Last night, millions of Americans watched two rounds of Republican Party presidential debates – first a debate among candidates who have failed to achieve more than one percentin national polls, and second a debate among relative frontrunners.
Both debates offered a window into an entirely different world, completely unrelated to the world we actually live in.Candidates made statement after statement that represented distortion, mistruths, and outright lies. Here are 11 whoppers:
1. Insisting That Hispanics Used to Love Republicans: Lindsey Graham scolded the other three candidates in his debate, telling them that Hispanics voted for “us” under previous Republican president George W. Bush. Although it’s true that frontrunner Donald Trump has depleted much of what was left of Hispanic support for the GOP, even under Bush, that wasn’t a vote they won. At the high point in 2004, Bush won 44 percent of that vote, and Romney won only 27 percent.
2. Ridiculously Saying That Iran Threatens The Whole Western World: Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee wanted the audience to know that Iran threatens the “essence of Western civilization.” Except Iran’s defense budget is around $10 billion, a fractionof our own $600 plus billion defense budget. How a country with no weapons of mass destruction and a tiny defense budget can be threatening the United States,let alone our NATO allies, was not explained by Huckabee. Probably because it makes no sense.
3. Implying the U.S. Government Funds Abortion:Over and over, the assertion was made that the United States federal government finances abortions, such as by giving subsidies to Planned Parenthood. While you can make a convoluted argument that money is indirectly spread around, the fact is the the federal government has followed a blanket ban on such funding except in cases of rape, incest, or when it threatens the health of the mother.
4. Claiming Obama Is Trying to Circumvent the Process to Let In Syrian Refugees: Bobby Jindal said that Obama was trying to “short-circuit the vetting process” to let in Syrian refugees, a dangerous dog whistle to imply that the president was going to let in terrorists. As CNN’s own fact-check pointed out, the 10,000 refugees – truly a paltry amount – are slated to come in through the exact same process as any other refugees.
5. Saying We Are Almost the Only Ones With Birthright Citizenship:Trump said almost no one else – including Mexico – has birthright citizenship, and moderator Jake Tapper agreed with him. That’s true, if you think the entire rest of the world consists of Europe. Almost everywhere in the Americas has birthright citizenship and that includes Mexico.
6. Rubio Telling a Fantastic But False Story About His Grandfather:Senator Rubio gave an emotional address about his grandfather supposedly fleeing Castro to come to the United States. There’s just a problem: the story doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. As has been reported in the past, his family came to the United States long before Castro even came to power.
7. Stating That North Korea Can Hit Us With a Nuclear Weapon: Rubio also claimed that North Korea could hit us with a nuclear weapon. Unless they plan to send a team on a boat carrying one, it’s not going to happen – there is very little evidence that they have a functional intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States.
8. Saying, With A Straight Face, That Bush Kept Us Safe: “My brother kept us safe,” said Jeb Bush. This is a pretty ironic thing to say five days after the anniversary of the September 11th attacks, which his brother obviously did not keep us safefrom.
9. Going Back to the Tired “Sanctuary” Arguments About Terrorists:Rubio made the argument that we needed to stay in Iraq, invade Afghanistan, and have our military all over the world to prevent terrorists from having “sanctuary” – but as the Boston Bombing, Charleston, and many other attacks prove, terrorists don’t need to have a physical space to plot attacks, and a giant military presence in a foreign country doesn’t necessarily prevent them so much as give them recruits.
10. Telling People Marijuana Is More Harmful Than Beer: Carly Fiorina, disupting Rand Paul’s more libertarian view on drugs, said that smoking marijuana isn’t like having a beer. Actually marijuana is much safer than alcohol – is linked to “one in 10 deaths among working-age adults can be attributed to excessive alcohol use.”
11. Lying About Vaccines: Trump boosted theories that vaccinations are linked to autism; despite Ben Carson’s intervention that this wasn’t true, Rand Paul still went on to tout the “voluntary” nature of smallpox vaccinations – actually they were not voluntary, they were mandated and financed by a global government effort through the World Health Organization.
“Human kind …cannot bear very much reality.” —T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton
It’s been over a year since polling data found that climate change has emerged as America’smost polarizing political issue. The survey, conducted by the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, found that the divisiveness characterizing the climate debate is so strong it has eclipsed such longstanding hot-button issues as gun control, evolution, the death penalty and even abortion. And with President Obama recently making an historic visit to Alaska to speak about the urgency of acting on climate change just as Republicans strive to derail his climate agenda, there is little sign that the climate gap separating the nation’s two major parties will be bridged any time soon.
In 2009, the Pew Research Center surveyed Americans’ views about the state of science and its impact on society. They concluded that “the strongest correlate of opinion on climate change is partisan affiliation.” Two-thirds of Republicans (67 percent) believe that global warming isn’t actually happening — or if it is, it’s not from man-made causes. By contrast, most Democrats (64 percent) say the planet is heating up mainly due to humans.
Climate change should not be this polarizing: Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN’s climate arm, reported that scientists are more than 95 percent certain that the primary cause of global warming is human activity.
American Pipe Dream
When it comes to the general election, the climate issue poses an electoral problem for the Republicans: A majority of Americans say they are more likely to support political candidates who promise to tackle climate change, according to a recent poll. Conducted by the New York Times, Stanford University and Resources for the Future, the poll found that two-thirds of Americans say they would support candidates who promised to take action to combat climate change. Almost half of Republicans (48 percent) say the same thing. The poll also found that a solid majority of U.S. voters, 83 percent, believe global warming poses a serious threat to the world.
