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I commute 35 miles each way to work. In my comparatively compact and fuel efficient car, that works out to a gallon of gas each way. At current fuel prices, it costs me about $12 each day to get to work.

It adds up. Its frustrating.

Im not the only one with fewer, less experienced coworkers sharing the same work. Im not the only one looking at the rising cost of everything rent, fuel, food, and so on and wondering when it will stop. Yes, wages are higher, especially for entry-level employees, and thats great, but the constant shortages of basic goods and services since the pandemic started a couple of years ago has been irritating. Violent crime is increasing as well no, the Bronx isnt burning, but just as we shouldnt wait for live-action reenactments of the Laramie Project before we take white nationalists showing up to violently disrupt Pride events seriously, we shouldnt wait for American cities to look like hollowed out war zones again before we take crime seriously, either.

Im also not the only one whos noticed that the people in charge dont seem to have any fixes for these problems.

I understand, then, why so many political analysts believe Republicans will have a banner year this year. Democrats are currently in charge (for whatever definition of in charge any political party can be said to be in our famously fractious country) and things are a little rough at the moment and getting rougher. Naturally, many voters will likely conclude, rightly or wrongly, that throwing todays bums out might make things better at least until tomorrows bums either wield political power effectively enough to create other problems or are unfortunate enough to be in power while we create entirely new and novel problems for ourselves.

What I dont understand is what Nevadas Republican primary voters, especially in Washoe County, think theyre doing about any of this.

Start with the gubernatorial primary, which produced one of the more comparatively sane outcomes. Whether you agree or disagree with Lombardos positions or policies, nominating a sheriff for governor is a logical thing to do if youre a voter whos worried about crime. Whats less logical, however, is nominating a conspiratorial former boxer and current ambulance chaser who thinks the establishment is conspiring to deny him his place on the general election ballot and consequently refuses to concede his race despite receiving nearly 30,000 fewer votes than the victor never mind how many Democratic political organizations, including here in Nevada, spent millions of dollars propping candidates like Joey Gilbert up.

But that ambulance chaser is exactly who a plurality of Republican voters in several counties including our state capital wanted for governor. Even in Washoe County, Gilbert was fewer than 300 votes away from Joe Lombardo. If Clark County Republicans didnt think so fondly of their sheriff, Sisolak would have needed to recruit Ross Miller as a stunt double in the next gubernatorial debate.

What made Joey Gilbert appealing? It wasnt his willingness nor perceived ability to solve Nevadas problems it was instead his willingness to fight reality itself. According to his headcanon, Donald Trump was still president, COVID-19 wasnt real (and, if it was, it was a plandemic anyway), and Nevadas students cant read because they dont say the Pledge of Allegiance often enough. Does any of that have any relationship with reality? Well, no, but reality left Joey and his supporters behind years ago.

Then theres Jim Marchant. Marchant is running for secretary of state on a platform of replacing every voting machine with thousands of bleary-eyed precinct captains hand-counting every ballot, handwriting their tallies with fountain pens on parchment, then delivering election results by Pony Express. If you ask him, every election result since Mark Twain published Roughing It has been fraudulent, including every primary and Assembly seat he ever won. Hes running because, as he readily admits, QAnon organizers the sort who are waiting for John F. Kennedy Jr. to arise from his watery grave off the coast of Marthas Vineyard so he can run as Trumps running mate in 2024 saw him as a kindred spirit and asked him to.

Is he a delusional crank spouting unhinged nonsense? Absolutely. In a just world, would he file as a paper candidate, pick up a couple thousand votes statewide from voters who had no clue who he was, then die in obscurity? You bet. Is he instead the Nevada Republican Partys general election candidate for secretary of state this year? By a landslide. Will electing him secretary of state make Nevada a better place or address a single meaningful problem faced by residents of our state? No, but if Otero County in New Mexico, a jurisdiction which refused to certify its own election results, is any indication, hell at least keep our judicial system gainfully employed.

Perhaps Nevadas Republicans had more sense when it came time to select their candidate for Treasurer. Surely surely they wouldnt support someone with a history of failed businesses, sweetheart deals for family members, constant out-of-state distractions, bullying and fighting fellow Republicans, and a scrambled misunderstanding of germ theory to manage the states money.

