Trump: A Cri De Coeur From A Republican

A commenter on Red State:

In a word, no. I cannot in good conscience support a candidate whom I believe to be a dangerous demagogue willing to inflame the worst elements of society in order to win personal power. His election would kill the Republican Party as any vehicle for conservative governance or opposition. Worse, his policies and proposals, such as they are, would threaten to ignite a global trade war, which, if history is any guide, would be followed by a shooting war. Moreover, he is an arrogant, unprincipled narcissist with a reckless temperament and unstable personality whose worst traits would be validated by winning that much power.

I have voted for every Republican nominee since my first vote in 1972. I did so only twice with genuine enthusiasm, once in 1980 and again in 1984, and only two other times with anything even approaching satisfaction, in 2000 and 2004. On other occasions I've had to hold my nose or fight back a rising gorge. But I've always voted for the nominee because of the alternative. I cannot and will not vote for Donald Trump. Ever. Cruz is my first choice, but I would support anyone else running or any compromise candidate that might emerge not named Trump.

If Trump is the nominee, I will vote third party and do everything I can to make sure that the Republicans retain the House and Senate in order to simply hold the line as best as possible until sanity is restored and help can arrive in 2020.

"Powerful Ripples Of Crazy"

Click here for an article in McLeans by Scott Feschuk, entitled "Powerful ripples of crazy: The Republican race farce."

Jeffrey Toobin On The Legacy Of Antonin Scalia

Click here for Toobin's scathing review of Scalia's career, entitled "Looking Back," in The New Yorker magazine.

Republican Obstructionism - A Comprehensive View

Click here for a MARVELOUS article at Daily Kos by Jon Perr, entitled "How Republicans turned the unprecedented into the new normal." It's a long article, but it's well worth taking the time to absorb it all. It covers Republican obstructionism in court appointments and appointments of administration staff nominees, and taking the debt ceiling hostage.

The article points out how the Democrats repeatedly reacted far differently when the party roles were reversed. As Perr says:

Why did Democrats choose cooperation where Republicans chose sabotage? Because it’s not true that “both sides do it.” Because we’re living in age of “asymmetric polarization” in which one political party has now normalized the previously inconceivable. As Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein put it in summing up their 2013 book, It's Even Worse Than It Looks:

"Let's just say it: The Republicans are the problem."

Krugman Economic Wisdom On Trump, Rubio, And The GOP

Click here. A must-read article by the great Paul Krugman.

Donald Trump, Truth-Teller

Click here for an article by Jonathan Chait in New York magazine entitled "Crazy Nut Donald Trump Thinks George W. Bush Was President on 9/11."

Trump claimed in the South Carolina campaign that Bush failed to take action which might have prevented 9/11 -- refuting the previously unanimous Republican position that George W. Bush "Kept Us Safe." He also claimed that the Bush administration knew there were no WMDs in Iraq but lied about it to bolster support for the invasion they wanted to make. (Chait doesn't go that far; he says rather that they relied on faulty intelligence, but repeatedly cherry-picked and manipulated ambiguous information to justify invasion.)

A Trump Zinger -- Well Played, Donald!

[Trump] added that praising the former president [W] for what happened after the Sept. 11 attacks was like saying the opposing team “scored 19 runs in the first inning, but after that, we played pretty well.”

What Digby Said

Here's the inimitable, redoubtable Digby again:

Yesterday on MSNBC some South Carolina Republicans were shown Trump being profane and juvenile on the stump and they didn't like it. The implication was that Southerners are more genteel than northeasterners and won't like his crude personality. I don't know if that's true or not but perhaps it is.

What is astonishing to me is that everyone in the Republican Party knows they cannot attack him for his barbaric proposals to deport millions of people, build walls, ban Muslims, kill and torture suspects families, waterboarding "and worse". These are all things the GOP base favors and they dare not challenge it. The only thing they can go after him for are that tepid bowl of mush in the Club for Growth ads, none of which are deal breakers for anyone.

Trump is the ultimate expression of the Republican base and they're stuck with it.

Beautiful! The establishment desperately wants to take Trump down, but he's only articulating -- and trumpeting -- the things the bigoted racist element of the GOP feels, but has felt unable to say.

