The Republican Party: "Democracy needs its gatekeepers": The Republican Party is too corrupt to care about the country

[sear]

Candidates for political office have been debating since long before Lincoln / Douglas.

But Lincoln / Douglas was not televised.

Several Republican candidates have qualified to participate in this Wednesday night event. BUT !!

This debate is scheduled for transmission over cable TV, not broadcast TV.

This exclusion discriminates against voters that reside in areas not served by cable operators.

Are standards required here? Government standards?

An informed electorate is indispensable to a viable democracy / republic. How can voters know the candidate's political positions if denied access to such debate?

 

[sear]

salon

"Democracy needs its gatekeepers": The Republican Party is too corrupt to care about the country​

Chauncey DeVega / Tue, August 22, 2023 at 5:45 AM EDT

This points, again, to the crisis of the Republican Party. On most substantive policy issues having to do with economics, taxation, defense, reproductive rights, gun safety and others, Democrats are staking out positions that are not just in the mainstream but command significant majorities in most cases. Republicans, meanwhile, continue to talk about further attacks on reproductive healthcare rights, cuts in Social Security and Medicare, continue to side with gun manufacturers over children and their parents, continue to favor tax cuts for the wealthy, and push a range of other positions that are intrinsically unpopular.

https://news.yahoo.com/democracy-needs-gatekeepers-republican-party-094501169.html

"News" means new information.
In that sense Donald Trump is hardly news.

What is unprecedented, what is extraordinary is this most indicted Republican polls more favorably than any of the other numerous Republican presidential candidates. That's a red flag. It sounds the alarm of broader party dysfunction.

There are many capable men & women within the Republican party. Until their word is heard, and heeded, how can the U.S. Republican party lead the nation, if it can't even control itself?

 

[Shiftless2]

Nothing to add to this

 

[sear]

That's quite a moe.

 

[Shiftless2]

The fact that they believe anything Trump says over things said by anyone else is kinda freaky.

 

[sear]

Admin: threads merged.

Vivek Ramaswamy says "the climate change agenda is a hoax".

Vivek Ramaswamy says the ‘climate change agenda’ is a hoax

During the first primary GOP debate, candidates were asked to share their thoughts on climate change and Vivek Ramaswamy replied that “the climate change agenda is a hoax.”

www.nbcnews.com

There's a difference between failing as a leader to lead to prosperity, and leading to catastrophe.
The scientific consensus corroborated by this Summer's weather reports from Phoenix, it's no hoax.

Adolf Hitler's objective was not to eliminate humanity, merely to purify it, the Aryan race.
Ramaswamy seems willing if not determined to go Hitler one better, and threaten all humanity, in exchange for his own moment in the political lime-light.
This may achieve among the highest scores on the treachery scale ever registered in all human history.

Congratulations Vivek. You undertook to distinguish yourself from your Republican primary rivals. You have succeeded.

 

[Rampage]

You didn't miss much sear. Restricting access was merciful, sparing millions.

 

[sear]

"You didn't miss much sear. Restricting access was merciful, sparing millions." R #7

Thanks R #7,
I don't "get cable", but the highlights are filtering in.

It looks like an ideological maelstrom.
Certainly the GOP is in disarray. What makes that all the more conspicuous, the Republican party used to be known for political cohesion.
Social satirist Will Rogers has been quoted as saying: “I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!” BUT !!
Today's Republicans are making the Dems. look disciplined, coordinated, competent. I suppose we should credit Biden for that.

 

[Shiftless2]

Today's Republicans are making the Dems. look disciplined, coordinated, competent. I suppose we should credit Biden for that.

In some weird way you could credit Trump - he's managed to pull so much GOP support that the only thing remaining is a bunch of "splinter" candidates who are trying to differentiate themselves from the crowd.

 

[sear]

Amen.
That's but one of the ironies. Trump may have left the GOP in tatters. What sentient entity in this solar system can name 3 substantive conservative policy positions Republicans are unified on?

But you may have nailed it here S2 #9. If anyone deserves more credit for unifying (or at least coordinating) the Dems than Biden, it's not Harris, or Pelosi, or Schumer, it's Trump. Might this secretly be why Trump is so popular among Republicans?

- what a frik in mess -

 

[Shiftless2]

What sentient entity in this solar system can name 3 substantive conservative policy positions Republicans are unified on?

Watch and learn ....

https://imgur.com/buBMSBd

Turn on the sound when you do so

 

[sear]

S2 #11
Not sure how to advance it from my impression to indisputable fact, but it seems to me Republicans place politics first, and the good governance of the People after, if at all.

Nikki Haley doubles down on promise to send special ops to 'eliminate' drug cartels across US-Mexico border​

Joseph Wulfsohn / Sun, August 27, 2023 at 1:17 PM EDT
Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley repeated her support for sending armed forces across the U.S.-Mexico border to target drug cartels.
"When it comes to the cartels, we should treat them like the terrorists that they are," Haley told Fox News Digital in a recent interview. "I would send special operations in there and eliminate them just like we eliminated ISIS and make sure that they know there's no place for them."
"If Mexico won't deal with it, I'll make sure I deal with it," she added.

