What's Next for the Republican Party?

[broncofan]

Wow that quotation by Murdoch is in really poor taste. Ben Carson has made more idiotic public statements than anyone on record. What would he do to address the racial divide? Would love to hear it. He would be an absolute disaster as a candidate for the Republicans. Am I wrong?

[buttslinger]

What's next, indeed. Kevin McCarthy out as House Speaker candidate, that job is a hot potato. Nobody wants the headache....

[Stavros]

Wow that quotation by Murdoch is in really poor taste. Ben Carson has made more idiotic public statements than anyone on record. What would he do to address the racial divide? Would love to hear it. He would be an absolute disaster as a candidate for the Republicans. Am I wrong?

Murdoch has now retracted his comment;

Rupert Murdoch ✔ @rupertmurdoch Apologies! No offence meant. Personally find both men charming.
1:14 PM - 8 Oct 2015

Ben Carson, however, has not been able to make an advance in the promotion of his campaign unless you agree with this kind of comment, relating to an argument in his book A More Perfect Union:
Carson was quizzed on CNN over comments in his new book, A More Perfect Union: What We the People Can Do to Reclaim Our Constitutional Liberties, which cites Nazi Germany to argue that the right to bear arms should not be curtailed.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked him: “Just clarify, if there had been no gun control laws in Europe at that time, would six million Jews have been slaughtered?”
Carson replied: “I think the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed … I’m telling you that there is a reason that these dictatorial people take the guns first.”
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...-they-had-guns

-Hmmm, what happens if an armed school-teacher gets fed up with a student who refuses to shut up and shoots him (or her). Will that set a trend? As for the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943...

[broncofan]

That was a question designed to make a pro-gun advocate slip up even though it's a fair question given their claims. I've heard this argument about the nazis from the pro-gun lobby for over ten years I think.

This pre-supposes that every single person who could arm himself does and becomes a resistance fighter. This ignores the collective action problems. The same reason a room full of people don't charge a shooter....people who are used to civilized life aren't ready to run headlong onto a gunman. They would not organize a militia against their government unless they were certain that failure to do so would result in extermination. When is one ever certain of that? The Warsaw Ghetto uprising is a great example for two reasons; 1) action was not initiated until the resistance fighters were fairly certain they were not being relocated to labor camps but marked for extermination and 2) its lack of success.


Ben Carson also said that prison rape was proof that homosexuality is a choice because straight men enter prison and decide to have sex with men. He made a slippery slope argument that he retracted about gay marriage, bestiality, and pedophilia. His polling numbers are pretty good now.

Edit: It would be unfair not to include his comments about a Muslim President which were in the article you linked. Even Ted Cruz and other Republicans did not go along with this.

[broncofan]

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/...-and-guns.html

This is the defense of Ben Carson...written by a Jewish man, and I think somewhat offensive to common sense and human decency. Could go in the gun thread, but I thought it relevant to Carson specifically. Seems Keith Ablow is like Ben Carson, super courageous in the face of danger.

[Stavros]

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/...-and-guns.html

This is the defense of Ben Carson...written by a Jewish man, and I think somewhat offensive to common sense and human decency. Could go in the gun thread, but I thought it relevant to Carson specifically. Seems Keith Ablow is like Ben Carson, super courageous in the face of danger.

A poor argument on any level and one that is designed not to explain what happened in the Third Reich but to justify gun ownership in the USA today. And don't forget that Carson's argument was premised on the claim that dictatorships first take guns away from the citizens -as if no other government, particularly after a war did not become worried about the volume of weapons in the homes of individuals. The first laws on gun control in the USA were initiated after the Civil War because of the fear that freed slaves might be armed; gun crime was rampant in Britain after the Napoleonic Wars as soldiers returning from the wars held on to their weapons.

