Doug Jones’s defeat of Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate special election is yet the latest signal that the accommodators of Donald Trump, those who have normalized and bolstered him, the gutless, schismatic conservatives who abandoned principle to follow a pariah, will have hell to pay in 2018.
Yes, Roy Moore was defeated, but it can never be fully erased from history or memory that he was endorsed by this president and supported by the Republican National Committee. All of Roy Moore’s sins are their sins, and they will wear that scarlet R straight into the midterms.
.. Moore still won the Republican vote and the white vote and, yes, the “white born-again Christian” vote. These people contorted their faith to support a man accused of unthinkable transgressions.
They made a mockery of Christian faith and moral fidelity.
.. they are motivated and insistent that the past will not defeat the future.
.. black voters, particularly black women, have been summoned to save America from its worst impulses and to establish that they are the most loyal and crucial constituency of a Democratic Party that still doesn’t grant them enough respect or deference
.. The Resistance has its own Southern Strategy.
.. It proved that Trump was a fringe candidate who tapped into an American ugliness and rode it to a fluke victory with the help of a foreign adversary.
.. Republicans must brace for the reckoning. If the Resistance can maintain its intensity — and there is no sign of it weakening — the midterms may well amount to a purge.
The ‘Resistance’ Goes Lower
Green groups are attacking staffers merely for working in Trump’s government.
But in today’s anti- Trump “resistance,” that counts for nothing. The left lost the election, lost the argument, and is losing President Obama’s precious legacy. Its response is a scorched-earth campaign against not only EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, but anyone who works for him.
.. The suit is simply Mr. Becerra’s excuse to delegitimize Mr. Pruitt... High-ranking appointees have always been demonized, but what makes this environmentalist campaign different is its purposeful extension of intimidation tactics to anyone willing to serve in the Trump administration... Political staffers have been put on notice that they may be watched, smeared and harassed, putting future job prospects at risk... Clearly aware of how obnoxious this is, ThinkProgress justifies the tracking by lamely noting that “these staffers are tasked with making decisions.. It essentially accused her, with no evidence, of doing the dirty work of energy donors in her past job at the Republican Attorneys General Association.. When green activists are poached from the NRDC or Sierra Club to work for Democratic administrations, they are praised for having experience. But when lawyers with a knowledge of regulated industries are hired to the EPA in a Republican administration, they are assumed to be unethical.
The Washington Post Seeks a Right-Wing Scapegoat for Left-Wing Violence
Spend much time in left-wing circles — especially the kind of deep-blue progressive urban centers that produce our nation’s mainstream media — and you’ll find a sincere, abiding fear that “angry white-wing rhetoric” is on the verge of spurring a wave of murder and violence. I’ve had multiple conversations with otherwise smart people who are just convinced that people like my Rush Limbaugh–listening friends and neighbors are so seething with rage that they’re a hair’s breadth from snapping.
.. At the same time, many of these same folks are utterly unconcerned with the effects of angry left-wing rhetoric. Politician after politician can accuse Republicans of killing people with their health-care plan, and that’s just “speaking truth to power.” When Hillary Clinton calls Republicans the “death party,” then that’s just the #Resistance in action. When left-wing riots break out across the land, then the resulting chaos is glossed-over as “mostly peaceful” protest.
.. There is, in fact, a problem with far-left violence, and the roots of that rage should be explored with at least the same energy the media devotes to perceived right-wing threats.
Blue State Blues: America’s Divisions are Not Political — They’re Religious
Broadly, the Republican Party is concerned about governance. That is why, for example, repealing and replacing Obamacare is taking so long. The Republican leadership in Washington seems genuinely concerned about passing something that works.
.. The Democratic Party is often called the “party of government.” But aside from representing public sector unions, Democrats do not care about governing — at least, not anymore. To them, power is the means to achieve a kind of secular salvation: a placid world where all are equal, all needs are met, and all are validated — something like John Lennon’s “Imagine.”
Many Democrats accept that the methods they use to achieve their utopia may be harsh, even violent. The ends justify the means.
.. The two parties are not clashing: they are talking past each other, and only seem to be arguing.
.. In extremis, that means taking up arms. For most Democrats, “resistance” means denying Trump’s legitimacy and denouncing the heresy of his supporters.
.. Democrats think Republicans are the religious nuts, because of the party’s stance on social issues. But even the Bible prescribes family values for reasons that are, at least in part, practical. “Honor your father and your mother,” the Bible says (Exodus 20:12), “in order that your days be lengthened on the land that the Lord, your God, is giving you” (emphasis added, obviously).
.. Republicans believe that faith and traditional values help individuals live more fulfilling lives in an orderly society. Democrats substitute the government for God
.. They have their own internal divisions, between
- leftists who want the state to do everything and
- those who simply want to tear it down along with every other institution.
But both reject America’s founding idea of God-given individual liberty.