“How To Lose A Voter For Life”: A Once Great Party Rips Itself Apart, One Voter At A Time
We frequently talk about how intolerant rhetoric can cost the Republicans support among the targets of their contempt. They’re going to lose support among young women, we say, and gays and lesbians, and Latinos and Asians and blacks and…
That’s all true, but this is a general phenomenon that actually goes on in an atomized and individualized way– one voter at a time.
Here’s one of those voters:
At midday on the eve of the [Iowa] caucuses, into the Hockenberry house walked two men who had driven to Dubuque from Milwaukee in a white Mercedes SUV. One of them was Ismail Fersat, who was from Turkey, and Muslim, and a successful entrepreneur who ran his own granite-countertop business. Once, back in Turkey, he was the national boxing champ. He came to America from Istanbul 16 years ago in hopes of becoming a professional boxer.
What did America mean to him? “For me, the key is democracy,” said Fersat, still two years away from citizenship. “I feel that if the people can tell honestly and confidently what they think without any fear, no matter what religion they belong to, what culture they belong to — that, to me, is democracy.” He had more than anything admired this about America — until he started to worry about it during this campaign.
For years in Wisconsin, he had thought that he should support the Republicans, because they would be best for business. Then along came Trump. “When Trump came out, I felt offended by the comment he made. The Muslim is blah, blah. That hurt me in a big way. I see democracy as something else. When Trump came out, boom, no more. I’m done with the Republicans. I said, ‘I’m on the wrong side!'”
Here’s an entrepreneurial immigrant, a job creator and small businessman. The chances are pretty good that he has some traditional ideas about gender roles and family and human sexuality. He was a Republican, he says, because he believed they would be better for his business. That stands to reason since their economic rhetoric is aimed like a laser at people like him. How many times did Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan talk about small business owners and entrepreneurship? It was like a mantra, or Chinese water torture, or an annoying involuntary tic.
Yet, once Donald Trump came out and said that “Islam hates us” and Muslims shouldn’t be allowed into the country and they should be forced to register with the government and that he might shut down mosques because virtually 100% of them are anti-American?
Once Donald Trump said all that, Ismail Fersat got the hint and said, “I’m on the wrong side!!”
And Ismail Fersat didn’t become some anti-American saboteur or terrorist. He and his buddy jumped in their white Mercedes SUV and drove down to Iowa to campaign for Hillary Clinton. They decided to knock doors for her campaign because they believe in democracy and they believe in the right to say (and be) what you want without fear.
Everyone has their own story, but there are millions of people in this country who are making, or have already made, or will soon be making the same voyage as Mr. Fersat and his friend.
That’s how a once great party rips itself apart– one voter at a time.
By: Martin Longman, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, March 18, 2016
“Pandering To Prejudice”: Trump Loses Two Delegates Because Of Their Foreign-Sounding Names
Two Trump delegates with foreign-sounding (i.e., Muslim) names failed to make the top three spots during last night’s Illinois primary, despite overwhelming Trump support in the districts they represented.
The state has one of the most complex delegate allotment schemes in the country. Rather than receiving just one delegate per electoral district, the Illinois primary provides three delegates per electoral district. That means that Illinois has 54 delegates who have already pledged to a presidential candidate to draw from its 18 electoral districts. And following the results of the primary, the first place candidate, is awarded another 15 delegates during the national convention.
The results were further proof of Trump’s pandering to prejudice in his run for the Republican nomination. The two candidates, Nabi Fakroddin and Raja Sadiq, prevented Trump from winning even more candidates in Illinois. The drop in support for the two was notable because Trump delegates won in the third and sixth districts. In the sixth district, Paul Minch won the district with 35,435 votes while Barbara Kois got 35,120 votes. But Fakroddin finished sixth with 5,000 fewer votes, despite running as a Trump delegate. That allowed a John Kasich supporter to take the third place spot, giving the Ohio governor an extra delegate.
The same took place with Sadiq in the third district. He should have finished somewhere in the top three, again, given that Trump won the state. But he also finished in sixth place, with 25 percent fewer votes than Doug Hartmann, the Trump candidate who won. Ted Cruz supporters took second, third and fourth place there. Even the fifth place finisher, Toni Gauen, also a Trump delegate, got 4,000 more votes than Sadiq.
