Mediaboss Marketing

For a long time, longer than Ive held this job, my advice to Republican politicians and policymakers has been consistent: It isnt the 1970s or 1980s anymore. The ideas associated with Ronald Reagans ascent to power, forged in an era of Cold War and high crime rates, stagflation and sexual revolution, were responses to crises and challenges decades in the past, and the G.O.P. was doomed to cycles of failure until it devised an agenda more fitted to the times.

The year 2021, though, is the first time a reasonable Republican could listen to my pitch and answer, but what if history is repeating itself, and were back in Reagans world?

First, inflation has returned at last. Since early in the Obama era Republicans have consistently warned that Democratic spending (or the Federal Reserves expansion of the money supply) would bring back 1970s-style inflation rates, and time and again those predictions turned out wrong. But the combination of the Biden administrations oversize burst of stimulus and not-quite-post-Covid supply-chain issues has finally generated real inflationary conditions not the conspiratorial Shadowstats version but the real thing, the kind that palpably affects prices and paychecks and politics itself.

Second, crime is a major political issue once again. After a horrendous spike in the murder rate last year, the data for 2021 so far shows a much lower increase but thats still an increase on top of 2020s surge, so the overall homicide rate continues to climb. Meanwhile, its easy to notice indicators of collapsing public authority that evoke the no radio signs that used to adorn New York City cars from The San Francisco Chronicle tweeting recently that the citys residents were debating whether to tolerate burglaries as a part of city living, and focus on barricading homes to a brazen incident of alleged large-scale shoplifting in Oxford, Conn., not that far from my own home, that became a viral video.

Third, for the first time since the Reagan era, the United States has a true great power rival in China and a zone of Cold War-style brinkmanship around Taiwan. Post-Reagan, Republican hawks were always looking for the next organizing threat for U.S. foreign policy, but their attempt to cast Islamic fundamentalism as a new Red Menace led only to disaster and the evaporation of the G.O.P.s traditional advantage on foreign policy. But the Biden administrations stumbling withdrawal from Afghanistan (however correct and even gutsy the strategic decision) and the backdrop of growing Chinese power have evoked the Carter era the Iran hostage crisis, the fear of Soviet expansionism more than anything that happened under Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.

Finally, the vaulting ambitions of cultural progressivism, the march of activist ideas through elite institutions and public bureaucracies, have given Republicans a chance to regain the culture-war advantages that they lost during the socially liberal years between Bill Clintons impeachment and the Supreme Courts establishment of a right to same-sex marriage. As in the 1970s, the cultural left has lately won a series of victories but then has run way ahead of them, creating a gap between its vanguard ideas and public opinion, and a clear opportunity just ask Glenn Youngkin for conservative counterattack.

Of course, history doesnt really repeat itself so neatly. Both the inflation spike and the murder surge have been mediated by pandemic conditions in ways that make them more likely to recede rapidly than their antecedents in the 70s and 80s. (My own suspicion is that the norm of masking in liberal cities has facilitated crime, which is another reason for blue America to seek a more rapid exit from its Covid rules.)

Meanwhile the comparison to Carter-era foreign policy is at the very least inexact the new Cold War doesnt look much like the old one, given the murky nature of the ideological confrontation and the uncertain place China occupies in the American imagination, while Bidens tactical stumble in Afghanistan may well fade from public memory rather than becoming a presidency-defining story like the Iran hostage crisis.

Finally, whatever culture-war advantage the Great Awokening has handed to Republicans, the cultural right still has deep structural weaknesses relative to the Reagan era, given the decline of religious affiliation and family formation since the 1980s and the growth of progressive ideological influence not just in Hollywood or the academy but in Silicon Valley and corporate America writ large. And the aftermath of a Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade might (depending on the pro-life movements response) send the public-opinion pendulum swinging back toward social liberalism.

All of which is to say that Republicans would be foolish to assume, and Democrats wrong to fear, that the dynamics of 2021 will prevail throughout the 2020s, delivering a simple replay of the rise of Reaganism.

But for the electoral landscape of this specific moment, and the politics of 2022, the G.O.P. has advantages unlike any in my pundits lifetime a chance to win, and maybe win big, by eschewing the unpleasant work of adaptation and simply playing those 1980s hits again.

