WHAT ARE REPUBLICANS HIDING?
Trump appointing unqualified people. Will Republican Senate care?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeiVG0AYJSM
Tag: Republicans
Republicans won big in the Senate. A warning lurks in the purple states.
“That 53-seat majority will be a boon to the GOP agenda next year. But three of Republicans’ wins were in solidly red seats in West Virginia, Ohio and Montana. They flipped a true swing state in Pennsylvania but suffered losses in Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona. That means they’ll fall well short of the 57 seats they might have had, thanks to undervoting, smaller Trump coattails and well-funded and disciplined Democratic opponents.
This was the fourth straight cycle in the Trump era that Senate Republicans struggled to win purple states. In theory, Trump could have pulled some of their top recruits over the finish line — he outperformed Senate GOP candidates in every single battleground state.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/12/republican-senate-majority-battleground-states-00188953
MAGA Is Not as United as You Think
Interview makes the new right’s ideology sound like hollow, baseless bullshit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXTjqaTQpYg
House GOP hits end of Biden impeachment effort
“House Republicans are all but officially giving up on trying to impeach Joe Biden.
GOP lawmakers on the Judiciary, Oversight and Ways and Means committees released a nearly 300-page report on Monday detailing the findings of their impeachment inquiry, accusing Biden of engaging in “impeachable conduct.” The Republicans said they’re still investigating, but even they didn’t directly call for an impeachment vote, leaving that up to the wider GOP Conference.”
…
“House Republicans have spent months on their investigation, which has largely focused on the business deals of Biden’s family members. A hefty chunk of their report on Monday delves deeply into the financial affairs of Hunter and James Biden, including their business ventures and loans the two received. While the report notes the inquiry remains open, both Comer and Jordan have said their investigations are largely over, though a handful of legal battles remain.
Republicans say they traced $27 million to the Biden family and their associates from foreign entities, and allege that they would not have received the funding had Joe Biden not been in office. They also uncovered examples of Hunter and James Biden leaning on their last name, and their connections to Joe Biden, to bolster their own influence.
But investigators struggled to find clear evidence that shows a direct link between actions Biden took as president or vice president and those business deals or that Biden committed a crime.
Some former business associates told investigators that Hunter Biden would put his father on speakerphone during meetings with potential business partners, though they said the conversation was limited to pleasantries. In other instances, witnesses recalled Joe Biden stopping by dinners or lunches — but that business wasn’t discussed at those moments. Hunter and James Biden have both denied that Joe Biden has been involved in their business deals — a denial repeatedly echoed by the White House.
In their report, GOP investigators argued they didn’t need to show evidence of a crime or a quid pro quo — but that’s exactly what some of their colleagues said they needed to see in order to approve a Biden impeachment. And Democrats quickly claimed victory on Monday, arguing that the report effectively cleared Joe Biden’s name.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/19/house-gop-biden-impeachment-00174711
Republicans threaten a government shutdown unless Congress makes it harder to vote
“It’s that time again. The last act of Congress funding the federal government expires on September 30. So, unless Congress passes new funding legislation by then, much of the government will shut down.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), egged on by the House Freedom Caucus and by former President Donald Trump, reportedly wants to use this deadline to force through legislation that would make it harder to register to vote in all 50 states.
Johnson plans to pair a bill funding the government for six months with a Republican bill called the “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act” or “SAVE Act,” that would require new voters to submit “documentary proof of United States citizenship,” such as a passport or a birth certificate, in order to register to vote.
As recently as Monday night, Johnson’s plan to tie government funding to passage of the SAVE Act seemed dead. At least five House Republicans oppose the spending bill, enough that Johnson would need to secure Democratic votes in order to pass it. But Trump, the GOP’s presidential nominee, demanded on Tuesday that congressional Republicans “SHOULD, IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, GO FORWARD” with legislation funding the government unless it also includes something like the SAVE Act.
