Texas Republicans blast Trump on conference call, urge GOP voters to cast ballots for Joe Biden
"'A Republican bloodbath': GOP senators voice fears of a painful Trump defeat [...] Pointed warnings of electoral defeat have come in recent days from Sens. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Ted Cruz of Texas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. All are former Trump critics turned allies who reliably vote with the president."
Posted By Sanford Nowlin on Wed, Oct 21, 2020 at 3:37 PM
Donald Trump shows off his signature on federal permits during an appearance in Midland this summer. Courtesy Photo / The White House
Several prominent Lone Star State Republicans joined in a call organized by the Texas Democratic Party to ask GOP voters to put country ahead of party and vote out President Donald Trump.
"It's not just enough to sound off against the president," said Republican donor Jacob Monty, who served on Trump's Hispanic Task Force before publicly parting ways over the president's anti-immigrant rhetoric. "We need to vote for Joe Biden. The consequences are just too great if we don't."
Monty, who helped mobilize Latinx voters for Republican George W. Bush's two presidential campaigns said Trump's racially divisive politics and lack of respect for military personnel are antithetical to his beliefs. For the first time in his life, he's now voting for a Democrat on the top of the ticket.
"All of that changed when Donald Trump descended that escalator and called us rapists and murderers," Monty said, growing red-faced as a he spoke on the Zoom call co-sponsored by the Biden campaign.
Courtesy Photo / Texas Democratic Party
Likening Trump's divisive politics "national migraine," former Republican congressman and Dallas mayor Steve Bartlett said the president has damaged both the country's governance and national security. He bristled at a reporter's question about whether a Biden presidency might hurt Texas' oil economy.
"I had to laugh at the question, because how much worse could the oil economy be damaged [than under Trump]?" he asked rhetorically.
Some on the call defended down ballot Republicans, including Sen. John Cornyn, who only recently have begun distancing themselves from the president. Cornyn, a key Trump enabler, made headlines over the weekend when he said he'd privately disagreed with the president over some policies.
Former GOP consultant Pierre Dubois said Cornyn's "hollow" about face on Trump comes months too late. Voting straight Democrat ticket this cycle is the only way to send a wakeup call to the GOP to right the party, he added.
"There needs to be a straight repudiation of this Republican Party in 2020," Dubois said.
...The Republican Embrace of QAnon Goes Far Beyond Trump [...] "The Georgia Senate Race Is a Horrifying Look at the Republican Party's Present and Future [...] The question is whether the Republican Party as seen by Doug Collins, one dominated by the bilge emanating from Fox News, is the future, or whether it is the addled conspiracy-mongering of Facebook and darker recesses of the World Wide Web on which Loeffler has begun to indirectly call. P - Considering Republican leaders have already pledged to seat Marjorie Taylor Greene on House committees when she wins in November—she is now running unopposed after a shocking scorched-earth campaign that drove her Democratic opponent from the race in short order—it seems like there will someday soon be a QAnon Caucus within the Republican Party. The president's son, Junior, is on television just today smearing his failson counterpart, Hunter Biden, as a human trafficker." https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=159070545
The vote on Barrett’s confirmation will occur just eight days before election day. By contrast, the Senate didn’t even hold a hearing on Merrick Garland, who Barack Obama nominated almost a year before the end of his term. Majority leader Mitch McConnell argued .. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mitch-mcconnell-supreme-court-vacancy-election-year-senate/ .. at the time that any vote should wait “until we have a new president”.
Barrett was nominated by a president who lost the popular vote by nearly 3m ballots, and who was impeached by the House of Representatives. When Barrett joins the court, five of the nine justices will have been appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote.
Once on the high court, Barrett will join five other reactionaries who together will be able to declare laws unconstitutional, for perhaps a generation.
- "The constitution says nothing about the number of justices. The court changed size seven times in its first 80 years -
Barrett’s confirmation is the culmination of years in which a shrinking and increasingly conservative, rural and white segment of the US population has been imposing its will on the rest of America. They’ve been bankrolled by big business, seeking lower taxes and fewer regulations.
Biden says .. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/22/us/politics/biden-supreme-court-packing.html .. if elected he’ll create a bipartisan commission to study a possible court overhaul “because it’s getting out of whack”. That’s fine, but he’ll need to move quickly. The window of opportunity could close by the 2022 midterm elections.
Second, abolish the Senate filibuster. Under current rules, 60 votes are needed to enact legislation. This means that if Democrats win a bare majority there, Republicans .. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/republicans .. could block any new legislation Biden hopes to pass.
The filibuster could be ended with a rule change requiring 51 votes. There is growing support among Democrats for doing this if they gain that many seats. During the campaign, Biden acknowledged .. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/14/joe-biden-2020-filibuster-360587 .. that the filibuster has become a negative force in government.
The filibuster is not in the constitution either.
- "At the least, statehood should be granted to Washington DC -
The most ambitious structural reform would be to rebalance the Senate itself. For decades, rural states have been emptying as the US population has shifted to vast megalopolises. The result is a growing disparity in representation, especially of nonwhite voters.
For example, both California, with a population of 40 million, and Wyoming, whose population is 579,000, get two senators. If population trends continue, by 2040 some 40% of Americans will live in just five states .. https://perma.cc/DC4E-5VMR, and half of America will be represented by 18 Senators, the other half by 82.
This distortion also skews the electoral college, because each state’s number of electors equals its total of senators and representatives. Hence, the recent presidents who have lost the popular vote.
This growing imbalance can be remedied by creating more states representing a larger majority of Americans. At the least, statehood should be granted to Washington DC. And given that one out of eight Americans now lives in California – whose economy, if it were a separate country, would be the ninth-largest in the world – why not split it into a North and South California?
The constitution is also silent on the number of states.
Those who recoil from structural reforms such as the three I’ve outlined warn that Republicans will retaliate when they return to power. That’s rubbish. Republicans have already altered the ground rules. In 2016, they failed to win a majority of votes cast for the House, Senate or the presidency, yet secured control of all three.
Barrett’s ascent is the latest illustration of how grotesque the power imbalance has become, and how it continues to entrench itself ever more deeply. If not reversed soon, it will be impossible to remedy.
What’s at stake is not partisan politics. It is representative government. If Democrats get the opportunity, they must redress this growing imbalance – for the sake of democracy.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a columnist for Guardian US
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