An interesting take by Ed Kilgore at New York Magazine. If Trump loses…
Read the entire piece here.
Republican Congressmen Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan
The New York Times is running a very revealing op-ed by Peter Wehner, a fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, on Michael Cohen’s testimony before Congress yesterday.
Here is a taste:
Yet Republicans on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, in their frantic effort to discredit Mr. Cohen, went after him while steadfastly ignoring the actual evidence he produced. They tried to impugn his character, but were unable to impugn the documents he provided. Nor did a single Republican offer a character defense of Mr. Trump. It turns out that was too much, even for them.
In that sense, what Republicans didn’t say reveals the truth about what happened at the hearing on Wednesday as much as what they did say. Republicans showed no interest, for example, in pursuing fresh allegations made by Mr. Cohen that Mr. Trump knew that WikiLeaks planned to release hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee in the summer of 2016.
In a sane world, the fact that the president’s former lawyer produced evidence that the president knowingly and deceptively committed a federal crime — hush money payments that violated campaign finance laws — is something that even members of the president’s own party would find disquieting. But not today’s Republican Party.
Instead, in the most transparent and ham-handed way, they saw no evil and heard no evil, unless it involved Mr. Cohen. Republicans on the committee tried to destroy the credibility of his testimony, not because they believe that his testimony is false, but because they fear it is true.
By now Republicans must know, deep in their hearts, that Mr. Cohen’s portrayal of Mr. Trump as a “racist,” “a con man” and “a cheat” is spot on. So it is the truth they fear, and it is the truth — the fundamental reality of the world as it actually is — that they feel compelled to destroy. This is the central organizing principle of the Republican Party now. More than tax cuts. More than trade wars. More even than building a wall on our southern border. Republicans are dedicated to annihilating truth in order to defend Mr. Trump and they will go after anyone, from Mr. Cohen to Robert Mueller, who is a threat to him.
Read the entire piece here.
Daniel K. Williams of the University of West Georgia explains why rural white voters, once a stronghold of the Democratic Party, started voting Republican. Here is a taste of his piece at History News Network:
If there was one demographic group that blunted the force of the “blue wave” in this month’s midterm elections, it was rural white voters. Even as Republicans lost control of the suburban areas that had been their strongholds in the 1980s and 1990s, Republicans extended their hold over rural America. The GOP is now on the verge of uniting nearly all rural white voters into a single party – which has never happened before.
For most of the Republican Party’s history, the notion that the GOP would become the party of rural whites was unimaginable. Rural whites were the last voter group in the South to leave the Democratic Party; they did not begin consistently voting Republican until the 1990s, nearly a generation after suburban white southerners entered the GOP. But now rural whites in both North and South are the stronghold of the GOP and the key to the party’s future.
Why have rural whites throughout the country started voting Republican? And why have Democrats been unable to win them back, despite making an effort to do so in 2018?
Read the rest here.
Liberty University is selling student e-mail addresses to Republican political candidates. Here is a taste of an article at The News & Advance:
Liberty University leased an expansive list of university-owned student email addresses to Republican Corey Stewart’s campaign for U.S. Senate in a pair of rare transactions that campaign experts said represents a new front in the growing world of digital electioneering in federal races.
The Stewart campaign paid the university a total of $9,754.80 in two separate payments, according to publicly available campaign finance reports filed with the Federal Election Commission.
It is unclear exactly how many email addresses are included in Liberty’s list but in a telephone interview University President Jerry Falwell Jr. hinted it could be in the tens of thousands.
Here is more:
Christian Griffith, a Liberty University junior, said he first noticed the campaign messages in June. Since then, his inbox has been flooded with Stewart for Senate emails.
“I got so many that they now go to my spam box,” Griffith said. “I have a piling of them sitting in my junk mail and they’re all unnecessarily aggressive.”
Griffith said the sale amounted to a one-sided endorsement of a partisan political campaign.
Read the rest here.
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.11Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
13By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 18There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19We love because he first loved us. 20If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannota love God whom he has not seen. 21And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
Despite these biblical calls not to dwell in fear, it seems like evangelicals have embraced what Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell describes as the Republican Party’s “closing argument” in the 2018 midtern election: “Be afraid, be very afraid.”
