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There are plenty of conservatives who don't particularly care for President Trump, but wouldn't call themselves NeverTrumpers. Yet they are reluctant to call out the president's daily political provocations because they see the growing allure of socialism among Democrats as a bigger threat to the country. This is a profound mistake that will backfire: If Trump's tyranny of ill intentions isn't defeated, the Democrats' tyranny of good intentions aka socialism may well become inevitable.

Socialism is a scary word in America, and Trump is doing everything in his power to wrap the term around the neck of Democrats before the next election. He attacked the socialist boogeyman in this year's State of the Union address after the resounding Republican mid-term loss. He excoriated Democrats for their "alarming" calls for socialism and declared "America will never be a socialist country."

Republicans took the message and ran with it. They launched an ad campaign against the "radical socialism" of "The Squad," the four minority congresswomen whose ring-leader is Green New Dealer Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). They are warning voters that Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-avowed socialist, will turn America not into Denmark but Venezuela if he gets anywhere near the White House. And they are accusing Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren of being a "dishonest socialist" who says she likes capitalism even as she would kill it.

Indeed, even the normally placid Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is now dramatically declaring that in 2020, Republicans will build a "firewall that saves the country from socialism."

If only!

In truth, Republicans may well deliver the country to "socialism" if they don't ditch Trump's America First ideology which is every bit as Big Government as socialism, but without any pretense of a higher purpose.

Socialism subordinates the interests of individuals in the name of a utopian egalitarianism, producing terrible results wherever tried. And yet it manages to seduce people because it purports to advance a just society. But America First dispenses with notions like justice. It has a zero-sum Hobbesian view of the world where one group's benefit is the other's loss. Socialists want to unite the world behind a problematic conception of the common good. But America First divides the world into us versus them, insiders versus outsiders and then uses the full power of the state to advance the interests of the former without much regard for fairness toward the latter. It's a fundamentally tribal approach to politics where (state) might makes right.

In foreign affairs, America First has meant not merely pursuing America's interests when dealing with other countries, but doing so without any regard for the interests of those other countries. Trump's willingness to withhold aid to Ukraine until it dug up dirt on his political opponents may be the most brazen example of this.

But the more morally troubling example is Trump's recent pardons of American soldiers accused of war crimes. One lieutenant he pardoned was serving 19 years for opening fire on unarmed Afghani villagers, killing two, and then calling in false reports. His own appalled troops turned him in.

The other case involves Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher who was accused of shooting Iraqi civilians, killing a captive Iraqi fighter with a knife, and then threatening to kill fellow SEALs if they reported him. He was convicted finally only of battlefield misconduct because he posed for a photo with the corpse of the Iraqi he was accused of killing. But America Firsters at Fox News decided that taking away Gallagher's elite status a gentle rap on the knuckles given the gravity of his actions would be intolerable "political correctness," prompting Trump to intervene on his behalf. He ordered military leaders to lay off Gallagher, leading to the resignation of the Navy secretary.

The message here is that it doesn't matter whether these guys are war criminals, they are "our" war criminals, and so there is no need to bring them to justice. At the same time that Trump is pardoning these Americans, he defends snatching babies from migrant moms as a deterrence measure and building detention camps for peaceful asylum seekers because they were born on the other side of the border.

Supporters of America First claim that its opposition to "endless war" is some kind of high-minded principle. But it matters whether this opposition stems from a concern for the world and its inhabitants or a contempt for them. And whether it sees contact and cooperation with the outside world as advancing America's well being or threatening its interests. America First is decisively in the latter camp on both counts.

It is no coincidence therefore that Trump is increasingly flirting with economic autarky or self-sufficiency, a time-honored tool of left wing dictators. This is reflected in Trump's bare-knuckles approach to trade policy. He doesn't want to straighten out the rules of the game to promote free trade for all. No, he wants "deals" where America's trading partners commit to buying prescribed amounts of American goods in order to close the trade deficit. Such demands have locked him in a bitter trade war with China, and have hit U.S. farmers, whom Trump has tried to placate through a government bailout two times bigger than President Obama's auto bailout.

