{"id":21613,"date":"2016-05-07T15:44:47","date_gmt":"2016-05-07T22:44:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=21613"},"modified":"2016-05-07T15:44:47","modified_gmt":"2016-05-07T22:44:47","slug":"squatchs-open-thread-07052016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/07\/squatchs-open-thread-07052016\/","title":{"rendered":"Squatch’s Open Thread 07\/05\/2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here I am, wide awake at 2 am having gone to bed at 10 pm because I have a very early start Saturday morning.  Young Loliyo has a dance competition and I will babysit her younger brother and sister, Simon and Regina, while Lucia goes to watch Loliyo compete.  I have to be at Lucia's house at 7 am.  OMG!!!  That's too early for this old Sasquatch!  I was up very early Friday because I was originally told that the competition was Friday.  Speaking of Friday, Simon is now officially 2 years old and a little devil.  I would like to take he and Regina for a walk but my knee won't take it so they'll have to be content to have a water fight with a soaker gun in the yard.  The weather is scheduled to be hot today, around 28 C (80F) so hopefully the water will cool the kids off and run off some energy.  Of course I'll have to be careful as we already have water restrictions in force.  Please say a prayer for me that I survive the diaper changes.  I haven't changed a diaper in 45 years!<\/span><\/p>\n

Short Takes<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

CBC<\/span><\/a><\/strong> — No, Donald Trump is not going to be president, or invade Mexico, or deport all immigrants, or disenfranchise women voters, or drop nuclear bombs in Syria and Iraq.<\/p>\n

What he almost certainly is going to do, though, is trigger an enormous disruption of the Republican Party, or even its breakup.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"AsI use the word "trigger" deliberately here, because Trump himself won't actually bring about the end of his party. He's only the catalyst.<\/div>\n
…<\/div>\n
But let's be clear: it isn't the hated liberals or the politically correct left that are doing this to the GOP. It's a gloriously Republican self-immolation.<\/div>\n

President Barack Obama was wrong when he snarked at the media last weekend, asking us if we're proud of ourselves for paying so much attention to Trump, whose candidacy, according to Obama, was really just an attempt to boost his hotel business and not worthy of constant coverage.<\/p>\n

In fact, Trump's run has been democracy in action.<\/p>\n

Creative destruction and all that. A perfect free market solution for a party that adores market forces.<\/p>\n

How can we not cheer such a thing? You go, GOP.<\/p>\n

Isn't<\/span> that<\/span> just<\/span> a<\/span> great<\/span> description . . .<\/strong><\/span> Republican self-immolation<\/em>.  <\/b>There are so many divergent factions within the Republican party — the pseudo Christian fundamentalists, the xenophobic white nationalists, the Tea Party, the corporatists etc — and they don't know how to come together.  Trump has said he will unite the party, but his actions and the temperment of the party say otherwise.  It will an interesting and chaotic 6 months.<\/span><\/p>\n

MSN<\/span><\/a><\/strong> — “I think the real subliminal message Trump is saying is this: The U.S. can afford to survive and prosper without any allies if it was forced to cut off all ties, but the converse isn’t true,” said Chung Min Lee, a professor of international relations at Yonsei University in Seoul. He added that Mr. Trump was forcing allies “to come up with convincing elevator speeches on the key benefits they bring to the U.S., and thus far, none of them have done so.”<\/font><\/p>\n

There is no doubt that Trump's vague and off-the-cuff foreign policy pronouncements have set tongues a wagging internationally.  And while I might agree that 70% of NATO costs is a bit steep for the US to bear, the US has also, IMO, assumed that cost when it declares itself to be the leader of the free world.  Trump talks about negotiations, but he does not have the temperment for international negotiations.  He has demonstrated that diplomacy is far from being his forté.<\/span><\/p>\n

Alternet<\/strong><\/span><\/a> — You’ll recall that after the last shellacking in 2012, the Republicans famously did an “autopsy” of what went wrong.<\/font><\/a> And they identified a very specific list of problems that contributed to their loss, not the least of which were their problems with young people, Latinos and women. The party’s perceived hostility to these groups or simple lack of interest in their concerns were found to be so severe that unless the GOP changed course and found ways to better appeal to them, it would sink into a demographic quagmire from which it could not recover.<\/p>\n

