Mediaboss Marketing

Former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-Fla.) on Saturday called out Republicans for not speaking out about the investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Speaking at the OZY Fest in New York City on Saturday, the Florida Republican and former opponent to President Trump gave the crowd a series of rules for politics, what he called "Jeb's rules."

The first rule wasn't caught on camera, but Bush's second "rule" spoke directly to the Russia investigation swirling around the Trump administration.

"If your opponent does things that you, your headexplodes on, if Barack ObamaBarack ObamaJeb Bush calls out Republicans silent on Trump's Russia probe Trump launches all-out assault on Mueller probe Immigration agents planning raids next week targeting teenage gang members MORE did something as it's related to Russia, you say 'this is outrageous,' all this stuff, then when your guy does the same thing, have the same passion to be critical," Bush said.

The remark caused the room to erupt in cheers.

It wasn't clear exactly which Russia and former President Obama-related mattersBush was referring to.

"Rule number three: Be civil," Bush said. "The idea that you shout profanities at one another and expect the other guy or gal to respond like 'that's so nice of you, to call me a name,' this is horrible."

These aren't Bush's first remarks attacking Trump since he took office. In May, Bush suggested his prediction that Trump would be a "chaos" president had come true.

"When I ran for office, I said he is a chaos candidate and would be a chaos president," Bush said at the Skybridge Alternatives (SALT) hedge fund conference in Las Vegas in May.

"Unfortunately, so far chaos organizes the presidency right now," he added.

View original post here:
Jeb Bush calls out Republicans silent on Trump's Russia probe - The Hill (blog)

Inhis interview with the New York Times, President Trump unabashedly advanced the notion that the rule of law and the interests of the United States are subservient to a higher obligation. Loyalty to the president not even the presidency, but rather Trump personally has become the only fixed principle of the administration. Words, laws, rules, facts and people have no value or meaning in and of themselves; they are instruments at Trumps disposal to advance his own interests.

Now, you might say, none of this is all that new. A president who will not liquidate his businesses, who will not cut off receipt of monies from foreign governments, who will not release his tax returns, who will not hire anyone who has publicly criticized him and who will not tolerate those who refuse, as former FBI director James B. Comey did, to pledge loyalty, is by definition a man who places himself above the national interest, the law and the ethos of democracy. Not unlike Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump adopts the role of mafia don a man immune from restraints and who can, through intimidation, bend others to his will.

All of this is contrary to the principles that conservatives have bandied about for years. A movement and party devoted to constitutional government, the rule of law, religious liberty (the state does not have dibs on ones conscience), market economics (not crony capitalism) and democratic values (both civic values at home and defense of the liberal international order overseas) now serve the interests of Trump. They defend, rationalize and normalize his rhetoric and conduct because they havent the nerve to speak out.

I had to laugh when CNN reported the reaction of four GOP senators:

One gets the impression that the President doesnt understand or he willfully disregards the fact that the attorney general and law enforcement in general they are not his personal lawyers to defend and protect him, one GOP senator told CNN. He has (his) own personal lawyers, and of course, the White House has the White House counsels office.

That Republican senator and two others spoke on background with CNN to avoid prompting a fight with the President. Maine GOP Sen. Susan Collins was the only one of the four to speak on the record in response to Trumps comments about Sessions, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and former FBI Director James Comey as well as his venting about the special counsel investigation into Russian attempts to influence the 2016 election.

How, well, pathetic is that? They cannot voice their concerns on the record because Trump will send out a mean tweet? Seriously, is Collins the only GOP senator not cowering in the shadows?

Republicans wring their hands or more often shrug their shoulders. What can be done? What choice do we have? Thats the attitude of supplicants toward royalty, not toward free men and women who have taken an oath to defend the Constitution.

The Post, meanwhile, reports, Some of President Trumps lawyers are exploring ways to limit or undercut special counsel Robert S. Mueller IIIs Russia investigation, building a case against what they allege are his conflicts of interest and discussing the presidents authority to grant pardons, according to people familiar with the effort. This should kill any argument that the president has nothing to hide or that the Russia story is fake news.Now is the time to head this off before the president acts and throws the country into a constitutional crisis.

All 100 senators should sign on to a letter vowing to defend the Justice Department and the FBI from political manipulation and intimidation.Republicans should be crystal clear that they would consider firing the special counsel to be an abuse of power, an impermissible obstruction of justice. They should lay down their own marker, their own red line, for a change.Next, House and Senate Republicans must get serious about oversight into Trumpsand his familys ethical conflicts and potential violation of the emoluments clause. They should hold hearings. Subpoena documents. Hold him to the ethical and legal standards that every prior president has followed. That would undercut the Trumpian presumption that if Trump does it or wants it, its legal and appropriate.

Republicans are not bystanders, but rather, part of a coequal branch of government. We are hurtling toward a constitutional standoff. If Republicans cannot fulfill their oversight role, its time to leave or at least turn off the crocodile tears.

