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The healthcare repeal & replace debacle has beautifully exposed the turmoil and the warring factions within the Republican party. Over the weekend, The Huffington Post examined the GOP of today and why it can no longer be simply deemed a "conservative" party, instead opting for the term "radical":
The Trump White House and their base voters are not conservatives in any sense that doesn’t warp the term beyond recognition.
America has always had a resentful, white-supremacist nationalism based on hating the “other” and rejecting liberalism. What changed in 2016 is that a major party embraced this fringe, handed it power and is now refusing to check that power with anything more than a furrowed brow.
A party that used to represent limited government encroachment on individual lives moved into a new present, where the President, Cabinet and Congress explicitly oppose the government they run in every respect but their personal domination of it.
Their voting base ― largely white and evangelical ― cheer the undermining of democracy through voting restrictions and boo defenses of traditional American values, such as freedom of the press, separation of church and state, the right to protest, and checks and balances.
“Alternative facts” don’t just offer an unsubstantiated, and often absurd, narrative; they destabilize the idea that truth exists or matters. Political lying is nothing new, and even lying on this scale has precedents (though only in the worst regimes).
Today’s right however goes a step further to undermine the value of any knowledge, education or evidence, for a receptive audience that cares only whether the script plays to their team’s advantage or serves as a strike against the other team.
Read more:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...onservative-party_us_59767dd6e4b0e201d5776f8c
Meanwhile, other outlets have been looking at reports that - in light of the Friday firing of Reince Priebus and continuing attacks on Jeff Sessions - Republicans are terrified that Trump will go rogue and turn his rabid base against the GOP.
In the POLITICO article titled "Without Priebus, Trump is a Man Without a Party", reporter Tim Alberta says that members of the Republican Party are fretting that Trump will go rogue and use his followers’ fanatical devotion to undermine other figures in the GOP should they disappoint him.
Trump often refers to Republicans as "they" or "them" in his tweets and most recently accused them of "looking like fools." More and more, Trump talks as though there are Democrats and Republicans—and him, a party of one.
If unchecked, this poses an existential threat to the GOP.
Read more:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/07/30/trump-priebus-unbound-215440
The Trump White House and their base voters are not conservatives in any sense that doesn’t warp the term beyond recognition.
America has always had a resentful, white-supremacist nationalism based on hating the “other” and rejecting liberalism. What changed in 2016 is that a major party embraced this fringe, handed it power and is now refusing to check that power with anything more than a furrowed brow.
A party that used to represent limited government encroachment on individual lives moved into a new present, where the President, Cabinet and Congress explicitly oppose the government they run in every respect but their personal domination of it.
Their voting base ― largely white and evangelical ― cheer the undermining of democracy through voting restrictions and boo defenses of traditional American values, such as freedom of the press, separation of church and state, the right to protest, and checks and balances.
“Alternative facts” don’t just offer an unsubstantiated, and often absurd, narrative; they destabilize the idea that truth exists or matters. Political lying is nothing new, and even lying on this scale has precedents (though only in the worst regimes).
Today’s right however goes a step further to undermine the value of any knowledge, education or evidence, for a receptive audience that cares only whether the script plays to their team’s advantage or serves as a strike against the other team.
Read more:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...onservative-party_us_59767dd6e4b0e201d5776f8c
Meanwhile, other outlets have been looking at reports that - in light of the Friday firing of Reince Priebus and continuing attacks on Jeff Sessions - Republicans are terrified that Trump will go rogue and turn his rabid base against the GOP.
In the POLITICO article titled "Without Priebus, Trump is a Man Without a Party", reporter Tim Alberta says that members of the Republican Party are fretting that Trump will go rogue and use his followers’ fanatical devotion to undermine other figures in the GOP should they disappoint him.
Trump often refers to Republicans as "they" or "them" in his tweets and most recently accused them of "looking like fools." More and more, Trump talks as though there are Democrats and Republicans—and him, a party of one.
If unchecked, this poses an existential threat to the GOP.
Read more:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/07/30/trump-priebus-unbound-215440
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