What happens to the Republican Party now? (2 Viewers)

[MT15]

This election nonsense by Trump may end up splitting up the Republican Party. I just don’t see how the one third (?) who are principled conservatives can stay in the same party with Trump sycophants who are willing to sign onto the TX Supreme Court case.

We also saw the alt right types chanting “destroy the GOP” in Washington today because they didn’t keep Trump in power. I think the Q types will also hold the same ill will toward the traditional Republican Party. In fact its quite possible that all the voters who are really in a Trump personality cult will also blame the GOP for his loss. It’s only a matter of time IMO before Trump himself gets around to blaming the GOP.

There is some discussion of this on Twitter. What do you all think?

 

[SaulGoodmanEsq]

That's because you focus on the folks you dislike instead of voters like me....well maybe you dislike me as well but I hope not

It would be nice if you are right but I'm still cynical. Everything I've seen points to Trump still having massive sway over the GOP regardless of what he says or does.

 

[SteveSBrickNJ]

It would be nice if you are right but I'm still cynical. Everything I've seen points to Trump still having massive sway over the GOP regardless of what he says or does.

Ok.

 

[MT15]

What Abbott is doing in TX is crazy-he’s hurting the economy again, after the bad results from the ice storm.

 

[SFIDC3]

WHO caused the problem between 2016 and 2020? It was the sore losers who wanted Hillary that tried to impeach Trump. It was additionally the (in the left's pocket) media who supported them. From 2016 - 2020 we were not in a war....my 401k did well ...and an effort was made to control our southern border. Under Biden we were embarrassed in Afghanistan, my 401k lost plenty and our southern border is porous. That is why I will NOT vote for incompetent Biden and I will NOT vote for Putin's buddy Donald Trump. We...America..we deserve better than those two politicians.

Above is utter and total BS.....I'm sorry that too many folks still have this mindset that somehow the president has control over the free market....just a ridiculous post....

I'm sure had Trump been elected things would be better......not......Biden is far from perfect but he is at least....sane......I do agree we deserve better but then that's up to us isn't it....

 

[superchuck500]

Ruining kids’ dream vacation.

 

[DJ1BigTymer]

Ruining kids’ dream vacation.

Believably stupid. That's just par for the course for these unpatriotic buffoons.

 

[MT15]

The result of the TX Governor’s policy:



I did read that Abbott now says he will stop the insane backup after being roundly criticized by truckers and businesses alike. And causing untold amounts of damage, delayed and/or spoiled food shipments.

 

[RobF]

Ruining kids’ dream vacation.

I saw this and I was thinking... but surely Disney World is really big. Like, yes, you could block the entrance to my local tiny theme park with a couple of cars. But isn't Disney World huge? So I clicked through the tweet to see if anyone had identified where they were and what they were blocking exactly.



Obviously still a jerky thing to do, but at least they're not very good at it?

 

[SteveSBrickNJ]

Above is utter and total BS.....I'm sorry that too many folks still have this mindset that somehow the president has control over the free market....just a ridiculous post....

I'm sure had Trump been elected things would be better......not......Biden is far from perfect but he is at least....sane......I do agree we deserve better but then that's up to us isn't it....

No. No. No.
I am far from alone in thinking a 2nd Trump term in office would have been better for everyone's 401k and the economy in general.

 

[MT15]

Oh dear. I guess “other people think so too” might mean something to you. But I cannot imagine where we would be if Trump were still president. It’s a horrible thought.

1. Afghanistan wouldn’t have been handled better by Trump. He didn’t have many people with any foreign policy expertise left and some of what beset Biden was the result of crazy things promised by Trump’s administration. Note-I am not saying Biden did a great job, just that it could have (and would have) been worse under Trump. For one example, I cannot see Trump’s team organizing the airlift that got so many people out. Logistics was not their strong suit, which brings me to:

2. One thing Biden’s team did do well was the logistics in the vaccine roll out. Trump’s team was essentially doing no real logistical work, just promises he didn’t keep.

3. Trump intended to pull us out of NATO. He certainly would never have been able to pull the alliance together to oppose Putin. In fact, the US would have tacitly if not openly approved of the Ukraine invasion, at least the Executive branch.

4. The economy in general is actually doing very well. We have added a record breaking number of jobs to the economy, and the deficit is being slashed. Growth is phenomenal. Inflation is a global problem, and supply chain issues are being driven by China‘s poor vaccines and draconian response to the pandemic. There is absolutely nothing Trump could do better, and a lot of indications that a Trump administration would only add to the global upheaval in contrast to Biden’s steadying influence. Your 401k will be just fine.