Here is a taste of her piece:
Immigrants are coming for your children and lake houses. Socialists are coming for your Medicare (huh?). Black football players are coming for your flag. And now the Democrats are coming for your 401(k).
Republicans’ closing argument: Be afraid, be very afraid.
The GOP has had unified control of government for nearly two years now. Yet, somehow, Republicans’ promised return to morning in America, that end of “American carnage,” still hasn’t arrived, according to both their own standard-bearer and their terrifying campaign ads.
It’s funny, in a way. Unemployment is historically low. Consumer confidence is buoyant. There actually is a compelling, positive story to tell about the state of the country — or at least, the state of the economy — today. Whether President Trump can legitimately claim credit for recent economic trends is a nonissue; we know he has no problem taking credit for things he inherited, including his personal wealth. So at the very least, he could be emphasizing those economic milestones.
Read the rest here.
Of course “fear” among evangelicals is a central theme in this book:
Ted Cruz’s campaign for Senate is in trouble. His opponent, Beto O’Rourke, is closing in on him. As Alex Isenstadt notes in a recent Politico piece, the GOP are taking campaign funds that it hoped to use in other Senate races (North Dakota, Indiana, Missouri) and spending the money in Texas.
Here is a taste of Isenstadt’s piece:
Now, Cruz is leaning on the president to turn out voters with the planned October rally. The president’s son Donald Trump Jr. is expected to host multiple events for the senator in the Houston area on Oct. 3.
Trump, aides say, was eager to help. The president personally drafted the tweet in which he announced the rally, which he wrote would be held in “the biggest stadium in Texas we can find.”
Since the 2016 race, Trump has repeatedly told Cruz that he’d like to help him get reelected. Final plans for the event, party officials say, are still being worked out.
Administration officials are among those who’ve privately expressed concern about the senator’s prospects. Those worries burst out into the open over the weekend, when Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, told donors at a Republican National Committee meeting that Cruz could lose, a person familiar with the remarks confirmed. The closed-door remarks were first reported by The New York Times.
The sight of national Republicans coming to Cruz’s defense would have been almost unthinkable a few years ago. After being elected in 2012, Cruz clashed repeatedly with GOP leadership — he once took to the Senate floor to call McConnell, the majority leader, a liar. But senior Republicans are putting all that behind them.
Read the rest entire piece here.
By the way, what does it say about Cruz’s campaign that he needs DONALD TRUMP JR to come to Texas to bail him out?
In a recent campaign stop, Cruz said that Texas liberals want the state “to be just like California, right down to tofu and silicon and dyed hair.” I am not sure if this qualifies as the kind of Cruz “fear-mongering” I described in Believe Me”: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump. Frankly, I am not sure what this statement qualifies as.
But I did get a revealing tweet on my feed last night:
Ted Cruz may not be aware that tofu is a product of soybeans and that Texas farmers produced more than 2.8 million bushels of soybeans last year.
— John Pijanowski (@John_Pijanowski) September 9, 2018
Franklin Graham and Paula White at White House dinner for evangelicals
Washington Post conservative columnist Michael Gerson keeps bringing the heat. Here is a taste of his latest column:
One of the unpleasant surprises of your 50s (among many) is seeing the heroes and mentors of your 20s pass away. I worked for Chuck Colson, of Watergate fame, who became, through his work with prisoners, one of the most important social reformers of the 20th century. I worked for Jack Kemp, who inspired generations of conservatives with his passion for inclusion. I worked against John McCain in the 2000 Republican primaries but came to admire his truculent commitment to principle.
Perhaps it is natural to attribute heroism to past generations and to find a sad smallness in your own. But we are seeing the largest test of political character in my lifetime. And where are the Republican leaders large enough to show the way?
President Trump’s recent remarks to evangelical Christians at the White House capture where Republican politics is heading. “This November 6 election,” Trump said, “is very much a referendum on not only me, it’s a referendum on your religion.” A direct, unadorned appeal to tribal hostilities. Fighting for Trump, the president argued, is the only way to defend the Christian faith. None of these men and women of God, apparently, gagged on their hors d’oeuvres.
Read the rest here.
