Tag Archives: GOP

national news

Bipartisanship withering away

REUTERS/Mike Blake

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It’s becoming clearer by the day, if not the hour, that President Biden’s stated wish to conduct a bipartisan government policy is being tossed aside.

Congressional Republicans accuse Biden of talking a good game about working with the GOP, but acting in a highly partisan, far-left manner.

The $2.25 trillion infrastructure bill that Biden wants enacted by the Fourth of July is drawing plenty of hits from the GOP. Why? They don’t want to raise taxes on the rich folks who got that big tax cut during the Trump administration … or so they say.

Republicans don’t think Biden really wants to work with them | TheHill

Let’s flash back for a brief moment to 2009. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said his No. 1 priority then was to make Barack Obama a “one-term president.” That meant he sought to make Joe Biden a one-term vice president. Do you think the current president of the United States has forgotten that solemn pledge? Hah! Hardly.

Still, President Biden’s inaugural speech included lots of talk about unity. He would seek it. He would work with Republicans. He wanted to bridge the political chasm.

It hasn’t happened. Nor, I am fearful, does it appear to be gaining traction as the debate ensues over the infrastructure plan. Biden didn’t get a lick of GOP support for his COVID-19 relief bill, despite overwhelming public support for it.

Indeed, he has the proverbial wind at his back on rebuilding roads, bridges, rail lines, airports, water systems and Internet access. The public backs his notion on that, too.

So, who among our political leaders is out of step with those of us out here who want to see government doing things for us? Is it President Biden and congressional Democrats? Or is it the Republican caucus that continues to obstruct because they still might be angry at losing their majority in Congress along with the White House?

political news

Expanding vote base a ‘power grab’? C’mon, Ted!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Ted Cruz says that efforts to allow more people to vote, to expand the voter base, is a “power grab.”

Hmm. Let’s parse that one for a moment, eh?

The Texas Republican U.S. senator was taken to task today by a letter writer whose missive was published in the Dallas Morning News. Richard Kidd of Dallas writes, “The only power grab is a party with minority support trying to hold on to power by disenfranchising as many people as possible … The right to vote is a pillar of a democracy and Cruz took an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Congress has a duty to ensure as many citizens as possible have a right to vote and be represented.”

I get his drift. I trust you do, too.

A mantra I beat into the ground over many years as a full-time journalist was that a representative democracy works best when we spread the power out among more, not fewer, voters. That is one argument I sought to make in different ways for greater voter turnout at election time.

It also lies at the heart, I only can presume, at efforts to expand availability to as many voters as human possible.

At its base, increased voter participation shouldn’t ever become a partisan battle. It has become that, however. Republicans are seeking to restrict voter access to ethnic and racial minorities who tend to vote, um, for Democrats. The GOP just can’t have that happen, right? So in states such as Texas, Republican legislators are pushing for rules that make it more difficult for minorities to get registered and to actually vote.

The result will be to invest more power in fewer Americans. It will place more power in the hands of the few and the proud. It also, in my view, runs directly counter to the argument I have been yammering about since The Flood, which is that democracy works better when we spread the power among greater numbers of voters.

So, for Ted Cruz to lament a phony “power grab” while objecting to increasing voter access only reveals how cheaply he values our democratic process.

Donald Trump

GOP fighting among its members

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

This isn’t a scoop, but it is clear that today’s Republican Party is locked in an internecine battle over the path it should take toward its future.

Yes, it causes me plenty of grief. Not because I am a card-carrying Republican — although I have voted in plenty of GOP primary elections over the years — but because it forces me to align with my  Republican friends who I consider to be on the “good side” of that intraparty battle.

I lived and worked in the heart and soul of the Texas Republican Party for nearly 23 years, nearly 18 of them as editorial page editor of the I know many fine elected officials all of whom are Republica Amarillo Globe-News. I resigned from that post nearly nine years ago, but I have retained many personal friendships with those individuals.

They are being whipsawed by competing factors: the beliefs of those who they represent in public office and their own view of what constitutes a “real Republican.” OK, you know that I am talking about the cult of personality that has evolved since the emergence of Donald John Trump on the political landscape. He ran for president of the United States as a Republican while campaigning as a so-called “populist” who by definition abhors concentrating power in the hands of the “elite.” Is that how he governed? Hah!

He’s out of office — thank Almighty God in Heaven! Trump’s legacy lives on in the minds of those who continue to believe in the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. The Big Lie taints everything about Trump and the party he purportedly represented while campaigning for the presidency and then serving as president for the past four years.

