Why I’m Resigning My Position As A Republican Committeeman

[emperus]

Thought this was a good letter.

At the national level, the delusions necessary to sustain our Cold War coalition were becoming dangerous long before Donald Trump arrived. From tax policy to climate change, we have found ourselves less at odds with philosophical rivals than with the fundamentals of math, science and objective reality.

The Iraq War, the financial meltdown, the utter failure of supply-side theory, climate denial, and our strange pursuit of theocratic legislation have all been troubling. Yet it seemed that America’s party of commerce, trade, and pragmatism might still have time to sober up. Remaining engaged in the party implied a contribution to that renaissance, an investment in hope. Donald Trump has put an end to that hope.

...

From his fairy-tale wall to his schoolyard bullying and his flirtation with violent racists, Donald Trump offers America a singular narrative: a tale of cowards. Fearful people, convinced of our inadequacy, trembling before a world alight with imaginary threats, crave a demagogue. Neither party has ever elevated to this level a more toxic figure, one that calls forth the darkest elements of our national character.

I will not contribute my name, my work or my character to an utterly indefensible cause. No sensible adult demands moral purity from a political party, but conscience is meaningless without constraints. A party willing to lend its collective capital to Donald Trump has entered a compromise beyond any credible threshold of legitimacy. There is no redemption in being one of the “good Nazis.”


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris...ition-republican-committeeman_b_11184436.html

 

[Atreus21]

In other words, he became a run of the mill progressive. He might've spared the reader the the same old platitudes.

 

[emperus]

In other words, he became a run of the mill progressive. He might've spared the reader the the same old platitudes.

Which part of the letter do you disagree with?

 

[JSt0rm]

Which part of the letter do you disagree with?

The guy is a rino. Easily dismissed.

 

[emperus]

The guy is a rino. Easily dismissed.

Why is he a RINO?

 

[yllus]

Why is he a RINO?

JSt0rm is being sarcastic. He's illustrating how any Republican who disagrees with the official party line by even a bit is immediately labeled as a non-member of the tribe.

 

[theeedude]

LOL, dude still had hope that GOP would give up on trickle down.

 

[Atreus21]

Which part of the letter do you disagree with?

The nonsense about the pursuit of theocracy, the use of loaded terms like climate denial, laying the financial meltdown solely at the feet of Republicans...

 

[Grooveriding]

Nailed it. Trump is the candidate of insecure white men; scared of a boogieman deity, scared of brown skins, scared of science, scared of evil religions, scared scared scared. Strongman Trump has come with the large penis they never had. It's their own fault for feeding these people nothing but garbage since 2001. They made them into the basket cases they have become.

 

[thraashman]

The nonsense about the pursuit of theocracy, the use of loaded terms like climate denial, laying the financial meltdown solely at the feet of Republicans...

Which parts of the pursuit of theocracy are wrong? Is it the teaching of the Bible in public schools, the attacks on pornography, the attacks on marriage equality and same-sex adoptions, or the support for conversion therapy? All of these come exclusively from a Christian religious standpoint and all are part of the official RNC platform.

 

[dank69]

The nonsense about the pursuit of theocracy...

Says the single-issue voter whose single issue is making abortion illegal, a position that appeals almost entirely to religious people.

 

[Atreus21]

Which parts of the pursuit of theocracy are wrong? Is it the teaching of the Bible in public schools, the attacks on pornography, the attacks on marriage equality and same-sex adoptions, or the support for conversion therapy? All of these come exclusively from a Christian religious standpoint and all are part of the official RNC platform.

The notion that there's a creeping theocracy is propagated by sheer paranoia. Biblical teaching in public schools, attacking pornography, and disallowing of gay marriage and adoption all existed less than 100 years ago in the US, yet somehow nobody in their right mind would classify the US as ever having been a theocracy.

 

[theeedude]

Jim Crow laws also existed less than 100 years ago.

 

[bshole]

The notion that there's a creeping theocracy is propagated by sheer paranoia. Biblical teaching in public schools, attacking pornography, and disallowing of gay marriage and adoption all existed less than 100 years ago in the US, yet somehow nobody in their right mind would classify the US as ever having been a theocracy.

Koranic teaching in public schools..... check
Attacking pornography....... check
Disallowing gay marriage..... check

You are clearly ready for Islamic theocracy. There is wide variety to choose from, but please choose wisely.

 

[Atreus21]

Says the single-issue voter whose single issue is making abortion illegal, a position that appeals almost entirely to religious people.

My single issue is severely restricting abortion - not making it wholly illegal. Whether it appeals almost entirely to religious people or Richard Dawkins is irrelevant to me.

 

[emperus]

The nonsense about the pursuit of theocracy, the use of loaded terms like climate denial, laying the financial meltdown solely at the feet of Republicans...

He said pursuit of theocratic legislation. How are laws like the ones Mike Pence embraces not theocratic legislation?

 

[sactoking]

nobody in their right mind would classify the US as ever having been a theocracy.

Overt theocracy? No. But pretty much any non-Christian would agree it's been a closeted one.

 

[Jaskalas]

Imaginary threats? Tell that to Europe.

 

[Herr Kutz]

Translation: He can make more money selling scams peddled by the DNC rather than the RNC.

 

[LegendKiller]

Translation: He can make more money selling scams peddled by the DNC rather than the RNC.

This.

The guy had no problems towing the typical gop lines and now he wants to quit because what? He likes illegals? He likes fucking our lower income manufacturing sector with one sided "free trade" deals? Bitch, please, I'll take 10 union members for every one of you.

 

[werepossum]

It's most amusing to read "the delusions necessary to sustain our Cold War coalition were becoming dangerous long before Donald Trump arrived" in one thread and "OMG the Russians hacked the DNC to make Donald Trump President" in another.

