GOP

Iowa Caucuses — What, Me Worry?

Fandango43 Comments

Am I worried that, in the Iowa caucus, the kickoff event for the 2024 presidential primaries, Trump won 51% of the votes, handily beating Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley? Yes and no.

Iowa is largely a white and conservative state and is not entirely representative of the U.S. population. And the Iowa caucus hasn’t always gone on to be the best predictor of who will be the party’s nominee, even less so at predicting who will win the presidency. So there’s that.

The next contest is the New Hampshire primary on January 23rd, followed by four primaries and two caucuses in February. But the big day is March 5th, known as Super Tuesday, where 16 states, including my home state of California, are having primaries or caucuses.

By the way, in case you were wondering what the difference between a primary and a caucus is, here is your answer:

Most states hold primaries 6-9 months before a presidential election. Primary voters choose their preferred candidate anonymously by casting secret ballots, either in person or, in some states, by mail-in ballots. The state where the primary is held takes the results of the vote into account to award delegates to the winners.

Several states hold caucuses in the months leading up to a presidential election. Caucuses are in-person meetings run by political parties that are held at the county, district, or precinct level. Some caucuses choose candidates by secret ballot. Others require participants to divide themselves into groups according to the candidate they support. Undecided participants form their own group. Each candidate’s group gives speeches and tries to get others to join their group. At the end, the number of delegates given to each candidate is based on the number of caucus votes they received.

So even though the Iowa caucus is close to meaningless, I am worried that more than half of the Republican caucus voters in that state stood with Trump. In the first chance Americans had to cast judgment on Trump since he tried to overthrow an election by inciting a siege of the U.S. Capitol Building, and has been charged with 91 felonies in four criminal cases this past year, most Iowa Republicans made clear that they don’t judge Trump. They love him.

If this Svengali-like spell he has over Republican voters continues (or strengthens) through primary season, and if Trump doesn’t either get convicted and sent to jail or die between now and November 5th, I don’t see how he loses to Biden again. And then it’s all over but the shouting for democracy in America.

MLMM Friday Faithfuls — Get the Drift

Fandango6 Comments

For this week’s Mindlovemysery Menagerie Friday Faithfuls challenge, Jim is asking us to write anything about continental drift, plate tectonics, geology, or whatever else we think might fit.

I’m not sure, after reading Jim’s post, there is anything I can add regarding the topics at hand. Instead I’m going to talk about a different type of continental drift. One that involves politics and not geology. It’s the Republican Party drift.

The Republican Party is not the party it once was. Not that long ago, the Republican Party was a party of moderates. The party has been growing much more conservative and less tolerant of deviations from doctrine over the past decades.

The GOP used to be more reflective of the national demographics. While the country has become older, more diverse, and more educated. The GOP, meanwhile, has grown even more disproportionately old. And it has grown more disproportionately white, as well.

As to education, the GOP’s share of non-Hispanic white voters without a college degree had been falling, but it’s now starting to increase. And can you imagine the Republican Party of years ago expressing growing support for the Russian dictator?

The Republican Party used to be all about individual freedoms, liberties, and family values. It still is, but only for those who are straight, white, Christian males. If you’re female, not white, a member of the LGBTQ community, and not Christian, you aren’t entitled to those same rights, freedoms, and liberties as straight, white, Christian males are.

There are so many other ways that the Republican Party has shifted away from what it used to stand for that it is hardly recognizable anymore. It’s the political party that seems content, if not eager, to re-elect a dictator wannabe and to embrace the end of American democracy while the country quickly transitions to an autocratic, Christian theocracy.

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — December 1st

Fandango1 Comment

Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about it? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Flashback Friday post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on any day this past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on December 1, 2017

What Does This Have To Do With Tax Reform?

Everyone knows that the Republicans in Congress are desperately trying to push through a draconian tax bill that would heartlessly increase taxes for middle and low-income Americans while providing massive tax reductions for large corporations and the wealthiest Americans.

But did you know that they have included a very troubling clause in their tax plan? There is a curious provision hiding among massive corporate tax breaks and the other items on the GOP’s tax plan wish list. This mysterious provision would permit families to open 529 educational savings accounts for “unborn children.” In other words, it would enable people to create college savings plans for fetuses. I’m not making that up.

In what has long been the holy grail of the anti-abortion movement, this provision would, through the proposed tax code, lay the foundation for “personhood,” which is the belief that life begins at conception. In effect, it would grant legal rights to a zygote, an embryo, or a fetus in the womb. This would potentially establish a legal basis that conservatives could use to argue to outlaw abortions entirely.

Republicans are hiding this highly unpopular provision deep within their proposed tax bill, where they hope no one will ever find it. If it does go mostly unnoticed and makes it into the final bill, conservatives will have successfully established a new, legal definition of when life begins, one that goes against legal precedent, science, and public opinion.

So yes, secreted deep within the bowels of the GOP tax plan is a provision to accomplish something that conservatives have been unable to accomplish since Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision issued in 1973 by the U.S. Supreme Court on the constitutionality of laws that criminalized or restricted access to abortions.

On the federal level, such attempts have always failed. But if this Republican tax bill passes Congress and is signed into law by Donald Trump, which he no doubt will do, Roe v. Wade will become meaningless and the conservatives and the religious right will have finally succeeded in essentially making abortion murder.

Tell me again what this has to do with tax reform?

2023 update: the House provision specified that nothing in this law could prevent an unborn child from qualifying as a designated beneficiary. For these purposes, an unborn child means a child in utero, and the term child in utero means a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb.

The Senate did attempt to include similar wording, but Senate lawmakers removed it at the last minute, as it also reportedly ran afoul of the Byrd rule, which limited the bill to issues related to taxes and spending in order to pass the Senate with a simple majority vote. So this sneaky provision didn’t make it into the final tax legislation that the Republicans passed and that Trump signed in 2017. But it was likely a critical factor that contributed to the overturning of Roe v Wade in 2022 by the United States Supreme Court.

Who Won The Week — 03/27/22

Fandango17 Comments

The idea behind Who Won the Week is to give you the opportunity to select who (or what) you think “won” this past week. Your selection can be anyone or anything — politicians, celebrities, athletes, authors, bloggers, your friends or family members, books, movies, TV shows, businesses, organizations, whatever.

If you want to participate, write your own post designating who you think won the week and why you think they deserve your nod. Then link back to this post and tag you post with FWWTW.

This week’s Who Won the Week Winner is Ketanji Brown Jackson, an American attorney and jurist who has served as a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since 2021. She is a current nominee for the Supreme Court, awaiting confirmation in the Senate.

This week, the U.S. Senate’s Judiciary Committee held hearings for her nomination and from the GOP perspective, it’s been a totally absurd, partisan shitshow. Judge Jackson is perhaps one of the most qualified, competent Supreme Court nominees in decades, certainly way more qualified than either Brett Kavanaugh or Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s last two nominees and now SCOTUS justices.

And Judge Jackson, given the ultra-partisan hatchet job the Republican senators on the committee attempted, comported herself with dignity and grace. I’m not going to go into all the gory details about how the Republican senators embarrassed themselves with their ludicrous cross examination. You can Google it if you want to. Or better yet, read this excellent post from fellow blogger Jill Dennison.

If When confirmed, Judge Jackson will not only have more experience than four of the current Supreme Court justices combined, she will also be the first and only justice with experiences as a public defender. So Ketanji Brown Jackson is, without hesitation, my designation for this week’s Who Won the Week.

What about you? Who (or what) do you think won the week?