Tag Archives: republican

Ted Cruz Tells Nevadans Only He Can Preserve Scalia’s Legacy

by DemetriHmi Posted on February 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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After a disappointing third-place finish in Saturday’s South Carolina Republican primary, Ted Cruz is looking to a new ally to boost his performance in the Nevada caucuses on Tuesday: the ghost of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Cruz seems to have settled on the idea that President Barack Obama won’t get a Supreme Court justice confirmed to replace Scalia. During a stump speech Monday afternoon in Las Vegas, Cruz said one of his first actions as president would be to name a “strong principled constitutionalist” as Scalia’s successor.

Cruz has begun to emphasize his legal career on the campaign trail in order to paint himself as the lone Republican candidate who can defend Scalia’s legacy. It’s a two-step dance to take down his rivals: heighten the stakes of the election to minimize Donald Trump as an unserious candidate, and push the idea that Marco Rubio isn’t conservative enough to be entrusted with picking Supreme Court nominees.

“As Ronald Reagan was to the presidency, so too was Justice Scalia to the Supreme Court,” Cruz said. “And his passing underscores the stakes of this election. It’s not one branch of government, but two that hang in the balance.”

Cruz laid out a conservative’s dystopian vision of the Supreme Court, where the law of the land would flip to a liberal interpretation should Scalia’s seat go to a Democratic appointee. “We are one liberal justice away from the Supreme Court mandating unlimited abortion on demand all across this country with no restrictions whatsoever,” Cruz said. “We are one liberal justice away from the Supreme Court reading the Second Amendment out of the Bill of Rights.” Cruz warned that a 5-4 liberal majority would also mean the dismantling of statues based on the Ten Commandments, “or the Supreme Court concluding that the United Nations and the World Court can bind our justice system…and subjecting us to international law and taking away sovereignty.”

Amid this doom and gloom, Cruz made sure to remind the crowd of Nevadans that he is a former lawyer who has argued before the Supreme Court, so he knows how the institution operates. At the same time, he repeatedly hammered the point that he wouldn’t waffle, vowing that he was the only Republican candidate the voters should trust to appoint truly conservative judges.

“I think Justice Scalia’s passing,” Cruz said, taking a veiled jab at Trump’s gutter politics, “has elevated the assessment of the men and women of Nevada.”

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Ted Cruz Tells Nevadans Only He Can Preserve Scalia’s Legacy

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Donald Trump Wins South Carolina Primary

by ClydeBrigstocke Posted on February 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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Like it or not, Donald Trump is in the driver’s seat for the Republican presidential nomination.

The networks called the South Carolina primary for Trump shortly after polls closed on Saturday, with Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida locked in a battle for second place. Over the last week of the campaign, Trump’s opponents worked hard to spin anything less than an overwhelming victory as a disappointing showing for the billionaire real estate mogul, but make no mistake about it: Trump’s win is a big deal. He has now finished second, first, and first in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, three states that have very little in common. He has won the latter two by overwhelming pluralities. And he has history on his side: Only one candidate has ever lost South Carolina and won the nomination, and that candidate, Mitt Romney, finished in second in 2012. If his name were anything other than “Donald Trump,” the party’s leaders would be penciling him in for the final speaking spot at their convention in Cleveland.

Trump used South Carolina as a backdrop for some of his most overheated pronouncements. He promoted his proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States while speaking aboard a decommissioned aircraft carrier in Charleston Harbor. He called Pope Francis “disgraceful” for questioning his proposal to build a wall on the Mexican border. And in his final event of the primary campaign on Friday night, he told the audience an apocryphal story about General John Pershing executing 49 Muslims with bullets coated in pig blood. His biggest argument against Cruz’s candidacy was that the senator was unnecessarily squeamish about torture. Shortly after polls opened on Saturday, Trump tweeted that President Barack Obama would likely have attended Antonin Scalia’s funeral if it had been held at a mosque. Opponents, notably former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, sought to cast Trump as boorish and unpresidential. They misunderstood the race.

Trump didn’t win in spite of being a boor, a bigot, and an analog internet troll; he won because he was proudly all those things. For all the diversions (who picks a fight with the pope, anyway?), he articulated a remarkably clear theory of politics: Other people are screwing you over, and I’m going to stop it. “He’s got balls,” Julia Coates, a longtime Trump fan, told me as we waited for the real estate magnate to take the stage in North Charleston. “He’s got big ones. And that’s what we need. I’m tired of all this shit going on.” It’s the kind of approach that plays poorly among the genteel Southerners who crowd into Low Country town halls in boat shoes and Nantucket red. But he recognized the electorate as something greater—and angrier. If you hadn’t voted in decades, Trump was your guy. If you felt betrayed by the people you had voted for, Trump was also your guy.