 

[JSt0rm]

This.
He likes fucking our lower income manufacturing sector with one sided "free trade" deals? Bitch, please, I'll take 10 union members for every one of you.

dont you work on wallstreet?

 

[sandorski]

The RNC weeds out another Stalinist Commie!!!

 

[LegendKiller]

dont you work on wallstreet?

Two union parents, a union brother, truck drivers and machinists for friends.

 

[1prophet]

Nailed it. Trump is the candidate of insecure white men; scared of a boogieman deity, scared of brown skins, scared of science, scared of evil religions, scared scared scared. Strongman Trump has come with the large penis they never had. It's their own fault for feeding these people nothing but garbage since 2001. They made them into the basket cases they have become.

Trump is the effect not the cause, the cause is the abandoning of the middle class by both parties over the last thirty years in the name of globalization, trickle down fantasies, political correctness, greed by the 1% at the expense of everyone else, etc.

funny how all these scared little people that you like to point the finger at were the same people over thirty years ago that were thrown under the bus by the Democrat party when democrats abandoned their ideals because they wanted part of the corporate pig trough the republicans were feasting at with no shame.

The only difference is the Democrats still wanted to appear like they were for the middle class through their lip service towards unions, jobs, environment, labor and safety rules, by constantly pointing the finger at the pig republicans while signing off on free trade agreements and pro wall street/banker laws which undermined all their core principles.

http://nypost.com/2016/03/12/how-de...rking-class-and-spurred-rise-to-donald-trump/
How Democrats abandoned the working class and spurred rise of Donald Trump

Inequality has risen. Jobs are going overseas. The more the stock market rises, the more the working class feels crushed by globalization.
And all of this has occurred exactly as Democrats have engineered it. Stuff happens, they say. The truth hurts.


Take it from Larry Summers, once one of President Obama’s leading economic advisers: “One of the challenges in our society is that the truth is kind of an equalizer,” Summers reportedly said in a candid moment in 2009. “One of the reasons that inequality has probably gone up in our society is that people are being treated closer to the way that they’re supposed to be treated.” (Summers this week denied saying this.)

The elite professional class, in the 1950s one of the Republican party’s most reliable constituencies, became the very heart of the Democrats by the 1990s. The party of labor morphed into the party of lawyers. This didn’t happen by accident.

In his new book “Listen, Liberal, Or Whatever Happened to the Party of the People,” progressive commentator Thomas Frank (author of “What’s the Matter With Kansas?”) saysDemocrats need to take a good long look in the mirror if they want answers to why blue-collar workers are feeling abandoned and even infuriated by what used to be their party.

Many such voters are now backing Donald Trump, who is sketching out the problem with America in exactly the terms they agree with: Jobs are either going to Mexico, or going to Mexicans. Unchecked illegal immigration on the one hand and free trade on the other hand are driving down the wages of working-class Americans, or costing them their jobs outright.

This isn’t racism: angry Americans told they were losing their jobs at a doomed air-conditioner factory in Indiana wouldn’t have applauded if told production was moving to Canada instead of Mexico. Either way, they’re losing their jobs.

In Frank’s analysis, around 1972 the Democrats started to suspect their lunch-bucket workers were warmongering dinosaurs doomed by their reliance on dying Rust Belt industries. The party placed its future in the hands of groovy technocrats in non-union fields and wrote off the workers, who soon defected to the Republican party even though Republicans didn’t and don’t apologize for being the party of capital.

Blaming Republican Intransigence (TM) for liberalism’s failures, particularly in the Obama era, is a common excuse that Frank isn’t having. He points to areas such as Rhode Island and Chicago where Republicans are virtually extinct and finds that Democrats behave exactly the same way: They make mild clucking noises about inequality while taking donations and policy ideas from financiers (both R.I. and the City of Big Shoulders are run by former Wall Streeters) and outlining an economic future of enhanced “innovation” designed to tilt the economy even further in the direction of elite knowledge-economy workers and away from those without college degrees.

Innovation, Frank says, is often just code for new methods (from Uber to credit default swaps) to evade necessary protective regulations. Many such innovations pump up profits for rich entrepreneurs and shareholders by unloading employees with benefits in favor of part-timers and freelancers with no benefits. Democrats take big donations from such firms, laud them in speeches, and tell everyone else to get out of the way of the “disruption.”

There is some enticing evidence for Frank’s claim that Democrats deliberately shunned American workers. He points to a 1971 manifesto by Democratic strategist Frederick Dutton, who wrote that workers had become the enemy because they were “the principal group arrayed against the forces of change.”

The Colorado Democrat Gary Hart, one of the many elected to Congress in 1974 as a reaction to Watergate, called his standard stump speech “The End of the New Deal” and President Jimmy Carter’s adviser Alfred Kahn wrote, “I’d love the Teamsters to be worse off. I’d love the automobile workers to be worse off. . . . I want to eliminate a situation in which certain protected workers in industries insulated from competition can increase their wages much more rapidly than the average.”

The centrist Democratic Leadership Council announced a “postindustrial, global economy” as it re-arranged the party to be friendly to business and trade, and President Bill Clinton, with Summers giving him advice, deregulated finance via repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which Frank blames for the Enron debacle and the 2008 banking crisis.

Such changes made the champagne flow for the urban professionals even as the workers were left parched. In a 1993 episode that Frank identifies as a turning point, the Clinton administration did nothing to help striking workers at two big plants in Decatur, Ill. On the scene, a worker turned to Frank and said this was labor’s last stand: “If we don’t do it, then the middle class as we know it in this country will die. There will be two classes, and it will be the very, very poor and the very, very rich.”

As Larry Summers would say: That’s just the way things are supposed to be.