothole in the road to having even a marginally successful first 100 days.

Republicans need to pass a new Continuing Resolution (CR) to fund the government, and the current CR expires on April 28. A CR is a form of appropriations law that keeps the federal government operating. The expiring CR was passed last December, effectively kicking the can down the road to the new administration. The idea was that there would be a GOP Congress and a Republican president for the first time since 2006, and they would work together to get things done.

But, as with the failed Trumpcare legislation, House Republicans are still divided, and Democrats will sit on the sidelines and watch the GOP’s efforts to achieve consensus. Republicans are staring at the twin issues that have led them to threaten government-shutdowns in the past, the funding of Planned Parenthood (PP) and the continuing funding of Obamacare. The GOP has not solved either through separate legislation since getting control of the government, so those issues will certainly come up.

Several Freedom Caucus and other Republican conservatives have pledged never to vote for an appropriations measure that allows federal funds to go to PP (they are for the “freedom” to fund middle-aged guys taking Viagra, but not to fund PP).

NY Magazine reports that there’s even a possibility that hard-core conservatives could renew the effort they made in 2013 to block appropriations necessary for the administration of Obamacare, now that it will be around for a while.

Congressional rules will require that this appropriations bill be treated as regular legislation. So NY Mag says:

…the odds are pretty good anything other than a straight extension of the earlier continuing resolution will attract a Democratic filibuster, and produce the kind of gridlock that could shut down the federal government for at least a while.

Another complicating factor is that some in the Senate are pushing to implement one or more of the controversial changes in funding that Trump outlined in his budget proposal. For example, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has said he will not vote for a CR that does not increase funding to the Defense Department: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

If that’s the only option, [a clean CR] I will not vote for a CR no matter what the consequences because passing a CR destroys the ability of the military to defend this nation, and it puts the lives of the men and women in the military at risk…

With several Senators likely to go along with Johnny Volcano, it will be even harder to get a bill that makes it past a Democratic filibuster in the Senate.

Given the GOP’s control of the White House and both houses of Congress, Republicans would almost certainly be blamed for any government shutdown on their watch. That means that Democrats are highly likely to deny Paul Ryan any Dem votes in the House for anything other than a clean CR.

So wake up White House and Congress! There isn’t a lot of time to get funding of the government done. Worse, it looks like the House doesn’t even plan to take it up until April 24th for an April 28th deadline.

To help them both wake up and get on the same page about the nation’s business, here is John Lee Hooker’s “I Need Some Money” written in 1960. Today we listen to it performed by The Beatles in a January 1962 demo recording with Pete Best playing drums. The Beatles called it: “Money (That’s What I Want)”. They were auditioning for Decca records, and did 15 songs, all but three of which were covers. After the audition, Decca Records rejected The Beatles. Here is “Money, That’s What I Want”:

Takeaway Lyric:

Money don’t get ever ‘thing it’s true
But what it don’t buy, daddy, I can’t use
I need money, I need money, yeah
That’s what I want

Those who view the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Monday Wake Up Call – March 27, 2017

The Daily Escape:

(Many Glacier, Glacier National Park, August 2016 – photo by Wrongo)

What’s next for the White House? Many are saying that the collapse of the Republicans’ failed effort to pass Trumpcare demonstrated that the ideological cleavage within the House and Senate Republicans will not be easy to overcome. This could make it more difficult for Trump to get much of his agenda passed in the immediate future.

Trump wants to move on many things, including tax reform and passing a budget, but the biggest challenge facing Republicans is the Debt Ceiling. The clock started ticking on the need to raise the debt limit, because it already expired on March 15th. That was a “soft” deadline, since the Treasury department can fire up a well-used arsenal of “extraordinary” measures to delay a reckoning, meaning that Congress can take until the early fall to enact a debt ceiling increase.

More time may not mean that a solution will be forthcoming, since the main adversaries to increasing the debt ceiling are the same people who helped derail Trumpcare. The House Freedom Caucus and their allies in the Senate have in the past, expressed a willingness to let the country default, rather than increase the level of the Treasury’s debt.

Since they were able to face down Trump on health care, they may well be emboldened to stand up to the president and Congressional leadership again on an issue that is so close to their hard hearts.