While there are climate deniers across the globe, this anti-science stance is a particularly American phenomenon. In the U.S., elected GOP climate deniers are commonplace; several of them are seeking the presidency. It’s a different story in other industrualized nations. “In Europe, climate change denial is seen as the preserve of the crackpot,” writes London-based finance and economics writer Imogen Reed. “Few political figures or members of the news media would dream of mentioning it, as doing so often receives the same contempt from the European public as denying the Holocaust.”
Even citizens of emerging countries are more attuned to the realities of global warming. The 2010 Pew Global Attitudes Project found that the majority of consumers in China (91 percent), India (73 percent) and South Korea (71 percent) are willing to pay higher prices to address climate change. Not so in America, where a mere 38 percent of consumers would do the same. “In this sentiment, people in the U.S. are out of step with the world,” the report’s authors write. “In most of the countries surveyed people are more likely than Americans to be willing to pay for efforts to slow global warming.”
“In this sentiment, people in the US are out of step with the world,” according to the Pew survey. “In most of the countries surveyed people are more likely than Americans to be willing to pay for efforts to slow global warming.”{4} – See more at: http://www.justmeans.com/blogs/if-you-had-to-choose-solve-the-climate-cr…
The GOP’s climate denial, buoyed by a massive social, financial and political machine oiled by conservative think-tanks and activist groups, has created a potentially disastrous situation in which climate change — arguably the most pressing global issue of our time — has also become the most polarizing topic in the nation whose leadership is absolutely critical to finding a solution. While Obama committed to an 83 percent reduction in carbon emissions on 2005 levels by 2050, that goal faces a massive hurdle: a rich and powerful Republican machine that seeks to dismantle the president’s climate agenda. With the two major parties locked in a seemingly intractable adversarial stance on the topic, truly meaningful action seems almost like a pipe dream.
If it is a dream, it’s because the GOP refuses to accept reality. The Carsey poll found that party-line gaps on science-related questions “equal or surpass those of historically divisive social issues.” The division is primarily driven by the Republicans, 70 percent of whom don’t believe in global warming. This position stands in stark contrast to the world’s scientists, 97 percent of whom agree that global warming has occurred in the last century. Lawrence Hamilton, a sociologist at the University of New Hampshire who conducted the Carsey poll, wrote that the findings represent “a changing political landscape in which scientific ideas and information that are accepted by most scientists are, nevertheless, highly controversial.”
Media Misinformation
The controversy is fueled in part by misinformation coming from the media. Last year, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released its analysis of 2013 climate coverage by the three major American cable news networks. The researchers confirmed what most environmentalists had already guessed: Fox News leads the pack in climate misinformation. The right-wing mouthpiece presented misleading statements in almost three out of every four (72 percent) of its climate-related segments. Bucking that trend is Fox News anchor Shepard Smith, who has acknowledged anthropogenic, or human-caused, climate change, though he is one of very few voices at the network to do so.
Earlier this week, the Justice Department responded to a request by a conservative group that wanted to review messages Clinton may have sent about a video the State Department broadcast in Pakistan. The response read, in part:
“There is no question that former Secretary Clinton had authority to delete personal emails without agency supervision — she appropriately could have done so even if she were working on a government server. Under policies issue both by the National Archives and Records Administration and the State Department, individual officers and employees are permitted and expected to exercise judgment to determine what constitutes a federal record.”
One would think this would close the door on any subsequent inquiries, but despite facts to the contrary, Republicans continue to deny climate change and promote conspiracy theories about Benghazi. As such, the Justice Department’s findings won’t stop a senate committee from calling former Clinton aides to testify about how she managed her email.
Thank goodness they’re focusing on the important issues of the day.
The United States of America is a nation of immigrants. It’s how the nation came to existence. No one person, outside that of the indigenous people who lived her prior to the arrival of the Pilgrims and the rest of our forefathers can say that this area of North America is exclusive to them and them alone. There’s a reason the Statue of Liberty has etched on it:
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”
Because we are the nation that was a “new world” to immigrants worldwide, and we still are. That will become very clear in the upcoming election. To win the national general election in November of 2016, the winning candidate will need to have the Latino vote and Asian American votes. In 2012, President Obama took 71% of the Latino vote and 73% of the Asian-American vote. The results are now obvious. Given the current opinions of the Republican Party candidates on the immigration issue, it appears that the Democratic Party is in a very good spot for a repeat performance.
The xenophobic reaction to Trump’s anti-immigrant spiel can be seen in nearly every Republican candidate, and their individual approaches to immigration reform are all uniquely comical. It’s almost as if they’re in a contest to out-crazy each other.
Let’s take a look at where some of the candidates fall on the issue of immigration.
Donald Trump: Besidescalling Mexicans rapists, murderers, drug dealers, etc. He also wants to build a big “beautiful”wall that will keep all immigrants from coming across the border. He also wants to make sure we make it easier for European immigrants to come. But don’t you dare call him “racist,” because you will run the chance of being called an “idiot” or a “moron” for suggesting such a thing. Even though he IS a raging racist. And his nationalistic white pride is literally written across his forehead.
Scott Walker: Here’s one of those guys who will literally say anything to be popular. He was likely the kid on the school yard who hung around next to the popular kids and laughed at all of their jokes. So when Walker suggested he would build a wall along Canada’s border to try to out-Trump Trump, when it wasn’t well received and laughed off as a joke, he said it was a joke. Basically because everyone else did too.
