“A Profound Test Of Their Principles”: Republican Candidates’ Despicably Lukewarm Criticism Of Donald Trump
You may remember that a year ago, Jeb Bush was musing on the Republican primary when he said that a winning GOP candidate would have “to be much more uplifting, much more positive, much more willing to… lose the primary to win the general [election] without violating your principles.” While the assumption at the time was that Bush was thinking mostly about immigration, it turns out that what we might call Bush’s Paradox applies to a whole range of issues.
Right now, the candidates are facing that paradox, in a profound test of their principles. And they’re failing.
The proximate cause is Donald Trump, who has moved from being a comical if repellent figure to being truly ghastly and sinister. As Trump has taken his xenophobia and outright hate-mongering to ever-increasing heights, the most stinging rebuke most of his opponents can offer in response is, “Well, I wouldn’t go that far.”
You might think I’m misrepresenting their statements, downplaying the degree to which they’ve condemned Trump for his ugly Islamophobic remarks. But if we look closely at what they’ve said, it’s clear that they’re being careful not to criticize him too harshly, lest they offend the voters who seem to be flocking to him precisely because he’s the one giving fullest expression to their hatred and fear.
But before we get to that, a brief review. Trump’s latest bit of demagoguery is a proposal (though I use the term loosely) to prohibit any Muslim from entering the United States — as an immigrant, as a businessperson, even as a tourist. Trump would even apply that to American citizens who had traveled out of the country and want to return. This follows on his extended insistence that “thousands and thousands” of American Muslims celebrated the fall of the World Trade Center, which was notable not just for the fact that it’s false, but for its purpose. In harping on this myth, Trump was trying to convince people that other Americans are untrustworthy, suspect, each one a terrorist sympathizer if not an outright terrorist. Add that to his assertion that mosques should be under surveillance and his toying with the idea of the government keeping a list of all Muslims for regular monitoring.
And it isn’t like Trump’s Islamophobia is unique to him. After the Paris attacks, all the Republican candidates seized on the issue of Syrian refugees to stoke fear of terrorism in the hearts of voters (even though going through the lengthy process of obtaining refugee status is about the most cumbersome and time-consuming way to reach the United States; if the attackers in Paris had wanted to come here, all they would have had to do is buy a plane ticket). Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz both said that we should accept Christian refugees, but not Muslim ones. Ben Carson said that no Muslim should be allowed to be president unless they disavowed their religion.
And how have Trump’s opponents reacted to the river of hate that gushes forth every time he steps up to a microphone? With the utmost care. “I disagree with that proposal,” Ted Cruz said about excluding Muslims from the United States. “Donald Trump is unhinged. His ‘policy’ proposals are not serious,” said Jeb Bush. “I disagree with Donald Trump’s latest proposal,” said Marco Rubio. “His habit of making offensive and outlandish statements will not bring Americans together.” Chris Christie said that the remarks showed that Trump didn’t have enough experience to deal with terrorism. “Unfortunately I think Donald Trump’s over reaction is as dangerous as Obama’s under reaction,” said Carly Fiorina. John Kasich called it “outrageous divisiveness,” mustering the strongest condemnation.
What we have there are varying degrees of disagreement, but about the worst any of them can bring themselves to say is that Trump’s ideas are nutty. Not that he’s a bigot, not that he’s using the politics of hate, not that he’s falling in line with a sordid history of racism. And certainly none of them are speaking directly to American Muslims — just imagine if they pandered to that community the way they pander to a dozen others whose votes they want.
There is one exception, who should be given all the credit he deserves: Lindsey Graham. Trump, Graham said in a recent appearance on CNN, is “a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for.”
Perhaps it’s because Graham barely registers in the polls that he feels free to speak plainly about Trump, because those polls also show that there’s a substantial audience for what Trump is offering. Republicans give Muslims lower favorability ratings than any other group. One recent poll found that only 49 percent of Iowa Republicans thought Islam should be legal. And ugly anti-Muslim incidents, ranging from harassment to outright hate-crimes, are cropping up all over.
While Trump may not have much support for his specific ideas from other Republicans, the conservative media reinforces the mindset that produces them each and every day. Josh Marshall recently described the discussion of these issues on Fox News as “a whole tapestry of falsehoods, that combined with incitement and hysteria create a mental world in which Donald Trump’s mounting volume of racist incitement is just not at all surprising.” Fox regularly gives airtime to bigots and xenophobes to spout off about the threat not only from abroad but from American Muslims (though a lot of that shows up on other cable networks as well), rhetoric that is echoed on one conservative talk radio show after another. And don’t think Republican politicians don’t know who’s watching and listening.