If America were to default on its debts, Trump would be presiding over the Bananaization of our Republic, and our ability to lead in the world would be eclipsed. Wrongo plans to write more about this in the future, but it will take real management by Trump to head this off, at a time that his management skills have been called into question.

So far, he has shown himself to be little more than a salesman for his ideas.

The famed management guru Peter Drucker, who wrote about management for corporations, non-profits and governments, at one point wrote management rules for presidents, in a 1993 article for the WSJ:

It’s hard to imagine a more diverse group than Bill Clinton’s predecessors in the American presidency — in abilities, personalities, values, styles and achievements. But even the weakest of them had considerable effectiveness as long as they observed six management rules. And even the most powerful lost effectiveness as soon as they violated these rules.

Wrongo has condensed Drucker’s management rules for presidents for your convenience:

  • What Needs to be Done? Is the first thing the President must ask. He must not stubbornly do what he wants to do, even if it was the focus of his campaign
  • Concentrate, Don’t Splinter Yourself. There usually are half a dozen right answers to “What needs to be done?” Yet unless a president makes the risky and controversial choice of only one, he will achieve nothing.
  • Don’t Bet on a Sure Thing…Roosevelt had every reason to believe that his plan to “pack” the Supreme Court…would be a sure thing. It immediately blew up in is face – so much so that he never regained control of Congress
  • An Effective President Does Not Micromanage…the tasks that a President must do himself are already well beyond what any but the best organized and most energetic person can possibly accomplish
  • A President Has No Friends in the Administration…they are always tempted to abuse their position as a friend and the power that comes with it
  • Sixth rule? Harry Truman advised JFK: “Once you’re elected, stop campaigning”

(h/t Barry Ritholtz)

Just how many of these rules does Trump follow, and how many does he violate? Discuss.

Perhaps if he followed all of them, the country would avoid Trumageddon, be less divided, and get a middle of the road agenda enacted.

So here’s a wake-up call for Donald Trump and his advisors: FOCUS!! To help them wake up and get focused, here is the Canadian group Bachman Turner Overdrive with their big hit (#12 in the US) from 1973, “Takin’ Care of Business”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdf04jVOHmM

Wrongo used to take the 8:15 in to the city. Working from home is a major improvement.

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Sample Lyrics:

And I’ll be taking care of business (every day)
Taking care of business (every way)
I’ve been taking care of business (it’s all mine)
Taking care of business and working overtime, work out

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – March 26, 2017

From the NYT: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

33 Republicans stopped the [Trumpcare] bill. 15 were from the “Freedom Caucus,” 10 were “moderates” mostly from the Northeast (the “Tuesday Group”), some of whose districts went for Clinton, and 8 were miscellaneous (“One said he was concerned about its changes to Medicaid expansion, another preferred a full repeal and a third said he was worried about the bill’s impact on treatment for opioid abuse”).

Republicans control 237 seats of the 435 seats in the House. It requires 218 votes to pass a bill. When Paul Ryan and Donald Trump lost 33 Republican votes, the bill couldn’t pass, and had to be withdrawn. That means the GOP really doesn’t control the House, and that’s unchanged since John Boehner was Speaker.

The Republicans have majority control of the House and the Senate. They also have the self-proclaimed greatest deal-maker sitting in the Oval Office.  They have been talking about repealing Obamacare for seven years since it was signed into law, and they couldn’t get their own party to fall in line.

But Trump isn’t a deal maker, he’s a salesman.

And that’s a huge difference. Savvy business people seem willing to buy whatever he is selling. He seems to have the charisma and persuasiveness that in his prior life, made him a top earner as a real estate mogul.

But there’s a difference between making a sale and making a deal. Deal making is hard; you have to build trust, you have to establish real relationships, you need a mastery of your deal points and those of the person on the other side. It can be slow, grinding work.

Trump doesn’t do that, he’s never done that. His entire career is a lurch from one deal to the next, and his Presidency is no different. Trump closed the sale with the American people, but once elected, his job is to make deals.

On to cartoons.