Chris Christie: Not to be out-crazied, Christie thought it wise to compare immigrants to FedEx packages and offered up the idea that we should track immigrantsin the same way we would our shipments. He probably should’ve thought that idea through a little better, because the last time a leader put tracking codes on people it was to keep order on them inside concentration camps.So now, backtracking ever so slightly, Christie has resigned to just “finger-printing” immigrants. Although, at least he admitted that using the term “anchor babies” makes the Republicans sound anti-immigrant.
Jeb Bush: With an unfortunate last name weighing him down, Bush really doesn’t know where to stand on much of anything. Does he pander to bigots? Does he stay moderate? But it seems that he’s decided to be all over the map. As far as immigration, he can’t decide if using “anchor babies” is racist or not so he tries to undo the racist remark by making it more racist and adding Asians to mix. Once considered a moderate on this issue, he sees Trump pulling ahead, and doesn’t seem quite sure how racist he should go to up his poll numbers with the Republican base.
Both Ted Cruz, an immigrant himself from Canada, and Piyush “Bobby” Jindal, a son to immigrants, also seem to be steadfast in their disdain of anyone else entering the country after their family did. Jindal labeling “immigration without assimilation” an “invasion,” and Cruz calls any form of immigration reform that doesn’t line up with what he wants, “illegal amnesty.”
When did we decide to get away from that? When did the United States put a sign on the door that said “Sorry, we’re full!” We haven’t, and we never should. Immigrants are what makes this nation what it is — so diverse, so eclectic, so rich with cultural differences that enrich our every day lives. However, to this latest batch of Republican presidential candidates, you’d think the sign on America’s door read “Whites only,” or “Mexicans need not apply” reminiscent of the treatment of immigrants back in the early 20th century.
No matter how you slice it, Republicans are NOT embracing this topic with a level head that may actually produce a positive change and proper immigration reform. Immigration as it is, is not good enough. It’s nearly impossible for many to come here legally. Something MUST be done. And just building a wall or shooing immigrants away like they are pests is not the proper action to take. They need to either embrace immigration reform with logical thinking, or they will, without a doubt, lose in 2016.
Only a few weeks ago, pundits and political observers roundly proclaimed that Donald Trump, the reality-show tycoon who’s mounted a takeover of the GOP, would flame out, fade, implode, or whatever. Jeb Bush’s campaign aides were telling journalists that they had no concerns about Trump threatening a third Bush regime. “Trump is, frankly, other people’s problem,” said Michael Murphy, the chief strategist for Bush’s super-PAC. It’s becoming clearer, though, that Trump, still dominating the polls and the headlines as the Republican front-runner, could well pose an existential threat to the Grand Old Party (or at least its establishment, including the Bush campaign). But the fundamental problem for the Rs is not Trump; it’s Republican voters.
Trump is a brash and arrogant celebrity who is well skilled in pushing buttons, belittling foes, uttering outrageous remarks, causing a ruckus, and drawing attention to one thing: himself. He’s a smart marketer and a brilliant self-promoter. His name recognition is over 100 percent. He cooked up a wonderful ready-for-swag tagline: “Make America Great Again.” He’s incredible. He’s yooge. But none of this would matter if there was no demand for his bombastic, anger-fueled, anti-immigrant populism—that is, if Republican voters did not crave a leader who equates undocumented immigrants with rapists and who claims that everyone else in political life is a nincompoop selling out the US of A to the Chinese, the Mexicans, and just about every other government.
The polite way to say this is that Trump’s message is resonating with Republicans. And polls show that his support is not ideological. He’s winning over GOPers across the spectrum, from conservatives to evangelicals to supposedly moderate Rs. His assault on the GOP powers that be (or powers that were) is not the rebellion of one wing against another. (Political commentators are so programmed to view party conflicts as battles between conflicting factions.) Instead, Trump is tapping into a current that runs throughout the various strains of the GOP. It’s a current of frustration, despair, anger, and yearning—a yearning for a time when the United States will not be confronted by difficult economic and national security challenges, and when you will not have to press 1 for English and 2 for Spanish.
Republicans are pissed off. (In polls, they express far more dissatisfaction with the nation’s present course than Democrats.) And they believe the nation has been hijacked by President Barack Obama, whose legitimacy most Rs still reject. A recent Bloomberg/Des Moines Registerpoll of likely Iowa caucus participants found that 35 percent of Republicans believe Obama was not born in the United States. A quarter said they were not sure. (Nine out of ten Democrats said the president was born in the United States.) So nearly 60 percent of Rs believe there is cause to suspect Obama has hornswoggled the nation. Meanwhile, according to another poll, 54 percent of Republican voters say Obama is a Muslim. A third were not sure. Only 14 percent identified the president as a Christian.
These findings—which echo a long string of surveys conducted during the Obama years—would seem to indicate that at least half of the GOP is unhinged and living in its own fact-free and perhaps Fox-fed reality. To top it off, many Republican voters have expected the GOPers in control of Congress to kill Obamacare, shut down the government and slash the budget, prevent Obama from issuing executive orders, and impeach the pretender who inhabits the White House. Oh, and there’s this: Benghazi! So they are mighty ticked off and seriously disappointed. The Bloomberg/Des Moines Register poll found that half of GOP caucus-goers said they were unsatisfied with the US government and 38 percent were “mad as hell” at it. Slightly more than half were unsatisfied with Republicans in Congress; a fifth were mad as hell at them.
