Tag: trump

Nationwide Poll: Majority of Republicans Have Nakedly Racist Worldview—Trump Has Found the Way to Unleash It

GOPers are living in a dangerous right-wing fantasyland—and are just fine with that.

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Source: AlterNet

Author: Steven Rosenfeld

Emphasis Mine

A new national poll released Tuesday has found that a majority of the Republican Party is living in a strange and dangerous political fantasyland.

“Our new poll finds that [Donald] Trump is benefiting from a GOP electorate that thinks Barack Obama is a Muslim and was born in another country,” Public Policy Polling’s analysis said. “Sixty-six percent of Trump’s supporters believe that Obama is a Muslim to just 12 percent that grant he’s a Christian. Sixty-one percent think Obama was not born in the United States to only 21 percent who accept that he was.”

Not only did PPP’s analysis find that Trump’s lead was growing—it is now 29 percent—it also found that the second most popular Republican is one who has not criticized other candidates: retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who has 15 percent. The rest of the pack is all under 10 percent: Jeb Bush (9 percent), Carly Fiorina (8 percent), Marco Rubio (7 percent), Ted Cruz and John Kasich (6 percent), Scott Walker and Mike Huckabee (5 percent). Walker has fallen the most, compared to last winter when he was leading.

The biggest takeaway from the PPP pollis that a majority of the Republican Party’s base is living in a right-wing bubble where facts don’t matter—and it has become increasingly acceptable to publicly voice racist positions because the leading presidential candidate is modeling that behavior.

Not only did PPP find that a majority of Republicans believe the birther lie—that Obama was not actually born in Hawaii—but 51 percent of all Republicans polled want to amend the Constitution to eliminate birthright citizenship, which is granted to any person born on U.S. soil. Of Trump’s supporters, 63 percent want to eliminate that right, and a majority said undocumented children should be deported.

“I’m not terribly surprised by the birther numbers or the numbers about Obama’s religion,” said Tom Jensen, PPP director. He said the numbers are consistent with what he’s seen in GOP polls in recent years, and matched another new poll from Iowa where about 35 percent of the state’s GOP electorate are “birthers.”

But what is surprising to Jensen is how Trump’s candidacy has made Republicans more willing to publicly admit their xenophobic or racist positions.

“Trump has sent a message that it’s okay to be racist,” he said. “So maybe some racist attitudes you previously held, or were not allowed to say in public, now one of the leading presidential candidates is saying them and not apologizing at all.”

The PPP poll also found that Trump was winning his war of words with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, the on-air host who challenged him in the GOP’s first presidential debate for his history of sexist remarks about women.

“Trump is winning his fight with Megyn Kelly,” the poll’s analysis said. “When we last polled her in December of 2013 her favorability with Republicans nationally was 44/9. Her favorability is in a similar place now at 42% but her negatives have shot up to 20 percent, largely because she’s at 20/43 with Trump’s supporters.”

The poll also found that Carly Fiorina and John Kasich have become more popular with GOP voters. Since their July survey, Fiorina, the ex-Hewlett Packard CEO, has “gone from 4 percent to 8 percent, and her 53/23 favorability rating makes her the most popular GOP candidate other than Carson and Trump,” their analysis said. “Kasich’s gone from 3 percent to 6 percent and is all the way up to double digits at 10 percent with moderate voters, putting him in third place overall with that group.”

The Republican who has fallen the furthest is Scott Walker, “who was in second place at 17 percent last month and is now down all the way to a tie for eighth place at 5 percent. There is a little bit of silver lining for Walker. He’s one of only three Republicans to hit double digits when it comes to voters’ second-place choice.”

Bush is struggling for a variety of reasons, Jensen said. He’s not passionate enough, compared to Trump. His past positions embracing federal education standards and immigration reform rankle right-wing Republicans. And in an anti-establishment year, being a Bush [or a Clinton] is as mainstream and establishment as it gets.

Bernie and Hillary

On the Democratic side, PPP found that Bernie Sanders has a very long way to go to catch up with Hillary Clinton in national polling.

“Last month Hillary Clinton led Bernie Sanders by 35 points and this month she leads him by 35 points again—she’s at 55 percent to 20 pecent for Bernie Sanders, 4 percent for Martin O’Malley, 3 percent for Jim Webb, and 1 percent each for Lincoln Chafee and Lawrence Lessig,” the poll’s analysis said.

This is a striking contrast with Sanders’ numbers in Iowa and New Hampshire, where another PPP poll just last week found he was ahead of Clinton by 7 points. However, looking past those first two contests to the next states, Jensen said that Sanders hasn’t yet made inroads into communities of color.

“I think it’s quite possible he may do very well in Iowa and New Hampshire and not do well anywhere else,” Jensen said. “We found Hillary down in New Hampshire but not nationally.”