If Trump was a winner, then everyone else is (to use his term of choice) a loser—including Rubio, who finished third in Iowa and a disappointing fifth in New Hampshire. Now you can add the South to the list of regions that have been less than receptive to his pitch. It’s not because he didn’t make his message clear. Over the last week, he cast himself as the anti-Trump, a fresh-faced Cuban American who could lead the party into the future. He toured the state with rising star Rep. Trey Gowdy; the state’s African America senator, Tim Scott; and its Indian American governor, Nikki Haley, who joked that the quartet looked like a “Benetton commercial.” Rubio bet the house on the idea that South Carolina was ready for the future and mentioned the Republican front-runner only in passing during his speeches, and never by name. Trump stuck with the past; he went all-in on white identity politics and, like Newt Gingrich and George W. Bush before him, came through unscathed—two divorces be damned.

In actual terms, the biggest loser was Bush, whose campaign is on life support after finishing far behind in a state that helped make his brother president 16 years ago. In a last-gasp effort at upping his numbers in South Carolina, he brought George W.—who was kept at arm’s length for most of the campaign—to North Charleston for a megarally where they chest-bumped backstage. And he blanketed the radio airwaves with an endorsement from the ex-president. Jeb pushed hard to position himself as a commander in chief in a state with one of the highest percentages of military families in the nation.

But even his supporters seemed to recognize the end was near. At a town hall in Summerville, in an open-air pavilion overlooking a golf course (Bush never tried too hard to shake the “country club” label), one questioner after another all but called him a wimp. As the event wrapped up, a voter told the younger Bush that he was a big fan of Dubya but questioned whether Jeb had the toughness for the job. “Can you be a sonofabitch?” he asked. Jeb didn’t say yes.

From here, the Republican field moves on to Nevada and then Super Tuesday, on March 1. Thanks to the efforts of a Southern bloc, that historic bellwether will be loaded up with states that look about as friendly to Trump as South Carolina did. (Not that he needs to drop his g’s to win votes—he cleaned up in New Hampshire, too.) There’s also a lot of time for him to screw it up, although short of lighting an American flag on fire in Times Square, it’s not clear what that would even look like. The more likely scenario is that his opponents and their backers might finally spend real money attacking him on the airways—just $9 million of the $215 million spent by conservative super-PACs this cycle has been on anti-Trump ads. But don’t let Trump’s army of Republican critics say South Carolina doesn’t matter. They’ve been saying for years and years that it does. And they’re absolutely right.

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Donald Trump Wins South Carolina Primary

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Here’s the Music Candidates are Rocking Out to on the Trail

by LuigiLandseer Posted on February 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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I was supposed to be writing a wrap-up piece about the South Carolina Republican primary this afternoon, but an attack of writers’ block led me to more inspiring territory: the compilation of the (mostly) complete music playlists of every candidate I’ve seen speak over the last two weeks, in New Hampshire and now South Carolina. Shazam: It’s every political reporter’s best friend.

This list is incomplete, and can change a lot depending on the candidate’s audience or the whims of the artist (heaven forbid Rachel Platten decides to endorse Bernie Sanders). I don’t ascribe any deeper meaning to these musical selections either, although suffice it to say there is a pretty big difference between Sanders and Hillary Clinton, and for that matter, between Donald Trump and everyone else.

See for yourself.

Hillary Clinton:

Jill Scott, “Run, Run, Run”
Mary J. Blige, “Real Love”
Katy Perry, “Roar”
Kelly Clarkson, “Stronger”
American Authors, “Best Day of My Life”
Bon Jovi, “We Weren’t Born to Follow”
Pharrell, “Happy”
Rachel Platten, “Fight Song”

Bernie Sanders:

Simon and Garfunkel, “America”
Janelle Monae, “Tightrope”
Pearl Jam, “Lightning Bolt”
Bob Marley, “Revolution”
Disco Infernor, “The trammps”
Muse, “Uprising”
John Lennon, “Power to the People!”
Tracy Chapman, “Talkin’ bout a Revolution”
Steve Earle, “The Revolution Starts Now”
Neil Young, “Rockin’ the Free World”

John Kasich:

Florida Georgia Line, “Round Here”
Zak Brown Band, “Jump Right In”
Darius Rucker, “Wagon Wheel”
Jake Owen, “Anywhere With You”
Diekes Bentley, “Free & Easy”
Rodney Atkins, “It’s America”
John Fogerty, “Centerfield”
Eric Paslay, “Friday Night”

Marco Rubio:

Kid Rock, “Born Free”
Montgomery Gentry, “This is My Town”
Darius Rucker, “Homegrown Honey”
MercyMe, “Greater”
Eric Church, “Springsteen”

Donald Trump:

Elton John, “Tiny Dancer”
The Beatles, “Hey Jude”
The Beatles, “Revolution”
Rolling Stones, “Can’t Always Get What You Want”
Rolling Stone, “Sympathy for the Devil”
Rolling Stone, “Brown sugar”
Adele, “Rolling in the deep”*
Twisted Sister, “We’re not Gonna Take It”
Danude, “Sandstorm”

Jeb Bush:

Of Monsters and Men, “Dirty Paws”
Blake Shelton, “Hillbilly Bone”
Billy Currington, “That’s How Country Boys Roll”

Ted Cruz:

*Pulled at request of the artist.

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Here’s the Music Candidates are Rocking Out to on the Trail

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Ted Cruz Wins the Family Values Endorsement

by EfrenGDFDgoxeo Posted on February 19, 2016

Mother Jones

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Exciting news! Former South Carolina governor Mark “Appalachian Trail” Sanford has endorsed….

Ted Cruz! This is quite a coup. As you no doubt remember, Sanford demonstrated his commitment to traditional Republican values by starting up an extramarital affair; disappearing to Buenos Aires for a six-day vacation with his beloved; telling his spokesman to claim that he was gone because he was “hiking the Appalachian Trail”; and then tearfully admitting his affair and claiming that he had found his “soul mate.” He subsequently got divorced, and later on broke up with his soul mate.

In fairness, the generous folks of South Carolina decided to elect him to Congress in 2013. So I guess all is forgiven. Certainly Ted Cruz has forgiven him.

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Ted Cruz Wins the Family Values Endorsement

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Republicans Invent New Supreme Court Tradition Out of Thin Air

by ChrisHedberg555 Posted on February 14, 2016

Mother Jones

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Republicans are pretty unanimously refusing to consider confirming a Supreme Court nominee to replace Antonin Scalia before the election. That’s hardly unexpected, but what cracks me up is their effort to make this sound like a principled stand. “It’s been over 80 years since a lame duck president has appointed a Supreme Court justice,” Marco Rubio said last night, apparently not understanding what “lame duck” means. “We have 80 years of precedent of not confirming Supreme Court justices in an election year,” Ted Cruz agreed, apparently not realizing that Anthony Kennedy was confirmed in 1988. No matter. “It’s been standard practice over the last 80 years to not confirm Supreme Court nominees during a presidential election year,” thundered Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, which will hold hearings on Obama’s nominee.

This has quickly become a meme on the right. It’s a deeply held American tradition not to confirm Supreme Court justices during an election year. Needless to say, this is ridiculous. Anthony Kennedy aside, the reason Supreme Court nominees haven’t been confirmed during election years for the last few decades is just coincidental: none of them happened to have died or retired during an election year.1Some tradition. Perhaps Scalia should be posthumously censured for having the gall to break this custom.

In any case, congratulations as usual to Mitch McConnell for not bothering with this self-righteous pretense. He says the Senate won’t vote on a replacement for Scalia because, basically, they just don’t want to. “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court justice,” he said yesterday, and that’s that. Republicans have the power to delay in hopes of electing a Republican in November, and that’s what they’re going to do.

1Abe Fortas was rejected during the 1968 election year, but this had nothing to do with any kind of hallowed tradition. It was because Republicans and Dixiecrats were pissed off at the Warren Court, and preventing LBJ from elevating Fortas to chief justice was a way of showing it. They were able to use an ethics scandal to gin up opposition, and Fortas never even made it to a floor vote.

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Republicans Invent New Supreme Court Tradition Out of Thin Air

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A Majority of States Now Have Right-to-Work Laws

by TyroneL29aehb Posted on February 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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West Virginia, once a bastion of organized labor, will soon join the ranks of the right-to-work states that have undercut union participation. The Republican-dominated state legislature on Friday overrode Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin’s veto of a right-to-work bill, becoming the 26th state in the nation to pass such legislation.

Right-to-work laws bar unions from negotiating contracts that require all workers represented by a union to pay dues—in effect guaranteeing workers the union’s protections and representation regardless of whether they contribute. The laws are broadly understood to weaken unions.