The image of the 'weak Jew' which permeates the article is offensive in itself, but prefers to skip over the irony that some of the most vocal opponents to the Nazis were not just Jewish but Communists, given that the Nazis extended the Russian 'fascists' claim that the Jews had organised the Bolshevik Revolution. The Black Hundreds, many of whom left Russia after the revolution to settle in Munich were an influence on Nazi thinking on this level. (Walter Laqueur wrote a book on The Black Hundreds).

On yet another level, the Turks have dismissed claims of genocide against the Armenians by claiming that armed groups of Armenians fought the nascent Turkish state and that any Armenians killed were a consequence of an internal war not genocide. As I think someone mentions in the comments to the article linked, had Jews fought the Nazis with guns this would merely have given the Reich an excuse to kill Jews on the spot.

It would be better for those who want to defend the right of Americas to own guns did so in the contemporary American context in which it makes most sense.

[Stavros]

I thought this article in today's Independent made a key point-

At the 2014 midterm elections, the Republicans achieved their largest majority in the House of Representatives since the 1920s. This resounding victory, party leaders boasted, would showcase their ability to govern. Instead, the debacle over the election of a new Speaker has demonstrated that Republicans are unable to govern themselves, let alone the country.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a6688566.html

In addition to pointing out that three of the leading contenders for the GOP -Trump, Carson and Fiorina- have never held political office. Presumably at some point in the next three months the people who run the Republican Party will have to sort out this mess by the time the primary season starts in the New Year? One wonders...

[buttslinger]

It's certainly not a buttslinger rule, but there's a rule in politics and debate you never ever mention Hitler or Nazi. The top three Republican potential Presidentis aren't politicians, they don't understand the concept of the "gotcha" sound clip yet. Except Trump, who bases his whole campaign on it.
On the broader view, the TEABAGGERS are almost a third party, and while they showed up strong last year, they're apt to be pissed off next year. So,.....we are deep into buttslinger territory here, senseless, but here just the same...
The Vegas odds have Hilary as the shoe-in.
Say what you want but put your cash on Clinton.
I'm sick of my savings acct earning 0.6%

The Republicans are like Hitler saying everything is great, even though the Russians are 20 miles outside Berlin. Ordinarily people would be lined up to be Speaker of the House.

[Stavros]

Is this sensational news, or just an example of how they do things their own way in California?
The Republicans in California have failed to get a candidate onto the ballot to challenge for Senator Barbara Boxer's seat in November. I read about the Senate race in California in this morning's New York Times, a story that has not made it to the UK -but while it is of local significance, it does seem to underline the long-term crisis that the Republican Party in California appears to be in, and as the article below suggests even in the case of Schwarzenegger he is both an immigrant and a moderate on many policies that have alienated people from the GOP. The Nation has a good overview and I think is the key paragraph:

Under California’s nonpartisan “blanket primary” law, which was enacted by the voters in 2010, Tuesday’s Senate primary ballot featured all the candidates on one list. Democrats, Republicans, and several dozen third-party and independent candidates competed against one another in a race where only the top two finishers could earn a place on the November ballot.
http://www.thenation.com/article/the...in-california/

[Stavros]

There is an interesting article in today's New York Times which looks at the Republican Party in Congress, mostly the Senate where sitting Senators are either likely to stand down or possibly die (due to ill-health) or be challenged, and how a vigorous process is being mounted by Steven Bannon and the 'alt-right', and Mike Pence's team to 'purge disloyal Republicans' (the phrase used by Pence's Chief of Staff, Nick Ayers).
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/u...T.nav=top-news

What intrigues me about this is that the definition of loyalty is presented, not as loyalty to an idea or a party, but to an individual, the .45 sitting in the White House on the basis that he represents whatever it is the Conservatives and alt-right define as their cause. But I cannot recall when American politics was a matter of loyalty to one person rather than to a party, the Constitution or perhaps a movement. Unless...unless one casts one's mind back to the late 1770s when there was an issue of loyalty, and it was loyalty to King George III...maybe that's why Ivanka is referred to as the Princess Royal...