So is anyone going to be surprised if next week some heavily armed right-wing terrorist walks into a mosque or a Muslim community center and starts killing as many innocent men, women, and children as he can? After all, he keeps hearing about how they’re terrorist sympathizers, how they need to be watched, how they need to be kept out, how they need to suspected and feared and hated.
I don’t know how long this ugly period will last, but I do know that history is going to judge those who created it harshly. And those who stepped carefully around a demagogue like Trump, always worried that they might offend his followers? Their cowardice will be remembered too.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Week, December 9, 2015
“Paul Ryan Stumbles Over ‘Leadership’ Test”: Republicans Have A Problem With The Vetting Process, But They Have No Idea Why
Press a Republican politician on his or her opposition to Syrian refugees, and they’ll eventually point to the vetting process that’s currently in place. Most GOP lawmakers, governors, and candidates have no interest in endorsing explicit bigotry, instead saying they have concerns about the rigor of the screening process refugees must go through. Some on the right like to pretend the process doesn’t even exist.
The trouble comes when pressed for policy details or any kind of substantive analysis. The New York Times reported today:
When pressed, most Republicans could not specify which aspects of the rigorous refugee vetting program that they found inadequate. [House Speaker Paul Ryan’s] staff members cited a Bloomberg poll of 1,002 adults released on Wednesday, conducted by Selzer & Company, that found that 53 percent of those surveyed said the resettlement program should be halted.
Of all the domestic coverage I’ve seen this week about U.S. politicians and their reactions to Paris, this might be my favorite paragraph to date. Republicans know they have a problem with the vetting process, but they have no idea why.
And when House Speaker Paul Ryan – a celebrated “wonk,” according to much of the media – was asked about his concerns, his office pointed to, of all things, a poll.
In other words, Americans who have no real understanding of the rigorous refugee vetting program are leading elected policymakers, whose job it is to know better. The new Republican Speaker can’t identify actual problems with the vetting system, but Ryan can stick his finger in the air, read a poll, put together a meaningless “task force,” and tell his party to ride the wave of panic whether it makes sense or not.
Talking to reporters this week about the terrorism in Paris, the Wisconsin lawmaker argued, “It’s clear this was an act of war, and that the world needs American leadership.”
It is, to be sure, a nice sentiment, but what the Speaker didn’t say is what he thinks “American leadership” looks like in this situation. Does it mean Congress voting to authorize a military offensive against ISIS? For the last year and a half, the answer has been no. Does it mean Congress voting this afternoon on an anti-refugee bill, which is exactly what ISIS wants to see? According to Paul Ryan, the answer is yes.
On the other side of Capitol Hill, the picture is equally discouraging. The Huffington Post reported yesterday:
In the aftermath of the Paris terrorist attacks, Senate Democrats on Wednesday criticized Republicans for blocking national security nominees who would help fight terrorism and track Islamic State militants. […]
Adam Szubin, who has bipartisan support, has been waiting more than 200 days to be confirmed as the Treasury Department’s under secretary for terrorism and financial crimes. The job involves tracking terrorists to prevent them from raising money on the black market and elsewhere.
Szubin’s nomination got a hearing before the Senate Banking Committee on Sept. 17, and Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) praised his past work in countering terrorist financing during his time with both Republican and Democratic administrations…. But Szubin’s nomination hasn’t moved since. There’s no clear reason why, beyond trying to make it difficult for President Barack Obama to fill administration posts.
Republicans have also slow-walked qualified nominees to serve as Secretary of the Army and the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, not because GOP senators have concerns about the officials up for confirmation, but rather because Republicans reflexively object to President Obama’s nominees for anything.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, November 19, 2015
“Endangering Christian Lives”: Ted Cruz Demonized Arab Christians Before He Liked Them
Just over a year after giving Middle Eastern Christians advice that could have put them in danger, Sen. Ted Cruz has announced Syrian Christian refugees are not a threat and should be first in line to enter the U.S.
And some of his old critics say that’s a long-overdue change in tone.
On Sept. 10, 2014, Cruz headed to the Omni Shoreham hotel in Washington to speak at the gala for a conference called “In Defense of Christians,” which brought together Christian leaders from throughout the Middle East to highlight the brutal persecution their congregants faced at the hands of the Islamic State.
The fact Cruz was speaking there at all caused waves in the conservative Beltway press. It started when the Washington Free Beacon reported earlier that day that some of the conference’s speakers and attendees had controversial affiliations; one speaker had previously defended Hezbollah, and another—years earlier—had touted a conspiracy theory about “Christians with Zionist orientations.”
Despite the bad press, Cruz took the stage that evening and launched into a speech, saying that everyone present was united by their commitment to defending persecuted Christians and Jews. He criticized ISIS, Hamas, al Qaeda, and Hezbollah, all to applause. But then he started talking about Israel.
“Christians have no greater ally than the Jewish state,” he said, to a mixture of boos and applause. “Let me say this, those who hate Israel, hates America.”
