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Donald Trump is teaching Republicans how to fight, by Michael Goodwin
The Republicans have been wimps for so long it’s hard to think of them any other way. But Trump may be changing that. From Michael Goodwin at nypost.com:
It’s an observation so strikingly true that you wonder why you didn’t think of it earlier. “Donald Trump,” a friend said the other day, “is teaching the Republican Party how to fight and how to win.”
The evidence is everywhere every day, and it was on vivid display Tuesday night. The president remains in a fighting mood, determined to keep punching his way forward.
The Trump way starts with the passage of the historic tax cuts despite tiny Republican majorities in Congress and scare tactics from the left. Before passage, polls showed the public was strongly opposed — but Trump pulled, pushed and bullied his party over the finish line.
The roaring results, with millions of workers already getting bonuses, pension boosts and pay hikes, vindicate his determination.
Another piece of evidence is that the government shutdown over the “Dreamers” was a huge defeat for Democrats, and Trump piled on the pain with a blistering ad about crimes by illegal immigrants that helped force divided Dems back to work.
The decision by the House intelligence panel to write and release its memo on possible FBI misdeeds is yet more evidence of a new fighting spirit. Even Speaker Paul Ryan, averse to conflict by temperament and training, forcefully supported the memo’s release, saying it was time to “cleanse” the FBI.
This is not George Bush’s or John Boehner’s Republican Party. This is Trump’s GOP, as he demonstrated in spades in his first State of the Union address.
For days, the White House advertised his speech as one where a kinder, gentler Trump would reach across the aisle and invite opponents to work with him on bipartisan programs to fix our broken immigration system and our crumbling infrastructure.
After all, that’s what Republicans usually do — soften their tone and, badgered by a liberal Washington press corps, give in to big government ideas.
While Trump did indeed deliver on those promises, it was just barely. Those offers were exceptions in an otherwise damn-the-Democrats, full-speed-ahead performance.
If this was Trump reaching out his hand, he was doing it from a position of strength and supreme confidence. If there is to be compromise, Dems will have to pay dearly for it.
To continue reading: Donald Trump is teaching Republicans how to fight
How Trump and the GOP Exploit Israel, by Jonathan Marshall
The Republicans have been trying for years to peel Jews away from the Democrats. Trump is playing this game to perfection. From Jonathan Marshall at consortiumnews.com:
Exclusive: Donald Trump’s Israel policies may have more to do with outmaneuvering Democrats than they do with any concern for Middle East peace, argues Jonathan Marshall.
Vice President Mike Pence addresses the Knesset, Israeli Parliament, in Jerusalem January 22, 2018.
Vice President Mike Pence’s trip to Israel last week revived warnings by foreign policy experts over the Trump administration’s controversial announcement that it will break with past policy and relocate the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.
“It’s still mysterious just how Mr. Trump believes he has advanced the cause of peace, or fortified America’s standing in the world, with that decision,” the New York Times editorialized. “Its costs in terms of American isolation, on the other hand, were evident throughout [Pence’s] trip.”
Henry Siegman, former executive director of the American Jewish Congress, earlier derided the “stunning level of ignorance” displayed by Trump’s decision. The Washington Post called it a “big risk,” predicting rightly that it would inflame opposition in the Arab world and give new ammunition to extremists in the region. Senator Bernie Sanders tweeted that the president’s move would “undermine the prospects for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement and severely, perhaps irreparably, damage our ability to broker it.”
All these and myriad similar comments were valid, but they missed the point. Trump doesn’t care a whit about peace in the Middle East, or who he alienates abroad: He cares about winning votes at home. Equally important, he cares about splitting the Democratic Party off from its funding base. To that end, Trump and his crew have a pretty good idea what they’re doing.
Defunding the Democrats
For years now, GOP has executed a successful plan to undermine major financial and organizational pillars of the Democratic Party by demonizing once popular groups like plaintiff lawyers (“tort reform”), unions (“right to work”), public employees (“privatization”), and especially public school teachers (“school choice”).
Exploiting the issue of Israel in much the same way, Republican strategists have aimed at neutralizing the Democratic Party’s largest individual donors, who are overwhelmingly Jewish.
