Tag Archives: GOP

A new Boss of Boss’s

Philosophy, Politics, , ,
Mr. Big

Hypothesis: Donald Trump has Turned the GOP in to a mafia organization.

As anyone who has followed the Trump Administration and read just a few of the ‘tell all’ books knows it has been said a time or two that it is run like a ‘Mob Family’. Not sure if they mean like a real mafia organization or just like our TV/Movies version. In any case the most recent action(s) of the GOP in the House I think it is safe to say that the House members of the GOP think it is. Further more they seem to be running their caucus like it too.

This is not something new. The GOP, all of it, has been on this road for sometime now. I submit it can be traced back to 1990’s and the “Contract on America” and the start of a much more vigorous control of the GOP Congressional Causes. It started to take it’s current form with the 2010 elections and the near absolute control of many of the state houses by GOP super majorities. With these super majorities in place the GOP was able to redraw congressional districts to favor the GOP. Good old guided age gerrymandering. With these new districts in place it became an assured thing that the only thing a GOP incumbent needed to fear was being primaried by someone to the ‘Right’ of them.

The primary challenger doesn’t have to be really more to the right of the incumbent, he just has to make the incumbent look like he is to the ‘left’ of him/her. With the way the congress worked in the teens this was quite easy to do. All the challenger has to do is show that the incumbent has ‘compromised’ with the ‘left’ (read that Democrats) or worse yet, voted with them when the caucus didn’t. This means that the House GOP Wip has a great deal of clout to swing. All he has to do is walk over to the congress person in question and say in a quite voice “Nice little district you have here. Same if you loose it.”

Other things have also come about. Like ‘out of town’ talent ($$$$$) can now be easily and quietly brought in. With the creation of ‘fake news’ and the creation of tailor made new reporting and the end of the fairness doctrine it is very easy to down any incumbent. Add into the the open acceptance of ‘transactional politics’ (I call it “Zero Sum” politics) where if your side doesn’t get everything it demands then it has lost and you have the makes of our current situation.

So how does this lead to Pres. Trump turning the GOP Mafia type organization? haven’t I just shown it was already been turned into one? Well, not really. I’ve shown all of the elements/components needed to make a mafia were present but it was missing one element. It needs a person ready willing and able to be the ‘Boss’. Sure the GOP had many many people wanting to be the Boss, but none of them had what it takes to do it. Donald Trump did and does. I submit that was missing was the way Donald Trump communicates to the ‘base’. Donald Trump has many faults but not being able to size up his mark. An make no mistake his was the GOP, not the American people. He doesn’t give a tinkers dam about the American people. He doesn’t care about the GOP except that it is a tool for gaining what he wants. Don’t ask me what he wants, I don’t know, but i am afraid we are soon to find out.

A Problem In 2020 for the GOP

Politics, ,

There is a problem just waiting to jump out and bite the GOP in the butt in 2020. It is, strangely enough, the blind eye they are turning towards election security. I’m not sure what they are thinking. It could be a lot of things, most likely is. But this I do know, the GOP is the party of “it’s no big deal, so let’s do nothing.”

Even if they win big in 2020 how will they defend their victory against the charges of election tampering. If we do nothing how can they reassure the electorate that the election was fair? How does any state demonstrate that the election wasn’t hacked? After all the GOP has been the party leading the charge about election fraud. Of ghost voters, or illegal aliens voting? So how do they turn around and say “This was a fair and open election. No hacking here.”

They maybe thinking that they will not win big, or even win at all. That this is just preparatory to crying “Rigged Election” when they loose. If so it is a greave error on their part. While it might help them in the short run, it will hurt the United States in the long run and history will not be kind tp them. But then, again, the leaders of the GOP may not care what history says. After all, they will be long dead an buried so what does it mean to them.

But what does it say about them?

“By the pricking of my thumbs.”

