"That's the battle across America, McConnell versus Trump, in a war for the heart and soul of the Republican Party."
Alabama Senate candidate Mo Brooks
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Donald Trump may seize defeat once again.
MAGA vs. RINO.
Democrats are in a tough spot politically. The well-educated White progressives in liberal strongholds are confident they have the moral high ground on climate, borders, policing, racial justice, gender fluidity, and reproductive rights. Democratic candidates who are compliant with the orthodoxy have first claim on campaign money from unions and issue-oriented activists.
This creates a problem for Democrats outside urban and college-town settings. Democratic orthodoxy is ahead of the median Democratic voter, and more so the general election voter. Democratic orthodoxy is more royalist than the king. It is more anti-racist than are most Black Americans. It is more indulgent of immigration illegality than are voters in immigrant communities. The orthodox are more critical of race-conscious policing than are voters in communities of color. Democrats are in sync with the leaders of issue groups, not voters.
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The national Democratic message is in sync with Democratic interest groups, not with the wider voting public. Joe Biden's limitations as a spokesperson exacerbates the problem. He communicates plodding mediocrity and weakness. Democrats cannot pass legislation, and if they do, they cannot explain it. They chase doomed legislation, highlighting what they could not accomplish. There is a national consensus: Democrats will lose big in 2022. Maybe not.
Trump may save Democrats.
Trump has not let up. He is Captain Ahab: Relentless and maniacal. He calls Mitch McConnell a weak, corrupt RINO. He engages actively in GOP primaries to purge the Republicans of Reagan, Bush, Cheney, and Romney elements. Trump endorses the most extreme loyalists in primaries. A Republican voter cannot help but see Trump's work. Georgia's Republican governor, Brian Kemp, tells the story of the pressure put on him to overturn the election. Bill Barr tells his story of an "unfit" president.
In 2016 there was talk of "grownups in the room" and the likelihood that Trump would become "presidential." That potential is mostly gone. Trump won't surround himself with moderating forces. Trump has gone to war against them.
Both political parties seem determined to lose the 2022 and 2024 election. Voters may have a choice. Democrats are weak and ineffectual, but Republicans are dangerous and crazy.
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Even if Republicans don’t subscribe to the more outlandish conspiracies propagated by Trumpists, it’s has become a core tenet of the of their worldview to consider the Democratic party as not simply a political opponent, but an enemy that’s turning what is supposed to be a white Christian patriarchal nation into a land of godless multiracial pluralism. Conversely, they see themselves as the sole proponents of “real” America, defending the country from the forces of radical leftism, liberalism and wokeism. This is making collaboration, compromise and the peaceful transfer of power a lot more complicated.
Democrats have a worse problem in 2022 than Republicans because they are ostensibly in charge. They control the presidency and both houses of Congress. When anything goes wrong, the finger of blame points squarely at the Democrats.
Take inflation, manifested most painfully to large numbers of voters as gasoline prices. Biden and the Democrats started out in 2021 by acting forcefully against the production of fossil fuels. They canceled the Keystone XL Pipeline and halted the provision of oil drilling leases on federal lands.
Voters understand the law of supply and demand. They saw the Biden administration reduce supply, and now they see gasoline prices going up. Cause and effect. (When you look at a detailed economic analysis of this, you can see it's not that simple. But most voters aren't going to do that, and the political effect is going to be significantly negative for Democrats.)
Or take the catastrophic and dishonorable withdrawal from Afghanistan last summer. There is no way to blame the Republicans for that. Blame falls exclusively on the Biden administration.
Democrats are doing themselves significant political damage right now by catering to the ideological fascinations of woke white liberals. Parents across the country are noticing toxic hostility towards white people embedded in K-12 curricula derived from Critical Race Theory. Countless employees are having to sit through obnoxious diversity trainings; expressing disagreement can cost you your job. Some Democrat-run health authorities have attempted to establish rules that distribute anti-Covid drugs preferentially to minorities. Folks, you can't make this stuff up. It's as though there's a political death wish rising up from the Democratic Party's subconscious.
Peter is correct to point out that Trump is a huge negative for Republicans among independent voters. But that's a problem for 2024. Trump isn't running for anything this year. He may do some harm to Republicans by backing crackpot congressional candidates who will then lose to Democrats, but I think it will not be enough to turn the tide in 2022.
The 2024 campaign is a long way off. By the time we get there, the Democrats' obeisance to wokeness may have damaged their political brand beyond all hope of recovery.
Another Trump campaign, another Trump loss.
Let's also send Herschel Walker back to school to study how evolution works!
