One of our two great political parties has simply gone mad.

I'm sitting here and wondering, WHAT CAN I DO? WHAT CAN WE DO??
The voter suppression and all of the other legislation in Republican state houses that is pulling us back into the dark ages are not to be ignored. I'm deeply concerned that 2022 elections will see Repub majorities in the House and Senate. Again, WHAT CAN I DO???

In my lifetime the Republican Party has NEVER been “great”. They’ve always been the same scumbags they are now, it was just behind closed doors.

if only...

I would love to see the data if they asked if they think that military votes should be considered fraudulent?

And then, after they respond, follow it up with the percentage of military votes that are mail-in ballots (the majority). 

Because, you know, the GOP likes to give lip service to supporting the military without actually supporting the military - counting their mail-in votes, funding their healthcare, providing adequate mental healthcare, cutting a wide variety of support to the military, veterans, and their families. They are so anti-military, compared to the Democratic Party, these days that it is jaw dropping. 

You may not know the history of the parties. The Republicans started life as the party of Lincoln, the party that freed the slaves. After Reconstruction ended, they grew into the party of industrialists, financiers, rich college-educated people.

The Democrats were the party of Southern white landowners and Jim Crow, but also the party of the working class in the North.

In the 1930s, Roosevelt’s New Deal ushered in a more forward-looking Democratic Party. In the 1960s, after the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts were pushed through by a coalition of postwar Democrats and moderate/liberal Republicans, the ugly wing of the Republican Party started wooing those Southern Democrats over to their side, and eventually that’s where most of them landed. The parties basically flipped positions over a period of about 50 years.

tl;dr: there are still a few holdouts, conservatives who have maintained Democratic membership while voting straight Republican tickets, and registered Republicans who consider themselves fiscal conservatives but social moderates, and (horrified by Trump) have been voting Democratic in recent years.

It’s bad enough Congress votes on bills without reading them but Schumer wanted a vote on a bill that hasn’t even been fully written.  He knew it was going to fail that’s why he voted with the republicans so he can bring it to the floor again.

I’m well aware of what it was for but how do you debate something that isn’t even written yet.  

onelasttime
I wish I knew what their hate is all about too. It is truly intense, beyond comprehension.

The Republicans are just stalling for time. They can’t completely block the bill, but they can delay it. They decided on Monday to vote against debate.  If they can delay long enough, the Senate takes a recess Aug 6.  Then it would be fall at the earliest before this passes.

www.politico.com/news/2021/07/19/gop-infrastructure-deal-500166

Though Portman and others cried foul over holding a vote on unfinished legislation, it’s a tried and true strategy for both parties. Republicans kicked off their drive to repeal Obamacare with a vote on proceeding to an unwritten bill; just this Congress, senators in both parties advanced hate crimes and competitiveness legislation before it was finished.

Not enough,!!!!

God, guns, gays, greed.




The party is lurching evermore into the land of lunacy.

"Republican U.S. Sen. James Lankford would seem to have all the conservative credentials he'd need to coast to re-election in deep-red Oklahoma.

A devout Baptist, Lankford was the director of the nation’s largest Christian youth camp for more than a decade. He speaks out regularly against abortion and what he describes as excessive government spending. And his voting record in the Senate aligned with former President Donald Trump’s position nearly 90% of the time.

But like several other seemingly safe GOP incumbents, Lankford, who didn't even draw a primary opponent in 2016, finds himself under fierce attack by a challenger in his own party. The antagonist is a 29-year-old evangelical minister and political newcomer who managed to draw more than 2,000 people to a “Freedom Rally" headlined by Donald Trump's former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, at which Lankford was accused of being not conservative enough.

“When James (Lankford) certified the big lie, he joined the big lie," Jackson Lahmeyer told the raucous crowd in Norman, citing Lankford's failure to endorse Trump's false claims about the election outcome. “The 2020 presidential election — that was a stolen election and we will never, ever allow it to happen again.” The state's GOP chairman, John Bennett, has already endorsed Lahmeyer in the race.
Political Cartoons

Similar scenes are playing out in other red states where ultra right-wing challengers are tapping into anger among Republicans over Trump's election loss and coronavirus-related lockdowns. Some incumbents suddenly are scrambling to defend their right flank, heating up their own rhetoric on social media and ripping into President Joe Biden at every opportunity.

In Texas, GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, who faces a contested reelection primary next year, is pushing looser gun laws than he ever previously embraced and proposing unprecedented state actions, including promises to build more walls on the Mexican border.

“I think it’s unquestionably attributable to the aftermath of the 2020 election and the insurrection and former President Trump’s claims of voter fraud,” said Alan Abramowitz, a political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta.

Some conservative incumbents are obvious targets for right-wing challenges — notably U.S. Reps. Liz Cheney in Wyoming and Anthony Gonzalez in Ohio who voted to impeach Trump. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp's offense was refusing to block Georgia's electoral votes from being awarded to Biden.

But with the 2022 election cycle approaching, the backlash is also touching even those who backed Trump consistently through countless controversies. Texas' Abbott echoed Trump's partisan positions and has banked $55 million in campaign funds, more than any sitting governor in history.

But he's drawn a challenge from Allen West, who until recently was the chairman of the Texas GOP. West, a tea party firebrand and former Florida congressman, has attacked Abbott's leadership after Democrats temporarily thwarted a GOP voting bill by decamping to Washington.

And he can draw a crowd. Last year, West led a boisterous rally outside the governor’s mansion to demand an end to coronavirus lockdown restrictions.

“We cannot sit around and continue to do nothing,” West told supporters in South Texas during one of his first campaign stops.

Actually winning a primary is probably more than many challengers, including West, can expect. But they can succeed in pushing the party farther to the right while also raising their own profiles as public figures."

www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2021-07-20/seemingly-safe-gop-incumbents-under-attack-from-right-wing