Tag: Republican Party

The Republican Debate of Texas

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Let the insults fly (Rubio and Trump)

W.J. Astore

Last night’s Republican Presidential Debate in Texas would dismay almost anyone interested in debates or politics.  Insults flew.  Boasts filled the air. Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio postured about which could be meaner toward “illegals” (undocumented workers).  There was more talk of border walls, of higher defense spending, of cutting taxes, of eliminating Obamacare, of reanimating Antonin Scalia and restoring him to the Supreme Court (think of Stephen King’s “Pet Sematary” but retitled as “SCOTUS Sematary”) — OK, that last one I made up, but if they could, they would.

I took a high school course on “debate and discussion,” and later as a professor I graded my students on debates.  Remember rules like staying on subject?  On following the rules? On keeping to the time allotted, on being civil to your opponent, on sticking to facts, on relying on evidence?  If you don’t recall those criteria, join the club of Trump, Cruz, and Rubio.

Almost any objective observer of the debate would score a win for John Kasich, the governor of Ohio.  He was clear, passionate, and stuck mainly to the subject.  He stressed his executive and governmental experience, spoke in complete sentences, and avoided insults and sound bites.  I don’t agree with much of what Kasich advocates, but he has the temperament and qualifications to make him a sound choice for the presidency.

Trump, of course, plays up his business acumen as preparing him for the presidency, and his argument against bickering politicians like Cruz and Rubio is compelling.  But let’s face it: watch the debates for just a few minutes and you realize Trump is a bully whose main attribute is bombastic self-confidence. By temperament he is unsuited to be president. The grim reality is that Republicans appear to have no answer to him.

This is partly because the debates are about issues only in passing.  They’re mainly about show, and “The Donald” knows how to put on a show.  As Cruz and Rubio split the vote, and Kasich and Carson slowly fade, Trump tightens his grip on the delegate total needed to grab the Republican nomination.

The amazing thing is this: It’s now quite conceivable that come January 2017, we will see Donald Trump inaugurated as president.

Last Night’s Nasty Republican Debate

debate
Southern charm did not rub off on these candidates

W.J. Astore

One word describes last night’s Republican debate from South Carolina: nasty. That’s the word Donald Trump used to describe Ted Cruz (transcript here), and that’s the word that best describes the tone of most of the debate.  Ben Carson and John Kasich, as usual, tried to take the high road, but Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush joined Trump and Cruz in the mud-slinging, tossing accusations about who’s lying and who isn’t, who’s insulting whose family, ad nauseam. (According to the LA Times, the candidates together made 22 accusations of lying; all that was missing was the old expression we used as kids, “Liar! Liar! Pants on fire!”)

As far as content, there wasn’t much new.  The death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia touched off a dishonest discussion as to what President Obama should do about his empty seat.  Pretty much all the candidates suggested the “lame duck” president should not nominate a replacement for Scalia (thereby abdicating his Constitutional duties). According to them, Obama is such a polarizing figure, and so untrustworthy, that he should leave to the next president the duty of nominating a new justice.  It was all nonsense, but it illustrated the patent dishonesty of politics as practiced in America today.

As I listened to the debate, the content and tone reminded me of the mean and miserly Ebenezer Scrooge before his conversion.  Again, there was much talk of deporting illegal immigrants, of blowing away our enemies (especially the Islamic State), of protecting gun rights, of ending Obamacare, of lowering taxes on the rich, all to be done in the name of our Lord.

Some media headlines from the debate coverage: “Jeb Bush attacks Donald Trump” (New York Times); “Sparks Fly at Rowdy Republican Debate” (NBC News); “The Gloves Come Off” (CBS News).  Yes, much heat was generated, but precious little light.  A dispiriting exercise, the debate illustrated the bad faith of the leading Republican candidates, as well as the rot within and across our entire political system.

If you missed the debate, consider yourself fortunate.

