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When Leaving Religion Costs You Everything
Despite the rapid growth in the number of atheists, losing your faith can also cost you a job, your friends, and your family.
By Brandon Withrow, June 25, 2016
In the first week of June, secular voters converged at the Lincoln Memorial—atheists, agnostics, humanists, freethinkers, and unbelievers of all stripes, came to celebrate what they have in common, to raise awareness among their representatives, and to fight bigotry.
The Reason Rally, as it is called, was a reminder that secularism isn’t going away anytime soon.
According to studies, institutionalized religion is losing its grip in The United States. Those who identify themselves as religiously unaffiliated (“the nones”) in America—persons who check “atheist,” “agnostic,” or “none of the above” on surveys—rose from 16 percent in 2007 to 23 percent in 2014. According to Pew Research, atheists make up 3.1 percent of American adults today; in 2007 it was 1.6 percent. Evidence shows that “the nones” are quickly losing their belief in God and becoming increasingly secular.
While there are significant demographic changes occurring in the U.S., as a phenomenon, atheism is still a long way from having the lion’s share of the American identity; religion still dominates our social world.
America is still “Christ haunted”—to use the words of Flannery O’Connor. Fears of public shunning and the risk of losing family connections and employment, keep many atheists quiet about their identity. There is a significant difficulty in being honest about disbelief in a country where prominent religious leaders warn that it leads to a nation’s demise.
“This liberal godless kind of what they call ‘reason’ should concern every freedom-loving American,” said Franklin Graham, about The Reason Rally on Facebook. “Here’s a warning— If you remove God, you remove God’s hand of blessing. That’s been shown over and over throughout history.”
In a study from 2014, which asked Americans to rate how open they were to having some religious and nonreligious persons becoming family members, the only group that ranked lower than atheists were Muslims. For those Americans who have left a faith and felt the costs, this is not shocking news.
“I have 5 grandchildren now, and 4 of them I have never held,” says Dave Warnock, a former pastor and now board member for The Clergy Project (TCP), a safe place and network for former religious professionals who no longer have supernatural beliefs. (Full disclosure: this author is a member of TCP.)
“They [his children] also withhold relationships from my wife—their mother, simply because she stays married to me, an apostate. They really do believe that the best form of love is to shun me and pray that the pain of that will bring me to repentance and back to God—from whom they think I am just running. They cannot conceive of the fact that I no longer believe that a supernatural god exists.”
Dave is one of 710 members of TCP, whose reach is global. Most have a Christian background, but a few are from Buddhist, Jewish, and Muslim traditions, though not all are out of the closet about being nonbelievers.
After 36 years in the Evangelical Charismatic movement in Tennessee, Dave left his faith. “For me,” he says, “it all started with a critical examination of the Bible and how it came to be…when I quit making excuses for the inconsistencies and contradictions, it started to have some gaping holes in it.”
After enough time in rigorous study, he says he saw the Bible as a collection of books written by very human individuals. Now he’s a stranger and pilgrim in a foreign land. “I feel like an alien here in the south. It’s all about where you go to church here,” he says.
Dave is not alone.
“My faith was the deepest, most sincere kind,” says Samantha (last name withheld), a former conservative Christian, who was firmly entrenched in the world of biblical inerrancy and Creationism. “Every thought in my mind was literally, how can I please God?”
Featured at the website of Answers in Genesis—the controversial creationist organization responsible for the Creation Museum and the forthcoming Ark Encounter—for her promotion of Creationism and awarded a scholarship from another creationist organization, she was a true believer. She was married at 19—saving herself for her husband to be—and like many evangelicals, submitted to a patriarchal order once married.
That is when her problems began, she says.
“Marriage was a very harsh disappointment for me,” she recalls. “He…took advantage of my beliefs that a wife is supposed to submit to her husband, and was very controlling and verbally abusive. It was like a very cruel game of Simon Says.” But she believed that it was God’s will for her, so she stayed married.
Her faith didn’t begin to unravel until she took a class on the Bible in college in 2011. She discovered the historical context in which the Bible was written, how it came together, and the more she learned about it, the less she believed. She also discovered that she had to leave her ex-husband, simultaneously coming out not only as an atheist, but also as bisexual.
While her siblings and parents continued to embrace her, she found other relationships crumbling.
“I knew I was leaving my husband, but I did not expect to lose my whole social structure of Christian relationships and support. I was shamed for leaving my marriage, abhorred for being attracted to women, and I was even told that my newfound confidence came from the devil.”
While she misses the community she had in her church and her marriage ended in divorce, Samantha has found that through her initial trial she now has a richer life.
“I feel like I gained more than I walked away [from]. I do not feel inequal as a woman. I have had delightful sexual relationships with men and women—none of which have ever made me feel ashamed about my body as my husband did.”
Gender and sexual identity as presented in the Bible are common themes among those who leave Christianity.
“I came out as an atheist publicly almost two years ago,” says Alexis Wesley, a former missionary and now an orphan advocate living in California.
“I spent 30 years as a very devout evangelical Christian,” she adds. “I became disillusioned with the Bible only after many years studying it.” For a while, she was able to explain away its passages that portrayed women as seductresses, as weaker than men, and as their property, but eventually she came to see how damaging this was to marriages.
She and her husband, who remains a Christian, immediately felt the ramifications of her leaving her faith in her social life.
“I was told by a close family member that I should stop fostering or adopting, and definitely not have another biological child since I shouldn’t bring them into an atheist household.”
Those who helped support their adoptions financially began openly expressing their regret.
“Another Christian friend in my adoption support group said during a discussion [that]…it would be better for kids to die orphans who loved Jesus after hearing a missionary talk about him, than to bring them into homes where ‘Christ wasn’t honored.’”
Those closest to her didn’t yell or threaten to disown, as she expected. “It’s been harder in some ways than that,” she tells me, “cold shoulders, strained looks, nervous conversations, forced prayers, and fake pleasantries….hide heaps of anger or hurt.”
Others found steep economic and personal identity costs in their departure from their faith.
Mark Farmer was a dedicated missionary and in ministry for most of his life. “We had been totally committed as missionaries who had no fixed salary and never requested donations,” he tells me. They lived on the hope of God leading others to send them money through their missionary society. By his 40s, and after he and his wife, Jean, raised three children in Western Europe, he managed to secure a position with salary and benefits while continuing his ministry.
It was that dedication to his faith, as well as liberal arts and seminary educations, that pushed him to study his faith deeper and presented troubling questions about the Bible.
“In my early sixties, serving as pastor of an evangelical church in the Midwest…it dawned on me that not only was Christianity a human construct and the Bible a thoroughly human book, none of it was plausible any more….I no longer believed in a supernatural god.”
His children had already left their faith after becoming adults, though Jean remained a liberal Christian; they remain happily married. Deconverting meant breaking with a significant part of his wider social network—he separated amicably with his church, though he did retain some Christian friends. It cost him a “sense of self,” and left life economically unstable, he says. “The idea on which I had based my life had turned out to be an illusion.”
Stories like these are not uncommon among nonbelievers. Many reiterate that departing a faith is not something they take lightly, but they often have to choose between being honest about who they are and losing family, friends, a job, or all of the above.
As more deconversions happen, it may produce less of a social shock for these unaffiliated expats. Until then, events, like The Reason Rally, and its sponsoring organizations, are representing the concerns of secular individuals and encouraging others to make their presence known as well.
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Sunday, June 26, 2016
"... proposals Trump has been touting throughout his campaign will not be included in the platform ..." Too bad, #Lyin'Donald.
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COMMENTS:
* That would be a difficult decision for McConnell since he's not qualified to be a Senator. His claim to fame is that he's owned by the rich and powerful NRA. He's their puppet.
* Pretty amazing that he's even gotten this far when he refuses to show his taxes, refused to debate Bernie and is already positioning himself to not debate Hillary, because he knows he'll be asked pointed questions which will prove his ignorance and thus unqualified. Hillary will run circles around him, so he'll never do it. Here's what I find amusing: Trump has only been successful this far by using the old-time psychological trick called the "Power of Three" where statements sound more powerful or funnier and sticks in people's minds when grouped into threes. "Liar" "Crooked" "Hillary", yet there's no substance, but repeated over and over people who only disliked her suddenly began hating her. Most literary people understand this rule, but the masses don't. Remember the blood coming out of her eyes, nose and "wherever"? He was telling the world he thought of Meg Kelly as just a vagina. The fool unwittingly used the rule of three on himself when he tried defending his small hands. Now he'll go down in history as being the candidate with the small "you-know-what". And it'll haunt him for years to come!
* Don't confuse conservatives with pesky things like facts. The cognitive dissonance will cause their heads to explode.
* All Joe an the other Trump Kooks have is avoiding all serious questions by pointing fingers at Obama or Hillary. They cannot answer questions honestly so they jump into rants about how dishonest other people are. Sad. It's clear theyare living in fear. Hillary is so far ahead and will slam dunk it when she faces Trump in a debate.
* But even the NRA is saying Trump's idea of putting guns on all citizens in saloons is ludicrous.
* Oh all that hate. We are much better off under Pres. Obama. Trump is just not "imperfect" but is unqualified to lead this country. Are you for him because you think Trump will bring back white supremacy?
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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Declines to Say if Trump Is Qualified to Be POTUS
By Nicki Rossoll, June 26, 2016
Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declined Sunday to say if Donald Trump, his party's presumptive presidential candidate, is qualified to be president.
"Well, look, I think it's no question that he's made a number of mistakes over the last few weeks. I think they're beginning to right the ship. It's a long time until November. And the burden obviously will be on him to convince people that he can handle this job," McConnell said on ABC's "This Week."
Pressed by ABC Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos on whether he thinks Trump is qualified, McConnell replied, "I leave it up to the American people to decide."
A new ABC News/Washington Post poll released today shows 64 percent of Americans, a new high, say Trump is unqualified to serve as president.
That could spell trouble for the presumptive Republican nominee in November, but the Majority Leader insists Trump won the Republican nomination fairly and that Republican primary voters have made their decision.
"He won the Republican nomination fair and square," McConnell said. "He got more votes than anybody else, against a whole lot of well-qualified candidates, and so our primary voters have made their decision as to who they want to be the nominee," he said. "The American people will be able to make that decision in the fall."
