A Casualty of Big Money in Politics: The Ruination of the Republican Party
In response to my post to the effect that Reykjavík, Iceland has the cleanest energy mix of any city in the world, a Republican who can’t stand Trump and who happens to be very close to me wrote: That was interesting. Guess you’ll be planning a move to Iceland when Trump becomes President.
LOL!!!!! You’re too funny! Iceland actually is a possibility. I won’t be staying here; that’s for sure.
Kidding aside, the probability of a Trump presidency is far smaller than that of my getting hit by lightning between now and then. I know I’ve said this before, but, though I don’t have a Republican bone in my body, I honestly feel sorry for you folks. There are plenty of intelligent and decent Republicans (of which you are the poster child), and this has been an unimaginably catastrophic turn of events for you folks.
The real problem is that none of this will magically go away when Trump is relegated to the position of a bizarre curiosity in US history. For example, as we speak, there are Latinos lining up to register to vote Democratic just to make sure Trump is defeated. 800,000 Latinos in the US turn 18 each year. That doesn’t bode well for the GOP now, or at any time in the future, when you’re still remembered as the party that nominated such a hateful person.
I really don’t see a soft landing for you folks.
As surreal is all this is, it’s not as if this just happened without a cause. It all goes back to money in politics. Yes, Trump has plenty of it, but he doesn’t need to spend a nickel while the corporate-owned, profit-oriented media lavishes him with free coverage. The more outrageous and ignorant his positions, the more they eat it up with a spoon.
In that sense, I suppose the GOP got exactly what it deserved (not that there’s any less corruption among the Democrats).
If, at any time the American people have enough, there are plenty of avenues they can take to remove control of our law-making processes from the hands of our big corporations. This needs to start with the overturn of the horrific Supreme Court decision in 2010 “Citizens United,” which grants corporate entities the right of free speech previously reserved for natural persons, and enables them to spend as much as they wish influencing our elections. When Joe American realizes that he lives in a sham democracy in which the will of the people is all but irrelevant, he’s going to want a change here. That day can’t come soon enough.
It is an interesting political comment. The Republican party has taken an interesting course during the last 25 years. Some would say that there is a quickly growing disparity between what they say and what they do. Some would say that they have sold out to corporate interests.
Perhaps because corporations have been given many of the rights of persons and they are immortal we have essentially created gods. Corporations are the American religion. It is also then not surprising that Republicans who are the party “with religion,” have embraced the corporate take-over of government. The corporate intrusion in government would then be a violation of a basic principal against the mixing of church and state.
The roots are even older however. Corruption always existed but it was perhaps in the 70’s that public manipulation also “got religion” when “Madison Avenue” advertising companies became consultants for political campaigns. This is when any end justified any means. It was then that any sense of morality or adherence to any basic principal of truth went out the window.
Trump is a direct outgrowth from policies that have been implemented for a very long time. Perhaps we could even go back to the previous decade and suggest that the assignation of Kennedy was essentially a coup that changed the course of the nation.
Trump is just a confidence peddler. He reads his audience well and then promises everything and then notices carefully what sticks. The essential problem for the Republican party is that he is not “their” confidence peddler.
But this is not to say he has no chance of the White-house. Clinton may be the democratic opposition but like his republican rivals she is bought and paid for by corporate interests. This is Trump’s turf. Polls suggest she will beat him but her big wins against Sanders were in the Republican South.
Sanders who has the highest favor-ability rating and polls say he could beat Trump easily, but there is a substantial media bias against Sanders. Unlike Trump he has not made outrageous comments that have given him lots of free publicity. The establishment has picked Clinton as their choice which helped to reduce democratic voter turn out. Sanders hoped for a ground-swell of support but it is Republicans who are surpassing recent records of voter turn-out not Democrats. When Democrats don’t vote and Republicans do turn out it is the Republicans who win.
Craig,
You wrote, “Kidding aside, the probability of a Trump presidency is far smaller than that of my getting hit by lightning between now and then.”
I think that you are right, but I’m less sure than I’d like to be. But even if Trump loses, as I expect he will, the fact that he has so much support from racists and others who have no respect for the rights of others is alarming. They will not suddenly go away if Trump loses.
Until a few years ago I was a life-long Republican, but the extreme shift to the right and others factors induced me to change my party registration to Democrat. It was not easy for me but I felt that I had no choice. Interestingly both my brother and sister made the same change even though we had never discussed the matter.
It is unclear what will happen to the Republican party. It may reform itself or it may become a small minority party with another party emerging to take its place.
During the Gilded Age, also known as the Robber Baron Age, the people became so fed up with the massive corruption and extreme gap between rich and poor that they finally took effective remedial action. I expect the same thing to happen again.
I strongly believe in free enterprise and the capitalist system. Nothing else seems to work well. HOWEVER, laissez faire does not work; it is necessary to have effective controls and regulations to prevent unethical tactics and prevent the powerful from oppressing others.
