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. And it may be surprising to hear. But there isn’t a single Tennessee Republican legislator that would openly disagree with this.

Tennessee is already a theocracy. https://t.co/x2mq7UkfCn

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) May 23, 2022

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.

 

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Not A Simple Prescription

Some center-left Democrats are enthralled with Mayor Eric Adams of New York City and Politico has reported

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, just had Adams speak at the DCCC’s Chairman’s Issues Conference and Weekend in the city on Saturday. Adams suggested the following talking points to attack the GOP:

 “Let’s force them to explain why they oppose common sense gun laws but support the violence claiming innocent lives.”

“Why murder rates are the highest in red states.”

“Why they won’t stop the flow of illegal firearms or ban ghost guns, but they will allow police officers to be shot with them.”

“Let’s force them to explain how they are for law and order and against funding law enforcement.”

Gun safety legislation is necessary and Democrats should inform voters that GOP states are murder havens and that Republicans accept police officers being shot with ghost guns and other firearms. That should be easy to do. However, Politico adds, Adams

also reinforced a moderate path for the party in rebuke of the more progressive actors who’ve supported the movement to defund the police and attack corporations.

“If we do not have the courage to admit public safety needs police, prosperity needs the private sector, and this country needs big changes, then we will not have the credibility to lead,” Adams said.

Steve M  understands

Right, because capitalism has worked so well for people in the 21st century. If you don't count the dot-com crash, the painfully slow recovery from the Great Recession, the current wave of inflation, and the decades-long decline in the share of national wealth that goes to the non-rich, capitalism seems awesome!....

As for capitalism, who apart from the Masters of the Universe themselves, and the politicians who desperately want their money, actually likes it anymore? Even Republicans know now that they get loud rounds of applause when they attack big corporations (although they don't really want to change their overall approach to the rich, as long as the rich defer to them politically).

He concedes

I think Defund the Police was an off-putting message, a terrible way to frame what was a popular idea two years ago: that there's serious police abuse that needs to stop. It's true that most people, including people of color, want traditional policing -- but they want it without the brutality. Adams actually won the mayor's race by appearing to hit a sweet spot: He's an ex-cop who said he was a victim of police mistreatment as a young man, and he seemed to advocate reform as well as law and order. But as mayor he's abandoned the idea of reform.

I'm not convinced voters are repulsed by police brutality. After George Floyd was murdered 24 months ago this month, most people were outraged as images of the brutality were so pervasive that they were virtually inescapable.

Those images are now a thing of the past, replaced by video of mayhem which occurred at some of the George Floyd protests, as well as constant (exaggerated) reminders by the media of soaring murder rates.  Republican Conference chairperson Elise Stefanik skillfully exploited this with her loathsome, yet tactically brilliant, tweet following the mass murder in Buffalo:

Our nation is heartbroken about the tragic news of horrific loss of life in Buffalo.

We are mourning for the entire community & loved ones.

During #NationalPoliceWeek, we must thank & honor our law enforcement & first responders who heroically face skyrocketing violent crimes.

— Rep. Elise Stefanik (@RepStefanik) May 14, 2022

When Stefanik spoke of allegedly "skyrocketing violent crimes," she wasn't referring to mass murders at schools, discount department stores, or supermarkets.  She was talking about the violent crime which takes place daily across the country, which occurs disproportionately in minority neighborhoods in major cities. (If a Tucker Carlson fan, you might believe it occurs exclusively in black neighborhoods in major cities.)

Democrats didn't need a lecture from a big-city mayor to know they have been plagued with an image of being "soft" on crime since Richard Nixon demagogically urged "law and order" to combat "crime in the streets."  It's history that Eric Adams chooses to ignore because it carries with it potentially explosive implications.  Democrats cannot talk effectively and convincingly about crime, guns, and police without confronting the racial component considered fundamental by (non-black) Americans. So good luck with that.

Race was an important theme in Richard Nixon's narrative and, even more cagily, it is now for Elise Stefanik and her fellow travelers.  Eric Adams won't tell you. Nancy Pelosi and Sean Patrick Maloney won't tell you. Neither will Politico and the rest of the mainstream media tell you. But it is the rest of the story.

 

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Where Sociology, Law, And American History May Meet

Admittedly, two items do not constitute a pattern, and various individuals are involved. However,  with both parties right-wing Republicans and an intriguing confluence of values exhibited, this might be referred to as Speculation Friday.

You will recall that, as explained in July 2018

In April 2018, the Trump administration announced a so-called “zero tolerance” policy on unauthorized immigration. Under this policy, each and every migrant – including asylum seekers – attempting to cross the U.S. border anywhere other than at an official port of entry was to be detained and criminally prosecuted. This approach meant the systematic separation of newly arriving adult migrants from children who had accompanied them if those migrants were crossing into the United States without authorization (and outside of official ports of entry).