It’s obvious that Donald Trump (and, frankly, the rest of the field as well) has gone in the opposite direction. Trump is working overtime to alienate women, at this point sitting on a 70 percent disapproval rate among that half of the population<\/font><\/a>. A recent poll of millennials conducted by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics<\/font><\/a> revealed 61 percent of young Americans likely would vote for Clinton while 25 percent would support Trump. Only 17 percent have a positive opinion of him.<\/p>\n

And since Trump’s signature issue is deportation of millions of Latinos and building a wall to keep them out of the country, it goes without saying that the GOP outreach to that demographic isn’t going too well. He has a 77 percent unfavorable rating.<\/font><\/a><\/p>\n

The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent pointed out yesterday<\/font><\/a> that despite the best efforts of Speaker Paul Ryan to do the right thing for once, the GOP Congress is helping Trump alienate Hispanics even more with its inane refusal to help Puerto Rico restructure its debt. (This by Matthew Yglesias at Vox<\/font><\/a> is a good explanatory piece on the issue.)<\/p>\n

And the party has not learned its lesson.  Go through the motions to identify issues around the 2012 defeat, but Republicans have failed to actively cultivate a change in the party.  Instead, they have set themselves up for defeat again like an out-of-control train.  This time though, the train is accelerating with Drumpf at the helm.  Republicans are going backwards . . . but then, that is nothing new for them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Alternet<\/strong><\/span><\/a> — Here are seven things we know about Trump and what his candidacy will likely mean, even as the country heads into new territory led by a crazed super-celebrity billionaire.<\/p>\n

1. Trump won’t keep his mouth shut<\/strong>. Any notion of better behavior or a classier act has repeatedly shown itself to be a mirage. His campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, has said that Trump will continue to be Trump, because he is “a person who tells it like it is.” That means building himself up by putting others down, whether it’s attacking Mexicans, Muslims, women who question him or his values, and anybody else for any headline-grabbing reason.<\/p>\n

4. He’ll split the party into factions.<\/strong> After Trump won Indiana, Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus called for the party to line up behind the presumptive nominee. That will be much harder for Republican candidates running this fall, who, looking at their own futures, will have to decide if they’ll run with him, in spite of him, or against him. All those shades are already occuring, with many longtime party leaders saying<\/font><\/a> never. These fissures are likely to cost the GOP its U.S. Senate majority.<\/p>\n

Before Trump’s clinching the nomination, there were predictions<\/font><\/a> the Senate was ripe for a Democratic takeover. Twenty-four of the 34 Senate seats in play this fall are held by Republicans. Democrats only need to pick up five for a majority. The party has strong candidates in states that turn out blue majorities in presidential years, such as Illinois and Pennsylvania. Trump not only weakens<\/font><\/a> these GOP incumbents, his candidacy raises a question of what may happen in the House<\/font><\/a>, though GOP gerrymandering after 2010’s redistricting still deeply favors House Republicans. Nonetheless, there’s little to suggest that Trump is about to become the great unifier, meaning Republicans could face a historic meltdown and defeat this fall.<\/p>\n

Click through for the remaining 5 ways Trump<\/span> Is<\/span> About to Turn the GOP into a National Freak Show.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Huffington Post <\/strong><\/span><\/a>— Former Texas Governor Rick Perry has endorsed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and is open to being his running mate, CNN<\/font><\/a> reported on Thursday.  …<\/p>\n

In July 2015<\/font><\/a>, Perry said Trump’s campaign was a “cancer” to conservatism.<\/p>\n

OMG!  Perry is at it again . . . thinking he is still relevant.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My Universe <\/strong><\/font><\/span>— <\/font><\/p>\n

\"cat-eats-raven-bird\"<\/a>A poet is born !<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"ccat24\"<\/a>All boxed in!<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"ccat18\"<\/a>Talk about being fenced in!<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"ccat14\"<\/a>Just been shopping and I'm bagged!<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here I am, wide awake at 2 am having gone to bed at 10 pm because I have a very early start Saturday morning.  Young Loliyo has a dance competition and I will babysit her younger brother and sister, Simon and Regina, while Lucia goes to watch Loliyo compete.  I have to be at Lucia's […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-thread","category-politics","category-35-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21613\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}