Meanwhile, we see actual GOP officeholders and contenders for public office trying to sell their ideas to a constituency that has swilled the snake oil sold to them by the presidential imposter known as Donald Trump.

How do these actual Rs compete with that? Thus, we see how this conflict is playing out.

I pity those friends I consider to be actual Republicans. They are caught in a struggle exacerbated by the lies — led by the Big Lie — told by the individual who grabbed their party by the throat. He is throttling the life out of it.

local news, political news

Trump is no one’s POTUS

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Take a gander at this picture.

I don’t know precisely where it was taken. It showed up on my Facebook news feed with a caption that it implies it’s in Dallas.

Eek!

Then someone else posted a note that said Donald Trump 2024 shirts are on sale somewhere in Amarillo. Now that doesn’t entirely surprise me, given the Texas Panhandle’s extreme right-wing tendencies. President Biden carried Dallas County by a handsome margin in 2020. Donald Trump rolled over Biden in Randall and Potter counties — which Amarillo straddles — also by handsome margins.

But … here’s the deal. Donald Trump lost the election. He would lose again were he to run a second time, in my view. I do not believe he is going to run for president again.

Trump has some legal and financial issues with which to contend. Prosecutors in Fulton County, Ga., and Manhattan, N.Y., are breathing down his neck. He has $400 million in debt that is coming due. It’s possible that he will remain blocked from social media platforms on the basis of the Big Lie he keeps spreading about so-called vote fraud in the 2020 election.

He’s already been revealed as a lying fraud. Just maybe lightning will strike, hell will freeze over and the sun will rise in the west one day, and that the Trumpkin Corps of believers will see that their guy is a first-class phony.

national news, political news, State news

‘Jim Crow in the 21st century’

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden has shucked the gloves and donned the brass knuckles to use against Republican Party efforts to suppress voter turnout.

Biden is taking particular umbrage at laws enacted in Georgia and signed by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp that seeks to restrict voter access to the ballot. Imagine that, if you dare.

One of the more odious aspects of the law is something that utterly boggles my noggin. It makes it a crime — a crime! — to give a voter food or refreshment while he or she is waiting in line to cast a ballot.

President Biden has described the law as “Jim Crow in the 21st century.” I happen to agree with him.

Gov. Kemp is pushing back, not surprisingly.

Kemp in a statement shared with The Hill said the legislation he signed into law Thursday “expands voting access, streamlines vote-counting procedures, and ensures election integrity.”

“There is nothing ‘Jim Crow’ about requiring a photo or state-issued ID to vote by absentee ballot – every Georgia voter must already do so when voting in-person,” he continued.

Kemp fires back at Biden: Nothing ‘Jim Crow’ about Georgia law | TheHill

I don’t have a particular problem with requiring a photo ID to vote. I do have a serious problem with restrictions on early voting, or reducing the number of polling places.

Is it a revision of “Jim Crow,” which is how President Biden describes it? So help me, it looks that way!

It is striking that the Georgia legislature would enact such restrictions immediately after Democrats captured two U.S. Senate seats; one of those Democrats, I hasten to add, happens to be an African-American, Raphael Warnock. Coincidence? As they say: In politics, there is no such thing as coincidence.

Georgia, sadly, isn’t alone. Texas legislators are in the midst of enacting equally restrictive voting laws, not to mention getting ready to redraw congressional boundaries in ways that favor electing Republicans.

President Biden happens in my view to call it correctly with regard to what Georgia is trying to enact.

Let the battle rage on!

national news

Don’t know about a GOP in the future?

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden said today isn’t sure there will even be a Republican Party in existence by the time 2024 rolls around.

I’ve got a flash for him: I believe the GOP will exist in some form.

It is possible — if not probable — that it won’t resemble the Republican Party with which he worked as a U.S. senator and as vice president.

The GOP that Biden knows was able at times to work with Democrats, to find common ground. Republicans knew how to legislate, as does Biden.

The cult of personality that has replaced the once-great political party is, well, something quite different.

It will call itself the Republican Party, but it likely will be a “Republican Party In Name Only.”

Donald Trump, national news

C’mon back, Donald!

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald John Trump’s expected return to Republican Party political involvement just might be a good tonic for the nation, if not the GOP.

Why? Because the ex-president will be able to expose himself even more to the kind of self-centered narcissism that became one of the hallmarks of his time as president.

