The Republican Agenda 2021 and Forward

[Herdfan]

Some Republicans are championing congressional term limits and it seems the left-wing media is the one being the rare contrarian on this one – it’s just a bad idea simply because some Republicans are supporting it. I haven’t seen anything detailing exactly why this is a bad idea and I haven’t met anybody left, right, or center who thinks it’s a bad idea. So can anybody tell me what possible nefarious reason some Republicans would have for supporting it?

I love the idea on its face. Getting rid of the likes of Pelosi, McConnell, Hoyer, Grassley, etc. would just be awesome.

But what I fear would happen is that it would give entrenched unelected bureaucrats more power. Power should rest in the hands of those who are elected, no matter if we like them or not.

 

[GermanSuplex]

Just watched clips of Trump at CPAC. He’s deranged, spouting total lies “Biden took away the wall and hid it in a secret location that was found with helicopters”.)

Anyone listening to this guy and taking him seriously needs an intervention. He’s nuts and full of shit. He’s no different than Kanye, except he’s far more stupid and not a self-made success. But Kanye rightfully gets called crazy, Trump gets votes. I don’t get it.

President Donald Trump's Full Speech At CPAC | The New York Times

President Trump spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference about the White House's agenda.Subscribe on YouTube: http://bit.ly/U8Ys7n--------------...

www.youtube.com

 

[Citysnaps]

Just watched clips of Trump at CPAC. He’s deranged, spouting total lies “Biden took away the wall and hid it in a secret location that was found with helicopters”.)

Anyone listening to this guy and taking him seriously needs an intervention. He’s nuts and full of shit. He’s no different than Kanye, except he’s far more stupid and not a self-made success. But Kanye rightfully gets called crazy, Trump gets votes. I don’t get it.

President Donald Trump's Full Speech At CPAC | The New York Times

President Trump spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference about the White House's agenda.Subscribe on YouTube: http://bit.ly/U8Ys7n--------------...

www.youtube.com

Yeah... Still, a lot of people are for trump. I'm a little surprised he's polling above desantis for next year's gop primary. I figured most would have learned by now.

 

[fooferdoggie]

it gets even worse

Singin’ the coups: Donald Trump releases single with January 6 prisoners

Former president drops charity song on streaming sites recorded with men imprisoned for their role in attack on US Capitol

www.theguardian.com

 

[mac_in_tosh]

Just watched clips of Trump at CPAC. He’s deranged, spouting total lies “Biden took away the wall and hid it in a secret location that was found with helicopters”.)

Anyone listening to this guy and taking him seriously needs an intervention

Apparently, based on a scan around the room, not many people were even listening to him. Lots of empty seats.

 

[GermanSuplex]

Yeah... Still, a lot of people are for trump. I'm a little surprised he's polling above desantis for next year's gop primary. I figured most would have learned by now.

He still has way more support than I’d imagine possible, but I wouldn’t put much weight on the CPAC polls.

Trump has one advantage; everyone knows everything about him. He will sling dirt at any other opponent. Can anyone else handle the onslaught of insults from Trump and his cult of gullible conspiracy theorists?

I do like the name “Meatball Ron” though.

In all seriousness, all the other republicans are weak. None of them are fighters. Trump may not be tough, but he is certainly tough against political opponents.

 

[Huntn]

At the hands of Republicans, we March backwards to the 19th century:

Arkansas Gov. Sanders signs law loosening child labor protections

Sanders believes the provision was “burdensome and obsolete,” spokeswoman Alexa Henning said in an emailed statement. Remaining state and federal regulations are still in effect, she said. Sanders signed the Republican-backed bill on Tuesday.

Meanwhile:
Federal officials have pledged to crack down on child labor law offenses after regulators discovered hundreds of violations in meatpacking plants and after press reports emerged of children working in hazardous occupations around the country.

 

[Herdfan]

Trump has one advantage; everyone knows everything about him. He will sling dirt at any other opponent. Can anyone else handle the onslaught of insults from Trump and his cult of gullible conspiracy theorists?

And that's the beauty of DeSantis. He won't engage in it and that will drive Trump crazy to the point he does something really stupid.

 

[Eric]

And that's the beauty of DeSantis. He won't engage in it and that will drive Trump crazy to the point he does something really stupid.

The general consensus seems to be that he will have to engage at some point and when you get in the dirt with Trump on the Republican side history shows you'll lose. It works for Democrats who stay above it because they don't have to appease the Republican base (who hates them and will never vote for them anyway), anyone who takes on Trump within the Republican party faces an uphill battle.

 

[mac_in_tosh]

And that's the beauty of DeSantis. He won't engage in it and that will drive Trump crazy to the point he does something really stupid.

