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Martha McSallyMartha Elizabeth McSallyPolitics and the pandemic Republicans are rightly worried NRSC outraises DSCC in February Florida Republican becomes first lawmaker to test positive for coronavirus MORE complained it was "inexcusable" the president was so "unprepared" for the virus epidemic: "Real leadership means taking action before there's a crisis."

No, the Arizona Republican then a Congresswoman wasn't talking about President TrumpDonald John TrumpBlame game heats up as Senate motion fails Trump approves disaster declaration for coronavirus in California Why studying persistent post-traumatic headaches in soldiers matter MORE's tragic failure to respond early to the Coronavirus pandemic: It was 2014, and she was assailing Barack Obama on the Ebola scare.

On the infinitely more serious current crisis, McSally now a Senator gushes about Trump's "decisive" leadership.

The politics of Coronavirus, which isshutting down much of the country, throwing the economy into a tailspin and threatening the health of perhaps millions of Americans, will play out in the weeks and months ahead. The downside is with Trump and Republicans.

This may be especially troublesome for a half dozen embattled incumbent Republican senators who savaged Obama for his handling of the Ebola health scare six years ago. Today, they are rallying behind the president.

That's not easy.

Few presidents have botched a crisis the way Trump did for almost two months. The administration already had downgraded resources for addressing a pandemic, an issue of little interest to Trump until it finally dawned on himthat the United States faces the most severe health crisis since the Influenza of 1918 which killed 675,000 Americans.

As enumerated by David Leonhardt for the New York Times, Trump repeatedly and recklessly dismissed this pandemic as a nothingburger. On Jan. 22, he declared it was "totally under control." Over the next few weeks he insisted only a handful of Americans would be affected by the virus, that when spring arrives it miraculously goes away, that it was a fiction of fake news and a Democratic hoax," like impeachment.

Only two weeks ago, he falsely claimed there was sufficient testing for everyone.

Eleven days ago finally he gave an address to a nervous country. The speech, apparently crafted by his often-clueless son-in-law Jared KushnerJared Corey KushnerPolitics and the pandemic Republicans are rightly worried In the Saudi-Russian oil price war, the US blinks first Coronavirus could keep Trump in the White House MORE, lacked a sense of crisis and made misrepresentations which had to be corrected.

As our American Nero calculated the political impact on his reelection, here's what transpired: The first reported case in the U.S. was on Jan. 20 in two months, this has soared to more than 26,000 cases with 340 deaths. These numbers are expected to climb sharply over the next few months. Worldwide, the total now over 316,000 cases.

Let's contrast that with the Republican uproar over the Ebola scare in 2014. That was chiefly an African plague affecting 28,000 people, a fraction of the toll Coronavirus already has taken. In the United States there were a grand total of 11 people infected and four deaths.

Yet in mid-October of that year, I was in North Carolina covering a Senate race at an event dominated by Republican Thom TillisThomas (Thom) Roland TillisPolitics and the pandemic Republicans are rightly worried Brady PAC endorses Biden, plans to spend million in 2020 McConnell cancels Senate break over coronavirus MORE's denunciation of Obama's dangerous dereliction on the Ebola crisis, putting he claimed a political hack in charge of meeting the challenge.The so-called hack was Ron Klain, a business executive and former Supreme Court clerk as well as political counselor; he's widely credited with successfully marshaling a multi-billion effort to stem the epidemic.

Six years later, Tillis is singing a different tune for an infinitely more serious matter; running for reelection, he praises Trump's "decisive leadership," and calls for the countrys leaders "to set aside our partisan differences."

Tillis and McSally aren't the only two-faced politicians on this score.In 2014, Iowa Republican Senate candidate Joni ErnstJoni Kay ErnstPolitics and the pandemic Republicans are rightly worried Ernst calls for public presidential campaign funds to go to masks, protective equipment GOP lukewarm on talk of airline bailout MORE was outraged at Obama being "apathetic" and merely "reactive" and questioned whether he really cared about the safety of the American people. She has been silent on Trump's dawdling and denying and wants a bi-partisan partnership.Georgia Republican Sen. David Purdue six years ago bemoaned a "lack of leadership." Now he says Vice President Pence, who is in charge of the administration's policies, is doing a "fantastic job."