Given the psychological state of the GOP base, it’s not surprising that the fellow expressing the most outrage on the campaign trail—the guy who sounds like he, too, is mad as hell—has taken the express elevator to the penthouse floor of the polls. After all, he’s the only one in the pack who has confronted Obama on his birthplace. Trump has not renounced his birther ways. He has already made that point for this audience and can move on. (In the past few days, Trump also came close to endorsing another far-right conspiracy theory. He essentially accused Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s longtime aide, of being a security problem because she is married to disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner and presumably shared classified State Department information with this “perv.” For years, conservative conspiracy theorists have claimed Abedin was a Muslim Brotherhood mole within the US government.)
The anti-immigrant, anti-Obama, anti-establishment sentiment that Trump is tapping runs deep within the Republican electorate. Many Republicans clearly see the president as a foreign-born secret Muslim with a clandestine plan to weaken, if not ruin, the United States—remember the death panels—and they have a dark, nearly apocalyptic view of Obama’s America. (My email box of late is full of fundraising notes from right-wing groups claiming Obama is about to confiscate all guns, suspend the Constitution so he can run for a third term, relinquish American sovereignty to the United Nations, and mount a military operation within the United States to subdue any opposition to him.)
If this is your perspective when seeking a presidential candidate who will represent your desires and demands, you are unlikely to be drawn to a politician who wants to gain your vote by presenting a 27-point economic plan or by advocating charter schools. Voters this dissatisfied and this detached from reality will be looking for someone who can vent for them. Trump does that. He also promises quick and simple action to address their concerns: a wall (not a fence), great trade deals at a snap of the finger, the end of ISIS, you name it. And you just won’t believe how great this country will be after four years of President Trump. A focus group of Trump backers recently conducted by GOP pollster Frank Luntz found that Trumpites fancied Trump as much for his cut-the-crap manner as for the substance of his remarks.
As a way to counter Obama, the Republicans eagerly courted the tea partiers and other dissatisfied voters. They rode that tiger into the congressional majority in the low-turnout elections of 2010 and 2014. They whipped up the frenzy. (During the Obamacare fight, House Speaker John Boehner hosted a tea party rally on Capitol Hill, during which the crowd shouted, “Nazis, Nazis” when referring to Democrats.) Washington Republicans vowed they would take the country back from Obama for the tea party. They exploited the Obama hatred, but their often effective obstructionism was still not enough to feed the beast that had carried them into power.
Though Trump may beg to differ, Trumpmania is not about Trump. He’s merely supplying the rhetoric and emotion craved by a large chunk of the GOP electorate. That yearning won’t go away. Ben Carson, who in the latest Iowa poll tied for first place with Trump, is pushing a similar message—America is going to hell and the nation needs an outraged outsider to clean up the mess. His tone is kinder and gentler (and musical!). But like Trump, he is mining profound dissatisfaction and promising a national revival. Combine the Trump and Carson electorates at this point, and it’s close to a majority of Republicans.
A Trump-Carson ticket? Maybe not. (But if so, you heard it here first.) The point is, the GOP is overflowing with voters who long for a candidate who echoes their rage and resentment. Whatever happens with Trump in the months ahead, this bloc of voters won’t go away. Neither will their fury. This is the true dilemma for the Republican Party and its pooh-bahs. Trump, the deal-making businessman, is merely responding to market forces. He’s just the supplier. Trump is the drug, and the voters need to score. The demand is what counts.
One of the most serious problems with religious faith is that it can afflict an otherwise intelligent person and incite her to utter arrant inanities with the gravitas of an old-time, Walter-Cronkite-style television newscaster. This problem is doubly striking when that intelligent person is herself a newscaster (of sorts). And triply striking when that newscaster (of sorts) is Megyn Kelly, the Fox News star who looks sane amid a roster of crazies headed by the faith-addled duo of Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly. Kelly is purportedly a Roman Catholic, but judging by her racy photos, divorce, and remarriage outside the church, the Pope and his bull(s) don’t play much of a role in her life. All of which is good, in my view.
Nonetheless, as the recent Fox News Republican presidential debates were coming to an end, Kelly decided to extract a (patently ridiculous) religion-related question from her channel’s Facebook feed and give it air time. Prefacing it by calling it “interesting,” she put the query to the politicians assembled on stage directly and in all seriousness: “Chase Norton on Facebook . . . wants to know this of the candidates: ‘I want to know if any of them have received a word from God on what they should do and take care of first.’” She paused. With just a hint of insouciance, and in one of the most understated segues I’ve ever witnessed, she then asked, “Senator Cruz, start from you. Any word from God?”
Now let’s pause and consider the situation. Kelly is a political science graduate from a major Northeastern university, an attorney by trade with some 10 years of practice behind her, and a citizen of one the planet’s most developed countries. Speaking on satellite television (a technological wonder, whether we still recognize it or not, and no matter what we think of Fox News) in the twenty-first century, this sharp, degree-bearing professional American has just asked, with a straight face, a senator (who happens himself to be a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law) if he is receiving messages from a supernatural being. Yet no one in the audience broke into guffaws or even chuckled. And, of course, no one cried out with irate incredulity at the ludicrousness of the supposition implicit in the question (that an imaginary heavenly ogre could possibly be beaming instructions down to one of his earthling subjects). But since the supernatural being in question goes by the name of “God,” in the clown show that was the Republican debate, everyone – audience, MC, and the clowns themselves – simultaneously took leave of their senses and judged the matter at hand legit.