Conservative commentator and columnist George Will said Friday that he's leaving the Republican Party because of Donald Trump, and he urged other conservatives to do the same.
McConnell offered reassurance to Will, whom he called a friend: "The Republican Party is still going to be America's conservative party," McConnell told Stephanopoulos, adding that the party's platform will include basic principles Republicans believe in.
That means that proposals Trump has been touting throughout his campaign will not be included in the platform, including his proposed ban on Muslims entering the country.
"Our nominee may not agree with every single one of those, but the Republican Party, it will remain America's conservative party," he said. "The platform will be a traditional Republican platform...and I don't expect it to differ that much from the platform we had four years ago.
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COMMENTS:
* That would be a difficult decision for McConnell since he's not qualified to be a Senator. His claim to fame is that he's owned by the rich and powerful NRA. He's their puppet.
* Pretty amazing that he's even gotten this far when he refuses to show his taxes, refused to debate Bernie and is already positioning himself to not debate Hillary, because he knows he'll be asked pointed questions which will prove his ignorance and thus unqualified. Hillary will run circles around him, so he'll never do it. Here's what I find amusing: Trump has only been successful this far by using the old-time psychological trick called the "Power of Three" where statements sound more powerful or funnier and sticks in people's minds when grouped into threes. "Liar" "Crooked" "Hillary", yet there's no substance, but repeated over and over people who only disliked her suddenly began hating her. Most literary people understand this rule, but the masses don't. Remember the blood coming out of her eyes, nose and "wherever"? He was telling the world he thought of Meg Kelly as just a vagina. The fool unwittingly used the rule of three on himself when he tried defending his small hands. Now he'll go down in history as being the candidate with the small "you-know-what". And it'll haunt him for years to come!
* Don't confuse conservatives with pesky things like facts. The cognitive dissonance will cause their heads to explode.
* All Joe an the other Trump Kooks have is avoiding all serious questions by pointing fingers at Obama or Hillary. They cannot answer questions honestly so they jump into rants about how dishonest other people are. Sad. It's clear theyare living in fear. Hillary is so far ahead and will slam dunk it when she faces Trump in a debate.
* But even the NRA is saying Trump's idea of putting guns on all citizens in saloons is ludicrous.
* Oh all that hate. We are much better off under Pres. Obama. Trump is just not "imperfect" but is unqualified to lead this country. Are you for him because you think Trump will bring back white supremacy?
...................................................................................................................................................................
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Declines to Say if Trump Is Qualified to Be POTUS
By Nicki Rossoll, June 26, 2016
Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declined Sunday to say if Donald Trump, his party's presumptive presidential candidate, is qualified to be president.
"Well, look, I think it's no question that he's made a number of mistakes over the last few weeks. I think they're beginning to right the ship. It's a long time until November. And the burden obviously will be on him to convince people that he can handle this job," McConnell said on ABC's "This Week."
Pressed by ABC Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos on whether he thinks Trump is qualified, McConnell replied, "I leave it up to the American people to decide."
A new ABC News/Washington Post poll released today shows 64 percent of Americans, a new high, say Trump is unqualified to serve as president.
That could spell trouble for the presumptive Republican nominee in November, but the Majority Leader insists Trump won the Republican nomination fairly and that Republican primary voters have made their decision.
"He won the Republican nomination fair and square," McConnell said. "He got more votes than anybody else, against a whole lot of well-qualified candidates, and so our primary voters have made their decision as to who they want to be the nominee," he said. "The American people will be able to make that decision in the fall."
Conservative commentator and columnist George Will said Friday that he's leaving the Republican Party because of Donald Trump, and he urged other conservatives to do the same.
McConnell offered reassurance to Will, whom he called a friend: "The Republican Party is still going to be America's conservative party," McConnell told Stephanopoulos, adding that the party's platform will include basic principles Republicans believe in.
That means that proposals Trump has been touting throughout his campaign will not be included in the platform, including his proposed ban on Muslims entering the country.
"Our nominee may not agree with every single one of those, but the Republican Party, it will remain America's conservative party," he said. "The platform will be a traditional Republican platform...and I don't expect it to differ that much from the platform we had four years ago.
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"It’s that change in domain that likely sent the majority of the emails into spam folders, an easily-avoided mistake." The real mistake was in sending the begging emails in the first place; after all, he's supposed to be self-funding!
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COMMENTS:
* Nigerian spam scammers would love to get their hands on the Trump mailing list, so as to target the most gullible and ignorant.
* no self funding? what's a fundraiser got to do with self funding? i trusted he would do this on his own!!!!!
* Trump the spammer trying to bolster his scampaign...
* trump's fund mailing email operations are being handled by graduates of trump university
* If the simple minded are going to go out of their way to attend rallies held by the billionaire they are dumb enough to send him the little money they have. I thought Trump was self-funding? I guess $10 billion dollars doesn't go as far as it used to so he needs their lunch money. Something doesn't make sense?
* The world's smartest businessman apparently still hasn't figured out that old email thingy.
* That is hilarious and why having your family managed your election on the cheap is never a great idea.
* But, but I thought the Donald only had the BEST of the BEST working for him.
* When spam filters are wiser than 40% of the Republican party, it's time to be afraid.
* What happened to the multibilionaire 'self-funding' candidate? Was that all a LIE? Of course, Mark Cuban says Mr Trump doesn't even have $1 Billion left, and Mr Cuban should be a pretty good judge on that. That's why Mr Trump won't release any financial records. He has lost it all and this candidacy is just a way to increase the Trump 'brand' to save his financial butt. That's why Mr Trump has never bothered to learn anything about the job he is applying for. He has no intention of winning.
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High spam rate hampers first Trump fundraising email
By Louis Nelson, June 24, 2016
Donald Trump’s campaign has bragged that the candidate’s first ever fundraising email was a record-setter in terms of money raised. But Trump’s email reached less than half of its intended recipients, and even fewer bothered to read the billionaire’s missive.
Data from email tracking firm Return Path shows 60 percent of Trump’s fundraising emails were kicked into recipients’ spam folders, according to a report from Ad Age. Only 12 percent of recipients opened the email and six percent deleted it without even opening it.
By comparison, Return Path’s data showed other emails from the Trump campaign are sent to spam folders at an eight percent rate, considered high relative to other email marketing.
Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks told Ad Age that the email generated $3.3 million in donations on Tuesday and an additional $3.4 million on Wednesday. In a separate email to supporters on Wednesday, Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. said his father’s request had spurred a $2 million flood of donations in just 12 hours. Hicks did not immediately return POLITICO’s request for comment.
Return Path Senior Director of Research Tom Sather told Ad Age that the Trump fundraising email’s poor performance was likely a result of a change in domain. While previous emails had been sent from @DonaldTrump.com email addresses, the candidate’s fundraising push came from an @DonaldJTrump.com account. It’s that change in domain that likely sent the majority of the emails into spam folders, an easily-avoided mistake.
"These are things that professional email marketers prepare for," he said.
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COMMENTS:
* Nigerian spam scammers would love to get their hands on the Trump mailing list, so as to target the most gullible and ignorant.
* no self funding? what's a fundraiser got to do with self funding? i trusted he would do this on his own!!!!!
* Trump the spammer trying to bolster his scampaign...
* trump's fund mailing email operations are being handled by graduates of trump university
* If the simple minded are going to go out of their way to attend rallies held by the billionaire they are dumb enough to send him the little money they have. I thought Trump was self-funding? I guess $10 billion dollars doesn't go as far as it used to so he needs their lunch money. Something doesn't make sense?
* The world's smartest businessman apparently still hasn't figured out that old email thingy.
* That is hilarious and why having your family managed your election on the cheap is never a great idea.
* But, but I thought the Donald only had the BEST of the BEST working for him.
* When spam filters are wiser than 40% of the Republican party, it's time to be afraid.
* What happened to the multibilionaire 'self-funding' candidate? Was that all a LIE? Of course, Mark Cuban says Mr Trump doesn't even have $1 Billion left, and Mr Cuban should be a pretty good judge on that. That's why Mr Trump won't release any financial records. He has lost it all and this candidacy is just a way to increase the Trump 'brand' to save his financial butt. That's why Mr Trump has never bothered to learn anything about the job he is applying for. He has no intention of winning.
...................................................................................................................................................................
High spam rate hampers first Trump fundraising email
By Louis Nelson, June 24, 2016
Donald Trump’s campaign has bragged that the candidate’s first ever fundraising email was a record-setter in terms of money raised. But Trump’s email reached less than half of its intended recipients, and even fewer bothered to read the billionaire’s missive.
Data from email tracking firm Return Path shows 60 percent of Trump’s fundraising emails were kicked into recipients’ spam folders, according to a report from Ad Age. Only 12 percent of recipients opened the email and six percent deleted it without even opening it.
By comparison, Return Path’s data showed other emails from the Trump campaign are sent to spam folders at an eight percent rate, considered high relative to other email marketing.
Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks told Ad Age that the email generated $3.3 million in donations on Tuesday and an additional $3.4 million on Wednesday. In a separate email to supporters on Wednesday, Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. said his father’s request had spurred a $2 million flood of donations in just 12 hours. Hicks did not immediately return POLITICO’s request for comment.
Return Path Senior Director of Research Tom Sather told Ad Age that the Trump fundraising email’s poor performance was likely a result of a change in domain. While previous emails had been sent from @DonaldTrump.com email addresses, the candidate’s fundraising push came from an @DonaldJTrump.com account. It’s that change in domain that likely sent the majority of the emails into spam folders, an easily-avoided mistake.
"These are things that professional email marketers prepare for," he said.
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Saturday, June 25, 2016
"... delegates could be granted conscientious objector status, thereby freeing them from their pledge to vote as they are bound as the result of primaries and caucuses."