A funny thing happened on the way to the Obamacare execution:

GOP’s Health Care March Madness bracket is now busted:

Boehner shows Ryan how to cope with Freedom Caucus:

Expect the GOP to keep trying to replace Obamacare until we all do this:

Sen. Menendez (D-NJ) burns the GOP:

Sadly, Menendez is also a joke of a Senator. He is about to go on trial for public corruption. Still, the tweet is funny.

Gorsuch epic head-fakes are now a required course in sports:

Trump’s Poodle, Devin Nunes can’t be counted on to keep secrets well, secret:

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Enabling the Tea Party Revolution

Tuesday is the first Democratic Presidential debate of the 2016 election cycle. It is 100% certain that you will not hear any one of the Democratic hopefuls discuss how the Democrats in the House of Representatives have enabled the current chaos in the House by Republicans.

How have they enabled Republicans? Democrats routinely save them from their dysfunction. On Sunday, we discussed that raising revenues and deciding where to allocate funds was the primary task of the party that controls Congress.

That would be the Republicans.

We also said that whenever John Boehner has tried to pass his own spending bills using just Republican votes, he’s failed. He then goes to Nancy Pelosi and asks her to get some Democrats to vote to keep the government open, and the Democrats then vote for a Continuing Resolution, or a short-term Debt Limit increase. This is enabling bad behavior.

Enabling is doing certain things for someone that they could, and should be doing themselves.

They enable Republicans by bailing them out when they have painted themselves into a corner on fiscal matters, in the same way that people help alcoholics continue to (ab)use their drink of choice, by allowing them to avoid the full consequences of their actions.

When John Boehner can’t keep the government open or pay our bills and protect our nation’s credit rating, his party should crash and burn. Instead, his “friend” Pelosi does the equivalent of hiring a high-priced lawyer to quash Boehner’s drunken driving arrest. Boehner drives on, but his party doesn’t govern on its own.

And when the smoke clears, the Republican leadership extracts no price from their Republican Revolutionaries, who are allowed to keep their committee assignments, and receive campaign funds from the National Republican Campaign Committee.

So, there is no political price that the Republican Revolutionaries have to pay for bad behavior.

Democratic enabling has allowed a minority of Republicans to not just persist with their brinksmanship, but along the way, they have vastly strengthened their political power. There is no reason why Dems should vote for Republican appropriations bills, that is the job of the majority. The GOP needs to act like a majority party, which means they must learn how to fund the government on their own, or share power with those who will work with them to fund it.

The value to Democrats for their enabling is that they can say they are saving the country from the Republican Revolutionaries. But, the opposite result has actually happened. Democrats have enabled the Republicans to badmouth Washington DC and Congress, to bluster about how they can insist on defaulting on our debts, or about shutting down the government.

This has allowed Republicans to develop an increasing tolerance for avoiding basic political realities. Now, the Republican Party has snapped its moorings. Now, they have to dig out of the hole they have spent time and effort digging, all the while “supported” by the Democrats.

There are two possible outcomes. First, the Republicans could elect a Speaker that they agree to follow, but that seems to be the opposite of what the Republican Revolutionaries want, which is a Speaker who will follow their demands. The link details the 21 demands of the Freedom Caucus, including that the Speaker candidate must agree to shut down the government until some of the legislative achievements of the Obama Administration are repealed. Otherwise, the Caucus will deny their votes to that candidate.

The second possible outcome is a bipartisan coalition that will keep the government open and pay our bills.

Since we definitely need to do that, then that coalition should elect the next Speaker. Given the makeup of Congress, that Speaker ought to be a Republican. But for Democrats to enter a coalition, they need to extract concessions: The Republican Speaker needs to bring some Democrats onto the leadership team, demoting recalcitrant Republicans.

We could be at a turning point in the House’s process. It has been a two-party place for most of its history, with the majority party electing the Speaker. But there was a four-party stalemate of the House during the Eisenhower administration. The Democrats split along FDR/Farm-Labor/Dixiecrat lines, while the Republicans were split between the Old Guard Republicans who supported big business and dismantling the New Deal; and the Modern Republicans, who supported individual freedom and the market economy, but thought the government should provide necessary social welfare assistance.