Read this article:
Opinion | How Republicans Can Replay the Reagan Era - The New York Times

REPUBLICANS AND COMMISSIONERS

Notice a pattern?

Republicans in control of the Senate are threatening to reject the confirmation of Minnesota Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm ("Health care chief on the bubble," Oct. 31). While public servants in this capacity have become targets of public wrath, it appears to me that Minnesota Republicans spend an inordinate amount of time targeting women in public office. Just last July, Laura Bishop, commissioner of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, resigned because Senate Republicans were prepared to oust her. Now 2022 is fast upon us, and if it were up to me I would make certain that every one of the eligible voters among the 2,745,132 females in Minnesota were aware of this issue.

Dan Gunderson, Minneapolis

Thank you, Jan Malcolm, for your never-wavering direction during an unprecedented journey through a novel pandemic. Shame on Republicans trying to use you as a political football. My relative in North Dakota recently almost died because there were literally no beds available at a hospital at the level he needed for his condition, anywhere in the state, due to demand for COVID treatment. Fortunately he was allowed to stay several days in an ER for treatment.

This is exactly the scene Jan Malcolm has worked tirelessly to prevent in Minnesota. Politicians, stop interfering in subjects you aren't trained in, and keep your hands off my right to scientifically informed public health.

Susan Corrado, Minneapolis

WHAT PEOPLE GET PAID

A little humility, please?

"Reform" is a word we hear quite a bit today. Reform for government, for policies, the Police Department, rent costs, drug pricing, health care, the minimum wage and so on. How about a little reform for the salaries of those who lead professional sports teams? P.J. Fleck, for example $35 million? (" 'It's home': Fleck gets 7-year deal," Sports, Nov. 4.)

Give everyone a break. Look at how ridiculous this is. His salary could do so much to help others who need it. Do we really need to pay a coach that much for a job that has little or no real socially redeeming value? P.J. could still be a coach and provide fans with a potentially great team. But, whatever happened to doing it for the love of the game? This salary is fundamentally and ethically wrong.

Susan J. Carlson, Wayzata

I am dismayed by the John Deere workers' rejection of a 10% raise in their contract (Nation & World, Nov. 4). As an RN in an ICU for 32 years, I do not believe I ever received more than a 3% raise at contract time and often less than that. It seems to me that 10% is a lot of money and a generous offer. Shouldn't we all be trying to compromise and be willing to set the stage on future negotiations for a less adversarial discussion/debate?

Susan Parham, Eagan

ELECTION RESULTS

Police reform now is up to all of us

Those in Minneapolis who want police reforms, no matter if they voted for or against City Question 2, now have an opportunity to see that serious reform efforts are implemented. A good starting list of reform items was suggested in a letter to the editor ("Next, the hard part," Nov. 4). Our mayor, police chief and City Council members will be coming up with additional reform points.

I suggest that Minneapolis residents study the proposed reform items, choose one that interests them especially, and commit to working on that point, by joining committees, forming task forces, contacting city officials and legislators, and following progress on the reform points of choice, to help further our citywide efforts to bring about police reform and increased public safety for our city's people. If we, as city residents want to have a better police force and public safety, it's up to us to be part of making it happen.

Lois Willand, Minneapolis

Just a little quibble about the Nov. 4 letter from our neighbor in Richfield, who weighs in on common sense vs. nonsense in Minneapolis and Virginia.

Yes, I entirely agree that Minneapolis voters used common sense to defeat Question 2. But equating this with what occurred in Virginia is where he lost me.

In Virginia, a very vocal group of frightened white folks fought to stop critical race theory from being taught in their schools. (FYI: Critical race theory is actually not being taught in Virginia K-12 schools though considering the vote, I'm guessing it should be!)

This sounds to me much more like the nonsense our writer spoke of. Just another "problem" in search of a solution. And the entire campaign was based on fear of the other.

Nope. That doesn't make "common" sense to me.

Carin Peterson, Minneapolis

I voted for Meg Forney for the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board because of her qualifications. I did not give a second thought as to her gender. ("Women take over Park Board," front page, Nov. 5.) As to Forney's assertion that it is more likely that women "can govern in a more collaborative way," she forgets it was men like Theodore Wirth who provided the vision for the park system she now represents.

