Republicans are Fighting Against Democracy

This situation is the result of a president who tried to overturn the November 2020 election. Even before the election Donald Trump repeatedly said that the election process was fraudulent. He tried to take his claims to courts including the Supreme Court.

Just today the justices declined to take up an appeal from Mr. Trump that challenged absentee ballots cast in the presidential election in Wisconsin. The former president urged the Supreme Court to declare the election there unconstitutional and allow the state legislature to appoint its own slate of electors. Mr. Trump lost the state of Wisconsin to President Biden, and Mr. Biden was sworn into office January 20.

Sadly GOP controlled states are now passing new laws to limit future elections by limiting voting and making it harder for voters to return absentee ballots. Arizona, Iowa, Georgia, and North Dakota are the states passing regulations that require identification of voters, limiting voting to in person only voting. All these law are probably legal. Each stae has the power to set its own election rules. They are clearly designed to deny the right to vote to poor people who likely Democratic Party voters.

Georgia is just one of the 43 states collectively contemplating 253 bills this year with provisions restricting voting access, according to a tally by the Brennan Center for Justice.

As Dana Milbank of the Washington Post reported: the Supreme Court’s majority signaled it would be open to more such voting restrictions. In oral arguments, the conservative justices indicated they would uphold two Arizona laws that would have the effect of disproportionately disqualifying the votes of non-White citizens. One law throws out ballots cast in the wrong precinct, a problem that affects minority voters twice as much as White voters because polling places move more frequently in minority neighborhoods. The other law bans the practice of ballot collection — derided by Republicans as ballot “harvesting” — which is disproportionately used by minority voters, in particular Arizona’s Native Americans on reservations.”

Why are Republicans doing this? They believe that large turnouts result in Democratic Party candidates winning.

The Fight for Working class Americans

The Trump Republicans and the Democrats know that their survival as a consequential political party depends on working class voters. Donald Trump showed Republicans now to appeal for that group of voters rather than the rich conservatives. There are far more working and middle class voters than rich conservatives. This situation has motivated President Joe Biden to take extraordinary actions to retain his slim control of congress. Many of the following postings will be focused on this new political reality.

America is Turned Upside Down

The hell of 2020 is now the hell of 2021. It all started with the shutdown of almost everything in March 2020. Five events that happened (or didn’t happen) that cause me to predict that 2021 is just an extension of 2020.

1. A virus but no approved vaccine. Yes you read that correctly. I just had my first Pfizer vaccination after someone handed me some documentation that read the following day. In part the document says (I bolded the last line) “The Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 Vaccine is an unapproved vaccine that may prevent Covid-19. There is no FDA-approved vaccine to prevent Covid-19.”

2. Conspiracy theorists that have been around since people have had the printing press to promote their ideas. It has now become a mainstream reality that have been promoted by QAnon. While the identity of the original author or authors behind “Q” is still unknown, the history of the conspiracy theory’s spread is well-documented — through YouTube videos, social media posts, Reddit archives, and public records reviewed by NBC News. With most of us staying home more than ever and little to do we are more likely to read and perhaps accept conspiracy theories. Many of those people at the riot at the Capital on January 6 were carrying signs and dressed in what they believed to be part of their purpose. One rioter at the Capital is known as the “QAnon Shaman” now regrets his entry and said after his arrest, “I deeply regret and am sorry that I entered the Capitol building on January 6, 2021. I should not have been there.”

3. A majority of Republican senators and house members have no problem with the president of the United States attempting to overturn the results of a national election. After the acquittal the Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said, “There is no question – none – that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it. The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president.”

4. The economy is in shambles. Restaurant and retail workers may never have jobs again because remote work at home jobs have supplanted those people who drove to work and had lunch out and did their shopping during their lunch breaks.

