At The Daily Beast Michael Tomasky posts what may be the best article written anywhere about Donald Trump’s campaign, “Who in GOP Will Finally Stop Trump?: Party leaders could summon the courage of their predecessor Margaret Chase Smith, who stood up to Joseph McCarthy when it mattered. That is, if any of them have the stones to do it.”

I’m still not sure it’s 100 percent clear that Donald Trump really understands that he’s a neo-fascist. He may not know enough history to be fully aware of the now-undeniable odor of his rhetoric and campaign. He may think a member of a racial minority being beat up and called a “n***r” by his racial-majority supporters at a rally, and his own joking about it, is just a little incident; something for which there’s no larger historical context. I know he allegedly had the book of Hitler’s speeches by his bed, but I still think he’s doing most of this on instinct rather than with intellectual intention because I doubt he knows enough about fascism for it to be the latter.
But stop and think about this: I just wrote a paragraph musing on whether the leading candidate for president of the United States from one of our two major parties is knowingly fascist. We’re at the point where we’re debating whether the Republican Party frontrunner is or is not objectively a fascist.

Trump’s GOP opponents are either too intimidated or incapable of calling him out. Of the Republican candidates, notes Tomasky, only former Gov. Jim Gilmore has spoken out against Trump’s “fascist talk.” Where are the others, asks Tomasky? Do any of them have the mettle that it took to speak out against McCarthyism?

And that brings us to the question: Who in the Republican Party is going to step up here? Because this is A Moment for the GOP, make no mistake. It’s a historical moment, and when your leading candidate is joking about his supporters beating people up at rallies and musing about religious ID cards for around (ahem) 6 million of your citizens, it’s time to say something.
Reince Priebus, after the last election, called on his party to be more inclusive. Is this what you had in mind, Reince? How about the other leading candidates? Is this where you want your party to be taken? Karl Rove and others in the professional political class–will they say anything, if not out of moral principle then at least to try to protect their party’s candidates from down-ticket disaster?
And most of all, what about the party’s graybeards and elder statesmen? Looking at you, John McCain. How about a little “Straight Talk” now, about a man who proposes to come into your state, where there are an estimated 300,000 or so unauthorized immigrants, and break up families because one of them’s illegal and the other is not?

The GOP has deliberately pandered to and exacerbated the worst prejudices of their voters. As Tomasky notes, “this predicament raises the interesting question of how one-third of their voters came to admire a neo-fascist and open racist in the first place. Gee, it can’t have anything to do with the kind of rhetoric and “harmless jokes” about the current president and about the 47 percent that Republican leaders have winked at for seven years, can it?”
If the Republicans need a role model to end their groveling to bigotry, Tomasky has one:

There’s precedent for the courageous path, should anyone choose to take it. On Feb. 9, 1950, Joe McCarthy gave his famous speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, charging that communists were working in the State Department. The months that followed were very much like these last five months of the Trump ascendancy, as the official party stood mute in the face of the hysteria created by one of its number.
Then in June, one Republican senator said “enough.” Margaret Chase Smith of Maine was a freshman senator, having taken her husband’s seat. She took to the Senate floor and gave a 15-minute speech (PDF), which has gone down in history as her “Declaration of Conscience,” that all of us, starting with leading Republicans, ought to be reading this week. Two choice excerpts:
“As a Republican, I say to my colleagues on this side of the aisle that the Republican Party faces a challenge today that is not unlike the challenge which it faced back in Lincoln’s day. The Republican Party so successfully met that challenge that it emerged from the Civil War as the champion of a united nation–in addition to being a party which unrelentingly fought loose spending and loose programs.”
“The Democratic administration has greatly lost the confidence of the American people… Yet to displace it with a Republican regime embracing a philosophy that lacks political integrity or intellectual honesty would prove equally disastrous to the nation. The nation sorely needs a Republican victory. But I do not want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny–Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.”

Tomasky notes that six of Sen. Chase’s fellow Republicans “signed with her a statement of principles that began: “We are Republicans. But we are Americans first.” So that’s what people can do in the face of extremism, if they want to.” Those seven Republicans stood up for American values and earned a place of honor in our history as genuine patriots who put their country before politics.
Where, we must ask, are their heirs?