Emanuel Gaziano, Minneapolis

PRE-ELECTION ANALYSIS

'Magical thinking' comes from the centrists

D.J. Tice's Oct. 31 drive through the bucolic countryside of "moderates" past the urban chaos of Minneapolis politics fails to mention the proximate cause of that chaos the murder of George Floyd ("Experiencing political homelessness, makeshift moderates look for shelter"). Police-murder-with-impunity finally got the attention it deserved, and the bloody mess isn't likely to stop stinking anytime soon.

But Tice suddenly crosses the centerline, veers into a ditch and bleeds economic ignorance:

"Ours is an age of magical thinking. Government, we've been told under the auspices of 'Modern Monetary Theory,' can borrow any amount of money it pleases without consequence, and policymakers have long behaved as if they believed this. So naturally we're puzzled to see inflation rising, even after a decade and a half of easy money ."

If Tice had bothered to read Stephanie Kelton's recent book "The Deficit Myth," he would know that MMT adherents are perfectly clear about the consequences of, and limits on, so-called "easy money."

And although Kelton is more temperate about it, the idea that the federal government "borrows" the money it spends is pure fraud. We, the people, don't "borrow" our own money; we manage it.

The specious notion that easy money drives today's inflation ignores the economy of COVID and former Fed governor Daniel Tarullo's hapless admission that, "we do not, at present, have a theory of inflation dynamics that works sufficiently well to be of use for the business of real-time monetary policy-making."

A good amount of "magical thinking" in politics emanates from "centrists" who would prescribe Band-Aids for arterial bleeding.

William Beyer, St. Louis Park

'GRASSLANDS UPROOTED'

The farmland solution

"Grasslands uprooted" (front page, Oct. 24) was certainly a sobering article about the fate of prairie habitat. Much as with the Amazon rainforest, farmers experience pressure to put every arable acre under the plow. Increasing acreage planted is the most direct way to increase farm revenue, converting something that is owned but not used into a revenue-generating asset. The general impression from business reporting is that farming is risky, something for only those who inherit land or who work for agribusinesses. Use of labor on farms is generally going down as the use of machinery and technology increases. So the pressure is on farmers, and they are putting pressure on the land.

The urban parts of Minnesota, even the metropolitan statistical area of St. Cloud, have experienced employment and income growth, while the farmers generally have not experienced the same level of dependable growth. If Minnesotans as a whole want to preserve prairie habitat in sufficient quantity to sustain the ecology and wildlife of our state, it will be necessary to buy, not rent, what is now farmland. It also will be necessary to bring a diverse employment base to rural parts of the state so that those who are being displaced from farming by climate change, agribusiness practices and barriers to entry have alternate means to stay gainfully employed in their communities.

Clinton Kennedy, Lakeville

See the rest here:
Readers Write: Republicans and commissioners, what people get paid, election results and analysis, 'grasslands uprooted' - Minneapolis Star Tribune

TOPEKA Kansas Republicans serving in Congress continued to raise objections Friday to the COVID-19 vaccination mandate rolled out by President Joe Biden applicable nationwide to private businesses with at least 100 employees.

The five GOP members in the delegation raised constitutional criticisms about requiring millions of people to be vaccinated during the pandemic and argued decisions about medical care ought to be left to individuals. Theyve also expressed displeasure with Bidens vaccination order aimed at employees and contractors of the federal government.

U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, of Manhattan, joined dozens of senators in a procedural effort to nullify Bidens vaccine mandate for private employees under a process allowing Congress to challenge executive branch regulations.

The decision to get vaccinated should be left to each individual in consultation with doctors they trust, Moran said. I ask the president to eliminate this mandate and let the decisions be made back home, between employee and employer.

Under the rule issued Thursday by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, an estimated 84 million American people working at companies with at least 100 employees must be fully vaccinated by Jan. 4 or be tested for COVID-19 on a weekly basis.

A separate rule released from the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services mandated health care workers to be vaccinated by Jan. 4, but those 17 million people at health facilities receiving federal funding from Medicaid or Medicare wont have the option of weekly testing.

Together, these rules will cover about 100 million Americans two-thirds of all workers in America, Biden said in a statement from the White House. As weve seen with businesses large and small across all sectors of our economy, the overwhelming majority of Americans choose to get vaccinated. There have been no mass firings and worker shortages because of vaccination requirements. Despite what some predicted and falsely assert, vaccination requirements have broad public support.