5. Two years after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida not one piece of legislation to deny the mentally unstable to obtain a weapon has been passed by congress. On Feb. 20, 2020, candidate Joe Biden made this statement. “My first day of office, I’m going to send a bill to the Congress repealing the liability protection for gun manufacturers, closing the background check loopholes and waiting period.” It didn’t happen. There is no legislation at this time said the Biden Press Secretary, Jan Psaki.

And you thought things would be getting better in 2021.

Trump Charged with “inciting violence”

It really does not make any difference what anyone says about the incitement on January 6. Most Republican senators are not going to vote a guilty verdict. The comments that the Republican Party is now the Trump Party appears accurate. Trump’s inexplicable hold over the GOP is almost 100%.

But just for the discussion what is incitement, exactly? The dictionary definition of “incite,” according to Merriam-Webster, is simple: “to move to action : stir up : spur on : urge on.” Trump clearly did that, when he directed his supporters to march toward Capitol Hill from a rally held under the “Stop the Steal” banner.

But there’s a much more detailed definition in US law, which is:

“…the term ‘to incite a riot’, or ‘to organize, promote, encourage, participate in, or carry on a riot”, includes, but is not limited to, urging or instigating other persons to riot, but shall not be deemed to mean the mere oral or written (1) advocacy of ideas or (2) expression of belief, not involving advocacy of any act or acts of violence or assertion of the rightness of, or the right to commit, any such act or acts.”

Federal courts said Trump did not incite a mob back in 2016 when he told supporters to turn on protesters, who later sued the President.

The New York Times has a thorough examination of how courts have looked upon “incitement.” Read that here.

The history of “incitement”: Oliver Wendell Holmes, the First Amendment-protecting Supreme Court justice who pushed the idea that a person can’t shout fire in a crowded theater, built the “clear and present danger” test for speech. He argued Congress could only regulate speech when it represented a “present danger of immediate evil or an intent to bring it about.”

More recently, the Supreme Court has protected all sorts of speech, like flag burning, crude political hyperbole and, importantly in this instance is Brandenburg v. Ohio, which allows advocating crime as long as it doesn’t incite imminent lawlessness.

Trump’s legal team repeatedly cited that case in a legal brief laying out their free speech-focused defense.

Most of this information is from CNN’s Zachary B. Wolf

The Exodus – Can the GOP Survive?

Angry and vindictive, Donald Trump has destroyed the Republican Party. As an independent I want to see at least two functioning political parties. That arrangement ensures that extremists do not pull the nation in a direction that does not reflect the wishes and values of most people. His positions do not reflect the historic conservative views that many Americans appreciate. He used Republican positions when they suited him. He has made the Republican Party a reflection of his opinions. Trump delights in having the support of fringe groups like QAnon and right wing militia groups and anti-Semitic hate groups that support conspiracy theories.

The GOP has been the party of big business and free trade. During the 20th and 21st centuries the party came to be associated with laissez-faire capitalism, low taxes, and conservative social policies. The modern Republican Party supports states’ rights against the power of the federal government in most cases, and it opposes the federal regulation of traditionally state and local matters, such as policing and education. The Republicans advocate reduced taxes as a means of stimulating the economy and advancing individual economic freedom. They tend to oppose extensive government regulation of the economy, government-funded social programs, affirmative action, and policies aimed at strengthening the rights of workers.

“There’s Nothing Left’: Why Thousands of Republicans Are Leaving the Party,” NYT: “An analysis of January voting records by The New York Times found that nearly 140,000 Republicans had quit the party in 25 states that had readily available data (19 states do not have registration by party). Voting experts said the data indicated a stronger-than-usual flight from a political party after a presidential election, as well as the potential start of a damaging period for G.O.P. registrations as voters recoil from the Capitol violence and its fallout.

“The biggest spikes in Republicans leaving the party came in the days after Jan. 6, especially in California, where there were 1,020 Republican changes on Jan. 5 — and then 3,243 on Jan. 7. In Arizona, there were 233 Republican changes in the first five days of January, and 3,317 in the next week. Most of the Republicans in these states and others switched to unaffiliated status” says Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations.