Continue reading here:
Republicans are whining on background about Trump. It's pathetic. - Washington Post

In 1990, George H.W. Bush signed the Americans With Disabilities Act, which gave disabled people more freedom to move about society. In 1996, Republicans passed and Bill Clinton signed a welfare reform law that tied benefits to work requirements so that recipients would develop the skills they need to succeed in the labor force. In 2003, Republicans passed a law giving Americans a new prescription drug benefit, which used market mechanisms to give them more control over how to use it.

These legislative accomplishments were about using government in positive ways to widen peoples options. They aimed at many of the same goals as Democrats broader health coverage, lower poverty rates but relied on less top-down mechanisms to get there.

Over the past few decades Republicans cast off the freedom-as-capacity tendency. They became, exclusively, the party of freedom as detachment. They became the Get Government Off My Back Party, the Leave Us Alone Coalition, the Drain the Swamp Party, the Dont Tread on Me Party.

Philosophically you can embrace or detest this shift, but one thing is indisputable: It has been a legislative disaster. The Republican Party has not been able to pass a single important piece of domestic legislation under this philosophic rubric. Despite all the screaming and campaigns, all the government shutdown fiascos, the G.O.P. hasnt been able to eliminate a single important program or reform a single important entitlement or agency.

Today, the G.O.P. is flirting with its most humiliating failure, the failure to pass a health reform bill, even though the party controls all the levers of power. Worse, Republicans have managed to destroy any semblance of a normal legislative process along the way.

There are many reasons Republicans have been failing as a governing party, but the primary one is intellectual. The freedom-as-detachment philosophy is a negative philosophy. It is about cutting back, not building.

A party operating under this philosophy is not going to spawn creative thinkers who come up with positive new ideas for how to help people. Its not going to nurture policy entrepreneurs. Its not going to respect ideas, period. This is not a party thats going to produce a lot of modern-day versions of Jack Kemp.

Second, Republican voters may respond to the freedom-as-detachment rhetoric during campaigns. It feels satisfying to say that everything would be fine if only those stuck-up elites in Washington got out of the way. But operationally, most Republicans support freedom-as-capacity legislation.

If youre a regular American, the main threats to your freedom are illness, family breakdown, social decay, technological disruption and globalization. If youre being buffeted by massive forces beyond your control, you dont want legislation that says: Guess what? Youre on your own!

The Republicans could have come up with a health bill that helps people cope with illness and nurtures their capacities, a bill that offers catastrophic care to the millions of American left out of Obamacare, or health savings accounts to encourage preventive care. Republicans could have been honest with the American people and said, Were proposing a bill that preserves Obamacare and tries to make it sustainable. They could have touted some of the small reforms that are in fact buried in the Senate bill.

But this is the Drain the Swamp Party. The Republican centerpiece is: Were going to cut your Medicaid.

So now we have a health care bill that everybody hates. It has a 17 percent approval rating. It has no sponsors, no hearings, no champions and no advocates. As usual, Republican legislators have got themselves into a position where they have to vote for a bill they all despise. And if you think G.O.P. dysfunction is bad now, wait until we get to the debt ceiling wrangle, the budget fight and the tax reform crackup.

Sure, Donald Trump is a boob, but that doesnt explain why Republicans cant govern from Capitol Hill. The answer is that were living at a time when the prospects for the middle class are in sharp decline. And Republicans offer nothing but negativity, detachment, absence and an ax.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on July 21, 2017, on Page A26 of the New York edition with the headline: Republicans Cant Pass Bills.

Read the original here:
Republicans Can't Pass Bills - New York Times

Six months in to the Trump presidency and you need a steady diet of fentanyl, Thunderbird, and head trauma to believe that Donald Trump is a master negotiator, a real leader, or any good at this whole presidenting thing. The national political stress test that is the Trump administration seems designed to force Republicans leaders into contortions that would break a Cirque de Soleil gymnast.

Republican Members of the House and Senate watched their 2017 agenda go down in flames. The money that Republicans planned to cut via Obamacare repeal was meant to fund massive business and upper-income tax cuts. All the winning stopped hard, and even the dead-enders in Congress know Trumpism took a shock this week. The coming months are a menu of misery: a debt-ceiling fight, the increasing evidence and pressure of the all-consuming Russia probe, and the certain knowledge that Trumps self-destructive dumbassery is the defining news driver of the summer.

Trying to follow Trumps manic changes of position on the doomed, roadkill-stank of the health care fight was like watching a cat chase a laser pointer. The GOP went into the fight without a real plan to market it, they let industry lobbyists craft it, and then they counted on Donald Freaking Trump to help sell it. Please clap.

As Trump dragged Senators to the White House for a North Korean-style rant, threatened Dean Heller to his face and proceeded to take four different positions on where to go next, Republicans took all the political damage a repeal vote would have incurred with the dubious benefit of having Trump lecture them in the Oval Office on how badly they sold their plan. The few who clung to the idea that the president was about to show some actual leadership on the bill didnt anticipate Trump giving an interview that wouldonce againknock the news cycle into orbit.

