“Republicans Want Revenge”: Democrats Elected The Guy Who Reminded Us About “e pluribus unum”
If you’re a Democrat who occasionally talks to Republicans, you might have heard this response when you point to the ridiculous charges that have been waged against President Obama: “Democrats did the same thing to George W. Bush when he was president.”
What can ring true about a statement like that is that a lot of Democrats thought that things like invading a country based on lies, sanctioning the use of torture, and skirting Constitutional processes by setting up a prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba were actions that are antithetical to our values as Americans. Now listen to how Frank Luntz describes what Trump supporters think about President Obama:
…just about all of them think he does not reflect the values the country was built upon.
For those of you who think I’ve lost my mind by making that comparison, stick with me. I have a bigger point that I want to make beyond a question of whose argument is more grounded in reality.
It is true that liberals/Democrats were incredibly angry at the direction George W. Bush took this country. And so it is interesting to note who they looked to for leadership to change all that. They picked this guy:
Regardless of how you feel about the “values” that are/are not being threatened today, it is crystal clear that the direction Republicans are going these days with their anger is the opposite. As Luntz says, “Trump voters are not just angry – they want revenge.”
The anger these voters are feeling goes to something a lot deeper than what Luntz suggests with this:
His [Trump’s] support denotes an abiding distrust in — and disrespect for — the governing elite. These individuals do not like being told by Washington or Wall Street what is best for them, do not like the direction America is headed in, and disdain President Barack Obama and his (perceived) circle of self-righteous, tone-deaf governing partisans.
That pretty well captures how a lot of Democrats felt after the Bush/Cheney era. But it does very little to explain why so many Republicans are thrilled with Donald Trump’s ravings against Mexicans, Muslims, women, African Americans, etc. Nope…there is something much deeper at work here. I described it as a world view in its death throes.
So the next time a Republican tells you that their reaction to 8 years of a Democratic president is no different than yours was to 8 years of a Republican president, remind them of how differently Democrats handled that anger. Republicans are looking for revenge. Democrats elected the guy who reminded us about “e pluribus unum.”
By: Nancy LeTourneau, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, December 30, 2015
“What The GOP Gets Wrong About ISIS”: The Positions Staked Out By Republican Politicians Are Crazy
As we come to the end of a year of terror—actually, of horror—and we enter a year of terrible campaigning by some horrible candidates for the presidency of the United States, one might wish the Republican front-runners would step back from the path of religious zealotry, racist paranoia and torture envy. But … no.
As the debates in mid-December and the sparring since have showed us, they are detached from many realities, but especially the reality on the ground in Syria, which I have been covering first-hand with frequent trips there since 2012.
So, now, back in the United States, I watch in consternation the nauseating spin about Radical Islam, carpet bombing, waterboarding, surveillance of everyone, blaming refugees. The Republican “strategies” for dealing with the so-called Islamic State sound like a laundry list of the monumental failures from the 9/11 decade.
Was it “political correctness” that knocked down the twin towers and kidnapped and tortured my friends? No, it was something much more sinister, and something much more sophisticated than these candidates seem to realize, or to be.
There is a reason, of course, for them to deflect questions about military tactics against ISIS. There are no easy answers, and even the difficult options are severely limited. No realistic proposal for tackling the jihadi group will play well with primary voters and all of the candidates know it. Presumably, this is why the Republican candidates have taken the discussion into the realm of paranoid fantasy and insinuation, where they seem much more comfortable.
Consider Donald Trump’s bizarre statement that “we should be able to penetrate the Internet and find out exactly where ISIS is.” Actually, we know exactly where the Islamic State is and have a good idea of where its main bastions are. We essentially already know what is needed to fight them.
The problem is that no matter how good our intel is, there is still the pesky issue of how to take and hold territory, which is a costly proposition. And while ISIS potentate Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi recently conceded he’s been losing ground, but gradually, he figures that, up against the disorganization of his enemies, and the U.S. presidential campaign is a prime example of that, he will be able to get it back—and then some.
Then there’s the question of torture, or “enhanced interrogation techniques,” and the notion that they could have prevented the Paris attacks in November that killed 130 people.
At a Council on Foreign Relations event Chris Christie said “it’s not a coincidence to me that this happened in the aftermath of restricting these programs and remember also demoralizing the intelligence community. That awful report that came out from the Senate Democrats at the end of last year was a complete political instrument that did nothing more than demoralize American intelligence officers all around the world.”
