Mediaboss Marketing

Representative David Valadao, a Republican running in a strongly Democratic district in Californias Central Valley, will face off in November with his strongest challenger yet after primary voters gave the Republican and Democratic establishments the candidates they wanted.

Mr. Valadao, whose victory was called by The Associated Press weeks after the June 7 primary, is one of the most endangered House Republicans in the country.

He voted to impeach former President Donald J. Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, then laid low and largely escaped Mr. Trumps wrath. He attracted two Republican primary challengers Chris Mathys, who ran as a pro-Trump voice, and Adam Madeiros, who campaigned as a traditional pro-agriculture conservative in the Central Valley.

Mr. Valadaos Democratic challenger Rudy Salas, a five-term assemblyman who is a popular fixture in the Fresno area cleared the Democratic field the night of the primary in a district whose lines shifted in his favor, away from the outskirts of conservative Bakersfield.

In the end, Mr. Valadaos two Republican rivals, Mr. Mathys and Mr. Madeiros, seemed to have split the anti-Valadao vote. That cleared the way for the strongest candidates to compete in one of the Democrats few pickup opportunities in the House in November.

Read the rest here:
In California, a Republican congressman who voted to impeach Trump survives his primary. - The New York Times

To the editor: On Jan. 6, 2021, as the insurrection mounted outside, the voting in Congress on whether to certify the 2020 election brought to mind the movie Judgment at Nuremberg. (These California congressmen betrayed voters on Jan. 6, editorial, June 22)

In one scene, a respected German jurist on trial for his role in the Nazi horrors of World War II tells the American judge on the tribunal that he thought he could thwart what was happening in his country by remaining as a judge in the system, and that I never knew it would come to that.

The American judge answers, It came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.

On Jan. 6, 147 Republican representatives (seven from California) voted to object to an election they knew to be free and fair. Then a month later, 43 senators voted to acquit a man they knew to be guilty. They empowered the Big Lie and the liar.

Today, as we watch the purge of Republicans willing to tell the truth, we now know that the threat is ongoing. These Republicans have failed to understand the dangerous moment we are in and the role they are playing. But I pray that the voters will not fail to vote out these compromised lawmakers.

Mari Bukofsky, Laguna Beach

..

To the editor: Your editorial, Texas GOP platform betrays historical Texan and Republican values, was relatively kind to the Texas Republicans who proposed a dazzlingly fanatical agenda for their party.

Their platform is a bigoted, racist, homophobic, theocratic rejection of our country, our president, voters of color, the LGBTQ community and those who do not embrace their dogma.

They booed their own Republican senator, John Cornyn, who has served their state and their party for 20 years, because he dared to work with Democrats on gun safety. They apparently reject any form of compromise.

These delegates are the antithesis of American values. They cloak themselves in their belief in God, the Constitution and our founding fathers. Nonetheless, they have declared that we do not have a legitimate president. This means they do not recognize the United States government as theirs.

These are not patriots with allegiance to our country. These are hypocrites who would propose undermining the United States by seceding.

Forgive me for agreeing with those who say good riddance.

William Goldman, Palos Verdes Estates

Follow this link:
Republicans are voting to end democracy, and they know it - Los Angeles Times

On a recent outing my wife and I took in a touring exhibit from the Smithsonian Institution titled Righting a Wrong. Within the modest confines of a single room at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul, the exhibit conveyed an epic tragedy: the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese immigrants as suspected traitors during World War II.

The exhibit made clear that not one such person was ever proved to be disloyal. To the contrary, more than 30,000 Japanese Americans served in the U.S. military during the war. Those who remained inmates in our countrys de facto concentration camps formed communities with their own newspapers, sports teams and arts programs.

The national disgrace of Japanese incarceration has long been acknowledged through bipartisan consensus. In 1976 the Republican President Ford revoked Franklin D. Roosevelts executive order that had authorized the wartime imprisonment. Twelve years later, an even more conservative Republican president, Ronald Reagan, signed into law a bill authorizing reparations payments to the 60,000 formerly incarcerated people of Japanese descent who were still alive. One of the displays in the Smithsonian exhibit quotes Reagan at the signing ceremony:

Yet no payment can make up for those lost years. So, what is most important in this bill has less to do with property than with honor. For here we admit a wrong; here we reaffirm our commitment as a nation to equal justice under law.