However, Jensen said he was “done making predictions” about what was likely to unfold on the GOP side. “There is nothing about this presidential race that anyone has seen before. Most experts expected things to become more normal by now.”

But things have not become normal. As one respected legal blogger wrote Monday, there is a path to the GOP nomination for Trump if he maintains his current standing in the polls, because of the arcane ways Republicans will be allocating delegates in their 2016 primaries.

Meanwhile, the PPP poll confirms that the modern Republican Party has a majority of members who live in a racist political fantasyland: they believe Obama wasn’t born in America, and is a Muslim, not a Christian; and they would revoke the birthright citizenship of the children of undocumented immigrants, and deport them as well.

“Trump’s beliefs represent the consensus among the GOP electorate,” their analysis said. “Fifty-one percent overall want to eliminate birthright citizenship. Fifty-four percent think President Obama is a Muslim. And only 29 percent grant that President Obama was born in the United States. That’s less than the 40 percent who think Canadian-born Ted Cruz was born in the United States.”

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).

See:http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/nationwide-poll-majority-republicans-have-nakedly-racist-worldview-and-trump-has-found?utm_source=Steven+Rosenfeld%27s+Subscribers&utm_campaign=d25c3f7811-RSS_AUTHOR_EMAIL&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2cfcfe7b54-d25c3f7811-107153921

Bigotry Confirmed: 66% of Trump Supporters Believe Pres. Obama Is A Muslim

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Source: occupydemocrats.com

Author: Colin White

Emphasis Mine

It really is astonishing just how far a misinformation campaign will go in this country. A recent poll by the Public Policy Polling firm reveals that just under two-thirds, around 66%, of Donald Trump supporters believe that President Obama is a Muslim. On top of that, 61% still believe the President wasn’t born in the United States. This kind of perpetual ignorance represents a deep disconnect with reality, tying into the narcissistic delusions of American exceptionalism that has become mainstream through the incessant trumpeting of FOX News and the right-wing echo chamber.

It symbolizes a fundamental refusal to recognize realities, dismissing rationality and reason in favor of appeals to our most base and primitive emotions- fear of difference and of the unknown. The Republican voting base has been reduced to malleable puppets on a string, rendered a quivering mess from a diet of constant self-righteous infallibility and hyperbolic fear-mongering, torn between two extremes so much that they are left as perpetually exploitable by those with the ability and charisma to manipulate them.

“America is under attack!” cries the right-wing. “Black Americans are murdering police officers and undermining the rule of law! Terrorists are going to attack our nation! Immigrants are coming to take your jobs! Healthcare services are murdering children!” It is the lowest and most despicable form of political manipulation, the kind that causes pogroms and race riots if it gets out of hand. The American people need to wake up and face the facts. Living in fear will get us nowhere. 

See:http://wp.me/p3h8WX-4ZV

Paul Krugman: What’s It Going to Take for Voters to Understand How Dumb Republicans Are?

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Source: AlterNet

Author: Janet Allon

Emphasis Mine

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.

See: http://www.alternet.org/paul-krugman-whats-it-going-take-voters-understand-how-dumb-republicans-are?akid=13430.123424.J1tkKL&rd=1&src=newsletter1041740&t=2

Donald Trump Is Joe McCarthy’s Doppelgänger, While the GOP Remains In a Dissociative State

Not a syllable escapes his duck lips without prior, due consideration as to how it will play to the rubes

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Source: Smirking chimp, via AlterNet

Author:P.M. Carpenter

Emphasis Mine

f you’re one of the few who’s still not convinced that playing American football causes severe and irreversible brain damage, just listen to this: “I’m for common sense.” Those are the words of former New England Patriots offensive tackle Matt Light, who, in Politico’s words, “likes what Trump has to say.”

Mr. Light was in attendance at Trump’s nonfundraising fundraiser last night in Norwood, Mass., as was 83-year-old Joseph Fierro. We suspect Mr. Fierro also played football: “I don’t want to die in a socialist, progressive, Godless America, and Trump will save us.”

Trump has made no secret of his support for the socialist schemes of Social Security and Medicare, he has advocated the ultimate in progressive ideology — single-payer healthcare, and he wouldn’t know the Bible from the Bhagavad Gita. Yet Mr. Fierro shakes his cane in protest of all modernity, and in support of one — the very one among the GOP pack who most supports what Fierro opposes. A late-blooming case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy?

Barring brain-damage causations of the Trump phenomenon, we look to political psychology. Is there some occult like secret to Trump’s successful bamboozlement of the masses? Hardly.

Yesterday, Politico observed elsewhere that “Trump is rewriting the playbook in which politicians who offend respond by equivocating, clarifying or apologizing. Instead, he goes on offense.” But of course Trump is not “rewriting the playbook” at all. He is, rather, borrowing heavily from Joe McCarthy’s playbook. Never apologize; always attack, and counterattack. In pursuit of the White House, Ted Cruz got in on McCarthy’s rhetorical racket before Trump did. Both men are now following the same playbook, and thus we see the simpatico and authentically offensive alliance between Cruz and Trump. At any rate, the old McCarthyite tactic of rhetorical bullying is often interpreted — “out there” — as a sign of strong leadership.