Biden ordered federal government employees to be vaccinated by Nov. 22 and people working at companies or institutions contracting with the federal government have until Jan. 4 to complete the vaccination process.

U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, a physician from Great Bend, said extending vaccination mandates to U.S. employers with greater than 100 people on the payroll would disrupt the economy by driving people from jobs, hobbling the supply chain and adding to inflationary pressures.

Setting the deadline after the holiday season indicates Biden understands the vaccination order on big businesses will cause economic challenges, Marshall said.

This federal vaccine mandate is unconstitutional and I cant think of a worse decision for Joe Biden to make right now, he said.

U.S. Rep. Ron Estes, who serves the 4th District that includes Wichita, said the president was improperly forcing people to make choices between getting the vaccination and staying in the workforce and adhering to personal convictions and losing a job.

This mandate does not instill confidence in the vaccine, which millions of Americans have freely chosen to take and experience its benefits, but instead it pushes the federal government deeper into the lives of our families and businesses. Regardless of ones views on the effectiveness of the vaccine, its clear this mandate is an overreach of the federal government and should not be implemented, Estes said.

U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner, of the 2nd District that includes Topeka, said the Biden administrations vaccine mandates were an authoritarian power grab and OSHA didnt possess authority to compel Americans to be vaccinated or to undergo testing. In a similar vein, U.S. Rep. Tracey Mann of western Kansas 1st District said the vaccination order for businesses was a gross misuse of executive order privilege.

U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, a Democrat serving the 3rd District of Johnson and Wyandotte counties, has been a consistent advocate for voluntary vaccinations along with several GOP members of the Kansas delegation to Washington, D.C.

More:
Kansas Republicans in Congress rip vaccination order applied to workers of private businesses - Kansas Reflector

During his Virginia gubernatorial campaign, Republican Glenn Youngkin's red sweater vest became a sartorial celebrity.

Media from The New York Times to Politico to Rolling Stone referenced the comfy attire Youngkin donned at rallies.

Now after winning an upset victory over Democrat Gov. Terry McAuliffe, there's much ado about whether Youngkin's Virginia playbook will work in other states including Illinois when the 2022 midterm elections arrive.

Politics aside, Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker is no novice at the sweater vest game. Although typically adorned in a business suit, Pritzker has his own version of the power sweater vest that's appeared at a number of events.

What's the significance of sweater vests?

Harper College's Nupur Sharma thinks that "sweater vests are the underdogs of the fashion world."

The garment emerged during the Great Depression as a cheaper alternative to waistcoats, explained Sharma, an associate professor of fashion studies.

As other fashion trends emerged, people started associating it with an older, avuncular person, she noted.

Sweater vests did get a boost in the show "Friends," from the quirky character Chandler Bing who often sported them. "Chandler was a lovable loser that everyone could relate to," Sharma said. "He wasn't hoity-toity."

That cozy chic not only conveys a down-to-earth, approachable kindliness you don't get by wearing an Armani suit, it's also accessible, she noted. "Sweater vests are made by Old Navy," as well as pricier brands.

Original post:
Who wears the power sweater vest better? Democrats or Republicans? - Daily Herald

At least 10 Republicans who attended the Jan. 6 rally in Washington, D.C., that turned into a deadly insurrection were elected to office Tuesday.

Three were elected to state legislatures, and seven won positions at the local level.

Although most have claimed they didnt breach the U.S. Capitol on that day, all were participants in the demonstration leading up to the attack, standing alongside extremists to take part in the finale of a months-long anti-democratic campaign to falsely claim that then-President Donald Trump hadnt really lost the 2020 election.

Their victories on Tuesday are a possible sign of things to come: HuffPost previously identified at 57 state and local GOP officials who attended the Jan. 6 rally, many of whom will be up for reelection and will likely keep office next year.

That these candidates enjoy the support of the wider Republican Party and are winning elections does not bode well for American democracy, showing that one of the countrys major political parties, despite some initial gestures at being horrified by the events of Jan. 6, is almost completely unrepentant over its role in fomenting the historic attack on the Capitol.