You mean there's still room for Trump to do something more stupid than he's already done? You know, like inciting an insurrection, stealing classified documents, offering ideas for Covid treatment, promising Mexico will pay for the wall, writing love letters to the head of N. Korea, etc.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

Inside the “Private and Confidential” Conservative Group That Promises to “Crush Liberal Dominance”

Leonard Leo, a key architect of the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority, is now the chairman of Teneo, a group that aims to influence all aspects of American politics and culture.

www.propublica.org

When the long game architect behind overturning Roe v Wade who was recently gifted over a billion dollars from one donor speaks we should probably listen.

 

[Eric]

More GOP love for the kids!

 

[fooferdoggie]

More GOP love for the kids!

look at who is smiling and who is not. this was past fucking stupid but we know the GOP care nothing about kids.

 

[Yoused]

As a companion to the child labor law repeal,

Bill To Ban Child Marriage In West Virginia Defeated By Republicans

Currently, children can marry as young as 16 in West Virginia with parental consent. Anyone younger than that also must get a judge’s waiver.

www.huffpost.com

Some of the bill’s opponents have argued that teenage marriages are a part of life in West Virginia. … Kanawha County Republican Sen. Mike Stuart … said his vote “wasn’t a vote against women.” He said his mother was married when she was 16, and “six months later, I came along. I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”

Although recent figures are unavailable, according to the Pew Research Center, West Virginia had the highest rate of child marriages among the states in 2014, when the state’s five-year average was 7.1 marriages for every 1,000 children ages 15 to 17.​

 

[mac_in_tosh]

It's ironic that some of the poorest states in America keep voting for Republicans and their policies that keep them in that condition.

 

[Huntn]

Closely related to “anti-Woke”, here is the current Republican agenda in the classroom. The GOP has gone to war over Diversity, Critical Race Theory*, and any Gender-Sexuality discussion that differs from the, oppressive “traditional” Christian View of one man, one woman marriage.
(If you disagree with the categorization of “oppressive”, as an alternative, about an unwillingness to live and let live?)

*Critical Race Theiry- A label they thought up to counter any discussion of racism where they feel like they are the primary targets of such discussions.

They display abhorrence to any notion that human beings don’t always fall into neat and tidy, Christian friendly and reinforcing categories, prefering ignorance to knowledge whenever it interferes with their religious preferences.
Most alarming is their unwillingness to acknowledge, that there are diverse views, their unwillingness to face diversity regarding all aspects of their lives, instead preferring to suppress, steamroll any counter views in essence cementing in place the essence of white privilege.

Here‘s the Long List of TopicsRepublicans Want Banned From The Classroom​

https://www.edweek.org/policy-polit...licans-want-banned-from-the-classroom/2022/02

(article from 2022)

Republicans this year have drastically broadened their legislative efforts to censor what’s taught in the classroom, according to an Education Week analysis of active state bills.

What started in early 2021 as a conservative effort to prohibit teachers from talking about diversity and inequality in so-called “divisive” ways or taking sides on “controversial” issues has now expanded to include proposed restrictions on teaching that the United States is a racist country, that certain economic or political systems are racist, or that multiple gender identities exist, according to an Education Week analysis of 61 new bills and other state-level actions.

There is more, lots more… excerpts from article

• In Florida, a bill would ban teachers from saying “racial colorblindness” is racist.
• In South Carolina, a bill would ban teaching that “equity is a concept that is superior to or supplants the concept of equality.”
• In New Hampshire, “promoting a negative account or representation of the founding and history of the United States of America” could become illegal, if a bill were to pass.
• In at least 10 states, legislators have proposed bills that would require administrators to list every book, reading, and activity that teachers use in their lessons, a process that educators argue would be cumbersome and expensive. Some of these bills also require districts to give parents prior right of review for new curriculum adoptions or library additions.
• Since January 2021, 14 states have passed into law what’s popularly referred to as “anti-critical race theory” legislation.
• In interviews with Education Week, state representatives said these new bills are designed to prevent teachers from telling children what to think, encouraging them to see divisions, or asking them to adopt perspectives that are different from those of their parents on issues like policing, Black Lives Matter, gender identity, and human sexuality.
• During the 2021 legislative session, though, only a handful of state bills concerned curriculum transparency or parents’ rights to object to classroom materials. Instead, most prohibited teaching a list of “divisive concepts,” which originally appeared in an executive order signed by then-President Donald Trump in fall 2020.
• Other conservative advocacy groups, some with ties to Trump, developed model legislation that would ban public schools from teaching these concepts—in some cases labeling them as “critical race theory.” The term refers to the academic theory that racism is perpetuated by structural forces like laws and policies rather than individual acts of bias, but proponents of these bills have used the term to refer to a broad swath of lessons about racism, oppression, and other social issues.
• Thirty-six bills introduced this year still include this list of prohibited concepts, and 30 ban the teaching of “critical race theory” outright. But more legislators have broadened the scope of banned topics, beyond the original list in Trump’s executive order.
• In several states, teachers are not allowed to teach that America is fundamentally or irredeemably racist.
• A Virginia bill would prevent teachers from saying that “market-based economics is inherently racist,” while several Mississippi bills would ban teaching that “the concepts of capitalism, free markets, or working for a private party in exchange for wages are racist and sexist.”
• In Indiana, lawmakers are trying to ban “race-based scapegoating.”
• Robert May, a Republican representative who introduced a South Carolina bill, said schools should make clear that the American judicial system is based on equality under the law, rather than equity of outcome. “The idea that the entire jurisprudence system is based on systematic racism is ridiculous,” he said.
• More bills also include language about “controversial” social and political issues, preventing schools from asking teachers to discuss these topics, and requiring that if teachers do, they evenly present both sides.

