Month: February 2021
DeSantis Polishes Conservative Creds at CPAC
“We can sit around and have debates about conservative policy… but the question is, when the klieg lights get hot, when the left comes after you, do you stand strong or do you fold?”
— Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), at CPAC, warning against a return to the old Republican “establishment.”
Trumer Suggests We ‘Blow It All Out’ on Deficit Spending
“There’s a lot of people that could use those checks. I don’t know about needing them, but we could all use them. The debt is so far out of hand that it’s a fantasy number at this point. We might as well just blow it out till everything collapses.”
— Trump supporter Anthony McGill, quoted by the New York Times.
Republican National Committee Can’t Count or Spell
36 out of 100
“The Republican National Committee complained on Thursday that President Joe Biden has not kept his promise to reopen most schools in the first 100 days of his presidency. He has only been on the job for 36 days,” the American Independent reports. From the now-deleted tweet: “On the campaign trial [sic], Biden promised to reopen schools within his first 100 days in office. But that is just another promise that President Biden hasn’t kept.”
Local GOP Leaders Pushing Conspiracies, Disinformation
“A faction of local, county and state Republican officials is pushing lies, misinformation and conspiracy theories that echo those that helped inspire the violent U.S. Capitol siege, online messaging that is spreading quickly through GOP ranks fueled by algorithms that boost extreme content.”
— Associated Press
The Search for Good Partisanship
“The best kind of partisanship, based on those universal values, promotes fierce but constructive arguments. It acknowledges that in a good society, most political differences involve not a choice between good versus evil, but among competing goods — efficiency, security, entrepreneurship, fairness, individualism and solidarity, to name a few. Compromise (along with, yes, bipartisanship) is easier when we’re honest about the trade-offs we’re making. … So our fight should not be against partisanship. It should be in favor of rehabilitating the vibrant and honest partisanship on which democracy depends.”
— E.J. Dionne
House Passes LGBTQ Equality Bill with Minimal Bipartisanship
224 to 206
The House voted 224 to 206 on Thursday to pass the Equality Act, which would expand federal protections for LGBTQ people by prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation, Axios reports. Three Republicans voted with all Democrats.
Dr. Democrat: The GOP Will Do Itself In, Just Be Patient
Dear Dr. Democrat,
I have very mixed feelings about cheering on the end of the Republican party. Not because I don’t want to see it shrunken and changed, but because I don’t see encouraging signs of declining power. I think the country is experiencing what we in Florida have gone through for years, which is minority rule based on gaming the system.
Republicans have gotten so good at this that it’s all they need to stay in power. They don’t need to convince the electorate of their rightness, they don’t need to win hearts or minds, they just need to keep suppressing the vote that would go against them and playing to their base. And if they all stick together, as McConnell has trained them to do, they not only win, they keep all the power and make all the decisions.
We got rid of Trump, maybe, but we are still in trouble. The work we still need to do is crushing and I don’t know if it’s even possible to succeed at it.
Please give me some encouragement that all is not lost.
Worried in Wakulla
Dear Worried,
I think you’re right on all counts, but I also see the Republican Party as weak and crumbling, which may be a product of my learned environment. But it’s difficult to operate politically for very long based on lies, which was the point of Tom Nichols’ recent piece in The Atlantic.
One of their biggest runs before now were the GOP’s anticommunist witch hunts. They started in the House around 1947-48, moved to the Senate in 1950 and then were obliterated with the “Have you no sense of decency?” episode in June 1954. A tremendous amount of damage was done in those few years – even though the lies were not promoted from the White House, either by Truman or Eisenhower (unlike Trump). And they didn’t have Fox News.
My point is, something will happen that will expose them or pop the bubble, but it’s going to have to be something irrefutable that even Fox, et. al., can’t ignore or spin – something like a Bush-Katrina moment that brings them down.
Crushing them at the polls would be a start. I thought we were going to do it last year, but … SOCIALISM! Thanks, Bernie and AOC.
I might sound like Paul E. Anna here, but I really believe it can’t last.
Sincerely,
Dr. Democrat
The Decision’s Elizabethan
They wait alike, Democrat, Republican and Libertarian,
In an atmosphere of high drama — almost Shakespearean.
Will she allow hiked wages?
It’s a question for the ages,
As we all bide the call of the Senate Parliamentarian.