Historian Heather Cox Richardson asks this question in a piece at CNN titled “Americans are right to wonder if the Great Experiment has failed.” Here is a taste:
Americans are right to wonder if, at long last, what George Washington called the Great Experiment has failed, and that our founders have lost their extraordinary wager that regular people could govern themselves better than a few rich men could.
Consider that in his disastrous press conference in Helsinki Monday — and again in a comment before a Cabinet meeting Wednesday — President Donald Trump sided with a hostile foreign oligarchy over our own democracy.
Asked by a reporter Wednesday, “Is Russia still targeting the U.S., Mr. President?,” Trump responded, shaking his head “Thank you very much. No.” (Later, his press secretary, Sarah Sanders, offered that he was saying “no” to answering questions.)
Trump’s alliance with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, in defiance of America’s own intelligence community, the Department of Justice, and the bipartisan report of the Senate Intelligence Committee, forces us to face that the fundamental principles of our nation are under attack.
History suggests the game is not yet lost. Three times before, in the 1850s, the 1890s, and the 1920s, oligarchs took over the American government and threatened to destroy democracy. In each case, they overreached, and regular folks took back their government.
Read the entire piece here.
Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir at Yosemite
In the wake of the Scott Pruitt resignation, historian Christopher Sellers of Stony Brook University explains how the Republican Party came to embrace anti-environmentalism. Here is a taste of his piece at VOX:
It’s ironic that today’s Republicans see America’s environmental state as such a liability, given that Republican presidents had such a big hand in constructing it. In the early 20th century Teddy Roosevelt pushed a federal system of parks, forests, and monuments. In 1970, it was Richard Nixon who created the Environmental Protection Agency and signed many foundational laws. Even during the last Republican administration of George W. Bush, longtime EPA employees have told me there was considerable if often tacit support by party leaders.
So how has the current Republican anti-environmentalism come so far so fast? Why this extreme Republican animus toward the environmental state?
For starters, it helps to recall where the strongest environmental support came from in the 1960s and 1970s, during the great bipartisan build-out of America’s environmental laws and agencies: those regions where urbanizing and industrializing had gone the furthest, across the cities of the coasts and the Great Lakes and especially in their suburbs. A new political language of “the environment” was born along urban edges; it interwove homeowner concerns about pollution and developer intrusions that state and local governments had failed to address.
Read the rest here.
Evangelicals are afraid. This is one of the major themes of my forthcoming book (June 28) Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump. In fact, the entire Christian Right agenda–the agenda that led evangelicals to help elect Donald Trump–is built on fear.
When evangelicals are afraid of losing power they tend to turn to politics. This, I think, best explains why GOP operative Ralph Reed‘s Faith and Freedom Coalition is spending $20 million to get conservative culture warriors elected in 2018.
Here is a taste of an article at The Hill:
An influential conservative Evangelical group is ramping up its spending on efforts to defend Republican majorities in the November midterms.
The Faith and Freedom Coalition, which invested heavily during the 2016 elections, plans to spend nearly $20 million on a voter turnout effort to protect GOP majorities in the fall.
“We are going to make a bigger effort in 2018 than we did in 2016,” said Ralph Reed, the chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition.
“We think our people are going to come, but we also think their people are going to come and they are going to come in really big numbers. This is going to be hard fought.”
Reed estimated that the group will make 180 million voter contacts through digital outreach, knocking on people’s doors and making phone calls, sending texts, emails and physical mail.
The current budget for the mobilization effort sits at $18 million, but that’s subject to change as the battlefield expands and contracts in the coming months, Reed told a small group of reporters during a wide-ranging interview at the coalition’s annual “Road to Majority” summit in Washington, D.C., on Friday.
Evangelical leaders have long viewed President Trump and the GOP-led Congress as major allies in their fight to reshape the federal judiciary and pass legislation aimed at protecting religious freedom.
Read the entire piece here.
Thurmond eventually joined the GOP
Princeton historian Kevin Kruse is sick and tired of Trump supporters claiming that the Democrats are the party of racism and white supremacy today because they were the party of racism and white supremacy 100+ years ago. This twitter thread is a masterful lesson in change over time.
