Tag: GOP

Everyone loses when MAGA Republicans get their way

September 27, 2023 / CounterPoint

Freedom Caucus, US House, GOP Right Wing, speaker of the house, political cartoon

What you need to know

Now you might be thinking: Didn’t we just go through this whole cycle a few months ago? The brinksmanship, the urgent warnings, the crisis over government funding? Why on earth is this happening again?

The short answer: Because Republicans have handed the car keys to the most extreme members of their caucus and they’re driving us all off a cliff.

The long answer: The May default crisis was resolved in the nick of time with a deal between President Biden and Kevin McCarthy. That deal set top-line spending levels for the coming year’s budget.

Extreme MAGA Republicans have spent the last several months agitating against the deal. Their demands are wide-ranging and radical. They want dramatic cuts to federal programs. They want to defund the DOJ and aid to Ukraine. They want to restrict access to medication abortion. They want drastic cuts to social safety net programs. In short, they want to move the goalposts for the budget process into right-wing fantasy land. As a result, Republican House members are currently literally unable to agree with each other on how to fund the federal government.

Now, this would not be a problem if Kevin McCarthy was willing to ignore the MAGA caucus. Because he does have enough votes in the House to pass the original deal. It’s just that he’d need Democratic votes to do it. And he’s committed to his caucus that he won’t pass a funding bill unless it can pass with only Republican votes.

US government shutdown: What is it and who would be affected?

This crisis could also be resolved if even a handful of Republicans were willing to go against their party and sign a discharge petition to allow Democrats to bring a bipartisan bill to the floor. A discharge petition is a tactic that allows a majority of Congress members to override the Speaker and put a bill on the floor. Plenty of Republicans (especially the ones who are worried about their re-elections, like the Unrepresentatives) are giving quotes about being frustrated, or how they wish their party would get its act together. Every time you hear that, just remember: it would take 6 Republicans signing a discharge petition to allow Democrats to bring a bipartisan bill to the floor. If your representative isn’t willing to do this, then their words are meaningless.

It’s common for the media to frame shutdowns as a “both sides” issue. But let’s be clear: This is not a situation where “Washington is broken” or “the two sides can’t work it out.” The deal has been reached. The votes for the deal are there. That’s not the problem. The problem is that Republicans, under pressure from their most extreme MAGA members, have unilaterally abandoned the deal. They would rather shut the government down than simply work with Democrats to pass the budget deal they already agreed to.

Don’t just take our word for it — here’s the same point from an unlikely source:

Said arsonist Matt Gaetz, “We cannot blame the Democrats for having not done our job to comply with the coalition agreement that we made at the beginning of the year. That is the fault of the Speaker.”

All of this would be comical if there weren’t such awful consequences for the rest of us. The pain of a government shutdown is enormous. Essential services for seniors, working families, the military, and first responders are disrupted. Kids go hungry because programs like WIC and SNAP lose funding. Disaster relief funding — like money for the survivors of the Maui fires — is delayed or cut. And crucial government functions like food safety inspections and air travel oversight risk disruption.

Everyone loses when MAGA Republicans get their way.

OK, so what do we do about it?

There are two things we need to do here:

First, we need to get out of this mess without rewarding Republicans’ terrible behavior. If you’ve got a Democratic representative, you should be telling them to stand strong. If you’ve got a Republican representative, you should be putting the heat on them — especially if you’ve got a Republican who represents a flippable district, or who’s in principle opposed to their party’s shenanigans.

Second, if a shutdown does occur, we need to make sure that the public understands that it’s a product of Republican extremism and dysfunction. Republicans are doing something very unpopular (shutting down the government) to try to get something else that’s also very unpopular (cuts to essential programs for families, seniors, and more). They need to pay a political price for it. Fortunately, we’ve got a plan for that – an entire campaign. Join our Unrepresentatives Project and help us hold the most vulnerable Republicans accountable.

The reality is that for these folks, the election season has already started. If this shutdown drags on, we’ve got to make sure they see consequences for it.

In solidarity,
Leah Greenberg
Co-founder and Co-Executive Director, of Indivisible

The GOP’s impeachment push is an attack on democracy

September 11, 2023 / CounterPoint

Republicans filed impeachment articles on Biden before he was sworn into office.

Republicans have openly admitted that their efforts to impeach President Joe Biden — which will begin in earnest this week as House members return to DC from summer break — are in bad faith. They don’t just want to tarnish Biden. They want to tarnish the impeachment process itself.

As the GOP has become increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic, Republicans have become increasingly committed to undermining and mocking forms of democratic accountability. A nakedly partisan and clownish impeachment is useful because it signals to voters that all impeachments are clown shows, and all impeachments are partisan. That exculpates former President Donald Trump and delegitimizes resistance to him should he win the presidency again.

By September 2022, Republicans in the then-Democratic-controlled House had initiated no less than nine impeachment resolutions.

Some of these resolutions proposed impeaching Biden for (supposedly) failing to control immigration on the Mexican border. Others focused on disputes over the handling of the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. Still, others were based on Republican claims that Biden’s moratorium on evictions during the pandemic was unconstitutional.

Source:

The GOP’s impeachment push is an attack on democracy

The GOP is looking more and more like the fascist parties of 1930s Europe

August 9, 2023 / CounterPoint

Trump says that if Judge Tanya Chutkan orders him not to reveal details of the prosecution’s case before they can be presented to a jury, including the names, addresses, and testimony of witnesses against him, he’s going to do it anyway and challenge the court.

And there’s little reason to believe he won’t do it: he’ll take what he’s asserting as his First Amendment right to troll and threaten witnesses against him all the way to the Supreme Court he packed with three rightwing crackpots. If nothing else, it may buy him enough time to get elected president and pardon himself before he’s convicted.