Dont call them surely. Fiore was the most popular candidate on the Republican statewide primary ballot. More than 125,000 Republicans voted for Fiore thats more votes than Adam Laxalt or any statewide candidate received.

Does she know what the job of a state treasurer is? Does she know how to balance a checkbook? Is she self aware enough to realize shes actually the angry racist aunt instead of the fun-loving party girl at every family gathering? The answer to all of these questions is almost certainly no. Did that stop Republicans from putting her on our general election ballots? The answer to that question is also no.

What about the position of attorney general the chief prosecutor for the state? Did Nevadas Republicans select someone who will be tough on crime? Or did they select someone who jokes about lynching people and is an open embarrassment in court? Does thirty men breaking into a local jail to kill a man while the local constable is asleep sound like law and order? As Republicans selected Sigal Chattah to run against Aaron Ford, it seems we have four more months to find out.

Then there are the races further down the ballot.

Washoe County Republicans the same bunch which used to reliably produce moderate Republicans like Bill Raggio, Brian Sandoval, Jill Tolles, Ben Kieckhefer and Heidi Gansert instead chose to replace an incumbent Republican county commissioner with a county assessor whos still not allowed in his own office. Instead of ensuring county properties were assessed fairly and equitably, Mike Clark used his time and resources to obsess over a picture of one of his staff members in a bikini a picture which he bundled in 162 novella-length mailers he sent to elected officials and county employees, each labeled as if they came from someone elses address.

Nothing says moral courage like trying to pin your mailed rants on someone elses head.

Then theres Jeanne Herman. Ive written about Washoe County Commissioner Herman before shes the one who wanted to deploy the Nevada National Guard to every single precinct in the county to shoot voter fraud because a Californian cryptocurrency lottery winner told her to. Did the Republican residents of Renos exurbs use the ridiculous press she generated from her buffoonery to select someone who will do the job of county commissioner quietly and effectively? Or did they double down on the election denial and Bircher-grade conspiracy theory spinning?

Take a guess.

Finally, we have the elections for Washoe County School Board. Districts B, C, D and F face election this year. Each of them face incumbents who, at the time of the writing of this piece, are leading in their races Ellen Minetto, Joe Rodriguez, Beth Smith, and Adam Mayberry, respectively. Three of those four, however, will face a general election against candidates handpicked by Save WCSD, a far-right organization obsessed with the notion that Critical Transgendered Race Theory (or whatever) is being taught in Renos famously progressive classrooms Beth Smith handily dispatched her Save WCSD-anointed opponent, Ed Hitti, in the primary.

As I pointed out fairly recently, the Save WCSD candidates sincerely believe Washoe County students will read better if they have the power to control which books Washoe County students read just dont ask them which books your students will be able to take home. Either theyd rather we found out which books were fit for reading and which books were fit for their Suberung by surprise, or the Californian cryptocurrency millionaire funding their organization failed to furnish them with his list of forbidden books before they were interviewed by local media. Whether these candidates are mendacious or ignorant, its extremely unlikely electing any of them to my countys school board will have a positive effect on any childs education.

***

Will pretending Donald Trump was actually elected in 2020 resolve our nations supply shortages? Will electing an innumerate bully with a gun fetish make our states finances more sound? Will lynching political opponents make our streets safer? Will banning books raise Nevadas educational results? Will throwing every election machine into the nearest river reduce inflation? Will electing a disgraced assessor with a temporary restraining order against him as county commissioner make Washoe County great again?

I dont see how.

Are any of these candidates offering a single tangible policy solution that can be delivered by our existing political processes that might concretely benefit Nevadans?

Not that I can see.

Thats a shame. We have real problems in this state which call out for real solutions. There was a time when voters in Nevadas second-largest political party took itself seriously enough to address them and selected candidates accordingly. Unfortunately, last week's primary has demonstrated theyd rather add their collective delusions to the list instead.

David Colborne ran for office twice and served on the executive committees for his state and county Libertarian Party chapters. He is now an IT manager, a registered nonpartisan voter, the father of two sons, and a weekly opinion columnist for The Nevada Independent. You can follow him on Twitter @DavidColborne or email him at [emailprotected].