By the way, if you want to learn more about Kruse and the way he has used twitter to teach us how the past informs the present, listen to our interview with him in Episode 34 of The Way of Improvement Leads Home Podcast.
So I think I broke Twitter. Um … my bad?
Here’s that Kanye/realignment thread unrolled. https://t.co/NrLnDktQ6J
— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) May 1, 2018
Read the thread here. A taste:
From the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference:
The woman on the right of the screen is National Review columnist Mona Charen.
Charen was glad she got booed.
Princeton University conservative Robert George praised Charen:
I wish we conservatives could clone Mona Charen so that we could keep one for ourselves and give the other to the liberal movement which is equally badly in need of a truth-teller to call out the hypocrites and snollygosters.
— Robert P. George (@McCormickProf) February 25, 2018
The Republican Party is now the party of victimhood, paranoia, and fear. Sadly, much of its support comes from evangelical Christians–people who are commanded to “fear not.” There is no hope. There is no humility. There is a lot of nostalgia, but very little history.
Over at The Nation, John Knepfl writes about CPAC‘s “red hot rage.” Here is a taste:
Trump repeatedly warned the crowd that if Democrats were elected they would repeal the Second Amendment, and at one point asked the attendees to cheer if they preferred the Second Amendment or tax cuts. It was a bizarre moment, one of many, but suffice to say the Second Amendment received very loud support. That defensive posture in the midst of a seeming sea change in the gun-control debate was not a coincidence, and a clear sign that the CPAC doesn’t see itself as responsible for the prevalence of mass shootings.
What makes the rancor especially absurd is that not only is the Republican Party in charge of the Executive Branch and both chambers of Congress, but, by all honest accounts, the Trump administration is succeeding in implementing a hyperconservative agenda. CPAC favorites Ted Cruz and Shapiro acknowledged that they had no substantive disagreements with Trump. Nevertheless, the entire event was defined primarily by victimhood and paranoia. The enemies are everywhere: Democrats, socialists, college professors, regulators, black athletes, reporters, “fake news,” the FBI. “They try like hell, they can’t stand what we’ve done,” Trump said ominously.
Read the entire piece here.
Jonathan Rauch and Benjamin Wittes think that they should. Here is their recent piece in The Atlantic:
We have both spent our professional careers strenuously avoiding partisanship in our writing and thinking. We have both done work that is, in different ways, ideologically eclectic, and that has—over a long period of time—cast us as not merely nonpartisans but antipartisans. Temperamentally, we agree with the late Christopher Hitchens: Partisanship makes you stupid. We are the kind of voters who political scientists say barely exist—true independents who scour candidates’ records in order to base our votes on individual merit, not party brand.
This, then, is the article we thought we would never write: a frank statement that a certain form of partisanship is now a moral necessity. The Republican Party, as an institution, has become a danger to the rule of law and the integrity of our democracy. The problem is not just Donald Trump; it’s the larger political apparatus that made a conscious decision to enable him. In a two-party system, nonpartisanship works only if both parties are consistent democratic actors. If one of them is not predictably so, the space for nonpartisans evaporates. We’re thus driven to believe that the best hope of defending the country from Trump’s Republican enablers, and of saving the Republican Party from itself, is to do as Toren Beasley did: vote mindlessly and mechanically against Republicans at every opportunity, until the party either rights itself or implodes (very preferably the former).
Of course, lots of people vote a straight ticket. Some do so because they are partisan. Others do so because of a particular policy position: Many pro-lifers, for example, will not vote for Democrats, even pro-life Democrats, because they see the Democratic Party as institutionally committed to the slaughter of babies.
We’re proposing something different. We’re suggesting that in today’s situation, people should vote a straight Democratic ticket even if they are not partisan, and despite their policy views. They should vote against Republicans in a spirit that is, if you will, prepartisan and prepolitical. Their attitude should be: The rule of law is a threshold value in American politics, and a party that endangers this value disqualifies itself, period. In other words, under certain peculiar and deeply regrettable circumstances, sophisticated, independent-minded voters need to act as if they were dumb-ass partisans.
Read the rest here.
Michael Steele has had enough. Let’s remember, Steele is the guy behind the “Fire Pelosi Bus Tour.”
