Tag Archives: GOP

national news, political news

Trump has tight hold on GOP … but he won’t run in ’24

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It is time to try to dispel any notion that Donald J. Trump is going to run for president of the United States in 2024.

I just cannot in any way, shape or imagined form see how the former president makes a credible case for his nomination by the Republican Party to run for POTUS.

Why not? Let’s see.

He is facing possible criminal indictments in two jurisdictions: Manhattan, N.Y., and Fulton County, Ga. One of them involves possible campaign finance and tax fraud; the other involves possible coercion and bullying of an elected official.

Trump has a huge debt coming due, on the order of $400 million.

He continues to spew the Big Lie about alleged “theft” of the 2020 election.

Trump lost re-election in 2020 because voters across the board had gotten sickened by his incessant lying, his insults, his bullying, the chaos and confusion and his complete and unabashed incompetence when it came to governance.

How does a former president parlay any of that into something positive? How does he sell himself to an electorate that already has been exposed to this idiot’s self-aggrandizement.

Spare me the idiocy that he “controls” a huge portion of the GOP electorate. I will place my bet that the Trump “base” is going to shrink particularly if indictments are brought.

Oh, and then we’ll see what happens if former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani squeals on Trump if federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York hang a federal indictment on him.

Nope, the stars aren’t aligning well for Trump to make another run for the presidency. Which is more than just fine with me.

This guy just needs to get the hell out of our sight.

local news

Trumpism boiled down

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By John Kanelis / johnkanelils_92@hotmail.com

It occurs to me as I read my Twitter feed that the voters in the congressional district where I once lived are being exposed to a boiled-down version of Trumpism from their elected House of Representatives member.

Rep. Ronny Jackson is a Republican — duh!— who now lives in Amarillo. He didn’t live anywhere near the Texas Panhandle before deciding to run for the 13th Congressional District seat being vacated by fellow Republican Mac Thornberry. He moved to the region. He got elected in November.

Ever since taking office, Rep. Jackson has been doing something that Thornberry rarely did. He fires off Twitter taunts constantly.

He has suggested that President Biden is destroying the country. That Biden is leading us toward a “communist” state. That the border crisis is all on Biden. That Democrats are trying to take away people’s right to own firearms.

Do you get where I am going with this? Republican congressmen and women all across the land who adhere to Donald J. Trump’s view of how the world should be have taken to this social medium.

That’s Jackson. All the way, man.

He isn’t sending Twitter messages out about how to improve farm policy. Or about how to protect Lake Meredith National Recreation Area. Or how to preserve Alibates Flint Quarry National Monument — the only national monument in Texas! Hell, he isn’t even tweeting about whether Interstates 40 and 27 should be shored up in a national infrastructure bill.

Oh, no. This clown has hopped onto the Donald Trump clown car parade and is spewing the same brand of demagogic nonsense that flows from Trump’s pie hole.

I am going to presume that most of his constituents are OK with it. They just adore Donald Trump and might want him to run again for POTUS. Their congressman is parroting his hero, too.

You want to know what has happened to the Republican Party? Look no further than the 13th Congressional District of Texas.

It is so very disgusting.

local news

Democrats’ hopes dashed

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Texas Democrats have seen their hopes dashed once again as they seek a significant political victory.

A runoff for the Sixth Congressional District in the Fort Worth area will be decided between two Republicans: Susan Wright and Jake Ellzey.

Why the Democratic disappointment? They had hoped to breach the runoff barrier by getting one of their candidates from a crowded field to replace the late Rep. Ron Wright, a Republican who died of COVID complications after winning re-election in 2020.

One of the runoff participants is Wright’s widow, the aforementioned Susan Wright.

The district is supposed to be trending more Democratic, given the changing voter face throughout Tarrant County, which voted narrowly for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race and for Beto O’Rourke in the Senate contest in 2018.

Two Republicans, one backed by Trump, head to runoff in Texas special congressional election (yahoo.com)

Democrats had high hopes for the Sixth District race. They fell just a bit short. Democrat Jana Lynne Sanchez, who was in third place with 13.4 percent of the vote, was her party’s leading candidate in the field.

I am thinking that more opportunities are going to present themselves going forward. The state’s political composition is changing by the year. It’s good to remember that Donald Trump carried the state in 2020 by fewer than 5 percentage points over Joe Biden, which makes the state a “battleground” going forward as the fight for the presidency ramps up.

Wait’ll next time, Democrats.

national news

Trump keeps grip on GOP

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump’s vise grip on the Republican Party remains a gigantic mystery to me.

He is, in no particular order:

  • An inarticulate business mogul.
  • A liar.
  • A philanderer.
  • Someone who entered politics at its highest level with zero public service experience.
  • A guy who bragged about sexually assaulting women.
  • A conspiracy monger.
  • And, yes, a racist.