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Nevada's Republican voters have lost their collective minds The Nevada Independent - The Nevada Independent

Republican Michigan Rep. Fred Upton tried to downplay the concerns of Second Amendment advocates over new gun control legislation while speaking on CNNs State of the Union Sunday.

Host Dana Bash asked whether its possible Congress would strike a deal on gun control before the impending recess.

I want to turn to guns. A bipartisan group in the Senate is trying to lock down a compromise deal, but funding for state red flag laws and eliminating the so-called boyfriend loophole do remain sticking points for Republicans. Congress leaves for recess in a week. Do you think a deal is still gettable? Bash asked.

Upton said he thinks a deal is still possible before recess, but the two sticking points are common sense.

Law abiding folks shouldnt have any fears in terms of whats going on. Its been a rallying point, particularly for the NRA and Gun Owners of America. You look at their website and theyre raising cash like you wouldnt believe in terms of, their Second Amendment rights are being taken away.'

Thats not whats happening here. This is common sense stuff. But its been elevated, for sure, particularly when you have some pretty well-respected Republicans, whether it be John Cornyn or Dan Crenshaw literally being accosted at their state conventions in Texas this weekend.

Red flag laws, also known as extreme risk protection orders, allow a court to confiscate a firearm from an individual who is believed to pose a violent threat. (RELATED: Police Use Red Flag Law To Seize Guns From Black Panther Member Who Allegedly Plotted To Kill Colorado Officials)

In the Supreme Court case of Canglia v. Strom, the high court ruled seizing a citizens gun violates search and seizure rights protected under the Fourth Amendment.

Cornyn and several other Republicans have voiced support for the red flag laws, stoking a wave of criticism.

Daily Caller co-founder and Fox News host Tucker Carlson blasted the unconstitutional red flag laws.

If you can seize peoples guns without proving that they committed a crime, why cant you imprison them without proving that they committed a crime? If you can take their guns, why cant you take their homes? Why cant you empty their bank accounts? Carlson said Monday.

Cornyn was drowned out by chants of no red flags, no red flags, while speaking Friday at a convention in Texas.

Link:
Law Abiding Folks Shouldnt Have Any Fears, Claims Republican On Gun Control Bill - Daily Caller

I have a B.A. in History and Creative Writing and an M.A. in History. I enjoy politics, movies, television, poker, video games, and trivia.

A List of Things Republicans Believe In

Do all Republicans believe the same things? Of course not. Rarely do members of a single political group agree on all issues. Even among Republicans, there are differences of opinion. As a group, they do not agree on every issue.

Some folks vote Republican because of fiscal concerns. Often, that trumps concerns they may have about social issues. Others are less interested in the fiscal position of the party. They vote they way they do because of religion. They believe Republicans are the party of morality. Some simply want less government. They believe only Republicans can solve the problem of big government. Republicans spend less (except on military). They lower taxes: some people vote for that alone.

However, the Republican Party does stand for certain things. So I'm answering with regard to the party as a whole. Call it a platform. Call them core beliefs. The vast majority of Republicans adhere to certain ideas.

So what do Republicans believe? Here are their basic tenets:

This is pretty universal among Republicans. Government should not be providing solutions to problems that confront people (like health issues or paying bills). Those problems should be solved by the people themselves. A Republican would say that relying on the government to solve problems is a crutch that makes people lazy and feel entitled to receive things without working for them.

A Republican believes that decision-making should be as local as possible and if there's something important that needs solving on a social level, the state's decision should trump any federal decisions. The federal government should not have control over state decisions, generally speaking.

The free market is the perfect decision-maker. There need be no interference in the market because ultimately, the needs and desires of manufacturers and consumers will resolve themselves correctly in an unregulated market.

Republicans are generally accepting only of the Judeo-Christian belief system. For most Republicans, religion is absolutely vital in their political beliefs and the two cannot be separated. Therefore, separation of church and state is not that important to them. In fact, they believe that much of what is wrong has been caused by too much secularism.

Those are the four basic Republican tenets: small government, local control, the power of free markets, and Christian authority. Below are other things they believe that derive from those four ideas.

No matter what the situation, Republicans believe in lowering taxes across the board, for both individuals and businesses. As far as they are concerned, the more money that stays in the hands of the private sector, the better. They think people and businesses should be able to determine how and when they spend their money.