John Podhoretz Thinks Democratic View of America Is Dystopian

Here's a piece by Digby from Hullabaloo that's too good to let go, but I find myself unable to link to it, so I have to painstakingly cut and paste it, page by page. The Republican worldview is that Obama has ruined the country and it's on the brink of collapse; Hunter Thompson was 40 years to early with "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail." I wish Hunter were here to offer an opinion on the 2016 Republican race. Digby:

"Here is a hilarious observation from conservative writer John Podhoretz about last night's Democratic debate:

The message from Thursday night’s Democratic debate is that everybody in America should get on a leaky rowboat and find somewhere, anywhere, else in the world to live — because life in the United States is a nightmare from which millionaires and billionaires and the Koch brothers and the Republicans will not allow us to awake.

"Has he listened to any of the Republican debates? In their view American is a dystopian hellscape of epic proportions on the brink of total ruin at the hands of foreigners who are making us eat beans tacos against our will, terrorists who are plotting in our own neighborhoods to kill us in our beds and require the survivors to live by Sharia law, and gays and feminazis forcing everyone to have abortions and marry members of their own sex. And that's just for starters.

"The frontrunner for the nomination openly says:

“This country is a hellhole, and we’re going down fast.I want to make this country great again.”

"Here's just a sample from the last debate:

Bush: The idea that somehow we're better off today than the day that Barack Obama was inaugurated president of the United States is totally an alternative universe. The simple fact is that the world has been torn asunder.

Carson: You know, when you go into the store and buy a box of laundry detergent, and the price has gone up — you know, 50 cents because of regulations....And everything is costing more money, and we are killing our people like this....It's the evil government that is putting all these regulations on us so that we can't survive.

Trump: Our military is a disaster. Our healthcare is a horror show....We have no borders. Our vets are being treated horribly. Illegal immigration is beyond belief. Our country is being run by incompetent people....Those two young people — those two horrible young people in California when they shot the 14 people....Many people saw pipe bombs and all sorts of things all over their apartment. Why weren't they vigilant? Why didn't they call? Why didn't they call the police?...We have to find out — many people knew about what was going on. Why didn't they turn those two people in so that you wouldn't have had all the death? There's something going on and it's bad. And I'm saying we have to get to the bottom of it.

Rubio: This president is undermining the constitutional basis of this government. This president is undermining our military. He is undermining our standing in the world....The damage he has done to America is extraordinary. Let me tell you, if we don't get this election right, there may be no turning back for America.

Kasich: In this country, people are concerned about their economic future. They're very concerned about it. And they wonder whether somebody is getting something to — keeping them from getting it. That's not the America that I've ever known.

Christie: When I think about the folks who are out there at home tonight watching....They know that this country is not respected around the world anymore. They know that this country is pushing the middle class, the hardworking taxpayers, backwards, and they saw a president who doesn't understand their pain, and doesn't have any plan for getting away from it.

"In the Republican psyche it is midnight in America.

"And by the way, I haven't heard any Republicans touting the improved economy lately, have you? Have any of them talked about the low unemployment rate? I guess I may have missed those comments on the stump. I listen to and read a lot of right wing talk. They are convinced that Barack Obama has turned this nation into a third world nightmare from which we may never recover. In fact, they are in a daily state of full-fledged panic over it. Sanders' abstract indictment of the financial system and Clinton's dry list of policy improvements are downright cheery and Reaganesque by comparison."

Rubio A Moderate? Krugman ...

Professor Krugman had the following to say, while discussing the results of the Iowa caucuses, where Cruz and Trump finished first and second:

Let me add that someone horrifying also came in third. Marco Rubio may seem less radical than Cruz or Trump, but his substantive policy positions are for incredibly hawkish foreign policy, wildly regressive tax policy, kicking tens of millions of people off health insurance, and destroying the environment. Other than that, he's a moderate.

It's always been a source of some amusement to me that Rubio touts himself as a new-generation politician; the policies he advocates are truly paleo-Republican.

Jeb Bush: "Please clap."

Cringeworthy moment on the Bush campaign trail.

Paul Krugman's Accurate Prediction For The Iowa Republican Caucus

Click here for a Paul Krugman article in The New York Times entitled "Post-Iowa Notes":

"Well, in my pre-Iowa notes I called the Republican primary right:

"I know what will happen on the Republican side: someone horrifying will come in first, and someone horrifying will come in second.

"Let me add that someone horrifying also came in third. Marco Rubio may seem less radical than Cruz or Trump, but his substantive policy positions are for incredibly hawkish foreign policy [complete with torture in secret prisons], wildly regressive tax policy, kicking tens of millions of people off health insurance, and destroying the environment. Other than that, he’s a moderate."