And yet this guy continues to retain this grip on a political party he hijacked in 2016. He demands complete loyalty and those who are loyal to only to him give it willingly.

For Republicans, fealty to Trump’s election falsehood becomes defining loyalty test (msn.com)

Thus, we are entering the netherworld between presidential election campaigns. Those who want to run for president must pledge their loyalty to Donald Trump or else be thrown to the wild dogs. How in the world do potential political opponents of Trump campaign against this guy … were he to declare his candidacy for the presidency again?

He bullies his GOP rivals by threatening to “primary” them in 2022. Trump already has drawn a bead on the likes of Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who voted to convict Trump of inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection. Trump just cannot stand the thought of politicians adhering to the Constitution, of being more loyal to that document than to him.

How does he maintain that grip on the once-great party? How does he demand — and get — complete fealty from other egotists who also happen to serve in Congress?

It’s a mystery to me, man. So help me I cannot wrap my noggin around how this guy — of all guys — manages to perform this act of political bondage.

Joe Biden, national news

Biden faces steep hill

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden wants to go big.

Republicans in Congress want to go … nowhere.

Who wins this argument? I’ll go with President Joe Biden every time I get the chance.

Biden spoke to the nation Wednesday night in tones that were alternately vociferous and reassuring. He whispered at times and all but shouted at other times during his hour-plus long speech to a joint session of Congress.

In a certain sense he was preaching to the proverbial choir when we tuned in to watch President Biden. I’ll declare flat out that I want him to succeed. I endorse the essence of his policy platform, which is that he wants to bring government back from the shadows and into the lives of those who need help.

I concede that President Biden is proposing an expensive set of plans to restore this nation’s role as the world leader. Biden and Congress already have agreed to spend $1.9 trillion in COVID relief funds to help Americans harmed in some manner by the pandemic. There is more spending on tap.

However, the intent of that spending is to help all Americans. Yet the president continues to run face-first into resistance from Republicans in Congress who keep insisting that the nation cannot afford to do damn near anything. Joe Biden is having none of that. He tells us that doing nothing is “not an option.”

Here, though, might be the greatest dichotomy between what GOP politicians are doing and what the public favors. Public opinion surveys tell us that American citizens — such as yours truly — favor what Biden wants to do. The GOP pols? They are on the wrong side of public opinion and quite probably on the wrong side of history as they continue to dig in against the president’s agenda.

Are those politicians smarter than the rest of us? Do they know something we don’t know or understand? Hell … no! They do not!

They work for us. Not the other way around!

I wish I could report that government works again now that we have a president who understands how to govern. Good government remains a team sport that requires the executive and legislative branches to put the country first.

One of them — the exec branch — has done so. We’re still waiting on legislators to do their job.

national news

GOP needs to retool itself

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

After every presidential election cycle, the party that loses the contest — particularly if they lose it in a landslide — announces plans to engage in self-examination.

The Republican Party made that declaration after Mitt Romney lost to President Barack Obama in 2012, seeking ways to expand its appeal to include more racial minorities. What happened then? Donald Trump became the party nominee in 2016 and he went on to win the White House.

Eek! Then he lost his re-election effort to President Joe Biden. Admittedly, it wasn’t by a landslide. Now, though, the party is having to face its own mortality, given the stranglehold that the Trump cult has placed around the GOP neck.

If ever a political party needed a retooling, it’s the Republican Party of 2021, which now contains two disparate elements: the establishment wing and the Trump wing.

I’ll be brutally honest on this point. I don’t really give a crap-ola which way the GOP tilts. I don’t find either wing of the party to be all that enticing. Of the two wings, I much prefer to deal directly with the establishmentarians among Republicans. The Trumpkins? No way in hell, man!

The GOP, though, faces a struggle the likes of which it hasn’t seen. It reminds me a bit of the internal struggle the Democratic Party went through after its 1972 crushing under President Nixon’s landslide victory. The party sought to remake its image. It produced a maverick nominee four years later, Jimmy Carter, who managed to win the White House. He served for a term then got his headed handed to him by another maverick, GOP nominee Ronald Reagan, who then remade the Republican Party into what it became before Trump hijacked it in 2016.

This much is clear to me: The Republican Party needs to cleanse itself of the toxic formula brewed by Trump and his acolytes if it is going to be taken seriously as a legitimate forced with which Democrats must reckon.

political news

Show us fraud, GOP pols!

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Tom Cruise yelled famously in the film “Jerry Maguire” to “Show me the money!”

In that spirit, I am inclined to yell out to Republican politicians intent on perpetuating the Big Lie about the 2020 election: Show me the vote fraud!