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COMMENTS:
* I don't like trump. This being said the republican congress I like less. With only 15% approval here they are blocking the Supreme Court nominee because their main argument is: let the American public decide. But when the public decides something they don't want they just ignore the voters! Change the rules. What do you think will happen if Hillary is in a clear position to win? Will they still stand by the: let American voters decide and risk a very liberal Supreme Court pick, more than Obama? Or will they throw aside their main argument of letting the American voter decide and quickly confirm Obama more moderate appointee? Really? What do you think will happen. I think republican congress should be confronted NOW about the issue of voters, be it with trump or with Obama. Either they come clean and say they don't care about the voters just about their agenda, or they finally listen to voters and stop acting against voter interest and pretending that our votes matter
* Question to Trump supporters: is it going to make any difference to your perceptions whatsoever whether or not he is the nominee? Because I get the feeling that if he is denied the nomination, you get to forever champion the narrative that he was cheated. But if they go ahead and nominate him and he loses in the general, which if you care about actual reality is likely, I suspect you'll still say he got cheated somehow. If he gets the nomination and gets beaten in a fair fight (or as fair as politics gets), will you accept that the majority of voters didn't actually want him?
* It's your classic "rock and a hard place" scenario. If they simply nominate Trump as per the primary and caucus process at the convention, they will have to spend the next 4-5 months defending their decision to nominate a divisive, unstable showman as their party nominee and probably lose. But, if they are able to work some kind of convention rules magic and deny him the nomination and give it to another, unknown candidate, then they completely disenfranchise all of his supporters and alienate the entire primary process and damage their own party's future elections; and still probably lose. How did it come to this?
* This year will be the end of the gop as a major national party. Not because of Trump...but because of the gop establishment that is doing everything they can to sabotage the guy their voters selected. Millions of dependable republican voters like myself will wash their hands of the party because of the arrogant, elitists that believe they are entitled to pick the nominee. Hey guys, WE did not want your hand picked candidate Bush3...or Rubio...or Kasich...and when you give Trump the middle finger you are also giving it to the 13,000,000 that voted for him.
* I do find it odd that people point the finger at establishment republicans blaming them for Trump. The GOP surely hasn't done any favors for anyone, but the Trump machine is more so a result of the past 8 yrs of democratic ruling. People finally getting tired of the narrative and all the other bullshxttery going on. You could have stuck a muppet up there and as long as they came across as anti establishment calling out half of the nonsense we're forced to digest everyday, they would have received the nomination.
* It's amazing how many Republicans suddenly grew a conscience when Donald's Poll Numbers dropped like a rock. A lot of these detractors were 100% behind him when he was neck and neck with Hillary and it isn't like he has said anything worse in the last 30 days than he said in the Primary...Funny how suddenly they cannot seem to overlook his flaws now that he is losing badly...
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Republicans Consider ‘Conscientious Objector’ Rule for Convention Delegates
By Time, June 18, 2016
Members of the GOP Convention Rules committee are planning to consider an amendment to allow delegates a way out of voting for Trump on the first ballot—an effort that in an extreme could be used to deny him the nomination.
Under the proposal, delegates could be granted conscientious objector status, thereby freeing them from their pledge to vote as they are bound as the result of primaries and caucuses. The measure, first put forward by Colorado delegate Kendal Unruh, would undo the strict ‘faithless-delegate’ rule enacted at the GOP convention in 2012 and allow a “vote of conscience, whether personal or religious” by delegates.
“Allowable personal reasons shall include the public disclosure of one or more grievous acts of personal conduct by a nominee candidate, including but not limited to, criminally actionable acts, acts of moral turpitude or extreme prejudice, and/or notorious public statements of support for positions that clearly oppose or contradict the policies embodied in the Republican Party’s platform as established at the national convention,” the amendment says.
Nearly all convention delegates are bound under the current rules—at least on the first ballot—by the results of primaries and caucuses in their states and territories. At minimum the proposed amendment would free frustrated delegates from having to vote for Trump, and in the extreme could deny Trump the 1,237 delegates required to win the nomination—even on the first ballot.
On Friday, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus announced the selection of the chair and co-chair of the Convention Rules Committee, Utah National Committeewoman Enid Mickelson and Massachusetts National Committeeman Ron Kaufman. Both have spoken negatively about Trump in the past, but are viewed as party institutionalists. On Friday afternoon, the RNC Counsel’s Office distributed copies of the party’s current rules and proposed changes recommended by the RNC’s standing committee on rules to all members of the convention rules committee. In the week before the Cleveland convention, the convention rules committee and the full convention will have to approve the new rules, as well as any proposed amendments.
The circulating draft is one of several proposed amendments designed to undermine Trump or alleviate the concerns of delegates at the convention. A more radical proposal would unbind all delegates for any reason, while more limited measures would provide delegates with other outlets to voice their frustration with Trump at the convention.
In an interview with TIME last week, Trump said he had “no comment” about whether delegates who don’t support him should be removed from the convention, but said that those seeking to undermine him already “had their chance.”
“All I’ve heard is I’ve got more votes than anybody in the history,” Trump said. “So I think it’s a little hard for somebody to do that. More votes than anybody in history. They had their chance. I do know they represented other people who were defeated. And they had their chance. They could have won but they didn’t.”
The convention rules committee is made up of one man and one woman from each of the 50 states, U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia. Dominated by party insiders and loyalists to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz—who aggressively worked state conventions to secure slots on the committee—it remains to be seen what the committee’s appetite would be for such a dramatic break from the existing rules. It is complicated further by the Republican National Committee’s embrace of Trump early last month, even as some party leaders are reversing their earlier decisions to support Trump.
In an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd this week, Ryan gave members of his conference the leeway to avoid backing Trump. “The last thing I would do is tell anybody to do something that’s contrary to their conscience,” he said.
The text of the proposed rule:
COMMENTS:
* I don't like trump. This being said the republican congress I like less. With only 15% approval here they are blocking the Supreme Court nominee because their main argument is: let the American public decide. But when the public decides something they don't want they just ignore the voters! Change the rules. What do you think will happen if Hillary is in a clear position to win? Will they still stand by the: let American voters decide and risk a very liberal Supreme Court pick, more than Obama? Or will they throw aside their main argument of letting the American voter decide and quickly confirm Obama more moderate appointee? Really? What do you think will happen. I think republican congress should be confronted NOW about the issue of voters, be it with trump or with Obama. Either they come clean and say they don't care about the voters just about their agenda, or they finally listen to voters and stop acting against voter interest and pretending that our votes matter
* Question to Trump supporters: is it going to make any difference to your perceptions whatsoever whether or not he is the nominee? Because I get the feeling that if he is denied the nomination, you get to forever champion the narrative that he was cheated. But if they go ahead and nominate him and he loses in the general, which if you care about actual reality is likely, I suspect you'll still say he got cheated somehow. If he gets the nomination and gets beaten in a fair fight (or as fair as politics gets), will you accept that the majority of voters didn't actually want him?
* It's your classic "rock and a hard place" scenario. If they simply nominate Trump as per the primary and caucus process at the convention, they will have to spend the next 4-5 months defending their decision to nominate a divisive, unstable showman as their party nominee and probably lose. But, if they are able to work some kind of convention rules magic and deny him the nomination and give it to another, unknown candidate, then they completely disenfranchise all of his supporters and alienate the entire primary process and damage their own party's future elections; and still probably lose. How did it come to this?
* This year will be the end of the gop as a major national party. Not because of Trump...but because of the gop establishment that is doing everything they can to sabotage the guy their voters selected. Millions of dependable republican voters like myself will wash their hands of the party because of the arrogant, elitists that believe they are entitled to pick the nominee. Hey guys, WE did not want your hand picked candidate Bush3...or Rubio...or Kasich...and when you give Trump the middle finger you are also giving it to the 13,000,000 that voted for him.
* I do find it odd that people point the finger at establishment republicans blaming them for Trump. The GOP surely hasn't done any favors for anyone, but the Trump machine is more so a result of the past 8 yrs of democratic ruling. People finally getting tired of the narrative and all the other bullshxttery going on. You could have stuck a muppet up there and as long as they came across as anti establishment calling out half of the nonsense we're forced to digest everyday, they would have received the nomination.
* It's amazing how many Republicans suddenly grew a conscience when Donald's Poll Numbers dropped like a rock. A lot of these detractors were 100% behind him when he was neck and neck with Hillary and it isn't like he has said anything worse in the last 30 days than he said in the Primary...Funny how suddenly they cannot seem to overlook his flaws now that he is losing badly...
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Republicans Consider ‘Conscientious Objector’ Rule for Convention Delegates
By Time, June 18, 2016
Members of the GOP Convention Rules committee are planning to consider an amendment to allow delegates a way out of voting for Trump on the first ballot—an effort that in an extreme could be used to deny him the nomination.
Under the proposal, delegates could be granted conscientious objector status, thereby freeing them from their pledge to vote as they are bound as the result of primaries and caucuses. The measure, first put forward by Colorado delegate Kendal Unruh, would undo the strict ‘faithless-delegate’ rule enacted at the GOP convention in 2012 and allow a “vote of conscience, whether personal or religious” by delegates.
“Allowable personal reasons shall include the public disclosure of one or more grievous acts of personal conduct by a nominee candidate, including but not limited to, criminally actionable acts, acts of moral turpitude or extreme prejudice, and/or notorious public statements of support for positions that clearly oppose or contradict the policies embodied in the Republican Party’s platform as established at the national convention,” the amendment says.
Nearly all convention delegates are bound under the current rules—at least on the first ballot—by the results of primaries and caucuses in their states and territories. At minimum the proposed amendment would free frustrated delegates from having to vote for Trump, and in the extreme could deny Trump the 1,237 delegates required to win the nomination—even on the first ballot.
On Friday, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus announced the selection of the chair and co-chair of the Convention Rules Committee, Utah National Committeewoman Enid Mickelson and Massachusetts National Committeeman Ron Kaufman. Both have spoken negatively about Trump in the past, but are viewed as party institutionalists. On Friday afternoon, the RNC Counsel’s Office distributed copies of the party’s current rules and proposed changes recommended by the RNC’s standing committee on rules to all members of the convention rules committee. In the week before the Cleveland convention, the convention rules committee and the full convention will have to approve the new rules, as well as any proposed amendments.
The circulating draft is one of several proposed amendments designed to undermine Trump or alleviate the concerns of delegates at the convention. A more radical proposal would unbind all delegates for any reason, while more limited measures would provide delegates with other outlets to voice their frustration with Trump at the convention.
In an interview with TIME last week, Trump said he had “no comment” about whether delegates who don’t support him should be removed from the convention, but said that those seeking to undermine him already “had their chance.”
