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The news on Monday from the Marist College poll was terrible for Republican leaders.

They have painted themselves into a corner, especially in the U.S. House of Representatives. They are so split internally more on that in a minute that maybe only Democrats can save them. One of those Democrats is Rep. Jared Golden of Maines 2nd District.

Republicans have lost the culture war while winning the battle over abortion availability nationwide. They have put the lie to the idea that they are the party of liberty by banning books, by dictating what can be taught in schools and by a backdoor ploy to ban medication abortions.

They have achieved a half-century goal of stacking the Supreme Court, just as the court sinks in public esteem. And the bedrock conservative (as opposed to hard-right) party stance against spending no longer resonates loudly.

Back to the Marist poll. Heres what it showed. Support for medication abortions is 64% nationally and 55% among Republicans. Approval of the Supreme Court is 37%, disapproval 62%. Thats the lowest approval in five years. And 68% said justices terms should be limited.

Cut to the U.S. House of Representatives, where Republicans hold an edge of 222-213. The Washington Post last week analyzed the five House Republican families. After reading that analysis, I concluded the party cant unify for anything more important than naming an airport.

But hope springs eternal. As is the nature of the news business, outsized attention has gone to the most extreme elements in the House, so we read more about the so-called Freedom Caucus of hard-right Republicans and about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other hard-left Democrats.

But thats only, maybe, 30% of the total House. Call me an optimist, but I believe those who really want to pass meaningful legislation can find the votes among the remaining 70%.

Two Republican families are the Republican Governance Group of 42 socially moderate and fiscally conservative members thats how I described myself when I was enrolled Republican and the Problem Solvers of 29 Republicans and 29 Democrats. Problem Solvers are the only family that includes Democrats. Thats where Golden fits in. Hes one of the Problem Solvers.

First to abortion. Ann Coulter, a darling of the hard-right, told Republicans just after the state Supreme Court election in Wisconsin, Please stop pushing strict limits on abortion, or there will be no Republicans left. The election probably turned on the abortion issue.

Liberal New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote The reason voters think Republicans support full abortion bans is that many of them do. The Wall Street Journal, think tank of the right, added: Republicans had better get their abortion position straight, and more in line with where voters are, or they will face another disappointment in 2024.

The House Republicans response? They have introduced at least 20 bills to further restrict access to abortion. Maybe they dont listen to Ann Coulter. Or read the Wall Street Journal.

As to the Supreme Court, it hasnt been so clearly identified with one party since at least the 80s. Republicans under Donald Trump quickly installed three justices, giving the four conservatives and two hard-rightists a three-vote majority.

Then, the term Supreme Court ethics became an oxymoron when ProPublica revealed that Justice Clarence Thomas (see the Countryman for April 15, Ethics in High Places) has accepted and not reported hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of trips and other goodies from a rich Republican donor.

Did the leaders wish too hard for a packed court?

Turns out, the nine in robes have no code of ethics, though they are subject to reporting laws for federal employees. And when Chuck Schumer, D-New York, the Senate Judiciary Committee chair, asked Chief Justice John Roberts to testify on court ethics, the chief said no. Less than a week after the Marist poll showed disapproval of the court at 62%. Can you say tone deaf?

So, if the Republicans have lost the culture war, if their prized Supreme Court is below water in the public eye and if their dislike of government spending has gone bye-bye, where do they turn?

Heres where the ideas of representatives like Golden come in. Republicans could try to fashion a coherent position on abortion Paul LePages incoherence on abortion did more to thwart his third-term bid than any other issue, except his personality one that would universalize access to abortion but recognize the governments protective interest in the safety of a late-term fetus.

They could join in drawing up an ethics code for justices, and maybe even create term limits on the court. They could become watchdogs over spending, not so much to prevent it as to ensure it is done carefully and wisely. After all, they always say they are out to get fraud and corruption.

Ah, but that may be too much work. Its easier to write bills that cant pass but do create reelection talking points.

Maybe even Jared Golden and the Problem Solvers cant save them.