That much is obvious, and the tactic is easy to master; it requires no genius to be consistently unapologetic and unceasingly rude. Nor do bullies have a difficult time in gathering a following of weak-minded admirers.

There’s something else, though, that lends to Trump’s popularity. How many times, in how many stories, have you read one of Trump’s followers say something to the effect of: “Wow, this guy is saying what we’ve been saying for years in our living rooms, at the kitchen table, around the watercolor. It’s so refreshing. He just says what’s on his mind — which is how we see the world — and he says it straight.”

Now that takes genius, or at least no little talent — to fake, that is, extemporaneous sincerity. Trump is as calculated as Hillary Clinton, perhaps more so.

Not a syllable escapes his duck lips without prior, due consideration as to how it will play to the rubes. He is well rehearsed, he knows what claptrap will send hearts (not minds) soaring, and he has, you will note, stuck to a script. Each rally is pretty much the rally before: Jeb is low energy, Lindsey is toast, China (or Mexico or Japan or South Korea or Saudi Arabia) is eating our lunch, and the Donald will somehow make America great again. Like a polished stand-up comedian, on occasion he tests new material (last night it was Anthony Weiner). Like a polished politician, however, he mostly adheres to the stump speech.

Such withering sameness won’t harm Trump for some time. The rabble likes the familiar (though it despises it in others). But we think back to the offensive, unapologetic McCarthy: His bullying sameness began to wear, his party knew it, and, in the end, it was Joe’s party that “got” Joe. McCarthy had assaulted “the establishment” once too often, and the establishment finally struck back.

It is to our benefit that Reince Priebus and Jeb Bush seem — are? — historically clueless. Trump may well destroy them before they assist Trump in destroying himself. Go with God, Reince and Jeb. You’ll need him, for you’ll have nothing else left, after Trump destroys the GOP.

See: http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/donald-trump-joe-mccarthys-doppelganger-while-gop-remains-dissociative-state?akid=13428.123424.18v9DK&rd=1&src=newsletter1041670&t=6

Is Donald Trump Really a ‘Fascist’?

The Trump campaign doesn’t seem so funny anymore.

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Source: AlterNet

Author: Joe Conason

Emphasis Mine

(N.B.: I heard on Bill Maher one panelist state that Trump was striking a chord with many white middle class voters because illegal immigrants where “taking” their jobs.  Some may believe that message, but in fact, many jobs have been moved overseas, and many more have been eliminated by automation…)

Although he is still a clown, nobody laughs at Donald Trump anymore — which may be the real purpose of his candidacy, at least as far as he is concerned. The casino mogul is pleased to instill fear among Republican elites, as he dominates their presidential nominating contest — and forces them to face a hard question about the man who is exciting such belligerent enthusiasm among Republican voters.

Is Trump a real live fire-breathing fascist?

From Newsweek to Salon to the Daily Caller, commentators of various colorations have found ample reason to apply that often-discredited label to him. While these observers hesitate to lump Trump in with totalitarian dictatorships and historic crimes against humanity, they are clearly concerned over his strongman appeal, his populist rhetoric, and his rejection of GOP free-market orthodoxy.

Genuine conservatives aren’t wrong to fret, but they seem unwilling or unable to grasp the clearest evidence that Trump is channeling toxic currents from the past — namely, his appeals to racial bigotry, his truculent attitude toward other nations, and his extremist “solution” to illegal immigration.

Obvious clues to the noxious nature of Trumpism keep cropping up across the political landscape like poison mushrooms. In Boston’s “Southie” neighborhood, once headquarters of the openly racist anti-busing movement known as ROAR (Restore Our Alienated Rights), two white males severely beat an older Hispanic man. When arrested, one of the thugs told police, “Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported.”

Rather than deplore this ugly assault, Trump’s impulse was to praise the zeal of his supporters. “It would be a shame,” he said when first told of the beating, then added: “I will say that people who are following me are very passionate. They love this country and they want this country to be great again. They are passionate.”

At a big rally in Mobile, Alabama, Trump welcomed Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, R-Ala., the only prominent politician singled out for praise. Sessions is a dubious figure whose federal judicial nomination was once rejected by the Senate Judiciary Committee over his record of racially inflammatory behavior and remarks — which included calling a white civil rights lawyer “a disgrace to his race” and opposing the Voting Rights Act. Today, he is the chief Senate opponent of legal immigration to the United States.

Opposition to legal as well as illegal immigration is a foundation of the white nationalist movement in the United States. So perhaps nobody should have been too surprised when a loud voice in the Mobile audience greeted Sessions’ arrival by screaming “White Power!”