Republicans Are Scaring Me Again

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Kasich, Bush, Rubio, Trump, Cruz, Carson, Christie (left to right)

W.J. Astore

I watched last night’s Republican Presidential Debate from New Hampshire.  And then I slept poorly.  John Kasich and a subdued Ben Carson excepted, all of the candidates were determined to frighten me and mine.  As they shouted and gesticulated, I wrote down some of their words and some of the thoughts and feelings they generated.  It went something like this:

We’re in danger!  Obama’s gutting our military!  Muslims are shouting “death to America”!  China!  America is weak!  We must build a HUGE WALL to keep out illegals! Abortion is murder!  Take their oil!  Chopping heads!  Dying in the street! Waterboarding isn’t torture, which doesn’t matter, because we need more torture!  Respect the police! People need to fear us again!  We don’t win — we need to win again!  Iranian and North Korean nukes!  America must get back in the game and be strong!  Tough!  Win!

Well, you get the picture.  The prize for most obscene statement of the night (among a wealth of obscene statements) was Ted Cruz’s claim that America’s possession of overwhelming airpower — its ability to carpet bomb enemies into oblivion — is a blessing.  A blessing — I’m assuming he meant from God, not the Dark One, but who knows?

My wife’s impression?  She said the candidates reminded her of low-blow fighters, or teenage boys in high school.

It’s simple, really: If you want more bombing, more killing, more war, more torture, more police, more walls, and lower taxes on corporations (yes — that came up too), vote Republican in November.

My nightmare scenario: this is exactly the vision Marco Rubio had in mind when he repeatedly called America “the single greatest nation in the history of the world.”

 

The Republican Alternate Universe of Paranoia

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Paranoia will destroy ya

W.J. Astore

I watched last night’s Republican debate so you wouldn’t have to.  Leaving aside the usual mugging by Donald Trump, the usual jousting over side issues like whether Ted Cruz is a natural born citizen, I thought I’d take an impressionistic approach to the debate.  You can read the debate transcript here (if you dare), but here is my admittedly personal take on the main messages of the debate.

  1. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are coming to take your guns. So you need to elect a Republican who will allow you to keep your guns and to buy many, many more guns while carrying them openly in public.
  2. Related to (1), ISIS is coming to these shores. In fact, they’re already here.  That’s one big reason why everyone needs guns – to protect ourselves from ISIS and other terrorists out to kill Americans on Main Street USA.
  3. America is weak. Obama has gutted our military.  The Iranians and Russians laugh at us.  To stop them from laughing, America needs to rebuild its military, buy more weapons, and use them freely.  In fact, all the next commander-in-chief needs to do is ask military leaders what they need to win, give them exactly that, then stand back as our military (especially Special Ops troops) kicks ass.  Victory!
  4. America is weak (again), this time economically. The Chinese are kicking our ass.  They’re tougher than us and smarter than us.  We need to teach them who’s boss, perhaps with a big tariff on Chinese imports, combined with intense pressure on them to revalue their currency.
  5. The American tax system is unfair to corporations. We need to lower corporate tax rates so that American companies won’t relocate, and also so that American businesses will be more competitive vis-à-vis foreign competitors.
  6. The most oppressed “minority” in the U.S. are not Blacks or Hispanics or the poor: it’s the police. Yes, the police.  They are mistreated and disrespected.  Americans need to recognize the police are there to protect them and to defer to them accordingly.
  7. The only amendment worth citing in the U.S. Constitution is the Second Amendment.
  8. The National Security Agency, along with all the other intelligence agencies in America, need to be given more power, not less. They need broad and sweeping surveillance powers to keep America safe.  Privacy issues and the Fourth Amendment can be ignored.  People like Edward Snowden are traitors. “Safety” is everything.
  9. Bernie Sanders is a joke. Hillary Clinton just might be the anti-Christ.
  10. Immigrants are a threat, especially if they’re Muslim. They must be kept out of America so that they don’t steal American jobs and/or kill us all.

