Tag: GOP

‘Not good signs for the Republican Party’: GOP lawmakers have a problem with their own voters

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In a column for the Los Angeles Times, longtime political observer Doyle McManus pointed out that the Republican leadership is finding itself put into a corner by the more extreme elements in the party — from far-right GOP lawmakers who excuse violence and conservative voters who see no problem with it.

With Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) excusing the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan 6th and Rep. Andrew S. Clyde claiming the insurrectionists were merely “tourists,” Republicans are now confronted with the optics of being the party that condones violence.

According to McManus, Republicans refusing to take a firm stance against political violence is not a good sign for a party that just lost the Senate and the White House. Continue reading.

Nikki Haley warns Republicans on China: ‘If they take Taiwan, it’s all over’

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Potential 2024 GOP presidential hopeful Nikki Haley sounded the alarm to House conservatives Wednesday that China is hell-bent on world domination — and that Taiwan is ground zero.

In a closed-door meeting with members of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), Haley, who served as former President Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, said that if China takes control of Taiwan, Beijing will be emboldened to seize other territories around the globe.

The U.S. must take stronger action against China, Haley said, starting with organizing a boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing with allies like India, Australia, Japan, South Korea and Canada. Continue reading.

Why the GOP Just Got Blown Out in a Congressional Race

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New Mexico, a once-purple state, is turning increasingly blue.

ALBUQUERQUE, NM —Two weeks before the GOP had its first chance to pick up a seat in Congress since Joe Biden became president, the Republican Party of New Mexico hosted a three-day event dubbed “Operation Freedom.” State Sen. Mark Moores, who was running for the open seat, addressed a crowd of a few hundred party leaders, activists and donors in a hotel conference center. Afterwards, he left the hotel and drove nearly 300 miles back to Albuquerque, where he was actually competing for votes.

New Mexico Republicans had opted to hold their marquee event in Amarillo, Texas.

When the votes came in, Moores had lost to Democratic State Rep. Melanie Stansbury by 24 percentage points—even more than the margin by which Joe Biden had won the district. Nationally, it was seen as a referendum on Biden’s first months in office. But in New Mexico, the story is longer and more complex. For some frustrated New Mexico Republicans, the Amarillo episode and Moores’ loss last Tuesday highlight deeper problems with the state party’s leadership and direction over the last few years—including a turn towards Trumpism that has galvanized some of the party’s base but has seemingly turned off swing voters in the state’s traditionally purple electorate.

At Once Diminished and Dominating, Trump Begins His Next Act

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The former president spoke on Saturday to the North Carolina Republican convention as he resumes political speeches and rallies.

GREENVILLE, N.C. — Donald J. Trump, the former president of the United States, commutes to New York City from his New Jersey golf club to work out of his office in Trump Tower at least once a week, slipping in and out of Manhattan without attracting much attention.

The place isn’t as he left it. Many of his longtime employees are gone. So are most of the family members who once worked there with him and some of the fixtures of the place, like his former lawyer Michael D. Cohen, who have since turned on him. Mr. Trump works there, mostly alone, with two assistants and a few body men.

His political operation has also dwindled to a ragtag team of former advisers who are still on his payroll, reminiscent of the bare-bones cast of characters that helped lift a political neophyte to his unlikely victory in 2016. Most of them go days or weeks without interacting with Mr. Trump in person. Continue reading.

Republican ‘base is vanishing’: These figures show why the GOP is hell-bent on voter suppression

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With Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp having recently signed into law a voter suppression bill that civil rights activists are vehemently protesting against, Republicans in state legislatures all over the country are pushing equally repressive bills. Conservative Washington Post opinion writer Jennifer Rubin, this week in her column, emphasizes that Republicans are deathly afraid of evolving demographics. And she points to recent data from the Democratic firm TargetSmart and Gallup as evidence of why the GOP is so worried and is resorting to blatant voter suppression.

TargetSmart, Rubin notes, has “compiled information on more than 98% of those who cast ballots last year.” The firm reports that “non-college educated Whites dropped from 53.8% of the electorate in 2016 to 49.2% in 2020” and that “nationally, total turnout increased by 12% relative to 2016, turnout among (Asian-American and Pacific Islander) voters surged by 43%, and Latino turnout increased by almost a third of all votes cast.”