While the loss of a couple delegates won’t hurt Trump as he bulldozes his way to the Republican nomination, the virulent form of Islamophobia he has espoused likely played a roll in the results for Fakroddin and Sadiq. Trump’s supporters are among the most hostile to Muslims. Some 67 percent hold unfavorable views of American Muslims, while 87 percent said they support his proposal to ban Muslims from entering the country.
It’s unlikely that this phenomenon will repeat itself, simply because there aren’t many Muslims supporting Trump. But if the Republican frontrunner’s targeting of other minorities (Mexicans, Hispanics, African Americans, women) continues, Trump delegates with non-white names could see themselves losing primary races due to the same man they represent. In that case, it would be perhaps the only time Trump’s overt appeals to white nationalism haven’t helped his campaign in some way.
By: Saif Alnuweiri, The National Memo, March 16, 2016
“Struck Just The Right Note”: At Baltimore Mosque, Obama Crushes The Muslim Haters
The two most powerful moments during President Obama’s first visit to an American mosque on Wednesday didn’t happen during his speech. Rather, they occurred in the moments before the president took the podium.
The first came when a color guard made up of young Muslim American Boy and Girl Scouts entered the venue. One of the older scouts told the flag bearer: “Proudly present the flag of the United States of America.” The audience, ranging from community leaders to Muslim-American military veterans to the two Muslim members of Congress, stood in unison to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
The words of this pledge never seem to resonate as much. Here we were waiting for the President of the United States to speak to us because the spike in anti-Muslim hate had so skyrocketed that he felt compelled to address the issue. I had to fight back tears as we got to the last line of the pledge: “one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
You see, that last line is the promise that brought my Muslim immigrant father as well as the parents, grandparents, and even some of the people in that room to come to America. They came here for the promise of being treated equally regardless of faith, ethnicity, or race. But that promise has been in peril as of late.
And the second moment that emotionally stood out was when the young African-American-Muslim woman, Sabah, introduced the president. Sabah spoke of the challenges of wearing a hijab—some had called her a terrorist. Yet she noted that far more of her fellow Americans of all backgrounds had been supportive. And then she delivered a passionate line that elicited huge applause from the crowd: “I’m proud to be American, I’m proud to be black, and I’m proud to be Muslim.”
That is what America is truly about. We can be hyphenated Americans and be just as American as anyone else.
President Obama even touched on Sabah’s very point in his speech when he said, “You aren’t Muslim or American. You are Muslim and American.” That was a theme that came up often in his speech at the Islamic Center of Baltimore, which was part pep talk for Muslims, part calling out the haters and also part calling on Muslims to play a role in countering radicalization.
But the heart of the President’s speech was trying to educate our fellow Americans about Islam to counter the anti-Muslim climate we live in today. One that has seen close to 100 anti-Muslim hate crimes in the last two months according to a Department of Justice official I spoke to at the event, which is far higher than we see reported in the media.
Obama began by countering the concept that some on the right peddle that Islam is foreign to America. The president declared, “Islam has always been part of America.” Adding, “Starting in colonial times, many of the slaves brought here from Africa were Muslim.”
The president also spoke of how Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia statute for religious freedom expressly included Islam as one of the protected faiths (“the Mahometan” was TJ’s word for a Muslim). Obama also added something I had never heard before: Some had accused Jefferson of being a closeted Muslim. (I wonder who was the Donald Trump of the 1700s who did that?!)
Obama then traced the contributions of Muslims in America as well as noting that Muslim Americans keep us safe. “They’re our police and our firefighters…They serve honorably in our armed forces—meaning they fight and bleed and die for our freedom. And some rest in Arlington National Cemetery. “
And the president recognized the extraordinary Muslims he had met at the mosque that day, from educators to business people to the first hijab-wearing Muslim to qualify for the U.S. Olympic team. But he added that despite the accomplishments of so many Muslims, he “could not help but be heartbroken to hear their worries and their anxieties.”