“All I’ve heard is I’ve got more votes than anybody in the history,” Trump said. “So I think it’s a little hard for somebody to do that. More votes than anybody in history. They had their chance. I do know they represented other people who were defeated. And they had their chance. They could have won but they didn’t.”
The convention rules committee is made up of one man and one woman from each of the 50 states, U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia. Dominated by party insiders and loyalists to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz—who aggressively worked state conventions to secure slots on the committee—it remains to be seen what the committee’s appetite would be for such a dramatic break from the existing rules. It is complicated further by the Republican National Committee’s embrace of Trump early last month, even as some party leaders are reversing their earlier decisions to support Trump.
In an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd this week, Ryan gave members of his conference the leeway to avoid backing Trump. “The last thing I would do is tell anybody to do something that’s contrary to their conscience,” he said.
The text of the proposed rule:
Preserving Delegates’ Ability to Vote Their Individual Conscience...................................................................................................................................................................
The secretary of the national convention shall receive and faithfully announce and record each delegate’s vote in accordance with these rules. If any such delegate notifies the secretary of his or her intent to cast a vote of conscience, whether personal or religious, each such delegate shall be unbound and unconstrained by these rules on any given vote, including the first ballot for the selection of the Republican nominee for President of the United States, without the risk of challenge, sanction, or retribution by the Republican National Committee. Allowable personal reasons shall include the public disclosure of one or more grievous acts of personal conduct by a nominee candidate, including but not limited to, criminally actionable acts, acts of moral turpitude or extreme prejudice, and/or notorious public statements of support for positions that clearly oppose or contradict the policies embodied in the Republican Party’s platform as established at the national convention.
"... majorities of both Republicans and Democrats describe the rival political party as immoral, dishonest and stupid, and consider it a threat to the country’s well-being. Many say members of the other party make them feel afraid."
...................................................................................................................................................................
America’s political civil war
By Nolan Finley, June 25, 2016
America is engaged in a civil war.
Our nation has fractured so severely that today there is almost nothing that unites us. Not national interest, not faith, not a common vision for our future, not values and increasingly not a respect for the fundamental principles of our founding.
America was attacked two weeks ago by one of our own, an American who bought into the hateful messaging of the Islamic State group, a foreign enemy committed to our ruin. The terrorist attack left 49 of our must vulnerable fellow citizens dead, and another 50 wounded.
Instead of bringing us together in steely resolve to confront this frightening new front in the war on terror, it furthered our divide.
Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s bomb-throwing presumptive presidential nominee, came out of the chute firing with an attack on President Barack Obama, blaming his policies for the killing spree.
Instead of denying Trump the opportunity to set the tone of the national discourse, Obama responded in kind, blaming Trump’s incendiary statements for poisoning the political climate. From there it was a free-for-all.
Groups from the right and left tore off whatever piece of the tragedy fit their particular agenda and shook it in the faces of their opponents.
By the end of the week, congressional Democrats were lowering their brittle bones onto the floor of the House for a sit-in to protest inaction on gun control bills that would strip a million or more Americans, mostly of Muslim descent, of their Constitutional right to due process.
The choice of anarchy over determined deliberation reflects the reality that our leaders, and perhaps all of us, have given up on the search for a middle ground and are concerned only with gaining partisan advantage. The Democratic sitters heralded their civil disobedience with a string of fundraising tweets and Facebook postings.
Already in this election season we’ve seen violent attempts to deny Americans their rights of free association and speech. Police in Cleveland have been warned by the FBI to expect hordes of organized hooligans to descend on their city with the aim of shutting down the upcoming Republican National Convention.
A new Pew Research Center poll finds majorities of both Republicans and Democrats describe the rival political party as immoral, dishonest and stupid, and consider it a threat to the country’s well-being. Many say members of the other party make them feel afraid.
So much for the concept of agreeing to disagree agreeable, an expectation of civility that has kept the nation from shredding.
We have not harbored such irreconcilable differences since the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s. America got through the hostility of that era intact, but for a while it certainly felt as if we were coming apart. In the midst of this bizarre, volatile election season, it feels that way again. Winning by any means necessary is all that matters.
It still is unimaginable that Americans would someday again take up arms against each other, but such fraternal bloodshed always starts with unchecked hatred. And we sure seem to hate each other.
...................................................................................................................................................................
America’s political civil war
By Nolan Finley, June 25, 2016
America is engaged in a civil war.
Our nation has fractured so severely that today there is almost nothing that unites us. Not national interest, not faith, not a common vision for our future, not values and increasingly not a respect for the fundamental principles of our founding.
America was attacked two weeks ago by one of our own, an American who bought into the hateful messaging of the Islamic State group, a foreign enemy committed to our ruin. The terrorist attack left 49 of our must vulnerable fellow citizens dead, and another 50 wounded.
Instead of bringing us together in steely resolve to confront this frightening new front in the war on terror, it furthered our divide.
Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s bomb-throwing presumptive presidential nominee, came out of the chute firing with an attack on President Barack Obama, blaming his policies for the killing spree.
Instead of denying Trump the opportunity to set the tone of the national discourse, Obama responded in kind, blaming Trump’s incendiary statements for poisoning the political climate. From there it was a free-for-all.
Groups from the right and left tore off whatever piece of the tragedy fit their particular agenda and shook it in the faces of their opponents.
By the end of the week, congressional Democrats were lowering their brittle bones onto the floor of the House for a sit-in to protest inaction on gun control bills that would strip a million or more Americans, mostly of Muslim descent, of their Constitutional right to due process.
The choice of anarchy over determined deliberation reflects the reality that our leaders, and perhaps all of us, have given up on the search for a middle ground and are concerned only with gaining partisan advantage. The Democratic sitters heralded their civil disobedience with a string of fundraising tweets and Facebook postings.
Already in this election season we’ve seen violent attempts to deny Americans their rights of free association and speech. Police in Cleveland have been warned by the FBI to expect hordes of organized hooligans to descend on their city with the aim of shutting down the upcoming Republican National Convention.
A new Pew Research Center poll finds majorities of both Republicans and Democrats describe the rival political party as immoral, dishonest and stupid, and consider it a threat to the country’s well-being. Many say members of the other party make them feel afraid.
So much for the concept of agreeing to disagree agreeable, an expectation of civility that has kept the nation from shredding.
We have not harbored such irreconcilable differences since the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s. America got through the hostility of that era intact, but for a while it certainly felt as if we were coming apart. In the midst of this bizarre, volatile election season, it feels that way again. Winning by any means necessary is all that matters.
It still is unimaginable that Americans would someday again take up arms against each other, but such fraternal bloodshed always starts with unchecked hatred. And we sure seem to hate each other.
...................................................................................................................................................................
"For Trump, who has alienated large swaths of minority voters with his immigration rhetoric, victory will likely have to come from securing a large portion of a diminishing slice of the electoral pie."
...................................................................................................................................................................
4 reasons why Brexit doesn't mean Donald Trump will win
By Gregory Krieg, June 25, 2016
The parallels are impossible to ignore.
In both the U.S. and U.K., populist campaigns stoked by economic and immigration anxiety have taken on the ruling elite of two major political parties and scored conventional wisdom-defying victories.
Posed in a certain light, the Brexit effort and Donald Trump's presidential candidacy appear to be twin causes, feeding off recognizable political grist.
But even as the forces driving their respective successes draw on some of the same innate social movements, the hurdles facing Trump's stretch run to the White House are much different -- and likely more difficult to clear -- from those now surpassed by the Brexit campaign.
Among them:
Washington vs. Brussels
Much of the frustration fueling Trump's success is aimed at the national political establishment. Supporters rail against career politicians in Washington, D.C., saying their interests are increasingly divorced from those of the voters who put them in office.
As the success of the tea party makes clear, this is a potent political message -- one being harnessed now by the Trump campaign.
But for all the frustration among Trump's backers, imagine their fury if the object of their ire was not an American city but a foreign capital. The seat of EU power is in Brussels, Belgium, allowing "leave" campaigners to make the case that British policy was being dictated from abroad.
Trump has made clear he wants to steer the U.S. away from the influence of foreign alliances, but he cannot draw on such a clear line -- and provocation -- as available to "Leave" organizers, who harped on fears that British sovereignty was on the line.
A candidate vs. an issue
Most American voters in November will cast a ballot for one of two major party candidates. But even if the piece of the U.S. electorate that rates its desire for Trump's brand of border security as their top priority outpaces those who prefer Hillary Clinton, there are a multitude of unrelated issues that will likely drive their decisions.
A February Gallup poll found that only the economy, national security, jobs and health care rated as "above average in importance" across the political spectrum.
After that, the relevance of a candidate's positions varied. So while Trump has undoubtedly struck a chord on immigration with his supporters, it's unclear how many voters will walk into their polling place in November with solely that question and its implications in mind.
For the "leave" campaign, the matter was much simpler. They had one question to press and considerably less concern about the doings of the well-known and polarizing political figures pushing their case.
Trump, meanwhile, is not just selling his positions but his candidacy. In choosing whether to vote for Trump, voters will be making more than a binary choice -- they'll have to consider his position on issues, his preparedness for the Oval Office and their opinion of the man himself -- all while being presented with an alternative major party candidate in Clinton.
Referendum vs. indirect election
The most apparent distinction between Thursday's Brexit vote and the coming U.S. general election is their reliance on two very different democratic mechanisms.
The U.K.'s decision to leave the European Union was made via popular referendum. That exercise of "direct democracy" cut out the familiar barriers -- in this case, parliament and the prime minister -- and put the decision squarely on the voters.
The American presidential system, by its nature, puts more space between their will and political action.
That space, occupied in the general election campaign by the electoral college, offers a unique benefit to the more organized, strategic campaign. So while victory in, say, Ohio, by one vote or 1 million, could decide the race, simply winning the popular vote nationwide won't be enough to carry Trump or Clinton to victory.
Demographics
Both the "leave" campaign and Trump's presidential bid have been powered in large part by concerns over mass immigration. But if the two movements are pulling support from similar wells of political discontent among non-Hispanic white voters, the British side enjoyed a proportionately deeper reserve.
