The Sewer That Is The GOP: With All The White Supremacists, Conspiracy Nutters, And Other Malicious Whacko Subgroups, How Does It Get Fixed?

[youngestson]

1 hour ago, Llevron said:

 

 

This is why you dont get it. 

 

Edit: Maybe I dont get it. Do we all agree that the idea behind political parties is to gain and retain power? Thats not at all what I thought. 

 

 

I get what you may or may not get...

I don't agree that maintaining power SHOULD be all a political party is about. Not at all.

 

However, I think both parties to some extent, but very very much so for Republicans, this has become their raison d etre. Sure, a few core ideals may be there, but as we've seen with the recent budget bill projected to blow deficits to heights never even imagined, it's all negotiable so long as they can call the shots.  

[youngestson]

1 hour ago, Dan T. said:

 

And then to add on to that, the de facto party leader, Trump, lives in a zero-sum world where there must be winners and losers in any negotiation.  Not a great formula for consensus building.

It may be unfair, but I blame Fox News for that. 

Every news item becomes a social war touchstone of Us vs Them, whoever the hell Them may be. 

 

It's a great business model for professional wrestling, but for news and information, it's a damned disaster.

 

 

 

 

[Llevron]

12 minutes ago, youngestson said:

I get what you may or may not get...

I don't agree that maintaining power SHOULD be all a political party is about. Not at all.

 

However, I think both parties to some extent, but very very much so for Republicans, this has become their raison d etre. Sure, a few core ideals may be there, but as we've seen with the recent budget bill projected to blow deficits to heights never even imagined, it's all negotiable so long as they can call the shots.  

 

Yea you got it for sure. My opinion has changed significantly since I posted that lol. Seems silly but im (maybe a little too) open to others showing me things I dont know - and I didnt know. 

[twa]

46 minutes ago, Sacks 'n' Stuff said:

Seems to me that the GOP has absolutely no principles and is all too happy to abandon any of the core values of what used to be the Republican Party in order to stay in power, passing legislation designed only to benefit their wealthy donors.

 

 

That is your perception, and if enough agree then the Reps will lose power.

It is also the reason there are limits on powers in our system.

 

I think ya'll are wrong.....for the most part 

Though fiscal cons seem to be getting the treatment so-cons did before.

Fun to watch the dance between So-cons,Def-cons,Neo-cons,Fiscal-cons and libertarian-cons....

[Fresh8686]

5 minutes ago, Llevron said:

 

Yea you got it for sure. My opinion has changed significantly since I posted that lol. Seems silly but im (maybe a little too) open to others showing me things I dont know - and I didnt know. 

There is nothing wrong with openness, as long as you have a rigorous standard to test what comes through that openness, before you accept it

[AsburySkinsFan]

The Republican party has ABSOLUTELY no intention on “fixing” itself.

 

 

[Hersh]

On 2/14/2018 at 1:55 PM, twa said:

 

 

That is your perception, and if enough agree then the Reps will lose power.

It is also the reason there are limits on powers in our system.

 

I think ya'll are wrong.....for the most part 

Though fiscal cons seem to be getting the treatment so-cons did before.

Fun to watch the dance between So-cons,Def-cons,Neo-cons,Fiscal-cons and libertarian-cons....

 

Feel free to lay out the principles of your Republican Party.

 

 

[Riggo-toni]

On 2/14/2018 at 1:55 PM, twa said:

Fun to watch the dance between So-cons,Def-cons,Neo-cons,Fiscal-cons and libertarian-cons....

At least you finally admit they're all cons.

[twa]

1 hour ago, Riggo-toni said:

At least you finally admit they're all cons.

 

Nah, not near all of them....but they are not important enough to matter.

[Sacks 'n' Stuff]

1 hour ago, twa said:

Nah, not near all of them....but they are not important enough to matter.

I agree with that. You can find plenty of good Republican leaders at the state and local level if you're looking for them. It's a **** show in congress and in the White House though.

[No Excuses]

Here's a tally of all the mainstream conservative people who have fed into the theory of protesting victims of the Florida shooting being "crisis actors":

 

Donald Trump Jr

Dinesh D'Souza

Alex Jones

David Clarke

Lucian Wintrich

Jack Kingston

Jim Hoft

Kurt Schlicter

A writer at National Review Online whose name is escaping me

Edited February 21, 2018 by No Excuses

[The Evil Genius]

The bigger problem being that these asshats are part of accepted mainstream conservatism.

 

Not, that they are just asshats.

[Sacks 'n' Stuff]

The adjuster came by... he said it's totaled. No hope of fixing this mess. Time to send this **** to the salvage yard.