Republicans enjoy a 53-47 Senate advantage, and the conventional wisdom is they'll lose no more than a net of one or two seats and retain control. Those odds changed a few weeks ago when Montana's popular Democratic Governor, Steve BullockSteve BullockPolitics and the pandemic Republicans are rightly worried The Hill's Campaign Report: Biden moves to unify party before general election Poll shows Daines, Bullock neck and neck in Montana Senate race MORE, after resisting for a year, jumped in the Senate race to face a colorless Republican incumbent.

Now the terrible pandemic crisis will complicate the election prospects for the likes of Tillis, McSally and Ernst, maybe others.

Their only hope on this issue is voters have a short memory.

Al Hunt is the former executive editor of Bloomberg News. He previously served as reporter, bureau chief and Washington editor for the Wall Street Journal. For almost a quarter century he wrote a column on politics for The Wall Street Journal, then the International New York Times and Bloomberg View. Follow him on Twitter@AlHuntDC.

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Politics and the pandemic Republicans are rightly worried | TheHill - The Hill

The Maine Republican Party will move ahead with a petition drive to try to block a ranked form of voting as much of the state shuts down due to coronavirus.

Mainers are scheduled to use ranked-choice voting in a presidential election for the first time in November.

The voting system allows people to pick second-choice candidates, and redistributes votes in a run-off style ranked round.

Republican opponents of the voting method have been gathering signatures to try to force a peoples veto vote about the law that allows ranked-choice presidential elections. They need 63,000 signatures by June to get the veto on the ballot. If its on the ballot, Maine wont use ranked choice for the presidential election this year.

Signature gatherers had been turning up at public events, such as Election Day polls, but Maine Republican Chair Demi Kouzounas said they will now bring petitions direct to potential signers. They will take necessary precautions in doing so, she said.

We are doing drive-thru stop-and-sign events in areas where people can stop and sign while following social distancing guidelines, pens are single-use, hand sanitizer being used, everything is outside, etc., Maine Republican executive director Jason Savage said. Tactical shift.

For most people, COVID-19 results in only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. People with mild illness recover in about two weeks, while those with more severe illness may take three to six weeks to recover, according to the World Health Organization.

Maines the only state in the U.S. with ranked-choice voting. Petitioners are about half way to their signature goal, the Maine Republican Party said.

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Maine Republicans to continue petition drive to block ranked-choice voting - Press Herald

His aides had never been told Mr. Paul might have been exposed to the virus or had been tested for it, according to a person familiar with the situation, and some began to fear that they could have contracted it and spread it to their friends and family before the office began working remotely, days after Mr. Paul attended the fund-raiser. Mr. Paul attended the fund-raiser on a Saturday and arrived in Washington the next Monday evening. His office closed to work remotely three days later.

Senior officials in Mr. Pauls Washington office told their staffs that none of them were at risk, the person said. But the aides remained livid that they were informed of Mr. Pauls exposure only minutes before their office publicly announced his positive test results.

Despite the panic prompted by Mr. Pauls announcement, on Monday, debate on the Senate floor proceeded mostly as usual albeit in more fiery terms with lawmakers filing into the chamber to vote and sitting in their desks next to one another. But the specter of the coronavirus weighed heavily over the proceedings.

As Mr. Durbin concluded a speech with his call for remote voting, Senator Jim Risch, Republican of Idaho, approached him. Both men kept their arms crossed, and Mr. Durbin slowly backed away step by step as they spoke, creating more and more distance between them.

Mr. Pauls announcement appeared to have won over some converts for the idea of remote voting. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who had previously shrugged off the suggestion, took to Twitter to offer his support for the idea.

We should make this change before the Senate leaves town, Mr. Graham wrote.