According to the CIA World Factbook, the British population was more than 87% white in 2011. Other estimates put the ratio at higher than 90%. Meanwhile, a Pew survey from earlier this year found that "the U.S. electorate (in 2016) will be the country's most racially and ethnically diverse ever." More than 30% of eligible voters will come from a racial or ethnic minority group.
The non-Hispanic white vote is expected to make up 69% of eligible voters, down from 71% in 2012.
For Trump, who has alienated large swaths of minority voters with his immigration rhetoric, victory will likely have to come from securing a large portion of a diminishing slice of the electoral pie.
...................................................................................................................................................................
4 reasons why Brexit doesn't mean Donald Trump will win
By Gregory Krieg, June 25, 2016
The parallels are impossible to ignore.
In both the U.S. and U.K., populist campaigns stoked by economic and immigration anxiety have taken on the ruling elite of two major political parties and scored conventional wisdom-defying victories.
Posed in a certain light, the Brexit effort and Donald Trump's presidential candidacy appear to be twin causes, feeding off recognizable political grist.
But even as the forces driving their respective successes draw on some of the same innate social movements, the hurdles facing Trump's stretch run to the White House are much different -- and likely more difficult to clear -- from those now surpassed by the Brexit campaign.
Among them:
Washington vs. Brussels
Much of the frustration fueling Trump's success is aimed at the national political establishment. Supporters rail against career politicians in Washington, D.C., saying their interests are increasingly divorced from those of the voters who put them in office.
As the success of the tea party makes clear, this is a potent political message -- one being harnessed now by the Trump campaign.
But for all the frustration among Trump's backers, imagine their fury if the object of their ire was not an American city but a foreign capital. The seat of EU power is in Brussels, Belgium, allowing "leave" campaigners to make the case that British policy was being dictated from abroad.
Trump has made clear he wants to steer the U.S. away from the influence of foreign alliances, but he cannot draw on such a clear line -- and provocation -- as available to "Leave" organizers, who harped on fears that British sovereignty was on the line.
A candidate vs. an issue
Most American voters in November will cast a ballot for one of two major party candidates. But even if the piece of the U.S. electorate that rates its desire for Trump's brand of border security as their top priority outpaces those who prefer Hillary Clinton, there are a multitude of unrelated issues that will likely drive their decisions.
A February Gallup poll found that only the economy, national security, jobs and health care rated as "above average in importance" across the political spectrum.
After that, the relevance of a candidate's positions varied. So while Trump has undoubtedly struck a chord on immigration with his supporters, it's unclear how many voters will walk into their polling place in November with solely that question and its implications in mind.
For the "leave" campaign, the matter was much simpler. They had one question to press and considerably less concern about the doings of the well-known and polarizing political figures pushing their case.
Trump, meanwhile, is not just selling his positions but his candidacy. In choosing whether to vote for Trump, voters will be making more than a binary choice -- they'll have to consider his position on issues, his preparedness for the Oval Office and their opinion of the man himself -- all while being presented with an alternative major party candidate in Clinton.
Referendum vs. indirect election
The most apparent distinction between Thursday's Brexit vote and the coming U.S. general election is their reliance on two very different democratic mechanisms.
The U.K.'s decision to leave the European Union was made via popular referendum. That exercise of "direct democracy" cut out the familiar barriers -- in this case, parliament and the prime minister -- and put the decision squarely on the voters.
The American presidential system, by its nature, puts more space between their will and political action.
That space, occupied in the general election campaign by the electoral college, offers a unique benefit to the more organized, strategic campaign. So while victory in, say, Ohio, by one vote or 1 million, could decide the race, simply winning the popular vote nationwide won't be enough to carry Trump or Clinton to victory.
Demographics
Both the "leave" campaign and Trump's presidential bid have been powered in large part by concerns over mass immigration. But if the two movements are pulling support from similar wells of political discontent among non-Hispanic white voters, the British side enjoyed a proportionately deeper reserve.
According to the CIA World Factbook, the British population was more than 87% white in 2011. Other estimates put the ratio at higher than 90%. Meanwhile, a Pew survey from earlier this year found that "the U.S. electorate (in 2016) will be the country's most racially and ethnically diverse ever." More than 30% of eligible voters will come from a racial or ethnic minority group.
The non-Hispanic white vote is expected to make up 69% of eligible voters, down from 71% in 2012.
For Trump, who has alienated large swaths of minority voters with his immigration rhetoric, victory will likely have to come from securing a large portion of a diminishing slice of the electoral pie.
...................................................................................................................................................................
"Evangelical Christians do not welcome the rise of the secular 'nones' ..." Gee, isn't that just too bad!
...................................................................................................................................................................
COMMENTS:
* American evangelicals are equal to the Taliban. There is nothing wrong with faith, but when you constantly try and force everyone into your version of the religion then I have a problem. Today's society doesn't have a long memory. Our nation's founders did. They remembered the Protestant/Catholic wars from a hundred years before our revolution. The reason that the 1st amendment was written, and radified, was that there were too many sects here already and they couldn't agree on one for the nation. So, they compromised and did what Jefferson had written and Virginia accepted--freedom to choose religion and practice it without the state having a preference of one over another. That kept the peace. The Bible isn't a democratic book anyway. There are way too many 'lords, masters, kings and queens' and not many elected officials. Maybe we've outgrown the tribalism that started religion in the first place?
* Sorry to point this out but the US hasn't been a "Christian" nation for some time. A large portion of people who claim to be Christians are only cultural Christians, that is they claim to be Christians because their parents are Christians so they think they inherited Christianity like they inherited their parents genes. Despite their claims to be Christians many don't have any deep seated religious beliefs and rarely attend church. These CINO (Christians in name only) are the ones that have no problem voting for Donald Trump and his decidedly un-Christian ideas about how to treat other people.
* It is amazing that evangelicals, in particular, have imaginary historical "facts" and then believe them implicitly. What is worse, they then expect to be granted special privileges and rights based on those none existent facts. There is school of thought that it is people with no internal moral compass that need a book of instructions to guide them. Since they also find it easy to act in their own interest, regardless of the harm, a system that forgives and wipes the slate clean is very attractive. Most Atheists make a point of saying that they were born knowing right from wrong and don't need a book to learn from.
* Perhaps if they acted Christian, the evangelicals might see it differently. Christianity is becoming more like Islam every day. Just as many people killed in the name of Christianity as Muslims in history of religion. Women's rights, sexual preferences, social issues, involvement in politics-- your track is not great. Going to church does not make you Christian, it is all about your deeds and actions. It is 2016, not 1816. Where is the church on guns? Seem to be very quiet. I have God, but not religion. There is only one, by the way. I do not need a church to be the intermediary to God, especially with the track record of late.
* This country has citizens of every religion, including non Christian ones, along with millions of others who do not believe God exists. So, my question would be..how can you call a whole country "Christian" when millions of it's citizens are not. Also, many of the "Founding Fathers" as they are called, considered themselves to be Christian, but they belied it by the things they did...such as have mistresses, and kidnap people from Africa & enslave them, so calling this country Christian is actually a misnomer in itself.
* About friggin' time. People can believe and worship, or not believe and not worship as they wish - that is a Right of being American. But damn, I am sick of these ignorant faith-based jerks pushing their beliefs on others. The GOP was the rational party until it hooked up with the Religous Right - now it is imploding as it has become "The party of stupid (quote of Bobby Jindal)", with the influence of the Religious Right taking over and the simple message of minding our own business and fiscal responsibility thrown out the window.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Why Evangelicals say US is no longer Christian
By Lucy Schouten, June 25, 2016
Evangelical Christians are mourning a cultural shift they see as a loss in both their influence at home and the nation's ability to hold a Christian standard for the world.
A majority of white Evangelical Protestants - 59 percent - say the United States has lost its Christian identity, according to a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute and Brookings Institution. This represents an 11-point jump from 48 percent in 2012.
"[Donald] Trump's politics of nostalgia calling to 'Make American Great Again' resonate with the great majority of Evangelicals," R. Andrew Chesnut, a professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, tells The Christian Science Monitor. "[They] miss the Reagan era or even the Eisenhower years when, in their view, a more masculine and Christian nation commanded greater respect abroad and reflected their own white Evangelical political and cultural attitudes."
Evangelical Christians do not welcome the rise of the secular "nones," and the data shows 70 percent believe the country has changed for the worse since the 1950s. The general feeling that the country is on the wrong track is echoed by 72 percent of Americans generally, however, suggesting the view partly reflects an Evangelical Christian interpretation of the country's mood overall.
Politics play a role, as the mostly Republican Evangelicals are lamenting both the traditional give-and-take of the two-party system and the reality that they have lost several key political battles.
"Seven years of a Democrat in the White House have caused most of them to feel relatively powerless in the face of great changes that they steadfastly reject, such as same-sex marriage," Professor Chesnut says. "Kentucky county clerk [Kim Clark] became a lightning rod of resistance when she was jailed, but gay marriage remains the law of the land."
Neither former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee nor Texas Sen. Ted Cruz marshaled enough support beyond Evangelicals to win the Republican nomination. Although presumptive presidential nominee Mr. Trump is courting Evangelicals, he has demonstrated too much unfamiliarity with their faith for them to be comfortable making him the standard-bearer for American Christianity, Chesnut says.
“Over the last four years, a growing number [of white Protestant Americans] are seeing that [their cultural dominance in the US has been] lost irretrievably,” said Henry Olsen, senior fellow at the Ethics & Public Policy Center, according to Religion News Service. “That has massive implications for our politics going down the road.”
The perception is also backed by demographic and census data. The demographic reality is that Protestant Christianity has been losing ground for half a century, and even the conservative sects long thought to be immune have seen membership decline over the past decade, as The Christian Science Monitor reported previously.
China replaced Mexico as the top source of new America's immigrants in 2013, and Asians have been the nation's fastest growing ethnic group since 2000, according to data released Friday by the US Census Bureau.
Asians have maintained this growth through immigration, rather than birth rate, thus supplying a continual stream of immigrants from traditionally non-Christian countries such as China or India, the Associated Press reported. By contrast, other immigration waves in the 20th centuries originated in predominantly Catholic Ireland, Italy, or Mexico, or from the more traditionally Christian nations of eastern Europe. These immigrants altered the nation's cultural and religious landscape, but they did so without diminishing its perceived Christian character.
