Tag Archives: GOP

national news

How would The Gipper fare in today’s GOP?

A social media post commemorating the election 39 years ago today of Ronald Reagan as our nation’s 40th president prompted me to wonder: How would President Reagan fare in what passes today as the Republican Party?

My hunch? Not well.

I will stipulate that I did not vote for Reagan in 1980 or in 1984. He won both elections in historic landslide proportions.

However, I acknowledge readily that Ronald Reagan was authentic. He adhered to what I believe are traditional GOP principles and policies. He sought to reduce government spending. He sought to reduce taxes. He believed in a strong national defense.

Most of all, though, he detested communism and the governments that promote what he considered to be an “evil” philosophy.

That brings me to the point of this blog: President Reagan would be aghast and appalled at Donald Trump’s flirtation with the direct descendants of the Evil Empire, aka the Soviet Union.

I get that Reagan met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and forged a partnership of sorts with him. However, the president never took his eye off the threat that the USSR posed to us militarily.

I also am trying to picture a moment where Ronald Reagan would declare in public that he trusted the word of a Soviet leader over the word of our nation’s intelligence experts. Suppose the CIA had determined that the Soviets had attacked our election in an effort to influence its outcome … and that the intelligence network had blamed the Soviets for its all-out attack on our electoral system. Who do you think Reagan would believe, our spooks or the commies?

You know the answer. Thus, for Donald Trump to pretend to be a Republican who endorses traditional Republican policies regarding our nation’s adversaries is, well, laughable on its face.

Except that no one should be laughing.

Today’s Republican Party bears no resemblance to The Gipper’s GOP. It has been hijacked by a flim-flam artist, a charlatan and a fraud. To that extent, Donald Trump makes me actually miss President Reagan.

Imagine that. I know. It’s weird.

national news

GOP demands more transparency … then rejects it!

I must have missed something in the translation.

Congressional Republicans have spent the better part of the past month or so trashing their Democratic colleagues because, they say, Democrats are conducting “secret” impeachment inquiry hearings into the conduct of Donald J. Trump.

Democrats are not doing anything in secret. Republican members of Congress have been taking part right along with Democrats as witnesses are deposed in private sessions.

So then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi agreed suddenly this past week to hold a vote of the full House of Representatives to formalize the impeachment inquiry. The result of the vote will launch the public portion of the inquiry.

Yes, committees will open their hearings up to the public. Americans of all stripes will get to witness the hearings on TV in real time.

However, the vote that the House approved Thursday didn’t collect a single Republican vote. Not a one of ’em decided to endorse the public inquiry. What gives with that?

I feel the need to remind y’all that the vote in the House was to formalize the inquiry. It was not an impeachment vote. That will come later. Then again — even though it is highly remote — an impeachment vote might not occur. Suppose most of the House decides that they lack the evidence they need to decide on articles of impeachment.

I know. That seems so distant these days, given the mountain of evidence that is piling up that Donald Trump sought personal political favors from a foreign government. That is against the law and it violates the oath the president took. It’s impeachable, man!

Back to my original thought: If congressional Republicans demand more transparency in these hearings, why didn’t they vote for the measure that the Democratic House speaker laid at their feet?

national news, State news

Rep. Gohmert invokes the ‘civil war’ canard … sheesh!

Leave it to U.S. Rep. Louis Gohmert, R-Loony Bin, to add an extra element of hysteria to the debate over whether to impeach Donald J. Trump.

After the U.S. House of Representatives today voted along partisan lines to proceed with its impeachment inquiry, Gohmert — an East Texas Republican — called it a “coup” against the president and invoked the possibility of a “civil war” erupting if he’s removed from office.

Good grief, dude!

Gohmert was among the 196 House Republicans to vote against the inquiry resolution. At a time when calm and reason might work well for the political process, we hear from Gohmert during a House Judiciary Committee meeting yapping, yammering and yelling about “coup” and “civil war.”

This is the guy who, I should add, continues to foment the idiocy about President Barack Obama’s place of birth.

But … I kinda/sorta digress.

The impeachment inquiry is no “coup” against the president. And for Gohmert, a member of the legislative branch of government, to invoke the prospect of open warfare in this country is reprehensible on its face.

He should be as ashamed of himself as I and other Texans are ashamed that this individual represents our great state under the Capitol Dome.

International news

A glimmer of sanity emerges from GOP congressional leadership

How about this bit of sanity from the ranks of senior Republican congressional leadership?

It comes in the form of pushback from GOP politicians against conservative media pundits who have questioned the patriotism of a decorated combat veteran who has testified about what he heard in real time when Donald Trump spoke to the Ukrainian president.

Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman testified today that he heard Trump ask Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for a personal political favor and that he expressed concern about the propriety — even the legality — of that overture.

Conservative media pundits have actually questioned whether the combat veteran, who was wounded in combat in Iraq, is loyal to the United States. I should add that Lt. Col. Vindman came to the United States from the Soviet Union when he was 3 years old. He has dedicated his life to public service.