Gender and Sexuality:

• In Arizona, Florida, and Indiana, students have to seek permission from parents before being taught about “human sexuality” and districts have to disclose to parents what those lessons would entail.
• One proposed bill from Indiana requires parent permission before students learn about topics such as abortion, “transgenderism,” and gender identity.
• Students also need written permission from parents before receiving counseling or medical attention related to abortion, gender-transitioning, hormone blockers, gender-reassignment surgery and “pronoun selection.”
• The same bill also requires that students “must receive instruction that socialism, Marxism, communism, totalitarianism, or similar political systems are incompatible with and in conflict with the principles of freedom upon which the United States was founded.”
• Another bill, introduced in Oklahoma, would ban school libraries from housing, and teachers from using, “books that make as their primary subject the study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender issues or recreational sexualization.” The bill clarifies that recreational sexualization means “any form of non-procreative sex.”
• A similar Oklahoma bill would prohibit school libraries from having books “that make as their primary subject the study of sex, sexual preferences, sexual activity, sexual perversion, sex-based classifications, sexual identity, or gender identity or books that are of a sexual nature that a reasonable parent or legal guardian would want to know of or approve of prior to their child being exposed to it.”

Pushback from article:

• Opponents of these bills argue that the legislation is aimed at stifling conversation about racism and oppression. Heather Fleming, the founder of the Missouri Equity Education Partnership, an advocacy organization that supports anti-bias and anti-racist education, said the bills are designed to privilege the desires of white parents over others.
  “They’re packaging some of these laws as ‘parents’ bill of rights.’ What parents? Because my daughter is entitled to see her culture and her heroes, people who look like her, in the curriculum, too,” said Fleming, who is Black.
• Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, the executive director of the LGBTQ advocacy group, GLSEN, sees these bills as evidence that LGTBQ students are the newest target in the fight against “critical race theory.”

 

[mac_in_tosh]

The GOP's appeal is to an ever-shrinking percentage of people in the U.S. One can only hope that such extremism will lead to further losses in future elections.

 

[Roller]

The GOP's appeal is to an ever-shrinking percentage of people in the U.S. One can only hope that such extremism will lead to further losses in future elections.

I hope you're right, but any return to sane politics and policy will be offset by Republican-controlled state legislatures continuing to pass restrictive laws, gerrymandering, and a Supreme Court that will be in place for decades to come.

 

[Eric]

One has to wonder about their logic as a party, after losing the election due to Trump's issues in 2020 they seem to believe that somehow indictments and arrests will help him in 2024? Right now they ALL have his back again and I'm guessing the Biden WH has no problem with that.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

One has to wonder about their logic as a party, after losing the election due to Trump's issues in 2020 they seem to believe that somehow indictments and arrests will help him in 2024? Right now they ALL have his back again and I'm guessing the Biden WH has no problem with that.

On their logic I think there are a couple of issues.

Their former economic platforms are DOA and unpopular. A good percentage of Americans are economic victims of the trickle down fallacy and are no longer buying it. Also going after entitlements for the poor is a losing strategy in today's reality.

On top of that Trump pretty much laid waste to the rest of their traditional platforms with his past behavior. He's the biggest RINO of them all but he got the base too drugged out on vengeance rhetoric for them to care.

So that leaves the only demographic Republicans feel confident they can court or at the very least not piss off, right-wing extremist deplorables. Democrats can still win without the progressives. Republicans NEED the deplorables.

Lately I've been listening to more Republican abandoning conservative content than progressive. The progressive content is getting a little echo chambery and I pretty much know everything they are going to say before they even say it. These conservatives left the party because of Trumpism but they all pretty much agree that when a traditional Republican attempts to wax poetic about a return to the pre Trump days it comes off as pathetically out of touch. The base is no longer there and no longer finds those platforms appealing.

This brings me to an interesting discussion I heard about the dying off boomer generation. The main reason they've had outsized influence and longestivity is because they were a massive generation in numbers. Baby boomer is an apt name. People were just pumping out kids left and right which didn't happen on the same scale with later generations. As they die off there should be a lot of change, hopefully for the better.