Obama relayed how he had received letters from Muslim-American parents who shared disturbing questions their young children were asking, like, “Are we going to be forced out of the country? Are we going to be rounded up?” Another Muslim American child wrote to him to say, “I’m scared.” The president responded forcefully that these are “conversations that you shouldn’t have to have with children—not in this country.”
The reality though is that’s where we are today as a community. There are young Muslim Americans who have been made to feel less than fully American simply because of their faith. We are seeing Muslim-American students bullied and taunted for wearing a hijab or having a first name like Mohammed.
The questions I find myself asking are: Will it get worse? Will the extreme voices win out? Will the good people simply be “bystanders to bigotry,” as Obama put it? Or will the voices of reason prevail?
I’m sure many Muslims at the event had similar question in mind. Perhaps sensing that, Obama told the audience: “I believe that, ultimately, our best voices will win out. And that gives me confidence and faith in the future.”
With of every fiber of my being I believe the president is correct. And despite the Trumps, Ben Carsons, or others on the right who believe that demonizing Muslims will make us cower in fear or even consider leaving this country, they are wrong. Our community, like every other minority community, will grow and prosper. I say that because our nation’s history tells us so. And because of our nation’s eternal promise that liberty and justice are not reserved only for one select religion or race, but “for all.”
By: Dean Obeidallah, The Daily Beast, February 4, 2016
“There’s One Big Reason We’re Being Radicalized”: America, Look At What Donald Trump Is Doing To Us
During Saturday night’s Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton declared that Trump is “becoming ISIS’s best recruiter.” Clinton was wrong to suggest Trump had appeared in any ISIS videos but she was right to note that his words will help ISIS radicalize people.
She also left something out: Trump has already radicalized Americans to commit and plot acts of violence right here on American soil.
The latest example came Sunday after William Celli of Richmond, California, was arrested for building explosive devices that he allegedly planned to use to kill Muslim Americans. What inspired Celli’s actions? Well, we know that Celli’s Facebook page reads like a Trump speech filled with anti-immigrant, anti-Latino and anti-Muslim comments. Celli also repeatedly praises Trump, even adding that he would follow Trump “to the end of the world.” This is not unlike social media posts pledging undying loyalty to ISIS-type groups.
But Celli is far from the only Trump supporter to turn to violence. In August, two Trump supporters in Boston beat up a Latino man while yelling anti-immigrant slurs. The police reported that after being arrested, one of the assailants stated, “Donald Trump was right. All these illegals need to be deported.”
Trump’s response to this brutal attack in his name was alarmingly tame: “I will say, the people that are following me are very passionate.” He added, “They love this country, they want this country to be great again.” Trump did later tweet that the incident was horrible and that “I would never condone violence.”
But just three months later, Trump changed his tune and did condone violence by his supporters. During a campaign event in Birmingham, Alabama, Black Lives Matter protester Mercurito Southhall Jr. repeatedly interrupted The Donald. Trump responded by imploring the crowd to “Get him out the hell out of here… Throw him out!” Trump supporters then sprung into action and beat up Southhall while reportedly calling him a “nigger” and a “monkey.”
Did Trump condemn the attack and racist words directed at the black man by his white supporters? No, to the contrary. Trump told Fox News the morning after the assault, “Maybe he should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.”
Trump was sending a clear message that violence in the name of Trump was acceptable. I know some will disagree with me, but the stakes are too high to be politically correct. Trump has and will continue to radicalize people to commit horrible acts just like ISIS does. True, the scope of the violence commited by ISIS supporters has been far worse but if Celli’s bomb had gone off and he’d slaughtered Americans, it would have been exactly like an ISIS-inspired terror attack.
And apart from these three incidents, Trump’s rhetoric about Muslims is responsible, to some degree, for the massive spike in anti-Muslim hate crimes we have seen in the last few weeks.
In recent years, there has been an average of 12.6 hate crimes against Muslims in America per month, according to FBI data. However, since the Paris terrorist attack on Nov. 13 there have been 38 anti-Islamic attacks.