Many of those donors also have a long history of financial support for Israel, and of discouraging public debates in the United States over its policies. Raising doubts about the Democratic Party’s commitment to Israel thus became a GOP ploy to dry up portions of that traditional funding base.
To continue reading: How Trump and the GOP Exploit Israel
Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Government, History, Politics
Tagged Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel, President Trump, Republicans
The Russiagate Stakes Are Extreme, by Paul Craig Roberts
Russiagate, according to Paul Craig Roberts, amounts to an attempted coup. It has to be stopped and its perpetrators brought to justice. Not all Republicans want to see that happen. From Roberts at paulcraigroberts.org:
The Republicans’ delay in releasing the summary of the House Intelligence Committee’s Russiagate investigation is giving weight to the presstitutes’ claim that the report is not being released, because it is a hack attempt at a Trump coverup that is not believable. Only Republicans are stupid enough to put themselves in such a situation.
Readers ask me why the summary memo is not released if it is real. There must be some reasons besides the stupidity of Republicans. Yes, that is so. Among the many reasons that might be blocking release are:
1) Republicans are very national security conscious. They don’t want to provide precedents for the release of classified information.
2) Many Republican congressional districts host installations of the military/security complex. Upsetting a large employer and directing campaign financing to a challenger is a big consideration.
3) The George W. Bush/Dick Cheney regime was a neoconservative regime. One consequence is that Republicans are influenced by neoconservatives who stress the alleged “Russian threat.”
4) The Israel Lobby can unseat any member of the House and Senate. The Israel Lobby is allied with the neoconservatives and this alliance intends to keep the US militarily active against perceived threats to Israel’s hegemony in the Middle East and against Russia, which supports Syria and Iran, countries perceived as threats by Israel.
5) Many Republicans are themselves invested in false Russiagate allegations against Trump and would like to replace him with Pence. Other Republicans believe that Trump is undermining Washington’s expensively-purchased foreign alliances and, thereby, undermining US power.
Many Americans do not seem to understand what is at stake. What America is confronted with is a coup conspiracy organized by top officials of the Obama Justice Department, FBI, CIA, the Hillary DNC, and the presstitute media to overturn the result of a democratic election and remove the president from office. The basis of the coup is a fake dossier purchased for money that consists of unsupported allegations against Trump and that was used to obtain warrants from the FISA count to spy on Trump and various associates hoping to find something that can be used against Trump. Regardless, the false allegations could be fed to the CIA’s media assets and used to create a scandal requiring a special prosecutor to investigate Russiagate. Once the investigation was under way, the presstitutes kept the scandal alive hoping to convince enough Americans that Trump must have done something—“where there is smoke, there is fire”—that justifies his removal. It worked against Richard Nixon, but not against Ronald Reagan, and Trump is no Reagan.
To continue reading: The Russiagate Stakes Are Extreme
Posted in Crime, Cronyism, Government, Investigations
Tagged President Trump, Republicans, Russiagate
America is Bankrupt and Republicans Couldn’t Care Less, by Doug Bandow
There hasn’t been a trace of fiscal responsibility from the Republican-controlled presidency, the Republican-controlled House, or the Republican-controlled Senate. From Doug Bandow at theamericanconservative.com:
These poseurs of fiscal responsibility are about to drive up debt to its highest levels since World War II
Credit: langdu/Shutterstock
The United States is effectively bankrupt, but that doesn’t matter to the GOP. Once evangelists of fiscal responsibility and scourges of deficit spending, Republicans today glory in spilling red ink. The national debt is now $20.6 trillion, greater than the annual GDP of about $19.5 trillion. Alas, with Republicans at the helm, deficits are set to continue racing upwards, apparently without end.
This flood of red ink will increase. Last year the Congressional Budget Office figured the U.S. was going to again run trillion dollar deficits around 2022. An extra $10 trillion would be added to the deficit over the following decade.
But under Republican fiscal “stewardship,” analysts now believe the deficit could hit a trillion dollars next year. Why? Congress relaxed the sequester, eliminating its modest pressure for fiscal responsibility, and approved disaster relief, without making any corresponding spending cuts. Legislators also inflated military outlays, even though much of the Pentagon budget constitutes defense welfare, subsidies for prosperous and populous allies.