Thanks for this post, Craig – well thought out and well said.
The Primary Campaigns, and November…
I know a number of independents – and a couple of Republicans – who will, though quite reluctantly, vote for Clinton if this becomes a Clinton vs. Trump contest. (By the way, his actual family name is originally Drumpf, so “Trump” is more or less just a brand his father and he built and traded on.)
That said, the national polling between Clinton vs. Trump is whisker-thin, and well within the margin of error, effectively making November a coin toss, if they’re the choices.
Sanders is the lone candidate with the support of enough likely voters nationally to handily beat Drumpf and the polling reflects that reality. Yet, the media is still (again) trying to write the Sanders campaign off.
What’s Next…?
Most of the remaining Democratic Primary states are in the northeast and along the west coast – states where Sanders has been heavily focusing, and states that he is likely to carry in the general election. In contrast, many states Clinton has won thus far have been red states where she is likely to lose in November.
The bottom line on Sanders is this: In order to secure the nomination in spite of any super-delegate bias, he needs to win the remaining delegates by about a 2-to-1 margin over Clinton.
Is that a mathematical impossibility? No, it depends on the voters in the remaining states. It only becomes “impossible” if present conditions continue – and conditions are changing. The majority of recent polling differences over time show that Clinton is losing ground with the remaining voters, while Sanders is gaining ground. So, the later primaries are more and more likely to break for Sanders.
In any case, Sanders is going all the way to the convention. In the end – no matter what the consolidated corporate media spin is to the contrary – it ain’t over till it’s over.
Drumpf and The Money…
An excellent article by Jim Sleeper defines Drumpf as “a premiere financier of casinos and an omnivorous self-marketer who is approaching the threshold of the presidency.” Pretty accurate.
Your observation on the relationship between his campaign and the media is quite accurate. From January through November 2015 for example, the total campaign major network/cable coverage for all parties added up to about 115 hours, of which Drumpf received the massive lion’s share.
Meanwhile – because of Sanders’ honesty, his unpurchased status, and his long history of consistently acting on behalf of the will and well-being of the whole people – the media granted his campaign 10 minutes of coverage for the whole year. After the recent primaries on March 15th, not a single major corporate media outlet carried his speech… not one.
Though he’s not needed large donations to his campaign so far – thanks to his media-darling status, Drumpf has adroitly capitalized on the (amplified) fear, (misplaced) anger, (justified) sense of loss and (misguided) scapegoating sown in the public mind by talk radio and talking heads for years. The rest of the political system has long been captive to bribery in all its many forms, from campaign contribution to revolving door.
Is it Really All About the Money…?
A recent study looked back at 20 years of public opinion records and legislation. It reviewed the opinions of the lower 90% of income earners, and of the highest 10% of income earners. The study compared these data sets to legislation over the same period.
This illustrated a stark reality.
No matter how firm the opinions of the lower 90% of the public, the chances of related legislation passing was about 30% across the board. Public opinion – either for or against – has had a “minuscule” and “statistically insignificant” effect.
However, when the opinions of the highest 10% were compared, there was a striking resemblance to the ideal democratic republic.
If there was no support for the idea among that 10%, supportive legislation stood a near zero chance of passage. That relationship was near linear, until about the 50% support mark. There, the relationship loosened but still remained strong between the 10%’s opinion and legislation.
Bribery is predictably at the roots of all the deepest evils in US politics, and the CU v FEC and McCutcheon rulings are a boatload of fertilizer for those roots.
If ideas based on logic and sanity are to have a chance in this game (the stakes of which could not be higher), we must stop the bribery.
At the beginning of the last century, the people of Italy and Germany didn’t have the advantage of knowing what their own history would soon become.
Here in the US today, those vital lessons that history can provide to our generation are increasingly obscured by the very same gangs of fiscal interests that wrestled against FDR when he charted for the United States a wiser path out of hardship.
Why So Serious…?
The greatest threat to our national security is therefore here at home – it’s the very flood of bribery capital that has taken our state and national Capitols by storm.
In the 5 to 4 SCOTUS McCutcheon ruling, “Justice” Roberts wrote, “If the First Amendment protects flag burning, funeral protests and Nazi parades — despite the profound offense such spectacles cause — it surely protects political campaign speech despite popular opposition.”
Talk about spinning in the grave? If our nation’s founders heard about Roberts’ twisted interpretation, we could harness all their grave-spinning as a major energy source.
We’re not talking about social offensiveness here; we’re talking about lopsided political power. What Roberts fiercely refuses to acknowledge is that our Constitution’s protection of Freedom of Speech and Assembly is not, and never has been, properly applied to money.
If corporate money is political speech, how much louder than you or me is the single corporate entity, ExxonMobil?