In any event, the question gave Cruz the chance to display his bona fides as a faith-deranged poseur. He told us, to waves of applause, that he was “blessed to receive a word from God every day in receiving the scriptures and reading the scriptures. And God speaks through the Bible.” He reminded us that his truant, once-alcoholic father had found Jesus and returned to the family; that he supports the sickening array of Religious Freedom Restoration Acts now pullulating pestilentially across the land; and that he’s against Planned Parenthood. Nothing new or even interesting here. Referring to conservatives, he noted that “the scripture tells us, ‘you shall know them by their fruit.’” Well, we know Cruz’s fruit, and it is poison to the cause of Enlightenment.
Kelly then turned to John Kasich, who, punctuating his speech with a strange mix of karate chops, head wobbles, and thumb-wags, brought up his family’s immigrant background and implied his election as Ohio’s governor was a miracle, but, oddly, did so without really implicating the Lord in it. He rambled on (godlessly) about the need for unity and respect, giving us reason to think – and this is a good thing – that he considered the issue of religion too divisive to dilate upon. He finally, though, did answer Kelly’s question: “In terms of the things that I’ve read in my lifetime, the Lord is not picking us. But because of how we respect human rights, because that we are a good force in the world, He wants America to be strong. He wants America to succeed.” This bland verbiage prefaced his closing non sequitur: “Nothing is more important to me than my family, my faith, and my friends.”
Given that he is a biblical literalist and believes he is destined for heaven, why Kasich chose to pass up the chance to spout piety is a mystery. However, he (grudgingly) recognized the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of same-sex marriage; quite possibly, he is content with leaving faith out of public affairs. Just as the Constitution would have it.
Wisconsin governor Scott Walker spoke next. He admitted to being an “imperfect man” and straightaway proved it by claiming to have been redeemed of his sins “only by the blood of Jesus Christ.” Walker’s father is a Baptist preacher, and he himself took to the pulpit as a teen, so such language should hardly surprise us. But before you dismiss it as boilerplate Jesus jabberwocky, consider that it does serve to highlight the bizarre conceit of the Christian cult: that the good Lord could think of no other way to give us a boost a couple of millennia ago except by orchestrating a cruel, ghastly act of human sacrifice involving His own kid. (Some dad.) If nothing else, ghoulish talk of this sort should prompt Fox News post-factum to rate the entire debate NOT SUITABLE FOR MINORS, or, at the very least, VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED.
(And where are all those annoying trigger-warning zealots when you need them? Why don’t they campaign to have the Bible stamped with “TRIGGER WARNING: contains multiple accounts of genocide, warfare, murder, enslavement, sexual abuse of women and underage girls, and ritual human and animal sacrifice”?)
In any case, Walker returned to reality, if only for a brief sojourn, and said the Lord hasn’t vouchsafed him a plan of action, and “hasn’t given me a list, a Ten Commandments, if you will, of things to act on the first day.” He closed saying he planned to live his “life in a way that would be a testimony to [God] and our faith.”
On this latter point journalists may wish to ask Walker to be more specific. Since he had just mentioned a bloody, barbaric, public act of execution and its lasting salvific effect on him, we are well within our rights to demand what sort of form his “testimony” will take. He has two sons. Might he consider offering at least one of them as a participant in one of the Philippines’ horrific real-life reenactments of the crucifixion that occur on Good Friday? Perhaps he would like to take part himself? Will he, if elected president, opt to introduce crucifixion as an approved means of execution? According to the Bible, God visited genocide, warfare, exile, slavery, and rape on humanity, and has drawn up plans to destroy the vast majority of us. Which of these banes would a President Walker chose, as part of his personal faith journey, to impose on his fellow Americans? Or would he limit himself to making merely cosmetic changes, such as replacing the White House’s annual National Security Strategy with the Book of Revelation?
Without responding to the Facebook user’s question about God’s to-do list, Senator Marco Rubio sputtered out permutations of bless (noun, verb, and adjective) in pitchman’s prattle too dull to merit space here, and spoke about the need for reform in the Veterans Administration (which Kelly had asked him to address, from the Lord’s perspective, of course). One might have concluded that he hardly believed in the supernatural at all, yet one would, of course, be erring grievously: he attends the extremist Christ Fellowship in Miami, a hotbed of exorcism, creationism and homophobia.
Kelly last turned to Dr. Ben Carson. Perhaps the most disturbing example of how high intelligence and belief in balderdash myths can jointly inhabit a single mind, Carson, so faith-deranged that he denies evolution and has had himself baptized twice, dodged God entirely and offered a reasonable look into how a neurosurgeon sees the issue of race relations. We can only surmise he felt he had elsewhere spoken enough about God. He gained nothing with his audience by leaving the Lord out, but by doing so he at least offered rationalists a tiny respite from the evening’s madness.
Presidential candidates have the constitutionally protected right to profess the religion of their choice and speak freely about it, just as atheists have the right – and, I would say, the obligation – to hold religion up to the ridicule and derision it so richly deserves. In that regard, nonbelieving journalists in particular should give openly devout candidates no passes on their faith. Religion directly influences public policy and politics itself, befouls the atmosphere of comity needed to hold reasoned discussions and arrive at consensus-based solutions, sows confusion about the origins of mankind and the cosmos, and may yet spark a nuclear war that could bring on a nuclear winter and end life as we know it. I could go on (and on), but the point is, we need to talk more about religion, and far more frankly, and now, before it’s too late.
Discussing religion freely and critically will desacralize it, with the result that the public professions of faith of which our politicians are so enamored will eventually occasion only pity, disgust and cries of shame! or, at best, serve as fodder for comedians. Faith should, in fact, become a “character issue.”
