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And if the sane Republicans leaving don't speak up, and talk only in careful code, what responsibility do they have for what's left?

These are the thoughts spurred by the news last week that state Sen. Nicole Poolman, sane Republican from Bismarck, will not run for re-election in 2022. She cited family and professional reasons, but also said these "toxic times" in politics weighed in her decision.

Since Republicans hold a super-majority in North Dakota politics and you can fit all the Democrats in the Legislature in a thimble, we presume Poolman was referring to her GOP counterparts.

The same poisonous right-wing, loony-tune politics that have become popular around the United States in the Donald Trump era are overtaking the Republican Party in North Dakota. The non-existent problem of Critical Race Theory, the belief Trump won the 2020 election, the wild-eyed frothing over masks and COVID vaccines, the intimidation of school boards, support of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists .... it's all here in North Dakota.

And it's only going to get worse.

Poolman, best as we can tell, doesn't belong to the wacky wing of the Republican Party although the line between normal and wacky has moved decidedly to the right and is becoming blurred. She's a classic Republican, checking all the conservative boxes on taxes, regulation, business and other traditional GOP issues. A high school teacher, she supported public education.

Moderate Republicans and the handful of Democrats in Bismarck seemed to like Poolman and worked with her on policy. There was a genuine outreach of support when she announced her retirement, something that will not happen when, say, Fargo Rep. Jim Kasper leaves.

But there is also a measure of hypocrisy with Poolman citing toxicity as a reason for bailing out, just as there is when every Republican laments the current political atmosphere of disrespect and lack of decorum.

Which person is most responsible for the noxious state of political discourse and what party does he lead around by the nose?

Hint: It rhymes with Tonald Drump.

Republicans disgusted by the nastiness of modern politics have a clever, almost pathological, way of disassociating themselves from Trump to keep themselves clean. His policies are fine, they'll say, but I don't like the person. As if you can so easily separate the two. Mussolini kept the trains running on time, right?

Whether Poolman voted for Trump is unknown. She certainly never spoke out against him or the legion of nutjobs in North Dakota who are taking his cues. She and her husband Jim, the state's former insurance commissioner, are tight with U.S. Rep. Kelly Armstrong, who's also never spoken a cross word or taken a tough vote against the former president.

So if the reasonable Republicans aren't going to speak out against the insanity and insurrectionists, who will? Losing a sane Republican like Poolman isn't good, but neither is the silence of her and other like-minded Republicans who are getting out.

Readers can reach columnist Mike McFeely at mmcfeely@forumcomm.com

Read the original here:
McFeely: Another sane Republican bites the dust - Grand Forks Herald

A new poll found that more Republicans now think that Donald Trump will likely be reinstated as president before the end of 2021.

The survey by the Economist/YouGov was conducted between November 6 and 9 and surveyed 1,500 Americans. One of the questions that respondents answered was: "How likely or unlikely do you think it is that Donald Trump will be reinstated as President before the end of 2021?"

Thirteen percent of Republicans surveyed in November said that it is "very likely" that the former president would be reinstated, compared to only 11 percent of Republicans who said so in an October poll.

Republicans who said that Trump will "somewhat likely" be reinstated before 2021 ends increased from 11 percent in October to 15 percent in November.

Additionally, the number of Trump voters who said that the former president will "very likely" be back to the White House increased by 1 percent in November compared to last month, according to the YouGov poll.

Meanwhile, the number of Democrats who agreed with that notion decreased from 7 percent to 4 percent in November.

In September, Trump hinted that he could be reinstated as president if it was a possibility due to what he claimed as "tremendous voter fraud."

At a rally in Perry, Georgia, Gina Loudon, a host for the conservative media network Real America's Voice, asked Trump when would America "get President Trump back?"

"Well we're going to see," Trump responded. "There's been tremendous voter fraud. And it's being revealed on a daily basis and we'll see what happens."

Although the November YouGov poll showed that more Republican voters believed more in the former president, it revealed growing disapproval of other GOP members.

The polls showed that the number of Republicans who disapproved of GOP House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's job increased by 1 percent from the prior month.

McCarthy has been scrutinized by fellow Republicans for failing to stop the passage of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill on November 5. Critics in the GOP questioned McCarthy's ability to lead the party's interests in the future.

On November 6, the National Review wrote that it's "not too soon to be asking whether Representative Kevin McCarthy should be ousted from leadership for his inability to keep his caucus together on such a crucial vote."

The bipartisan infrastructure bill passed after a final vote of 228-206 with the help of 13 Republicans who voted in favor of it. In August, the bill passed in the Senate with the votes of 19 Republicans.

The legislation aims to improve the country's infrastructure including bridges, rail, and roads over the course of five years.