In 2012, all the elections – for president, house and senate – cost about $6.2 billion (that’s $21 per US citizen). ExxonMobil, all by itself, profited $44.8 billion that year alone. That means ExxonMobil, all by itself, could have paid for all the campaign spending for all the candidates in all the federal elections in the country with just 14% of its 2012 profits.
The same goes for ‘personal’ money. If money to be regarded in law as Free Speech, then the elite few (and their corporate objects) will scream through bullhorns while the voice of ‘We the People’ is reduced to a smothered and gasping whisper.
Lincoln Warned Us…
Though he spoke concerning a far bloodier war between very different armies, the words of Abraham Lincoln illuminate the danger of inaction against the fixated and methodical army of corporate lobbyists – 11,000 strong and pouring out bribery at an average of $6 million per congressperson in 2009 alone…
“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
From the Triangle Factory Fire and the crying needs for child labor law, workplace safety and food safety law, to Fen-Phen, WorldCom, Enron, and the LIBOR scandal, history has proven again and again that “The Market” cannot be trusted to regulate itself. Good government – of the people, for the people, and by the people – is the only hope that We the People will ever have to defend our Public Commons and advance our Common Good. Good government won’t come from people who hate government.
Want improvement? Ban bribery in all its forms. That’s the most important and central issue that controls all others.
As long as cash reigns as king, we’ll more and more be rendered as slaves to the most vicious greed and craven cowardice imaginable.
You write: Want improvement? Ban bribery in all its forms.
Right. But we to broaden sense in we understand “bribery” to include the myriad ways in which big money destroys our democratic processes. You get it, and I get it, but most people aren’t interested in following this stuff.
I shouldn’t have ignored the rest of your comment here, which is excellent. Thanks for the contribution.
Thank you, Craig – I admire your fortitude in maintining this forum.
I think most people don’t track the bribery question because they feel powerless against the onslaught of so many varieties of influence weilded by wealthy interests against the ethical duty of our public servants – from campaign funding and astroturf operations, to lucritive speaking engagements to elite career opportunities for them (or their children) after they leave office.
This feeling of powerlessness likely stems most from the observation that resolving the bribery issue requires the foxes to vote themselves out of the henhouse.
It’s useful to recall that political reforms don’t happen because of a desire by the folks being reformed, but by popular demand.
More and more of us regular folks, of every political stripe, are gaining awareness of the severity of the impacts, and correctly viewing all this bribery as a central, direct and lethal subversion of our democratic republic.
The public opinion is there. Media Matters noted that 78% of our citizenry opposes the CU v FEC ruling. Although the ruling was fashioned by the conservative SCOTUS majority, Republicans oppose Citizens United 80% to 18%. Democrats oppose 83% to 13%, and independents (the largest group), 71% to 22%. The numbers of “unsure” are pretty small in all three groups.
It remains for that sentiment to be organized and focused in direct action to force genuine reform onto the political stage.
Thanks for the compliment re: my fortitude. I don’t think of myself as particularly brave, though I sure have made some enemies in high places over the years, and I know I’ve cost myself consulting work in at least a few cases. But that’s more than counterbalanced by the enormous personal reward I take away from doing all this according to my own lights.
At the end of the day, I’m a proponent of “conscious capitalism.” That’s pretty benign/noncontroversial, IMO.
A wonderful comment Cameron: Great content, well thought out and presented convincingly.
Really. As I like to say about Cameron, “He’s not just anybody.” 🙂
Thank you both – much appreciated.
I longtime reader notes: Women voters will be his demise.
Yes. And all non-Christians, all racial minorities, and all the people like you who are kind and intelligent. That’s one hell of a lot of people.
It’s hard to get too worked up about this when it’s so obvious that he’ll be whisked off to the dustbin of obscurity next November.
The problem: all that hate has to go somewhere, otherwise it violates the law of physics called “the conservation of hate.” 🙂
Craig,
Donald Trump may not be the most desirable candidate for office, but I think you are misreading the reasons for his popularity.
All lot of Trump’s appeal is he’s not “politically correct”, he is unafraid of to speak his mind, even with outrageous comments. He passes what Australians call the “pub test”. The sort of simplistic, emotional statements people say when they feel relaxed and not liable to be criticized. They know such sentiments are neither edifying, or even responsible, but they’re tired of being patronized by a hypocritical leftist elite.
They’re sick of the ” blame the victim” tactic’s of the left.
They’re mischievously delighted that mainstream (mostly leftist) media identities are outraged that, not only doesn’t Trump pander to pleasing their sensibilities, but defies them with seeming impunity.
They see Trump as beholden to no-one. (He annoys everyone equally). His appeal is to the powerless, forgotten Al Bundy’s of America’s middle and working class.