Using religious language like “Radical Islam” has also been touted as a Republican “strategy” for some time. Such words, one way or the other, have zero effect on the ground.
Ted Cruz’s anti-ISIS strategy is to rename the terror group, which results in a meaningless sound bite, not a strategy. You can rebrand a cancer however you like; the threat it poses will be unchanged. But the “Radical Islam” rhetoric plays well into a broader trend of advocating racial, ethnic and religious profiling by the general public. Cruz’s followers do not hear the word “radical,” as any spin doctor knows. They cut straight to “Islam” as the threat.
When asked if the American government should engaging in profiling, Jeb Bush’s answer was concrete and definitive: “Yeah, absolutely, that is what screening is. We should be profiling. Of course we should. This is Islamic terrorism. The Democrats have no clue about this, or they refuse to call it what it is. These are Islamic terrorists that are trying to take out our country and destroy Western civilization. If you start with that premise, which I think the great majority of Americans believe, then you have a totally different approach on how you deal with it.”
Yet when asked about his military strategy, Bush replied with a platitude: “The main thing we should be focused on is a strategy to defeat ISIS…. Leading the world, funding [the military] to make sure we have a military that is second to none and doing the job.”
When Republicans rally so strongly behind the anti-refugee hysteria, torture and religious rhetoric, it is because they need unifying issues that allow them to attack President Barack Obama and, by extension, Hillary Clinton.
According to Robert Y. Shapiro, a professor of government at Columbia University, the refugee issue is a convenient tool used by the GOP to criticize the Obama administration without confronting military realities.
“I think they want to keep the focus on the refugees since, first, they are a reminder of Obama’s perceived failure against the Syrian government and the conquests of ISIS,” says Shapiro. “Second, they are a reminder of the potential terrorist threat which is an issue on which the Republicans, since George W. Bush, have had the high ground over the Democrats. The current polls strongly reflect this.”
“It is a way of avoiding the tougher issue of what to do about Syria and ISIS,” says Shapiro. The political strategy keeps the focus on the the failings of the Obama administration and its longtime secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.
If there is one thing Republicans agree on, in fact, it is that Obama somehow created ISIS. Yet when it comes to exactly why they think that, the reasons are vastly different and completely contradictory.
So, for instance, former New York (9/11) Mayor Rudy Giuliani said in a recent Fox News interview that he believes ISIS is an “Obama creation.” According to Giuliani, ISIS rose to prominence because Obama refused to implement a no fly zone over Syria after the Assad regime’s chemical weapon attacks in 2013.
According to Trump, however, ISIS is a result of Obama’s weak personality and his intervention in Libya, which Trump says destabilized the region. Trump has also claimed that he believes Obama may have directly armed ISIS, and that America should support Russia’s intervention in Syria.
According to Ted Cruz, political correctness is to blame and Obama should try to ramp up the religious rhetoric.
According to Jeb Bush, ISIS is Obama’s fault because he drew down U.S. forces in Iraq, allowing the jihadis to fill the vacuum.
Rand Paul insists that Obama “armed the allies of ISIS.”
On the far-out fringes of the right (whose votes are coveted as well) there are the persistent conspiracy theories that Obama is a secret member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and that moderate Republican Sen. John McCain met with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of ISIS, when he visited Syria.
If Obama is a dictatorial warmonger, a secret jihadi or, as Christie puts it, “a feckless weakling,” what Republican could come to his defense?
Yet none can say that Obama is not striking ISIS, because he is. GOP candidates cannot say that Obama has overstepped his executive authority, because this would be interpreted as opposition to the military campaign. The Republican candidates cannot advocate sending in ground troops, because that is an unelectable position.
No one is going to make waves by advocating a no-fly zone, because Hillary Clinton has been the most vocal advocate of an air exclusion area since the beginning of the conflict, long before any Republican candidates raised the issue.
Four years of contradictory statements and shortsighted posturing from the GOP with regard to Syria have made emotionally charged peripheral issues the safest bet when it comes to politicizing ISIS.
A review of Republican positions since the conflict began reveals broad opposition to Obama’s anti-Assad-regime plans and serious criticism of his executive actions against ISIS.
In 2014, John Boehner was quick to criticize Obama’s military actions as unauthorized, but became visibly uncomfortable when asked why he didn’t introduce an authorization to use military force. Numerous Republicans dissented when Obama said he intended to retaliate against the Assad regime for chemical attacks in 2013, and were largely responsible for staying his hand. With regard to military action against ISIS, many Republicans chose to avoid a vote on the subject so they could assess the success of the campaign before risking a position. This is hard to spin as a courageous stance against the Islamic State.