A few examples include a Muslim cab driver in Pittsburgh being shot by a man who went on an anti-Muslim tirade, shots fired at a Muslim woman’s car while exiting a mosque in Florida, hot coffee thrown at a Muslim praying in a California park, and death threats directed at numerous Muslim leaders including Rep. Andre Carson, one of the two Muslim members in Congress.
And we have also seen a rash of attacks on American mosques in the past two weeks, with windows broken at the Islamic center in Palm Beach, a pig’s head thrown at a mosque in Philadelphia, hate-filled, threatening letters sent to a mosque in New Jersey, and more.
Are all these hate crimes due to Trump’s alarming rhetoric in recent weeks about Muslims, from vowing to close mosques to banning all Muslims from entering America? No. But there’s absolutely no doubt his words play a role in ginning up fears and legitimizing hate. It’s akin to the hateful fear-mongering by Southern Democrats in the 1950s and ’60s directed against blacks that then led to violence against blacks and their white allies.
Keep in mind that after the 2013 Boston marathon bombing that left three dead and over 250 injured, we didn’t see anything like this level of anti-Muslim hate crimes. As the Associated Press noted in a detailed article published a few weeks after the Boston bombing, “Muslim civil rights leaders say the anti-Islam reaction has been more muted this time than after other attacks since Sept. 11.” And Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations told the AP reporter then that there had been “no uptick in reports of harassment, assaults or damage to mosques since the April 15 bombings.”
What is the difference between 2013 and now? Simple: Donald J. Trump. After the Boston bombing, leading political figures weren’t actively ratcheting up hate toward Muslims. But that is exactly what Trump has been doing. Trump’s proposals regarding Muslims aren’t about enacting policies, they are about sending the message that all Muslims are a danger to our nation.
Even after nearly 3,000 Americas were killed as a result of the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush did the exact opposite of what we are seeing from Trump. Bush, while addressing Congress two weeks after that horrific terror attack, stated: “I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith… Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah.”
What a contrast to what we now hear from Trump. This is truly the first time in my life that I have been fearful for the safety of my Muslim American family members and friends. And I’m far from alone in that feeling within the Muslim American community.
Is this what Trump means when he says he wants to make America great again? I’m not sure, but it appears that many of his supporters alarmingly believe that’s exactly what Trump means.
By: Dean Obeidallah, The Daily Beast, December 22, 2015
“Dr. Ben Carson Is On Life Support”: Slowly Fading, Just One Step Away From Hospice
Moments before Tuesday night’s fear-mongering GOP debate, Ben Carson gave a preview of the utter strangeness that was to emerge from his mouth during the night’s proceedings.
During a visit to the media spin room, Carson was asked if he would need to ramp up his rhetoric in the ensuing debate. His response was nothing short of bewildering.
“Um, well maybe I’ll bring some weapons with me, spice it up a little bit,” he told ABC News, chortling at his own odd suggestion. This off-hand remark was strangely prescient, characterizing the night was to come.
Instead of the foreign policy “slam dunk” he promised in a campaign video, Carson sunk into the background as the top-tier candidates—Trump, Cruz, Rubio, and to some degree Christie—duked it out in varying dour and vicious tones.
What little stage time Carson got (some 10 minutes and 27 seconds approximately) was consumed by a highlight reel of ill-fated remarks about bombing children and disruptive coughing, and, of course, a complaint about not getting enough time.
Hugh Hewitt asked a question about the former neurosurgeon’s ability to declare war where children would inevitably end up as casualties. The response could have served as a demonstration of strength, a label which often evades Carson next to the bombastic yelling of Trump, but ended up as an ill-fated comparison to his medical experience.
“Well, interestingly enough, you should see the eyes of some of those children when I say to them ‘We’re going to have to open your head up and take out this tumor,’” Carson tangentially responded. “They’re not happy about it, believe me. And they don’t like me very much at that point. But later on, they love me.”
“And by the same token,” he went on, “you have to be able to look at the big picture, and understand that it’s actually merciful if you go ahead and finish the job, rather than death by a thousand pricks.”
Hewitt pressed him by bluntly asking if Carson would be OK with the deaths of thousands of civilians and children in an effort to fight terrorism. Amidst the boos that erupted in the Venetian Casino, Carson awkwardly replied, “You got it,” seemingly not believing the words he himself was actually saying. Even when Carson leaned on what little applicable experience he has, referencing the scholars fund he created to demonstrate leadership abilities, he misfired.