Evangelicals are just another lobbying group in Washington D.C.
I wrote about this yesterday.
The Republican nominee for Jeff Sessions’s vacated Alabama Senate seat is a Christian nationalist who appears to see Muslim-Americans as second-class citizens. Writing at The Atlantic, Peter Beinart wonders why Moore’s fellow Republicans are not condemning his views. Here is a taste of his piece:
In his hostility to Islam, and his belief that American Muslims should not be allowed to serve in office, Moore stands firmly in the tradition of Cain, Bachmann, Carson and Trump. In 2006, when Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison swore his oath of office on a Koran, Moore comparedit to taking an “oath on Mein Kampf” in 1943, and said Ellison should not be seated in Congress. This July, he called Islam a “false religion.” In August, he said, “There are communities under Sharia law right now in our country. Up in Illinois. Christian communities.” He later acknowledged that he had no idea if that was true. (It isn’t.)
What’s new isn’t what Moore has said. It’s the way leading Republicans have responded. There has been virtually no criticism at all. When CNN asked Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson how he felt about Moore’s claim that Barack Obama was a Muslim, Johnson responded merely that, “no two people agree 100% of the time.” When asked by the Toronto Star about claims that Moore was anti-Muslim, the Chairman of the Russell County, Alabama, Republican Party replied, “I’m anti-Muslim too.” (He later explained that, “I don’t have any problems with anybody’s religion as long as it’s Christian.”) When Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel declared in an interview on Fox News that, “the voters did the right thing,” Moore’s anti-Muslim comments didn’t even come up. In the age of Donald Trump, most Republican politicians are now too afraid to condemn anti-Muslim bigotry. And increasingly, journalists no longer expect them to.
And where are the court evangelicals? Why aren’t they speaking out against Moore? I assume they are too busy petitioning Donald Trump for more religious liberty legislation.
The former GOP Senator and ordained Episcopal priest tells us what he really thinks about the POTUS in a Washington Post op-ed titled “Trump is exactly what Republicans are not.”
A taste:
Now comes Trump, who is exactly what Republicans are not, who is exactly what we have opposed in our 160-year history. We are the party of the Union, and he is the most divisive president in our history. There hasn’t been a more divisive person in national politics since George Wallace.
It isn’t a matter of occasional asides, or indiscreet slips of the tongue uttered at unguarded moments. Trump is always eager to tell people that they don’t belong here, whether it’s Mexicans, Muslims, transgender people or another group. His message is, “You are not one of us,” the opposite of “e pluribus unum.” And when he has the opportunity to unite Americans, to inspire us, to call out the most hateful among us, the KKK and the neo-Nazis, he refuses.
To my fellow Republicans: We cannot allow Donald Trump to redefine the Republican Party. That is what he is doing, as long as we give the impression by our silence that his words are our words and his actions are our actions. We cannot allow that impression to go unchallenged.
As has been true since our beginning, we Republicans are the party of Lincoln, the party of the Union. We believe in our founding principle. We are proud of our illustrious history. We believe that we are an essential part of present-day American politics. Our country needs a responsibly conservative party. But our party has been corrupted by this hateful man, and it is now in peril.
In honor of our past and in belief in our future, for the sake of our party and our nation, we Republicans must disassociate ourselves from Trump by expressing our opposition to his divisive tactics and by clearly and strongly insisting that he does not represent what it means to be a Republican.
Read the entire piece here.
Read Jennifer Kerns‘s recent piece on politics and Charlottesville at The Washington Examiner. Kerns is a GOP communications strategist who has worked for the California Republican Party and Fox News.
Here is a taste:
In the aftermath of Charlottesville, an awful lot of awful things have been said about Republicans and race relations.
However, the Left’s accusations of racism couldn’t be further from the truth that has played out in the halls of Congress over the last 150 years.
It is shocking that as talk of statues and historical racism is being bandied about, no one has mentioned the Democrats’ utterly shameful treatment of African Americans throughout history.
Over the last 100 years, Republicans have stood up for African Americans while Democrats not only stood on the sidelines, but in fact served as obstructionists to civil liberties.