Given these formal acts of contrition one might be forgiven for believing that the injustice of Japanese incarceration in America is settled history. Some of us, after all, are convinced that the immorality and treason of the Confederacy and its slave system is also beyond rational debate.

But earlier this month a small school district in Wisconsin delivered the latest example of two interwoven threats to history: the purging of books that dare to gaze critically into the American experience and the mobilization of right-wing zealots on local school boards.

On June 13, a school board committee in the Muskego-Norway district in the exurbs of Milwaukee turned down a request from educators there to teach Julie Otsukas novel about the Japanese incarceration in an advanced-placement English class for 10th-graders. The reasons largely boiled down to complaints that the book, When the Emperor Was Divine, is not even-handed. That excuse brings to my mind an observation from the Holocaust survivor, novelist and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, Neutrality helps the oppressor. Never the victim.

As it happens, I am deeply familiar with Otsukas book. I wrote about it in 2005, in a column about high school English teachers studying the book. What I knew then has become even truer since. When the Emperor Was Divine is widely adopted by schools for much the same reason as books such as To Kill A Mockingbird are taught it is a literarily luminous work that forces readers to confront bigotry and unjustness.

Far from distorting or exaggerating truth to make her points, Otsuka built the book from the experiences of her mother, uncle and maternal grandparents having been incarcerated. Her research is so exemplary that I have assigned the novel several times to my graduate students at Columbia Journalism School.

Now, however, Otsukas book itself has become a captive of efforts by the Republican Party to literally and figuratively whitewash American history and literature. The effort began to gather force two years ago with the introduction and passage of state laws banning the use of the 1619 Project, an award-winning collection of articles and essays reassessing American history, economics, public health, transportation and other subjects through the lens of Black enslavement and Jim Crow.

That certain legitimate historians intellectually sparred with the projects creator fell well within the norms of scholarly discourse. The statewide bans were something else entirely, an effort at eradication. Those laws anticipated the more recent ones outlawing instruction in Critical Race Theory, by which right-wing activists essentially mean anything about racism that might cause a student to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress, as Floridas recent legislation, often referred to as the Stop WOKE Act, put it.

The censorship is coming so fast that its nearly impossible to keep track. Between last July 21 and March 31, PEN America counted 1,586 banned books in schools serving about 2 million students. Overwhelmingly, the banned books featured nonwhite protagonists, dealt with racism, or addressed the LGBTQ experience.

Back in the Muskego-Norway district, hundreds of residents have petitioned for the school board to reverse its ban on Julie Otsukas book. They might want to cite the recent words LeVar Burton, beloved host of Reading Rainbow: Read the books theyre banning. Thats where the good stuff is. If they dont want you to read it, theres a reason why.

Samuel G. Freedman is the author of nine books and currently at work on his 10th, about Hubert Humphrey and civil rights.

View original post here:
Op-Ed: Republicans are banning books about historical truths their own leaders have apologized for - Los Angeles Times

Leonard Pitts, Jr.

ABC News thought it was in the words of George Stephanopoulos too ugly and too dangerous and declined to show it on air. So Rep. Adam Kinzinger tweeted it Sunday night, letting us all see the threatening letter that recently came to his wife. Sofia, at the home where they live with Christian, their 5-month-old son.

It greets her with a profane sexual slur. Then it gets worse:

That pimp you married not only broke his oath, he sold his soul. Yours and Christians too! Adams activities have hurt not only this country, but countless patriotic and God-fearing families. Therefore, though it might take time, he will be executed. But dont worry! You and Christian will be joining Adam in hell too!

Asked by Stephanopoulos about the threat Sunday on ABCs This Week, Kinzinger had an ominous reply. Given this countrys trajectory, he said, There is violence in the future.

But truth is, violence the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump is the only reason many of us even know Kinzingers name. The Illinois congressman is one of just two Republicans Rep. Liz Cheney is the other who had the moral fortitude to serve on the House committee investigating that attempted coup. Hence, the threats from fellow Republicans.

The 2017 shooting of GOP Rep. Steve Scalise and four others and the arrest this month of a man who allegedly sought to murder conservative Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh foreclose any claim that violence is unique to the political right. No, violence remains, as H. Rap Brown said in 1967, as American as cherry pie.