Thousands of children were separated from their parents, and, following intense public outcry, the administration halted family separation and has sought instead to detain migrant families together – a move that has been subject to legal challenge and has yet to move forward.

"So-called" 'zero tolerance' policy is about right.  The Administration would have liked, if possible, to prosecute each parent in federal criminal court. Fortunately

A Biden administration effort to reunite children and parents who were separated under President Donald Trump's zero-tolerance border policy has made increasing progress as it nears the end of its first year.

The Department of Homeland Security announced Thursday that 100 children, mostly from Central America, were back with their families and that about 350 more reunifications were in process after it had taken steps to enhance the program....

On his first day in office, President Joe Biden issued an executive order to reunite families that had been separated under the Trump administration's widely condemned practice of forcibly separating parents and children at the U.S.-Mexico border to discourage illegal immigration.

"Zero-tolerance border policy." Unless the Voice of America is stenographer for former President Donald Trump, the first two words should be in quotes. The Administration claimed the objective was zero-tolerance. At 1:48 of the Canadian video below, the narrator innocently maintains "still, the Administration is convinced it will work. It will be, and already is, a deterrent. The problem is, that might not be so." A little needed skepticism, but still an assumption that deterrence was at the heart of the policy.

That might not be so. It may have been prompted by an interest in deterrence or plain cruelty, or some combination thereof. But there is no better time than Speculation Friday to suggest the possibility of a third motive, suggested by what- on the surface- is a completely different issue.

Justifiably alarmed, Slate's legal analyst Dahlia Lithwick recently wrote

One of the most arresting lines in Justice Samuel Alito’s 98-page draft opinion reversing Roe v. Wade is a footnote that didn’t really surface until the weekend. A throwaway footnote on Page 34 of the draft cites data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing that in 2002, nearly 1 million women were seeking to adopt children, “whereas the domestic supply of infants relinquished at birth or within the first month of life and available to be adopted has become virtually nonexistent"

....... the footnote reflects something profoundly wrong with the new “ethos of care” arguments advanced by Republicans who want to emphasize compassion instead of cruelty after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health fallout. Footnote 46, quantifying the supply/demand mismatch of babies, follows directly on another footnote in the opinion approvingly citing the “logic” raised at oral argument in December by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who mused that there is no meaningful hardship in conscripting women to remain pregnant and deliver babies in 2022 because “safe haven” laws allow them to drop those unwanted babies off at the fire station for other parents to adopt.

Lithwick is concerned about "the extortionate emotional and financial costs of childbirth and the increased medical risks of forced childbirth." Additionally, she offers a brief history lesson which suggests "removing babies from their biological parents to be used by others lay at the very heart of the system of slavery."  

Drawing a connection between that system and Alito's reasoning, Lithwick recognizes "the argument that forced birth is justified because other people can have enjoyment of the resulting children sends us tumbling deeper down the rabbit hole into commodifying babies and conscripting their mothers. This is hardly a practice that ended with slavery. " 

According to the VOA, approximately 5500 children were forcefully removed from their parents during the Trump Administration. Yet despite their intensive efforts, well under 1000 youngsters have been reunited with their family. And now we have conservative Republican Samuel Alito, with tactical air support supplied by Trump nominee/appointee Amy Coney Barrett, pining for "the domestic supply of infants." This could be a coincidence. 

 And yet, "cruelty was the point, sure, but so was the forced birth and separation," Lithwick maintains about the practice of slaveholders using white men to impregnate black slaves for economic benefit. Slavery certainly provided a domestic supply of infants, which Alito et al. are favorable toward. Meanwhile, no one knows the exact location of those 4,000 boys and girls, cruelly separated from their parents at the border, or whether they have conveniently become a domestic supply.

 

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The Very First Rule

For a political strategist, Rachel Bitecofer is way out of touch.

First rule of GQP. Don't speak of the coke orgies.

— Jeff Scott (@Jeff_Scott87) May 19, 2022

It's the ONLY rule

— Rachel Bitecofer 📈🔭🍌🇺🇦 (@RachelBitecofer) May 19, 2022

As Chris Hayes explains, there is video of U.S. Representative Madison Cawthorn, who on Tuesday lost his bid to be nominated by the Republican Party for a second term, claiming that Republican colleagues had asked him to attend sex and cocaine-infused parties.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was upset. Other Republicans probably also were none too pleased.

We in the public do not know whether Cawthorn was telling the truth. However,  no video of this escapade exists other than Cawthorn calmly alleging existence of these affairs. Thus, it is a charge which probably does not stick in the minds of many voters, in part because there is no sex or hint of sex in any video itself.