High levels of immigration are making Americans generally feel threatened, particularly when the immigrants are not Christian. Almost six in 10 worry that the values of Muslim immigrants conflict with the American way of life, and that fear is heightened among Evangelical Christians, the survey shows. Muslims represent just 1 percent of the country, but their disproportionate media presence belies their actual numbers, contributing to an Evangelical sense that cultural and political power have vanished irretrievably.
...................................................................................................................................................................
COMMENTS:
* American evangelicals are equal to the Taliban. There is nothing wrong with faith, but when you constantly try and force everyone into your version of the religion then I have a problem. Today's society doesn't have a long memory. Our nation's founders did. They remembered the Protestant/Catholic wars from a hundred years before our revolution. The reason that the 1st amendment was written, and radified, was that there were too many sects here already and they couldn't agree on one for the nation. So, they compromised and did what Jefferson had written and Virginia accepted--freedom to choose religion and practice it without the state having a preference of one over another. That kept the peace. The Bible isn't a democratic book anyway. There are way too many 'lords, masters, kings and queens' and not many elected officials. Maybe we've outgrown the tribalism that started religion in the first place?
* Sorry to point this out but the US hasn't been a "Christian" nation for some time. A large portion of people who claim to be Christians are only cultural Christians, that is they claim to be Christians because their parents are Christians so they think they inherited Christianity like they inherited their parents genes. Despite their claims to be Christians many don't have any deep seated religious beliefs and rarely attend church. These CINO (Christians in name only) are the ones that have no problem voting for Donald Trump and his decidedly un-Christian ideas about how to treat other people.
* It is amazing that evangelicals, in particular, have imaginary historical "facts" and then believe them implicitly. What is worse, they then expect to be granted special privileges and rights based on those none existent facts. There is school of thought that it is people with no internal moral compass that need a book of instructions to guide them. Since they also find it easy to act in their own interest, regardless of the harm, a system that forgives and wipes the slate clean is very attractive. Most Atheists make a point of saying that they were born knowing right from wrong and don't need a book to learn from.
* Perhaps if they acted Christian, the evangelicals might see it differently. Christianity is becoming more like Islam every day. Just as many people killed in the name of Christianity as Muslims in history of religion. Women's rights, sexual preferences, social issues, involvement in politics-- your track is not great. Going to church does not make you Christian, it is all about your deeds and actions. It is 2016, not 1816. Where is the church on guns? Seem to be very quiet. I have God, but not religion. There is only one, by the way. I do not need a church to be the intermediary to God, especially with the track record of late.
* This country has citizens of every religion, including non Christian ones, along with millions of others who do not believe God exists. So, my question would be..how can you call a whole country "Christian" when millions of it's citizens are not. Also, many of the "Founding Fathers" as they are called, considered themselves to be Christian, but they belied it by the things they did...such as have mistresses, and kidnap people from Africa & enslave them, so calling this country Christian is actually a misnomer in itself.
* About friggin' time. People can believe and worship, or not believe and not worship as they wish - that is a Right of being American. But damn, I am sick of these ignorant faith-based jerks pushing their beliefs on others. The GOP was the rational party until it hooked up with the Religous Right - now it is imploding as it has become "The party of stupid (quote of Bobby Jindal)", with the influence of the Religious Right taking over and the simple message of minding our own business and fiscal responsibility thrown out the window.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Why Evangelicals say US is no longer Christian
By Lucy Schouten, June 25, 2016
Evangelical Christians are mourning a cultural shift they see as a loss in both their influence at home and the nation's ability to hold a Christian standard for the world.
A majority of white Evangelical Protestants - 59 percent - say the United States has lost its Christian identity, according to a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute and Brookings Institution. This represents an 11-point jump from 48 percent in 2012.
"[Donald] Trump's politics of nostalgia calling to 'Make American Great Again' resonate with the great majority of Evangelicals," R. Andrew Chesnut, a professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, tells The Christian Science Monitor. "[They] miss the Reagan era or even the Eisenhower years when, in their view, a more masculine and Christian nation commanded greater respect abroad and reflected their own white Evangelical political and cultural attitudes."
Evangelical Christians do not welcome the rise of the secular "nones," and the data shows 70 percent believe the country has changed for the worse since the 1950s. The general feeling that the country is on the wrong track is echoed by 72 percent of Americans generally, however, suggesting the view partly reflects an Evangelical Christian interpretation of the country's mood overall.
Politics play a role, as the mostly Republican Evangelicals are lamenting both the traditional give-and-take of the two-party system and the reality that they have lost several key political battles.
"Seven years of a Democrat in the White House have caused most of them to feel relatively powerless in the face of great changes that they steadfastly reject, such as same-sex marriage," Professor Chesnut says. "Kentucky county clerk [Kim Clark] became a lightning rod of resistance when she was jailed, but gay marriage remains the law of the land."
Neither former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee nor Texas Sen. Ted Cruz marshaled enough support beyond Evangelicals to win the Republican nomination. Although presumptive presidential nominee Mr. Trump is courting Evangelicals, he has demonstrated too much unfamiliarity with their faith for them to be comfortable making him the standard-bearer for American Christianity, Chesnut says.
“Over the last four years, a growing number [of white Protestant Americans] are seeing that [their cultural dominance in the US has been] lost irretrievably,” said Henry Olsen, senior fellow at the Ethics & Public Policy Center, according to Religion News Service. “That has massive implications for our politics going down the road.”
The perception is also backed by demographic and census data. The demographic reality is that Protestant Christianity has been losing ground for half a century, and even the conservative sects long thought to be immune have seen membership decline over the past decade, as The Christian Science Monitor reported previously.
China replaced Mexico as the top source of new America's immigrants in 2013, and Asians have been the nation's fastest growing ethnic group since 2000, according to data released Friday by the US Census Bureau.
Asians have maintained this growth through immigration, rather than birth rate, thus supplying a continual stream of immigrants from traditionally non-Christian countries such as China or India, the Associated Press reported. By contrast, other immigration waves in the 20th centuries originated in predominantly Catholic Ireland, Italy, or Mexico, or from the more traditionally Christian nations of eastern Europe. These immigrants altered the nation's cultural and religious landscape, but they did so without diminishing its perceived Christian character.
High levels of immigration are making Americans generally feel threatened, particularly when the immigrants are not Christian. Almost six in 10 worry that the values of Muslim immigrants conflict with the American way of life, and that fear is heightened among Evangelical Christians, the survey shows. Muslims represent just 1 percent of the country, but their disproportionate media presence belies their actual numbers, contributing to an Evangelical sense that cultural and political power have vanished irretrievably.
...................................................................................................................................................................
SHOCKER! Let's hope that more follow his lead.
...................................................................................................................................................................
COMMENTS:
* george will congrats on a wise move.
* Wow. This is like Tony the Tiger coming out against Frosted Flakes.
* Well, I'll be damned. Turns out there IS a principled Republican in D.C. Too bad it isn't Paul "He's a racist but we are more likely to get our policies enacted with him" Ryan or Mitch "The party of Lincoln wants to win the White House" McConnell. Winning at all costs is not a principle. Racism is not a "yes, but..." kind of ism.
* I hope more Republicans will realize what their hate-and-smear rhetoric has done to this country. First there was the dumbing-down of the Republican base. Next they substituted their propaganda for real information. Then they turned the base against government as "the elite" or "the establishment" or "spending your money for you" (when, in fact, government protects Americans from exploitation by the CEOs who donate to Republicans). Donald Trump was the next part of the equation. Let's hope it ends with his nomination, and conservatives like George Will recognizing their part in the mess.
* George Will is a real conservative, not an AM radio entertainment conservative. There is a huge difference. They'll all call him a RINO and Hillary supporter, but he's not. He's just one of many who has had enough.
* Well, I am not a fan of George Will, but he obviously loves his country more than some other GOP crazies do, such as Ryan, Graham, Cruz -- not to forget Rubio --
...................................................................................................................................................................
George Will leaves the GOP
By Kristen East, June 25, 2016
Conservative columnist George Will has left the Republican Party.
The longtime commentator reportedly made the announcement during a Federalist Society event in Washington, D.C., on Friday.
Will, who resides in Maryland, said he changed his affiliation this month from Republican to unaffiliated.
A report from PJ Media quoted Will as saying: “This is not my party.”
He also said that it’s too late for the Republican Party to nominate someone who isn’t Donald Trump, an idea that those in the Never Trump movement have been holding on to as the convention nears.
“Make sure he loses,” he said. “Grit their teeth for four years and win the White House.”
Trump attacked the Washington Post columnist as a “major loser” last month, criticizing a column Will wrote, headlined “If Trump is nominated, the GOP must keep him out of the White House.”
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COMMENTS:
* george will congrats on a wise move.
* Wow. This is like Tony the Tiger coming out against Frosted Flakes.
* Well, I'll be damned. Turns out there IS a principled Republican in D.C. Too bad it isn't Paul "He's a racist but we are more likely to get our policies enacted with him" Ryan or Mitch "The party of Lincoln wants to win the White House" McConnell. Winning at all costs is not a principle. Racism is not a "yes, but..." kind of ism.
* I hope more Republicans will realize what their hate-and-smear rhetoric has done to this country. First there was the dumbing-down of the Republican base. Next they substituted their propaganda for real information. Then they turned the base against government as "the elite" or "the establishment" or "spending your money for you" (when, in fact, government protects Americans from exploitation by the CEOs who donate to Republicans). Donald Trump was the next part of the equation. Let's hope it ends with his nomination, and conservatives like George Will recognizing their part in the mess.
* George Will is a real conservative, not an AM radio entertainment conservative. There is a huge difference. They'll all call him a RINO and Hillary supporter, but he's not. He's just one of many who has had enough.
* Well, I am not a fan of George Will, but he obviously loves his country more than some other GOP crazies do, such as Ryan, Graham, Cruz -- not to forget Rubio --
...................................................................................................................................................................
George Will leaves the GOP
By Kristen East, June 25, 2016
Conservative columnist George Will has left the Republican Party.
The longtime commentator reportedly made the announcement during a Federalist Society event in Washington, D.C., on Friday.
Will, who resides in Maryland, said he changed his affiliation this month from Republican to unaffiliated.
A report from PJ Media quoted Will as saying: “This is not my party.”