But the embrace of violence, the cultivation of violence, the tacit encouragement of violence, have become, distinctively and disturbingly, Republican staples. So Jan. 6 was no accident. To the contrary, its what youd expect from a party that endorses guns as a remedy for political disagreements, one whose leader explicitly encourages and condones thuggery, one where seemingly every candidate for office runs a TV spot co-starring a firearm. Indeed, former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens is seeking a Senate seat with an ad that shows him wielding a long gun alongside a team in tactical gear as they breach a house. Today, were goin RINO hunting, he says.

Story continues

The acronym stands for Republican In Name Only which is, not incidentally, what Republicans like Greitens call Republicans like Kinzinger. The ad appeared online the day after Kinzinger revealed the threats against his family.

This is now our norm. Republicans no longer talk policy or ideas. Republicans only threaten.

Isaac Asimov famously called violence the last refuge of the incompetent. But violence self-defense excepted is also the last refuge of the loser, the last gasp of those who have no more words, the tacit confession of those who know, but are loathe to admit, that they got nothin. If you cant win the argument, win the fight. A mantra for thugs, bully boys and other Republicans.

There is violence in the future, said Kinzinger. And it felt not unlike someone saying, There is a storm in the future, as rain pelts the window and lawn furniture goes skittering across the yard.

Yes, things could get much worse. They are, however, already quite bad. One of our two major political parties is a threat to the very nation. And absent a dramatic course correction, it seems likely dissolution is in the future, pain is in the future, regret is in the future.

But violence? Thats already here.

Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for the Miami Herald

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Republicans are the threat using violence as easily as talking points

Here is the original post:
Republicans are the threat - Yahoo News

The decision, issued Friday, was a landmark victory for conservatives who have held up overturning Roe as an ambition of near-biblical significance, fundraising, organizing and legislating off opposition to abortion rights for nearly half a century.

Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade

The Supreme Court has voted to strike down Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that upheld abortion rights for the past 50 years.

But its a victory that will almost certainly come at a cost. In Republican circles, a consensus has been forming for weeks that the courts overturning of a significant and highly popular precedent on a deeply felt issue will be a liability for the party in the midterms and beyond, undercutting Republicans to at least some degree with moderates and suburban women.

Before Roe came down, said a former Republican congressman familiar with the partys campaign operation, Everything was going our way. Gas is above $5. Inflation is a giant problem.

The only thing [Democrats] have got going for them is the Roe thing, which is what, 40 years of settled law that will be changed that will cause some societal consternation, said the former congressman, granted anonymity to speak candidly. And can they turn that into some turnout? I think the answer is probably Yes.

Maybe instead of losing 45 seats, they lose 30, he said, while at a minimum, there will be a few seats that Republicans would have won without [the abortion rights decision], and they may not win them now.

Almost no political professional Republican or Democrat expects the courts decision on abortion to upend the electoral landscape severely enough to keep Republicans from winning the House in November. In recent elections, abortion has not been the motivating issue that Democrats once anticipated it might be, and even polling earlier this month, when Roe was widely expected to be overturned, had abortion falling below other concerns, including jobs and the economy, as an issue of significance to voters.

You go to any diner in America, and nobodys talking about this, said Dave Carney, a national Republican strategist based in New Hampshire. Thats not whats driving the conversation. Real people, working people, people who vote, are talking about the incompetence of the president, and then they go down the list of six or seven things, including the rising price of goods and the recent baby formula shortage.

The problem for Republicans with the Roe decision is that its giving Democrats something to grasp onto in an otherwise bleak year the kind of issue that may animate some lower-propensity voters, including young Democrats, to turn out in November, and blunt the GOPs appeals to independent voters, a majority of whom also support Roe, according to Gallup.

Republicans, said Sarah Longwell, a moderate Republican strategist who became a vocal supporter of Joe Biden in 2020, are now the dog that caught the car.

Then what? The motivation moves to the left in terms of who feels theyre the ones who have to be on offense, she said. People will fight harder for a thing that they want rather than reward people for a thing they already have.

One Republican operative familiar with polling in federal and state races and spoke on condition of anonymity said the most important impact may be on swing voters who lean Republican. It takes a sizeable bloc of voters who were leaning [Republican], and it gives them reason to vote Democrat, he said. And they havent had any reason to vote Democrat in quite a while.

Paradoxically, the politics of the Roe reversal would likely not be so distressing for Republicans if everything else wasnt going so well for them. Bidens public approval rating, a metric closely tied to a partys performance in the midterms, has sunk below 40 percent, according to the FiveThirtyEight polling average, worse than former President Barack Obamas was at this point in the run-up to Democrats midterm shellacking in 2010. Inflation is already souring the electorate, and a recession may be next.