A mixture of boos and applause followed.
“If you will not stand with Israel and the Jews, I will not stand with you,” he concluded, exiting the stage.
The next day, Cruz doubled down, defending his decision to walk out on the group. He even gave a statement to Breitbart saying the evening “deteriorated into a shameful display of bigotry and hatred.”
“[B]igotry and hatred have no place in this discussion,” he continued in that statement. “Anti-Semitism is a corrosive evil, and it reared its ugly head tonight.”
Breitbart’s initial headline of one story even implied the event’s attendees weren’t really Christians.
The event’s organizers—who brought together a historic group of Christian leaders at a moment when their communities faced (and still face) genocide—weren’t impressed.
“He came to a summit in defense of Christians and actually endangered Christian lives,” said the group’s executive director, Andrew Doran, according to the National Catholic Register.
Doran noted to the paper that “standing with Israel”—as Cruz demanded that event attendees do—can make already-vulnerable Christians top targets for Islamist extremists. And in the case of the Syrian civil war, Christian bishops have pushed for their flocks to stay neutral. Middle Eastern geopolitics make for happy hour chit-chat in Washington; for Christians in that region, though, those stances are sometimes matters of life or death.
“People had come here trusting us not to put their lives in danger,” Doran continued to the paper. “People had come here for the sake of unity, and for politicians to take advantage of this for their own agenda is absolutely disgraceful.”
So while Cruz has apologized to conservative political pundits, he has never expressed remorse for demanding that attendees applaud Israel or for characterizing them as hateful bigots.
Since launching his presidential campaign, though, event organizers say Cruz’s tone has changed. In particular, they point to comments he made on Sunday about Syrian Christians.
“There is no meaningful risk of Christians committing acts of terror,” Cruz said at a recent campaign stop in South Carolina, arguing that the U.S. should admit Christian refugees but not Muslim ones.
That particular debate arose in the wake of the terror attacks on Paris, as one of the shooters entered France by pretending to be a refugee.
“If there were a group of radical Christians pledging to murder anyone who had a different religious view than they, we would have a different national security situation,” he continued. “But it is precisely the Obama administration’s unwillingness to recognize that or ask those questions that makes them so unable to fight this enemy. Because they pretend as if there is no religious aspect to this.”
An adviser to the In Defense of Christians group told The Daily Beast that this new approach represents a change in tone for the senator, and a welcome one at that.
“Senator Cruz took an unfortunate posture at last year’s IDC Summit considering the lives of some in the room were imperiled by what he said, and since some of the attendees were recent survivors of the invasion by Daesh, and others had lost family members to Daesh,” the advisor said.
“That said, we are pleased to now see Senator Cruz offer more thoughtful and constructive comments to improve, rather than imperil the Christians of the Middle East who seem to be forgotten when it comes to the soundness of the strategies and tactics to defeat Daesh, on the matters of refugee status, and qualifying Middle East Christians as victims of a genocide,” he continued.
Catherine Frazier, a spokeswoman for Cruz’s campaign, strongly disagreed that the senator’s tone on Middle Eastern Christians has changed.
“Cruz rightly spoke against those who loudly booed his support for Israel,” she said. “The entire purpose of the dinner, of which he was a keynote, was to support persecuted Christians in the Middle East, a cause for which he has consistently and strongly supported. I completely disagree with any assertion that he has changed his ‘tone.’”
Does Ted Cruz talk differently about marginalized populations depending on who’s listening—defending their integrity when it’s convenient and characterizing them as hateful bigots when needed? You decide.
By: Betsy Woodruff, The Daily Beast, November 18, 2015
“Trump Speaks The Truth”: The Donald Has The Better Of Jeb Bush In Their Spat Over 9/11
Here at the Country Mart, on the edge of Brentwood and Santa Monica, politics is not on the menu. The Sunday talk shows are no big thing. Imagine, people are not that excited about Hillary Clinton’s upcoming date with Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., chairman of the House Benghazi committee.
This is Hillaryland, a rare state with two Democratic women senators. But one flare from the presidential primary season has made its way west: Donald Trump said something simple and true, which needed to be said. I never thought I’d say it, but thanks for clearing the air on the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Trump.
The failing presidential contender Jeb Bush has made this absurd statement his signature as a candidate: “My brother kept us safe.” No, President George W. Bush did not do that. Trump only pointed out that almost 3,000 died on that day and the World Trade Center towers fell. That’s the record of a day that broke the nation’s heart.
It happened on President Bush’s watch, while he was ignoring his CIA August intelligence briefings that a plot involving planes was in the air, so to speak. Most of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, not Afghanistan nor Iraq. We stayed friends with the desert kingdom for some reason; the Bushes were chummy with Prince Bandar. Bush fell down on the job, to say the least.