[twa]

6 minutes ago, Sacks 'n' Stuff said:

The adjuster came by... he said it's totaled. No hope of fixing this mess. Time to send this **** to the salvage yard.

 

 

Wait, this thing is insured???

 

Did it come with a manufacturers warranty as well?

Where is a lemon law when ya need one?

[88Comrade2000]

On 2/20/2018 at 11:56 AM, Sacks 'n' Stuff said:

I agree with that. You can find plenty of good Republican leaders at the state and local level if you're looking for them. It's a **** show in congress and in the White House though.

Any person who still calls themselves a Republican in this Trump era, is no better than Trump and the idiot GOP congress.  The GOP of the pre-Trump era is gone. Though really, the GOP has been a ****show since the Clinton Adminstration.

 

The brand - Republican is toxic. The GOP represents a lot of wrong things.

 

If they are any decent GOPers then they have to leave the GOP and run as something else. 

[No Excuses]

NRA board member, Republican darling and noted asshole Ted Nugent is also pushing "crisis actors" conspiracies now.

 

We can ignore this putrid political movement, full of cruel, disgusting people at our own peril. 

 

Or many of you can make the choice in 2018 and 2020 to punish these assholes at the ballot box so we can go back to having two sane parties, instead of just one. 

[No Excuses]

Can’t fix a hate driven agenda:

 

 

[Renegade7]

2 hours ago, No Excuses said:

Or many of you can make the choice in 2018 and 2020 to punish these assholes at the ballot box so we can go back to having two sane parties, instead of just one. 

Only 1 in 3 Millennials voted for Trump and we're now the largest voting block.  Change is coming. 

[@DCGoldPants]

2 hours ago, No Excuses said:

NRA board member, Republican darling and noted asshole Ted Nugent is also pushing "crisis actors" conspiracies now.

 

We can ignore this putrid political movement, full of cruel, disgusting people at our own peril. 

 

Or many of you can make the choice in 2018 and 2020 to punish these assholes at the ballot box so we can go back to having two sane parties, instead of just one. 

 

Draft dodger pedophile, Ted Nugent? The one who **** his pants to pretend being crazy rather than serve his country? 

[The Sisko]

On 2/14/2018 at 1:50 PM, youngestson said:

It may be unfair, but I blame Fox News for that. 

Every news item becomes a social war touchstone of Us vs Them, whoever the hell Them may be. 

 

It's a great business model for professional wrestling, but for news and information, it's a damned disaster.

 

 

They acknowledged some time ago that they're actually in the entertainment business, not news.

 

2 hours ago, @SkinsGoldPants said:

 

Draft dodger pedophile, Ted Nugent? The one who **** his pants to pretend being crazy rather than serve his country? 

No wonder Nugent is so in the tank for the draft dodger in chief. Well, that and he's a racist turd.

[Warhead36]

While I've never been a Republican sympathizer, I used to have respect for the party. They were still good people with solid moral backing and beliefs.

 

Now? Now they are the party of child/sex abusers, of ignorant science/fact ignorers, fake news pushers, and in general have become the party of hatred and corruption.

[Predicto]

I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

[The Sisko]

1 hour ago, Predicto said:

I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

As a fan of The Sisko, I definitely like this idea. ?

[mcsluggo]

This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition of the Economist magazine, under the headline "What has become of the Republican Party?" .... i highly recommend subscribing to easily the best best magazine in the world:  

https://economist.com/

 

The Republican Party is organised around one man

That is dangerous

 

Apr 19th 2018

ALL presidents, Republican and Democrat, seek to remake their party in their own image. Donald Trump has been more successful than most. From the start, the voters he mesmerised in the campaign embraced him more fervently than congressional Republicans were ready to admit. After 15 months in power, as our briefing explains, he has taken ownership of their party. It is an extraordinary achievement from a man who had never lived in Washington, DC, never held public office, who boasted of groping women and who, as recently as 2014, was a donor to the hated Democrats.

The organising principle of Mr Trump’s Republican Party is loyalty. Not, as with the best presidents, loyalty to an ideal, a vision or a legislative programme, but to just one man—Donald J. Trump—and to the prejudice and rage which consume the voter base that, on occasion, even he struggles to control. In America that is unprecedented and it is dangerous.

Already, some of our Republican readers will be rolling their eyes. They will say that our criticism reveals more about us and our supposed elitism than it does about Mr Trump. But we are not talking here about the policies of Mr Trump’s administration, a few of which we support, many of which we do not and all of which should be debated on their merits. The bigger, more urgent concern is Mr Trump’s temperament and style of government. Submissive loyalty to one man and the rage he both feeds off and incites is a threat to the shining democracy that the world has often taken as its example.