The advances of science have rendered all vestigial belief in the supernatural more than just obsolete. They have shown it to indicate grave character flaws (among them, gullibility, a penchant for wish-thinking and an inability to process information), or, at the very least, an intellectual recklessness we should eschew, especially in men and women being vetted for public office. One who will believe outlandish propositions about reality on the basis of no evidence will believe anything, and is, simply put, not to be trusted.
Come on, rationalist journos, be brave and do your job. Even if Megyn Kelly won’t do hers.
For some reason, it took Hurricane Katrina to expose the utter incompetence and disgusting lack of any semblance of humanity or leadership in the Bush Administration. Paul Krugman wonders in Monday’s column what it will take for Republican voters to see these same features in their favorite tough guys today, like Trump, Christie and Jeb Bush.
Among the lessons that Krugman says should have been learned from Katrina, but clearly wasn’t is “the huge gap between image and reality. Ever since 9/11, former President George W. Bush had been posing as a strong, effective leader keeping America safe. He wasn’t. But as long as he was talking tough about terrorists, it was hard for the public to see what a lousy job he was doing. It took a domestic disaster, which made his administration’s cronyism and incompetence obvious to anyone with a TV set, to burst his bubble.”
Now, we have a Republican field chock full of tough talking “political poseurs,” who are easily exposed by a modicum of digging into their actual record. Of course, Trump is the obvious example, but Chris Christie and Jeb Bush spring to Krugman’s mind as well. On Christie:
Not that long ago he was regarded as a strong contender for the presidency, in part because for a while his tough-guy act played so well with the people of New Jersey. But he has, in fact, been a terrible governor, who has presided over repeated credit downgrades, and who compromised New Jersey’s economic future by killing a much-needed rail tunnel project.
Now that Christie seems pathetic, it is not that he has actually changed, it’s just that the public has seen what he truly is.
Then there’s Jeb, “once hailed on the right as ‘the best governor in America,'” Krugman writes, “when in fact all he did was have the good luck to hold office during a huge housing bubble. Many people now seem baffled by Mr. Bush’s inability to come up with coherent policy proposals, or any good rationale for his campaign. What happened to Jeb the smart, effective leader? He never existed.
Krugman attempts to be even-handed, to find similar examples on the Democratic side, but comes up short. “In modern America, cults of personality built around undeserving politicians seem to be a Republican thing,” he writes.
Obama may not have turned out to be all that “starry-eyed liberals” had hoped he’d be, but he’s not utterly incompetent. Clinton’s e-mail scandal, ridiculous.
Then there’s Trump, whose rise everyone, except perhaps Krugman, seems to find shocking.
Both the Republican establishment and the punditocracy have been shocked by Mr. Trump’s continuing appeal to the party’s base. He’s a ludicrous figure, they complain. His policy proposals, such as they are, are unworkable, and anyway, don’t people realize the difference between actual leadership and being a star on reality TV?
But Mr. Trump isn’t alone in talking policy nonsense. Trying to deport all 11 million illegal immigrants would be a logistical and human rights nightmare, but might conceivably be possible; doubling America’s rate of economic growth, as Jeb Bush has promised he would, is a complete fantasy.
And while Mr. Trump doesn’t exude presidential dignity, he’s seeking the nomination of a party that once considered it a great idea to put George W. Bush in a flight suit and have him land on an aircraft carrier.
Conclusion: Don’t expect America to recognize this Emperor has no clothes for a long time.
While Donald Trump continues to inspire what he calls “the silent majority” (and everyone else calls the racist rump of the GOP) and the other assumed front-runners Walker, Rubio and Bush flounder and flop around, another candidate is quietly gathering support from a discrete, but powerful, GOP constituency. As Peter Montgomery of Right Wing watch pointed out earlier this week, Ted Cruz is making a huge play for the religious right. And they like what they’re seeing.
Montgomery notes that influential conservative Christian leaders have been getting progressively more anxious about the fact that they’ve been asked to pony up for less-than-devout candidates like McCain and somewhat alien religious observers like Mitt Romney when they are the reliable foot-soldiers for the Republican party who deliver votes year in and year out. With this year’s massive field from which to choose including hardcore true-believers Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal and Rick Santorum, these religious leaders are looking closely at all the candidates, but are homing in on Cruz.
A couple weeks later, Cruz stopped by the headquarters of the American Family Association. Lane’s American Renewal Project operates under the AFA’s umbrella, and Cruz sounded like he was reading Lane’s talking points. Cruz told AFA President Tim Wildmon that mobilizing evangelical Christian voters is the key to saving America, saying,“Nothing is more important in the next 18 months than that the body of Christ rise up and that Christians stand up, that pastors stand up and lead.”
Cruz held a “Rally for Religious Liberty” in Iowa last week that had the influential Christian right radio host Steve Deace swooning with admiration as Cruz carried on about Christian persecution. He thundered, “You want to know what this election is about? We are one justice away from the Supreme Court saying ‘every image of God shall be torn down!” to massive applause from the audience.
The religious right feels battered after their massive loss on marriage equality. And they expect their candidates to do something about it. It appears they’ve decided the destruction of Planned Parenthood is that crusade and Cruz is only too willing to play to the crowd. According to the Washington Post:
Sen. Ted Cruz, who has assiduously courted evangelicals throughout his presidential run, will take a lead role in the launch this week of an ambitious 50-state campaign to end taxpayer support for Planned Parenthood — a move that is likely to give the GOP candidate a major primary-season boost in the fierce battle for social-conservative and evangelical voters.