However, we do have the following:

 

And there is this:

 

 

For those many Democrats and centrists, including the preponderance of the national media who would interpret this as harmless and normal fun, it should be instructive that a PAC has filed an ethics complaint against Cawthorn and

Among the many allegations is the claim that representative for North Carolina's 11th district provided thousands of dollars in loans and gifts to (Stephen) Smith, a staff member, with whom, the complaint states, he is engaged in an improper relationship characterized by steamy postings on social media and so close that the staffer joined Cawthorn on his honeymoon to Dubai in April 2021.

After the crotch thing became public, a prescient Cawthorn noted "Many of my colleagues would be nowhere near politics if they had grown up with a cell phone in their hands.' He wasn't talking about phone calls or text messages.

And so, as one tweeter maintains and Bitecofer agrees, one rule of a Republican primary is not to be associated in any way with a hint of cocaine or sex parties.  But two other rules for a man to survive GOP primaries might be: don't flaunt foreplay with another man and don't advertise your preference for wearing women's lingerie. And of course the most important: don't be captured on video doing either.

 

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Not Quite Yet

I confess that I do not like Oprah Winfrey. I have never liked her, don't like her, and probably never will like her. 

Winfrey, or "Oprah" as an adoring media calls her, has never seemed to embody principle or a firm set of values. Money and image appear to be her guiding principles. There is no clear ideological reason that (as the video below reminds us) she endorsed Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. The dirty little secret (for which the elite would substitute "wonderful" for "dirty") is that she yearned for a President who would "make history," whatever benefit or harm he would bring to the country.

I posted yesterday two excellent tweets. Today, I reverse that and post tweets from one clueless, and one almost clueless, individual about arguably the most popular American celebrity of the past decades.

Every powerful person has a responsibility to speak when they see injustice in general, but especially when they helped set the injustice in motion.

Oprah should have campaigned relentlessly against Oz. I don’t believe she did.

Silence at injustice = support for injustice. https://t.co/aRTU4cWBBn

— Dr. Thrasher (@thrasherxy) May 18, 2022

"Oprah" is more than a "dialogue starter." As of 2021, she was considered the fourth most admired woman in the world. Reportedly worth approximately $2.6 billion, Winfrey is held in such esteem that the Smithsonian museum in 2018 dedicated to her an exhibition entitled "Watching Oprah: The Oprah Winfrey Show and American Culture." With such great influence and wealth comes great responsibility.

Winfrey did indeed launch the media career of Dr. Mehta Oz, who thereby became simply the far more marketable "Dr. Oz." She chose to promote his career despite the widespread belief in medical circles that Oz  stood upon a platform of quackery (video below from 12/21).  Winfrey promoted Dr. Oz- and his growing popularity in turn contributed to Oprah's own phenomenal success.  She commands a microphone more than almost anyone in this country, and if she were to choose publicly to deny responsibility for Dr. Oz' rise, she has every opportunity to do so.

Nonetheless, there was no reason heretofore for Ms. Winfrey to "campaign relentlessly against Oz."  Mehta Oz was running in a primary, not a general election.  If Winfrey had spoken out against Oz, she would have been aiding the candidacy of either David McCormick, a far-right hedge fund executive, or Kathy Barnette, apparently a far-right participant in the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2020. Though Oz would be a terrible US Senator, there is scant evidence that either of the other two wouldn't be at least as dangerous.

As of this writing, the race is sufficiently close that a recount is likely. If Oz does not prevail, Winfrey's silence will prove to have been irrelevant. If Oz does prevail, there is plenty of time for Ms. Winfrey to explain not only that Oz would not be a wise choice in November but that his opponent, John Fetterman, is far more dedicated to the democratic process and to the values of a free people.  

Patience, patience.  Tweeter Thrasher recognizes that powerful people should speak out against injustice, particularly when the individual (albeit lacking prescience) indirectly helped bring it about. But if there is a time for everything, the time for Oprah Winfrey to criticize Dr. Mehta Oa was not during a primary race but during a general election contest. It would be an invaluable part of her legacy.

 

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On Target

Monday, May 16 included an excellent tweet from a prominent Republican- and an excellent retort.

 

— Geoff (get vaccinated!) Nesnow (@DonotInnovate) May 16, 2022

It is the opposite side of the same issue, or an essential part of the same issue. Last August, Representative Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, and Adam Kinzinger, the Republican who serves with Cheney on the 1/6 commission, voted against the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, thus leading Mehdi Hasan to note."On voting rights, the most important issue of our time, Cheney, Kinzinger, Romney… are not your friends."

It is the most important issue of our time and no Republican in the US House of Representatives voted in favor of voting rights. (The bill failed to receive the 60 votes necessary to proceed in the Senate, with Alaska's Lisa Murkowski the only Republican willing to advance it to debate.)

Nonetheless, Cheney's said (typed?) what was necessary. She criticized the white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-semitism saturating today's GOP. She avoided attributing it specifically to Donald Trump, albeit a worthy target but low-handing fruit, or to the Republican street. Clearly, she had in mind House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik but broadened it to House leadership generally.