Meanwhile, Trump's Buy American, Hire American directive awards government contracts not to the best bid but to the one that advances his own Make America Great Again agenda, regardless of the cost to taxpayers. But that does not necessarily make him a friend of domestic industry. He has targeted Big Tech companies with anti-trust investigations because he considers them his political opponents. He has viciously gone after Jeff Bezos and Amazon to retaliate against The Washington Post's critical coverage, even, it seems, denying Amazon a lucrative defense contract, signaling to Bezos that it will be costly for him to exercise his First Amendment rights.

Equally concerning is Trump's effort to constantly jawbone American companies that don't fall behind his America First agenda. He has repeatedly rebuked automakers, such as General Motors, that shutter their American operations or open plants overseas, because he wants to keep "American" jobs in America. And he showered Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn with massive government incentives to prod it to locate its manufacturing plant in southeastern Wisconsin to create jobs (that haven't materialized).

In other words, Trump won't slap billionaires with confiscatory taxes or regulate them out of existence, as Bernie or Warren might do, but he'll happily use state power to make them do their patriotic duty. This is just as statist as the "socialists" conservatives fear.

But if the use of state power gets legitimized for narrow, self-serving reasons, it will become impossible to stop it from also being used for seemingly more lofty goals such as addressing income inequality or saving the planet. People certainly pursue their self-interest but they don't do so to the exclusion of every higher purpose, especially the young and idealistic. Republicans, at least since Ronald Reagan, had offered liberty as that higher purpose. But if conservatives don't push back against Trump's America First, they'll signal that all their pious talk about limited government and freedom was merely a ruse to protect majoritarian privilege. They won't have anything left to counter Democratic calls for socialism.

Indeed, when Ocasio-Cortez was queried about what she thinks of Trump's attacks on her Big Government socialism, she responded: "I find it hilarious, because this president seeks to expand government into the bodies of women. They seek to expand government to spontaneously generate detention centers all along our southern border So this is not about who's expanding government. It's about who we are working for, and we're choosing to work for the people of the United States."

One does not have to agree with her on a single issue to see that she has a point.

It is telling that even as the America First right increasingly employs the vocabulary of interest and abandons the vocabulary of rights to justify its slams on outsiders and opponents, the left is abandoning the vocabulary of interests and deploying the vocabulary of rights to push for freebies for everyone.

The latter may be detrimental for the country in a million different ways, but it is a much better positioning for winning the messaging war. It's perhaps not a coincidence then that since Trump assumed office, support for socialism has not only inched up by five points among Democrats but also seven points among independents. Trump may also have something to do with the fact that 7 out of 10 millennials polled last month said that they'd vote for a socialist.

In the long run, Trump's strongman tendencies and his use of the state's clenched fist to slam some for the alleged benefit of others risks making people more open to deploying the heavy hand of the state to supposedly lift everyone up.

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Read more:
Republicans are leading the country to socialism - The Week

As the impeachment trial looms, we talk with Republicans about the risk and rewards of standing with Trump.

Lisa Desjardins, correspondent for PBS NewsHour. (@LisaDNews)

Seth Weathers, Republican political consultant and digital strategist. Founder of the political campaign agency Weatherscorp. Georgia state director for the 2016 Trump campaign. (@sethweathers)

Kim Alfano, Republican strategist and president and CEO of Alfano Communications. ()

On standing with President Trump, despite any revelations from the impeachment inquiry

Kim Alfano: "You didn't mention cutting regulations and creating jobs and, you know, boosting the economy. As much as I care what the phone call contained, I care more that my 401(k) is growing, because I have a child to put through college. ... You have to understand, Donald Trump is both theater and policy. And the policies, for the most part, especially domestically, have been very widely appreciated.

"I think that it's hard to parse the personality with the policy. For some of us that are out here, it's sometimes hard to ignore the brashness of our president. And we support him, and we support his policies, but, you know, personality-wise, not all the time. And I think that a lot can be done at the local level and in local races to drive home the success of the policies that are making our families better, that are making our lives freer and more prosperous. But we also have to do it in the shadow of a presidential campaign, which is going to be the reality TV part of it. So, we have to be clear about policies and priorities and the specifics of them, despite what the show might be playing that night."