Bob Neal feels our system needs two functioning parties. He feels it so strongly that he has been enrolled first as independent, then Republican and then Democrat over the past 25 years or so. Neal can be reached at [emailprotected].

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Bob Neal: The Countryman: Knitting a party back together - Lewiston Sun Journal

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Originally posted here:
Ann Coulter: The new baby-killers | Columns ... - Northwest Georgia News

Weve heard a lot lately about how Republicans dont care about dead kids just keep your hands off their guns! The bullhorn insurrection staged by Tennessee legislators, for example, was justified on the grounds that they were JUST TRYING TO SAVE CHILDRENS LIVES!

As MSNBCs Lawrence ODonnell put it, the bullhorn episode showed who is trying to protect the children of Tennessee and who isnt.

The amazing statistic thats supposed to make us give up our guns PRONTO is that since 2020, gun violence has become the leading cause of death for American children.

Youre supposed to be thinking of the little kids killed in school shootings, like in Uvalde or the Christian school in Nashville. In fact, the odds that a child will be killed in a mass school shooting are 1 in 10 million.

The trick is that children includes 16-to-19-year-old gang members. Exclude 16-to-19-year-olds, and the number of kids killed by guns every year plummets from 2,811 to a few hundred.

It turns out, teenagers are using guns to kill a lot of other teenagers.

Based on arrests reported in the local news, here are a few recent examples of children being killed by gun violence. You will notice that none of these suspected homicides would have been prevented even if Republicans gave up all their guns.

And consider that, in most urban areas, the huge majority of murders never result in any arrests at all. For example, the clearance rate for murder which is much higher than the arrest rate is only 22 percent in Chicago, 43 percent in Baltimore and 37 percent in Philadelphia.

According to police arrests:

On March 29, 2023, 16-year-old Vincent Lee Bradley III and 17-year-old Devonte J. Pool fired at least 33 shots, gunning down a 16-year-old high school student, Larry Marshall III, in Tacoma, Washington.

A few days earlier, 16-year-old Lorenzo A. Brooks and 19-year-old Aaron Randolph Carter allegedly shot and killed 18-year-old Jasiah Smith in a Fredericksburg, Virginia, parking lot.

A week before that, 19-year-old Adrian Daeshawn Granville and 24-year-old Teonjenique Elizabeth Lashay Hudson Howard were shot and killed at the Embassy Suites hotel in Portland, Oregon, by an unknown suspect the same hotel where 15-year-old Deandrae Barber fatally shot 18-year-old Parnell Badon Jr. on Nov. 19, 2022. (Cant wait to read the Yelp reviews.)

On March 7, 2023, two brothers, Jacob Tobias Bryant, 18, and John Aalen Bryant Jr., 20, along with an unnamed 16-year-old juvenile, fatally shot a 17-year-old in Georgetown, South Carolina.

On Feb. 23, 2023, Keith Melvin Moses, 19, shot and killed a 9-year-old girl, Tyonna Major, and her mother in a shooting spree in Orlando, Florida, that left several others wounded or dead.

On Jan. 23, 2023, 18-year-old Preston Walls removed his ankle bracelet before gunning down rival gang members, 18-year-old Gionni Dameron and 16-year-old Rashad Carr, at a violence reduction program in Des Moines, Iowa.

On Jan. 4, 2023, 18-year-old Jakari Harps fatally shot 17-year-old Breck Gerard Williams Jr. and 14-year-old Adrian Daniels in west Fort Worth, Texas.

Right before Christmas last year, 17-year-old Lavon Semaj Longstreet and 18-year-old TaeShawn Adams-Wright killed 19-year-old Johntae Raymon Hudson at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, standing over Hudsons body and firing multiple rounds into his body.

Earlier in December, 17-year-old Tejuan Johnson and 18-year-old Jaylan Dubose shot and killed 15-year-old Nonaisha Jones and 19-year-old Logan Lawson in the Roselawn neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio.