He also said that it’s too late for the Republican Party to nominate someone who isn’t Donald Trump, an idea that those in the Never Trump movement have been holding on to as the convention nears.
“Make sure he loses,” he said. “Grit their teeth for four years and win the White House.”
Trump attacked the Washington Post columnist as a “major loser” last month, criticizing a column Will wrote, headlined “If Trump is nominated, the GOP must keep him out of the White House.”
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Friday, June 24, 2016
"Rather than prove that the GOP can govern, it makes the Republican position on Obamacare look weak." A natural result, you know.
...................................................................................................................................................................
COMMENTS:
* Remember when he was running with Romney & he was asked about his budget plan (I think that was it) and he said he couldn't go into it, it would take too long (on one of the Sunday morning shows, I believe. This man, Ryan, is duplicitous and creepy.
* Its pretty clear that Ryan wants to take away health care from everyone but the wealthy. And that includes taking it away from senior citizens dependent on Medicare.
* Ryan, like all Republicans, believes that a good way to cut down on Social Security and Medicare expenses later in life is to not fund good health care and education to children and young adults early in life since that will cause them to die early enough in life that they will not live long enough to collect on their contributions. After all, only the rich and corporations deserve to have any benefits from the government. All others deserve to be treated as badly as possible. Republicans are genetically heartless.
* Poor people shouldn't die in the gutter due to lack of insurance. All western nations have universal healthcare.
* You are wrong. They would never approve anything Obama wanted even if it was a cure for cancer. The Medicaid expansion keeps people out of the emergency rooms where care is mostly not paid. That means higher costs for you and me. Poor people still get sick no matter what their circumstance.
* This is classic Ryan. He disguises his venality in alleged wonkery and 'reason' that either completely distorts the truth or is so asterisk dependent it borders on best being laughable and at worst being criminal. The man's a con artist who relies on legerdemain to propagate his small government agenda. He's actually just as bad as Don the Con with a better temperament. Of course the whole Republican party reflects this. No wonder he's committed to voting for Drumpf. Birds of a feather flock together.
...................................................................................................................................................................
A shameless deception in Paul Ryan’s Obamacare replacement plan
By Stephen Stromberg, June 23, 2016
Republicans have tried to sabotage the Affordable Care Act since it passed. Now they are using one of the messes they have made as evidence that they should replace the law.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) released an Obamacare replacement plan on Wednesday that, among other things, complains that the ACA leaves people out. In many states, some low-income people are eligible neither for Medicaid, a public health-care program for the poor, nor for Obamacare subsidies, which help those higher up the income scale buy private plans. Ryan’s document rightly points out that this coverage gap is a major failure. Then it blames the gap on “Obamacare’s poor design and incentives.”
This is an outrageous distortion. The coverage gap is not a design glitch. It is the direct result of anti-Obamacare hysteria in Ryan’s party.
After the ACA passed, the Supreme Court ruled that the Medicaid expansion must be optional for states. The terms were so good for state leaders — the federal government promised to pay nearly the whole cost to cover lots of vulnerable people — it seemed inconceivable that any of them would refuse to expand Medicaid within their borders. But this thinking did not account for the anti-Obamacare tantrum the GOP has thrown over the past six years. Nineteen states have refused to expand Medicaid in rote Republican opposition to the ACA.
Obamacare’s drafters did not foresee this irrational turn of events. They expected that people below a certain threshold would be on Medicaid and those above that threshold would be on marketplace subsidies. So they did not offer subsidies to those they thought would be on Medicaid. When Republican states refused to expand Medicaid, they created an eligibility gap hitting millions of people the law’s authors reasonably expected would have coverage.
Republicans had — in fact, have — at least two ways to avoid this result. State GOP leaders could have simply expanded Medicaid in their states, as many observers assumed they would, apparently giving them too much credit. Or Republicans in Congress could have agreed to extend eligibility for marketplace subsidies downward, solving this gross and unnecessary inequity without requiring the states to do a thing. Instead, Republicans chose not only to create the gap, but also to keep it in place. Their continued inaction hurts low-income people in those 19 states. And Ryan has the nerve to complain about it — even to use it as evidence that the ACA is fatally flawed.
Rather than offer a believable alternative to Obamacare, Ryan released a document that not only contains this shameless deception and other claims that warp the reality of the law’s rollout, but also lacks crucial details about how it would reshape the health-care system. Rather than prove that the GOP can govern, it makes the Republican position on Obamacare look weak.
...................................................................................................................................................................
COMMENTS:
* Remember when he was running with Romney & he was asked about his budget plan (I think that was it) and he said he couldn't go into it, it would take too long (on one of the Sunday morning shows, I believe. This man, Ryan, is duplicitous and creepy.
* Its pretty clear that Ryan wants to take away health care from everyone but the wealthy. And that includes taking it away from senior citizens dependent on Medicare.
* Ryan, like all Republicans, believes that a good way to cut down on Social Security and Medicare expenses later in life is to not fund good health care and education to children and young adults early in life since that will cause them to die early enough in life that they will not live long enough to collect on their contributions. After all, only the rich and corporations deserve to have any benefits from the government. All others deserve to be treated as badly as possible. Republicans are genetically heartless.
* Poor people shouldn't die in the gutter due to lack of insurance. All western nations have universal healthcare.
* You are wrong. They would never approve anything Obama wanted even if it was a cure for cancer. The Medicaid expansion keeps people out of the emergency rooms where care is mostly not paid. That means higher costs for you and me. Poor people still get sick no matter what their circumstance.
* This is classic Ryan. He disguises his venality in alleged wonkery and 'reason' that either completely distorts the truth or is so asterisk dependent it borders on best being laughable and at worst being criminal. The man's a con artist who relies on legerdemain to propagate his small government agenda. He's actually just as bad as Don the Con with a better temperament. Of course the whole Republican party reflects this. No wonder he's committed to voting for Drumpf. Birds of a feather flock together.
...................................................................................................................................................................
A shameless deception in Paul Ryan’s Obamacare replacement plan
By Stephen Stromberg, June 23, 2016
Republicans have tried to sabotage the Affordable Care Act since it passed. Now they are using one of the messes they have made as evidence that they should replace the law.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) released an Obamacare replacement plan on Wednesday that, among other things, complains that the ACA leaves people out. In many states, some low-income people are eligible neither for Medicaid, a public health-care program for the poor, nor for Obamacare subsidies, which help those higher up the income scale buy private plans. Ryan’s document rightly points out that this coverage gap is a major failure. Then it blames the gap on “Obamacare’s poor design and incentives.”
This is an outrageous distortion. The coverage gap is not a design glitch. It is the direct result of anti-Obamacare hysteria in Ryan’s party.
After the ACA passed, the Supreme Court ruled that the Medicaid expansion must be optional for states. The terms were so good for state leaders — the federal government promised to pay nearly the whole cost to cover lots of vulnerable people — it seemed inconceivable that any of them would refuse to expand Medicaid within their borders. But this thinking did not account for the anti-Obamacare tantrum the GOP has thrown over the past six years. Nineteen states have refused to expand Medicaid in rote Republican opposition to the ACA.
Obamacare’s drafters did not foresee this irrational turn of events. They expected that people below a certain threshold would be on Medicaid and those above that threshold would be on marketplace subsidies. So they did not offer subsidies to those they thought would be on Medicaid. When Republican states refused to expand Medicaid, they created an eligibility gap hitting millions of people the law’s authors reasonably expected would have coverage.
Republicans had — in fact, have — at least two ways to avoid this result. State GOP leaders could have simply expanded Medicaid in their states, as many observers assumed they would, apparently giving them too much credit. Or Republicans in Congress could have agreed to extend eligibility for marketplace subsidies downward, solving this gross and unnecessary inequity without requiring the states to do a thing. Instead, Republicans chose not only to create the gap, but also to keep it in place. Their continued inaction hurts low-income people in those 19 states. And Ryan has the nerve to complain about it — even to use it as evidence that the ACA is fatally flawed.
Rather than offer a believable alternative to Obamacare, Ryan released a document that not only contains this shameless deception and other claims that warp the reality of the law’s rollout, but also lacks crucial details about how it would reshape the health-care system. Rather than prove that the GOP can govern, it makes the Republican position on Obamacare look weak.
...................................................................................................................................................................
"A further disconnect between business and political leadership is that success in the former is based more on pragmatism while success at the latter requires a philosophy or point of view." #Lyin'Donald doesn't have a philosophy.
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Why Business CEOs Don't Make Effective Political Leaders
By David Davenport, June 22, 2016
Let’s imagine that a major business CEO wanted to run for president of the United States. Oh wait, we don’t have to imagine: the Republicans ran Mitt Romney, longtime CEO of Bain Capital, in 2012 and appear set to nominate Donald Trump, CEO of his own brand, in 2016. What do we know, then, about how well business leaders are able to cross over and become effective political leaders? Basically it works about as well as elite athlete Michael Jordan trying to cross over from professional basketball to baseball: not very well.
Why is that so? Well, for one thing, the context of leadership does matter. John Sculley was an effective CEO of Pepsi who had, at best, a mixed record as CEO of Apple, a firm with a very different product and culture. More than a few business and military leaders have become university presidents, only to be driven out of office because they didn’t really get that very different context. And, for the record, Michael Jordan, the best athlete ever to play basketball, batted a miserable .202 in his one season in professional baseball.
Leaders in business have a single overriding goal which must be proven to a well-defined audience of investors: making a profit, measured every quarter. By contrast political leaders have multiple goals, few of which are clearly stated or predominate over the others. They have multiple constituencies and a plethora of responsibilities measured primarily by the vagaries of political polls and elections. They have a lot of responsibility but, unlike, a corporate CEO, relatively little authority to get things done. Theirs is the realm of persuasion, not power. They can only get done what they convince Congress and others to join in.
A further disconnect between business and political leadership is that success in the former is based more on pragmatism while success at the latter requires a philosophy or point of view. As Milton Friedman famously said, a businessman might be passionately in favor of free markets, but seems eager to lobby for a little special government subsidy or lighter regulation for his own company. Business leaders must be pragmatic, they must make things work, they are responsible to hit a bottom line. But while they love their product and their company, rarely are they philosophers.
