“My advice is to listen and accept the will of the American people, the Republican voters — the Republican Party is the Republican voters,” he added — a pointed reference to Ryan’s suggestion that he, and not the presumptive party nominee, represents authentic conservative values. “Give me a break! A lot of our drift within our party has gotten away from [the will of the voters]. … I think the leaders in all parties tend to adjust to reality. They just have to or they won’t remain in office. … Already many are sensing it.”
.. But he’s clearly positioned himself as Trump’s man on the Hill
.. “He has said this is going to be a new Republican Party, a workers’ Republican Party, instead of just the elite Republican Party,” said Sessions, who was quietly ridiculed by other GOP senators when he embraced (but didn’t quite endorse) Trump last summer.
.. the foundation of his argument is that everything-except-Trump has already failed, so why not give the people what they want?
.. Like many Southern Republicans of his generation, Sessions views the civil rights era as settled history, not an ongoing issue that remains unresolved.
.. When I asked about the views of family and neighbors during that period, he spoke in generalities but referred to criticism by civil rights advocates as “attacks” on the Alabama system. “They would react defensively and too strongly, so the attacks would be taken as a personal attack on everything I’ve ever done, and basically you’re an evil person,” he said. “Emotionally, it was — one moment would be defensive and the next moment a recognition that this was not a sustainable lifestyle and it had to change, and it was wrong.”
Donald Trump and David Duke: For the record
1991
CNN’s Larry King: “Did the David Duke thing bother you? Fifty-five percent of the whites in Louisiana voted for him.”
Trump: “I hate seeing what it represents, but I guess it just shows there’s a lot of hostility in this country. There’s a tremendous amount of hostility in the United States.”
Does Democratic Weakness Create Republican Opportunity
Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House and a presidential candidate in 2012, released a set of recommendations for Republicans running for election this year. Gingrich put together the 22-page manifesto, “2016 Election Principles,”
The document — in essence a master plan that comes with the strong endorsement of Reince Priebus, the chairman of the R.N.C. — stresses the need for “widespread inclusion of ethnic groups.” It sounds remarkably like an across-the-board renunciation of Donald Trump’s campaign strategy.
This presents something of a paradox, though, because Gingrich claims to be one of Trump’s strongest supporters.
.. But Trump won the Republican presidential nomination by appealing specifically to just those voters most opposed to “widespread inclusion of ethnic groups.” His core support in primary after primary has been white voters who rank highest on scales of ethnocentrism and racial resentment.
.. Gingrich argues that
the goal has to be inclusion, not outreach. Outreach is when the old order makes a decision and then calls the community leaders to inform them. Inclusion is when the community is in on the discussion before the decision.
.. Gingrich is convinced that there has been a weakening of the Democratic Party over the last eight years at the state and local level — including in key battleground states — which has left a door open for a broad Republican victory this November.
.. when Barack Obama took office, 51.8 percent of voters identified with the Democratic Party and 38.4 percent with the Republican Party, a solid 13.4 point Democratic advantage.
In 2016, however, the average of the first five polls shows that the Democratic advantage has shrunk to a far more modest 5.2 point edge ..
.. In Pennsylvania, the 16 point Democratic advantage fell to 3 points.
.. In effect, Stewart supports Gingrich’s claim that the Obama years have “done more to grow the Republican Party than any Democratic president in our history.”
.. To get a sense of the depth of the Democratic Party’s decay at the state legislative level in the Obama era, consider that since President Obama took office, 85 of 98 legislative bodies have become more Republican than they were when he was inaugurated.
.. Gingrich claims that Republicans are on the cusp of a game-changing “revolution” in microtargeting through the use of a new technology called “Voter Score.” Voter Score is a database that ranks every voter in the nation on a series of 100 point scales for their likelihood of casting Republican or Democratic ballots, their stands on issues and their turnout history.
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How and Why You Diversify Colleges
As a result, about one in four students at Amherst, one of the country’s most venerated and selective institutions of higher education, qualifies for federal Pell grants, which are dedicated to low-income families. Just over a decade ago, fewer than one in seven students qualified for those grants.
.. The Cooke report found that fewer than one in 25 students at these schools came from families in the country’s lowest socioeconomic quartile, while nearly three in four came from families in the top quartile.