Again, the reaction of the Trump campaign was telling. Campaign manager Corey Lewandowski responded that he wasn’t aware of the “white power” shouter. “I don’t know about the individual you’re talking about in Alabama,” he insisted. “I know there were 30-plus thousand people in that stadium. They were very receptive to the message of ‘making America great again’ because they want to be proud to be Americans again.”

Asked about the Boston beating, Lewandowski acknowledged that violence is “unacceptable,” continuing: “However, we should not be ashamed to be Americans. We should be proud of our country, proud of our heritage, and continue to be the greatest country in the world.” Like his boss, Lewandowski isn’t subtle. His dog-whistle about “heritage” and being “proud” was heard loud and clear by the white supremacist underworld, which is rallying behind Trump.

The troubling tone in Trump’s language can be detected when he talks about foreign policy, too. As David Cay Johnston recently reported, the draft-dodging billionaire boasts that he is the “most militaristic” candidate, and has blatantly advocated attacking other countries to “take” their oil. Imperial warmongering is a classic hallmark of fascism — indeed, it was military aggression by Nazi Germany that led to World War II.

Finally there is Trump’s “solution” to illegal immigration. He promises to deport an estimated 11-12 million people, a plan that would be ruinously expensive and grossly inhumane to even attempt. The only analogous projects on that scale were atrocities carried out by the Turks against Armenians and, later, by the Nazis against European Jews.

Imagine a country that seeks to round up millions of brown-skinned people by force, transforming itself into a police state, while mobs of vigilantes in militias scourge frightened families out of hiding. It is not hard to predict scenes of bloodshed and horror.

No Donald, that isn’t the way to “make America great again.” For most of us — the majority of citizens who have no use for Trump and Trumpism — that isn’t America at all.

 

Joe Conason is the editor of the National Memo and writes a column for creators.com

 

See:http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/donald-trump-really-fascist?akid=13427.123424.uoNmyc&rd=1&src=newsletter1041631&t=4

With Donald Trump, the Nazis Seek to Finally Conquer America

“White power” is the American “Sieg Heil.”

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Source: PoliticsUSA

Author: Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Emphasis Mine

The unholy alliance between ethnic nationalism and big business saw its 20th century heyday in the Third Reich of Adolf Hitler. Ethnic Nationalists in this country have long been looking for their version of Germany’s Führer, and they have finally found him in Donald Trump, and with him, the hope of a 21st century redux.

As the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) reported the other day,

With his campaign showing no signs on slowing down, Donald Trump continued his war on immigrants by introducing a six-page immigration plan that reads like the playbook of the organized anti-immigrant movement in America. Trump’s plan — calling for mass deportations, a border fence and gutting the 14th amendment — also strengthened his support among white nationalists.

The SPLC’s Hatewatch report shows praise coming in from white nationalist Brad Griffin on his website Occidental Dissent, from Jared Taylor, “one of the most significant white nationalists in the movement today” at American Renaissance, and from former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke.

What happened when Trump addressed a crowd in Mobile, Alabama, ought to give every American pause:

One person could be heard yelling “white power!” during Trump’s remarks, and white nationalist Olaf Childress, editor of the racist paper The First Freedom was on hand to pass out copies to attendees. The New York Times also interviewed a Trump supporter who stated, “Hopefully, he’s going to sit there and say, ‘When I become elected president, what we’re going to do is we’re going to make the border a vacation spot, it’s going to cost you $25 for a permit, and then you get $50 for every confirmed kill. That’d be one nice thing.”

“White power” is the American “Sieg Heil.” As Trump is speaking their language, he will likely hear many more of these.

If you look at Trump’s Greenville, South Carolina crowd, you see his demographic plainly:

The Lindsey Graham crowd. According to Trump, Graham’s former crowd (They’re his now). The combustible center of right wing angst. Old white people.

Trump is no former soldier. Unlike Hitler, he hasn’t faced an enemy in battle, been wounded, or won any medals. But like Hitler, he is subscribing to a homeland “stabbed in the back” mentality that rallies all the disgruntled and discontented to his banner, those who feel they have been betrayed by the establishment.

In 1930s Germany, this was the post-war leftist Weimar government. In 21st century America, it is another “leftist” government that is the target – the presidency of Barack Obama.

Jews, blacks, immigrants. It doesn’t matter. These are all people who are fundamentally unlike us, they say. Germany for the Germans. America for Americans. White. Like Jesus.

Hitler said Germany could be great again. Neither Trump nor Reagan invented the idea of lifting a nation from the ashes and restoring it to its former glory. And like Hitler, Trump is pushing the idea that the military has been betrayed by the politicians, and just as Hitler linked this betrayal to the Jews, Trump is linking it to immigrants:

Like post-war Germany, America is riddled with right wing militias, all eager to come to blows with the communists in their midst. The trouble with that analogy is that here in America, there are really no communists with which to come to grips. So conservatives have invented “other” communists: liberals, progressives, gays, atheists; anyone to the left of where they themselves are.