You’ve read all of the good arguments for increasing the minimum wage to a living wage. But to win wider support for this long-overdue reform, we have to make people feel it. Sharing this young man’s testimony widely is a good start:

The following article by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
Imagine that you and your family have been displaced from your homeland by an oppressive government. Imagine that if you are forced to return to that homeland you will likely be subjected to persecution — and potentially death.
Now imagine that the world’s democracies close their doors and refuse to give you asylum.
That is exactly what happened to thousands of Jews who were targeted for persecution and ultimately extermination by Hitler’s Germany.
In November 1938, the Nazis organized a systematic attack on Jews called Kristallnacht. That event escalated the growing anti-Semitism in Germany to a new level, and many Jews decided they must leave the country.
On May 13, 1939 some 900 Jews fled Germany aboard the cruise liner SS St. Louis. They had hoped to reach Cuba and then travel to the United States and safety.
But when they arrived in Cuba they were not allowed to land. Then the captain steered the St. Louis towards the Florida coast, but U.S. authorities refused to allow the ship loaded with desperate refugees to dock.
In the end, the ship was forced to return to Europe — and 250 of those on board were ultimately killed by the Nazis.
Most Americans look back on our refusal to admit the Jewish refugees from Europe as a shameful blot on American history. We must not allow it to happen again.
Today the flow of refugees are Muslim, Christian, and Yazidi. They are fleeing ISIS and the horrific civil war in Syria.
Our most fundamental moral precept is “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” — the Golden Rule. When fellow human beings are fleeing their homes in fear of their lives, we must do our best to help provide them help and safety or we won’t be able to look at ourselves in the mirror.
What if we found ourselves on the other side of that equation? What if that child’s body on that Greek beach were one of our children? What would we expect and hope for from our fellow human beings?
It certainly is not the unforgivable demagoguery that flooded the airwaves on Monday from 24 GOP governors who issued statements saying they would “not take in” Syrian refugees in their states and would deny any aid to resettle them.
New Jersey Governor and long-shot GOP presidential contender Chris Christie said he wanted to keep out Syrian refugees even if they are children.
Another presidential candidate, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said he would use “all lawful means” to block Syrian refugees from coming to Louisiana.
Rick Snyder, Governor of Michigan, which has a large Syrian community, said he would do everything he could to keep Syrian refugees out of the state.
Illinois Governor, Bruce Rauner announced he had “suspended” taking refugees in Illinois.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed a letter to Obama that begins “As governor of Texas, I write to inform you that the State of Texas will not accept any refugees from Syria in the wake of the deadly terrorist attack in Paris.”

Read more…

In his Washington Post op-ed, “Why 2016 could be shattering for Republicans,” Democratic strategist Stan Greenberg predicts that “Election Day 2016 will produce a shattering crash larger than anything the pundits anticipate.” The reason, says Greenberg, is “because the revolutionary economic and social changes occurring in the United States have now pushed both the burgeoning new majority and the conservative Republicans’ counterrevolution beyond their tipping points.”
Greenberg provides a vivid picture of America’s demographic changes:

The United States is being transformed by revolutions remaking the country at an accelerating and surprising pace. Witness the revolutions in technology, the Internet, big data and energy, though just as important are the tremendous changes taking place in immigration, racial and ethnic diversity, the family, religious observance and gender roles. These are reaching their apexes in the booming metropolitan centers and among millennials.
As the revolutions interact, they are accelerating the emergence of a new America. Consider that nearly 40 percent of New York City’s residents are foreign-born, with Chinese the second-largest group behind Dominicans. The foreign-born make up nearly 40 percent of Los Angeles’s residents and 58 percent of Miami’s. A majority of U.S. households are headed by unmarried people, and, in cities, 40 percent of households include only a single person. Church attendance is in decline, and non-religious seculars now outnumber mainline Protestants. Three-quarters of working-age women are in the labor force, and two-thirds of women are the breadwinners or co-breadwinners of their households. The proportion of racial minorities is approaching 40 percent, but blowing up all projections are the 15 percent of new marriages that are interracial. People are moving from the suburbs to the cities. And in the past five years, two-thirds of millennial college graduates have settled in the 50 largest cities, transforming them.