Trump reportedly is planning to get more involved in GOP primary activities, siding with candidates who oppose incumbents who weren’t sufficiently loyal to him.

As The Hill reports, though, many mainstream Republicans are none too happy to see The Donald step back into the arena after being beaten soundly by President Biden. They blame Trump for Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats flipping from Republican to Democrat in the January runoff election. They are angry that Trump keeps repeating The Big Lie about the 2020 election being stolen from him.

Trump ramps up activities, asserts power within GOP | TheHill

As an ardent critic of Donald Trump, I am going to stop worrying about whether he plans to launch a return to political life. I see many hideous storm clouds on the horizon awaiting Trump. Prosecutors in New York and Georgia are looking for potential criminal culpability involving Trump. His once-fabled business “empire” is looking shakier all the time. Trump is facing hundreds of millions of dollars in debt that are coming due. All of that will become fodder for whoever wants to challenge The Donald.

To be sure, my sincerest hope of all is for Trump to vanish. I want him gone. His 15 minutes of political fame are up. He had his time on center stage … and blew it all apart.

I will watch with somewhat muted interest in this individual’s attempt at trying to cling to the power he possesses over a political party he grabbed by the throat and turned it into a cult of personality.

State news

‘Open borders’? Hah!

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

A South Texas congressional Democrat, Filemon Vela of Brownsville, today announced he won’t seek another term in the U.S. House of Representatives.

His seat had become a target for Republicans who see a chance to what had been a staunchly Democratic seat.

What slays me, though, is the reaction, as reported by the Texas Tribune, of the GOP in response to Vela’s unsurprising announcement:

“Filemon Vela knows Biden’s border crisis will cost him his seat and Democrats their House majority,” said House GOP campaign arm spokesperson Torunn Sinclair. “Texans deserve a congressman who is going to stand up to Biden’s open border agenda, not defend it.”

Open border agenda? Is this clown for real?

There is no “open border agenda” being pushed by President Biden. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas this weekend declared the border “is closed.”

Yes, the Biden administration has been caught flat-footed by the influx of undocumented immigrants seeking entry into the United States, particularly the unaccompanied children who have been rounded up and taken to holding centers, such as the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas.

But … there is no “open border agenda” being pursued. The GOP campaign flack is spouting demagogic nonsense.

national news

What happened to 11th Commandment?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Ronald W. Reagan would be an angry man today.

President Reagan once coined a phrase that became known as the 11th Commandment, which stated that “Thou shalt not speak ill of other Republicans.” The Republican Party of President Reagan’s era wasn’t always faithful to that “commandment.”

Today it is so far removed from that dictum that the party bears virtually no resemblance to the conservative political organization that Reagan helped reconstruct in the 1980s.

Instead, the nation is watching a party being retooled yet again by the latest GOP president, who is launching a nationwide campaign against any Republican who dared stand against him while he committed high crimes and misdemeanors against the U.S. of A.

Donald Trump is now targeting, for example, the Republican secretary of state of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, who had the temerity to resist the Big Lie that Trump keeps telling that the Georgia presidential election was “stolen” from Trump and given to President Biden. The ex-president is backing a GOP primary opponent against Raffensperger, whose only “sin” was to, um, follow the damn law!

Trump looks to take down Raffensperger in Georgia – POLITICO

Trump has taking aim as well across the nation, seeking to destroy GOP politicians who just couldn’t bring themselves to practice blind fealty to the disgraced former president.

If only President Reagan were around today to take the former Numbskull in Chief to the proverbial “woodshed.”

national news

Hopes are being dashed

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

My hope for a swift return to what they refer to in Washington as “regular order” in Congress is being wiped away.

The hope rested on the election of Joe Biden as president of the United States. He is a man of the Senate. He knows how to legislate, how to get those on the “other side” to join him in the search for common ground.

I guess I didn’t count on the Senate being so fundamentally remade in the image that President Biden replaced, Donald John Trump.

Man, this transition from the Trump Era to the Biden Era so far hasn’t gone quite like I had hoped.

Congressional Republicans appear dug in deeply in their mistrust of the electoral process that produced a Biden victory. They have swallowed the snake oil that Trump has fed them about the election being “stolen.” The irony is stinking rich, given that many of those congressional GOP imposters took an oath to protect the very system they now contend is corrupt.

Well, we still have time. President Biden still has time to win them over. I won’t surrender to the darker impulses that still seem to pervade politics in Washington.

But my eternal hope for a return to regular order is getting dimmer by the week.