Even after the most optimistic accounting for the impact of increased economic growth, the tax bill will still add $500 billion to $1 trillion to the deficit over the coming decade. (In fact, those estimates probably understate the final cost since Congress is likely to extend provisions set to sunset in order to meet Senate budget rules.) If the president and Congress come up with an infrastructure bill, even more red ink will flow. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget predicts deficits of $1.05 trillion and $1.1 trillion in 2019 and 2020, respectively.
Welcome to modern Republican budgeting. Complained Congressman Walter Jones, the North Carolina Republican who has become a GOP dissident of sorts: “At the time I joined, the Republican Party was very outspoken about the debt of the nation. …I look at where we are as a nation now, and the Republican Party doesn’t stand for less government and less spending. It spends like no tomorrow.” Congressman Justin Amash, Republican of Michigan, was equally critical, telling Reason’s Matt Welch: “It’s looking as bad as any time I’ve seen I’ve been in Congress.” Legislators, Amash says, continue “to move in the wrong direction.”
To continue reading: America is Bankrupt and Republicans Couldn’t Care Less
Republicans Bet the Farm, by Patrick J. Buchanan
Patrick J. Buchanan may find that the Republicans bet the farm by not doing anything about Obamacare or immigration. From Buchanan at buchanan.org:
President Trump, every Republican senator, and the GOP majority in Speaker Paul Ryan’s House just put the future of their party on the line.
By enacting the largest tax cut since the Reagan administration, the heart of which is cutting the corporate rate from 35 to 21 percent, Republicans have boldly bet the farm.
They have rewritten America’s tax code to reflect their belief that cutting taxes on the private sector will produce the prosperity they have promised. If it happens, the GOP will reap the rewards, if not by 2018, then in 2020.
Democrats, as the Party of Government, egalitarian and neo-socialist, have come to see their role as redistributing wealth from those who have too much — to those who have too little. For, as men (and women) are born unequal in ambition, ability, talent, energy, personality and drive, free markets must inevitably produce an inequality of results.
The mission of Democrats is to reduce those inequalities. And as the very rich are also the very few, in a one-man, one-vote democracy the Democratic Party will always have a following.
Winston Churchill called this the philosophy of failure and the gospel of envy.
Republicans see themselves as the party of free enterprise, of the private not the public sector. They believe that alleviating the burden of regulation and taxation on business will unleash that sector, growing the economy and producing broader prosperity.
By how they voted Wednesday, Republicans yet believe in “supply-side” economics. In the early ’80s, this was derided as “voodoo economics” and “trickle-down” economics, and pungently disparaged by John Kenneth Galbraith as an economic philosophy rooted in the belief that, if you wish to feed the sparrows, you must first feed the horses.
The problem for Democrats is that Reaganomics worked, and is seen historically to have been successful. In 1984, growth was near 6 percent and Reagan rode to a 49-state landslide over Fritz Mondale who, at his San Francisco convention, had declared he would raise taxes.
Thus the importance of what happened Tuesday and Wednesday on Capitol Hill should not be underestimated.
To continue reading: Republicans Bet the Farm
Republicans Save EV Subsidy . . . And in Other News, it Will Get Dark Tonight, by Eric Peters
Never forget who congress critters work for. From Eric Peters at burningplatform.com:
The same Republicans who worked overtime to make sure Obamacare wasn’t repealed – or even “replaced” – have done as expected and made sure the $7,500 subsidy for the purchase of electric cars remains in place.
These Republicans are Senate Republicans – the worst Republicans of all.
House Republicans are no great shakes – all politicians are by nature grifters – but a few of them come to Washington still slightly wet behind the ears, a degree naive . . . in the sense that they suffer a few occasional and temporary pangs of trying to do the right thing. They are like newly created vampires who – for a brief time – are somewhat restrained by their fading memory of being human.
For this reason, language was included in the House version of the Republican spending bill which would have eliminated the despicable $7,500 sop to the electric car “industry,” – which is an “industry,” in the sense of making things that can swim on their own in the way that Caitlyn Jenner is a woman.
But Senate Republicans are like the Ancients in the television series, The Strain. They no longer remember what it was like to be human, if they ever were.