There is no indication that House or Senate leaders are moving toward doing so. A report released Monday night by Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts and the chairman of the House Rules Committee, underscored the hurdles both technical and legal such a move would create, and instead recommended using existing practices, like adopting legislation by unanimous consent.

For now, senators are maintaining their routine albeit from a substantial distance, and under considerably more stress.

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Rand Pauls Positive Coronavirus Test Sets the (Still Meeting) Senate on Edge - The New York Times

LaFleur Stephens-Dougan, a political scientist at Princeton and the author of Race to the Bottom: How Racial Appeals Work in American Politics, wrote me in an email:

Most Americans have a distorted definition of racism. We think of racism as person-to-person acts of prejudice like using a slur. Such behavior is racist, but racism is far more than that. We have baked racism into our political institutions and economic systems.

It is important, Stephens-Dougan argues, to ask people why they think black and Latino neighborhoods struggle with poor school and higher levels of crime. If ones answer, she continued, is that those neighborhoods are under-resourced because blacks and Latinos are less smart, less hardworking or less disciplined, etc., then that answer is racist.

Ryan Enos, a political scientist at Harvard, applies what he calls the Golden Rule of Intergroup Relations which means that if you would be upset if somebody did something to or said something about your own group, then it is bigotry if you say it about or do it to another group.

Ashley Jardina, a political scientist at Duke and the author of White Identity Politics, put it this way:

The use of these terms is complicated, messy, and without consensus. There are a number of important distinctions we can make. We think of racial prejudice as an individual-level sense of hostility, animus, set of negative stereotypes, or other negative attitudes that one person has toward members of a group by way of their race. We refer to a person as racist when they have some degree of racial prejudice. For most Americans, this is generally what they think of when they hear the term racism or racist. A racist is a person who uses racial slurs directed at racial out-groups and thinks their own racial group is superior.

Lets turn back to Darren Davis of Notre Dame. I asked Davis and other scholars whether Asian-American protests in New York City against the potential elimination of entrance exams as the sole determinant of entry into selective high schools like Stuyvesant or Bronx Science were racist. Likewise, is the opposition of well off suburbanites to affordable housing in their neighborhoods racist? Is the number of African-Americans in prison evidence of racism? And is white opposition to the decarceration movement, or to the prison abolition movement, racist?

Davis stresses that, in his view, not all racialized behavior and expressions stem from racial hatred or hating African Americans. He is cautious in his wording:

Ordinary citizens, without being racists themselves, may do and say things that are consistent with a racist ideology. It does not make the outcomes any less egregious or harmful. For instance, Asian-Americans protesting NYC school proposals is not necessarily racist in my opinion because I can see other motivations driving the support for higher standards not just beliefs about the inferiority of others.

Davis argues that the debate has become clouded, that even though individual and group motives may not be racist, the outcomes achieved can be identical to the ones that racists would seek:

My overall point is that we have forgotten what racism means. In doing so, we have focused attention on bigots and white nationalists and not held ordinary citizens accountable for beliefs that achieve the same ends.

Chloe Thurston, in turn, cited as specific examples

President Trumps or Steve Kings comments about certain types of immigrants being unassimilable or not sufficiently American and suggesting that other (e.g. white) immigrants do not have those characteristics.

While both Trump and King, an anti-immigrant congressman from Iowa, balk at the label racist, she continued, it is descriptively accurate and necessary from the standpoint of keeping track of the role and uses of racism in American society and politics.

Like Davis, Thurston sought to address the more difficult question of when it is legitimate to use that label for everyday behaviors.

Her answer:

People can participate in and perpetuate racist systems without necessarily subscribing to those beliefs. People can recognize something they participate in or contribute to as racist but decide its not disqualifying. And people can design racist policies and systems. These are distinctive manifestations of racism but not all of them require us to know whether a person is expressly motivated by racism.

Cindy Kam a political scientist at Vanderbilt, and a co-author with Camille Burge, a political scientist at Villanova, of Uncovering Reactions to the Racial Resentment Scale Across the Racial Divide added another element to the discussion: wariness about how the word is used in political and policy debates:

As a social scientist, I would entertain the possibility that peoples actions are guided by a variety of motivations, potentially including racial considerations but also values (i.e., a commitment to a free market; egalitarianism; moral conservatism); economic considerations; self-interest (concerns about my childs ability to get into a high school or my childs commute to a faraway school), or even factual beliefs.