Republicans favor a strong military . . . and using that military. Republicans are usually hawks where Democrats are doves. The strong military stance demonstrates how Republicans use the power of the federal government, though they believe that a strong military spurs innovation and directs tax dollars as investments into businesses they support.

Republicans are more likely to argue for the privatization of things than Democrats, even going so far as to advocate for privatizing fire departments and the police in some cases. This goes for Social Security, healthcare, medicare, and virtually anything else that's linked to the government in any way. No matter what it is, they think that private industry can always do a better job than government.

This comes from their religious beliefs, which form the basis for a lot of policy. Republicans believe that homosexuality is a choice and, as such, gay people should not be acknowledged in the same way as other groups. Therefore, according to a Republican, homosexuals should not be allowed to marry, nor should they be allowed to adopt children.

Republicans support the position of the NRA and do not believe in gun control. They believe in the right of all citizens to own guns as detailed in the Constitution.

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Republicans are fundamentally against abortion and do not support the idea that a woman should be able to choose whether to end a pregnancy no matter the reason, though some Republicans make exceptions for rape and incest. Although Republicans believe abortion is murder and believe Roe v. Wade should be overturned, they do not usually explain what punishment should befall those who get or give abortions should it become illegal.

Generally, Republicans question the conclusions scientists have come to regarding global warming. At best, they believe that the effects of global warming have been overstated and that regulating emissions should not be done; at worst, they believe global warming is a hoax.

Republicans reject the theory of evolution and believe in creationism, the idea that God created man the way he is. They believe creationism should be taught in public schools.

Republicans believe that illegal immigrants, no matter the reason they are in this country, should be forcibly removed from the U.S. Although illegal immigrants are often motivated to come to the U.S. by companies who hire them, Republicans generally believe that the focus of the law should be on the illegal immigrants and not on the corporations that hire them.

Republicans believe that poor people are usually poor for a reason, be it laziness, choice or whatever. Unless we demand that people pull themselves up by the bootstraps and solve their own problems, people will not be motivated to do things. Therefore, the issue of poverty cannot be solved by the government. Charity should be the choice of individuals.

Republicans believe in the death penalty and support its use in cases where violent crimes have been committed.

15 Differences Between Democrats and Republicans

Party Realignment in the Trump Era: Right Populists vs. Progressives

This content reflects the personal opinions of the author. It is accurate and true to the best of the authors knowledge and should not be substituted for impartial fact or advice in legal, political, or personal matters.

Question: Who is the leader of the Republican Party?

Answer: Donald Trump.

Question: Why doesn't Donald Trump believe in most of the typical Republican things besides immigration stances?

Answer: Donald Trump is not a typical Republican.

Question: Who is the the leader of the Green Party?

Answer: Jonathan Bartley and Sian Berry have been elected as new joint leaders of the Green Party.

Question: Why do people want to get rid of guns when it's against the second amendment of the U.S. Constitution?

Answer: People probably want to get rid of guns because they are so often used to kill people and they think that will help.

2011 Allen Donald

Continued here:
What Do Republicans Believe? 15 Things a Republican Stands For

In pivotal primary races from Nevada to South Carolina on Tuesday, Republican voters chose candidates who fervently embraced Donald Trumps lie about a stolen election, prompting warnings from Democrats that US democracy will be at stake in the November elections.

Victories of pro-Trump candidates in Nevada set the stage for match-ups between election-deniers and embattled Democrats in a state both parties see as critical in the midterms.

In South Carolina, a vote to impeach Trump for inciting the January 6 insurrection proved one Republicans undoing while another survived the former presidents wrath to win the nomination.

In south Texas, where Hispanic voters have shifted sharply toward the Republican party, a Republican flipped a House seat long held by a Democrat. The loss was a stark warning that Democrats standing with a crucial voting bloc is slipping.

Nevada, a swing state that has trended Democratic in past election cycles, will play host to a number of consequential races this fall, for House, Senate, governor and secretary of state, as Democrats seek to defend narrow majorities in Congress.

In the 50-50 Senate, every race will matter. But the party is saddled with a deeply unpopular president in a political system primed for revolt against the party in power. Inflation and the war in Ukraine have caused the cost of food and gas to shoot up while angst over gun violence and a shortage of baby formula deepens voter frustration.

