This article calling for voters to boycott the Republican Party at all levels and for all offices is notable because of who wrote it: A pair of Brookings Institution eggheads with plenty of conservative views. It concludes with this:
We understand, too, the many imperfections of the Democratic Party. Its left is extreme, its center is confused, and it has its share of bad apples. But the Democratic Party is not a threat to our democratic order. That is why we are rising above our independent predilections and behaving like dumb-ass partisans. It’s why we hope many smart people will do the same.
I don’t mean to put too much emphasis on it, because ultimately they’re just a couple of beltway-bound analysts who can’t see things clearly — the Democratic center is “confused”? No, the phrase you’re looking for is “morally bankrupt sellouts” — but if guys like this are saying things like this, the lunatic fringe cannot hold until November.
The frantic flailing from the White House and Trump’s enablers in Congress is getting absurd — Devin Nunes now claims he has proof that Hillary Clinton colluded with the Russians, presumably to ensure her own defeat — but it all boils down to the same thing: Trump is guilty, he knows it and he’ll do anything to obscure it. It’s why his lawyers don’t want him talking to Robert Mueller, though as Josh Marshall points out, the law is clear: He has to talk, even though he’s president.
Journalist Kurt Andersen has traced the source of Republicans’ refusal to “believe in” science to its twisted roots: evangelical Christianity. It’s not that Republicans don’t believe in science, he says — it’s that their voters don’t, so they can’t admit otherwise.
I don’t think all of them disbelieve in evolution – some of them – but they were all obliged to say yes to falsehood and magical thinking of this religious kind, and that’s where it becomes problematic. America has always been a Christian nation. That had always meant a different thing one hundred years ago or even 50 years ago than it means today. … Christian Protestant religion became extreme. It became more magical and supernatural in its beliefs in America than it has for hundreds of years or for any other place in the world.”
Here’s a shocker: Handing out FEMA contracts to people with no experience in disaster relief is — please, sit down for this — a gigantic waste of money. Naturally, not a peep from conservatives who wail almost non-stop about “crony capitalism” when anyone but their buddies get one of these sweetheart contracts.
Here’s another shocker: Casino boss Steve Wynn’s sexual predation was known in 1998, but the Las Vegas Review-Journal spiked the story. This is not all that different from the El Foldo the News Journal pulled when its reporters found that Tom Gordon’s first administration was a hotbed of crookedness, and it demonstrates perfectly why all the lamentations about the death of journalism always ignore the real culprit — the publishers of the advertising circulars who like to pretend they’re part of the “free press.” If it were free, they wouldn’t charge you for it. Since they do, they guard their revenue sources at the expense of the public. Always have, always will.