Philosophy, Politics, ,

“Something wicked this way comes”

As some of you may know the above quote comes from the play McBeth (act 4, sene 1). Many more will know that the play is one of Shakespeare’s tragedies and is about a very bad king.

With the coming of Pres. Trump and the turning in of the Mueller Report, we are now seeing, what I like to identify them as, Movement Conservatives really coming out of the wood work. They are greatly emboldened to push thru their agenda and grab for ultimate power. Mostly because of the new A.G. Barr has publicly said that the President, when he is a Republican in nothing else, can not be investigated. Nor may he be charged. Additionally he can stop any investigation he chooses when ever he thinks it is best, particularly those investigations that are directed at him/her. Pres. Trump now seems to be acting like he can do what he wants, when he want, to whom he wants, in anyway he wants. Just like the Kings of old.

In the past two weeks we have seen the threat of military action in Venezuela, Korea and Iran. We are seeing US military actions taking place in the Middle East with responses by Iran. Also we have several State Legislators passing or getting ready to pass laws that are currently unconstitutional in the hope that the ‘new’ “Conservative” Supreme Court will use one or more of them to over turn “Roe vs Wade”. Funny how so few people remember that the SCOTUS of ‘Roe’ was considered ‘conservative’ at the time?

I am really not sure where all these things will lead to, but I am sure we will be living with the results and effects for the next few decades, even if Donald Trump is not re-elected. One of the results I will be working for, and I encourage others to do is when you disagree with what is happening to resist to your up most. It doesn’t mater how much, every little bit is needed. You need not be a MacDuff, you don’t even need to be a spear carrier. If nothing else you can bear witness to the actions taken. So I leave you with the closing couplet of the pay that I started this with……

“Lay on MacDuff, and damned be he who cries Hold! Enough!”

A Study in History

Politics, , , , ,

I have a question for you….Do you remember the political party called The Federalists? Drawing a blank? Then let’s try something closer in time, how about The Wigs? Still nothing?

To start with The Federalists Political Party is not the POC or Think Tank known as the Federalist Society, it was “faction” (there were no political parties yet) that supported both Pres. Washington and Adams. (Follow the link provided if you want more details.) What is important about the Federalists is that after the 1800 election they knew they were going to be out of power so the both created a slew of judgeships and then appointed loyal Federalists to the judgeships. It was said by the Democratic-Republicans that John Adams stayed up all night of the last day of his presidency signing the papers for the judges.

So what does this have to do with today? Well…..for most of the last administration (Pres. Obama) the GOP has done to keep open as many federal judgeships as it can open (What was done to Merrick Garland was the most famous of these acts.) in hope that they would win in 2016. Well they did, and they got someone, Donald Trump, who could careless about getting good jurists. So now they have been filling all of these open judgeships as fast as they can. More often than not along straight party line votes. So what does this mean to us? Well the Federalists never won a major election again and by 1824 was no more. Strangely enough, that was just about the same time as all the Federalists judges had left office.

Hypothesis

Is a political party appointing large numbers of judgeships symptomatic of it eminent dissolution?

Now lets look at the Wigs. As shown in the link this is one of the political parties listed as succeeding The Federalists party. You may remember hearing about them when you studied the American Civil War and the rise of the Republican Party. So what does the Wigs have to do with todays Republicans? Simply that before they finally collapsed in 1860 their membership was shrinking for many many years in the decade of the 1850’s. Also they had a great deal trouble with extreme organizations like the “Nativist, or American Party, or Know Nothings. (To get a Hollywood view of Native party members see the Gangs of New York. Pay particular attention to Bill “The Butcher”.) The GOP seems to be having the same problem with things like the Libertarian party or the Freedom Caucus. So we have a political party with a shrinking and fracturing membership. How long can it stay a major player.

Hypothesis

Is the election of Donald Trump symptomatic of a moribund political party?

So we have two interesting hypothesis’ that are actually the same. Is the GOP moribund? How can we tell? What are symptomatic what are diagnostic? Any ideas for set or two of good tests or do we just need to sit and watch what happens.