There is no evidence that noncitizens vote in US federal elections in any meaningful numbers, and states typically have safeguards in place to prevent them from doing so. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, for example, claims to have identified 1,634 “potential noncitizens” who attempted to register during a 15-year period. But these possible noncitizens were caught by election officials and were never registered. In 2020, nearly 5 million Georgians voted in the presidential election.
More broadly, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center, “illegal registration and voting attempts by noncitizens are routinely investigated and prosecuted by the appropriate state authorities, and there is no evidence that attempts at voting by noncitizens have been significant enough to impact any election’s outcome.”
While noncitizen voting — which is, of course, illegal — has never been proven to have affected an election, there is evidence that the SAVE Act could have an impact on elections. That much is clear from Arizona, which already has a SAVE Act-like regime. Data from Arizona suggests the state’s law has made it slightly harder for people of color, a group that skews Democratic, to vote. And at least one analysis of Arizona voter data suggests that the SAVE Act could suppress voter registration among another group that tends to vote for Democrats: college students. So the bill could make it slightly more difficult for Democrats to win elections.
That said, the SAVE Act law does have a vague provision allowing voters who “cannot provide” the required documentation to submit other evidence that they are a citizen, and it provides that state or local officials “shall make a determination as to whether the applicant has sufficiently established United States citizenship.”
It’s unclear what, exactly, that means.
Notably, the SAVE Act would take effect immediately if enacted by Congress, and it imposes significant new administrative burdens on state and local election offices. So, if the law did take effect in the two months before a presidential election, it could potentially throw that election into chaos.”
https://www.vox.com/politics/370713/republican-government-shutdown-save-act-voter-disenfranchisement
The crime wave is over but Republicans can’t let go
“The theme of the Republican National Convention’s second night was “Make America Safe Again,” and the roster of speakers repeatedly criticized Biden’s record on crime and immigration: Randy Sutton, a retired police officer, said there was a “war on cops.” Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird said that Biden treats “police like criminals, and criminals like victims.” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz declared that “your family is less safe, your children are less safe, the country is less safe,” as a result of Biden’s presidency.
But the Republican speakers’ rhetoric on crime spiraling out of control was out of touch with reality.
While there was indeed a rise in crime during the pandemic, recent data has shown that crime is declining nationwide. According to the FBI, murder is down 26 percent and robberies have declined by 18 percent in the first three months of 2024 compared to the same time last year. That didn’t stop Republican speakers throughout the night from singling out incidents of heinous crimes and drug overdoses to conjure up an image of lawlessness and disorder.
So why are Republicans plowing ahead with their “Make America Safe Again” messaging despite data that shows America is already getting safer? The answer is simple: Most Americans believe that crime is getting worse, so it’s not a particularly tough message to sell.”
https://www.vox.com/politics/361165/rnc-2024-make-america-safe-again-trump-gop-false-crime-wave
It’s Trump’s party now. Mostly.
“Beyond Trump worship, the RNC has been billed as proof that the populist takeover of the Republican Party is complete. On issues like trade, immigration, and foreign alliances, this analysis is surely correct; the Trumpian insurgency has gone head-to-head with the party old guard and defeated them.
Yet elements of the old Republican Party remain thoroughly in place.
Unlike Europe’s far-right populist parties, the GOP remains unyieldingly opposed to the welfare state and progressive taxation. It remains committed to banning abortion, an issue where its actions at the state level speak for themselves. It remains deeply hostile to unions; vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance, allegedly the avatar of the party’s pro-worker populism, has a 0 percent score from the AFL-CIO. On foreign policy, it is by no means strictly isolationist: it seeks to ramp up military spending and aggressively confront China even as it tears down both military alliances and the American-led global trade regime.
Ideologically, the GOP is a mess, a political party constructed less out of one cogent worldview than an assemblage of different parts, a zombie given life by the lightning of Donald John Trump. It is Frankenstein’s party. And while Trump and his loyalists are clearly our Shelleyian monster’s head, they do not (yet) have full control over all its limbs.