Republicans view the Nevada Senate race as one of their best chances of flipping a Democratic seat. They also sense an opportunity to make inroads in a state dominated by Democrats who were guided to power by the late Senate majority leader, Harry Reid. The senator up for re-election, Catherine Cortez Masto, was his chosen successor.

Adam Laxalt, a former state attorney general endorsed by Trump, easily won the Republican primary to take on Cortez Masto in one of the most fiercely contested races of the cycle.

Jim Marchant, a former lawmaker who has dabbled in the Qanon conspiracy theory and openly embraced the idea of overturning elections, will be the Republican nominee to become secretary of state, and therefore the top election official in a swing state that could be key to determining the presidential contest in 2024.

The elevation of election-denying Republicans across the US comes even as a bipartisan House panel investigating the Capitol attack unspools damning testimony from Trumps inner circle, discrediting the former presidents claims.

In South Carolina, Republicans ousted the five-term incumbent, Tom Rice, who crossed Trump and loyalists by voting to impeach the former president.

Rice was defeated by Russell Fry, a Republican state lawmaker backed by Trump. The result was a welcome one for Trump after setbacks last month in races where Trump sought retribution against Republicans who rebuffed his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

But as in Georgia, there were limits to his influence. Another Republican House incumbent, Nancy Mace, fended off a Trump-backed challenger. Unlike in Rices staunchly conservative district, Mace who did not vote to impeach but did criticise Trump held on by attracting support from suburban voters who abandoned the party during the Trump years.

On social media, Trump spun the evening as a resounding success. Of Maces challenger, Katie Arrington, he said she was a very long-shot who did FAR better than anticipated.

The Impeacher was ousted without even a runoff. a GREAT night!, Trump wrote on his social media site, Truth Social, about Rice.

In Maine, Jared Golden, one of the few Democrats to represent a House district Trump carried, will attempt to defy political gravity in a rematch against the seats former representative, Bruce Poliquin. Golden narrowly beat Poliquin in the anti-Trump wave of 2018. With political winds reversed, Poliquin hopes to regain the seat.

The states combative former governor, Paul LePage, is also attempting a comeback. Facing no opposition, he clinched the Republican nomination to run against the incumbent, Janet Mills.

Perhaps most worrying for Democrats was the loss in south Texas. A Republican state representative, Mayra Flores, cruised to victory, avoiding a runoff against her main Democratic opponent, Dan Sanchez, in a special election to fill a seat vacated by a Democratic congressman, Filemn Vela.

Flores will have to run again in November. Because of redistricting, she is set to square off against the Democratic congressman Vicente Gonzalez in a district considerably more left-leaning than the one she will temporarily represent.

Nevertheless, some prognosticators moved their ratings for the district in Republicans favor, citing gains among Hispanic voters in the Rio Grande Valley.

In a memo from the National Republican Congressional Committee obtained by CNN, the party touted Flores victory as the culmination of efforts to recruit and run more diverse candidates and said it offered a blueprint for success in South Texas.

It concluded: This is the first of many Democrat-held seats that will flip Republican in 2022.

Read more:
Pro-Trump Republicans primary wins raise alarm about US democracy - The Guardian US

In the hearing room on Capitol Hill this week, a parade of Trump advisors testified that they tried to tell the President that he had lost the 2020 election. Its possible that Trump knew he had lost but decided to pursue another, more cynical route to power by persisting in whats come to be known as the Big Lie. Or its possible that Trumps narcissism was so powerful that he simply couldnt believe the experts and pursued the Big Lie out of a delusional fantasy. Sorting this out will keep historians and psychiatrists busy for years to come. In the meantime, however, the Big Lie has become a prominent feature of some Republican primary races around the country and one more way of measuring Donald Trumps strength within the Republican Party.