Kyle Rittenhouse, after killing two unarmed protestors, is lionized across the GOP (an Idaho Republican Party recently raffled off “Trigger Time With Kyle,” an opportunity to shoot an AR15 with the man-child himself).

From “rolling coal” trucks blowing poisonous smoke at Prius and EV drivers, to “Free helicopter rides for liberals” tee shirts invoking Pinochet’s murders, to hate groups and militia members showing up at school board meetings, today’s Republican Party has fully embraced hate and trolling.

Have Trolling & Hate Become the Core, the Essential Identity, of the Post-Trump GOP?

How far can a political party take trolling as its main way of motivating voters before it turns into something like the fascist parties of Europe in the 1930s or modern-day Russia and Hungary?

No Labels declines to reveal just who is funding its third party bid

June 23, 2023 / CounterPoint

UPDATE 6/23 No Labels Exposed: Here’s a List of Donors Funding Its Effort To Disrupt the 2024 Race

No Labels is helping a firm that raises money for right-wing extremists

Since its inception in 2010, No Labels has billed itself as a refuge for sensible centrists, inspiring a caucus on Capitol Hill called the “Problem Solvers.” More recently, it’s sought to assemble a potential third-party presidential ticket.

On No Label’s fundraising vendor’s Anedot Direct page, the firm promotes a “Conservative List” of organizations and candidates who can receive contributions directly through this service. The roster includes 205 entities, including 46 state GOP committees, Sen. Tim Scott’s and Nikki Haley’s presidential campaigns, 109 House Republican members (including Reps. Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Matt Gaetz), 37 GOP senators (including Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell, Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul), and 11 organizations (including Turning Point USA, Moms for America, the National Association for Gun Rights, and the National Republican Congressional Committee).

Who, exactly, is paying for this thing?

While No Labels has not actually named a ticket it wants to see run, it has privately made it evident that it has one in mind. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is seen as a potential candidate and has joined at least one regular conference call held by the group in late April. A state official granted anonymity to speak freely said Jacobson and Clancy both mentioned Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) as potential candidates during a 2022 phone call about fundraising.

No Labels declines to reveal just who is funding its third party bid

FASCISM: Army Talks 3/24/1945

May 30, 2023 / CounterPoint

Fascism, the U.S. government document explained, “is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state.” “The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.”

May 29, 2023

Beginning in 1943, the War Department published a series of pamphlets for U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II. Titled Army Talks, the series was designed “to help [the personnel] become better-informed men and women and therefore better soldiers.”

“The basic principles of democracy stand in the way of their desires; hence—democracy must go! Anyone who is not a member of their inner gang has to do what he’s told. They permit no civil liberties, no equality before the law.” “Fascism treats women as mere breeders. ‘Children, kitchen, and the church,’ was the Nazi slogan for women,” the pamphlet said.

Download (PDF, 18.96MB)

A GOP Chairman’s Tricky Hypocrisy on ‘Political’ Probes

March 28, 2023 / CounterPoint

“You know, the customer’s always right,” Comer said wryly, of his approach to the people who elected him and now brandish conspiracy theories, vulgar photographs featuring the president and his son, Hunter, and other lies they expect him to act upon.

“I say, ‘Let me see it,’ because I want to see where the source is,” he said. “They don’t know that it’s QAnon, but it’s QAnon stuff.”

His embrace of such statements reflects how Comer has transformed himself to command the Republican war machine in Congress — becoming a high-profile example of what it takes to rise and thrive in the Fox News-fed MAGA universe. (NYTimes)

A GOP Chairman’s Tricky Hypocrisy on ‘Political’ Probes

While Rep. James Comer (R-KY) has been tapped to steer congressional probes into what House Republicans characterize as the “weaponization” of government investigations, Comer is no stranger to weaponizing politically driven investigations. Last week, Comer and Rep.

When You Want to Annihilate Everyone Else in Society, Maybe the Problem Is…You

March 8, 2023 / CounterPoint

Hate is a strong claim, and yet it’s easy enough to see, or at least it should be, that in the manifold attacks on basic freedoms above, isn’t just the subtext of hate… But the real thing. Open calls for “eradication,” speaking about those of who are just pleading for decency as if we’re a “virus.” If all this isn’t hate, then what is? Surely hate doesn’t have only to be the next step, which is genuine material annihilation. It begins here.

Why Do the Fascists Hate Everyone So, So Much?

There’s a question which I keep asking these days. Maybe you do, too. It’s simple enough, and yet it’s surprisingly complicated, strange, and…ugly. Why do they hate us? You know what I mean already. Just think of the state of the nation or the world. It’s being rocked by fascist tides again.

The Jan 6 attack continues

March 8, 2023 / CounterPoint

What the Georgia GOP is doing cannot co-exist with a democratic Republic. It’s that simple.

On Monday night, the Republican-controlled Georgia House approved a bill that will empower Republicans to remove any elected District Attorney in the State if they go “rogue.” This follows the GOP-run Georgia State Senate passing a similar piece of legislation on Thursday.

Georgia Republicans want you to believe that the sudden need for this legislation is not about removing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for investigating Trump–as well as other GOP elected officials including Lieutenant Gov. Burt Jones for his role in Trump’s attempted coup. Those GOP officials, however, are undermined by the reality that this legislation was called for by Trump’s allies and is now being publicly cheered by Trump.

Georgia GOP takes first step to remove Fulton County DA Fani Willis in order to protect Trump

What the Georgia GOP is doing cannot co-exist with a democratic Republic. It’s that simple. Georgia Republicans want you to believe that the sudden need for this legislation is not about removing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for investigating Trump–as well as other GOP elected officials including Lieutenant Gov.