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The GOP: Not What It Used to Be


fraurosena

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Hey Issa, say you’re an idiot without saying you’re an idiot:

 

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On 6/18/2022 at 8:35 PM, Cartmann99 said:

The Texas GOP circus is over.

Texas Republican Convention calls Biden win illegitimate and rebukes Cornyn over gun talks

I got about two-thirds through their final draft last night before I stopped for mental health reasons. In short, American and Texan Exceptionalism fell in love with an super-religious QAnon/MAGA/Sovereign Citizen nutter and they had a whole houseful of crazy babies. :doh:

When the official platform drops, I'll try to find an article that breaks it all down. If worse comes to worse, I'll plow through it myself and post about it.

At this point I'd offer Texas back to Mexico, but I don't think Mexico would take it.

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Former congressman King is still a racist.

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More under spoiler:

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Another GQP idiot 

 

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This is a lengthy, but excellent thread about how the GQP spent 40 years slowly fucking over America.

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Continued under spoiler:

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And of course the GQP snowflake fucksticks have a mad now over Orlando saying this. 

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The City of Orlando, Fla., apologized on Saturday for its Independence Day message that declared the nation was in “strife” and questioned why people would want to celebrate the holiday in the city’s weekly newsletter.

“A lot of people probably don’t want to celebrate our nation right now, and we can’t blame them,” the Friday edition of Orlando’s “City News” read. “When there is so much division, hate and unrest, why on earth would you want to have a party celebrating any of it?”

The city apologized the next day, saying it “sincerely regrets” the message’s “negative impact.”

The statement had sparked widespread criticism online, with many calling the city’s newsletter “un-American.” The message also caught the attention of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) office.

Fuck the GQP snowflakes.  Orlando was absolutely right to say this and should not back down 

Edited by 47of74
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A good read: "How Republican leaders broke Americans’ confidence"

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On Tuesday, the venerable Gallup organization reported that just 27 percent of Americans expressed confidence in their institutions — the lowest level of trust since the questions were first asked half a century ago.

On Wednesday, Mitch McConnell showed us why Americans feel this way.

Republican senators announced that, under orders from the Senate Republican leader, they were pulling out of House-Senate talks finalizing details on bipartisan legislation to help the United States compete with China on semiconductor chips.

It wasn’t because McConnell objected to the China bill; he was one of 19 Republican senators who voted for the Senate’s version. It’s because he objects to a second, unrelated bill Democrats are working on to lower prescription drug prices.

McConnell wants to stop Democrats, including Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), from using a process known as “reconciliation” to pass that prescription-drug bill by a simple majority vote, immune from any GOP filibuster. And to stop Americans from getting cheaper prescriptions, he is willing to sabotage American manufacturers (and therefore assist China) by denying them $52 billion in support under the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act.

In both cases, Americans lose — because McConnell thinks it’s to Republicans’ advantage in the midterm elections. He is willing to hurt the country, and help the Chinese, in order to harm Democrats’ political standing.

“Let me be perfectly clear: there will be no bipartisan USICA as long as Democrats are pursuing a partisan reconciliation bill,” he tweeted.

And let me be perfectly clear: This cynicism has destroyed Americans’ faith in their government.

You can see it in this year’s edition of the annual Gallup poll on 14 U.S. institutions: Congress, the presidency, the Supreme Court, the military, business, police, media, churches, schools and more. The average confidence level, 27 percent, has declined from 46 percent in 1989.

Though opinions of individual institutions vary widely among groups, the overall distrust of institutions is universal — with little variation by gender, age, race, education or even party.

Though the economic and political cycles play some role, Gallup’s Jeffrey M. Jones, who led the study, tells me that the declining confidence is more because of a “general idea of government not being able to address the problems facing the country.”

That’s backed up by other data. Two decades ago, just 5 percent cited the government as the most important problem facing the country. That reached 32 percent for 2019, and has remained at or above 20 percent for the years since then.

This is no accident. For three decades, as the Republicans transitioned from a limited-government party to an anti-government party, GOP leaders have seen political advantage in undermining Americans’ confidence in their institutions, and in sabotaging the functions of government. That’s a major theme of my book, out next month, “The Destructionists: The Twenty-Five-Year Crack-Up of the Republican Party.”