What I didn’t hear: Anything about the poor, or true minorities, or gender inequities, or the dangers of more war, and so on.

My main takeaway from this debate: Republican candidates live in the United States of Paranoia, a hostile land in which fear rules.  Think “Mad Max, Fury Road,” but without any tough females about.  (I have to admit I missed Carly Fiorina/Imperator Furiosa on the main stage.)

Only one candidate struck a few tentative notes of accord through bipartisan collaboration and compromise: Ohio governor John Kasich.  In his closing statement, he spoke eloquently of his parents’ working-class background.  He’s also the only candidate with the guts not to wear the by-now obligatory flag lapel pin.  I’m not a Republican, but if I had to vote for one, it would be him.  Why?  Because he’s the least batshit crazy of the bunch.

Yes, it was a depressing night, one spent in an alternate universe detached from reality.  In the end, old song lyrics popped into my head: “paranoia will destroy ya.”  Yes, yes it will, America.

Republican Presidential Candidates Are Scaring Me

Please, God, make him stop
Please, God, make him stop

W.J. Astore

Yes, I know Republican candidates for president are currently feeding “red meat” to the base, a base that consists of evangelical Christians who vote in the primaries come hell or high water.  But the rhetoric used recently by Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee is more rancid than red meat. And it’s dangerous.

Jeb Bush is supposedly the more centrist candidate.  Yet according to “centrist” Jeb, the federal government under Obama has adopted an “aggressive stance” against religious freedom.  The solution for Bush is to revive the “Christian voice,” which he claims isn’t being heard enough in America.

So: to enhance religious freedom in America, we need to amplify the voices of Christians?  Excuse me for seeing a slight contradiction here.

Mike Huckabee, of course, is a minister as well as a politician, so he is used to speaking with forked tongue.  As he announced his candidacy, Huckabee claimed that Obama had not been active enough against Muslim jihadists.  The answer, in his words, was simple:

“As president,” said Huckabee, “I promise you that we will no longer merely try to contain jihadism, we will conquer it!”

Super!  The answer to Muslim extremism is a conquering crusade against it, led by a Baptist minister as president!

Did I just slip back 800 years into the past?  Well, there’s nothing like a religious crusade to calm the waters of worldwide strife.

Few thinking Americans will be hornswoggled by such rhetorical nonsense (or so I hope).  But rhetoric has a way of becoming reality.

Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee, and all the other “committed” Christians in the Republican Party put me to mind of one of Christ’s teachings in the New Testament:

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. (Matthew 6:5 KJV)

So I have a humble request to make, Republicans: Stop talking about religion on the street corner.  Stop boasting about how you’re going to fight your own jihad.  Start trying to live a truly moral life.  You might start with humility and compassion, both becoming in a true candidate of the people.

And, if you please, stop scaring me.

Update (10:00PM): A reader sent me this image.  It’s hilarious — and frightening.

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Republicans and Fear

 

PFC Jones with Mine-Detector. Want to talk about fear?
PFC Jones with Mine-Detector. Want to talk about fear?

W.J. Astore

Why, looky here, another article in the New York Times that examines the Republican “hawks” posturing for a presidential run in 2016.  As the article blurb states, “Republicans are scrambling to outmuscle one another on national security issues.”  It’s all about looking tough and calling for more boots on the ground in battles against ISIS and terror everywhere.

Here’s the money quote:

“There’s a lot of fear out there,” said Katon Dawson, a former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, noting that the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, had become a regular topic of discussion at his regular breakfast spot in Columbia, the Lizard’s Thicket. “The waitresses and managers and everybody there has a notion about ISIL. People understand who this group is now.”

I should think the waitresses at “Lizard’s Thicket” would be more fearful of paying their weekly and monthly bills, given the low wages earned by wait staff in America.  Or that they and their customers would be more fearful of their sons and daughters in uniform being deployed to Iraq to showcase those “muscles” that Republican politicians are always trying to flex.  (Don’t worry: No politicians, Republican or Democrat, are eager to send their own sons and daughters overseas to fight.)