Because of the wide variety of possible motivations, Kam wrote in her email, she would hesitate to label an action as racist unless racial considerations seem to be the only or the massively determinative consideration at play, based upon statistical modeling or carefully calibrated experiments.

Kam notes that she worries about excessive use of these labels because describing someone or some action as racist can easily escalate conflict beyond the point of return.

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How Racist Is Trumps Republican Party? - The New York Times

In just over 24 hours, some 12,000 people shared a post from the Kenosha County Democratic party slamming the coronavirus vote by Wisconsins Republican congressional delegation.

The emergency measure which includes free testing for COVID-19, paid emergency leave and other emergency appropriations easily passed both houses of Congress and was signed into law by President Donald Trump on March 18, 2020.

But it passed without much help from Wisconsin.

The Kenosha Democrats seized on that fact in a March 19, 2020, Facebook post. The post explained the bill, commented on gerrymandering and noted the GOP no votes from purple Wisconsin went beyond the breakdown from even the deepest red of the red states.

It was accompanied by a graphic with pictures of U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson and U.S. Reps. Mike Gallagher, Glenn Grothman, Jim Sensenbrenner and Bryan Steil that said this: "WI is the ONLY state where all Republicans voted against protecting its citizens."

This post was flagged as part of Facebooks efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

Lets check it out.

The votes

The bill passed 363-40 in the U.S. House and 90-8 in the U.S. Senate.

Indeed, all five Republicans in the Wisconsin delegation cast a no vote, according to roll calls published by ProPublica. All four state Democrats voted for the bill.

And, yes, that clean sweep of Republican votes was unique around the country.

In Oklahoma both Republican senators voted against the bill, but two of three Republican representatives supported it. Iowas lone Republican representative voted no, but both Republican senators there supported the bill.

The summary

That leaves us to look at the characterization that Wisconsin Republicans "voted against protecting (the states) citizens"?

Like anything in politics, its more complicated than that. In various statements issued after the votes, the states Republican lawmakers didnt object to the concept of providing help amid the pandemic, but they took issue with numerous specifics in the bill and how the process was handled.

Sensenbrenner objected to spending money on a bill that he said stretched 100 pages and was presented with less than 30 minutes to review.

"We do not know the full cost of this legislation," he said in a statement. "I am not a fan of passing bills to find out what is in them."

Steil told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel he voted against the bill because it "places a heavy government mandate on Wisconsin small businesses that are already suffering negative consequences from coronavirus."

Gallagher echoed those comments in a statement, saying he feared the bill would hurt small businesses.

"This bill, while well-intentioned, contains a number of unclear provisions that could force small businesses in Northeast Wisconsin to lay off workers or cause them to close their doors altogether," Gallagher said. "Let me be clear: H.R. 6201 contained a number of good provisions like free testing that weve already successfully fought for. But I have serious questions as to whether the best way to support those needing paid and sick leave is through tax credits to small businesses instead of direct payments to those affected."

Lori Hawkins, chair of the Kenosha County Democratic Party, defended the description in the Facebook post. She said the bill guided both testing and treatment to help control the spread of the disease.

"A 'no' vote by our elected officials was a vote against protecting their constituents from this highly contagious disease which has already been deadly to residents in Wisconsin," she said in an email.

Our ruling

A viral Facebook post said Wisconsin "is the only state where all Republicans voted against protecting its citizens."

It is indeed the only state where all Republicans opposed the bill, which has now become law.

But its a bit of an exaggeration to summarize their decisions as a vote "against protecting (Wisconsin) citizens." And of course this is expected to be just the first of many bills addressing the coronavirus fallout.

We rate this claim Mostly True.

Originally posted here:
Yes, Wisconsin is the only state where all Republicans opposed coronavirus bill - PolitiFact