Nikki Haley doubles down on promise to send special ops to 'eliminate' drug cartels across US-Mexico border

GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley told Fox News Digital she would send special ops to "eliminate" drug cartels beyond the border and "treat them like the terrorists they are."

news.yahoo.com

Ambassador Haley:
Talkin' tough may be dandy for appealing to dim-witted jingoistic voters. But as you should know madam ambassador following through on this proposal would be a disaster.
The U.S. has been waging and losing its War on Drugs for generations. "Special Ops" will not "eliminate drug cartels". You think a U.S. Drug War incursion into Mexico would be any more successful than the U.S. Vietnam War incursion into Laos & Cambodia?
So the "President Haley" formula: if we're going to lose this Drug War, lose BIG !!?

The way to eliminate the illegal recreational drug commerce across the U.S. Southern border is not with human corpses strewn across the Mexican countryside. It's with the stroke of the pen.

"The pen is mightier than the sword" Edward Bulwer-Lytton 1839​

Drug War is the martial usurpation of the Creator endowed, Constitutionally enumerated, unalienable right of Liberty.
We are not going to "win" Drug War with carnage.

“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.

- sadly -

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history." Hegel

The stroke of a pen madam ambassador. That's all it takes to both reduce the U.S. recreational drug problem to pre-Drug War levels, and reduce the U.S. incarcerated population by ~20%.
​

1 in 5 incarcerated people is locked up for a drug offense​

Graph showing the 353000 people in state prisons, local jails, federal prisons, youth prisons, and military prisons for drug offenses.

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/pie2023_drugs.html

Regardless of whatever you imagine your source of inspiration to be Ambassador Haley, you're not following the inspiring standard of the U.S. Founders.
Instead you're seduced by the destructive allure that drives men like Russia's Vladimir Putin.

Shame on you madam ambassador. For if this promise is sincere, you are a traitor to your nation and People.

"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves, and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion." Thomas Jefferson

Yet the harm of recreational drug use is so negligible the Drug Warriors don't even bother to inform and persuade. Drug Warriors remain committed to detect and punish.

It's not working.

 

[sear]

According to the PBS NewsHour this evening Speaker Mike Johnson "supports national 15-week ban" on abortion. BUT ! Before Speaker Johnson Republicans justified their opposition to Roe v. Wade on 10th Amendment grounds, State's rights.

So when Republicans think it will benefit their authoritarian government agenda for government control of women's healthcare, Republicans advocate letting each individual State decide, if it will advance their authoritarian agenda. Start with the oppressive red States, and hope their cancer of oppression would spread national.

It has.

We may at this moment be witnessing partisan political metastatis. The instruction set for expanding U.S. federal government authoritarianism named Speaker Mike Johnson.

This Johnson has penetrated deep into the body politic, too deep at this point for the meager defenses our Constitutional republic has the authority to exercise.

Despite Trump teetering on the precipice of serious legal consequence, President Trump still runs the Republican party.

And President Trump has already warned he will go after any that go after Trump. The house speaker is next in line after the VP, Harris .

If the GOP bumps off the executive branch, Speaker Johnson would then be President.

Would President Johnson continue to take orders from President Trump? Is there any doubt President Johnson would function within the limits of the presidency (& perhaps beyond) to solve Trump's many legal problems?

A painful irony, 208 Democrats voted with 8 Republicans to oust Speaker McCarthy, the moderate that delivered a last minute rescue, averting a U.S. government shutdown. "Oh what a tangled web ... " !

They may have tilted the domino that will result in the end of our Constitutional republic.

 

[Shiftless2]

America. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1717249354027671855

 

[sear]

"America. Be afraid. Be very afraid." #14

Reuters.com

Mike Pence, former vice president, drops out of Republican presidential campaign​

Wave bye bye Mike. BUT !!
Let's not have any of this Pence "drops out" malarkey. You were shoved out Mike.

 

[sear]

RNC = Republican National Committee
GOP = Grand Old Party, aka Republican

The Republican National Committee is threatening to disqualify GOP presidential candidates from RNC-sponsored debates if they participate in an Iowa forum hosted by a conservative Christian organization.
The warning comes ahead of the Family Leader Foundation's event on Friday that the group said will include White House hopefuls sitting at a table for a “moderated, friendly and open discussion.”
In a letter obtained by NBC News, the RNC reminded candidates that they signed a pledge not to participate in debates like the one in Des Moines that aren’t sanctioned by the national party.
“Any Republican presidential candidate who participates in this or other similar events will be deemed to have violated this pledge and will be disqualified from taking part in any future RNC-sanctioned presidential primary debates,” the Oct. 28 letter said.

RNC threatens to ban candidates from debates if they attend Iowa group’s forum

Several candidates have been invited by the Family Leader Foundation to participate in an event that will include a “moderated, friendly and open discussion.”

news.yahoo.com

Political candidate debates are as old as politics.
Media proliferation has enabled both space-shift, & time-shift, empowering voters to witness a debate, even when never within a hundred miles of the venue.

Publicizing candidate policy positions educates the electorate, helps select the optimal candidate, and promotes both the candidate and the party.

Why then would the RNC deny Republican candidates participation in additional free publicity? Potential loss of message control?

Any legitimate candidate for U.S. president should be a U.S. citizen, and as such should have basic Constitutional rights including freedom of speech.
But neither the GOP nor the RNC are bound by First Amendment protections for their candidates.

So the GOP's underlying message is:
our best way to serve the Constitution, to enable the People to select the executive branch of U.S. federal government, is to infringe candidate free speech, obstruct their publicizing their candidacy and policy positions.

In short: to preserve, protect, & defend the Constitution we infringe the free speech of the primary candidates of our party.

To promote it, we infringe it. Is this the methodology, the embrace of principle we the People need to promote?