Political attitudes dynamics are no less striking. Greenberg explains that “diversity is becoming more central to our multicultural identity” and “Shifting attitudes were underscored in this year’s Gallup Poll when 60 to 70 percent of the country said gay and lesbian relations, having a baby outside of marriage, sex between an unmarried man and woman, and divorce are all “morally acceptable.”
He cites a “a new majority coalition of racial minorities, single women, millennials and seculars” which comprised 51 percent of voters in 2012, but will account for 63 percent of voters in 2016. he adds that the Republican Party brand “has probably not been as tarnished since the Watergate era.”
Greenberg notes that the GOP downhill slide accelerated in 2004, when Bush strategist Karl Rove decided to prioritize winning evangelical voters, while writing off swing voters. As a result the Republican demographic mix has been distilled down to “mostly married voters, as well as the oldest, most rural and most religiously observant voters in the country.” Greenberg argues that the GOP’s new demographic reality “creates formidable odds against its winning an electoral college majority.”
Further, there is a “shrinking proportion of people who think of themselves as conservative, down to 37 percent from 46 percent during the November elections.”For Republicans,” adds Greenberg 2016 “will confirm that the new America is here and that the counterrevolution has lost. That is why I expect the result to be shattering for the Republican Party as we know it.”
Greenberg believes it is possible that the Republicans can learn from their 2016 defeat and re-emerge with less bashing of immigrants and more tolerance for “the sexual revolution and the new gender roles and work to help the modern working family.” They might even be more open to investing in infrastructure upgrades and education.
Such a transformation, says Greenberg, could set the stage for “a different kind of debate within the Republican Party and, perhaps, a different kind of politics in the country,” just as Dems “modernized” their policies after their 1984 defeat. And that would be a welcome change for those who want to see America moving forward again.

Some Headlines that reveal the state of near panic of the GOP about their presidential candidate front-runners:
“Time for GOP panic? Establishment worried Carson or Trump might win” by Phillip Rucker and Robert Costa of the Washington Post.
Then there’s Maggie Habermans’s New York Times article, “Donald Trump Asks Iowans: ‘How Stupid’ Are They to Believe Ben Carson?”
At Politico Ben White describes the latest Trump meltdown in “What Trump’s bizarre Iowa tirade looked like up close.”
From “The Note: Trump Gone Wild” by Michael Barone at ABC News

–‘HOW STUPID ARE THE PEOPLE OF IOWA TO BELIEVE THIS CRAP’: On a contentious day in the GOP race, frontrunner Donald Trump didn’t shy away from calling out his rival “in second place” Ben Carson, asking the 1,500 Iowans in the crowd today about Carson’s “pathological stories” in his book and saying “How stupid are the people of Iowa to believe this crap?” Trump focused on a story from Carson’s books where he writes about stabbing someone with a knife, ABC’s JOHN SANTUCCI and JOSH HASKELL note. “It hit the belt. And the knife broke. Give me a break,” Trump told the crowd at Iowa Central Community College. Trump then stepped away from the podium and demonstrated what Carson stabbing a friend in the belt would look like. “He hit the belt buckle? Anybody with a knife wanna try it on me? Believe me it ain’t gonna work,” Trump said…

“Panic in the GOP elite! Is this a job for Mitt?!?!?” by Joan McCarter at Daily Kos, who notes,

The fact that Donald Trump and Ben Carson are still around and are still sucking the oxygen out of the primary race is causing real panic among Republican elites. All their hopes that either of the two would self-destruct are not materializing, because no matter what these guys say, people seem to like it, and that makes it very difficult for another candidate to try to destroy them. What’s more, there’s not a lot of time to do something about it.

So how long can a political party remain competitive when its front-runner generates such headlines?
I’ve got to believe that Trump’s teflon is going to wear thin, very thin, before too long, when the GOP field narrows and his egomaniacal rants are no longer enough to carry the day in the polls. When that moment comes the power of the GOP establishment will kick in hard, as John McQuaid writes at Forbes:

The establishment’s sprawling networks of politicians, campaign personnel, donors, interest groups, and Fox News may be “paralyzed” right now, but they still hold powerful cards in the nomination fight, most yet to be played. So make no mistake. At some point, we will be bidding farewell to Donald Trump and Ben Carson.

But Trumpism may not go away from the GOP so quietly. As Fareed Zakaria notes: “A poll this week found that half of Republican voters think Trump is the presidential candidate best able to handle the immigration issue — almost five times the share any other candidate received.
Whether he wins or loses his party’s nomination, however, every day Trump can be called a “front-runner” helps brand the GOP as a chaotic circus — no matter who finally drives the clown car.

