Monday, January 7th, 2019
Rickey Dennis, - The Post Courier
Stephan: I am a Virginian and people have been telling me for decades that America was founded as a Christian country. It is absolute nonsense but they believe it passionately, and their preachers reiterate it regularly. Most of the major Founders -- Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, for instance -- on the basis of their beliefs were deists, and would not even be considered Christians by evangelicals today.
Half of residents in 11 Southern states believe that America was founded as an explicitly Christian nation, a recent Winthrop University poll found.
The view is a crux of Christian Nationalism, said poll director Scott Huffman. Those who espouse Christian Nationalist beliefs support the idea that the United States should be governed as an explicitly Christian nation, protecting Christians and Christian values.
“Research has shown that increases in Christian Nationalist beliefs lead to more exclusionary views on immigration and more negative views of multi-culturalism in America,” Huffmon said. “Those who hold these views care more about whether they have a strong leader who will protect their religious and cultural values than whether a leader is individually pious.”
The Winthrop University Poll randomly dialed and questioned 969 residents in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia between Nov. 10-20 and Nov. 26-Dec. 2. Results have an error margin of plus or minus 3.15 percent.
The poll found that half of residents either agree or strongly agree that America was founded as an explicitly Christian nation.
This position is particularly popular among white evangelicals. In the survey, three-fourths of white evangelical respondents agree or strongly agree with this belief about […]
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Sunday, January 6th, 2019
George Packer, Staff Writer - The Atlantic
Stephan: From what readers write me I know that many think I am a political partisan, and a liberal Democrat. Sorry, I am not. I am a fact-based scientist whose interest is wellbeing from the individual to the planet itself. I don't care about political parties except anthropologically. I see them much as I would do a cultural study of tribes. If Republicans supported social wellbeing you would think I was a Republican. But they don't.
The Democrats have all kinds of problems and do many stupid things, but on balance they do serve the interest of wellbeing, so that's why you see in SR less criticism of Democrats than you do of Republicans.
So what are the Republicans? I think that is a very important question, and this past week I think we have an undeniable answer. The Republican Party is a criminal political cult obssessed with power and with only one social priority, profit, and to achieve that priority they will do anything. Here is the basic argument.
Former Republican Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker
Credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst
Why has the Republican Party become so thoroughly corrupt? The reason is historical—it goes back many decades—and, in a way, philosophical. The party is best understood as an insurgency that carried the seeds of its own corruption from the start.
I don’t mean the kind of corruption that regularly sends lowlifes like Rod Blagojevich, the Democratic former governor of Illinois, to prison. Those abuses are nonpartisan and always with us. So is vote theft of the kind we’ve just seen in North Carolina—after all, the alleged fraudster employed by the Republican candidate for Congress hired himself out to Democrats in 2010.
And I don’t just mean that the Republican Party is led by the boss of a kleptocratic family business who presides over a scandal-ridden administration, that many of his closest advisers are facing prison time, that Donald Trump himself might have to stay in office just to avoid prosecution, that he could be exposed by the special counsel and the incoming House majority as the most corrupt […]
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Sunday, January 6th, 2019
Joel McNally, - Shepherd Express
Stephan: Wisconsin is a good case study of Republican governance. Like Kansas a population of voters gave themselves over to their governance. In both cases the states were devastated by that choice and then the voters discovered getting rid of grifters and political criminals is harder than they thought. Here's the case study.
Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) and Speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly Robin Vos (R-Rochester)
Wisconsin Republicans have become a national embarrassment by immediately convening an “extraordinary” session of the Legislature to sabotage the results of last month’s election, in which Democrats won every statewide office.
It’s national news when a state’s Republicans refuse to accept the will of the voters in a democracy and ram through partisan laws crafted behind closed doors to strip elected Democrats, including Governor-elect Tony Evers and Attorney General-elect Josh Kaul, of the power to carry out the agenda that won the election.
But, for anyone from Wisconsin, the reaction is simply: What else is new? That really should be the reaction of any American who’s paid attention to the corruption of the Republican Party. It’s no secret Republicans are now openly contemptuous of democracy and increasingly brazen about doing anything possible to disenfranchise anyone who might vote for their opponents. Being a Democrat in America is no crime, but Republicans believe it should be.
The reason Republicans […]
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Sunday, January 6th, 2019
NATASHA KORECKI, - Politico
Stephan: Here is what may be some good news. Polls are beginning to show that voters are getting fed up with the endless corruption of the Trump administration. I am not sure how this will come out, but if this trend takes off historians someday may see the Republican Trump Administration as the reawakening of America to its democratic republic roots.
Last week, Vice President Mike Pence pointed to a humming economy and the Republican tax plan as marquee selling points as he toured a series of competitive Midwestern House districts to boost candidates.
Credit: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
The Trump administration’s scandals threaten to take a toll on Republicans in battleground districts this fall, according to new polling suggesting “culture of corruption” messaging is gaining traction.
Fifty-four percent of voters across 48 Republican-held congressional districts said Republicans are “more corrupt” than Democrats, compared with 46 percent who said Democrats are “more corrupt.”
According to the online survey of 1,200 registered voters, conducted for the progressive Center for American Progress Action Fund from July 2-5, an even higher number of independents hold Republicans responsible for corruption: 60 percent.
Those are welcome numbers to Democrats who have struggled to find their messaging in the run-up to the midterms. In May, the party signaled an effort to tap the “culture of corruption” theme that proved an effective mantra in 2006, when GOP Capitol Hill scandals helped […]
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Sunday, January 6th, 2019
Stephan: Here is some more potential good news. The Electoral College was a compromise the Founders created to satisfy the slave states that they would not be overpowered by the states whose social order was not based on slavery. It was a bad idea then, and it is a bad idea now, as the 2016 election demonstrated. If you agree I suggest you let your Representative and Senators know that.
Tennessee Democratic Representative Steve Cohen
Rep. Steve Cohen has proposed two constitutional amendments, one that would abolish the Electoral College and another that would prohibit presidents from pardoning themselves, their families, members of their administration or their campaign staffs.
The Tennessee Democrat, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, proposed his amendments Thursday, the first day of the 116th Congress after the Democrats took power of the House. In 2017, he
introducedarticles of impeachment against President Donald Trump.
The Constitution provides for both the structure of the Electoral College and presidential pardon power, therefore changing either of them would require a constitutional amendment rather than a law passed by Congress.
Calls to abolish the Electoral College intensified in the aftermath of the 2016 election, when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
won the popular votebut lost the presidency when Trump won the majority of the Electoral College. Similar calls were made in […]
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