Before the Paris attacks and the current anti-refugee hysteria, the Republican contenders, especially Cruz, had focused their criticism of Obama on the fact that he refuses to equate the Islamic State with mainstream Islam. This is clever, up to a point, because it is vague and draws on a widely held belief among conservatives that political correctness and cultural sensitivity are largely to blame for their unhappiness. Thus Cruz proclaimed, incongruously, “It is not a lack of competence that is preventing the Obama adminstration from stopping these attacks it is political correctness.”
Do the candidates really believe what they are saying about refugees? It is important to listen to the specific words that they and governors opposed to resettlement have been using.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie knows that his biggest weakness is being perceived as soft on Obama, because he worked closely with the president after Hurricane Sandy. In interview after interview, Christie has deflected questions on his refugee scapegoating back to Obama, stating that he does not trust the President to vet the refugees.
During the GOP debates in Las Vegas Christie focused heavily on his involvement with minor terrorism cases as a prosecutor and the fact that he lived in New Jersey on 9/11.
Ted Cruz keeps the focus on buzzwords meant to energize his evangelical base. In a single interview with Sean Hannity, he repeated the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” 19 times. And since the Paris attacks, Cruz has also been sure to repeat the words “tens of thousands of Syrian Muslim refugees” verbatim several times per interview.
Despite all the tough talk none of this rhetoric comes close to resembling a strategy, which is why the GOP has more to lose than anyone from a real debate on military tactics against ISIS.
The fear mongering has been successful turning conservatives against a vulnerable community that had no role in the Paris or San Bernardino attacks. According to a Yougov poll, support for accepting refugees has dropped from 39 percent among Republicans in early September to 17 percent now. The major GOP contenders need issues like refugees and religion to stay in the conversation because they have no clue how to beat ISIS.
In fact, the threat does not come from Obama, refugees, and civil rights, as opposed to from the actual Islamic State. The Republicans give the overall impression that they would increase U.S. military operation and that the Obama administration has no clear strategy. ‘In fact the Obama administration does,” say Shapiro “but it is a much slower long term one… leaving the fighting on the ground to the Kurds and Iraqi forces.”
Most of the actual proposals presented by GOP candidates are basically just variations on that theme.
On the ground in Syria, debates among the Republican candidates have sounded unrealistic if not surreal. It is obvious that ISIS can only be beaten through intelligent alliances and precise military planning. This should not be a great mystery given the fact that ISIS has been beaten before. In early 2014 Syrian rebels forced ISIS into a massive retreat from Aleppo province. I personally had the privilege of visiting parts of Aleppo that were recently liberated. This objective was achieved through military coordination among rebels factions who took heavy casualties.
It’s strange to hear politicians speak about ISIS as though it is some mysterious threat that will require America to change its identity. The leaders and fighters of ISIS are simply human beings, and in battle, they die.
When I hear politicians demonize Syrians and Muslims or advocate torture and carpet bombing, it shows how deep their lack of commitment to the actual fight is.
Syrians are the only people I have ever encountered who have actually stood up to and beaten back ISIS. The 2014 rebel offensive was the most significant blow that ISIS has ever been dealt and it didn’t magically occur when Ted Cruz uttered the words “Radical Islam.” It certainly didn’t come from preventing desperate refugees from settling in America. The biggest defeat ISIS has ever suffered came from Syrians who are the exact same religion and nationality that candidates like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are so determined to turn into an enemy.
By: Patrick Hilsman, The Daily Beast, December 28, 2015
“Donald Trump, The Candidate For The Ladies”: Trump Is Not Just Sexist, But ‘Spectacularly Sexist’
Donald Trump is ready to throw down with Hillary Clinton over the issue of sexism. Being a big fan of the ladies (at least until they hit their 40s), Trump is not going to sit back and take any criticism from Clinton on this subject:
Donald Trump on Sunday accused Hillary Clinton of unfairly trading on her gender while declaring Bill Clinton to be “fair game” as the former president hits the trail to campaign for his wife.
“She’s playing the woman’s card,” Trump said during an interview on Fox News, before turning his attention to Clinton’s husband, declaring him “fair game because his presidency was really considered to be very troubled because of all the things that she’s talking to me about.”
There are a number of things to unpack here. Is Clinton “playing the woman’s card”? Well, yes. In this campaign, much more so than when she ran in 2008, she has talked a lot about how it’s long overdue for a woman to be elected president. She has also stressed many issues that affect everyone but are particularly important to women, like family leave. And she hasn’t shown any reluctance to call out sexism when she sees it.
