Tag: GOP now the party of Trump

Nikki Haley’s Time for Choosing

The 2024 hopeful can’t decide who she wants to be—the leader of a post-Trump GOP or a “friend” to the president who tried to sabotage democracy.

KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. – Late last year, Nikki Haley had a friend who was going through a hard time. He had lost his job and was being evicted from his house. He was getting bad advice from bad people who were filling his head with self-destructive fantasies. He seemed to be losing touch with reality. Out of concern, Haley called the man. “I want to make sure you’re okay,” she told him. “You’re my president, but you’re also my friend.”

I. Whiplash

At the time of Haley’s call, Donald Trump—her “friend”—had spent much of the previous month refusing to concede defeat in an election he clearly lost, opting instead to delegitimize the institutions of government that upheld the result, indulge in outlandish conspiracy theories and generally subvert the country’s 244-year-old democratic norms. Republican leaders who possessed the credibility to dispute these claims publicly and exert a counterinfluence over the GOP electorate had chosen not to. Haley was among those who kept quiet.

For the previous four years, since being plucked from the governorship of South Carolina to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Haley had navigated the Trump era with a singular shrewdness, messaging and maneuvering in ways that kept her in solid standing both with the GOP donor class as well as with the president and his base. She maintained a direct line to Trump, keeping private her candid criticisms of him, while publicly striking an air of detached deference. Upon her resignation in 2018, the New York Times editorial page praised Haley as “that rarest of Trump appointees: one who can exit the administration with her dignity largely intact.” Continue reading.

For Trump’s Republican defenders, is there such thing as too much presidential power?

Washington Post logoPerhaps more than any other modern president, President Trump has been blatantly intent on expanding his power. And Republicans in Congress have been willing to let him, especially on the two biggest news stories of the week: impeachment and Iran.

All presidents test how far they can push away Congress, especially when it comes to war. Congress has let presidents take the lead when it comes to military conflict, despite lawmakers’ constitutional right to be the branch that declares war.

But legal experts The Fix spoke to also say Trump is rapidly expanding presidential power, and most of the Republican Party is cheering him on — even as it happens at the expense of their own power to hold future Democratic presidents accountable. Continue reading.

Republicans come out against Iran language they previously supported

Many House members who supported amendments on War Powers now opposed

In July, 27 Republicans voted for an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act to effectively prohibit the president from using military force against Iran without congressional approval. As the House readies to vote on a similar measure Thursday, few, if any, Republicans are likely to support it.

U.S. tension with Iran has escalated since July, resulting in recent attacks from both sides. President Donald Trump’s decision to kill Iran’s top general Qassem Soleimani has drawn praise from Republicans who believe the administration line about the Quds Force commander and criticism from Democrats who say the intelligence does not support that claim.

The War Powers resolution the House will vote on Thursday directing the president to terminate the use of military force in or against Iran unless Congress authorizes it or such force is needed to defend Americans does not name Trump. But the measure is a referendum on his decisions on Iran, and Republicans don’t want to support Democrats’ latest effort to reprimand the president. Continue reading.

‘They’re not needed’: Trump allies fear ‘clown show’ if Jim Jordan or Matt Gaetz join impeachment defense team

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump’s fiercest allies aren’t expected to join his defense team in the Senate impeachment trial, but don’t expect them to quietly sit on the sidelines.

Trump allies have considered adding Reps. Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan and John Ratcliffe to the president’s official legal team, but advisers fear they’ll “grandstand” and turn the Senate trial into a “clown show,” reported Politico.

Three sources familiar with the situation say there seems to be no prohibition against House members serving on the president’s official defense team, but there’s not much appetite for that among Trump’s current lawyers. Continue reading.

Former GOP lawmaker admits party members forced to agree with ‘psychologically unfit’ Trump — or consider retirement

AlterNet logoIn interviews with the New York Times, Republican lawmakers past and present admit that Donald Trump has such a hold on the party that there is little choice but to go along with his policies and defend him or face his wrath and consider retirement.

The report notes, “Just under four years after he began his takeover of a party to which he had little connection, Mr. Trump enters 2020 burdened with the ignominy of being the first sitting president to seek re-election after being impeached,” adding, “But he does so wearing a political coat of armor built on total loyalty from G.O.P. activists and their representatives in Congress. If he does not enjoy the broad admiration Republicans afforded Ronald Reagan, he is more feared by his party’s lawmakers than any occupant of the Oval Office since at least Lyndon Johnson.”According to one former GOP lawmaker from Michigan, he was faced with the dilemma of bucking the president in 2017, and knew what would happen if he did. Continue reading “Former GOP lawmaker admits party members forced to agree with ‘psychologically unfit’ Trump — or consider retirement”

Among The Republicans, Debauchery And Blasphemy Reign

Since Nov. 8, 2016, I have stumbled about in a country I do not recognize — a mean and narrow place where toddlers are snatched from their mothers’ arms as they try desperately to find sanctuary, where NATO is denounced but Russia is courted, where the president mocks children, the dead and the disabled to the rapturous cheers of his cult following. The recent impeachment proceedings have left me more profoundly confused.

President Donald Trump has so remade the Republican Party that it, too, is unrecognizable — a clown car of lapdogs whose use of the English language would likely startle even George Orwell. Up is not merely down; gravity no longer exists. Neither do facts.

Trumpists have resorted not only to distortions and fabrications but also to nonsensical demands to show their loyalty to dear leader. Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-AL) offered the sole amendment to the articles of impeachment in the House Rules Committee, insisting that Trump’s behavior was no different from that of President Barack Obama. If Trump is to be impeached, Byrne argued, so Obama should have been, as well.

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Fear and Loyalty: How Donald Trump Took Over the Republican Party

New York Times logoThe president demands complete fealty, and as the impeachment hearings showed, he has largely attained it. To cross him is to risk losing a future in the Republican Party.

BIRMINGHAM, Mich. — By the summer of 2017, Dave Trott, a two-term Republican congressman, was worried enough about President Trump’s erratic behavior and his flailing attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act that he criticized the president in a closed-door meeting with fellow G.O.P. lawmakers.

The response was instantaneous — but had nothing to do with the substance of Mr. Trott’s concerns. “Dave, you need to know somebody has already told the White House what you said,” he recalled a colleague telling him. “Be ready for a barrage of tweets.”

Mr. Trott got the message: To defy Mr. Trump is to invite the president’s wrath, ostracism within the party and a premature end to a career in Republican politics. Mr. Trott decided not to seek re-election in his suburban Detroit district, concluding that running as a Trump skeptic was untenable, and joining a wave of Republican departures from Congress that has left those who remain more devoted to the president than ever.

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