Despite their claim to represent a “silent majority,” their list of enemies includes most of the population.

Hitler had the Jews. Today’s right wing has had, until recently, to settle for Muslims, atheists, Hindus – and Jews – anyone, really, who isn’t what they perceive to be “Christian” and white. The concept of white has never been entirely about skin color in this country. Once upon a time, even the Irish weren’t considered white. Now Donald Trump has given them immigrants, who are mostly rapists and murderers anyway, he says.

The result of the Trump hatefest should not be surprising:

Stormfront, the Web’s largest white supremacists website founded by former Klan leader Don Black, has no less than nine threads discussing the New York billionaire’s plan. With a history of violence attributed to the site’s users, it’s no surprise that Trump’s supporters have begun calling for the murder of immigrants.

In one thread, a user claimed it would only be plausible to deport 25 percent of the undocumented immigrants in the country. Another user followed up with the statement, “Everyone in favor of shooting the rest…raise your hand.”

In a country where we already have police, the people whose job it is to protect and serve the public, gunning down or killing while in custody those portions of the public of which it does not approve, talk like this is not just talk. We have seen armed white men take to the streets at the possibility of gunning down black protesters in Ferguson. We have white ranchers emerging from armed showdowns with the federal government without consequence, and white militias are already patrolling our southern border while white men with their ubiquitous AR-15s infest restaurants and stores alike, using the Second Amendment like a weapon.

Too much should not be made of Walmart’s decision to stop selling AR-15a – announced the same day two journalists were murdered in Roanoke, Virginia – because the decision was not made in response to shootings there or elsewhere, but according to Walmart spokesman Kory Lundberg, “slumping demand,” and the decision to cater to hunters and clay-shooters.

Ethnic nationalists militias will not be hard pressed to continue to arm themselves. The NRA has seen to that.

The biggest difference here is that Adolf Hitler needed the support of the 1 percent, and got it. They supported the Nazi party from its very early days. Donald Trump does not need the support of the 1 percent. He IS the 1 percent. People have always wondered how Germans let themselves be mislead by Hitler, but Americans need wonder no longer: we are seeing it for ourselves in the response to Donald Trump.

The totalitarian demagogue they have been waiting for has arrived, and he is leading them down a rosy path to destruction. We do not have to say violence will result. Violence has already resulted as a couple of would-be Trump stormtroopers beat a Hispanic man in his name.

Indeed, as in the days of Adolf Hitler, violence has preceded him in his march to power, because violence is inherent in the forces he is seeking both to harness and to unleash. And this is but a foretaste of what is to come, because the inevitable consequence of ethnic nationalism when given the power it craves, is ethnic cleansing.

Donald Trump has already promised us that, and look out, because if you’re not with Trump, he has already made clear you are against him, and his well-armed supporters enthusiastically agree.

See:http://www.politicususa.com/2015/08/28/trump-nazis-finally-conquer-america.html

As Trump Circus Continues, Ted Cruz Is Quietly Mobilizing Christian Right Fanatics

Ted Cruz is making a huge play for the religious right. And they like what they’re seeing.

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Source: Salon via AlterNet

Author: Heather Digby Parton

Emphasis Mine

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.

Montgomery writes:

One big sign came late last month, when news that broke that Farris and Dan Wilks had given $15 million to Keep the Promise, a pro-Cruz super PAC. Not coincidentally, David Lane told NBC News last year that, “With Citizens United…you can have somebody who gives $15 or $20 million into a super PAC and that changes the game.” The billionaire Wilks brothers from Texas have become sugar daddies to right-wing groups generally, and to David Lane’s Pastors and Pews events specifically.

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.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Cruz says he plans to shut down the government this fall unless Congress agrees to stop all funding of Planned Parenthood. And he’s making a big bet that his campaign will benefit from it:

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.

See: http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/trump-circus-continues-ted-cruz-quietly-mobilizing-christian-right-fanatics?akid=13422.123424.mYzeFH&rd=1&src=newsletter1041555&t=4

The GOP’s contempt for women

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Source: WashPost

Author: Katrina vanden Heuvel

Emphasis Mine

During the Republican primary in 2012, one of Mitt Romney’s most damaging gaffes was saying that he would “get rid of” Planned Parenthood. If only that were the Republican Party’s biggest problem with women today.

Leading in the early polls, billionaire blowhard Donald Trump ignited a firestorm of controversy when he said that Fox News host Megyn Kelly, who moderated last week’s presidential debate in Cleveland, had “blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.” Trump was angry that Kelly had the gall to ask, among other things, how Trump justified his lengthy record of misogynist attacks on women. (“The big problem this country has is being politically correct,” he answered, ridiculously conflating political correctness with common decency.)