All these incidents of children dying by gun violence consisted of teenagers killing other teenagers and a 9-year-old.

More than half of all Black teenagers who died of any cause in 2020 were killed by guns. Black males 15 to 34 years old were more than 20 times more likely to die by gun homicide than white males that age.

Unfortunately, there is probably no story of less interest to our media (or the president) than the epidemic of Black teenagers killing one another. In Jill Leovys acclaimed book, Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America, theres a full page of racist quotes explaining why, historically, black-on-black killing drew so little notice. This one is from a white Tennessean during Reconstruction: [N-word] lifes cheap now.

Or, as Cook County (Illinois) States Attorney Kim Foxx put it in declining to prosecute a gang shootout, its mutual combat.

Far from highlighting the crisis of Black teenagers shooting one another and declaring a national emergency, the media, corporate America and Democrats mightily egged on Black violence after the death of George Floyd. Its fun for them. They get to watch riot porn from the safety of their lily-white neighborhoods.

The only people who actually give a d about Black people getting killed are the police. And who have the bien-pensants declared war on? You guessed right.

Propose anything that would actually reduce the plague of crime, such as arresting, prosecuting and imprisoning criminals, and liberals scream, STOP PUTTING BLACK BODIES IN PRISON!

Needless to say, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, the Tennessee representatives who attacked democracy because they were JUST TRYING TO SAVE CHILDRENS LIIIIIVES, are huge BLM supporters. They prattle about ending police violence, Blacks being lynched by police officers, and accuse the police of running a system of white supremacy.

Jones told Teen Vogue that more policing does not lead to community safety. (The thousands of Black men who are still alive thanks to Mayor Rudy Giulianis more policing policy would disagree.) Instead, Jones proposed more funding to social workers, public education [and] ending poverty. (Why didnt anybody else think of that?)

On NPR, Pearson blamed white supremacy for the death of Tyre Nichols. (White supremacy is such an awesome force, it even infected the five Black Memphis police officers charged with Nichols death.)

You want to know who doesnt care about our childrens lives, MSNBC? You, the rest of the media, George Soros-supported prosecutors and the entire Democratic Party. Their motto: [N-word] lifes cheap now.

Visit link:
Ann Coulter: Who really cares about dead kids? - Marshall News Messenger

To the editor: Nico Perrinos piece admonishing liberal students who disrupted events on college campuses where conservative figures were invited to speak ignores the reality of how conservative value systems dominate day-to-day life in this country.

Perrino, the executive vice president of a conservative think tank, should consider how many students experiences at home, at work, on social media and in the public sphere in general are defined by cultural conservatism.

The Republican and conservative student clubs that invite speakers such as Ann Coulter hold ideas that already dominate lived reality throughout the country, and yet they treat their relative minority on a few acres of campus ground as a microcosm of the U.S.

Second, prominent conservative minds retain a plethora of paid speaking opportunities elsewhere; their being shouted down in one arena is a fleabite on the back of public discourse as a whole.

Third, conservative campus groups routinely choose the most odious representatives possible, people whose audiences would be minuscule if not for the presence of their detractors.

Why doesnt Perrino focus on the day-to-day interactions between liberal and conservative students if he wants to see his proper form of free speech in action?

Matt Neel, Sherman Oaks

..

To the editor: Perrino makes good points in his defense of free speech and against the hecklers veto, but some points need clarity.

Too many on the left view protest as a holy rite that absolves any excess. For example, the Tennessee Three are cleared because no property was damaged. Everything is peaceful protest, or at least mostly peaceful. Protesters are convinced of their virtue and correct beliefs.

But protests invariably force people to listen. In fact, peaceful protest is almost an oxymoron, as disruption is inevitable. The holy grail in a democracy is not protest, it is the ballot box.

One has free speech on your own time and your own dime. In other words, you cannot hijack someone elses event or venue. Employees and students cannot use a college event or graduation or anything else for their own purposes. One does get a pass for speech, whether political or for profit.

Every event has an organizer who makes the rules. Authorities should never hesitate to enforce those rules.