The bill faced fierce opposition from unions, who organized protests at the state capitol and launched TV and radio ad campaigns to fight the legislation. But it also had money behind it, courtesy of Americans for Prosperity, the conservative advocacy group backed by the Koch brothers that has lobbied for right-to-work laws across the nation. One of the West Virginia bill’s key proponents, Republican gubernatorial candidate and state Senate president Bill Cole, touted his efforts to pass the right-to-work bill at a Palm Springs retreat organized by the Kochs earlier this year.

According to the US Census Bureau, West Virginia had a higher poverty rate than all but 10 states between 2011 and 2013. Many communities have been hit hard by the loss of thousands of mining jobs in recent years. Republican lawmakers claimed that loosening labor laws was necessary to attract businesses to the state. Democrats have argued that it will ultimately hurt workers, and that the bill was aimed primarily at diminishing unions’ political clout.

The right-to-work law will go into effect on July 1.

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A Majority of States Now Have Right-to-Work Laws

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Democratic Congressman: "Free Puerto Rico"

by MiguelLeddy Posted on February 11, 2016

Mother Jones

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On the House floor Thursday, Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) called on the US Congress to “free Puerto Rico so she can solve the problem of her crushing debt without being handcuffed by Congress, its distant and inattentive colonial master.” The speech came as Congress continues to debate what should be done to assist Puerto Rico in coping with its debt crisis.

Gutiérrez, who is of Puerto Rican descent, said that Congress has offered “very little” tangible help for the island as it grapples with its crushing $72 billion debt. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) said in December that Congress would propose a debt relief package by the end of March. Previous legislative proposals have stalled out, whether offered by Democrats, Republicans, or Pedro Pierluisi, the island’s non-voting representative to congress.

The island’s government and public institutions owe money on more than a dozen separate loans involving a number of different lenders, all with competing interests. Since Puerto Rico’s cities and public institutions cannot seek bankruptcy protection in the same way as their counterparts on the mainland, debt restructuring has to be handled by each individual creditor separately, which has made the process slow and unwieldy.

The Obama administration and Congressional Democrats support the idea of amending US law to let Puerto Rico seek bankruptcy protection, but Congressional Republicans have been resistant, arguing that the island’s government must get its financial affairs in order—and honor its debts—before congressional action should be taken. Republican proposals have included the idea of an independent financial oversight board, an idea Gutiérrez blasted on Thursday.

“And now, what is the solution that everyone in Washington is lining up behind? A federal control board,” he said. “Imagine that. An island that cannot determine its own destiny, that has to play an economic game with a stacked deck and all the rules rigged against them, what is the solution in Washington? Take away what little autonomy they have left and add a new layer of Washington control over the colony.”

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Democratic Congressman: "Free Puerto Rico"

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Coming Soon: The Bush-Kasich Death Match

by JIGAlyciajpbd Posted on February 10, 2016

Mother Jones

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So far, the Republican presidential contest has been like a Quentin Tarantino film in which the main characters end up in a circular firing squad or a multisided Mexican standoff and don’t know whom to target—or from which direction an attack might come. Donald Trump has rotated the target of his volleys, and the other Republican contenders have often seemed puzzled whether to go after the front-runner or focus on a candidate who is a more direct competitor for a certain slice of the GOP electorate.

Trump, at different times, has needled Jeb Bush, Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz. Bush, at one point, attempted—feebly— to take a poke at Trump. Bush and Marco Rubio have tangled with each other. Cruz and Rubio have done the same. On Saturday night, in the most consequential clash of the campaign, Chris Christie unloaded on Rubio during the New Hampshire debate, forcing the one-term senator to commit a blunder that may have derailed his campaign permanently. Trump, Cruz, Kasich, and Bush—especially Bush—no doubt appreciated this greatly, though the harsh assault did not help Christie, who on Wednesday appeared set to suspend his campaign. As the non-Trump field has shifted, the one-on-ones have changed. And with the New Hampshire results, it seems inevitable that a coming matchup will pit Kasich against Bush.

This could be an odd battle. Kasich placed second in New Hampshire, Bush came in fourth, and both are governors (Bush is an ex-) who emphasize their policy chops and claim they want to stay positive. (Bush has referred to immigration to the United States as an “act of love,” and Kasich, as part of his campaign pitch, has called on people to slow down and listen more to each other.) Both are from and pals of the GOP establishment. Both tout their executive experience and claim to have reasonable demeanors. Both seek to win the fancy of moderate, suburban Republicans. Each probably cannot survive long in the race without knocking the other out—sooner rather than later.

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Coming Soon: The Bush-Kasich Death Match

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Carly Fiorina Drops Out of the Presidential Race

by VerleneMrv Posted on February 10, 2016

Mother Jones

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After finishing seventh in both the Iowa caucuses and Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina announced Wednesday that she’s suspending her campaign for the Republican nomination for president:

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This campaign was always about citizenship—taking back our country from a political class that only serves the big, the…

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Carly Fiorina Drops Out of the Presidential Race

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The One Line in New Hampshire That Donald Trump Won’t Cross

by Volodyslav7uk Posted on February 9, 2016

Mother Jones

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It’s hard to get too lost on your way to Pittsburg, New Hampshire (pop. 869). You just drive north for a while. And then you keep driving north for a while longer. Pittsburg is New Hampshire’s largest town by land area, covering nearly 300 square miles of North Country mountains and lakes and spanning the entire length of the state’s international border with Canada. It’s also one of the only corners of the nation’s first primary state where candidates never go.

In a year in which Republican candidates have made the Rio Grande a mandatory stop on the presidential campaign trail, trekking to McAllen, Texas, to stare grimly into the Mexican desert, the far vaster northern border—the one terrorists have actually tried to come across—is a much different story. Of the hundreds upon hundreds of town halls and meet-and-greets in the 2016 election cycle, only one happened in Pittsburg. And it was held by Lindsey Graham.

(It’s not just candidates who have a tendency to overlook Pittsburg; in the 1830s, it was excised from the United States by a vaguely written treaty, and it hummed along for three years as the independent republic of Indian Stream before the boundary was clarified.)

“People certainly can sneak through here, there’s no doubt about it,” said Laurie Urekew, braving the snow flurries on Saturday afternoon outside Young’s general store, an all-purpose grocery and gas station that features a punching bag of President Barack Obama by the register. “But it’s very vast here, so chances are someone from the southern area wouldn’t survive too much.”

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Urekew is a Republican (“the only good Democrat is a dead one,” she joked), who was torn between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, provided the latter is ruled eligible. “I like Trump because we need somebody like him—he’s strong and yet he’s not afraid to be politically incorrect,” she said. But she trusts Cruz more than Trump to shut down the border—the southern one.

Although Trump is popular in the North Country, his warnings about a Canadian senator usurping the American government has hit with a thud—it’s just not that big of an issue. Canadian flags fly with American ones outside some houses, road signs are in French and English, and there’s a Quebecois radio station. The compelling local issue up north is not the border; it’s the proposed Northern Pass transmission line, which would cut through the North Country to bring hydroelectric power from Canada to the Northeast, but would require the use of eminent domain to acquire land for the project. For that reason, it’s deeply unpopular in northern New Hampshire. (The slogan that Northern Pass opponents have come up with is “Live Free or Fry,” which you have to admit, is pretty good.) Trump was asked about the Northern Pass at Saturday’s debate and gave it his seal of approval.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was widely mocked after briefly entertaining the idea of building a fence on the Canadian border last summer; he dropped out soon after. To the extent that Canada has played a determinative role in the New Hampshire primary, the concern has been what’s leaving the United States, not what’s coming in. Opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the subsequent loss of lumber jobs to Canada, helped propel Republican Pat Buchanan to victory in 1996. (Some Buchanan supporters did believe Russian tanks would invade the United States by way of Canada.)

When I asked Cal DelaHaye, who was working on a piece of funnel cake at Grampy’s diner in Pittsburg, if he thought more candidates should make the trek up north, he was emphatic. “No,” he said. “I’d tell them they’re wasting their time.”

There was one group of New Hampshire Republicans that was particularly concerned about the Canadian border threat. In 2006 and 2007, the New Hampshire branch of the Minutemen Civil Defense League made a few weekend trips to West Derby, Vermont, and Pittsburg, to draw attention to the great northern threat.

“One time we saw a guy who actually parked his car in the New Hampshire side and then backpacked, and it looked like he was hiking the Long Trail, and he headed north toward Canada, and we looked at his car later and it turned out he was from Canada,” said Ron Oplinus of Exeter, New Hampshire, who lead the chapter before it disbanded a few years back. “So we don’t know exactly what was going on but we didn’t see him again.”

Other than that, he conceded, “there wasn’t much” to see.

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The One Line in New Hampshire That Donald Trump Won’t Cross

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