The left rants on about “big money” as being behind all of America’s social ill’s, while happily accepting money from Warren Buffet and the RFA. The left indignantly complains about Trumps belligerence, yet turns up in large numbers to violently disrupt his rally’s and demands he be prevented from speaking.
The response from the left is to blame the victim for their own misbehavior.
The growing numbers of Trump supporters see the hypocrisy, corruption and arrogance of the left elite, is any wonder that a populist like Trump has appeal ?
Trump supporters are rightly appalled at the idea that any truly patriotic American would consider petulantly abandoning his nation simply because a President they didn’t like was elected.
In the end, Trump will not be elected, because what someone says in the pub, isn’t really how they vote. But it’s foolish to think that every Latino will vote against Trump. For to0 long the Democrat party machine has treated people as stereotypes, assuming that no diversity exists among minorities.
Curiously, much of Trump’s appeal is that he seems to stand for individualism. Even among some Muslims his image has appeal.
Trump will not become President, but all politicians in the US should re-consider the reasons for the rise Donald Trump.
As usual, I agree with most of this. Though “They’re sick of the blame the victim tactics of the left” doesn’t really makes sense.
In any case, you should know that we’ve had the rightist as well as the leftist elite in power here since the turn of the century. The previous administration prosecuted an illegal, aggressive war (against the wrong country), rubber stamped thousands of cheap leases for public land to the oil companies, and cut taxes for the richest Americans. Please see: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/01/02/the-legacy-of-the-bush-tax-cuts-in-four-charts/. All of this greatly diminished the respect that the US had previously enjoyed from the rest of the world.
A lot of folks (like me) were pretty incensed about that.
Marco, I think you are right about Trump’s appeal and there are lots of lessons to be learned here. But to continue the metaphor, who is the student here and will they ever have a chance to act on what they learn?
I think perhaps his campaign should give us all pause to consider that not everything is what it seems. Sometimes when trying to understand events a mysterious origin might be guessed if you pose the question, “who wins.” In the media we constantly hear that protesters at Trump rallies are “leftists” With such hatred of the candidate by both the RNC and establishment doners it might also be an effective tactic to pay protesters at trump rallies to pose as leftists. Even Trump might seed his own rallies with protestors if there are not sufficient numbers as his message requires an enemy. While there seems to be no proof of who they are it is an interesting speculation.
Craig,
I don’t see how Christians can vote for Trump either. His rhetoric is clearly contrary to the Summary of the Law.
When Jesus was asked which is the most important command, He responded with what is commonly known as the Summary of the Law. The second half of it is to love one’s neighbor as oneself. Then, He said, “On these two commands hang all the law and the prophets.”. Thus that is the most important law in Christianity; some theologians actually state that it is the entire law with everything else being merely commentary. When asked to define “neighbor”, He responded with the parable of the Good Samaritan which I think most people know. That greatly expanded the definition of “neighbor” and also made it clear what was meant by love. Love, as illustrated by the parable of the Good Samaritan, is not mere sentiment. Rather, it is action. It is helping people who need help whether one likes them or not. There may be differences of opinion on EXACTLY how to define it and that’s OK, but the principle stands.
Thus, it should be inescapably clear that much of Trump’s rhetoric is contrary to Christianity because it is incompatible with the Summary of the Law which is the most important law in Christianity.
Frank I applaud your sensitivity and astute observation, but when we look at the world, who actually lives the teachings. There is another parable that ends with the admonition that the one without sin should cast the first stone. It suggests that we are students on a journey with no natural right to be a judge.
Christians will vote for Trump because what they see from their perspective is the best fit rather than absolute perfection. I am not trying to defend Trump here or a vote for him, but the people who however imperfect themselves should have a right to express their opinion. “We see the world through the light that is in our own eyes” Perhaps it is also true that we find the love that is in our own hearts.
Christianity is not a function of government. It is a personal philosophy of life as expressed in the life of Jesus. He expected his disciples to make a dichotomy between personal action and government obligation. Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesars and unto God the things that are God’s. Trying to make government a Christian entity is foolish and will only invite scammers to take advantage of the free stuff that pours from a system that is blind to human nature.
I also strongly believe in strict separation of church and state. However, some Christian principals are practically universal and accepted by all people who are committed to social justice and fairness. The second part of the Summary of the Law, as reiterated by Jesus, is to love thy neighbor as thyself. That is not unique to Christianity. Voters who are concerned with social justice would follow that principal. Of course, when voting, there are many issues to consider.
Craig ,
my comment to whatever is mentioned above is that it all boils down to the values we carry forward as leading nation of the world.
The value of green has been established and it shall bloom in times to come.
Evolution is a process it takes many forms . It suddenly surfaces in a form which is appealing when looked at instantly but withers away and gives room to reality which we as humans finally appreciate at the end of a day.
So persuit of the Green is the only objective to save and keep this this mother ship earth alive and breathing.