Come on, Steve, you’re better than to be persuaded that Trump would be doing anything better right now.

 

[cuddlemonkey]

Republicans are MOSTLY Pro Police...Pro Military....anti Putin.
When Republicans who are only paying attention to their jobs and their families these days...when THOSE Republicans find out Trump's views on Putin....those Republicans will rush to jump off his bandwagon.

Yet his vote total increased after he spent four years sucking up to Putin and insulting Gold Star families. He won in 2016 after mocking a former POW (John McCain). Voters may think they are pro-police, pro-military, and anti-Putin, but when push comes to shove, they vote for the guy that sucks up to Putin and insults the families of soldiers killed in action.

 

[SteveSBrickNJ]

My "bell" said someone quoted me. Yet I scrolled below that person's post to an empty box so I could type this.
If that person wishes to quote me to show off to others...fine.
I just want it known that I will not even read anything that person has to say.

 

[Optimus Prime]

A lot of Trump support at the Conservative Jamboree

 

[bird]

WHO caused the problem between 2016 and 2020? It was the sore losers who wanted Hillary that tried to impeach Trump. It was additionally the (in the left's pocket) media who supported them. From 2016 - 2020 we were not in a war....my 401k did well ...and an effort was made to control our southern border. Under Biden we were embarrassed in Afghanistan, my 401k lost plenty and our southern border is porous. That is why I will NOT vote for incompetent Biden and I will NOT vote for Putin's buddy Donald Trump. We...America..we deserve better than those two politicians.

Um, Steve? Afganistan was a direct result of Trump’s decision including feting the Taliban. We were still in Afganistan when Trump lost. As for impeachment? How much money went into Trump’s pockets due to the demand that plane’s refuel near his properties? The southern border is no more or less porous than it was before. Jared Kushner and Trump’s entire administration with the exception of Fauci flocked up the SARS-CoV-2 response resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths. Trump was thinking about leaving NATO. Trump withheld aid from Ukraine when he attempted to extort Zelensky. Trump pressured the Georgia Secretary of State to “find 11,000 votes” for him.

If your 401k “lost plenty” then maybe that gives you a window on why you shouldn’t support Republicans who want to eliminate social security. The stock market is unrelated to reality. Company stocks go up when they layoff workers and when they buy back shares which has nothing to do with actual productive economic activity and everything to do with executive compensation.

Please ignore the unemployment and GDP results that have occurred since Biden came into office. That also underscores the untethered relationship to the real economy that the stock market has. Inflation? Well, economists will tell you that it is driven by exploding demand but that really isn’t true. Inflation is a term of art for a psychological greed/fear response. But we can talk about that more later.

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[Optimus Prime]

Wasn’t sure which thread to put this in

Moving past school libraries and into public ones too
==============
LLANO, Tex. — In early November, an email dropped into the inbox of Judge Ron Cunningham, the silver-haired head chair of the governing body of Llano County in Texas’s picturesque Hill Country.

The subject line read “Pornographic Filth at the Llano Public Libraries.”
 “It came to my attention a few weeks ago that pornographic filth has been discovered at the Llano library,” wrote Bonnie Wallace, a 54-year-old local church volunteer.

“I’m not advocating for any book to be censored but to be RELOCATED to the ADULT section. … It is the only way I can think of to prohibit censorship of books I do agree with, mainly the Bible, if more radicals come to town and want to use the fact that we censored these books against us.”


Wallace had attached an Excel spreadsheet of about 60 books she found objectionable, including those about transgender teens, sex education and race, including such notable works as “Between the World and Me,” by author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, an exploration of the country’s history written as a letter to his adolescent son.

Not long after, the county’s chief librarian sent the list to Suzette Baker, head of one of the library’s three branches.
“She told me to look at pulling the books off the shelf and possibly putting them behind the counter. I told them that was censorship,” Baker said.


Wallace’s list was the opening salvo in a censorship battle that is unlikely to end well for proponents of free speech in this county of 21,000 nestled in rolling hills of mesquite trees and cactus northwest of Austin.

Leaders have taken works as seemingly innocuous as the popular children’s picture book “In the Night Kitchen” by Maurice Sendak off the shelves, closed library board meetings to the public and named Wallace the vice chair of a new library board stacked with conservative appointees — some of whom did not even have library cards.