However, Trump’s ugly bombast is a distraction from a far more serious problem for the GOP. Three years after Romney lost the women’s vote by a double-digit margin, in part because of his support for defunding Planned Parenthood, the presidential debates last week made clear Republicans have only become more disrespectful toward women’s bodies, more deranged in their hatred of Planned Parenthood and more dismissive of female voters.

The rhetorical assault on women began in Thursday’s “undercard debate,” where seven Republican also-rans tried to breathe life into their listless campaigns. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal reflected the party’s disdainful attitude when he promised to investigate Planned Parenthood with “the Department of Justice and the IRS and everybody else that we can send from the federal government.” Carly Fiorina, who was crowned the “winner” of the debate by many observers, likewise attacked Hillary Clinton for “defending Planned Parenthood.” And despite being the only candidate who identifies as pro-choice, former New York governor George Pataki called for defunding Planned Parenthood, which he accused of showing a “hideous disrespect for life.”

But the most deplorable statements came when the top-tier candidates — all men, of course — took the stage in prime time. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio denied that he believes rape and incest victims should be legally permitted to have abortions, adding that future generations will “call us barbarians for for murdering millions of babies.” And Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker went a step further by defending his opposition to abortion even when the woman’s life is in danger, while criticizing Clinton’s “radical position” of supporting Planned Parenthood.

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee delivered the most grotesque line of the night. “It’s time that we recognize the Supreme Court is not the supreme being, and we change the policy to be pro-life and protect children instead of rip up their body parts and sell them like they’re parts to a Buick,” he said. Meanwhile, Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) echoed Jindal, pledging that he would order the Justice Department to investigate Planned Parenthood on his first day in office.

Finally, there was former Florida governor Jeb Bush, the supposed “moderate” in the race. “As governor of Florida, I defunded Planned Parenthood,” he boasted, adding, “We were the first state to do a ‘choose life’ license plate.” For Bush, the debate came just a few days after he got himself in hot water for saying, “I’m not sure we need half a billion dollars for women’s health issues.” And while Bush later said he “misspoke,” insisting that he merely wants to divert funds from Planned Parenthood into community health centers, his record suggests otherwise: In Florida, Bush redirected money from Planned Parenthood into abstinence education and funded “crisis pregnancy centers” that discourage women from having abortions.

Regardless, what Bush meant to say is irrelevant. Women’s health is clearly not a priority for the GOP. Neither are women, in general. On the contrary, the gleeful cheering by the debate audience showed that disrespect for women’s bodies is baked into the party’s DNA. That’s why Republicans are attacking Planned Parenthood — an organization that has provided cancer screenings, birth control and other health-care services to millions of women in the United States — with increasing hostility, and it’s why the position that was once a liability for Romney has now become a litmus test for GOP contenders.

In the short term, GOP primary candidates may benefit from staking out such extremist positions, but they are undoubtedly alienating female voters and making it even more difficult to ever win a national election. As the party gets smaller and more conservative, GOP leaders’ anti-woman vitriol is getting worse and their stances on women’s health issues are getting more dangerous. Unless they change course soon, the party will only continue to shrink, and the cycle will continue. Indeed, with their distorted view of “life,” Republicans may be trapped in a death spiral from which they cannot escape.

Read more from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s archive or follow her on Twitter.

See: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-gops-problems-with-women-go-far-beyond-donald-trump/2015/08/11/d13a1c56-3f97-11e5-bfe3-ff1d8549bfd2_story.html

Robert Reich: There’s a Revolt Against the Ruling Class Brewing — Elites Don’t See It Coming

In two very different ways, Trump and Sanders are agents of this revolt.

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Source: AlterNet, RobertReich.org

Author: Richard Reich

Emphasis Mine

“He can’t possibly win the nomination,” is the phrase heard most often when Washington insiders mention either Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders.

Yet as enthusiasm for the bombastic billionaire and the socialist senior continues to build within each party, the political establishment is mystified.

They don’t understand that the biggest political phenomenon in America today is a revolt against the “ruling class” of insiders that have dominated Washington for more than three decades.

In two very different ways, Trump and Sanders are agents of this revolt. I’ll explain the two ways in a moment.

Don’t confuse this for the public’s typical attraction to candidates posing as political outsiders who’ll clean up the mess, even when they’re really insiders who contributed to the mess.

What’s new is the degree of anger now focused on those who have had power over our economic and political system since the start of the 1980s.

Included are presidents and congressional leaders from both parties, along with their retinues of policy advisors, political strategists, and spin-doctors.

Most have remained in Washington even when not in power, as lobbyists, campaign consultants, go-to lawyers, financial bundlers, and power brokers.

The other half of the ruling class comprises the corporate executives, Wall Street chiefs, and multi-millionaires who have assisted and enabled these political leaders — and for whom the politicians have provided political favors in return.