From Greg Sargent’s Plum Line post, “Here’s Hillary Clinton’s big 2016 challenge, in one chart”:

The new poll, which was commissioned by Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund and conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, shows that members of the Rising American Electorate — minorities, millennials, and single women — are significantly less tuned in to next year’s election than GOP-aligned voter groups are.
The poll has some good news for Democrats. The survey, which was taken in four key battleground states — Colorado, Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin — suggests that in those states, the demographics do favor Dems. That’s because the poll finds that RAE voter groups — who helped drive Obama’s wins — now make up a “majority or near majority of the vote” in all those states. The poll also finds Dems leading in Senate races in two of those states and tied in two others.
But members of the RAE are insufficiently engaged in next year’s election when compared to Republican-aligned voter groups:

Sargent adds, “Unmarried women, minorities, and particularly millennials are less interested in next year’s voting than seniors, conservatives, and white non-college men are. Non-college women — a group the Clinton camp is reportedly eyeing as a way to expand on the Obama coalition — are also less interested.” However, “If Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, and the prospect of electing the first female president seems increasingly within reach, you could see engagement kicking in much more substantially. (It will be interesting to see how non-college, unmarried, minority and millennial women respond.)” Further,

But Greenberg’s pollsters are sounding the alarm now, warning that Democrats need to take more steps to tailor their message towards boosting the interest level among these voters. As Stan Greenberg outlines in his new book, America Ascendant, the key to engaging these voters is two-fold. It isn’t enough to simply outline bold economic policies to deal with college affordability, child care (universal pre-K), workplace flexibility (paid family and sick leave), and so forth, though those things are crucial. What’s also required to engage these groups, Greenberg argues, is a reform agenda geared to reducing the influence of the wealthy, the lobbyists, and the special interests over our politics. Today’s new poll suggests the same.

The reason is that “many Americans don’t believe government can or will actually deliver on those policies.” However, writes Greenberg, “when voters hear the reform narrative first, they are dramatically more open to the middle-class economic narrative that calls for government activism in response to America’s problems.”
Sargent notes that Clinton’s campaign has embraced the need for reforms to reduce the political influence of the wealthy in politics. It’s important that other Democratic candidates do so as well — down ballot as well as presidential candidates.

At HuffPo, senior polling editor Mark Blumenthal has a review article discussing Stanley Greenberg’s new book, “America Ascendant,” which calls for a new progressive era to address “revolutions that are changing America, changing politics, changing culture, changing economics.” Blumenthal interviews Greenberg (audio of full interview here), and shares some of his observations, including:

Greenberg argues in the book that these revolutionary changes, including a population that is growing younger and more racially and culturally diverse, will lead to a period in which America will be “exceptional again.” But he believes that renewal will require a period of sustained political reform, comparable to the Progressive Era at the turn of the 20th century, and the defeat of the “counter-revolution” being waged by the modern Republican Party.
The book, based in part on years of Greenberg’s polling and focus groups, also looks at the profound “downside” to this time of change: stagnating wages, an endemic cost-of-living crisis, a perceived end to “middle class dreams.” These “deep contradictions,” as Greenberg describes them, have produced pessimism about the future and great skepticism about leaders in Washington, including President Barack Obama.

As for the Republican party and its future, Blumenthal notes:

While Greenberg counsels Democrats to advocate “very bold policy changes,” he also believes that a Republican “implosion” is now underway in the GOP presidential primary.
The Republican Party, as Greenberg describes it, is “a rural, white, married, evangelical, religious party in a country that’s becoming less married, more secular, more urban.” The “furious counter-revolution” the party has waged for a decade to keep the “new American majority” from governing, he said, has “alienated the Republican Party from the country.”
He sees the evangelical and tea party blocs as “driving the base of support” for presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson, and believes they could ultimately boost support for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
Greenberg is also ready to declare former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush “gone” as a presidential aspirant. “There’s no place for Bush in the Republican Party,” he said. Bush has positioned himself as a “more electable” candidate. But Greenberg pointed out that he “presents himself as the most conservative on choice issues, which makes him unacceptable to [GOP moderates], the one group of voters that might have voted for a moderate establishment candidate.”

In the interview Greenberg acknowledges that a “shattering loss” for the GOP in 2016 could strengthen Republican moderates and make their party more competitive later on. “For now, however,” concludes Blumenthal, “Greenberg sees the GOP’s counter-revolution on a collision course with the demographic trends reshaping the American electorate.”

