Tag Archives: GOP

national news

106 House GOP members form an infamous cabal

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

One hundred six members of the U.S. House of Representatives have formed a cabal that has joined what has been called an act of sedition against the U.S. government.

They signed on to a lawsuit brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to overturn the electoral results in four states that endorsed President-elect Joe Biden’s bid to become president.

Yes, roughly half of the GOP House caucus has signed on to a plan to undercut the democratic process. They want to throw out the votes of millions of Americans. They want those states’ electors to vote for Donald Trump and not Joe Biden, even though the president-elect earned more votes than Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

They are shameful seditionists who should be defeated when they stand for re-election in 2022.

national news

Country already scored a ‘victory’

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump fired off this Twitter message today …

“We will be INTERVENING in the Texas (plus many other states) case. This is the big one. Our Country needs a victory!” 

The “Texas … case” to which Trump referred is the moronic lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that seeks to overturn the duly cast votes in four states in the presidential election.

It’s not clear to anyone how Trump plans to “intervene,” whether as an individual or as a spokesman for his failed re-election campaign.

I just want to add this: The nation already got the “victory” it needed when it elected Joe Biden as its next president.

national news, political news

Cowards occupy Capitol Hill offices

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am sickened to the maximum degree by the cowardice I am witnessing among Republicans who occupy most of the U.S. Senate seats and a healthy minority of those in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Americans have just elected Joseph R. Biden Jr. as their president, and yet congressional Republicans by and large refuse to even refer to the president-elect by the title he earned in a free and fair election.

What the hell is going on here?

The Senate’s chief coward, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has a longstanding professional and political relationship with the president-elect. Yet he remains silent on the issue of whether he won the election. McConnell cowers in the face of the Trumpkin Corps of zealots in Kentucky who threaten him with payback if he does what he should have done long ago, which is recognize President-elect Biden as the winner … and then say so out loud in public!

McConnell is just one, of course.

Still, we are witnessing a shameful and reprehensible dereliction of duty among our congressional leadership to do the right thing, which would be to follow our two-century-old tradition of honoring the results of an election. They are dishonoring that democratic process and dishonoring the government they all took an oath to defend and protect.

They sicken me to my core.

I would say we should vote them out of office. Except that too damn many of them were just returned to office in an election we just completed. I am left, therefore, to just vent on this blog … which I will continue to do until I start seeing some courage emerging from the herd of Capitol Hill cowards.

national news

GOP wants to win by ‘not voting’?

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

OK, how am I supposed to process this bit of idiocy?

Republicans want to hold onto their fragile U.S. Senate majority. Two GOP senators from Georgia — David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler — are engaging in runoffs set for Jan. 5. Perdue is running against Jon Ossoff; Loeffler is facing off against the Rev. Dr. Raphael G. Warnock.

What does the nation’s top Republican, Donald Trump, want Georgia voters to do? He wants them to boycott an election he says is “rigged.” Yes. That’s how he wants the Senate Republicans to retain their majority. Just stay home because you don’t want to participate in a “rigged election,” says Trump in an impassioned message to Georgia voters.

By all means, Georgia Republicans, don’t vote. Ossoff and Warnock can win, giving Democrats a 50-50 tie in the Senate, which means Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris could break ties votes.

Yep, Donald Trump is pitching an idiotic strategy.

medical news

Why do GOP pols keep getting sick from COVID?

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

OK, don’t hate me because I am going to ask this question, given that I recently called for an end to the politicization of the COVID pandemic.

I gotta ask: Why are Republican politicians and political operatives — not to mention members of Donald Trump’s family — keep getting infected by the virus? Why aren’t more, um, Democratic pols and key aides to President-elect Biden getting the disease?

Oh, I think I know. It’s because GOP pols and key aides keep dismissing the measures the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention keep urging us to take to avoid getting sick; Democrats, meanwhile, are taking these measures seriously.

Could that be it? Oh, sure it is!

Is there a lesson to learn here? You bet there is.

national news

C’mon, senator … Biden is ‘president-elect’

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Dang, I was hoping U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn could avoid being sucked into the Republicans’ loony bin caucus when she joined that body in January 2019.

The Tennessee lawmaker, sadly, has swilled the nut job Kool-Aid by authorizing her staff to declare that her reference to Joe Biden as “president-elect” was a misspoken statement.

Good … grief, senator. The president-elect is going to take office in a couple of months. He will be the duly elected president of the United States. I daresay he will be even more “duly elected” than Donald Trump, the Sore Loser in Chief who lost to Biden. Indeed, as Trump yammers about how a “rigged election” put Biden in office, he ignores the actual rigging that occurred in 2016 when Russians conspired to assist The Donald into the White House.

As for Trump’s assertions about this year’s election, it’s crap, senator. It’s pure bullsh** that she and others of the GOP caucus have fomented by their continuing to sow doubt about the election.

There has been no evidence produced — zero! — that suggests “widespread” voter fraud. Still, the GOP lunatics keep enabling Trump to sow doubt and undermine our democratic process.

Sen. Blackburn, sadly, is one of them.

Give it up, Marsha.

national news

Boorishness lives among GOP

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Boorishness is alive and well — dammit, anyway! — among Republican political leaders.

A Democrat has won an election for president. Do you think there would be any prominent Republican member of Congress who would deign to wish President-elect Joe Biden well as he begins to form a new government? Might there be a tide of good wishes coming from the “loyal opposition”?