What matters to them is retaining and if possible enhancing the federal government’s power – which amounts to the same thing as their power. Once elected, a senator becomes Washington’srepresentative, not yours or even the state from which the creature nominally emanates.
And so, the EV subsidy was restored.
To continue reading: Republicans Save EV Subsidy . . . And in Other News, it Will Get Dark Tonight
Trump Heralds GOP “Anger, Unity” As WSJ Warns Dems “The Russian Dossier Dam Is Breaking”, by Tyler Durden
The dam is indeed breaking, and no telling who will be deluged. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:
In a series if tweets this morning, President Trump has exposed some of the narratives that much of the mainstream media seems loathed to touch…
Never seen such Republican ANGER & UNITY as I have concerning the lack of investigation on Clinton made Fake Dossier (now $12,000,000?), the Uranium to Russia deal, the 33,000 plus deleted Emails, the Comey fix and so much more.Instead they look at phony Trump/Russia “collusion,” which doesn’t exist.
The Dems are using this terrible (and bad for our country) Witch Hunt for evil politics, but the R’s are now fighting back like never before.
There is so much GUILT by Democrats/Clinton, and now the facts are pouring out. DO SOMETHING!
And while Democrats and their mouthpieces continues to try and focus attention on the unverified frivolous claims within the dossier – as opposed to the illegalities of the dossier’s production, collusion, and exhibition – The Wall Street Journal’s Holman Jenkins warns then that the Trump Dossier dam is breaking…
A U.S. political party applied to a hostile power for lurid stories about a domestic opponent.
’Tis the season of tossing out nondisclosure agreements. Victims and employees of Harvey Weinstein clamor to be released from their NDAs so they can talk about his abuse. Perkins Coie, the Washington law firm for the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton campaign, showed the way by voluntarily releasing Fusion GPS from its duty to remain mum on Democrats who funded the notorious Trump dossier.
May the example catch on.
Journalists who investigated the Trump dossier now say their Democratic sources lied to them. That’s already a start. Please, Democrats, release journalists from their confidentiality agreements so they can tell us more about your lying.
To continue reading: Trump Heralds GOP “Anger, Unity” As WSJ Warns Dems “The Russian Dossier Dam Is Breaking”
Posted in Crime, Government, Investigations
Tagged Democrats, Fusion GPS, President Trump, Republicans
It’s Trump’s Party Now, by Patrick J. Buchanan
Establishment Republicans have lost “their” party to Trump. From Patrick Buchanan at buchanan.org:
“More is now required of us than to put down our thoughts in writing,” declaimed Jeff Flake in his oration against President Trump, just before he announced he will be quitting the Senate.
Though he had lifted the title of his August anti-Trump polemic, “Conscience of a Conservative,” from Barry Goldwater, Jeff Flake is no Barry Goldwater.
Goldwater took on the GOP establishment in the primaries, voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, defiantly declared, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” and then went down to defeat battling to the end after the assassination of JFK made LBJ invincible.
The real “Mr. Conservative” was a true profile in courage.
Flake, with only 18 percent approval in Arizona, decided to pack it in rather than get waxed in his own primary. With Falstaff, Flake appears to believe that “discretion is the better part of valor.”
Sen. Bob Corker is another summertime soldier calling on colleagues to stand and fight Trump while he retires to Tennessee.
It’s no wonder the establishment is viewed with such derision.
Flake calls Trump “dangerous to our democracy.” But the real threat Trump represents is to the GOP establishment’s control of the party’s agenda and the party’s destiny.
U.S. politics have indeed been coarsened, with Trump playing a lead role. Yet, beneath the savagery of the uncivil war in the party lies more than personal insults and personality clashes.
This is a struggle about policy, about the future. And Trump is president because he read the party and the country right, while the Bush-McCain Republican establishment had lost touch with both.
How could the Beltway GOP not see that its defining policies — open borders, amnesty, free trade globalism, compulsive military intervention in foreign lands for ideological ends — were alienating its coalition?
What had a quarter century of Bushite free trade produced?
To continue reading: It’s Trump’s Party Now
Posted in Economy, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Government, Politics
Tagged President Trump, Republicans
