Mitch McConnell is trying to reassure concerned conservatives that their presidential nominee won’t be an apostate.
And even as the presidential nominee, Trump won’t redefine the Republican Party, McConnell says. In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Trump predicted he would transform the GOP into a “worker’s party” over the next five to 10 years.
“My view is that Trump will not change the Republican Party,” McConnell says, describing it as “America’s right-of-center party.” “If he brings in new followers, that’s great, and well worth the effort, but he will not change the Republican Party.”
The question that people should ask next is, “then why should we vote for him?”
The Republican Party’s unfavorable numbers are trending sharply up and are near historic highs. In some recent polls, as many as two-thirds of Americans express their disapproval of the GOP. The Democratic Party’s favorable numbers are trending up. Recent surveys show that the Republican-controlled Congress is staggeringly unpopular, with an aggregate 13%-78% approve/disapprove number. And the Republican Party has lost the popular vote in every presidential election since 1988, save one.
Fully 82% of the people think abortion should be legal, at least under some circumstances. Sixty-four percent of Americans say that they’re concerned about climate change, and about 80% are worried about pollution in our drinking water, lakes, and streams. More people consistently support allowing undocumented workers to stay in the country than favor deporting them, and majorities believe that immigration in general strengthens our country. The people are rather emphatic that gun laws should be stricter. While it’s true that Obamacare is still narrowly unpopular, that’s largely because an equal number of people think it should be expanded to those who think it should be repealed, and the respondents generally agree that the federal government has a responsibility to see that all people have health coverage. There’s even a plurality of people in the country who think the Republicans are wrong to oppose letting transgender people use the public restroom of their choice.
On some of these issues, Trump is even worse than the Republican Party he will soon lead, but that’s not the point. The point is that the Republican Party clearly needs to change in some basic and some extensive ways if it wants to be competitive on the national stage. Trump either offers that possibility or he doesn’t. If he doesn’t, then there’s really no hope at all for the Republicans in November.
The Trump fit is getting more and more comfortable. There’s no change here. Like the GOP, he’s bust his own treasury and now goes through the back door to rob Peter’s GOP to pay Paul’s Trump bank account.
From his accounting on the Vet’s project at this morning’s presser it was obvious he had been caught and was scrambling big time to point anywhere but himself for fault. His personal $1 million donation to the vets obviously was forced and for the first time he actually showed fear.
The Rep better hope the dark money comes on board soon because Trump’s campaign is going to be a spendy one.
that he was caught in his own BS, and forced to turn over those checks – that was fabulous.
Oh about the money…
The GOP is about to learn something bout “developers”. They never never ever use their own money to do anything. The borrow or use other people’s money.
So in keeping with the ways of his craft Donald has let the RNC know that the campaign has no cash on hand. And I read with a giggle that The Trump Organization has handed the RNC a bill for $700,000 for the use of the Trump Jet during the campaign, and they’re letting the RNC know that they expect the party to start paying out to keep his game rolling to the convention. Yes, that job-maker Trump is hard at work at this new job already with his trademark skills!
Trump is just an full-time wreck-maker, and it is only through some miracle of bloviation that he has managed to keep his game running for so many years. He just might take the GOP down like some loser banker who was stupid enough to lend him any money in the first place – and, this is important – he would not care.
—————
It’s not safe to make predictions this years – BUT – I predict that there is still some spectator fun in store for us in Cleveland, and the Empire is probably still planning to strike back, somehow. Right on cue, I see Mitch McConnell is asking Donald to release his income tax records…
Either this is McConnell kissing Trump’s ring of fealty or McConnell warning off a real threat from Kristol and company. On these options, I go with fealty.
If you think (which I don’t quite yet) that McConnell might start being worried about the extent of the shellacking Republicans will take in the Senate, this sounds like a pledge to be your same-old, same-old whether Trump or Clinton. Obstructionist for Clinton and greasing the skids of the Permanent Republican Majority (aka Thousand Year Reich) for Trump.
In either case, it says that Trump was never an anti-establishment candidate to begin with. Just one who would say what the GOP establishment considered politically incorrect to say.
Change agent. Well nor is Hillary Clinton, though no one seems to be claiming she is, herself in the first place. This is a really worthless ditty from the comments at Naked Capitalism, yet entertaining enough to post here.
Madame Secretary
When your goose is cooked,
And the bed’s been shat,
When you’ve screwed the pooch,
And shaved the cat,
When the barn door’s broke,
And your mules are gone,
And the High Sheriff
Is comin’ on,
When the lies you sell
Are tired out tricks,
When you just ain’t got
No pancake mix
When it’s sink or swim
With no help in sight
When the sharks come close
And begin to bite,
Blame only yourself
As you disappear,
And forgive this whole world
If we stand up and cheer.
~ Antifa
LOL There is a blank verse guy over at the Economist’s View who is pretty darn good.
LOL — and once again, a post that has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton evokes more Hillary bashing — in less than 45 minutes! Any port in a storm, eh?
WE MAY HAVE A WINNER!! First comment in the thread is both off-topic and bashes Hillary!
Why don’t you ask our host to go full Markos and ban anyone who doesn’t genuflect to Saint Hillary?
I remember when this was a Progressive blog, not a DNC blog.