A Greater Danger To Pres. Trump

Philosophy, Politics, , , ,

Since Friday I’ve been hearing a great deal about how the Mueller Report and/or the Barr Letter have eased, if not out right eliminated, any threat the Russian interference with the 2016 elections has for Trump or the GOP. I would beg to differ.

First let’s assume that the Mueller Report does clear the Trump Presidential campaign of any knowing cooperation with the Russians. Next lets also assume it show that no one in the campaign did anything that can be said to be obstruction of justice (this is a big assumption as some of the people involved in the campaign actually did do things publicly). This still doe not mean that the Report does not contain anything damaging to Pres. Trump, his family, his associates, or the GOP in general. What I’d like to suggest is that the Mueller Report contains evidence proving that some, if not all, of the GOP or the Trump group were and are “useful idiots”. (See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot )

Being seen as a Useful Idiot is a bigger danger to both the Trump Presidency and to the GOP than showing a few people in the Trump Campaign and/or Presidency knowingly cooperated with the Russian effort for a. Very simple reason. If they had, they could be ostracized as “bad” people who are not like everyone else in the party or administration. But being show to be Useful Idiots can and will taint both the Administration and the GOP as a whole.

Just consider this little ‘though Experiment ‘:

Cabinet member puts forth a ‘new’ and radical idea, say like defunding the Special Olympics. If the Mueller Report has show that a fair number of the Trump administration were co-opted as “Useful Idiots” by the Russians how can said Cabinet member defend themselves from the charge that they are still being used as “Useful Idiots” now?

Also, both administrations and political parties can survive and recover from corruption and/or criminal charges, even ones that have been proven true. What they can not survive is being shown to be both stupid and a laughingstock. If you don’t think the GOP isn’t worried about this just look at some of the hysteria going on in the Houes of Repressives right now. Look at what the Administration is doing now, like the No-plan plan to replace the ACA once the courts remove it. Or look at just what the Administration is doing about the massive flooding in the mid-west.

It is like one of my professors said “politicians can weather almost anything but being shown to being stupid”. I have said for many years that “In politics, stupidity is the only capital crime.”

The GOP and the Matryoshka Doll

Politics, , ,

Continuing my posts on the coming Seldon Crisis you maybe wondering why I have a picture of a Matryoshka Doll.

Well it is simple, when dealing with Russian activities in the The Great Game it is best to look for plots nested in plots, and nested in plots.  Just as a matryoshka doll is nested.  I use the phase “The Great Game” because it dates back to 19th Russian Empire and to reminded us that this nesting of plots is a Russian thing, not just a Communist tactic. Even as I write this an accused Russian Agent has had her request for bail denied.

Even if we find that Donald Trump is comprised by Putin.  Or even if it is just his business that are in tangled and he ‘knew nothing’ about it.  Even if NRA didn’t ‘know’ where the large bundles of money came from that the then passed on to campaigns, we need to keep in mind that it may go deeper.  We must always remember that Russians are past masters of indirection and we must ask what don’t they want us to see.

So, once we cleanup the problems of the 2016 election.  Once we take steps to end the penetration of our elections by foreign nationals.  Once we deal with the problem of ‘dark money’ we must remember we haven’t found everything.  We must continue  to be vigilant for new and inventive ways people who do not have the best interests of the USA at hard will continue to take control of OUR elections.

Finally, once we have identified those people who are responsible for these malignant attacks and the people who pulled their strings we must make sure they know it is not acceptable and the pice they have to pay is unacceptable to them.  We must show ourselves and the world just what it means to tamper, in anyway, our elections.  We hold our elections inviolable.  We have payed too high a price in blood and tears to ever let anyone corrupt or control them.

In this we are not Democrats, or Republicans, or any political party.  This goes beyond partisan politics, this goes to just what it means to be Americans.

So I ask you now:

“Who here is an American?”