We are still paying dearly for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The fearsome Islamic State group is not keeping us safe, little brother. President Barack Obama had to own that grim truth, keeping more troops than planned in the warring Middle East neighborhood. Much of Syria has been destroyed, like a contemporary Carthage.
“My brother kept us safe” shows a tragic chorus of Bush blind loyalty at work again. Jeb Bush has clearly not learned any lessons from the past, asking the same family crowd of foreign policy advisors to help him, including that shrewd player and hawk, Paul Wolfowitz.
It’s his birthright, his inheritance. Jeb is very proud of being a Bush team player.
Finally, as a matter of finesse, “my brother” sounds like he’s running for home room president. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy always referred in public to his late brother, John F. Kennedy, as President Kennedy. That has more dignity, not the Bush strong suit.
Trump spoke the plain truth. It’s refreshing. Let’s have more of it from Republicans running for president.
By: Jamie Stiehm, Washington Whispers, U. S. News and World Report, October 19, 2015
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“Republicans Are The Ones Hiding Behind ‘Political Correctness'”: Dismissal Of Facts And Opinions They Don’t Want To Hear
The Republican presidential candidates and the far-right echo chamber have made “politically correct” an all-purpose dismissal for facts and opinions they don’t want to hear.
Take Donald Trump’s claim that when the World Trade Center towers collapsed on 9/11, “I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering.”
The Post’s Fact Checker columnist, Glenn Kessler, found no evidence to support Trump’s claim and gave him Four Pinocchios, reserved for the most baldfaced lies. PolitiFact gave the statement a Pants on Fire rating, denoting extreme mendacity. But when ABC’s George Stephanopoulos pressed the GOP front-runner to explain himself, noting that “police say it didn’t happen,” Trump resorted to what has become a familiar dodge.
“I know it might not be politically correct for you to talk about it, but there were people cheering as that building came down,” Trump said.
Ben Carson, running second in the national polls, is even more fond of the political-correctness allegation — so much so that it could be considered a central theme of his campaign. It is unclear whether he actually knows or cares what “political correctness” means. The phrase is just more verbal romaine to add to the word salad that is Carson’s discourse.
He used it when challenged on his stance that a Muslim should not be president, even though the Constitution explicitly states there can be no “religious test” for public office. “Political correctness is imposed by the secular progressives and those who wish to fundamentally change our society,” he said. “Therefore, they make things off-limits to talk about, but you know what? I’m going to talk about it anyway.”
In other words, he considers the framers of the Constitution a bunch of “secular progressives,” since they’re the ones who put a candidate’s faith off-limits. That’s not the loopiest thing Carson has said (his attempts to discuss financial reform are in a class of their own) but it’s in the top 10.
The renowned neurosurgeon took the same route Sunday when Stephanopoulos — who had a busy morning — asked him to react to Trump’s call for the United States to resume harsh interrogation techniques for terrorism suspects, including waterboarding.
“I agree that there’s no such thing as political correctness when you’re fighting an enemy who wants to destroy you and everything that you have anything to do with,” Carson said. “And I’m not one who is real big on telling the enemy what we’re going to do and what we’re not going to do.”
But Carson is a medical doctor who took an oath to heal and alleviate suffering. Or maybe he believes that Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine, was just another PC lemming, blindly following the secular progressives who are leading us to our collective doom.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, asked about his view that the United States should accept no Syrian refugees, said we should not bow to “political correctness, the elites in Washington or the editorial pages of major newspapers.” Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), asked this summer whether he thought the term “anchor baby ” was offensive, told reporters “we need to stop this politically correct nonsense.” Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, after making a joke about transgender people that some found offensive, responded that “everybody wants to be politically correct, everybody wants to be loved by the media and loved by the left and loved by the elitists.”
And it’s not just GOP candidates who have the anti-political-correctness bug. Many conservative commentators have been quick to condemn the “politically correct” Princeton University students who demand that the school remove symbols honoring Woodrow Wilson — a onetime Princeton president — because of his racism.
These critics ignore the historical fact that Wilson was racist not just by today’s standards but by those of his time. He wrote that African Americans were an “ignorant and inferior race.” He lavishly praised the Ku Klux Klan and pined for the Confederacy. As president of the United States, he ordered that integrated federal government workplaces be segregated; NAACP founder W.E.B. Du Bois wrote of one black clerk who “had a cage built around him to separate him from his white companions.”
Yes, I’m being politically correct. But also truthful.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, November 23, 2015
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November 30, 2015 Posted by raemd95 | Ben Carson, Donald Trump, GOP Presidential Candidates, Political Correctness | 911, Conservative Commentators, Founding Fathers, Muslims, Racism, Terrorists, Waterboarding, Woodrow Wilson | Leave a comment