"As much as I care what the phone call contained, I care more that my 401(k) is growing, because I have a child to put through college."

Seth Weathers: "I think what she's calling the show is the president is standing up strongly for the American people for a change. And I understand that it can be brash and off-putting to some people, but we've reached a time where that was needed. That's what the people wanted. They wanted someone that was willing to call BS, BS, and not run around in circles and give us political doublespeak. And I think that that's what Trump's given us. Are some of the tweets over the line, or something along that? Perhaps, at times.

"Anything Trump says gets blown out of context by the media. He referred to the impeachment as a 'lynching.' Well, then you had like two days of the media calling the president a racist. And how awful it was, how he was referring to black people being lynched in the south, and all kinds of nonsense. And then we go back to 1996, and you've got a slew of Democrats referring to the Clinton impeachment as a 'lynching.' It's an example of just over-blowing anything Trump does and says, and the media forms that into this terrible synopsis that the people can latch onto, watching the television or listening to a show. And so, I think, that when you have the media pushing one narrative, and they blindly ignore the other side, of the Democrats, for the same exact words, it blows everything out of proportion. And so it makes it into things that it's simply not."

We heard from Sheila, a Republican caller from Albuquerque, New Mexico.

"Your guest panelist had mentioned that as long as her 401(k) was growing, then she was OK with what's happening in the country. I'm a Republican, which is a minority here in New Mexico. I'm a small business owner, and I believe in the Republican Party in regard to what it stands for. But what I don't believe in is that we're giving up on morals and ethics in replacement of self-benefit. And that's what concerns me right now, what's going on with our country.

"Trump,specifically, the way he acts and represents our country is not how I want to be represented as an American and as a Republican, because turning your back to morals and ethics and treating individuals poorly that is not representing who we are. And the fact that people are willing to overlook that for self-benefit, that concerns me for our country as a whole."

Here's how our panelists responded:

Alfano: "I don't disagree with you. And I think I I've said it before. The fact that the theater is happening is not my favorite thing. And, again, as a consultant, I would love to be able to talk to people in the party about policies that I think are helpful to families. And if I made it sound like, you know, it's all about my 401(k), I didn't mean to say that. What I meant to say is that it's important that our economy continues to grow, that small business owners like yourself, and my business is very small as well have the freedom and the ability to grow our companies and employ people. I mean, these are things that the Republican Party has stood for for years and years, pre-Trump, and now, and after Trump. My point is that the policies he's actually enacted have been helpful to our economy, and that is the bread and butter kind of issue that people can parse, and pull out, and say, 'Well, the country is doing well.' How that plays out in the presidential race? We'll find out."

Sheila, how are you doing financially in the time since President Trump has taken office?

"Financially, I would say the same, but morally and emotionally and just ethically, no. And that's the concern. I agree that we all need to provide for our families and look to our families to support them. But I don't want my children thinking, you know, as long as you're making a good buck, you're doing well in this country. I want them to have the morals and the leadership that represents who we want to be as a nation.

"Just how he treats women. I have teenage daughters. I don't like how he treats women, in regard to the comments. ... I'm also a veteran. And so I know chain of command. I can't respect him as a military person because of what he does with our military and bypassing. I'm also a former intelligence analyst. So the fact that he bypasses the intelligence community."

"I don't want my children thinking, you know, as long as you're making a good buck, you're doing well in this country. I want them to have the morals and the leadership that represents who we want to be as a nation."

Weathers interrupted Sheila at this point to explain that the president is the commander-in-chief, the top of the chain of command.Sheila clarified to explain her issue is with Trump's disregard of the intelligence community.

As for Trump's demeaning comments toward women ...

Weathers:"He says the same things about Rosie O'Donnell as he has, at some point, about Ted Cruz or anyone else who he's ever gone up against. And so I think he's very gender-neutral when it comes to who he goes after, after they go after him, who he responds to. He's also the guy that's appointed the first female head of the CIA, the first female campaign manager to win a presidency a long line of other female appointments that you haven't seen that are literally first in history."