@RichardHaass: “I changed my registration to ‘no party affiliation’ after 40 years. I worked for Reagan & Bush 41 & 43. But today’s Rep Party no longer embraces the policies & principles that led me to join it. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, I didn’t leave the Republican Party; the Party left me.”

Liz Cheney’s Blockbuster Fox News Interview

Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney sat for an interview with “Fox News Sunday” anchor Chris Wallace in which she made clear that she has no plans of backing off her criticism of former President Donald Trump.

Her unwavering support of the rule of law and her allegiance to the constitution is not a political party issue. Every American should honor that belief. Her refusal to disavow conspiracy theories suggested by QAnon or other conspiracy groups will bring her respect from her political opponents.

Here were the key points she made to Wallace as identified by CNN’s Chris Cillizza. Her words provide the justification for finding Donald Trump guilty of the the charge of inciting a riot.

1. “The oath that I took to the Constitution compelled me to vote for impeachment and it doesn’t bend to partisanship, it doesn’t bend to political pressure. It’s the most important oath that we take.”

2. “I think, you know, that people in the party are mistaken. They believe that BLM and Antifa were behind what happened here at the Capitol. It’s just simply not the case, not true and we’re going to have a lot of work we have to do.”

3. “The extent to which the president, President Trump, for months leading up to January 6 spread the notion that the election had been stolen or that the election was rigged was a lie and people need to understand that. We need to make sure that we as Republicans are the party of truth that we are being honest about what really did happen in 2020 so we actually have a chance to win in 2022 and win the White House back in 2024.”

4. “I think this vote and conference made very clear, we are the party of Lincoln, we are not the party of QAnon or anti-Semitism or Holocaust deniers, or white supremacy or conspiracy theories. That’s not who we are.”

5. “People will want to know exactly what the president was doing. They want to know, for example, whether the tweet he sent out calling Vice President Pence a coward while the attack was underway, whether that tweet, for example, was a premeditated effort to provoke violence. There are a lot of questions that have to be answered and there will be many, many criminal investigations looking at every aspect of this and everyone who was involved, as there should be.”

6. “We have never seen that kind of an assault by a president of the United States on another branch of government and that can never happen again.”

7. “What we already know does constitute the gravest violation of his oath of office by any president in the history of the country, and this is not something that we can simply look past or pretend didn’t happen or try to move on. We’ve got to make sure this never happens again.”

8. “So it should not have gotten to the point that it did. I don’t believe the Democrats have any business determining who from the Republicans sit on committees, but we should have dealt with it ourselves.”

9. “Somebody who has provoked an attack on the United States Capitol to prevent the counting of electoral votes, which resulted in five people dying, who refused to stand up immediately when he was asked and stop the violence, that — that is a person who does not have a role as a leader of our party going forward.”

10. “We have to make sure that we are able to convey to the American voters, we are the party of responsibility, we are the party of truth, that we actually can be trusted to handle the challenges this nation faces like Covid, and that’s going to require us to focus on substance and policy and issues going forward but we should not be embracing the former president.”

The Meaning of “Fight like Hell”

Donald Trump exhorted his followers to “fight like hell” before they swarmed the Capitol on January 6. What did Trump mean? A quote from his speech that day: “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

It appears the rioters chose to hear “fight like hell” over “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

Although we are just more than a month into the 117th Congress, Richard Shelby is the fourth GOP senator to say he won’t run for reelection — joining Sens. Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania), Richard Burr (North Carolina) and Rob Portman (Ohio) on the sidelines. (By contrast, no Democratic senators have announced their retirement at this point.)

With the exception of Shelby who is 86 years old. Toomey is 59 years old. Burr is 65 years old. Portman is 65 years old. Those three are relatively young senators. The average age of senators is 63.

So with the exception of Shelby what is the motivation for their decision not to run for re-election?

If all four of these men vote “not guilty” in the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump they have decided to move on to other interests than serving in the senate.

Which take precedent? Political party or defending the constitution?