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GOP contenders learning Trump requires 100 percent loyalty -- or 'you're a damn traitor'
February 25, 2021
Several potential Republican contenders are jockeying for position on the "Trump turnpike" this week at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Former president Donald Trump, who will begin his re-entry into politics with his CPAC speech, remains the GOP's undisputed leader, but contestants in the next two election cycles will also fire off the starting line in the event that he decides not to run for another term, reported Politico.
<p>"There isn't a Trump lane," said GOP strategist Chris LaCivita. "There's a Trump Turnpike with multiple lanes and multiple people."</p><p>Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who met with the former president last week and will speak at CPAC, said the next GOP nominee would be Trump -- or a candidate who pledged <a href="https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-lies/" target="_blank">full loyalty</a> to him.</p><p>"The winner of our primary [in 2024] will be someone from the Full Trump lane who embraces Trump and is embraced by him," Gaetz said.</p><p>That would include, as of now, CPAC speakers Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley and Florida Sen. Rick Scott, as well as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as loyal aspirants who abide by a saying in Trump's circle: "If you're with him 99 percent of the time, you're a damn traitor."</p><p>"Trump remains the 800-pound gorilla in the room, he just happens to be sitting in the corner right now," said former Michigan state chair Saul Anuzis. "[His <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/twitter-uphold-permanent-ban-against-trump-even-if-he-were-n1257269" target="_blank">Twitter ban</a> is] more like an electronic dog fence. … You can definitely still hear the bark."</p><p>Republicans who have tried to stay on Trump's good side while occasionally criticizing him -- Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and former UN ambassador Nikki Haley -- have longer odds in a Trump-dominated GOP, while there's probably no path at all for "Trump zero" candidates such as Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) or Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan.</p><p>"It's probably not even a lane," said Republican strategist David Kochel. "It's more like a gravelly shoulder on the side of the mountain that's about to crumble into the ocean."</p>
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There are startling similarities between the implosion of the GOP and the demise of the Soviet Union: conservative professor
February 25, 2021
On Thursday, writing for The Atlantic, Naval War College professor and Trump-skeptic conservative Tom Nichols compared the current state of the Republican Party to the decline of the Soviet Communist Party in the 1970s — not in terms of ideology, but in terms of the corruption and stagnation thereof.
"The Republicans have entered their own kind of end-stage Bolshevism, as members of a party that is now exhausted by its failures, cynical about its own ideology, authoritarian by reflex, controlled as a personality cult by a failing old man, and looking for new adventures to rejuvenate its fortunes," wrote Nichols, who has previously denounced the far-right evangelical takeover of the party he once backed and warned of the poisonous influence of right-wing media.
<p>"No one thinks much about the Soviet Union in the late 1970s, and no one really should," wrote Nichols. "This was a time referred to by the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, as the <em>vremya zastoi </em>— 'the era of stagnation.' By that point, the Soviet Communist Party was a spent force, and ideological conviction was mostly for chumps and fanatics. A handful of party ideologues and the senior officers of the Soviet military might still have believed in 'Marxism-Leninism' — the melding of aspirational communism to one-party dictatorship — but by and large, Soviet citizens knew that the party's formulations about the rights of all people were just window dressing for rule by a small circle of old men in the Kremlin."</p><p>This kind of decline, wrote Nichols, is exactly what the GOP is going through now.</p><p>"The Republican Party has, for years, ignored the ideas and principles it once espoused, to the point where the 2020 GOP convention simply dispensed with the fiction of a platform and instead declared the party to be whatever Comrade — excuse me, President — Donald Trump said it was," wrote Nichols. "Like Brezhnev, Trump has grown in status to become a heroic figure among his supporters. If the Republicans could create the rank of 'Marshal of the American Republic' and strike a medal for a 'Hero of American Culture,' Trump would have them both by now."</p><p>There is no coming back from this kind of decay, Nichols argued.</p><p>"Another lesson from all this history is that the Republicans have no path to reform," wrote Nichols. "Like their Soviet counterparts, their party is too far gone. Gorbachev tried to reform the Soviet Communist Party, and he remains reviled among the Soviet faithful to this day. Similar efforts by the remaining handful of reasonable Republicans are unlikely to fare any better. The Republican Party, to take a phrase from the early Soviet leader Leon Trotsky, should now be deposited where it belongs: in the 'dustbin of history.'"</p><p>You can read more <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/02/the-republican-party-is-now-in-its-end-stages/618132/" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
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'Our entire country is fed up': Biden nominees urged to demand Trump megadonor's ouster
February 25, 2021
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a megadonor to former President Donald Trump, insisted during a House Oversight Committee hearing on Wednesday that he plans to remain at the head of the U.S. Postal Service "for a long time."