One would think. Except that we’re now exiting the Era of Trump, the Sore Loser in Chief whose own brand of boorishness apparently has been spread to others in Capitol Hill.

OK, there are exceptions. Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska have extended their good wishes; so has Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah. George W. Bush, the only living former GOP president, did so, too.

Donald Trump continues his futile attempt to sow discord among the GOP faithful by challenging the election results. He says he won’t concede. His pals in the Senate, led by Lindsey Graham, say a concession would doom the GOP to losses at the presidential election level forever. Good grief!

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has refused to say congrats; so has House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. A host of other GOP pols have endorsed Trump’s bogus assertions about widespread fraud and illegality.

President-elect Biden is left, therefore, to proceed apace with his own task of forming a government and getting to work.

We are witnessing yet another national disgrace courtesy of the clown who, thankfully, is about to exit the political stage.

Good … riddance!

State news

Texas becomes ‘battleground’? Who knew?

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I won’t even think about predicting that Joe Biden is going to win Texas’s 38 electoral votes next month.

However, it is fascinating in the uber-extreme to think that this longstanding Republican bastion has become a battleground state in this year’s presidential election.

The Dallas Morning News/University of Texas-Tyler this past weekend published a public opinion survey that says Joe Biden holds a narrow lead over Donald Trump. Biden is up 3 percent over Trump in Texas — with just eight days to go before the election.

Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris is coming to Texas to campaign. Yes, just a bit more than week out from the election and we’re getting an up-close look at one of the major-party candidates for national office. And she’s a Democrat!

Granted, Texas isn’t going to be trampled by candidates the way, say, Florida, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin will be pounded. Still, Texas has emerged from the ranks of those states that get zero attention from the presidential campaign teams.

Any of the Pacific Coast states are seen as Democratic bastions. Democrats take voters there for granted; Republicans realize Oregon, Washington and California are lost causes. Conversely, voters in Oklahoma, Utah, the Dakotas or Wyoming won’t see the candidates in the flesh. Republicans take those folks for granted; Democrats know they can’t win there.

Texas has become arguably the biggest prize on the national political map.

I have longed for this moment. I hope the state can flip this year, from GOP to Democrat. I don’t dare predict such a thing will occur.

It surely is fun to watch this spectacle unfold in real time.

national news

Here’s the paper’s ‘asterisk’

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The Manchester (N.H.) Union-Leader used to feature one of the country’s premier conservative editorial pages.

Its editorial voice was important, given New Hampshire’s role as an early presidential primary state. This weekend, though, the Union-Leader threw its editorial support behind Democratic nominee Joe Biden … but with what the paper called “an asterisk.”

Here is what the paper noted at the end of its editorial:

While Joe Biden is the clear choice for president, it would be a disservice to the country to send him to the White House without a backstop. We suggest splitting the ballot and electing a healthy dose of GOP senators and representatives. The best governance often comes through compromise. The civility of the Biden administration will help foster such compromise, but a blue wave would be nearly as disastrous for this country as four more years of Trump. It would result in a quagmire of big government programs that will take decades to overcome.

I would agree with what the paper stated, were it not for the obstructionism that has dominated the legislative branch of government under GOP rule.

My hope for the election of a “healthy dose of GOP senators and representatives” would be that they would turn away from the idiocy and anger promoted by Donald Trump and actually agree to govern as partners with Democrats, notably with a Democrat who could be elected president of the United States.

Check out the Union-Leader’s full endorsement here.

I should point out that as a U.S. senator and as vice president, Biden was able all by himself to forge relationships with Republicans. The man knows how to govern.

As for the notion of ticket-splitting, that’s fine if Republicans adopt a formula for governance. Anything else is a non-starter.

local news, national news

When will GOP pols abandon Trump?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

First, I must acknowledge the obvious, which is that I am far from the political action, as I am sitting in the peanut gallery with a lot of other Americans.

You know that already. My full-time journalism career ended more than eight years ago. However, I have remained friends with many politicians and political observers in Texas.

Which brings me to this point: I am wondering when the Texas Republican Party political apparatus ever is going to turn its back on Donald Trump.

The president appears headed to defeat. I won’t say it’s done deal. It is looking that way.

I am acquainted with a number of GOP pols in the Texas Panhandle, where my wife and I lived for 23 years before gravitating to the Metroplex. Truth be told, I consider a number of those pols to be friends. One of them, a fellow I have known for more than 25 years, has told me privately that Trump must be defeated, that he has been a disaster as president.

He hasn’t said a word publicly, at least nothing that I have heard.

Trump has built a cult of personality across the land. The GOP no longer is a party of principle. It is a party that centers on an individual who, ironically, had zero political cred prior to his become a presidential candidate in 2015. Trump had no public service on his record. He had never sought any public office prior to seeking the Big One.

Indeed, the Republican Party is strong in the Texas Panhandle. So I keep wondering why the GOP political hierarchy continues to stand with Trump. It might be that the Trump “base” that comprise such a large portion of the Republican voting public has threatened reprisal against any pol who dares to speak out against their guy.

I keep reading reports about Capitol Hill Republicans beginning to put distance between themselves and the president. Why? Because Trump has few personal friendships, or longstanding political alliances with members of the GOP caucus in Congress. Still, they remain quiet.

It’s a puzzle to me. Yes, I am far these days from the hustle and the tussle of politics. I do retain a keen interest in it all.

Eight days from Election Day gives these pols some time to collect themselves, muster up some courage and tell us publicly what they likely are thinking in private … which is that Donald Trump is a loser.