Former political editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Tom Baxter catches Mitt Romney in a classic Republican screw-up/walkback and puts it in context of the GOP’s increasingly schitzy framing of Obamacare and Medicare expansion:

Paying tribute to a departed friend last week, Mitt Romney stumbled into the sort of gotcha moment that causes former supporters of the 2012 Republican standard-bearer to flinch.
“Without Tom pushing it,” Romney said of businessman Tom Stemberg, “I don’t think we would have had Romneycare. Without Romneycare, I don’t think we would have Obamacare. So, without Tom a lot of people wouldn’t have health insurance.”
Realizing he had trampled into a sacred cow, Romney quick backtracked and issued a standardized denunciation of Obamacare. But Romney is not alone in his gotcha.
“I was personally against the Affordable Care Act… But we lost, folks,” Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley said recently in a speech to a group of seniors. “We lost. And we lost in court. So what we have to do now is move past that, take the resources we have available and try to improve the quality of life for the people of Alabama and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
Pressed later to say whether he was moving toward accepting the Medicaid expansion at the heart of the Affordable Care Act, Bentley gave a response that is the perfect reflection of Republican ambivalence on this subject:
“You know I wouldn’t say nudging toward it,” said Bentley. “But we are certainly looking at that; not right now. We are not at that stage right now.”
That’s the picture from the hinterlands, where a collapsing rural healthcare system and a disproportionate share of the uninsured are making it progressively harder to hold the line on the Medicaid expansion. Mitt Romney said no more than the truth: without a movement toward something like the Affordable Care Act, a lot more people today would be without health insurance. Those who still aren’t tend to be in states which have held the line against this movement, riddled with problems though it may be.

Democratic candidates should make more of all this GOP talking tough about Obamacare coupled with caving on Medicaid expansion — yet another gift from the bottomless well of Republican double-talk.

In his Wall St. Journal column, “The New Democratic Coalition: The party has moved to 41% liberal from 21% since 2000, but seeks a unifying candidate,” William A. Galston writes:

The Democratic contenders for 2016 are dealing with a party that has shifted left in the 14 years since the end of Bill Clinton’s presidency. In 2000, according to an October report from the Pew Research Center, 43% of Democrats identified themselves as moderate, 27% as liberal and 24% as conservative. In 2015, 41% of Democrats think of themselves as liberal–a 14-point jump. The moderates’ share of the party dropped to 35%, the conservatives’ to 21%. Half of the Democrats who participate in the 2016 nominating process are likely to be liberal.
The candidates will be vying to lead Barack Obama’s Democratic Party. Pew researchers find that 61% of Democrats who say they may vote in the primaries and caucuses will be more likely to support candidates who offer plans similar to those of the Obama administration. Only 12% would be less likely to do so. By 45% to 19%, these Democrats say that they will be more, rather than less, likely to support a candidate who wants to expand trade agreements. On this issue, surprisingly, there is no disagreement between liberal and moderate/conservative Democrats.

Galston also notes that the Pew survey shows significant, but unsurprising differences between “liberal,” “moderate” and “conservative” Democrats in their attitudes toward breaking up the big banks and the Iran deal. With respect to the poll’s findings on attitudes toward bipartisan compromise, Galston explains:

The second large contrast between the parties is especially telling. Among possible Democratic primary participants, 60% say they are more likely to favor a candidate who wants to compromise with Republicans. Only 41% of possible Republican participants would be more likely to favor a candidate who wants to compromise with Democrats. Democrats are weary of unending partisan strife; Republicans are gearing up to intensify the battle…Among these Democratic respondents, candidates who espouse a more unifying approach to the presidency are likely to hold the advantage over partisan warriors.

In addition, Galston says, “According to a Pew Research Center study published in June 2014, 56% of voters overall preferred candidates who are willing to compromise; only 39% wanted leaders to stick to their positions, come what may.” But he cites public skepticism about the prospects for political leadership actually pursuing greater bipartisan unity, and concludes, “In these polarized times, the candidate with the most credible response to this challenge is likely to be the next president of the United States.”

From the Select Committee on Benghazi Minority Site:
Instead of taking concrete steps to enhance the safety and security of our diplomatic corps overseas, the Select Committee on Benghazi continues to squander millions of dollars and has nothing to show for it other than a partisan attack against Secretary Clinton and her campaign for president.

$4,816,375 and counting as of 8:50 a.m. 9/23/15 – SPENT BY THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON BENGHAZI TO DATE*
(*Based on actual expenditures publicly reported here and then forecasted using the most recent month’s average daily expenditures.)
This calculation does not include the costs of: the independent Accountability Review Board; the eight previous reports by seven Congressional committees; the time, money, and resources consumed by federal agencies to comply with Select Committee requests; or the opportunity cost of not spending this money elsewhere, like improving security for our diplomatic officers abroad.
The Select Committee on Benghazi has been investigating for 533 Days, which is longer than the investigations of Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy assassination, Iran-Contra and Hurricane Katrina.

The Benghazi Research Center estimates that costs to the taxpayer could exceed $20 million when all is completed.
Think also of all the expenses incurred by the media in covering this nothingburger — time and money that should have been used to illuminate real issues and policies for the benefit of Americans.