It’s appalling that after what they pulled in 2020, the Insurrection Party is still in operation, but unfortunately their tactics work: foment fear of imaginary threats like CRT and the woke agenda, for which they have the imaginary solution – Trump or someone equally repugnant. As they have demonstrated with their “stolen election” meme, if you repeat a big enough lie often enough, it becomes the truth.
I made claims in my previous post in this thread that deserve documentation. Here it is, for those who are interested:
No Critical Race Theory in Schools? Here's the Abundant Evidence Saying Otherwise
Yes, Children Are Being Taught Critical Race Theory in K–12 Schools in the US
Is Critical Race Theory Taught in K-12 Schools? The NEA Says Yes, and That It Should Be.
Cornell law professor files challenge to New York's 'non-white' prioritization of COVID-19 drugs
Took about 10 minutes to check on the background of the sources Trigoboff cited...
https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2021/04/28/state-policy-network-partners-with-realclear-to-promote-its-right-wing-agenda/
“Real Clear became one of the most prominent platforms for elevating unverified and reckless stories about the president’s political opponents, through a mix of its own content and articles from across conservative media,” per The Times.
The publication’s nonprofit, the Real Clear Foundation, funds its investigative stories, some of which have been so unsubstantiated or so ethically concerning that other outlets, including conservative ones, and social media giant Facebook steered clear.
The foundation is almost entirely funded by ideological, right-wing foundations, according to a Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) review of federal tax filings.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/areo-magazine/
In review, Areo Magazine primarily publishes articles related to politics, some of which are very long essays. The articles tend to identify with the left, but with caution such as this: The Illegitimate President: Donald Trump and the Faking of Democracy and this Why I’m a Liberal Who Fights the Left, Even in the Age of Trump. This latter article is critical of the far left, stating that they only serve to reinforce the far and alt-right, which is a small group and should not be the primary focus. The author says he is liberal in philosophy but rejects the left’s tactics.
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Reason_Foundation#Ties_to_the_Koch_Brothers
Check out ties to the Koch Brothers and ALEC
Point of information: Institutional racism is an indisputable fact of American history. How, or even whether, to teach it in schools is what’s being debated, not CRT. The following is a quote from Christopher Rufo, who founded and fuels the anti-CRT hysteria:
“We have successfully frozen their brand — “critical race theory”— into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category. The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think “critical race theory.” We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.”
Draw your own conclusions.
I suggest that everyone read the articles and judge for yourselves instead of relying on ideological hit pieces that try to discredit my sources. You can find hit pieces like that on all sides. Direct your own attention and use your own brains.
When you look at the anti-America propaganda contained in the 1619 Project (which claimed that the whole point of the American Revolution was to preserve slavery), I think it’s only fair for there to be a gifted propagandist like Rufo playing on the other side.
The 1619 Project itself is pop-CRT, or simplified CRT, and is or is being incorporated into K-12 curricula nationwide. No one ever claimed that graduate school CRT is taught K-12. It’s a simpler version, as with climate science for secondary schoolers, or gender studies. This is the rather silly straw man deflection now compulsively repeated either by lightweights who never heard of Critical Theory before its race permutation, or those who are curiously defensive about it.
The 1619 Project "aims to reframe the country's history by placing the consequences o slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of the United States' national narrative." Apparently that’s controversial, but it’s not CRT.
Blurby summaries or favorable descriptions of The Project are all well and good. The Project's own reductionist, race-determinist claim, from writers primarily with bachelor's degrees, that all major American historical events, dynamics and institutions post-1619 were motivated by, and can only be understood through the prism of, concerted white race-oppression, is the problem. The problem....and a crude distillation of CRT as well. Unfiltered, fortified wine is still intoxicating, and even more harmful to children. As ever, the truth lies between partisan all or nothing.
Sweet Editor, once again, yet again, too many on the pop-Left are simply out of their depth on the nature and origins of CRT, despite--or obstinately because of?--ample opportunity and directed invitation afforded to educate themselves on the subject, or at least to underpin substantive attempted rebuttal beyond the level of pull-string slogans and hackery and sometimes plain Pied Piper dishonesty from the likes of Slate Magazine, Joy Reid or The Atlantic. Frankfurt School critical theory--it's in articles and books!--is at base an analytical gloss. Then it's applied. Baby steps from lazy straw man and ad absurdum fallacies and deflections.
I don't believe Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is out of her depth when it comes to CRT. In fact, I suspect she's far more knowledgeable than anyone on this blog. As she told Senator Cruz, "Critical race theory is an academic theory that is about the ways in which race interacts with various institutions."
Republicans have turned it into a buzzword signifying anything they don't like about social justice.
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