McCarthy in October said that if the bill came to the floor, he would "expect few, if any, to vote for it." He was also asked in an interview with FOX News whether he thinks the infrastructure bill would pass, to which he responded: "It will fail."

Newsweek contacted Trump's office for comments.

Continue reading here:
Republicans Saying Trump Likely to Be Reinstated by Year's End Jumps to 28 Percent - Newsweek

As liberals shy away from the word "woke," the media has blamed Republicans negative use of the term for its downfall. What actually happened to "woke" may be more complicated, and cause problems for Democrats in coming elections.

After the results of the Virginia election, Democrat strategist James Carville blamed "stupid wokeness" for his partys disappointing loss. In an interview with PBS Newshour, the long-time Democrat strategist said that some of his partys ultra-progressive policies had a "suppressive effect across the country on Democrats."

"Some of these people need to go to a woke detox center or something," he added.

DEMOCRAT STRATEGIST JAMES CARVILLE: WHAT WENT WRONG IN VIRGINIA ELECTION WAS STUPID WOKENESS

New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took a different approach, saying Democrats' losses on election day were due to "trying to run a fully 100% super moderated campaign."

When Ocasio-Cortezs comments were branded as advocating for "woke" policies, she balked, tweeting "How can news outlets even attribute words to me I didnt say? Said nothing abt wokeness which is a term almost exclusively used by older people these days btw."

Despite her and other Democrats' current disdain for the word, New York-based writer David Marcus said being woke was once seen by the left as a positive thing. "You go back 12, 13 years it was definitely something that people on the left would use in an approving way," he said in an interview with Fox News Digital.

DONALD TRUMP BROKE THE WOKE STRANGLEHOLD ON OUR COUNTRY, AND ON US

But as the comments from Ocasio-Cortez and Carville illustrate, that is no longer the case, and the media is blaming Republicans for the terms downfall.

As far back as 2018, an NPR opinion said it was time to put the word "woke" to sleep due to the "muddling" of the definition.

"Words that begin with a very specific meaning, used by a very specific group of people, over time become shorthand for our politics, and eventually move from shorthand to linguistic weapon. Or in the case of woke, a linguistic eye-roll," the piece read.

A New York Times columnist declared that "Republicans want to recast wokeness as progressive politics run amok," saying the term "has been referred to in the most hyperbolic language imaginable, from ideology to religion to cult."

"No wonder young people are abandoning the word," the piece continued. "Opponents to the idea are seeking to render it toxic."

A New York Times columnist claimed Republicans are trying to recast wokeness.

A piece in The Guardian sought to explain "How the word woke was weaponized by the right," saying the word is "used as a stick often wielded by those who dont recognize how un-woke they are, or are proud of the fact."

A Washington Post columnist claimed "the word woke once meant something, kind of. But now its just an empty, all-purpose insult hurled by conservative propagandists, anti-vaccine fabulists, lazy journalists and people who dont want to know our history."

I'M A CONSERVATIVE IMMIGRANT READY TO CHALLENGE THE WOKE LEFT - AND NO, I WON'T GO HOME

Despite the medias claims, Marcus told Fox News Digital the lefts disavowal of the word had to do with "so many excesses," and the "commoditization of the concept."

"There are all of these companies whose job it is to go into schools and corporations and do these anti-racist woke trainings," he said. "I just think that the term has become associated with something that a lot of people now see as corrupt or involved with some sort of perverse interests in terms of the money that can be made through it."

Marcus cited research done by Manhattan Institute senior fellow and City Journal contributing editor Christopher Rufo, who has written extensively about the infiltration of progressive training and policies into corporate America.

Rufo has brought attention to corporations like AT&T and Walmart for their policies, including White employees at AT&T being "tacitly expected to confess their complicity in white privilege' and systematic racism" or be "penalized in their performance reviews.

CHRISTOPHER RUFO: WALMART VS. WHITENESS - HOURLY EMPLOYEES GUILTY OF INTERNALIZED RACIAL SUPERIORITY

Walmart, according to internal documents Rufo obtained from a whistleblower, "launched a critical race theory training program that denounces the United States as a white supremacy system and teaches White, hourly wage employees that they are guilty of white supremacy thinking and internalized racial superiority."

These findings are part of the left wanting to get away from the term woke, Marcus said, but despite the media's push to stop use of the word it will be an issue for Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections and beyond.

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"I think that especially people who are running in tighter races are going to have to address the excesses. Theyre going to have to find a middle ground," he said. "If the Democrats dont find a way to address this and reel it back in a little bit, I think theyre going to be in trouble."

Read this article:
What happened to woke: Liberal media blame Republicans for the term's downfall - Fox News

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