“One of the things that you’ll notice if you look through my life is that I don’t do a lot of talking,” Carson said. “I do a lot of doing.” But Carson gave more than 141 paid speeches between the start of 2014 and the beginning of his campaign, not to mention an extensive, quasi-illegal book tour wedged in the middle of this campaign cycle.
His floundering in the debate may not have been so noticeable if there weren’t as much at stake for Carson. It wasn’t that long ago that Carson bolted to the front of the GOP pack, drawing the attention of Trump’s oxygen-extinguishing ire (remember when he analogized him to a child molester?).
But November’s terrorist attacks in Paris pivoted the conversation to national security and foreign policy, causing Carson, who was woefully unprepared for any in-depth conversation on either topic, to plummet in the polls.
His campaign tried to make adjustments to mold the quiet doctor into an overnight foreign policy wonk, including a trip to Syrian refugee camps, which resulted in the badly worded summarization: They were not that bad. Carson is scheduled to take another trip, this time to Africa, this month.
Carson’s campaign even released a seven-step plan to “protect America” ahead of the debate, that includes a call for a declaration of war against ISIS. Only special ops forces would be needed on the ground for the time being, his communications manager Doug Watts told The Daily Beast yesterday.
Yet in the debate, Carson seemed to be all but certain that there would be ground troops in this war.
“If our military experts say we need boots on the ground, we should put boots on the ground and recognize that there will be boots on the ground and they’ll be over here, and they’ll be their boots if we don’t get out of there now,” he said during a particularly meandering answer.
But the seventh step of the procedural is the one that probably gives the most pause. The final proposal of the Carson Doctrine to make America safe again calls for an investigation of “the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood and a supporter of terrorism.”
“Given the precarious situation America is in with sleeper cells and jihadists making threats from within, and CAIR’s background, publicly stated affinity with Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, we believe further investigation is in order,” Watts elaborated.
The United Arab Emirates did in fact put CAIR on its own version of a terrorist watch list in 2014, but experts balked at the suggestion that the organization poses a viable threat in the United States.
“Carson’s remarks are typically silly,” Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institutes in Washington, told The Daily Beast. “He pontificates a great deal about Muslim and Islamic matters, and every time he opens his mouth, he reveals himself to be exceptionally ignorant and informed entirely by bigots and a hateful rhetoric.”
The bigots to whom Ibish is referring include Islamophobe and recent GOP darling Frank Gaffney Jr., who has suggested that CAIR is waging a “stealthy, pre-violent” jihad against the United States. (Gaffney also insists American Tax Reform’s Grover Norquist is secretly working to help Muslim Brotherhood moles infiltrate the U.S. government.)
Ibish explained that while CAIR may have had “origins in Brotherhood-supporting or sympathetic causes,” the organization is by no means “connected to terrorism or in any practical, material sense supportive of terrorism.”
“If Dr. Carson doesn’t realize that CAIR has been ‘investigated’ since 9/11 as thoroughly as any American organizational entity has ever been investigated by the government, he hasn’t got a clue,” Ibish added. “But then again, he is a fool.”
For their part, CAIR condemned Carson a long time ago when he said that he was against a Muslim being president.
“Ben Carson is a failing candidate grasping at straws and seeking payback for CAIR’s previous criticism of his anti-Muslim bigotry,” Corey Saylor, the national legislative director for the organization, told The Daily Beast. “He found that Islamophobia gave him a boost in the past, so he is using it again.”
But there are no obvious signs that it will give him a boost now.
Carson fell from 22 percent to 11 percent in two Washington Post-ABC News polls taken less than a month apart. And even as the campaign attempts to right the sinking ship, private tensions between business manager Armstrong Williams and other staffers are getting played out in public.
And if last night’s debate was any indication, all Carson can do is smile and feign toughness on a stage with loudmouth bigots and opportunistic politicians simply out-muscling him.
It doesn’t work to play nice anymore.
By: Gideon Resnick, The Daily Beast, December 16, 2015
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