America has long had a ruling class but the public was willing to tolerate it during the three decades after World War II, when prosperity was widely shared and when the Soviet Union posed a palpable threat. Then, the ruling class seemed benevolent and wise.

Yet in the last three decades — when almost all the nation’s economic gains have gone to the top while the wages of most people have gone nowhere –– the ruling class has seemed pad its own pockets at the expense of the rest of America.

We’ve witnessed self-dealing on a monumental scale — starting with the junk-bond takeovers of the 1980s, followed by the Savings and Loan crisis, the corporate scandals of the early 2000s (Enron, Adelphia, Global Crossing, Tyco, Worldcom), and culminating in the near meltdown of Wall Street in 2008 and the taxpayer-financed bailout.

Along the way, millions of Americans lost their jobs their savings, and their homes.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has opened the floodgates to big money in politics wider than ever. Taxes have been cut on top incomes, tax loopholes widened, government debt has grown, public services have been cut. And not a single Wall Street executive has gone to jail.

The game seems rigged — riddled with abuses of power, crony capitalism, and corporate welfare.

In 2001, a Gallup poll found 77 percent of Americans satisfied with opportunities to get ahead by working hard and 22 percent dissatisfied. By 2014, only 54 percent were satisfied and 45 percent dissatisfied.

The resulting fury at ruling class has taken two quite different forms.

On the right are the wreckers. The Tea Party, which emerged soon after the Wall Street bailout, has been intent on stopping government in its tracks and overthrowing a ruling class it sees as rotten to the core.

Its Republican protégés in Congress and state legislatures have attacked the Republican establishment. And they’ve wielded the wrecking balls of government shutdowns, threats to default on public debt, gerrymandering, voter suppression through strict ID laws, and outright appeals to racism.

Donald Trump is their human wrecking ball. The more outrageous his rants and putdowns of other politicians, the more popular he becomes among this segment of the public that’s thrilled by a bombastic, racist, billionaire who sticks it to the ruling class.

On the left are the rebuilders. The Occupy movement, which also emerged from the Wall Street bailout, was intent on displacing the ruling class and rebuilding our political-economic system from the ground up.

Occupy didn’t last but it put inequality on map. And the sentiments that fueled Occupy are still boiling.

Bernie Sanders personifies them. The more he advocates a fundamental retooling of our economy and democracy in favor of average working people, the more popular he becomes among those who no longer trust the ruling class to bring about necessary change.

Yet despite the growing revolt against the ruling class, it seems likely that the nominees in 2016 will be Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. After all, the ruling class still controls America.

But the revolt against the ruling class won’t end with the 2016 election, regardless.

Which means the ruling class will have to change the way it rules America. Or it won’t rule too much longer.

Robert B. Reich has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He also served on President Obama’s transition advisory board. His latest book is “Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future.” His homepage is www.robertreich.org.

 

See: http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/robert-reich-theres-revolt-against-ruling-class-brewing-elites-dont-see-it-coming?akid=13352.123424.onHRay&rd=1&src=newsletter1040341&t=3

Is America Undergoing a Major Political Sea Change? Inside the Shocking Rise of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/america-undergoing-major-political-sea-change-exploring-shocking-rise-bernie-sanders?akid=13338.123424.tn7jbS&rd=1&src=newsletter1040052&t=1

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Add MediaSource: AlterNet

Author: Stephan Rosenfeld

Emphasis Mine

America’s political center, if it ever really existed, appears to be shrinking.

On the left, Bernie Sanders’ issue-oriented presidential campaign of economic justice is drawing the crowds and generating the most passion, eclipsing his more moderate competitors. And on the right, Donald Trump’s loud promises to use his dealmaking moxie to fix the country, with a dose of racist comments thrown in, has pushed him to the top of the polls in 2016’s early states.

There’s no shortage of pundits writing off their surges. Surely, you’ve heard them all, which amount to saying that when the campaign gets serious, they will seriously falter. The latest analyses from this past weekend’s polling noted that both were doing well in two of the whitest states—Iowa and New Hampshire—but not in bigger, more diverse ones. So now these hallowed presidential proving grounds prove nothing?

But there is one explanation you won’t find among the politicos who are parsing the interior numbers in polls—such as the negative approval ratings, or appeal by race and gender. That explanation is that the political spectrum is changing, or stretching toward its blunter extremes, which also accounts for the muted enthusiasm for both party’s leading establishment candidates, Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush.

A shifting electorate is the last thing many pundits want to confront. The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza, pointing to four recent polls, merely says Hillary should worry about her rising unpopularity. He does not touch the deeper question: is she out of tune with what’s engaging the public now? His colleague, Phillip Bump says she’s lagging among whites in Iowa and New Hampshire, but climbs back up in later states where she appeals to non-whites. Sanders and Trump aren’t doing that, he said.

At Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, another go-to site for reporters to get zeitgeist quotes, the reflex is to dismiss both Trumps and Sanders for different reasons, rather than probe how the electorate may be shifting. Trump’s surge, according to associate editor Geoffrey Skelly, is because he’s well-known, loud, in a crowded field, and keeps getting press coverage. Even worse, the GOP idiotically tied participation in its upcoming presidential debate to how candidates are polling, he said, where Trump will be “attacked from all sides.”

One can go very far in political analysis by being cynical. But that does not mean you’ve got your finger on a changing pulse. Politico’s  piece on Trump’s latest rise in New Hampshire and Iowa points to the politics of anger, especially against Washington power-brokers, which includes the GOP’s congressional majority.

“Just 16 percent among all Republicans (15 percent of Republican registered voters… [and] 50 percent of Democrats (51 percent of Democratic registered voters) feel that they are [well] represented in the nation’s capital,” it reported. “Among independents, just 27 percent feel well-represented.”

What are people angry about? Who is giving voice to their problems, or offering solutions? CNN says the top concerns facing voters are the economy (44 percent), health care (20 percent) and terrorism (12 percent). If those numbers are accurate, it is not surprising that Sanders and Trump, on the left and right, have captivated voters because they are speaking outside the safe centrist political box.

Trump’s bragging that most of politics comes down to being the best negotiator has an appeal when the Republican-controlled Congress is bumbling at best. His slaps at immigrants are ugly, but there have always been racists in modern Republican ranks. Today’s GOP is not the party of Lincoln, nor is it Teddy Roosevelt’s anti-corporate reformers. Most of their 2016 candidates have been recycling Ronald Reagan’s rhetoric or predictable policies benefitting the upper classes.

While it remains to be seen what broad new agenda will emerge on the right, it is not surprising that the cliché-ridden remedies spouted by a field of predictable candidates isn’t creating much excitement, even as they try to out-do each other on the far right. Trump’s rise strongly suggests something in the GOP’s base is shifting.

Bernie Sanders’ surge is more easily traced, and also shows shifting voter sensibilities. His messaging has been saturated with specifics, from his speeches to e-mails. On Monday morning, he sent out a long missive seeking $3 donations that listed 12 issue areas and his solutions: jobs, jobs, jobs; raising wages; wealth and income inequality; reforming Wall St.; campaign finance reform; fighting climate change; health care for all; protecting our most vulnerable; expanding opportunity and equality; dismantling structural racism; college for all; war and peace. This is not political fundraising as usual.

It is easy to say that Sanders, like Elizabeth Warren before him, is pulling the Democrats closer to their progressive heart. But Sanders would not be as successful as he has been if Democrats in the electorate were not embracing his message. As one of Iowa’s leading pro-Democrat bloggers, BleedingHeartland.com, wrote this weekend, “Bernie Sanders continues to draw the largest crowds in Iowa–including roughly 1,200 people in West Des Moines on Friday—and polls indicate that he is cutting into Hillary Clinton’s lead among likely Democratic caucus-goers.”

Clinton still led Sanders by 29 points, 55 percent to 26 percent, with Martin O’Malley at 4 percent and Jim Webb at 2 percent, it reported, citing the latest polls. But “his message is resonating with a sizable part of the Democratic base, as anyone could see on Friday night during his town-hall meeting at West Des Moines Valley High School. I challenge any Democrat to find one substantive point to disagree with in Sanders’ stump speech. Many people who attend his events are already ‘feeling the Bern.’ My impression is that the undecideds who show up walk away giving him their serious consideration. I doubt anyone leaves a Sanders event thinking, ‘I could never caucus for that guy.’”

BleedingHeartland continued, “Listening to Sanders on Friday, I was again struck by the senator’s distinctive way of speaking. He packs a lot of facts and figures into his remarks without sounding wonky. He conveys a lot of passion without raising his voice often. Compared to many candidates, he says very little about his children and grandchildren. Still, his feelings about family come through loud and clear when he contrasts Republican ideas about ‘family values’ (a ‘woman shouldn’t be able to control her own body’) with what family values should mean (for instance, a mom and dad having paid time off from work so they can get to know their new baby). Although the Sanders stump speech is overly long—pushed well past the one-hour mark by many interruptions for applause—he keeps his listeners’ attention. Even my 12-year-old was still engaged….”

Next years’ presidential caucuses are a long way off, and the November election is even further away. It’s easy for pundits to dismiss Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, for different reasons, with respect to their eventual prospects. But doing so can overlook what’s happening now, which is the assumed frames, views and mood of the electorate are shifting, or stretching, or changing, and favoring the blunt and unconventional.

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). 

See: http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/america-undergoing-major-political-sea-change-exploring-shocking-rise-bernie-sanders?akid=13338.123424.tn7jbS&rd=1&src=newsletter1040052&t=1