It turns out that senior GOP politicians are standing behind Vindman. They are calling him a patriot and a war hero. As U.S. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., noted, you can question what he is saying, but his patriotic credentials are out of bounds. “You can obviously take issue with the substance and there are different interpretations about all that stuff. But I wouldn’t go after him personally. He’s a patriot,” Thune said.

I hope such wisdom silences the right-wing media hyenas who have attacked this dedicated soldier. It might, but I won’t hold my breath believing they will heed this bit of political advice.

International news, national news, political news

They’re now calling this fellow a spy? What the … ?

What in the name of military valor am I missing here?

A decorated U.S. Army officer, a refugee from the Soviet Union, a Purple Heart recipient and a true-blue American patriot, is now being challenged by Donald Trump’s supporters on the right and far right, being called a “spy” and a “traitor.”

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman is talking to congressional committees about what he heard in real time when Donald Trump spoke on the phone to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and then sounded alarm bells in the moment about what he heard come from the president’s mouth.

Vindman reportedly heard Trump ask Zelinskiy for a political favor. He heard the president reportedly withhold military aid until the Ukrainians delivered on the favor.

And for speaking out in closed session to congressional inquisitors, the president’s friends on Fox News and other conservative media — as well as politicians — are calling Vindman dirty names that impugn his loyalty to the country he has served with valor.

I do not understand this misplaced loyalty. I do not comprehend how one can demean, denigrate and disparage a proven battlefield hero in this fashion.

However, it is happening.

Actually, I suppose I can understand it. The reaction appears to be a product of the cult of personality that has consumed the once-great Republican Party.

Reprehensible.

national news

Here is a tale of two impeachments

While the president of the United States keeps taking a victory lap after authorizing the mission that killed the Islamic State’s founder, it is time look at another matter that should concern Donald J. Trump.

The president is going to be impeached by the House of Representatives. The Senate will put him on trial eventually and likely will fail to convict him.

It will be the second presidential impeachment in 20 years. The House impeached President Clinton in 1998 and the Senate put him on trial the following year.

Is there a difference between these two matters? Let’s examine a critical difference.

Bill Clinton’s impeachment had everything to do with boorish personal conduct. The Republican-led House was looking for a reason to impeach Clinton, a Democrat. The president handed it to the House by lying under oath to a grand jury about a relationship he was having with a White House intern. Clinton denied the relationship. The House had evidence to the contrary.

The House impeached the president on perjury and on obstruction of justice.

Back to my point: Clinton’s impeachment had next to nothing to do with the job he was doing as president. In fact, he proved to be an effective and highly successful president. He worked with Congress to balance the federal budget and the economy was booming.

His impeachment was based on a disastrous personal decision he made. Clinton paid the price politically for that decision. He stands forever as an “impeached president.”

What about Donald Trump? The allegations staring this president down have everything to do with the conduct of his office. He has been accused of violating his oath of office by accepting foreign government assistance for personal political gain. He allegedly withheld military assistance to an ally in exchange for dirt on political foes.

There might be even more to be revealed before it’s done.

Donald Trump’s troubles far exceed in relevance to the conduct of his elected office anything that Bill Clinton did.

Clinton got impeached because he lied about marital infidelity. Donald Trump is going to be impeached over allegations that he has abused the immense power of his office.

The irony is that Trump likes to boast about doing things in fashions that dwarf his presidential predecessors. On this impeachment matter, what Donald Trump reportedly has done lends a certain quaintness to whatever it was that got Bill Clinton into so much trouble.

national news

Secrecy? What secrecy in impeachment probe?

Donald Trump and his Republican allies are yapping about “secrecy” in the impeachment inquiry underway in the House of Representatives.

They are all wet. They are dead wrong. They are blathering out of both sides of their mouths.

House committees are meeting behind closed doors. There is nothing “secret” about what’s going as they take depositions from witnesses with information to share regarding whether the president has committed potentially impeachable offenses.

All the committees are staffed fully by Republican as well as Democratic members of Congress. Their staffs are present, too. GOP lawmakers are able to ask questions of the witnesses, just as their Democratic colleagues are doing so.

What’s more, they are operating under rules established in 2015 by a GOP-led congressional majority.

These hearings are taking place the way the Watergate hearings commenced in 1973 and the way the “Benghazi hearings” occurred in 2012. House members took testimony in private then flung the doors open for the public to see and hear for itself much of what had been discussed in private.

Yet the Republicans are bitching about what they contend is an “illegal” impeachment inquiry. Give it a break, ladies and gentlemen of the right wing.

There will be a public moment or two of reckoning to take place. The House is going to open its doors in due course, possibly quite soon, for the public to see for itself what it is learning.

I am one American who is willing and quite anxious to see and hear what is occurring. I know the House will do what it has done before and what it is doing now under the rules it has established.

Republican attacks on the process seek to divert attention away from congressmen and women are examining. The process doesn’t worry me. What gives me pause and deep concern is what the process is going to produce.

national news

No, Mick, we won’t ‘get over it’

Mick Mulvaney needs to understand something about his role as the ostensible “acting” White House chief of staff.

When he makes public statements out loud in the light of day in front of the world. he cannot take them back.