It began with Newt Gingrich’s instructions to Republicans on how to refer to Democrats (and the government) in 1990: “Traitors.” “Corrupt.” “Cheat.” “Decay.” “Failure.” “Incompetent.” “Abuse of power.” As the era of government shutdowns, default brinkmanship, hostage-taking, name-calling and mindless obstruction was just beginning, Vice President Al Gore presciently remarked: “The Republicans are determined to wreck Congress in order to control it — and then to wreck a presidency in order to recapture it.”

McConnell played a major part in the sabotage, and not just with his extravagant intransigence toward legislation and nominees, highlighted by the theft of a Supreme Court seat in 2016.

In 2009, he urged the Obama administration to support legislation creating a debt-reduction committee — and then opposed the legislation after the Obama administration supported it. In 2012, he threw his support behind a majority vote on a debt-ceiling proposal — and then, when it appeared the bill would pass, he said he would block it with a filibuster.

Now, we see the fruits of such labors.

After Republicans’ years of throwing sand in the gears of government, just 7 percent have confidence in the legislature and 23 percent in the presidency. After Republicans’ use of underhanded tactics to secure a highly partisan supermajority on the Supreme Court, just 25 percent have confidence in the high court. After years of Republicans’ attacks on the media (culminating in Trump’s “enemy of the people” formulation) and after the GOP’s fostering of propaganda outlets such as Fox News, just 11 percent of Americans have confidence in television news (16 percent in newspapers).

They’ve hacked away at public schools (critical race theory! trans athletes!), at the “broken” military and at the criminal justice system (“corrupt” FBI and Justice Department leaders) — and Americans’ trust in those institutions has slipped, too.

Now, against all odds, Washington is on the cusp of lowering drug prices and boosting U.S. technology over China’s. And so, McConnell, top Senate Republican, steps in to sabotage both.

It doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

 

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Dear Rufus, please don't allow the GQP to take over either house of congress.

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Ric Scott creeps me out. He's also a nasty piece of work:

 

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3 hours ago, WiseGirl said:

Me too.

I think the other line I have for this is don't let the door hit you where the good Lord split you.

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You could not make this up:

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4 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

You could not make this up:

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It gets even better. Apparently the GQP stole art that was under copyright protection:

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More under spoiler:

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Enlarged image in case it's too hard to read:

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1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

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Enlarged image in case it's too hard to read:

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This is a total scam and should be illegal. Disgusting and predatory. 

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I’ve said this before, but I really do not understand why donating money to political candidates is even a thing. Why do they even need that money in the first place? Doesn’t their party allocate money— money the party receives from membership fees?

But politicians asking/grifting for money has become so normalized in US society, that the success a politician has at raising money is equated with them being more or less successful than their opponents…

I still get DeSantis grifting emails on a daily basis, often more than one in 24 hours. I laugh about it, but really it’s a sad example of the state of affairs in US politics: it’s all about the grift.

I sincerely hope that one day, the US wakes up to this ultimate shake down and changes, but I won’t hold my breath.

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5 hours ago, fraurosena said:

I’ve said this before, but I really do not understand why donating money to political candidates is even a thing. Why do they even need that money in the first place? Doesn’t their party allocate money— money the party receives from membership fees?

But politicians asking/grifting for money has become so normalized in US society, that the success a politician has at raising money is equated with them being more or less successful than their opponents…

I still get DeSantis grifting emails on a daily basis, often more than one in 24 hours. I laugh about it, but really it’s a sad example of the state of affairs in US politics: it’s all about the grift.

I sincerely hope that one day, the US wakes up to this ultimate shake down and changes, but I won’t hold my breath.

You don’t have to join a party. Even if you consider yourself a Dem or Rep, there’s no membership fees. 
 

Most of them beg for money for more advertising. You would be appalled at the number of ads we are force fed, especially close to the election. If you are no a swing area, you are bombarded even more. TV, internet, radio, streaming services, and print ads, over and over and over and over. 
 

Money also goes towards fundraising activities to raise more money. Also, they want/need money to hold campaign events, which can be expensive. 
 