The Trump coalition is so new that it has yet to produce an equilibrium, a stable set of policy commitments that will endure as long as it aligns. It basically works by Trump getting his way on issues he really cares about — like democracy, trade, and immigration — while others claim what they can when they can claim it. The monied class is still calling the shots on taxes and regulation; the social conservatives are still in the driver’s seat when it comes to issues like abortion and LGBT rights.”
…
“Some of the most notable policies in them, like Project 2025’s proposal to end the Justice Department’s independence or the platform’s call for “the largest Deportation Program in history,” is pure Trump (right down to the random capitalization).
But in issue areas where other elements of the right prevail, things sound a bit more old Republican. Project 2025’s chapter on the EPA is about as old-school business friendly as it gets; the GOP platform promises to “slash Regulations” and “pursue additional Tax Cuts.” Project 2025 calls on the next president to “rescind regulations prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex characteristics.”
When there’s tension between Trump’s instincts and the old Republican agenda, the result is not always clear.
On trade, Trump has simply won; the issue is central enough to his political identity that his protectionism has become party orthodoxy. But on abortion, where Trump wants the party to moderate, signals are more mixed. He succeeded in, for example, taking a call for a national abortion ban out of the GOP platform — but banning abortion remains central to the party identity. Both Vance and Project 2025 support using an obscure 1873 law to ban the distribution of mifepristone, the abortion pill, by mail.
Partly, this confused state of affairs is a product of Trump’s own personality. The conservative writer Ramesh Ponnuru argues, correctly, that he simply doesn’t have the character necessary to run a strict and doctrinal ideological movement.
“It’s not just that he lacks the discipline and focus to carry out an objective, although he does lack both, or that flatterers easily manipulate him, although they do. It’s also that his objectives are malleable to start with,” Ponnuru argues.
But partly, it’s a result of coalitional politics — how the American right has always worked.”
https://www.vox.com/politics/361684/trump-speech-rnc-gop-republicans-project-2025
The RNC clarified Trump’s 2024 persona: Moderate authoritarian weirdo
“At the behest of Trump and his allies, the RNC approved a new GOP platform, one free of calls for federal abortion bans or any explicit opposition to same-sex marriage. The Republicans’ official agenda also forswears any cuts to Medicare and Social Security, including increases to the retirement age. All of these stances contradict longstanding conservative movement goals, and all three bring the Republican Party into closer alignment with public opinion.
Meanwhile, Trump used some of the RNC’s primetime speaking slots to signal sympathy for nonwhite voters, younger Americans, and union members. The biracial model and rapper Amber Rose gave a speech that invited young, historically liberal voters to rethink their skepticism of Trump and his party. “The truth is that the media has lied to us about Donald Trump. I know this because for a long time I believed those lies,” Rose declared, explaining that she eventually realized, “Donald Trump and his supporters don’t care if you’re Black, white, gay, or straight. It’s all love. And that’s when it hit me. These are my people.”
The RNC’s outreach to union voters was even more concerted. On the convention’s first night, Teamsters president Sean O’Brien enjoyed the most prominent speaking slot. The union leader did not actually endorse Trump and spent much of his address on diatribes against corporate greed that received tepid support in the convention hall.
To all but the most attentive viewers, however, O’Brien’s status as the keynote speaker overshadowed the absence of a formal endorsement: By all appearances, the head of one of America’s largest unions was vouching for Trump’s commitment to workers’ interests.
Taken together, the RNC’s four-day infomercial for Trump’s GOP was far more professionally orchestrated and broadly accessible than its 2020 and 2016 predecessors, which often seemed to be made by and for Fox News addicts.
Yet other aspects of the convention betrayed the strange, illiberal, and authoritarian character of Trump’s politics. As well-managed as the Trump campaign has been to this point, it cannot escape the inherent liabilities of the man it’s trying to sell.”