All of which seems perfectly legitimate to me, though you might feel differently. The truth is that for her entire time as a public figure over the last two-plus decades, Clinton has been the target of sexist venom that has no parallel in both its volume and intensity in our recent history. There are a number of ways one can react to it — ignore it, acknowledge it but pretend it doesn’t bother you, call attention to it — all of which she has done at one time or another. You can argue that no one should vote for her solely because she’s a woman, and I doubt she herself would disagree. But you can’t say it won’t be an issue if she’s the Democratic nominee.
And if Trump ends up being the Republican nominee, sexism will be a much bigger issue than it would be with any other GOP candidate. That’s because — let’s be honest here — Trump is not just sexist, but spectacularly sexist. He constantly comments on women’s appearance, treats women differently than men (you’ll remember how, during one of the debate shout-fests, he singled out Carly Fiorina: “Why does she keep interrupting everybody?”) and is plainly horrified and repulsed by women’s bodily functions, whether it’s breastfeeding, menstruation or peeing. And oh yeah, he seems to have a creepy interest in his own daughter.
You can rest assured that if Trump and Clinton are the nominees, there will be multiple occasions on which Trump will say something unbelievably sexist about Clinton or someone else, Clinton will express her outrage, and it will be the topic of extended discussion in the media. Which will serve to reinforce what a big deal it would be to have our first woman president.
But what about Bill Clinton? If you look at what Trump has said in interviews and on Twitter, he’s arguing that not only shouldn’t Hillary Clinton talk about sexism, but Bill Clinton shouldn’t even campaign for her, given his past. The idea that Clinton shouldn’t talk about sexism because she stayed with her husband after he had an affair with a 20-something White House intern has been raised before, but it doesn’t make any more sense now than it ever has. It’s not as though she ever excused his behavior, and it’s hard to believe there are too many voters who abhor sexism and will vote against Hillary Clinton because of her husband’s personal failings.
When Bill Clinton campaigns for her, that’s not going to be what he talks about, and when he does get asked about it, he’ll surely dodge the question with little difficulty. And on the whole, Bill will be an effective surrogate for her. He’ll be able to remind everyone of the successes of his presidency, particularly on the economy, and while Hillary may not be able to claim credit for them, she can certainly argue that she’ll be following a similar approach that will produce similar results.
Yes, there will be questions about his post-presidential activities and what he’ll be doing if he becomes First Spouse. And there’s always the chance that in the heat of political battle he could make mistakes, as he did at certain points in 2008. But Bill Clinton remains extraordinarily popular — in fact, he’s almost certainly the most popular partisan political figure in America. In a national Bloomberg poll last month, 60 percent of Americans said they had a favorable opinion of him (well ahead of the much-improved 45 percent George W. Bush got).
You can argue that candidates’ gender shouldn’t matter at all, or that while it would be good to have a woman president, Hillary Clinton shouldn’t be that woman. But what you can’t say is that Donald Trump is the candidate to support if you want to strike a blow against the kind of sexism Hillary Clinton represents. The only person crazy enough to believe that is Donald Trump.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Plum Line Blog, The Washington Post, December 28, 2015
“Discarding The Playbook”: Can A Campaign That Breaks Every Rule Still Win?
About four months ago, the University of Virginia’s Larry Sabato, a prominent political scientist, co-authored a piece on Donald Trump’s electoral prospects. “If Trump is nominated,” the analysis said, “then everything we think we know about presidential nominations is wrong. History has shown that presidential nominations tend to follow a certain set of ‘rules.’”
And in Trump’s case, those rules are being challenged in ways without modern precedent. Sabato focused on some key structural and institutional constraints, but one of the “rules” appears especially important now: “[A] likely nominee needs a layered, professional organization that has been carefully constructed at the national level and in each of the early critical states.”
It’s important at this stage to appreciate how far short Team Trump is falling on this front. The New York Times ran a piece the other day that surprised me – because while I knew Trump was blazing his own trail, I didn’t fully understand the degree to which he’s breaking with Campaign 101 orthodoxy.
His advisers have not revealed the existence of any pollsters on their staff or any advertising team. He has no real research operation to examine his own vulnerabilities or those of his opponents and, based on Federal Election Commission filings, little in the way of a voter contact operation to identify and turn out his supporters. […]
[He] has conspicuously opted against spending in conventional ways that could fortify his lead or harm weak rivals, discarding the playbook that winning candidates have used for many decades.