But even if Roe alone is not sufficient to remake the midterms in Democrats favor, it could fit into what Longwell called an overall case the Democratic Party should be prosecuting against Republicans wedding Roe with the courts decision the previous day on gun control, among other issues, to depict the post-Donald Trump GOP as one still animated by extremes.

On Friday, the court provided fodder for that line of attack, when Justice Clarence Thomas, in a concurring opinion, argued the court should reconsider protections for contraception access and same-sex marriage. And the post-Roe fallout itself will reverberate in states for months, focusing attention on state-level campaigns as red-leaning states prepare to enact restrictions.

Already, Republicans are wincing at the consequences. In the swing state of Pennsylvania, Democrats have been pummeling the Republican gubernatorial nominee, Doug Mastriano, for a position opposing abortion rights that includes no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother. In Georgia, another swing state, the Republican U.S. Senate nominee, Herschel Walker, is facing similar criticism. In a message that Democrats will likely repeat for months, incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock issued a fundraising appeal on Friday afternoon with the subject line: Our opponent says he wants a total ban on abortion.

Jason Roe, the former executive director of the state Republican Party in Michigan, described himself as nervous about it because the opportunities we should have with suburban women become more complicated when that issue is on the table, and I think it puts us on defense.

For nearly 50 years, ever since Roe v. Wade was issued in 1973, it has been the opposite, with Republicans on a sustained offensive to overturn the decision chipping away at its protections in red-leaning states, working to advance conservative judicial nominees and invoking the issue as a litmus test in GOP primaries. And publicly, conservatives on Friday did take a victory lap.

Life wins! Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, said in a prepared statement. Millions of Americans are celebrating todays ruling and a pro-life movement that has worked tirelessly for decades.

But Republicans running in elections this year have been preparing since the publication of a draft ruling last month in POLITICO to turn the political debate away from Roe as sharply as possible, seemingly cognizant of its downsides. In a messaging memo obtained by Axios in May, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the partys campaign arm, urged Republicans to depict Democrats as fixated on extreme views on abortion, while asserting that Republicans support for abortion restrictions is reasonable and Republicans are focused on getting the economy back on track and keeping your family safe.

Republicans wont want to deflect from the economy whatsoever, said former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, who ran unsuccessfully for a U.S. Senate seat this year, because thats what people are feeling every day.

It may not be possible for Republicans to maintain that level of discipline. Partly, thats because Democrats will relentlessly fan the issue in the run-up to November. But its also because one significant segment of the Republican Party anti-abortion activists want to talk about Roe, too, especially as states this summer take up post-Roe restriction.

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, one of the nations leading anti-abortion groups, said this week that along with its partner organizations, it plans to spend $78 million this election cycle. In recent weeks, anti-abortion advocates have been briefing Republican lawmakers and candidates on ways to campaign on the issue in a post-Roe landscape, arming them with polling that suggests Americans, while overwhelmingly saying abortion should be legal in all or most cases, nevertheless express openness to some restrictions.

We cant choose when the Supreme Court acts, and certainly the left will come roaring out of the starting gate, as theyve indicated they will. So, we just have to engage and present the other side.

Bob Heckman, a Republican strategist who has worked on nine presidential campaigns.

This is the Democrats Hail Mary pass, said Bob Heckman, a Republican strategist who has worked on nine presidential campaigns. They cant win on the economy, they cant win on foreign policy, they cant win on cultural issues, and they are going to want to have this discussion, and I dont think we can deflect.

But Heckman, who consults for Susan B. Anthony, said conservatives, too, have wanted to have a nationwide debate about this since 1973, and now were going to have one. And as Republicans and conservatives and advocates for life, now were going to have to go out and make our case and win it.

Every poll and political strategist of both parties would suggest that any other issue this year is riper for Republicans to exploit and that, politically, there is little upside for the GOP in the shifting focus to Roe.

Still, Heckman said, We cant choose when the Supreme Court acts, and certainly the left will come roaring out of the starting gate, as theyve indicated they will. So, we just have to engage and present the other side.

He added, I think its a case we can win.

Here is the original post:
'The dog that caught the car': Republicans brace for the impact of reversing Roe - POLITICO