CNN: "White House will not participate in Judiciary Committee hearing" "Neither President Donald Trump nor his attorneys will participate in Wednesday's House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing, they said late Sunday.

"In a letter to Chairman Jerrold Nadler, White House counsel to the President Pat Cipollone said, 'We cannot fairly be expected to participate in a hearing while the witnesses are yet to be named and while it remains unclear whether the Judiciary Committee will afford the President a fair process through additional hearings. More importantly, an invitation to an academic discussion with law professors does not begin to provide the President with an semblance of a fair process. Accordingly, under the current circumstances, we do not intend to participate in your Wednesday hearing.'

"Cipollone said they would respond separately to the Friday deadline about their participation in future hearings."

The Hill: "Top Judiciary Republican: 'My first and foremost witness is Adam Schiff'" "Rep. Doug Collins (Ga.), the top GOP member of the House Judiciary Committee, said Sunday that Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) is the most important witness Republicans want to question in the upcoming phase of the impeachment inquiry.

"'My first and foremost witness is Adam Schiff,' Collins said on 'Fox News Sunday,' also noting that Schiff had 'compared himself in the past to a special counsel' and that then-special prosecutor Ken Starr testified during the GOP-controlled Houses impeachment of former President Clinton.

"'[Schiff] has put himself into that position,' Collins added. 'If he chooses not to [testify], then I really have to question his veracity in what hes putting in his report.'

"'Its easy to hide behind a report,' Collins said. 'But its going to be another thing to actually get up and have to answer questions.' "

The Hill: "Trump faces uphill 2020 climb" "President Trump is a slight underdog to win a second term with less than a year to go before the 2020 election.

"The president is saddled with low approval ratings nationally and weaknesses with key voting groups. Trumps approval ratings are mired in the low 40s, and he may remain the first president since modern polling began whose favorability number has never been above 50 percent in a Gallup poll.

"Trumps fiery and impulsive style appeals to members of his core Make America Great Again base, who continue to pack large arenas for his campaign rallies. But it costs him badly among other segments of the electorate."

See the article here:
Surveying The State Of The Republican Party | On Point - WBUR

WASHINGTON When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was released from the hospital last weekend after another in a string of health scares, blue America breathed a sigh of relief. Only one more month, many whispered, until the start of a presidential election year when filling a vacancy on the Supreme Court would be off limits in the Senate.

But would it?

That was the case in 2016 when Senate Republicans stonewalled President Barack Obamas nomination of Judge Merrick B. Garland to fill an opening that occurred with 11 months left in Mr. Obamas tenure. Let the people decide, was the Republican mantra at the time, as they argued that it was improper to consider Mr. Obamas nominee when voters were only months away from electing a new president who should get the opportunity to make his or her own choice on a Supreme Court justice.

But with the tables turned and Republicans holding the White House, that almost certainly would not be their refrain in 2020 if a court seat were to open up through death or retirement.

Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican, majority leader and unapologetic mastermind of the 2016 Garland blockade, has made clear that he would move ahead with a Supreme Court nominee from President Trump. The only potential barrier would be resistance from his own party on the grounds it would be hypocritical and unfair for Republicans to do what they prevented Democrats from doing four years ago.

Widespread defections on that basis seem highly unlikely.

And Senator Susan Collins, the moderate Republican from Maine who broke with her party and backed holding a confirmation hearing and vote on Judge Garland in 2016, said she would take the same position in 2020: Should a vacancy arise, the sitting president should get the chance to choose a nominee, and the Senate should move forward to confirm.

My standard on the nomination of Supreme Court nominees remains the same, she said. As long as the president is in office, he has the constitutional right to nominate. I thought that Merrick Garland should have had a hearing and a vote. Now obviously, senators could have voted against him based on the timing. But to block the nomination from proceeding at all, I thought was wrong.

Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, oversaw the Judiciary Committee but refused to convene a hearing for Judge Garland and met with him only grudgingly. As a result, he said last year that he would not consider a nominee in 2020 if he were still chairman of the panel. But he has since left the top spot on the panel to take over the Finance Committee, sparing him the prospect of either going back on his word or infuriating Mr. Trump and his colleagues. Allies say they doubt he would take a stand against a nominee since he is no longer chairman.

Republicans say the difference between 2016 and 2020 is one of political alignment. Democrats held the White House and Republicans controlled the Senate in 2016; Republicans now control both. To Mr. McConnell and his colleagues, that shift justifies their new position. But in 2016, Republicans focused most of their argument against taking up Mr. Obamas nominee not on party control, but on the basis of the approaching presidential election, and they would face thunderous charges of hypocrisy if they took up a nomination next year.

Democrats remain angry over the treatment of both Mr. Obama and Judge Garland and expect Republicans to move aggressively if the chance arose for Mr. Trump to place a third nominee on the court. Should any nominee replace one of the four justices picked by Democratic presidents, it would cement a commanding 6-to-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, and the lure of that lineup would probably prove irresistible to Republicans.

Do you have any Republican senator saying that in 2020 we wont ram through a Supreme Court nominee? asked Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware and a member of the Judiciary Committee. Of course they will.

Mr. Coons, an active player on judicial nominations, called the stonewalling of Judge Garland a man some Republicans had earlier said they would consider a strong choice by a Democratic president among the worst things the Republicans have done in my decade in the Senate. His colleagues agree. The dispute, which colored both the confirmation fights over Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh, has badly frayed relationships both on the committee and in the Senate.

Should Republicans remain united, however, there is little Democrats could do to impede a nomination, because a series of rules changes has neutered the filibuster when it comes to judicial picks, meaning the majority party can push through the presidents choice without a single vote from the minority.

Though Democrats would lack procedural weapons, they and their allies say they would still mount a challenge using whatever tools available, and their attention would focus intently on the nominee. While it is hard to imagine proceedings more toxic than the Kavanaugh hearings, a move to install an election-year nominee with the specter of impeachment swirling in the capital would certainly be considered inflammatory by Democrats and those on the left.

Any scenario where an impeached president is trying to jam through a Supreme Court pick in an election year, in direct defiance of the precedent Mitch McConnell set with Merrick Garland in 2016, would rightly spark a war, said Brian Fallon, the head of Demand Justice, a progressive group formed in response to the Republican blockade of Judge Garland.

Mr. Coons said his preference would be that the conflict be avoided altogether and no vacancy arose. If one did, the fight would no doubt spill over into the presidential and congressional elections. It could also give momentum to calls by some Democratic presidential contenders and advocacy groups to reconfigure the court to offset what they see as an illegitimate conservative imbalance building support for ideas that have not yet been embraced by the party mainstream.

While there are few options we would have to stop that nominee before the election, my hope is it would mobilize Democrats at the polls to insist on restoring balance to the court, Mr. Coons said.

One wild card is the timing of any vacancy. Judge Garland was nominated to replace Antonin Scalia, who died in mid-February, a time frame that would ordinarily be well beyond the period needed to pick a nominee for Senate review and a confirmation vote if it had not been for the Republican refusal to take up the nomination. A vacancy that occurred later in 2020, much closer to the election, could present Republicans with a tougher argument to make, though there would no doubt be intense pressure for them to move forward no matter what the calendar said.

But with no vacancy imminent and Democrats holding their breath that none will occur just one thing is certain about a potential 2020 Supreme Court fight: It would be brutal for all involved.

Continue reading here:
Why Republicans Will Sidestep Their Garland Rule for the Court in 2020 - The New York Times

Mamma mia! This is my reaction when I read Paul Mulshines columns in defense of President Donald Trumps corruption and abuse of power.

Mulshine is worse than even the Republicans in the impeachment inquiry, who day after day spent the time allotted to them trying to discredit the process, asking about the whistleblower (whose identity is protected by law), obfuscating and denying the facts, and showing a total disregard for the truth and the rule of law.