A Washington Post article added over the weekend, “[J]ust as Trump doesn’t spend money on pollsters or focus groups, the campaign has yet to purchase databases of potential voters, a key organizing tool used by most campaigns. Instead of buying such a tool from a private contractor, the campaign has compiled its own database using contact information from every rally attendee, either when they registered online or showed up at the door.”
Not to put too fine a point on this, but as national campaign strategies go, this appears to be bonkers.
We’re not talking about exotic, outside-the-box expenditures. Bakers understand that to make a good loaf of bread, they’re going to need some flour. Guitarists understand that to perform a good song, they’ll need a set of strings. And modern, competitive presidential campaigns – in both parties – understand that to compete nationally and in early nominating contests, candidate invest in some basic elements.
Team Trump simply isn’t making these investments, evidently because the candidate and his aides believe they don’t have to.
At a certain level, Trump and his backers may not see any real value in traditional campaign “rules.” Indeed, breaking those rules may serve as a point of pride. It’s a “movement” in which the Old Way is being replaced with the Trump Way. And if the polls are correct, why mess with success?
The answer, or at least one possible answer, is that the race is entering a more difficult phase, and if Trump lacks necessary infrastructure, he won’t be able to capitalize on his dominant position in the polls.
Over the weekend, the Washington Post highlighted a middle-aged Iowa couple, Bonnie and Randy Reynolds, who’ve bought “Make America Great Again” hats, put on the Trump T-shirts, and who are ready to support the GOP candidate “100 percent.”
So, obviously, the couple plan to caucus for Trump on Feb. 1?
“We’re going to see,” Reynolds said. “With kids and grandkids and all this, it’s kind of hectic…. We’ll look into it. If our time is available, then yeah, maybe we’ll do it. Maybe. We’ll have to see.”
A meaningful campaign infrastructure takes shape in order to make sure folks like Bonnie and Randy Reynolds show up at the campaign rally and at the caucuses.
Trump’s rivals have tried and failed to find ways to slow the frontrunner’s momentum, but perhaps the more pertinent question at this point is whether Trump has found ways to undermine his own chances by choosing such a deliberately nontraditional path.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 28, 2015
“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”: The Gullibility Of American Television Audiences
Is NBC really responsible for the rise of Donald Trump?
On a recent edition of the progressive radio program Ring of Fire, hosts Mike Papantonio and Farron Cousins discussed the mainstream media’s role in fueling the momentum of the Trump campaign, and strongly suggested that NBC effectively laid the foundation for Trump potentially becoming the 45th president (relevant discussion begins at 5:58): https://youtu.be/-D35FkhmQVA
I’ve never watched an episode of The Apprentice, and I’ve never quite understood the appeal of that program, or reality television in general. (Don’t even get me started on President Obama and Running Wild with Bear Grylls, despite the climate-consciousness of the December 17 edition of that program.) I’m not quite sure that NBC can be blamed for, frankly, the gullibility of American television audiences. After all, those who wasted hours watching Trump’s antics on The Apprentice could have been reading books instead.
It’s too easy to blame NBC for the rise of Trump, just as it’s too easy to blame Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes. There has always been an element of American culture that embraces the low, the vulgar, the putrid and the perverse. Donald Trump and NBC did not create that culture; it was a pre-existing condition in America’s body.
That condition could be fatal. You have to think that, love for his brother notwithstanding, George W. Bush is secretly rooting for Trump to win the Republican nomination and the presidency, since four to eight years of a Trump administration could actually make the Bush years look better by comparison. Sure, future historians will say, Bush lied America into war, abandoned American citizens in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, tortured people, attacked LGBT civil rights and wrecked the United States economy, but at least he didn’t inspire de facto pogroms against Mexicans and Muslims!
It’s creepy to think about it, no? Reagan’s recklessness almost made Nixon look OK relative to Bonzo’s co-star. Dubya’s destructiveness almost inspired nostalgia for the “Morning in America” era. Now, if Trump becomes the 45th President, people will start forgetting the 43rd President’s flaws. Trump would, on some level, have the power to rewrite history.
It is often said that every President becomes a reflection of the era in which he governed. When we think back to the Nixon era, our minds recall the cynicism of the age; when we remember the Reagan era, we think of the “Greed Is Good” ethos; when we think of the Bush years, we recall a time of constant fear. Let’s say Trump serves one or two terms as President. What will we think of when we remember those years?
By: D. R. Tucker, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, December 27, 2015
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 