…
“Vance is among the most openly authoritarian Republicans in Washington. He has said that he would have helped Trump overturn the 2020 election results, raised money for January 6 rioters, called on the DOJ to launch a criminal investigation against an anti-Trump Washington Post columnist, touted plans for consolidating the president’s authority over the federal bureaucracy, and argued that Trump should simply defy any court orders that obstruct such a power grab.
Traditionally, presidential candidates use their VP picks to assuage potential concerns that swing voters might have about them or balance out the ticket demographically. Vance’s selection, by contrast, exacerbates Trump’s biggest political liabilities: the perception that he is an authoritarian extremist whose election would threaten abortion rights.
Nevertheless, Trump picked him precisely because Vance’s current ideology closely mirrors his own. According to the Atlantic’s Tim Alberta, the Trump campaign had initially planned to pick a milquetoast, unthreatening running mate, such as North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum. But Trump was eventually persuaded that he needed a fellow true-believing populist to help him enact his most far-reaching ambitions.”
…
“The Republican nominee’s acceptance speech was the longest ever given, meandering across 92 bizarre and tedious minutes. This excess was a direct reflection of the authoritarian nature of Trump’s candidacy. The nominee of a healthy democratic political party must balance their own narcissistic appetite for attention against the interests of the various constituencies they represent.
Having consolidated his personality cult’s control of the GOP, Trump faced no such constraint. His speech did not stretch to marathon length because of its abundance of substantive content. Rather, it consumed so much time because Trump allowed himself to supplement nearly every passage with pointless and tiresome ad-libbing, after detailing his own narrowly averted assassination in painstaking detail.
A less weird and authoritarian Republican nominee might have also drummed up panic about undocumented immigration. But they probably wouldn’t have paused in the middle of such demagogy to ask the crowd, “Has anyone seen The Silence of the Lambs?” and then say, incongruously, “The late, great Hannibal Lecter.”
Trump’s endless, self-indulgent rambling was alienating enough in and of itself. Even more unnerving was the spectacle of an increasingly bored crowd struggling to humor their dear leader with increasingly strained outbursts of enthusiasm.”
https://www.vox.com/politics/361751/rnc-trump-speech-vance-2024
RNC Speakers Give Exaggerated Impression of Immigrant Crime
“”A disproportionate number of undocumented immigrants are convicted of driving without a license” or “using a false Social Security Number,” notes the Law Enforcement Immigration Task Force. But immigrants “are less prone” to committing crimes that are unrelated to their immigration status, it continues. “Existing evidence shows that immigrants do not represent a threat to public safety any more than every other segment of the population.””
https://reason.com/2024/07/16/republican-national-convention-nikki-haley-ron-desantis-donald-trump/
Project 2025: The myths and the facts
“The answers are a bit complicated because Project 2025 encompasses a lot of different things (and there are some claims about what’s in it that are simply false). I think of its agenda as falling into three buckets:
1) Concentrating power in the presidency: The idea here is to give Trump and his appointees more power over the executive branch relative to permanent nonpartisan civil service professionals (who he disparages as the so-called “deep state”). Critics fear this will lead to the abuse of power and political hackery. Trump supports these ideas and we have every reason to believe he’d implement them.
2) Achieving longtime conservative priorities: This is stuff like slashing regulations, reducing federal spending on the poor, ditching efforts to fight climate change, ramping up military spending, and so on. Many progressives think these ideas are terrible, but they aren’t exactly new. Trump supports basically all of these. (Project 2025 mostly avoids taking firm positions on issues where Trump breaks from the conservative consensus, such as trade.)
3) Taking a hardline religious-right agenda: The project lays out quite aggressive proposals to use federal power to prevent abortions and restrict certain contraceptive coverage. It even says that pornography should be “outlawed” and its creators and distributors should be “imprisoned.””
https://www.vox.com/politics/360318/project-2025-trump-policies-abortion-divorce