Among the Jan. 6 attendees who won office on Tuesday were two Republicans reelected to the Virginia House of Delegates: Dave LaRock and John McGuire.

Bill Clark via Getty Images

Earlier this year LaRock, responding to criticism from a Black elected official about his role in the insurrection, said the official should focus on the needs of the colored community. (He later apologized for the comment.)

McGuire won his seat despite his Democratic opponent unearthing a photo showing him standing near men in paramilitary gear confronting police on Jan. 6. McGuire had previously claimed he hadnt heard of the violence at the U.S. Capitol until returning home. The news, he said, had shocked and horrified him.

Marie March, a restaurant owner who bragged in a campaign advertisement about her attendance at the Jan. 6 Stop the Steal rally and who in a since-deleted Facebook post warned of a coming Civil War in which she would be willing to fight and die for both her family and small businesses, also won a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates on Tuesday.

In city councils across the country, Jan. 6 rally attendee Natalie Jangula won a seat in Nampa, Idaho, and Christine Ead, who did not enter the Capitol building and later wrote a Facebook post falsely blaming the violence on ANTIFA and other anarchists, won a seat in Watchung, New Jersey.

Charles Ausburger also won a seat on the town council of Mansfield, Connecticut, an official at the town clerks office confirmed to HuffPost. Ausburger didnt have to campaign too hard though: There were only eight candidates for the nine-seat council.

Susan Soloway, who helped organized a bus to transport Trump supporters to the Jan. 6 rally, won reelection to the Hunterdon County, New Jersey, Board of Directors. Soloway attended the rally and later posted on Facebook a selfie outside of the Capitol, which she later deleted. She claims not to have entered the building, and to have turned over footage she took at the riot to the FBI.

In Braintree, Massachusetts, a former high school teacher who resigned his position after local activists sent a photo of him outside the Capitol on Jan. 6 to the FBI, won a seat on the local school committee. Matthew Lynch received the second most votes in the six-candidate race for three open school committee seats. He told Patch earlier this year that the FBI has visited him twice since Jan. 6, but did not elaborate on what occurred during those interviews. In his correspondence with Patch, he accused the activists of slandering me as a domestic terrorist, and called them a digital Lynch mob. Its unclear if he breached the Capitol building.

And in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, wife-husband duo Danielle and Stephen Lindemuth who were part of a bus trip to the rally from nearby Lancaster won two seats on the school board. The couple, according to The Lancaster Online, campaigned on promising to keep critical race theory and The 1619 Project out of schools. In a March school board meeting on Zoom, the couple who have said multiple bigoted things online complained about a poster in their daughters classroom depicting Black Lives Matter protesters. Stephen Lindemuth told the school board that Black Lives Matter was a Marxist organization with anti-American values that are largely anti-family.

At least one race involving a Jan. 6 attendees is still undecided. Monica Manthey is still awaiting results in her race to join the Annapolis, Maryland, city council.

Im not a crazy insurrectionist person, Manthey, who attended the rally but claimed she didnt enter the Capitol building on Jan. 6, insisted to HuffPost on Wednesday morning. Asked if the riot made her rethink her support of Trump, Manthey replied: I never rethought my support.

Elsewhere across the country, at least five Jan. 6 attendees were defeated at the ballot box. In Virginia, two candidates Maureen Brody and Phillp Hamilton lost their bids to join the House of Delegates.

Paul Weaver/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Steve Lynch, who pushed debunked conspiracy theories that the siege of the Capitol was a false flag event carried out by leftists, lost his race for county executive in Northampton County, Pennsylvania.

Incumbent T.J. Onerlaw, who said he got pretty darn close to where the door is at the Capitol but was unaware until later that night that anyone had breached the building, was defeated in his quest for another term in the Mason, Ohio, city council.

And Edward Durfee Jr., a member of the far-right militia the Oath Keepers, a group heavily implicated in the violence on Jan. 6, lost a race for a seat in the New Jersey General Assembly. Durfee, who previously told BuzzFeed News he did not storm the Capitol but was working as security for the Oath Keepers, currently heads up the Republican Party in Northvale, New Jersey.

Go here to read the rest:
At Least 10 Republicans Who Were At The Jan. 6 Rally Just Got Elected To Office - HuffPost