Monday, May 23, 2022

Tweet of the Day- With or Without Donald Trump



Doing important work on varied issues in a very conservative, Republican state:

She's saying it out loud because she will face no penalty, electorally or otherwise, for doing so.Tenessee may not yet be a theocracy but there are GOP legislators who would like it to be.  If there weren't, Republican legislators would denounce a statement which is as contrary to both the spirit and the letter of 1B as anything we've heard in years. 

Nor are there legislators in Georgia, the state in which Kandiss Taylor is running for the GOP nomination for governor, who will openly disagree with these remarks while Democratic politicians and others plead that the problem lies with Donald Trump and GOP politicians who are afraid to cross him.

Yet, here is a candidate who will lose badly in the Georgia primary on May 24. Polling at only about 4%, she has no chance to be nominated. She is not endorsed or praised by Donald Trump, who has endorsed and publicly supported former US Senator David Perdue. (Perdue has been running well behind incumbent Brian Kemp.)

She is not a particular favorite of Donald Trump, not only because she has had no chance of winning but also because she seems to be a living, breathing believing Christian, which does not go over very well with an ex-President contemptuous of Christianity.

Taylor never has held elective office and is not a veteran of the armed services, a businesswoman, or a member of the clergy, any of which may endear her at least a little to the GOP street. She has been described as having "formerly worked as a 3rd-grade teacher, testing coordinator, school counselor, student service coordinator, and homeless liaison in public schools." This is a field generally not well-regarded by either Republican voters or politicians.

Democratic politicians and others plead that the problem lies with Donald Trump and GOP politicians who are afraid to cross him. Yet, Kandiss Taylor, a zero trying to be a one, declares "the church runs the state of Georgia" and there is nary a peep from politicians in Georgia or in Tennessee.

Admittedly, in 2015-2016 Donald Trump did not have to invent crude and extreme right-wing views, needing only to mobilize and energize the dark impulses of the Republican id.  They were impulses lurking not only among GOP voters but also among party officials and officeholders.  

Nonetheless, independent of Mr. Trump, those impulsesnow  have been reinforced in some, adopted in other, Republican politicians.  They're not all insurrectionists, bigots, or theocrats. Nonetheless, many are- and  have become bolder and more extreme not because of Donald Trump but because it is what they believe.

 


1 comment:

Kenneth said...


Absolutely right! It's not just Trump. The Republican Right has been extremist for years.

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