A reporter asked him this past week about whether Donald Trump sought a “quid pro quo” in withholding funds for Ukraine in exchange for dirt on Joe Biden. He said everyone does it and that we all should “get over it.” Mulvaney said there always has been “politics” associated with foreign policy.

Oh, my.

No, Mick. Not true. Not quite like what we all know has occurred.

Donald Trump had that phone call with Ukraine President Volodyrmyr Zellenskiy. They talked about U.S. aid to Ukrainians fighting Russian-back rebels. Zellenskiy thanked the president for the missiles, but then Trump said he needed a “favor, though.”

He withheld the arms until Zellenskiy produced the goods on Biden, a potential 2020 presidential opponent. He sought foreign government help for his re-election.

That, right there, sits at Ground Zero of the effort to seek impeachment of the president. It is not a matter that we need to “get over.” It is a profoundly serious political act that once it is done — and impeachment by the House now appears to be a near certainty — it will stain this presidency forever.

I am not nearly convinced the Senate will evict Trump from the presidency when it receives the articles of impeachment and then conducts a trial. Too many GOP senators remain loyal to Trump, disregarding the obvious “high crimes and misdemeanors” that this president has committed.

One of them involves Ukraine and that matter about withholding military assistance in exchange for a political favor.

C’mon, Mick. Knock off the shilling for the president. You’ve been “acting” chief of staff for damn near a year. Do your job. Provide the liar in chief with the kind of stern advice that White House chiefs of staff are supposed to give the guy who hires them. If he won’t listen and if he insists on careening toward impeachment, there’s one more thing you do can do.

You can resign.

national news, political news

This impeachment thing appears to be growing more tentacles

As I seek to follow the ongoing impeachment crisis threatening the presidency of Donald Trump, I am getting a sense that the story is getting bigger than many Americans would prefer.

Just three weeks ago we learned about a phone call that Trump had with Ukrainian President Volodormyr Zellenskiy in which he sought a favor from Ukraine in exchange for releasing money to help Ukrainians fight Russian aggressors.

The phone call prompted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to launch an impeachment inquiry. The thought as I understood at the time was that the House would move rapidly toward an impeachment vote by Thanksgiving. It would be a narrowly focused matter: whether the president violated his oath by seeking foreign government help in his re-election and seeking foreign help in digging up dirt on Joe Biden, a potential foe in the 2020 presidential election.

Now it seems as if this story is getting many more tentacles.

Trump appeared to suggest that the vice president, Mike Pence, had conversations with Ukrainians as well; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at first denied knowledge of the Trump-Zellenskiy phone conversation, then acknowledged he was “on the call”; questions have now arisen about Turkey and whether the president’s decision to abandon our allies in Kurdistan in the fight against ISIS is somehow related to a Trump Towers deal in Istanbul.

My head is spinning, man.

Does all of this come together quickly? Can there be an impeachment vote by Thanksgiving? Can the Senate commence a trial and make a decision by, say, spring 2020? Is all of this getting so muddy that we won’t have a resolution until after the 2020 presidential election?

As if it needed to get more complicated. The juxtaposition of a re-election fight and an impeachment muddies matters beyond anything the nation has experienced. President Clinton was a lame-duck second-term president when the House impeached him in 1998; President Nixon was in the same boat when the House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment in 1974. Neither man faced re-election.

This whole scenario is vastly different. Moreover, it keeps growing in its complexity as more Cabinet officials get sucked into the debate over what they knew and when they knew it.

I need something to settle my nerves.

I also want this saga to end — either through impeachment and Senate conviction, or at the ballot box — with Donald Trump vacating the Oval Office for a final time.

national news

Where is the GOP outrage over this fundamental betrayal?

Republicans in Congress continue to astonish and astound me.

We see a growing mountain of evidence that the president of the United States, Donald John Trump, has betrayed the oath he took when he became president. He vowed to defend the Constitution, then he — by his own admission — solicits foreign government help in getting re-elected, something that the Constitution expressly forbids.

Almost all of Trump’s GOP allies in Congress remain silent. They express no outrage over this blatant, purposeful flouting of the Constitution … which they all vow to defend and protect!

OK, a few of them have spoken out. Sen. Mitt Romney is one. So is Sen. Ron Johnson. And Sen. Ben Sasse. The rest of ’em? Silence, man!

Think back just a few years ago when President Barack Obama showed up in the White House press room wearing a tan suit. Do you remember the GOP response then? I do. They worked themselves into a virtual frenzy over the alleged “disrespect” the president showed by wearing something other than a dark suit while speaking to the nation on matters of state.

Indeed, Republicans also got mighty worked up in 1998 when another president, Bill Clinton, lied to a grand jury about an affair he was having with a young White House intern. Why, we can’t have a president who acts as if he is “above the law,” they said then. The House of Representatives impeached him, then put him on trial in the Senate, which then acquitted the lame-duck president of the charges brought against him.

Where in the name of constitutional protection is the righteous outrage now?

Have these individuals been taken hostage by the cult of personality that Donald Trump has developed and nurtured while serving as president of the United States?

The president put his hand on a Bible and swore to God Almighty he would protect and defend the nation’s governing document. He has failed to keep that pledge.

Where is the outrage?