Rubin notes that although former President Donald Trump performed better among Latinos in 2020 than he did in 2016, he “still lost 65% of these voters.” Continue reading.

The GOP’s fallout with big business is already mending

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Opposition to Democrats’ priority bills reunites longtime allies

ANALYSIS — Some of America’s most prominent corporations infuriated Republicans in Congress earlier this month when they protested a Georgia law setting state voting rules. The longtime alliance between the GOP and business seemed on the verge of cracking up. But when it comes to Democrats’ priority bills in Congress, the old allies are still on the same side.

Indeed, corporate America is joining Republicans in opposing both the House-passed voting rights measure, or HR 1, that is Democrats’ answer to the Georgia law, as well as President Joe Biden’s pending infrastructure bill.

While the spat over the Georgia law embarrassed Republicans, business has not joined Democrats in their proposed solution to that law’s election strictures — the voting rights, campaign finance and ethics bill, known as S 1 in the Senate, that Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer called a “must do” on April 13.  Continue reading.

GOP’s ‘Working Class’ Agenda Is A Feeble Echo Of Fox News Obsessions

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Political parties often respond to electoral defeat by spending time contemplating, with varying degrees of seriousness and success, why they lost and how they need to change their approach to win in the future. Following President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection, for example, the Republican Party commissioned and published a 100-page report which pinned the blame on Mitt Romney’s weakness with Hispanic voters and called for a more benign policy toward undocumented immigrants. But the party backed off after a revolt by prominent right-wing media commentators, and in 2016, Donald Trump seized the GOP nomination and eventually the presidency with a nativist campaign that both halves of the 2012 Republican ticket criticized as racist.

GOP leaders are trying to avoid a similar scenario in the wake of Trump’s 2020 defeat. They are circulating a memo that seeks to chart the party’s course by keeping it closely aligned with the former president — and with Fox News.

The document represents another datapoint in the ongoing merger of the right-wing media and Republican politics. Under Presidents Bush and Obama, Fox served as the GOP’s communications arm. With Trump’s ascent, the feedback loop between the network and the administration gave Fox unrivaled influence. Now, the Republican Party seems to have completely capitulated to the whims of its propagandists. Continue reading.

Inside a stealth ‘persuasion machine’ promising Republican victories in 2022

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A Facebook page shows a child scampering down a school corridor, alerting Ohio families to a scholarship program.

Chatter fills the same page with news ranging from a state anti-corruption bill to the vibrant local real estate market. “It’s a great time to be selling a home in Columbus,” one post celebrates.

Titled Arise Ohio, the Facebook page is the creation of the American Culture Project — a nonprofit whose website says its mission is to “empower Americans with the tools and information necessary to make their voices heard in their local communities, statehouses and beyond.” Continue reading.

Gaetz, on the ropes, finds few friends in GOP

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In four years on Capitol Hill, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) has experienced a meteoric rise to national prominence — one fueled by a close alliance with former President Trump, a penchant for political theatrics and a no-apologies brand of conservatism that’s made him a darling of the right-wing cable outlets.

Yet this week, facing a federal investigation into allegations of a sexual relationship with an underage girl, Gaetz is finding himself in an unusual spot: on the ropes and virtually alone.

Few of Gaetz’s GOP colleagues are coming to the defense of the third-term Floridian following a New York Times report that the Department of Justice (DOJ) is investigating allegations of sexual misconduct with — and interstate trafficking of — a minor roughly two years ago. And a number of Republicans, while warning against jumping to premature conclusions about Gaetz’s conduct, also suggested they wouldn’t miss him if he were gone. Continue reading.

Republicans seek to make vaccine passports the next battle in the pandemic culture wars

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Republicans are opening a new front in the pandemic culture wars, attacking efforts by the Biden administration to develop guidelines for  coronavirusvaccination passports that businesses can use to determine who can safely participate in activities such as flights, concerts and indoor dining.

The issue has received an increasing amount of attention from some of the party’s most extreme members and conservative media figures, but it has also been seized on by Republican leaders like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is considered a potential 2024 presidential candidate.

“We are not supporting doing any vaccine passports in the state of Florida,” DeSantis said Monday. “It’s completely unacceptable for either the government or the private sector to impose upon you the requirement that you show proof of vaccine to just simply be able to participate in normal society.” Continue reading.