That split was the start of the modern conservative movement’s push for ideological purity, that push and the Democrats’ recent enabling has given us the three party split we now see in the House of Representatives.

The Republicans could elect a Speaker at any time, and restore the two-party process.

Otherwise, we could be in a three-party scenario that might function like a parliamentary system, with occasional votes of “no confidence”, and the formation of a new coalition that elects a new Speaker, and then, new committee chairs.

If a coalition happens, it will happen because the Republicans realize that they cannot elect a Speaker on their own who hasn’t promised to deliver a global economic catastrophe in early December when we have to raise the debt ceiling.

Interesting times, eh?

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Tribes of America

We have two tribes in America, largely represented by our two political parties. The parties debate the correct course for the country, without any chance of reaching compromise. One of the parties has begun acting like insurrectionists.

Over the past 40 years, the Republican Party has transformed into a party that flouts the law when it is in the majority, and threatens disorder when in the minority:

• No Democrat has called for secession, as Rick Perry did
• No Democrat defied the Supreme Court by sending in the National Guard and provoking a confrontation with police, as Jeb Bush did during Schiavo
• No Democrat is so anti-science that they believe that if women are “legitimately raped,” they will be protected from pregnancy, as Todd Akin did
• No Democrat has said, what Mike Huckabee has said: The Supreme Court is only that…it is not the Supreme Being. It cannot overrule God…when it comes to life, and when it comes to the sanctity of marriage, the court cannot change what God has created
• No Democrat has suggested that states disregard EPA rules on coal plant emissions while various court challenges occur, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did

Politicians keep their jobs because they win elections, and a politician who openly admits that he only believes in democracy if it achieves his desired ends, is at minimum, a radical, or more likely, is an insurrectionist.

There is a precedent for the actions of today’s Republican Party. It is the antebellum Southern Democrats of John C. Calhoun, who threatened to nullify federal legislation, and who later led the fight to secede from the union over slavery.

The homeland of today’s right-wing insurgency is the very same place where the last insurgency originated: The Old Confederacy. History offers some geographical perspective: The South had an almost unbroken control of the Federal Government from 1789 until secession. Our presidents were either Southerners, or when they were Northerners like Pierce and Buchanan, they were puppets of Southern senators and cabinet members.

For 70 years, the Supreme Court had a majority of Southern justices. With the aid of Northern allies and the three-fifths rule, the South continuously controlled one or both houses of Congress. The 15 Slave States, with a white population of not quite eight million, had 30 Senators, 90 Representatives, and 120 electoral votes, while the state of New York, with a population of four million had two senators, 33 representatives, and 35 electoral votes.

Lincoln’s election in 1860 left the South in control of both houses of Congress, and until 1863, Lincoln and the Republicans would have been powerless to pass legislation hostile to the South. Through its control of the Senate, the South could have blocked the confirmation of any Lincoln appointee whom it considered unfriendly. In spite of this, and notwithstanding Lincoln’s repeated assurances that he would not, directly or indirectly, interfere with slavery where it already existed, the South seceded.

Today, the two parties are still the two tribes that were created out of secession, and the same political dynamic prevails today. The civil war map looks starkly similar to the political bases of both parties today, with the addition of the new Randians in the Upper Midwest.

This tribe now includes Republicans, the Tea Party and right-wing conservatives. They now control 36 state legislatures that are trying to eliminate abortions, remove environmental protections, enhance gun rights, and privatize education, all of which need a weak federal government in order to succeed. Time to call it what it is: A domestic insurgency by America’s right wing tribe.

After the Civil War, we passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, ending slavery, formalizing birthright citizenship, creating black male suffrage, and guaranteeing equal protection under the law. Later, after the Great Depression, we enacted laws to protect the people from financial abuses by businesses and corporations. With Civil Rights legislation, the federal government protected citizens from abuses at the hand of businesses as well as local governments.

Much of these will be unwound if the insurgency succeeds.

What good are policy proposals in the face of an insurgency? We no longer have fellow citizens, we have enemies. We do not have common views, we have religious, racial, class, and political factions.

When we see each other as enemies, we are the Middle East, we can no longer work together for the common good.

We should deal with our tribal issues at home instead of trying to fix the tribal issues in the Middle East.

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