William N. Hoke, Manhattan Beach

More:
Letters to the Editor: Free speech is alive and well, even on college ... - Los Angeles Times

I generally dont have occasion to quote conservative media pundit Ann Coulter, but a comment she made following Janet Protasiewiczs double-digit win over Dan Kelly in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race caught my attention.

In a Twitter post, Coulter said, The demand for anti-abortion legislation just cost Republicans another crucial race. Pro-lifers: WE WON. Abortion is not a constitutional right. Please stop pushing strict limits on abortion, or there will be no Republicans left.

That might be typical Coulter hyperbole, but she is correct that Protasiewicz made abortion rights the centerpiece of her campaign. The Wisconsin high court is expected to hear a case shortly challenging the states 1849 law that makes it a felony to perform abortions, a law revived when Roe v. Wade was overturned, and her election gives progressives a 4-3 majority on the court.

Opposition to a near-total ban on abortion turned what had been projected to be a close race into a Protasiewicz landslide.

A recent Public Religion Research Institute poll of over 20,000 Americans in all 50 states found that 64% believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

Majorities of residents in 43 states and the District of Columbia believe abortion should be legal, including 57% of West Virginians.

And that poll seemed to undercount support for legal abortion. A national Gallup poll conducted at roughly the same time put the figure at 69%.

But as Coulter points out, instead of declaring victory with the Dobbs decision and with implementation of total or near-total abortion bans in 15 states, including West Virginia, anti-abortion zealots continue to push for bans in other states, as well as for a national abortion ban.

Indeed, days after Potasiewiczs blowout victory, Florida legislators defied the will of the majority by passing a six-week abortion ban, a bill quickly signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Likewise, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas, Matthew Kacsmaryk, issued a preliminary injunction to suspend the FDAs approval of mifepristone, a commonly prescribed abortion drug that for the past 23 years, the FDA has consistently found to be safe and effective.

Kacsmaryks ruling, pending appeals and counter-decisions, not only has the potential to ban mifepristone in all 50 states, defying the will of a majority of Americans, but to set a precedent to make it possible to remove other FDA-approved drugs from the marketplace.

Likewise, polls consistently show a sizable majority of Americans want stricter gun safety measures, a demand that goes unheeded by Republicans.

As a result, the United States has exorbitantly high rates of gun violence, gun deaths and suicides by gun compared to other First World countries.

Its not uncommon for cable news coverage of memorial services for mass shooting victims to be interrupted by breaking news of another mass shooting, as occurred Monday.

Yet, Republicans consistently fail to address the crisis, beyond offering thoughts and prayers, with some insisting nothing can be done to curb the nations epidemic of gun violence.

When thousands of protestors descended on the Tennessee State Capitol demanding gun reform following the mass shooting at a Nashville grade school, the response of the Republican supermajority in the General Assembly was to attempt to expel three Democrats who joined in the protests after leadership failed to take up any gun safety measures.

That they ultimately voted to expel Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, but not fellow protestor Rep. Gloria Johnson, raised the specter of racism, giving the appearance of a majority white male House of Representatives opting to punish two uppity young Black men.

(When asked why she survived the expulsion vote when her colleagues did not, Johnson said, It might have to do with the color of our skin.)

Since 1900, the Tennessee General Assembly had expelled only two members one after being convicted of bribery, the other after detailed evidence surfaced of multiple instances of inappropriate sexual conduct.

By comparison, the Tennessee Threes expellable offense was violating rules of decorum by leading peaceful protestors up in the House galleries in chants calling for gun reform.

Something similar occurred in the West Virginia Senate chambers this spring, when Sen. Robert Karnes, R-Randolph, violated rules of decorum by disrupting a morning floor session by repeatedly yelling out demands for bills to be read in their entirety, and shouting calls to be recognized by Senate President Craig Blair, R-Berkeley.

Karnes outbursts were not in pursuit of the noble cause of attempting to quell the ongoing carnage of young people, but in an attempt to kill a bill placing restrictions on child marriage in the state.