Jeff Flake, Dean Heller, and Jeff Sessions all had to learn painful lessons on the cost of being on the Trump Train this week. For Flake, Heller and a few other Republicans, setting themselves on fire for a vote on Obamacare repeal was political poison. Their legitimate fear of their constituents was greaterfinallythan their fear of Trump. Winning over Trump voters is no longer a sane response to the insanity of your political situation. Many Republican elected still arent getting this because they think they can make it work. They stare at Trumps base-approval numbers, torn between fear and temptation.

To remind my Republican friends for the hundredth time, the Trump base isnt your base. His supporters hate you as much as Trump hates you. Trump devotees dont care about shrinking the size and scope of government. They dont care about the Constitution. Theyre not Republicans, except as a flag of convenience. If you havent noticed the theme from Fox to Rush and across the rest of the Trump-fanatic clickservative media isnt My God, this bill was political death for anyone who voted for it. Instead, it was Why wont Republicans follow Donald Trump over the cliff? What good is a majority if it wont destroy itself in a vote that 70 percent of the population hates?

So, to my Republican elected friends, there are a lot of reasons that GOP Trumpism wont work, but the biggest one is this: Donald Trump hates you. You are, at best, props and extras in The Apprentice: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. No matter how many times you abase yourself before him, no matter how much you grovel, it will never be enough. The moment you do anything to preserve your own political fortunes, he will turn on you. The moment you deviate from constant service to his colossal ego, youre going to end up on blast. He has no allies. Only fluffers andfoes.

If you dont see it yet, the clickservative media and the Trump base is fundamentally nihilist. They hate you even more than Trump does. Theyre the party of Uli Kunkel, not Ronald Reagan. They expect nothing but the spectacle, the house fire and the sound of glass breaking. The performance art of the one-man show Red Don is their only political satisfaction, and like junkies, theyre chasing the political dragon of more stimulation, more chaos, and more destruction. The Democrats are so pathetic that Republicans are the inevitable target of Trump voters fury.

Trumps threats against Dean Heller and Jeff Flake are nothing compared to the epic, world-class humiliation he delivered to Attorney General Jeff Sessionsa brutal, near-fatal whipping of the most loyal dog in his kennelin Wednesdays wide-ranging, lunatic interview with The New York Times.

Jeff Sessionswho isnt out of the woods on Russian connections himselftook a massive personal and political risk by stepping away from the investigation, but in Trumps eyes, the oath Sessions took as attorney general to serve the law and protect the Constitution is secondary to the blind loyalty he owes King Donald of Orange. Jeff has displayed absolute loyalty to Trump from the moment he joined candidate Trump on stage in Mobile, Alabama, relentless and early defender of The Donald and helped to normalizehim with rank-and-file conservatives. Sessions sacrificed his Senate leadership role, and to be frank, his reputation to accept the role as Trumps attorney general. Loyalty to Trump will always be met with public betrayal and humiliation.

This week weve seen Trump in his most loathsome and essential forman abusive, reckless child demanding more more more and offering not a shred of discipline, loyalty, or responsibility in return. Mommy and daddy in this case are a House and Senate willing to overlook Little Donnies propensity to kill small animals, set fires, and mutter darkly about how hes going to teach the other kids at school a lesson they wont forget.

In the meantime, hows that wall coming?

Continued here:
When Will Republicans Learn That Donald Trump Hates Them? - Daily Beast

July 21, 2017, 11:13 a.m.

A cadre of Republicans have spent days taking slings and arrows after breakingwith party activists and many of their colleagues to support California's premiere climate change program.

Now some of them are defending themselves in the pages of the Wall Street Journal.

"We served our people and did our jobs as legislators by rolling back taxes, cutting regulations and protecting Californians from higher costs," wroteAssembly Republican Leader Chad Mayesof Yucca Valleyand Assemblyman Rocky Chavez of Oceanside, two of the eight Republicans who voted for the legislation on Monday.

The Journal had criticized some Republicans for supporting the extension of the state's cap-and-trade program, which requires companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gas emissions. The newspaper's editorial board said California Republicans are "so beaten down in the minority that they now confuse surrender with victory."

Cap and trade could boost gas prices by24 to 73 cents a gallon by 2031, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Analysts Office.

ButMayes and Chavez argued that the program ispreferable to other, more costly regulations that would have been needed to meet the state's climate goals, which became law last year. The final legislation also included two other Republican goals:the rollback of a fire prevention fee, which has been levied on landowners, and the extension of a tax credit for manufacturers.

"Republicans in California must live with the realities of a deep-blue Democratic state," they wrote. "This isnt Washington, D.C., or Kansas. We have to cut taxes and regulations every chance we get."

Read more from the original source:
Assembly Republicans defend climate vote as 'protecting Californians from higher costs' - Los Angeles Times