Here are at least 12 examples in which Democrats voted against African Americans, and Republicans voted to free them:
Democrats voted against every piece of civil rights legislation in Congress from 1866 to 1966 – a whopping 100 years. That is a dismal record for today’s Democrats who would like you to believe that history has been on their side on this issue.
It hasn’t.
Democrats voted to keep Africans Americans in slavery, opposing the 13th Amendment which officially freed the slaves. Only four Democrats voted for it.
Republicans also passed the 14th Amendment which granted slaves U.S. citizenship; Democrats voted against it.
Republicans also passed the 15th Amendment which gave slaves the right to vote. Not a single one of the 56 Democrats in Congress voted for it.
Shame on them.
Furthermore, Republicans passed all of the Civil Rights laws of the 1860s — including the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Reconstruction Act of 1867 following the Civil War.
And it goes on…
I thought we were done with this kind of stuff after CNN fired Jeffrey Lord.
As any of my liberal or conservative students will tell you, one of the key components of historical thinking is change over time. In the case of Kern’s article, let’s remember that political parties change over time. They are not frozen in time, as she suggests. The Democratic Party of the 19th century is not the Democratic Party of the 21st century. The Republican Party of the 19th century is not the Republican Party of the 21st century. Things changed in the 20th century, particularly as each of these parties addressed the questions of race in America. A political realignment took place.
The facts of Kern’s piece seem generally fine, (although I have not checked them thoroughly). If they are accurate, they might make for a nice Wikipedia entry. But when you are trying to make the past speak to the present, as Kern does here, there are a set of historical thinking skills–such as change over time–that must be considered. Kern is not writing history here. She is using the past irresponsibly to make a political point.
I think I will use this piece in my Introduction to History course this semester at Messiah College.
Want to learn more about historical thinking? Try this. You can read it along with my students this semester.
Or watch this for starters:
Let’s face it. No one cares what the Democrats in Congress and elsewhere think right now. That is because we all know that the Democrats condemn Trump’s refusal to distinguish white supremacists from those protesting against them.
But we should all care about what Republicans in Congress and elsewhere are saying. They are the only ones with the power to rebuke the POTUS. This is not a political issue. Any Republican who fails to speak out strongly against Trump right now either shares his views on moral equivalency or is more concerned about politics than the moral state of the country they serve. If there is another option I would like to know about it.
Here are some of the Republicans who have spoken out after Trump’s remarks on Tuesday. Notice that only a few of them name the office of the POTUS by name. I think that’s significant.
In case you missed my interview on @NBCNews the @TODAYshow, watch it here. pic.twitter.com/Edr5ZNNrUa
— John Kasich (@JohnKasich) August 16, 2017
The #WhiteSupremacy groups will see being assigned only 50% of blame as a win.We can not allow this old evil to be resurrected 6/6
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) August 15, 2017
This is a time for moral clarity, not ambivalence. https://t.co/amcpJxmvZ5
— Jeb Bush (@JebBush) August 16, 2017
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) August 16, 2017
There’s no moral equivalency between racists & Americans standing up to defy hate& bigotry. The President of the United States should say so
— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) August 16, 2017
We can’t accept excuses for white supremacy & acts of domestic terrorism. We must condemn. Period.
— Jeff Flake (@JeffFlake) August 15, 2017
We can’t accept excuses for white supremacy & acts of domestic terrorism. We must condemn. Period.
— Jeff Flake (@JeffFlake) August 15, 2017
Our words must not create confusion. The supremacy of any race is abhorrent, unAmerican & should be condemned by everyone. Full stop.
— Sen. James Lankford (@SenatorLankford) August 16, 2017
My statement on hate groups in the wake of Charlottesville: pic.twitter.com/d6Z5MyrOMY
— Senator Pat Toomey (@SenToomey) August 16, 2017
There is absolutely NO gray area when it comes to condemning groups who breed on racism, hate and division.
— Tim Scott (@SenatorTimScott) August 16, 2017
We must be clear. White supremacy is repulsive. This bigotry is counter to all this country stands for. There can be no moral ambiguity.
— Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) August 15, 2017
Just so we are clear, the American Health Care Act:
This is from Paul Waldman’s piece in The Washington Post. He wants to hold the GOP accountable.
After the bill passed, you can hear congressmen on the floor singing this:
