Mueller's Obstruction Gambit

The saga continues, but moves inexorably closer to resolution, at least in the case of obstruction of justice. The Washington Post is reporting that Mueller needs only one thing to complete a report, presumably to present to Congress so they can consider impeachment, "about the president’s actions while in office and potential obstruction of justice." Mueller needs to interview the president. Which is what the president's attorney quit over--Trump's desire to answer questions.

The report and/or indictments on "collusion" (more formally, conspiracy to violate election laws) with the Russians in the election will wait for another day. My interpretation is that Mueller has a strong case for obstruction and the president will either acknowledge it under oath in the belief that as president he is immune and that Republicans will not impeach him for it, or he will lie, which in itself is impeachable...or both, admit it and lie about several things in the process.

He has actually admitted obstruction before--when interviewed by Lester Holt and saying he had Russia in mind when he fired Comey and when he told the Russian Ambassador in the Oval Office that firing Comey had "relieved great pressure because of Russia."

In January of this year, he answered a reporter's question about obstruction by saying that what he would say in an interview with the Special Counsel was that he fought back, and they're calling that obstruction. Apparently, he believes his own spin, that since the whole Russia thing is fake news, he was entitled to try to stop the investigation. Somehow I don't think the law agrees with him. And Mueller and his team are lawyers that his fixers can't fix and his attack dog lawyers can't intimidate and force to settle.

My hope is that this national nightmare is over soon. Trump might agree to talk to Mueller at any time, and they might be able to release their report quickly. Mueller, in my most optimistic moments, is a superhero who is quietly building an airtight and damning case that Congress will not be able to ignore, and that will be a "slam dunk" for impeachment.

However, in my realistic moments I realize that Republicans, even if faced with a slam dunk, will delay, at least until after the elections, afraid that if they impeach or even talk about impeaching before the election, they lose the Trump supporters, which is 80% of Republicans, and the blue wave will become the extinction of the Republican Party. After the election, when the Democrats presumably have a majority in the House, Republicans can safely play the opposition role and defend him, losing only the moral high ground which they haven't had since they started carrying his water.

The actual Impeachment process can then be over within a few months, and, if at least 1/3 of the Republicans in the Senate have any moral standards and patriotism left at all and vote to convict Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors, distasteful as it will be, we might see President Pence sworn in before spring, 2019.

We Got "Bushed" for Eight Years, Let's Not Get "Trumped"

At the beginning of the 21st century, the American people got snookered by a Republican president who talked a good game and seemed tough and strong, but was incompetent. By the end of his two terms, we were “Bushed.” Now, we are being "Trumped" by a con man who wants to be the next Republican president.

George W. Bush did not know much about foreign policy, but people thought he was successful in business and Texas politics, very personable and persuasive so people trusted him. While he was born to a wealthy family, his father had been President, and he’d attended Yale, he had adopted a good old boy manner, and people perceived him as a man they’d like to have a beer with. He would be the "decider," who would listen to wiser, more knowledgeable advisors and make the best decisions based on his "gut." He seemed to be compassionate and was thought to be "centrist" on economic and immigration issues. Unfortunately, once elected, he surrounded himself with neoconservatives who believed they could remake the world by creating democracy in the Middle East by force. It turned out he was very much into trickle down economics, so...tax breaks for the rich. And Iraq War, formation of ISIS, Iranian nuclear program development, North Korea developing nukes, big deficits, and the Great Recession.

Trump doesn't know much about foreign policy, but he is a successful businessman, despite several missteps resulting in bankruptcies, and he is a master salesman of a certain kind (the kind who usually sells products on 30 minute infomercials). He won't need advisors and wouldn't listen to them, because he has a "very good brain," and knows "more than the generals,” he assures us. 

Jake Novak, a producer and columnist at CNBC, identified one of Trump's main tactics as puffing, a legal term that allows salesmen and businesses to make boastful claims about their products and services without fear of lawsuits. 

Trump, with a ghostwriter's help to make it coherent, acknowledged this in his book, Art of the Deal, "The final key to the way I promote is bravado...I play to people's fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That's why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It's an innocent form of exaggeration — and a very effective form of promotion."

So his language is full of "the most amazing," "fantastic," "unbelievable," which he might follow with, "believe me." The innocence of this may be true in a legal sense, except when he's made guarantees he can't keep and wanders into the territory of outright lies and fraud, witness Trump University and not paying contractors, fleecing investors, etc. He's had to settle hundreds of lawsuits, which means he went beyond "puffing" many times.

Because politicians have even more speech protection than salesmen, he has moved far beyond puffery to world class lying. When has a politician ever been sued or prosecuted for making unfulfillable promises or claims? After toying around with the birther issue and finding out that he could tell a big lie and convince 20% of Americans to believe it back in 2011, he decided he could up the ante, boost his brand, maybe get a Fox News gig, and who knows, maybe even win the presidency. As he said after a debate, "I am not a debater, but I am a winner. If I am elected I will make this country a total winner." He will do almost anything to win.

So he picked his issue, immigration, and started talking about the great big beautiful wall he would build to keep out all the drug runners, rapists, and terrorists. He uses playground bully's skills at humiliating his opponents and using what psychologists call "projection," accusing others of those things that actually apply to him (I know you are, but what am I? I'm rubber, you're glue) to paint his opponents as liars, corrupt, weak, ignorant, and on and on. He is also adept at manipulating the media, making outrageous statements and tweets that have kept him the lead story almost every day for over a year. He may succeed in winning the election.

So, the media and almost half the American people have been the victims of a masterful con man who seems to be unable to tell the truth at times. When he finally disavowed the birther lie, he found it necessary to add a new lie, that Hillary Clinton started it. 

What can we do? We are used to lobbying politicians, now we have to lobby the media. We need fair coverage. First, while we know Hillary can defend herself, we should demand the debate moderators are prepared. They shouldn't debate Trump, but if the curtains are red and Trump says they are blue, when Hillary responds red to which Trump repeats blue, the moderator should say, "For the record, these curtains have been independently verified as red curtains," and move on. It would be helpful if the networks would run a fact checking scroll during debates or at least show a fact checking website where connected viewers can see real time fact checks. 

News outlets should be using the words lie, untrue, false, falsehood, fabrication, deception instead of softer words like misstatement, inaccuracy, hyperbole. Hopefully, in the few weeks left until the election, those Americans who are being fooled by this man or, perhaps worse, are not fooled but plan to vote for him, will see him for what he is and understand the dangers of a Trump presidency. But we can't count on that. It may be a very close election. The best way to beat this man will be to show up at the polls and get everyone who has not been "Trumped" there, too.

Apple or Bomb? Your Choice on November 8

It’s easier to compare apples to apples. One apple is green, crisp, tart; the other red, juicy, sweet. It’s harder to compare apples to oranges. But how do you compare an apple to a bomb? 

In this election, how will you compare a politician who has spent her career working to improve the lives of children and families with a wealthy businessman and reality TV star.

Donald Trump is a self-proclaimed multi-billionaire who grew his inheritance by making deals that he acknowledges have benefited him while often fleecing others. Trump University, being sued in three class action suits, is described as “a straight up fraud” by the Attorney General of NY. 

Trump refuses to release his tax returns, so we assume he is hiding something. Is it that he pays little or no income tax? Are many of his businesses supported by foreign investors with questionable integrity? Many have speculated that it is his business interests in Russia that drive his admiration for their authoritarian leader, Vladimir Putin. Newsweek recently reported after extensive research that “If Donald Trump wins this election and his company is not immediately shut down or forever severed from the Trump family, the foreign policy of the United States of America could well be for sale.”

Trump claims he “is the least racist person you will ever meet.” Yet he has consistently made racist statements about Latinos and Muslims, and his first foray into politics was based on the allegation that Barack Obama was not born in America, an accusation that African Americans correctly interpret as a racist effort to delegitimize the first African American President of the United States. He recently retracted it under pressure from his campaign managers who are trying to make him more palatable to mainstream voters. Avowed racists and white nationalists recognize him as one of their own, however, and have been enthusiastically endorsing and campaigning for him.

PolitiFact, a Pulitzer Prize winning fact checker, has rated 70% of his claims in this campaign as mostly false, false, or “pants on fire.”

It’s hard for the media to stop talking about Trump (hard for me, too!) because he’s so outrageous and skilled at bringing attention to himself. Just minutes after playing clips of Clinton referring to Trump and no clips about the policies that comprised the bulk of her speech, an MSNBC anchor asked, “Why doesn’t she talk more about policy?”

In the recent NBC National Security Town Hall, Clinton had to spend half her time explaining the complexities of her e-mails as Secretary of State, a controversy created by the wasteful House Republican investigation into Benghazi.  Added to endless Whitewater investigation against her and her husband in the nineties that ended up uncovering nothing except a man who lied about his infidelity, Republicans have succeeded in creating the perception that the Clintons are dishonest. If she were the liar her critics claim, somewhere in the eleven hours of Benghazi testimony or the hours of FBI grilling there would have been cause for a perjury claim.  PolitiFact has ranked 72% of her campaign claims as true, mostly true, or half true. Remember, Trump: 70% falsehoods. How do you like them apples?  

But let’s talk policy! There are many reasons to vote for Hillary Clinton besides saving the nation and the world from the turmoil of a Trump presidency. With eight years of steady leadership by President Obama, we have recovered from the Great Recession. We just learned 2015 median wages increased by a stunning 5%! Hillary Clinton plans to increase the job growth we have enjoyed the last 6 1/2 years through a variety of proposals, including increased spending on desperately needed infrastructure projects: roads, bridges, clean energy, high tech. She will work to raise the minimum wage, fight for equal pay and guaranteed family leave, child care and housing for those who need assistance. She will work to improve and expand the Affordable Care Act to cover more Americans and keep health care costs down. 

Unlike her opponent who makes up policies on the fly and makes false claims about the effects they will have on jobs and the economy, Hillary Clinton has devised her proposals over the last year with many top experts, including Bernie Sanders. Go to hillaryclinton.com/issues to read her proposals, including a highly detailed fact sheet outlining how she will invest billions revitalizing coal communities.

West Virginians are struggling. Democrats in our state government have not provided the leadership needed to move our economy forward in a declining coal market, so many have decided to give Republicans a try. Like their national counterparts, however, they spread divisiveness, attack worker’s rights, want tax cuts for the wealthy, and starve needed government programs. Historically, under Democratic presidents, the economy improves for working people and those on the margins more than under Republicans, whose policies favor the wealthy. That’s why I’m excited about a President Hillary Clinton. She may not be the “apple of your eye,” but she’s not the poisonous fruit some portray her to be, nor the time bomb that is the alternative.

Unconventional Convention

The rise of Don the Con Man Trump and his warped ideas have been written about by so many that I’ve hesitated to add my two cents, but it might be worth trying to explain what’s going on at the Republican Convention for anyone who hasn’t been paying much attention.

Con Don won the Republican nomination because the Republican base abandoned their party leadership and voted for an outsider who ran against the establishment. He did that not so much by promoting outsider policies as by claiming that all politicians, Democrats and Republicans, are stupid and only he is smart enough to “Make America Great Again. The primary message he is running on, is be afraid of 

• Muslims, because they might be or might become terrorists, 
• Immigrants, because they are taking your (white men's) jobs, raping your wives, murdering your families, and taking advantage of free stuff,
• African Americans, just because. He won't come out and say anything direct, but uses "dog whistles" like "Law and Order" which Nixon and others always used to mean put blacks in jail and get control of protest movements and rioting through harsher policing rather than addressing issues,
• Other countries, which are taking advantage of us in trade agreements, by getting our protection without paying adequately for it, or by being enemies or terrorists. 

Many establishment Republicans abandoned him for several reasons. Some because they believe his strategy is a losing one (Paul Ryan, for instance, wants a more inclusive party); some don't trust him on the economic issues and are afraid he will make agreements with Democrats to raise taxes or bolster social programs; and some few actually have scruples and think he is too dangerous to be president.

Trump is ignorant of the nuts and bolts of government and doesn't know much about conventions--he wanted to put on a few days of entertainment that would get great ratings, since he views elections as popularity contests, but he couldn't get any A-list entertainers to cooperate. And the few grownups and politically astute people he is listening to (Paul Manafort, his campaign manager, family members, and maybe Republican Party Chairman Reince Preibus) must have let him know there had to be some regular speeches and other convention conventions....but really he's only interested in his own and his family’s appearances.

Day 1 was pretty interesting, but only because there was a bit of parliamentary wrangling from the Never Trump delegates that delayed the first speeches of the evening. Then there was the David Copperfield smoke and mirrors entrance by the Don himself (gave me a kind of Hunger Games vibe) to introduce his wife, the very beautiful former model, Melania. She gave a good speech, but it turned out she or a speechwriter had lifted a paragraph or so from Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech at the Democratic National Convention. Once it was detected, it went viral with Twitter, Facebook, and every news channel opening with first Michelle, then Melanie delivering their lines which were almost exactly alike, and, contrary to the claims made by Trump surrogates, not common language, “My word is my bond….” When was the last time you heard that? Yeah, right, 8 years ago. 

Instead of figuring out how it happened and owning up, they went for a couple days trying to deny, deny, deny, and even accused Hillary of creating the issue because, “…when a woman threatens Hillary Clinton, how she seeks out to demean her and take her down.” 

They are so disinclined to backtrack or own up to mistakes because it’s a trait that comes from the top, “You make a mistake, you go forward. And, you know, you can correct the mistake but to look back and say: 'Gee whiz, I wish I didn't do this or that,' I don't think that's good.” I shouldn’t have to point out that there is no consideration here for the feelings of the person who is the victim of the mistake.

On day two, only the chanting of “Lock Her Up” as Chris Christie recited a litany of so-called indictments on Hillary’s judgement and character could break through the endless discussion on cable news of how off the rails the Trump campaign seemed to be (even Fox--I checked).

On day three, finally, a long time Trump employee, a ghostwriter, fessed up. But because it took so long, now no doubt they’ll have to deal with the fall out of when they found out, who knew, and when did they know. 

Why does it matter? That’s a valid question. Melania is not running for anything. It matters, as many have said, because it is an indication of what a Trump presidency would be like—stonewalling, accusatory, denying, and finally trotting forward someone to take the blame.

Thus far there has been little mention of policy during the convention. Trump doesn’t believe Americans care, and he may be right. His policy prescriptions, as I’m sure you know, are limited to a few broad strokes: build a wall on the border of Mexico, deport millions of immigrants, stop immigration of Muslims or anyone from “countries where there are terrorists.” Day 2 was supposed to be about putting America back to work, but none of the speakers talked about that except perhaps Senator Capito of WV who subscribes to the far-fetched promise that Trump would put coal miners back to work. 

The fact is that Con Man Don is not a politician, and he has no respect for politicians who make decisions based on their ideology or strategy or the advice of experts. He believes only in himself, his superior mind and his instincts—his gut. So far, his gut and his superior mind are not putting on a very successful convention.

Bernie or Hillary? We'll Know Soon, No Fooling

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say this is the most contentious primary season in a generation. Leaving alone for a moment the “Real Estate Developer” as at least one pundit calls Trump, refusing to use his name, Democrats are having their own argument among themselves. The idea that outsiderness is the flavor of the day can be applied to Bernie Sanders despite the fact that he’s been in Congress for 26 years. After all, though he usually votes with Democrats, officially he has never been elected as a Democrat, preferring to run as an Independent in Vermont, one of the most liberal states in the nation. He is a Democratic Socialist and proud of it. 

Sanders does not waver in his insistence that America can afford to give every citizen free health care, free tuition at state universities, paid family leave, an increase in Social Security benefits, while simultaneously rebuilding our infrastructure. Bernie says it would cost 18,000,000,000,000 over 10 years, that’s 18 trillion, 15T of which is federal spending—1.5T/yr when the annual federal budget right now is 3.2T. It would almost double federal spending. Republican heads just exploded: to them, Sanders proves Romney’s contention that they just want “free stuff.”

To pay for it, he would….raise taxes, mostly on the wealthy, on corporations, and on the financial and banking industries, because as he likes to say, we bailed them out, now it’s their turn. But he would also raise taxes on just about all in order to pay for “Medicare for All” and family leave. I’m not sure how the almost 50% whose health insurance is paid all or in part by employers make out. He doesn’t explain how he would convince Americans to willingly give up their private insurance policies, when just a few years ago Obama was vilified for promising Americans could keep their insurance plans if they liked them, yet only some 5% or less could not and screamed bloody murder. His projections of future economic growth are also considered a fantasy by most economists, and without the 5.3% growth rate he predicts, a rate not seen since the 1980’s, enough tax revenue would not come in.

He acknowledges that in order to achieve sweeping changes like this, it would not be enough simply to elect him President, since Republicans in Congress have not been willing to so much as close a corporate tax loophole for many years. No, he says it will take a “political revolution.” I don’t know how deeply his followers have thought through how unlikely this revolution is, but I know that when you are caught up in what feels like, and may indeed be described as “a movement,” it is easy to delude yourself that each success is inevitable and each setback is caused by a conspiracy (media isn’t fair, Democratic Party is against him, the system is rigged). 

Sanders’ opponent in his quixotic adventure is Hillary Clinton, a former First Lady to probably the most investigated president in American history (at least most investigated for false or inconsequential misdeeds). After 25 years of almost nonstop media coverage of Republican smears and phony scandals, her image is tarnished. Among liberals, this is compounded by her vote to support use of force in Iraq, a mistake she explains was that of believing Bush’s promise to pursue continued weapons inspections. Using a private e-mail server while Secretary, which the FBI is reportedly still investigating, also hangs over her candidacy. Bottom line: her credibility is doubted by the majority of voters despite the fact she polls as the most admired woman in the world, year after year.

One of Bernie’s biggest arguments against Hillary, which he applies to all politicians, is that because they have their own Super PACs often funded anonymously by big corporations or billionaires, they are corrupt and cannot be trusted. Only he and Chump (my preferred alias for the Donald) claim they are free of influence because Bernie takes only small donations from individuals and Chump spends his own money. Hillary agrees with Bernie that Citizen’s United (the Supreme Court ruling that treats corporate political spending as ‘free speech’) should be overturned, but maintains, as Obama did, that until it is, she must take donations from many sources to compete and will not allow these donations to influence her policy decisions. Bernie suggests otherwise, though he stops short of a direct accusation and has not produced any instances of her changing a vote due to a contribution. He is a master of skepticism and innuendo, inviting his chuckling admirers to just imagine how good her speeches must have been to earn her hundreds of thousands of dollars per speech. It's a lot of money, but not out of line for speakers of her renown: Colin Powell, a former Secretary of State as well, and not in political office, so presumably “not corrupt,” earns between $100,000-200,000 per speech.

As I write this, Bernie has won several Western caucus states with staggeringly good numbers and is claiming a path to the nomination, though Hillary has over 250 more “pledged” delegates (delegates won in primaries/caucuses) and 450 more superdelegates (elected officials, party chairmen and such). The delegate count is 57%/43% in Hillary’s favor, 67%/33% if you include super delegate endorsements. Bernie has been strong in some parts of the country and among some demographics, particular young people, white men and in caucus states, but there are only a couple of caucus states left. Hillary has been very strong among African Americans and in the South, but the South has largely finished voting. 

Bernie has to win consistently and strongly to win the nomination. If Hillary wins even just a couple of the remaining states or wins some with strong numbers, Bernie can’t catch up in the pledged delegate count, and unless the political revolution he needs reveals itself now, it’s going to have to wait for a future election. To quote FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver, the statistics ‘wonder boy’, if Bernie manages to surpass Hillary in pledged delegates, “this scenario would represent such a massive sea-change that superdelegates really might have to reconsider their positions. You might even say it would require a revolution, a profound rejection of Clinton and the status quo.”

We should know by April 26 when we will have results from NY (April 19), Pennsylvania, and several other Northeastern states. If Bernie hasn’t significantly closed the gap by then, I think Hillary can claim the nomination.

And though I’m publishing this on April Fool’s day, I ain’t fooling.

The Republican (Right) Field, Round 2

To go with the mixed metaphor of my title (baseball vs. boxing), today's blog post presents in short "chapters" some of my response to the second Republican debate, which I endured for almost two and a half hours on Wednesday. 

Debrief

I almost felt sorry for the poor guys and gal--they had to stand there for 3 hours and think about the fact that they would have to somehow distinguish themselves from the other 10 wingnuts on stage with them in little 1 or 2 minute chunks every 10-15 minutes. I'm surprised no one came out from behind the lectern and started doing cartwheels, dancing a jig, or juggling watermelons to get attention. 

Mostly they had to hope someone would mention their name, because if their name was mentioned they got automatic response time (imaginary pre-debate confession cam, with Christie: "Kasich and me gotta deal goin' you see--every time one of us gets a chance to talk we'll take a softball poke at the other one, that way we'll get to go back and forth all night and block the others out!").

And they actually got into policy, which shut Trump up, because the fact is, and he acknowledged it, he doesn't know much. I'll hire experts who know this stuff is basically what he said...that inspires confidence. Rand Paul and John Kasich tried to inject some reasonable ideas like not trying to police the whole world and working with allies instead of going it alone...but they were all alone up there. Ben Carson...what is the great attraction to him? I still think that may be about Republicans wanting to win the black vote ("Look at how many African Americans came out to vote for Obama! They'll vote for their own"). Rubio and Bush are supposed to have potential to pull in the Hispanic vote, but it seems like Trump has forced Republicans to write off that block of voters...and by the way, ship them out on Day 1!

Other things that will happen on Day 1: End Obamacare, Tear up the Iran Agreement, and, though none of them said it, probably indict President Obama for impersonating a president.....OMG--it's still over a year until the election!

On Carly Fiorna’s attack on Planned Parenthood

As if the doctored stealth videos purporting to show that Planned Parenthood was selling fetal tissue illegally weren’t false enough (a few PP clinics legally donate fetal tissue for medical research and are reimbursed for the expense of doing so), Carly Fiorina described a supposed scene from the video THAT SHE MADE UP! Here's what Politifact reports:

“Carly Fiorina spoke out against Planned Parenthood regarding the controversial videos released over the last few months. The scene she described, though, does not exist in any of the videos.

Fiorina: I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes. Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.

We are aware of no video showing such a scene. The videos, released by the Center for Medical Progress beginning on July 14, have focused on fetal tissue being collected for research and have shown some aborted fetal tissue. As we wrote before, the use of donated fetal tissue has been important in several areas of scientific research.

Fiorina’s description matches up with one of the videos in a series the Center for Medical Progress has called “Human Capital” — but only with regard to how an interviewee describes her experience. Holly O’Donnell, an “ex-procurement technician” for StemExpress, a company that procures fetal tissue from Planned Parenthood clinics, relates a story of an intact fetus. She says that a Planned Parenthood doctor “taps the heart and it starts beating,” and then instructs her to remove its brain for collection.

The video does contain images of what appear to be intact fetuses, but they don’t fit Fiorina’s description. In one, where a fetus does appear to move, there is a caption saying that the footage is from the pro-life Grantham Collection and Center for Bio-Ethical Reform; there is no indication as to where the footage was shot. In the other, it was revealed after the video’s release that the image was of a stillborn baby, rather than an aborted fetus.

Though we cannot verify if part or all of O’Donnell’s story is true, the scene Fiorina “dares” others to watch is not present in any of the Planned Parenthood videos."

On Donald Trump boasting he would create a bigger, stronger military, so strong that nobody, not even Putin would mess with us

The fiction the Republicans have created is that talking tough, having a strong military, and using it frequently scares others into cooperating with us. They say Reagan talked tough and scared Gorbachev into disbanding the Soviet Union (false--Glasnost--freedom of speech he implemented led to the Republicans breaking away). They see Bush as tough and strong and would go it alone--going to war in Iraq with "a coalition of the willing". That meant neither NATO nor any major allies were with us and actually weakened us and our interests in the world, strengthening Iran and creating ISIS, which started as Al Qaeda in Iraq. 

They say Obama is weak because he is willing to negotiate with countries that we have serious disagreements with in order to avoid going to war. They don't see it as a strength to bring in our allies to participate in negotiations, but allies add to the threat should negotiations fail. But time after time, Obama has led the majority of the world to the table, negotiating the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons, the Iran Agreement, and to stop Russia in Ukraine by implementing sanctions against them that are devastating their economy--finally, the ceasefire seems to be holding, an indication that the policy is working.

Yet like other Republican fictions that they repeat endlessly as if repeating a lie will make it true: that cutting taxes always creates jobs, that making abortion illegal or unavailable reduces abortions, that running a deficit is always bad for the economy, an overwhelmingly strong military used irresponsibly does not make us safer, it makes us feared and hated around the world.

What Republicans see in Ben Carson (I don’t see much)

Chicago Tribune columnist Dawn M. Turner (African American—I mention that because I think it lends her credibility on the issue) wrote that Carson’s inner city Detroit rise to famed neurosurgeon story “allows Republicans to feel good about themselves. They can vote for a black guy (whose name isn’t Obama) and maintain the myth that race is no longer a hindrance in this country and the only thing black folks have to do is work hard (as if blacks don’t already) and they too can achieve the American Dream."

And the prize for dumbest statement goes to (no surprise)

Trump on why he didn't recognize the name of the head of Iran's Quds Force: “[The reporter] was giving me name after name; Arab name, Arab name, Arab name… and there are few people anywhere that would know those names… I think he was reading them off a sheet.” 

When You Dance with the Devil, You Risk Getting Trumped

“When you dance with the devil….” you get burnt; you have to pay the piper; you don’t change him, he changes you. Finish it how you like, the Republicans have been dancing with hot issues and colorful characters for years. They have enticed their base with pipe dreams of a tax free country with a tiny efficient government, an all powerful military to which all countries and terrorist groups submit, and a return to a 19th century morality that never existed in which the Preacher in Chief ushers in an era of peace, prosperity, good health, and world dominance, and there’s no need to pay for any of it….”the shining city on the hill.”

The flip side of these fantasy images assigns blame to anything they claim is preventing us from living their dream: Evil Empires, abortion as holocaust (even to save a woman’s life),  a government that should be starved and shrunk until they can “drown it in the bathtub,” a “Muslim” President “born in Africa” who “hates America”, and encourages illegal immigration and “entitlements” to pad the Democratic voting roles. Their list of imagined grievances is  endless, but it starts and ends with their political opposition who, like the rest of the world, are either evil Socialists or the Gestapo. 

Their dance with the devil, during which they have abandoned facts, reason, caution, and evidence of anything that counters their Bible thumping, demagoguing, conspiracy theorizing, tax revolting, tea partying, war mongering, immigrant hating, gay bashing platform has won a loyal following. Their constituency no longer trusts government, and the horde of Republican Congressmen, Senators, and Governors who seek the presidency are one face of the reviled government. An ever increasing number of Republican voters are not interested in facts, just claims, like those the  front runner comedian, I mean candidate, Donald Trump makes that America is losing because, “We are led by very, very stupid people,” and, "We will have so much winning when I get elected that you will get bored with winning.” 

The only other Republican candidate even reaching double digits in the polls is Ben Carson, a skilled neurosurgeon who also has no experience in government and has said Obamacare is “the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery.” Is it possible many Republicans support him because he is black and they want to prove they are not racist? At least he’s not saying life may have been better for enslaved African American families than it is today as a pledge once signed by Republican candidate Rick Santorum suggested.

I, like many liberal or progressive Democrats, are quietly waiting for the dance to end. Trump is such a wild card—a multi-billionaire who is entertaining, media savvy, and so totally disdainful of politicians, even of his own party, that voting for him is the biggest gamble voters could make. They are willing to trust our nation and the world to a carnival barker who has absolutely no discernible platform or policy—an amazingly brutal competitor who has proven himself by becoming rich, very, very rich! 

After losing the 2012 presidential election, Republican strategists saw the writing on the wall: if they didn’t abandon some of their most radical right platforms and reach out to a wider audience, they were doomed to a shrinking Party comprised mostly of angry white men. Trump represents the devil they tried to spurn. After thirty years of listening to the devil’s enticements, at least half of Republican voters will not face reality, they will not listen to reason, they want someone who tells them what they want to hear—that they, too, can be rich winners who take back their country and return it to the good old days: government of white men, by white men, and for white men.