The importance of the Big Lie was on display in the June 14 Republican primary in South Carolina. It featured two House races in which Republican candidates embraced Trumps delusion against two incumbent Republicans who refused to go along. In South Carolinas 1st district, incumbent Nancy Mace, was running for a second term. In 2020, she flipped a Democratic seat, campaigning as a solid supporter of Trump and ran with Trumps endorsement. But, appalled by the January 6 rioters, in one of her first acts in Congress she refused to object to the certification of electors, and she called on Trump to get off Twitter. Her opposition to the Big Lie earned her Trumps enmity and a primary opponent, Katie Arrington, who had Trumps support. Because the two candidates share many of the same positions on issues, the race largely revolved around Maces betrayal of Trump. In South Carolinas 7th congressional district, incumbent Tom Rice, also broke with Trump over the January 6 riotsgoing even farther than Mace did by voting to impeach Trump. That got him a primary challenger, state representative Russell Fry, who has been running with Trumps endorsement. Unlike Mace, Rice has not tried to soften his opposition to the Big Lie. On primary night, Mace won her race and Rice lost his.

In our study of all the candidates to date, we broke the Big Lie down into three parts in order to get a more nuanced understanding of how Republicans are dealing with this issue. In one we looked to see if the candidate mentioned the January 6 attack on the Capitol and how they felt about it. In another we looked for the candidates views on the 2020 election and in yet another we looked for the candidates views on issues of election integrity in general. In House and Senate primaries, we coded candidates websites, Facebook pages, other social media platforms and media interviews. So far, we have evaluated 759 Republican House and Senate candidates.

Republican candidates generally refrained from discussing the January 6 riots in their campaign materials. As Table 1 indicates, only 38 candidates or 5.01% of all Republican candidates made statements to the effect that January 6 was the work of patriots legitimately protesting a corrupt election. Surprisingly, slightly more Republican candidates made statements indicating January 6 was a violent insurrection/coup attempt and steps must be taken to protect democracy63 candidates or 8.3% of the total. The vast majority of Republican candidates did not seek to opine on January 6. Nearly 87% made no mention of the event at all.

The final columns in Table 1 show the percentage of candidates in each category who actually won their races. Surprisingly, the candidates who spoke out against the insurrection did better than those who supported it, but the numbers are small, there are still candidates in runoffs and there are still races to be decided.

We also looked for statements showing how candidates felt about the legitimacy of the 2020 election. More candidates had opinions on this than they did on January 6 but still not very many. As Table 2 indicates, 65 candidates or 8.56% of all candidates to date campaigned on something to the effect of, Bidens win was a myth, and Trump would have won without voter fraud. Notably more candidates believed something like, the election should have been investigated further, but I dont believe Biden is illegitimate; 113 candidates or 14.89% of all candidates to date said something like that in their campaign materials or appearances. As one would imagine, practically no Republican candidates went so far as to state that Biden won the election fairly. But, perhaps most importantly, 74.7% or 567 candidates made no mention of the legitimacy of the 2020 election at all.

Candidates who took the more moderate position, that the election should have been investigated further, did better than candidates who bought into the Big Lie. Only 14 Republican candidates believed Biden was the clear winner and they did well too.

Finally, we looked for general statements about election integrity with a focus on the future not the past. In Table 3, 42.6% or 323 candidates made statements in favor of election reforms that would make it harder to cheat, and only 17 candidates or 2.24% of the total made statements indicating that theyd like to make it easier for people to vote. Clearly the former was a safe haven for most candidates: expressing concern about election integrity without having to support the violence around January 6 or the Big Lie. But even here the majority of Republican candidates419 candidates or 55.2% of the total candidates to datestayed away from the issue.

On this issue, overall election integrity, Republican candidates who were in favor of tightening voting rules in the name of improving election integrity did fairly well. No wonder so many Republican candidates adopted this position. It was a forward-looking position that allowed them to express some doubt about the past without getting mired in approving or disapproving the violence of January 6 and without getting sucked into conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

What are we to make of these findings?

First, January 6 and the 2020 elections do not loom as large in the minds of Republican candidates in 2022 as they do in the mind of Donald Trump.

Second, to the despair of many Republicans, Trumps strategy for the 2022 midterms has been all about him and the 2020 election. It is a backwards looking strategy that has resulted in mixed verdicts on Trump all across the countryas it did in South Carolina on June 14. And third, most of his victories are in deep red states and districts. Trump is not changing hearts and minds as much as he is activating a cadre of 2020 voters who are among his most passionate and committed.

Read more:
What impact are the events of January 6 having on the Republican primaries? - Brookings Institution