Are you kidding? I remember when this was a progressive blog in the commentary threads too and not a steady stream of anti-the-democratic nominee.
The democratic nominee isn’t a progressive, that’s why.
That’s debatable, but you’re preference for Trump disqualifies you from making that complaint.
Why? Because this place is Democratic first and Progressive second? Let’s make it plain. Genuflecting to the Clintons is required.
No, because Trump violates every progressive principle.
I suspect McConnell is desperately trying to keep the big donors on tap, reassuring them that it will be the same old, same old…. whilst Trump is still refusing to speak from the old script and making it up as he goes along. He might well change the GOP if he wins, but more likely will help to destroy it by losing badly.
Calling a member of the media a sleaze to his face is not going to help him;
what?
.
Be interesting to see Major Garrett’s emails from upstairs over the past few days. Some reporters might be under orders to suffer the abuse. Others to lay off the guy with the weasel on his head.
It’s a fascinating question what these Repubs who are voting for Der Trumper think they are going to get and what they “want”. He “tells it like it is!!”, but where does that ultimately get one?
Trump certainly emotes as though he can and will bring some kind of change to DC. And his railings against the “establishment” of the party and its multitudinous LOSERS also seem to support that rhetoric. Precisely what the change will be and how it will be accomplished is somewhat murky.
But as we all know, the “conservative” movement has been in control of the party and its “ideas” (to use the word loosely) for quite some time, indeed the party is now spreading an ever more vitriolic strain of “conservatism”, all uniformly in opposition to the poll results you recite. But is Trump actually going to demand changes to the sort of doctrinal claptrap that has been the platform of this party since the days of St Reagan? Is he going to announce some abandonment of or retreat from the Pillars of Conservatism at his acceptance speech in Cleveland? Highly doubtful.
The popularity of the various policy positions you raise haven’t radically changed in decades now, except perhaps acceptance of gay marriage—which the “conservative” movement also doesn’t recognize! And let’s just say it’s pretty doubtful that 82% of the folks in TX and MS and AL etc, think “abortion should be legal”. It’s hard to square the actions of the (mono)party of those states with such a public sentiment…
But more importantly, the fact that the Repub party is consistently (even historically) “unpopular” over the past decade certainly hasn’t stopped it from taking control of the majority of states and the federal Congress, with no real thought it will lose this control as a result of its actions. Its legislators obviously do not fear their voters for appeasing conservative extremism–they only fear being attacked from the right!
So it must be that many Repubs in many states personally hold more sane policy views than the extremist turds they consistently send to DC, yet it doesn’t matter to them that the turds then operate to ensure a paralyzed gub’mint in DC or an American Taliban gub’mint in their state. That appears more important to such Repubs than (leftward) movement on any of the societal problems you recite. The Demonic Dems (and their hated demographics!) must not be in control–even if they would enact change you would approve of!
Hmm, that inflection in Dem favorables began in August 2015, when Iowa and NH campaigns began. Be curious to see what happens after June.
Just shows that you cannot teach old GOP members new tricks. They stay entrenched in their parties dogma and refuse to admit it is destroying their party.
Also shows they missed the gene for cognitive dissonance.
“The question that people should ask next is, “then why should we vote for him?”
Indeed
His voters would seem to want him to be, no?
“If all those declared supporters (together with the people who don’t like him but tell you confidentially, “Well, he does have a point”) are as worthless and benighted as the political establishment appears to believe, then the case for democracy would seem to need rethinking, Trump or no Trump. Alternatively, one could ask a better question: Why so many decent, reasoning, responsible people – citizens deserving of respect, if democratic self-government means anything – are saying they’ll vote for this outrageous man.
[…]
What seems most important is that they think they’ve little to lose in smacking down politics as usual. They’re tired of being ignored and want that understood. Washington is broken, incapable of action, and apparently content to stay that way, so why not declare, in unmistakable terms, that enough is enough?
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20160531_Commentary__Elites_ignored_concerns_of_voters.html#3Cd
5TTXbwqsIdtXI.99
Nice.
Why? The lesser evil, of course! Our Lords and Masters have arranged things so that we can choose between their toadies, only.
well, duh
……………..
SUNDAY, MAY 29, 2016 09:30 AM CDT
Donald Trump exposes the GOP’s dirty secret: They build everything by nurturing white rage
For decades, GOP has used the war on drugs or voter ID laws as cover for race-baiting. Trump just blew their cover
CAROL ANDERSON
Paul Ryan is angry with Donald Trump, not so much for failing to espouse conservative values, as for exposing America’s dirty little secret — white rage: that deep-seated determination to block black progress in this country. For years, conservative politicians have relied upon the cover of high-minded principles and slogans – “protecting the integrity of the ballot box,” or waging a “war on drugs” — in order to cloak their determination to restrict African Americans’ citizenship rights. The racism fueling Trump’s campaign and his followers, however, is so overt, that it is undoing decades of hard covert work by the GOP.
When Trump didn’t immediately disavow an endorsement from Klansman David Duke; when the GOP front-runner condoned the beatings African Americans endured at his campaign rallies; and when 20 percent of his followers insisted that the Emancipation Proclamation, which ended slavery, was bad policy, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan’s carefully stitched plan of “racism with plausible deniability” began to unravel.