With these actions, Llano joins a growing number of communities across America where conservatives have mounted challenges to books and other content related to race, sex, gender and other subjects they deem inappropriate.

A movement that started in schools has rapidly expanded to public libraries, accounting for 37 percent of book challenges last year, according to the American Library Association.

Conservative activists in several states, including Texas, Montana and Louisiana have joined forces with like-minded officials to dissolve libraries’ governing bodies, rewrite or delete censorship protections, and remove books outside of official challenge procedures…….

In January, commissioners voted to dissolve the existing library board — whose members came from Friends of the Library groups and the Women’s Culture Club — and created a reconstituted board of mostly political appointees, including many of the citizens who had complained about books.

A retired physician, Richard Day, a Democrat, was denied a seat despite having a master’s degree in library science and experience managing the rare books collection at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, he said.

Cunningham said in a statement that the restructuring of the library board was in keeping with Texas law and past practices to allow for “citizen participation from different perspectives.” The all-female board is overwhelmingly White and Republican, records show.


And the new board was ready to start focusing on its top priorities, including adding content of “academia, educational value and character building” and consulting with a local Christian school about their needs, Wells wrote in one email.

Wells, a member of the local tea party who home-schools her six children, did not return calls for comment.


But she had one more complaint: “There were 3 or 4 patrons present taking notes,” at the group’s meeting, she wrote to one of the commissioners. “That surprised a few of us. Would you be able to persuade Judge Cunningham to keep the meetings closed?”

Last month the board voted to close meetings to the public, which could violate the Texas open meeting laws, experts have said.

Panel members often stop to pray over questions brought up in meetings, and until the Lord answers, they can’t resolve them, according to county officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared repercussions…….

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/04/17/public-libraries-books-censorship/

 

[DaveXA]

Republicans are MOSTLY Pro Police...Pro Military....anti Putin.
When Republicans who are only paying attention to their jobs and their families these days...when THOSE Republicans find out Trump's views on Putin....those Republicans will rush to jump off his bandwagon.

Well, it's simple to me. I'll believe it when I see it.

Oh dear. I guess “other people think so too” might mean something to you. But I cannot imagine where we would be if Trump were still president. It’s a horrible thought.

1. Afghanistan wouldn’t have been handled better by Trump. He didn’t have many people with any foreign policy expertise left and some of what beset Biden was the result of crazy things promised by Trump’s administration. Note-I am not saying Biden did a great job, just that it could have (and would have) been worse under Trump. For one example, I cannot see Trump’s team organizing the airlift that got so many people out. Logistics was not their strong suit, which brings me to:

2. One thing Biden’s team did do well was the logistics in the vaccine roll out. Trump’s team was essentially doing no real logistical work, just promises he didn’t keep.

3. Trump intended to pull us out of NATO. He certainly would never have been able to pull the alliance together to oppose Putin. In fact, the US would have tacitly if not openly approved of the Ukraine invasion, at least the Executive branch.

4. The economy in general is actually doing very well. We have added a record breaking number of jobs to the economy, and the deficit is being slashed. Growth is phenomenal. Inflation is a global problem, and supply chain issues are being driven by China‘s poor vaccines and draconian response to the pandemic. There is absolutely nothing Trump could do better, and a lot of indications that a Trump administration would only add to the global upheaval in contrast to Biden’s steadying influence. Your 401k will be just fine.

Come on, Steve, you’re better than to be persuaded that Trump would be doing anything better right now.

I hate to "defend" Trump or his administration, but regarding number 2, the logistics of vaccine distribution were already largely in place prior to Trump leaving office (largely led by the CDC, Trump and even Pence had little to do with the logistics challenges, that was left to the agencies handling it). The Biden administration basically picked up the baton and continued what was already started. His administration should get credit for executing the rollout, but the plan for the rollout was already in place before Trump left office. Now, I don't know how much different that would have been had Trump remained in office, but I think the support for the vaccine rollout probably drops off after the first round of vaccines were largely completed.

4. Ordinarily, Presidents on their own don't really have a large impact on the US economy, but, had we pulled out of NATO like Trump wanted to, and not supported Ukraine like we are now, I think the US economy would be in considerably worse shape. So, I'm convinced Trump's policies would have had a detrimental effect on the economy. So yeah, I agree.

 

[Optimus Prime]

This guy literally can't help himself
========================

Former President Trump blasted Democrats in Easter messages on Sunday morning, including one aimed at “radical left maniacs” and another calling New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) a “failed gubernatorial candidate.”