More than 100,000 pastors received e-mail invitations over the weekend to participate in conference calls with Cruz on Tuesday in which they will learn details of the plan to mobilize churchgoers in every congressional district beginning Aug. 30. The requests were sent on the heels of the Texas Republican’s “Rally for Religious Liberty,” which drew 2,500 people to a Des Moines ballroom Friday.
“The recent exposure of Planned Parenthood’s barbaric practices . . . has brought about a pressing need to end taxpayer support of this institution,” Cruz said in the e-mail call to action distributed by the American Renewal Project, an organization of conservative pastors.
Cruz implored more than a thousand pastors and religious leaders on Tuesday to “preach from the pulpit” against Planned Parenthood and rally public support for an amendment defunding the family provider in the must-pass federal budget bill in November. If Congress attaches the defunding amendment to the budget instead of holding a vote on the standalone bill, it cannot keep funding Planned Parenthood without shutting down the whole federal government.
“Here is the challenge,” the presidential hopeful explained on the national conference call. “The leadership of both parties, both the Democrats and Republicans, want an empty show vote. They want a vote on Planned Parenthood that has no teeth or no consequence, which allows Republicans to vote for defunding, Democrats to vote for continuing funding, and nothing to change. But the leadership of both parties have publicly said they do not want the vote tied to any legislation that must pass.”
“It will be a decision of the president’s and the president’s alone whether he would veto funding for the federal government because of a commitment to ensuring taxpayer dollars continue to flow to what appears to be a national criminal organization,” Cruz said.
As I said, the religious right is bursting to reassert its clout in the GOP and this is where they’ve decided to stand their ground. Cruz is going to lead them into battle.
That’s not to say that he’s running solely as a religious right candidate. Byron York reports that at a GOP candidate event last Monday in South Carolina featuring Cruz, Ben Carson and Scott Walker, Cruz received the most thunderous ovation. His speech wasn’t solely focused on the Christian persecution angle but he delivered what York called “an almost martial address” beating his chest about Iran and railing against sanctuary cities with the same fervor he delivered his put-away line: “No man who doesn’t begin every day on his knees is fit to stand in the Oval Office!”
York asked 53 people afterwards who did the best and 44 said Cruz, 6 said Carson and 3 said Walker. (Poor Walker is so dizzy from his immigration flip-flops that he’s stopped talking about it altogether, which the crowd did not like one little bit.) Cruz, on the other hand, has a way of making everything from EPA standards to the debt ceiling sound like a religious war which pretty much reflects the GOP base’s worldview as well.
Cruz is a true believer, but he’s also a political strategist. He has said repeatedly that his base is Tea Party voters and religious conservatives. In key Republican primaries like Iowa and South Carolina nearly 50 percent of the voters define themselves as conservative evangelicals. Cruz is betting that he can turn them out to vote for him.
Nobody knows what’s going to happen in this crazy GOP race. If Trump flames out, his voters will scatter and it will matter who has lined up the other institutional factions in the party. While everyone else spars with Trump and tries to out-immigrant bash each other, Ted Cruz is quietly working the egos and the passions of the millions of bruised conservative Christians who are desperate for a hero. When all the smoke has cleared the field he may very well be one of the last men standing.
Heather Digby Parton, also known as “Digby,” is a contributing writer to Salon. She was the winner of the 2014 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism.
It’s no secret that the Republican Party does not believe in climate change, over the last decade or so, they have made that abundantly clear. During President Obama’s tenure as Commander-and-Chief, he has actively fought to reduce our emissions in an effort to reduce our damage to the planet, but the GOP has fought him every step of the way. It’s also no secret that the right actively fights to against climate change legislation, because they are stuffing their pockets with money from Big Oil. Now we are learning that Republican presidential candidates are reaping huge benefits from their pro-pollution policies.
The Guardianreleased their findings today, from a study they conducted with Greenpeace and the Center for Media and Democracy, that was based on filings from the Federal Election Commission which proved that the GOP is receiving an astronomical amount of money from the fossil fuel industries. Eight out of 17 candidates have had at least $62 million pumped into their campaigns from just 17 ultra-rich families and business connected to non-renewable energy companies.
Three of the Republican candidates have received the most money from these companies and they are also three of the most anti-environment candidates: Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz and Rick Perry.
Former Texas governor, Rick Perry, is the third largest recipient of money from the fossil fuel industry. The biggest super PAC supporting his campaign, Opportunity and Freedom, has been given $6 million from just one perso-: Kelsy Warren. Not only has Warren donated the most money, but he employs Rick Perry on the board of his oil and natural gas company, Energy Transfer Partners. In return for his very generous campaign contributions, Perry hired Warren to work as his campaign finance chairman.
The former governor has a long history of denying the existence of climate change. During Perry’s 2012 failed bid for the White House, he claimed that scientists were lying about global warming when he said,”There are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects.” He has also said that he would eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency if he were elected to the Oval Office. His solution for a destructive drought that hit his state when he was governor, was to issue an official proclamation praying for rain. His prayers went unanswered and his state stayed in a persistent drought for months after his “Days of Prayer.”
Former Florida governor and GOP presidential favorite, Jeb Bush, is the second largest receiver of money from the destructive industry. Bush’s super PACs have been given more than $13 million from just nine donors. One of his largest donors — $2 million — is Frank Rooney, of Rooney Holdings. Rooney serves on the boards of two oil and gas companies: Laredo Petroleum and Helmerich & Payne Inc. The latter is one of the world’s largest offshore drilling contractors. The Guardian explains who some of his other mega-rich donors are:
Richard Kinder, co-founder of Kinder Morgan, an energy infrastructure company that owns 84,000 miles of pipeline; the oil magnate Trevor Rees-Jones; and Dallas oil billionaire Ray Hunt.