The Wyoming congresswoman challenged the leaders of her party to denounce the bigots. Moreover, she managed to blast white supremacy and white nationalism without using the "r" word, arguably the least-defined, most abused term in the English language: racist.

White nationalism and white supremacy, with a valid nod toward anti-semitism, says it all. There is no need to write "racist" because it is flagrantly overused, poorly understood, and antagonizes individuals.  It is applied to individuals who are racist and more often to individuals who are not. Used in this fashion, it has become virtually meaningless, a go-to term invoked by people to mean- well, whatever they choose for it to mean.

When she accuses leadership, in the chamber in which she serves, to the party to which she (and her famous father) belong, of enabling evil, Liz Cheney is being succinct and comprehensive in under 281 characters. It's what had to be said by someone we needed to hear it from, a Republican and sitting member of the House of Representatives.

Her legacy will be determined by two things: her leadership opposing her party's allegiance to the attempted coup of 1/6/20; and the leadership she thus far has not exhibited in opposing her party's allegiance to voter suppression. As Professor Nesnow indicated, the first logically leads to the second, a connection which thus far Elizabeth Cheney regrettably seems not to have made.

 

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Where "Partisan" Is Republican

Buried deep into her piece on Saturday in The Washington Post, Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer write

Biden’s decision to dub Republicans as “ultra MAGA” — like another new Biden quip, “This is not your father’s Republican Party — represents a turnabout from his campaign persona. He ran as a unifier, promising that under a Biden administration Republicans would have an “epiphany” and bipartisanship would return to Washington.

Instead, partisan vitriol has continued to consume the nation’s capital, a reality Biden seems to acknowledge with his “ultra MAGA” descriptor — a wing of the Republican Party that he described as “petty,” “mean-spirited,” “extreme” and “beyond the pale” at a fundraiser in Chicago Wednesday night.

Biden's recent remarks, Ashley & Scherer maintain, "represents a turnabout from his campaign persona." (As I explained in my immediate previous post, they really don't, but that's off-topic.)  Moreover, they maintain, "partisan vitriol has continued to consume the nation's capital...."

If indeed- as conventional wisdom has it- Biden's recent comments are a turnabout from his promise to be a unifier, the reporter seems at a loss to understand it. Her point appears to be: Joe Biden is no longer Joe Biden, but instead has become what his enemies are.

That bothsiderism angle is, as the President himself would put it, malarkey. In the same newspaper the following day, WAPO's Marianna Sotomayor noted promotion of the Great Replacement Theory by the wildly popular right-wing talk show host Tucker Carlson, as well as by three Republican US Representatives- Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Matt Gaetz of Florida, and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.

Nevertheless, Sotomayor properly emphasized the advocacy of New York State's Elise Stefanik. In a Facebook ad posted by her campaign last September, the third highest-ranking GOP House member contended

Radical Democrats are planning their most aggressive move yet: a PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION. Their plan to grant amnesty to 11 MILLION illegal immigrants will overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington.

At the time, Stefanik's hometown newspaper editorialized

Ms. Stefanik isn’t so brazen as to use the slogans themselves; rather, she couches the hate in alarmist anti-immigrant rhetoric that’s become standard fare for the party of Donald Trump. And she doesn’t quite attack immigrants directly; instead, she alleges that Democrats are looking to grant citizenship to undocumented immigrants in order to gain a permanent liberal majority, or, as she calls it, a “permanent election insurrection.

So perhaps this was not surprising:

The White House, House Dems, & usual pedo grifters are so out of touch with the American people that rather than present ANY PLAN or urgency to address the nationwide baby formula crisis, they double down on sending pallets of formula to the southern border. Joe Biden has NO PLAN

— Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) May 13, 2022

Stefanik is much too slick to say "let immigrant babies die" or "keep the Latinos out."  However, as Yale professor Philip Gorski has told Greg Sargent, "first, it was the entertainment wing of the GOP. Now it's the political wing as well." New York Times reporters Nicholas Confesore and Karen Yourish recognize that versions of the ideas espoused in the manifesto of Payton S. Gendron, the apparent perpetrator of the mass murder in Buffalo

sanded down and shorn of explicitly anti-Black and antisemitic themes, have become commonplace in the Republican Party — spoken aloud at congressional hearings, echoed in Republican campaign advertisements and embraced by a growing array of right-wing candidates and media personalities.

Republican leaders have been spouting rhetoric which itself goes well beyond President Biden's adjectives of “petty,” “mean-spirited,” “extreme” and “beyond the pale.”  Nor is the Republican invective relegated to an "ultra-MAGA" wing, whatever that is. It is deep in the heart of leadership, including House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik. That is the partisan vitriol infecting the country and it has no parallel in the Democratic Party, even as some reporters pretend otherwise.

 

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