Once again, Republican politicians are banging the drums of fear – and as my dad always said, the empty barrel makes the most noise.  The music is as tragic as it is predictable: endless war in the name of looking tough and defeating terror.  And anyone who dares to suggest the folly of this risks being tarred as an appeaser to ISIS and its ilk.

What burns my butt is that none of these blowhard politicians has any skin in the game.  They risk nothing in bleating for war.  It’s not their sons and daughters who are being deployed to the front lines.

The other day, I was talking to a young woman at my eye doctor’s office.  Her brother is in the Army.  She told me he’s an EOD, an explosive ordnance disposal specialist.  A risky job, I said, to which she replied, “He volunteered for the extra money,” money that the Army has yet to pay him.  He’s got a four-year commitment and is due to be deployed after his training is completed.

So, as they seek to “outmuscle” their political rivals, how many politicians’ sons are in the Army right now, training for EOD duty and risking their lives for the extra money that comes with this hazardous duty?  My educated guess: none.  Absolutely none.

It’s easy to flex (and to risk) the muscles of others, America.  Stop listening to politicians and their fear-mongering.  No foreign terrorist is coming to get you as you enjoy your coffee and hash browns at “Lizard’s Thicket.”  No – the biggest risk is blowhard politicians who are so, so, eager to send your sons and daughters off to yet more wars in the cause of outmuscling their rivals for political office.

Conservative Kookiness in Iowa

Scott Walker serves up some red meat
Scott Walker serves up some red meat

W.J. Astore

OK.  I should know better.  When you pay attention to what conservatives are saying at the Iowa Freedom Forum, attended as it is by religious activists, you’re going to hear kookiness and craziness.  But what’s sad is how the “red meat” issues raised by the likes of Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, and Rick Santorum are so devoid of nutritional value.  Empty calories, all of it.

You hear the usual talk about lower taxes and less governmental regulation, even though Republicans under Reagan and the Bushes (along with the Democrats as well) oversaw expansions in government.  George H.W. Bush famously said, “Read my lips — no new taxes,” before proceeding to raise taxes once he became president.  Along with lower taxes and smaller government, Republicans also claim to support “family values,” a vapid phrase that basically means whatever you want to read into it.  I’m not a fan of Obama’s priorities and policies, but one thing I can say for the man is that his life, his wife, and his teenage girls have exuded family values, Thanksgiving controversy or no.

So we know Republicans are supposedly for lower taxes, smaller government, and family values.  What else are they for? Abortion, of course, as in restricting it further or even eliminating it.  Voter ID laws, because we all know how the “wrong” kind of people are being bussed in en masse to skew voting results in favor of socialism (talk about an urban myth!).  And more gun rights, like open carry laws and easier approval for concealed permits to carry.

Egads!  These are the issues that sway the activist base of the Republican Party?  Fetuses, the specter of more disadvantaged people of color voting, and guns.

Wow.  Our country faces serious issues.  A crumbling infrastructure.  An unsustainable prison system.  Perpetual wars.  Climate change (even Republicans admit it’s real, though they won’t blame humans for it).  Ever widening gaps between rich and poor.  Student loan and credit card debt that threaten a fragile economic recovery.  Mediocre education.  Ever rising health care costs (still the number one cause for personal bankruptcies in America).  But forget all that: let’s talk about fetuses, non-existent voter fraud, and guns.

And Republicans like Santorum wonder why “too many people don’t think we care about them.”  Gee… I wonder why, Rick.

(A personal note: In 1976, though too young to vote, I supported Gerald Ford rather than Jimmy Carter.  In 1984, I voted for Ronald Reagan because I believed Walter Mondale lacked the gravitas to be president at a crucial moment in US-Soviet affairs.  Ever since then, the Republican Party has lost me with its cynical culture wars and active suppression of democracy, among other reasons.)