While the West Virginia Constitution, like the Tennessee Constitution, provides for expulsion of legislators with a two-thirds vote of the body, Karnes received no disciplinary action for his outbursts, other than being removed from the Senate floor for the remainder of the day.

No expulsion from the Senate. No loss of committee assignments. Just a few hours off the Senate floor. Which would have also been an adequate punishment for the Tennessee Three.

Had Karnes been a Black progressive Democrat, he likely would have faced much more severe punishment for violating Senate rules.

There are many other parallels between the GOP supermajority legislatures in Tennessee and West Virginia.

As we saw the cavalier attitude of Tennessee legislative leaders in ignoring the will of the people, weve watched West Virginia legislative leaders ignore the will of the people again and again, formulating bills in secret, stifling public input, defying a Constitutional process designed to promote transparency and clarity, and limiting debate by members.

As in Tennessee, Republicans in the West Virginia Legislature turned Republican majorities into supermajorities through the use of extreme gerrymandering that diluted Democratic votes by dividing blue cities among multiple rural districts.

Political parties that consistently defy and ignore the will of a majority of voters cannot stay in power indefinitely.

Of course, the expulsions backfired on the legislative leadership in Tennessee, providing the Tennessee Three with a national forum to expose wrongdoing in the General Assembly, and with Jones and Pearson being quickly reappointed to their seats in the House.

(To that end, the process to fill legislative vacancies in Tennessee is far superior to the process in West Virginia, with the Boards of Commissioners in the representatives respective counties quickly voting to reappoint both.

Had the expulsions occurred in West Virginia, the legislators respective Democrat Executive Committees would have had to submit to the governor three nominees to fill each vacancy. Politics being what they are, it is unlikely the governor would reappoint the expelled legislators, at the risk of drawing the wrath of the legislative leaders that orchestrated their ouster.)

Along those lines, it was disheartening to see statewide elected officers, including Gov. Jim Justice, Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, Secretary of State Mac Warner and Treasurer Riley Moore, issue statements criticizing the indictment of Donald Trump, while all, as best I can determine, remained silent regarding back-to-back mass shootings in Nashville and Louisville, Kentucky.

Justice, in a particularly heartless and obscene gesture two days after Louisville, posted on Twitter a six-week-old article on his signing the campus open carry bill into law, stating, I strongly support the Second Amendment. I proudly signed the Campus Self-Defense Act, which will strengthen Second Amendment protections in West Virginia.

Well, at least he refrained from spitting on the graves of the shooting victims. (Although Im sure if the gun lobby told politicians that is what they must do to retain its support, they would get their saliva flowing.)

Justice called Trumps indictment (almost certainly the first of several) a witch hunt, a term popularized by Richard Nixon regarding the Watergate investigation an investigation that led to his resignation as president, and had he not been pardoned, would have resulted in his indictment and almost certainly, his conviction on charges stemming from the cover-up.

Im pretty sure all the officials decrying the indictment took oaths of office in which they swore to uphold the U.S. and West Virginia constitutions, and yet, without the benefit of a trial, without access to the evidence, are disparaging a judicial process that has served our country and state well for ages, on no grounds other than blatant partisan politics. A duly empaneled grand jury of 26 fellow citizens concluded there was sufficient evidence to indict Trump, and Trump will have every opportunity to present evidence, call witnesses, testify, and otherwise defend himself at his trial.

If the indictment (and the ones likely to follow) were excessive, an overreach, or politically motivated, that will come out during the trials. If it turns out that Trump operated like a mafia boss in the White House, that too will be revealed in court.

Letting the legal process take its course is the American way.

Finally, since my last column, I passed a milestone birthday immortalized in a song from the Beatles Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band album. I would have been eight years old the first time I heard the song, and it never occurred to me at the time that someday, it would apply to me.

See the rest here:
Statehouse Beat: Ignoring the will of the people not exclusive to WV ... - Charleston Gazette-Mail