It got worse with the horrible SCOTUS ruling in the Citizens United case. That basically gave carte blanche to increased corporate influence and dark money. 

I wish we could get out of the endless push for more money for campaigns. 

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Interesting: "Leaked audio of a billionaire GOP donor hands Democrats a weapon"

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You’ve probably heard that Republicans are dissembling madly about new tax policies in the law President Biden signed this month. The Inflation Reduction Act will boost IRS funding to better target wealthy tax avoiders, and Republicans are pretending this will unleash an army of tens of thousands of IRS agents exclusively on working- and middle-class taxpayers.

That’s par for the course. But now, a billionaire GOP donor has reportedly been caught on a recording advising Republicans to amplify distortions exactly like this.

Politico obtained audio of a conference call that Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel held with top GOP donors, telling them their help is badly needed to win the Senate.

McDaniel advised the donors that Democrats are swamping Republicans in money, because GOP fundraising is flat with small donors. Hence big donors must step up and bail out GOP candidates by giving directly to their campaigns, McDaniel told them.

But buried in the Politico story is another revelation.

Specifically, Politico reports, during the question-and-answer session, billionaire GOP donor Steve Wynn asked whether there are additional ways for very well-heeled donors to give anonymously. Wynn also urged Republicans to crank up the messaging that Democratic tax policies will primarily hammer working-class people, per Politico:

The billionaire also offered up some messaging advice. Republican candidates, he said, should run aggressive TV ads casting Democrats as advocates of tax policies that would hurt lower-wage earners and small businesses.

“Hard-hitting kind of spots with a man’s voice, no soft pedal,” Wynn suggested, before giving a sample script: “‘They’re coming after you if you’re a waiter, if you’re a bartender, if you’re anybody with a cash business … they’re coming after you.’”

It’s particularly perverse for a billionaire donor such as Wynn to advise Republicans to “message” in this way because the new legislation’s provisions are actually designed to target the very wealthiest Americans who benefit from business structures that require lots of IRS resources to audit. That is, people like Wynn.

To be fair, it’s not entirely clear which tax policies Wynn was referring to here. But Steve Rosenthal, a senior fellow with the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, notes that Wynn’s claim is often made by opponents of beefing up IRS tax funding. They say such funding will inevitably mean increased targeting of low-level cash workers and cash businesses, because they are often tax avoiders.

It’s true that cash workers and small-to-midsize cash businesses are sometimes part of the tax avoidance problem. But the new policy — which would spend $80 billion on IRS enforcement, with the goal of raising at least $200 billion in additional tax revenue over 10 years — is specifically meant to address a problem that has been a huge boon to very rich taxpayers.

The infusion of money is necessary because the IRS has been the target of an extraordinarily successful campaign to defund it. Who benefits most from an underfunded IRS? The wealthy.

As ProPublica usefully documented, when the IRS finds itself without sufficient resources and personnel, it’s outmatched by the ultrawealthy, who can hire squadrons of accountants and lawyers to help them avoid paying taxes.

Notably, while audit rates have fallen across the board in recent years, they’ve plunged the most for the wealthy. As the Government Accountability Office documented, in 2010, 21.2 percent of tax returns reporting over $10 million in income were audited; by 2019, that fell to 3.9 percent. Among those making between $5 million and $10 million, audits fell from 13.5 percent to just 1.4 percent.

“The lack of resources prevents the IRS from ensuring that large and sprawling operations pay their full tax bill,” Rosenthal told us. “The point of increased enforcement is to pursue these businesses.”

There’s no telling whether Wynn himself will be affected by the Inflation Reduction Act’s changes. But Wynn, who presided over casinos and properties on multiple continents, oversaw the same sort of complex business structures that potentially benefited from years of starved IRS enforcement, Rosenthal says.

“Wynn is trying to push Republicans to scare the little fish into thinking the IRS is targeting them," Rosenthal told us, “when in fact the IRS has pledged to target the big fish.”

In short, the new policies will target members of Wynn’s class. It’s pretty revealing for Wynn to be urging Republicans to attack those policies by arguing that their real victims will be waiters and bartenders. Democrats should jump on this.

 

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