In his recent column (The whistleblower blew up a non-story, Nov, 24), Mulshine puts a new spin on it: The whistleblower revealed nothing that was not already known, and the president can do whatever he wants, including bribery.

Sorry, but nobody is above the law, not even the president. Trump has committed a serious crime, and the impeachment inquiry is a tool and a duty that the Congress has to defend our country from corruption and protect our democratic values.

Republicans in Congress too have sworn to defend the law and the Constitution, not to trump them every day in their defense of a lawless president.

Chiara Nappi, Princeton

The Russians are coming ... for N.J. elections

Longtime Russia expert Fiona Hill warned in her testimony in the impeachment inquiry that the Russians are going to hack into the 2020 election.

In 2018, the Democrats won almost all of the congressional seats in New Jersey, some by a very thin margin. The Republicans have vowed to take back those seats, so 2020 will see hard-fought races and potentially close elections. Because most of New Jersey votes on touchscreen machines without paper, a recount or audit is impossible. We will not be able to identify any hacking of the machines, foreign or domestic, and the machines themselves are very old and subject to breakdown or errors.

For 15 years, the Coalition for Peace Action has been calling for a transition to hand-marked paper ballots, optical scan machines to tabulate the votes, and ballot-marking devices for the disabled.

Neither Republican nor Democratic administrations have heeded this call, even though Gov. Phil Murphy made a signed campaign pledge to fund paper ballots and optical scan machines. It is time for the governor to fulfill his campaign promise.

I urge all those concerned to contact the governor and their county freeholders and demand hand-marked paper ballots for the 2020 primary.

Stephanie Harris, Hopewell; chair, Voting Integrity Task Force, Coalition for Peace Action

State bank is smart money for N.J.

A New Jersey state bank is an excellent step to take to begin bringing the power of capital back to the people and making their own tax money available for student loans, job creation and small businesses in the Garden State (Murphy starts ball rolling on a taxpayer-funded bank for N.J., Nov. 14). Kudos to Gov. Phil Murphy for taking this step. I look forward to being a depositor.

Anne Stires, Verona

Standardized testing benefits us all

Guest columnist Ikechukwu Onyema (Dump standardized testing programs in New Jersey schools, Nov. 17) effectively makes the case for standardized achievement testing, not against it.

Whether PARCC is properly designed is not the whole question. The high school teacher indicates he alone should be the arbiter of what and how well he teaches. Standardized achievement tests establish a basis for judging education and educators, not just students.

The extent that test scores merely reflect socioeconomic issues is vital in determining the need to improve life in this country and also identifying which approaches work. That is separate from assuring that a diploma has a meaning other than adequate attendance.

Leonard Gordy, South Orange

See the original post here:
Mamma mia! This defense of Trump is worse than the Republicans efforts | Letters - NJ.com

As of November 25, 2019, 1,839 candidates are filed with the FEC to run for U.S. House in 2020. Of those, 1,728864 Democrats and 864 Republicansare from one of the two major political parties. In 2018, 3,244 candidates filed with the FEC, including 1,566 Democrats and 1,155 Republicans.

295 candidates are filed with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) to run for U.S. Senate in 2020. Of those, 257134 Democrats and 123 Republicansare from one of the two major political parties. In 2018, 527 candidates filed with the FEC to run for U.S. Senate, including 137 Democrats and 240 Republicans.

In the past week, no members of Congress announced 2020 retirements. To date, four Senators (three Republicans and one Democrat) and 28 Representatives (20 Republicans and eight Democrats) are not running for re-election. In 2018, 55 total members of Congress18 Democrats and 37 Republicansdid not seek re-election.

On November 3, 2020, 35 Senate seats and all 435 House seats are up for election. Of those Senate seats, 33 are regularly-scheduled elections, while the other two are special elections in Arizona and Georgia. Twelve are Democratic-held seats and 23 are Republican-held seats. In the House, where all the seats are up for election, Democrats currently hold a 233-seat majority.

Additional reading:

See more here:
Number of Democrats and Republicans filed for 2020 US House races remains even for the third straight week; no new 2020 retirements - Ballotpedia News