Jeb Bush has said in the past that he believes that the climate is changing, but he doesn’t really know what is causing it. “The climate is changing, whether men are doing it or not,“he said during his first campaign stop. So even though he tries to sound more reasonable than the other members of his party, he still ignores the fact that the vast majority of the world’s scientists are telling him that humans are causing the damage to the atmosphere.
Finally, the first biggest recipient of money from the industries causing the most destruction to the earth is Senator Ted Cruz. The Texas Senator is, perhaps, the biggest climate change-denier in the government, so it makes sense that he is also reaping the most from his denials.
Cruz has received $36.5 million from just FOUR wealthy donors from the industry; that’s more than half of all the given to all of the candidates. The elite Wilks family of Texas have given $15 million to his super PACs. The Wilks family founded, Frac Tech, a company that makes the equipment needed for fracking. Another donor gave Cruz $11 million:
Clearly Ted Cruz’s denial of climate change has been very, very profitable for him and deny he does. “Today, the global warming alarmists are the equivalent of the flat-Earthers,” according to the senator. He also said,”The last 15 years, there has been no recorded warming. Contrary to all the theories that – that they are expounding, there should have been warming over the last 15 years. It hasn’t happened.” these are just two of a plethora of statements by Cruz.
The other Republican candidates receiving money are:
“Carly Fiorina ($.2m), Lindsey Graham ($1m), Bobby Jindal ($1.2m), Donald Trump ($1.8m) and Scott Walker ($1.8m).”
Republicans are the sole receivers of donations from the pollution industry. They haven’t given money to the Democratic candidates, because they know our candidates are not going to damage our environment further, so they have no reason to spend money on Bernie Sander, Hillary Clinton or the other candidates on the left.
So the question becomes: What do these donors hope to receive in return for all of the money they are sending? David Keating, president of the Center for Competitive Politics, says nothing:
“way too much was read into numbers like these. Most people at this stage of the election cycle are giving because they believe in what the candidate stands for and their policies, rather than because they are trying to influence those policies.”
Connor Gibson, the Greenpeace researcher who oversaw the Greenpeace/Center for Media and Democracy study, does not agree:
“To see so much money flowing into the war chests of viable Republican candidates so early in the race from people linked to climate change pollution is very concerning...Will these candidates be expected to roll back federal oversight and regulation of fracking and methane leaks? Will they be more likely to allow drilling in the Arctic at a time when scientists are warning that fossil fuels must be kept in the ground?”
It’s very clear at this point that the donations are not for what the candidates believe in but to dictate what the candidates believe in. Denying climate change and disseminating ignorance among the voting base represents massive profits for the fossil fuel industry. They realize their time is running short, and will stop at nothing to milk the most that they can from our people and our land. It’s far beyond time we put a stop to the pernicious influence of dark money in our politics.
Presidential debates matter but follow-up polls tracing shifting fortunes can also miss the big picture.
That picture isn’t whether or not Donald Trump is still the Republican frontrunner for the 2016 nomination, or whether Carly Fiorina has surged, or whether Jeb Bush has stalled. It’s that a majority of Republican primary voters are supporting candidates who share many extreme right-wing views.
That evidence is not found in Trump’s numbers, which slipped from 26 percent in pre-debate national polls by Rasmussen Reports, which specializes in GOP campaigns, to 17 percent after the confrontation with Fox News’ moderators and his competitors. Rather, it comes from adding up the percentages of the candidates with 5 percent or more, and realizing that 70 percent of likely GOP primary voters favor right-wing extremists.
The polls’ fine-print tell one story—of shifting fortunes in a crowded field. Nationally, Trump now has 17 percent, followed by Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, each at 10 percent, according to Rasmussen. Then Scott Walker and Carly Fiorina each have 9 percent, followed by Ben Carson at 8 percent, and Ted Cruz at 7 percent. State polls find even more movement, such as Trump pulling ahead of Walker in Iowa and John Kasich climbing in New Hampshire.
But no matter who is out front now—or who might be leading as the fall campaign looms, when you add up the shares up of the GOP candidates pollings at 5 percent or more, fully 70 percent of Republicans want a candidate who isauthoritarian and anti-abortion, anti-LGBT, anti-science, anti-tax, anti-government, anti-labor, and more.
This big-picture is largely lost in the campaign commentary and analysis, such as Nate Silver’s recent post at fivethirtyeight.com, entitled, “Donald Trump Is Winning The Polls – And Losing The Nomination.”
Silver’s points are all good—but he’s looking at the microcosm not the macrocosm. Yes, the Iowa caucuses are nearly 175 days away. And states do vote one at a time; there is no national primary. And of the 17 GOP contenders, some will drop out. And many states do not award delegates on a winner-take-all basis. And many poll respondents may not end up voting.
“This is why it’s exasperating that the mainstream media has become obsessed with how Trump is performing in the polls,” he wrote, then citing other historic and political factors why performance this early in a race is not a strong indication of who will win.
But what’s also exasperating is that the media’s fine print focus of post-debate polling is missing a very big point about the nature of the Republican field and the party’s current base: it’s filled with right-wing extremists, no matter how you parse it.
Steven Rosenfeld covers national political issues for AlterNet, including America’s retirement crisis, democracy and voting rights, and campaigns and elections. He is the author of “Count My Vote: A Citizen’s Guide to Voting” (AlterNet Books, 2008).
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