But President Joe Biden took a step late Wednesday afternoon that Democratic lawmakers are hoping will mark the beginning of the end of DeJoy's tenure, which has been characterized by scandal, precipitous declines in Postal Service performance, and accusations of deliberate sabotage of America's most popular government institution.
<p>"My hope is the newly constituted board will do the right thing and bring in a new, qualified postmaster general."<br/> —Rep. Gerry Connolly</p><p>As DeJoy on Wednesday faced heated questioning on his <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/07/15/attempted-murder-your-post-office-outrage-trump-crony-now-heading-usps-moves-slow" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">past operational changes</a> at USPS as well as his <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/02/14/fire-dejoy-he-burns-down-usps-postmaster-general-pushes-plan-slower-mail-higher" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">future plans</a> to raise costs and further slow mail delivery, Biden nominated three officials to fill existing vacancies on the Postal Service Board of Governors, the body with the authority to replace the postmaster general.</p><p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/02/24/dejoy-hearing-usps-live-updates/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">According to</a> the <em>Washington Post</em>, Biden has "named two Democrats and a voting rights advocate to fill three of the four openings on the Postal Service's governing board...: Ron Stroman, the Postal Service's recently retired deputy postmaster general; Amber McReynolds, the chief executive of the National Vote at Home Institute; and Anton Hajjar, the former general counsel of the American Postal Workers Union."</p><p>"If all three win Senate confirmation," the <em>Post</em> noted, "the nine-member board would be made up of equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans with McReynolds, whose organization is a darling of left-leaning groups, as the lone independent."</p><p>Congressional Democrats who have been urging Biden to take action to get rid of DeJoy applauded the president's nominees as solid choices and called on the Senate to swiftly confirm them.</p><p>"They will bring a fresh perspective, a diversity in lived-experience, and a broader understanding of the challenges all Americans are suffering with the current USPS—something lacking in the current Board of Governors," Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said in a <a href="https://connolly.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=4214" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">statement</a>. "These nominations are an important first step toward reforming the Postal Service. My hope is the newly constituted board will do the right thing and bring in a new, qualified postmaster general."</p> <p>Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-N.J.), one of several Democrats <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/01/25/biden-urged-fire-entire-postal-service-board-complicity-devastating-arson-trump-and" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">pressing</a> Biden to terminate every current postal board member, called Biden's picks "an impressive group of diverse nominees well-suited to the work of saving our Post Office."</p><p>"Our entire country is fed up with USPS leadership. Something needs to change and that change begins here," Pascrell tweeted. "This is a key step, but only the start. I continue to urge POTUS to remove all the sitting governors, who've been complicit. Once they're replaced, DeJoy should be sent packing."</p> <iframe src="https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?creatorScreenName=commondreams&creatorUserId=14296273&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=true&id=1364685022368776192&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2F2021%2F02%2F25%2Fdejoy-should-be-sent-packing-biden-postal-board-nominees-urged-press-removal&siteScreenName=commondreams&siteUserId=14296273&theme=light&widgetsVersion=889aa01%3A1612811843556&width=550px" style="position: static; visibility: visible; width: 550px; height: 501px; flex-grow: 1;" title="Twitter Tweet"></iframe> <p>During Wednesday's House Oversight Committee hearing, USPS Board of Governors chair Ron Bloom—one of two Democrats currently on the board—said he believes DeJoy has been "doing a good job" despite nationwide outrage over persistent mail delays, which have held up <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/09/09/warren-demands-dejoy-resign-or-be-removed-after-probe-shows-usps-sabotage-led" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">prescription medicines</a> and other key deliveries.</p><p>While Bloom's support for DeJoy would seem to present a problem for potential efforts to oust the postmaster general, <em>Slate</em>'s Mark Joseph Stern <a href="https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1364628781932150786" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">pointed out</a> that Bloom is currently in a holdover year after his term officially expired in December—meaning that Biden can nominate a governor to replace him.</p><p>"Donald Lee Moak is a progressive union guy recommended by [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer," Stern noted, referring to the other Democrat currently on the postal board. "Based on my reporting, I am confident that he will not stand in the way of DeJoy's removal."</p>
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