GOP pols in states all across the nation keep pitching for “voter reforms” they contend will protect the electoral process from fraud that they imply is rampant. The keep feeding that fantasy that the 2020 presidential election was somehow, some way rife with corruption.

Holy cow, man! It was clean, free and fair. It also was the most secure election in U.S. history, according to a Trump administration official, Christopher Krebs, who was hired to ensure the election’s security.

I watched Texas state Rep. Briscoe Cain today rail on and on about protecting the state’s electoral system against fraud. He didn’t cite a single shred of evidence that fraud even exists. Yet this GOP lawmaker is being charged with crafting vote-restriction legislation aimed at making it more difficult for Texans to vote.

He is far from alone. Republican members of the U.S. Senate and U.S. House bellow and bluster continually about alleged voter fraud. It doesn’t exist in anywhere even close to the level that these pols keep implying.

It is maddening and infuriating in the extreme to hear allegedly responsible public figures make assertions that are patently untrue and then to foist legislation on us that they base solely on the lie they keep fomenting.

Our elections are the product of hard work at the local, county and state level. States such as Texas have worked diligently to protect our electoral system. Have they enacted a totally fool-proof process? No. Instances of fraud, though, are rare. They amount to an infinitesimal fraction of the millions of ballots that we cast.

When I hear politicians cite threats and fears of “widespread vote corruption,” I am left only to exclaim in the loudest voice I can summon to “Show me the vote fraud!”

Joe Biden

Who will cheer this POTUS?

(Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Presidential speeches to joint congressional sessions have devolved over many years into partisan events.

Presidents of one party stand before senators and House members and deliver lines designed to draw applause. The way it usually plays out is that lawmakers from the president’s party stand and cheer while those on the other side of the room sit silently while their “friends” offer the cheers.

So that will be the backdrop next week as President Biden strides to the podium to tell Congress about his big plans to help the nation continue to recover medically and economically from the pandemic that has ravaged us.

Joe Biden has trumpeted himself as being a politician with plenty of friends on the other side of the room. He is a Democrat who has worked well — in the past — with Republicans in the Senate, where he served for 36 years before becoming vice president in 2009. Why, he’s even drawn high praise from his GOP colleagues over those many years.

They aren’t about to praise him now. The mood is markedly different these days from the time in 1973 when Biden first joined the Senate. There’s a whole lot of snarling taking place these days.

He’ll have a Democratic House speaker sitting behind him at the joint session, along with the vice president, Kamala Harris. We’ll get to watch them cheer the president’s remarks.

My curiosity will be piqued, though, when President Biden enters the room as the sergeant at arms announces his arrival. Will congressional Republicans have enough good manners about them to stand and cheer when our head of state enters? Or will they continue to exhibit their petulance over losing the 2020 presidential election?

I am willing to acknowledge that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at times bristled openly at Donald Trump’s remarks and behavior during his speeches to Congress. Her anger manifested itself spectacularly when she stood and tore up the text of Trump’s speech to pieces in front of the whole world.

If only we could expect better behavior this time around.

crime news

Matt Gaetz: Lock him up?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Congressional Republicans need to get their priorities in order.

U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, one of the GOP bomb throwers, is being investigated for sex trafficking charges and whether he had a sexual relationship with an underage girl.

House GOP leadership’s response? He deserves “the presumption of innocence.”

Now … how does that compare with the Republican response to Hillary Clinton’s email kerfuffle? They were chanting “Lock her up!” Due process? Presumption of innocence? Hah!

So, which is it? The Republican Party’s political leadership hypocrisy is on full display once again.

It makes me sick.

national news

Boehner comes out swinging

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

There he is, suddenly becoming a major newsmaker.

John Boehner had been in relative seclusion since walking away from political life six years ago. Make no mistake that he wasn’t my favorite pol when he served as speaker of the House, given his penchant for trying to block meaningful legislation pitched by President Obama.

Now, though, Boehner is back in the news. Suddenly he has become one of my favorites. How’d that happen? Because he is hanging “political terrorist” labels on some seriously bad dudes in public life today. They are, for example, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and, oh yeah, Donald J. Trump of Mar-a-Lago.

Boehner has decided to reveal his deepest feelings about the insurrection of Jan. 6, about Trump’s conduct prior to and after the 2020 election, about what an a**hole Ted Cruz has been while serving in the Senate and Jim Jordan’s conduct as one of Trump’s suck-ups in the House.

In interviews, the former speaker has declared his disgust and revulsion at what has become of the Republican Party to which he has belonged for decades. The emotional politician shed a couple of tears on TV this past weekend talking to CBS News about his feelings watching the terrorists storm the Capitol Building at Trump’s urging.

Boehner is now a civilian. He won’t be back in the saddle. The former speaker of the House, however, remains a potent political antidote to the toxic mix that comprises today’s Republican Party.

Thus, I welcome his return to the limelight.