“Happy Easter to failed gubernatorial candidate and racist Attorney General Letitia James,” Trump said in a message sent via his Save America PAC. “May she remain healthy despite the fact that she will continue to drive business out of New York while at the same time keeping crime, death, and destruction in New York!”.........

Trump Easter messages skewer Democrats

 

[Optimus Prime]

Well, this seems normal
===============

Garrett Soldano released a pretty strange campaign ad last fall. The only words spoken in it came from a voice aggressively asking, “WHO?” and a chorus twice chanting “WE THE PEOPLE!” in response. The rest of the ad was 45 seconds of footage of Soldano firing various weapons at a gun range, set to a heavy, looping guitar riff.

Soldano is not running for sheriff, or even for a seat in the state House. He’s a Republican running to become the next governor of Michigan.

Soldano’s ad may have been absurd, but it wasn’t atypical. Republican candidates are turning to guns, guns, guns in a very big way ahead of the midterms, serving their potential constituents with a torrent of campaign ads, Instagram posts, and even Christmas cards of themselves toting and firing deadly weapons.

Conservatives using guns in campaign ads is nothing new, of course, but the way in which they’re being used in the wake of Trump’s term in office — and particularly in the wake the violent attack on the Capitol that ended it — portends a dark future for the party, and if it regains control of Washington, D.C., for the nation.

Ron Filipkowski, a researcher who tracks right-wing activity online and has highlighted several examples of Republicans going gun crazy in their campaign ads, says the use of guns in ads has “absolutely” ratcheted up this primary cycle compared to 2020 and 2018.

“I started noticing it and was like, ‘What’s going on?'” he says. “I think it’s almost like the [Lauren] Boebert-, [Marjorie Taylor] Greene-ization of the whole America First movement that’s driving the Republican Party now. It’s those candidates who are the ones that are doing it. I feel like the establishment candidates kind of feel like they have to do it too, now.”

Boebert built her successful 2020 campaign largely around guns, and last year released an ad promising to carry a Glock on Capitol Hill. Greene in an ad for her 2020 campaign cocked an assault rifle as she warned “antifa terrorists” to stay out of her district, and last fall blew up a Prius with a 50-caliber rifle.

Establishment Republicans like Lindsey Graham, who last year released a video of himself at a shooting range in khakis, are struggling to keep up, but the point is that they feel like they need to try. This is what the party is now.............

But there’s something more insidious behind the sudden rash of pro-gun ads than protecting the Second Amendment. It’s a visual reminder that the party believes Jan. 6 was a good thing, that the attack on the Capitol was a valiant effort, and that Republicans deserve candidates who is willing to implicitly or explicitly condone the use of violence to reclaim a bygone version of the United States they’ve seen slip through their fingers under Democratic leadership — to make America great again.

“It’s an extremist movement,” says Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist and co-founder of The Lincoln Project. “The GOP base, at least a wide swath of it, has been radicalized. There are very few things you can do to demonstrate you’re more extreme and intense on tribal issues than to insinuate, tacitly or overtly, violence, that you are willing to fight for the cause. That’s what it is. It’s not a Second Amendment issue. It’s saying, ‘I’m this intense. I’m this extreme. I’m willing to go to these measures to fight for our tribe.’ That’s what it’s all about.”..........

“The Second Amendment has always been a defensive posture,” Madrid continues. “It’s always been don’t take my guns. What we are moving into now is something foundationally different. It’s now advocating that gun ownership and bearing arms is a virtue. It’s not a right. It’s almost an obligation. … There’s a desire to see a society that is centralized on this type of weaponry. There’s a lot of paranoia involved here, but it’s also demonstrative of a society that a lot of these members feel is out of their control. They feel quote unquote America is gone. It’s behind them. It’s already been taken, and the only way to defend themselves from whatever that boogeyman is, is to have a stockpile of gold bullion, canned goods, and a ton of weaponry.”

Madrid, like Filipkowski, acknowledges that the use of guns in political ads is “growing,” and that by 2024 Republicans are going to be blowing stuff up. “Brandishing weapons and leaning into gun culture is viewed as revolutionary, and by revolutionary I mean, in their minds, the most virtuous sense, as defenders of quote unquote America,” he says. “There’s the 1776 rhetoric and there’s the patriot rhetoric, and there’s the American flag that’s always waved. It’s this absurd definition of what American is, and it’s getting more and more extreme in the Republican Party every election cycle.”.............

MSN

www.msn.com