Not what, but how

Mr Trump’s takeover has its roots in the take-no-prisoners tribalism that gripped American politics long before he became president. And in the past the Oval Office has occasionally belonged to narcissists some of whom lied, seduced, bullied or undermined presidential norms. But none has behaved quite as blatantly as Mr Trump.

At the heart of his system of power is his contempt for the truth. In a memoir published this week (see Lexington) James Comey, whom Mr Trump fired as director of the FBI, laments “the lying about all things, large and small, in service to some code of loyalty that put the organisation above morality and above the truth”. Mr Trump does not—perhaps cannot—distinguish between facts and falsehoods. As a businessman and on the campaign he behaved as if the truth was whatever he could get away with. And, as president, Mr Trump surely believes that his power means he can get away with a great deal.

When power dominates truth, criticism becomes betrayal. Critics cannot appeal to neutral facts and remain loyal, because facts are not neutral. As Hannah Arendt wrote of the 1920s and 1930s, any statement of fact becomes a question of motive. Thus, when H.R. McMaster, a former national security adviser, said (uncontroversially) that Russia had interfered in the election campaign, Mr Trump heard his words as unforgivably hostile. Soon after, he was sacked.

The cult of loyalty to Mr Trump and his base affects government in three ways. First, policymaking suffers as, instead of a coherent programme, America undergoes government by impulse—anger, nativism, mercantilism—beyond the reach of empirical argument. Mr Trump’s first year has included accomplishments: the passage of a big tax cut, a regulatory rollback and the appointment of conservative judges. But most of his policymaking is marked by chaos rather than purpose. He was against the Trans-Pacific trade deal, then for it, then against it again; for gun control, then for arming teachers instead.

Second, the conventions that buttress the constitution’s limits on the president have fallen victim to Mr Trump’s careless selfishness. David Frum, once a speechwriter for George W. Bush, lists some he has broken (and how long they have been observed): a refusal to disclose his tax return (since Gerald Ford), ignoring conflict-of-interest rules (Richard Nixon), running a business for profit (Lyndon Johnson), appointing relatives to senior posts in the administration (John F. Kennedy) and family enrichment by patronage (Ulysses S. Grant).

And third, Mr Trump paints those who stand in his way not as opponents, but as wicked or corrupt or traitors. Mr Trump and his base divide Republicans into good people who support him and bad people who do not—one reason why a record 40 congressional Republicans, including the House Speaker, Paul Ryan, will not seek re-election. The media that are for him are zealous loyalists; those that are not are branded enemies of the people. He has cast judicial investigations by Robert Mueller into his commercial and political links with Russia as a “deep-state” conspiracy. Mr Trump is reportedly toying with firing Mr Mueller or his boss in the Department of Justice. Yet, if a president cannot be investigated without it being counted as treason then, like a king, he is above the law.

The best rebuke to Mr Trump’s solipsism would be Republican defeat at the ballot box, starting with November’s mid-term elections. That may yet come to pass. But Mr Trump’s Republican base, stirred up by his loyal media, shows no sign of going soft. Polls suggest that its members overwhelmingly believe the president over Mr Comey. For them, criticism from the establishment is proof he must be doing something right.

Look up, look forwards and look in

But responsibility also falls to Republicans who know that Mr Trump is bad for America and the world. They feel pinned down, because they cannot win elections without Mr Trump’s base but, equally, they cannot begin to attempt to prise Mr Trump and his base apart without being branded traitors.

Such Republicans need to reflect on how speaking up will bear on their legacy. Mindful of their party’s future, they should remember that America’s growing racial diversity means that nativism will eventually lead to the electoral wilderness. And, for the sake of their country, they need to bring in a bill to protect Mr Mueller’s investigation from sabotage. If loyalty to Mr Trump grants him impunity, who knows where he will venture? Speaking to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 George Mason put it best: “Shall that man be above [justice], who can commit the most extensive injustice?”

 

https://economist.com/news/leaders/21740741-dangerous-republican-party-organised-around-one-man

 

 

Edited April 19, 2018 by mcsluggo

[Sacks 'n' Stuff]

On 2/21/2018 at 3:44 PM, Renegade7 said:

Only 1 in 3 Millennials voted for Trump and we're now the largest voting block.  Change is coming. 

Yeah but the other two didn't vote at all. It's the next step in Republican voter suppression. Make sure that the new Call of Duty gets released on election day.