This explains conservative frustration with Romney and especially Trump: they don’t seem to stand for anything except winning. Trump’s so-called policy positions are generally more like one-liners: on immigration, let’s build a wall; on trade, let’s build a tariff wall; on terrorism, let’s win. You also see more than the average amount of flip-flopping with candidates like Romney and Trump. On one hand, Trump said tax rates for the wealthy should be cut, but later said they would go up. He said he would not raise the minimum wage, but then acknowledged he was “looking at it.” He’s been on several sides of the abortion question. This does not elicit much enthusiasm from conservatives, who want principled positions. But a businessman puts pragmatism ahead of philosophy—in fact, they may not even get political philosophy. Remember when President George H.W. Bush acknowledged he didn’t get “the vision thing?”
As a consequence, when you look at great presidents you don’t see a lot of business leaders on the list. Most have been lawyers or career politicians—21 were both. The only businessman of modern times who made a success in the presidency, Harry Truman, had been a failure in business. Neither Jimmy Carter nor George W. Bush, both businessmen, is regarded as a great modern president. Mitt Romney’s suggestion that we had a provision to the Constitution requiring a president to spend at least 3 years working in a business appears to be off base.
Donald Trump has essentially operated his own family business, not a major public company with a strong board and vocal shareholders. He’s not used to the kind of pushback he has experienced, with mixed results, in a political campaign. If he can’t bring his own party together, he says he’ll go it alone. All this sounds likely to produce something akin to Michael Jordan’s .202 batting average.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Why Business CEOs Don't Make Effective Political Leaders
By David Davenport, June 22, 2016
Let’s imagine that a major business CEO wanted to run for president of the United States. Oh wait, we don’t have to imagine: the Republicans ran Mitt Romney, longtime CEO of Bain Capital, in 2012 and appear set to nominate Donald Trump, CEO of his own brand, in 2016. What do we know, then, about how well business leaders are able to cross over and become effective political leaders? Basically it works about as well as elite athlete Michael Jordan trying to cross over from professional basketball to baseball: not very well.
Why is that so? Well, for one thing, the context of leadership does matter. John Sculley was an effective CEO of Pepsi who had, at best, a mixed record as CEO of Apple, a firm with a very different product and culture. More than a few business and military leaders have become university presidents, only to be driven out of office because they didn’t really get that very different context. And, for the record, Michael Jordan, the best athlete ever to play basketball, batted a miserable .202 in his one season in professional baseball.
Leaders in business have a single overriding goal which must be proven to a well-defined audience of investors: making a profit, measured every quarter. By contrast political leaders have multiple goals, few of which are clearly stated or predominate over the others. They have multiple constituencies and a plethora of responsibilities measured primarily by the vagaries of political polls and elections. They have a lot of responsibility but, unlike, a corporate CEO, relatively little authority to get things done. Theirs is the realm of persuasion, not power. They can only get done what they convince Congress and others to join in.
A further disconnect between business and political leadership is that success in the former is based more on pragmatism while success at the latter requires a philosophy or point of view. As Milton Friedman famously said, a businessman might be passionately in favor of free markets, but seems eager to lobby for a little special government subsidy or lighter regulation for his own company. Business leaders must be pragmatic, they must make things work, they are responsible to hit a bottom line. But while they love their product and their company, rarely are they philosophers.
This explains conservative frustration with Romney and especially Trump: they don’t seem to stand for anything except winning. Trump’s so-called policy positions are generally more like one-liners: on immigration, let’s build a wall; on trade, let’s build a tariff wall; on terrorism, let’s win. You also see more than the average amount of flip-flopping with candidates like Romney and Trump. On one hand, Trump said tax rates for the wealthy should be cut, but later said they would go up. He said he would not raise the minimum wage, but then acknowledged he was “looking at it.” He’s been on several sides of the abortion question. This does not elicit much enthusiasm from conservatives, who want principled positions. But a businessman puts pragmatism ahead of philosophy—in fact, they may not even get political philosophy. Remember when President George H.W. Bush acknowledged he didn’t get “the vision thing?”
As a consequence, when you look at great presidents you don’t see a lot of business leaders on the list. Most have been lawyers or career politicians—21 were both. The only businessman of modern times who made a success in the presidency, Harry Truman, had been a failure in business. Neither Jimmy Carter nor George W. Bush, both businessmen, is regarded as a great modern president. Mitt Romney’s suggestion that we had a provision to the Constitution requiring a president to spend at least 3 years working in a business appears to be off base.
Donald Trump has essentially operated his own family business, not a major public company with a strong board and vocal shareholders. He’s not used to the kind of pushback he has experienced, with mixed results, in a political campaign. If he can’t bring his own party together, he says he’ll go it alone. All this sounds likely to produce something akin to Michael Jordan’s .202 batting average.
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"A majority of Americans in both parties now hold very unfavorable views of the opposing political party ..."
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COMMENT:
By Matt Sedensky, June 22, 2016
Democratic and Republican views of the opposing political party have sunk to such lows that many say their rivals make them feel afraid, a major public opinion poll released Wednesday found.
Though party-line division is nearly as old as the republic and polls have long shown unfavorable views of the opposition, the newest Pew Research Center survey shows a worsening of opinions of political adversaries. A majority of Americans in both parties now hold very unfavorable views of the opposing political party, the poll found, a first since Pew began probing the issue.
Majorities in both parties see those on the other side as closed-minded, while significant minorities describe them as immoral, dishonest and unintelligent, the poll found. Sizeable minorities — 45 percent of Republicans and 41 percent of Democrats — see the opposing party’s policies as so misguided they threaten the country’s well-being, up significantly from two years ago.
“The intensity of the feeling is stronger now, this antithetical feeling toward the other party,” said Carroll Doherty, director of political research at Pew.
Highly negative views of the other party have grown steadily since Pew began gauging them in 1994, when 21 percent of Republicans and 17 percent of Democrats held very unfavorable opinions of the other side. In the latest poll, 58 percent of Republicans and 55 percent of Democrats said the same, a 12-percentage-point jump on both sides in just the past two years. Those most engaged in the political process — people who say they regularly vote and either volunteer for or donate to campaigns — expressed even more negative views of the other party.
The negativity spilled over into voters’ feelings about their own parties as well.
An overwhelming number of people — 87 percent on both sides — said their own party either made them feel frustrated, afraid or angry or some combination of the three.
Though majorities on both sides — 64 percent of Republicans and 73 percent of Democrats — said their party made them hopeful, far fewer said they felt enthusiasm or pride. Among Republicans, 23 percent said their party made them enthusiastic, versus 26 percent of Democrats. Sixteen percent of Republicans and 26 percent of Democrats said their party made them proud. Republicans were far more likely than Democrats to express frustration with their own party.
Still, nearly everyone identifying with a party, and a big majority of those who leaned toward one, said they would definitely or probably vote for that party’s candidate for president.
“Some people are candidate-centered, some people are party-centered, some people are issue-centered,” said Christina Greer, a political science professor at Fordham University. “But at the end of the day, I think party-centered politics tend to win out, largely because it’s the shortcut,” she said, noting that going with general feelings about a party is easier than delving into issue specifics.
The poll was conducted in English and Spanish in two segments, one from March 2 to March 28 and the other from April 5 to May 2, before Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump became their parties’ presumptive nominees. Some 4,385 respondents participated. The margin of error for the full survey sample is plus or minus 2.3 percentage points.
Most survey respondents said they had at least a few close friends who are members of the opposing party, but few said they had a lot. Among those who are married or living with a partner, 77 percent of both Republicans and Democrats said their significant other was in the same party. Fewer than 10 percent said they were paired with a member of the opposite party.
Friendships across party lines lead to softened animosity toward the opposition, but negative views remained pervasive.
Among Republicans, 52 percent said Democrats were more closed-minded than other Americans; 47 percent said they were more immoral; 46 percent said they were lazier; 45 percent said they were more dishonest; and 32 percent said they were more unintelligent. Among Democrats, 70 percent said Republicans were more closed-minded; 35 percent said they were more immoral; 18 percent said they were lazier; 42 percent said they were more dishonest; and 33 percent said they were more unintelligent.
“It suggests that there’s certainly a personal dimension to this,” Doherty said. “It’s not just about the parties. It’s about the people in those parties.”
Participants were asked to give ratings on a scale on which zero represents the most negative rating and 100 the most positive. On that scale, Republicans gave their own party an average score of 68, Trump a 60, Democrats a 29 and Clinton a 12. Democrats gave their party a 76, Clinton a 73, Republicans a 31 and Trump an 11.
In a sign of the political acrimony, Republicans’ distaste for the opposition extended beyond President Obama to the first lady. Nearly six in 10 members of the GOP gave Michelle Obama a “very cold” rating of 24 or under, including a full 40 percent who gave her the lowest possible score of zero.
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COMMENT:
All I know is, if I'm paying someone $175K a year, I want them to actually do something to earn that money, not just sit around blocking others' efforts to accomplish something. That is the most frustrating for what passes for today's Republican party. The GOP, however, doesn't scare me - they show themselves on a daily basis to be too incompetent & disorganized to be dangerous. But a LOT of their major backers (NRA, Kochs et al) do...
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Many say political opponents frighten them, threaten countryBy Matt Sedensky, June 22, 2016
Democratic and Republican views of the opposing political party have sunk to such lows that many say their rivals make them feel afraid, a major public opinion poll released Wednesday found.
Though party-line division is nearly as old as the republic and polls have long shown unfavorable views of the opposition, the newest Pew Research Center survey shows a worsening of opinions of political adversaries. A majority of Americans in both parties now hold very unfavorable views of the opposing political party, the poll found, a first since Pew began probing the issue.
Majorities in both parties see those on the other side as closed-minded, while significant minorities describe them as immoral, dishonest and unintelligent, the poll found. Sizeable minorities — 45 percent of Republicans and 41 percent of Democrats — see the opposing party’s policies as so misguided they threaten the country’s well-being, up significantly from two years ago.
“The intensity of the feeling is stronger now, this antithetical feeling toward the other party,” said Carroll Doherty, director of political research at Pew.
Highly negative views of the other party have grown steadily since Pew began gauging them in 1994, when 21 percent of Republicans and 17 percent of Democrats held very unfavorable opinions of the other side. In the latest poll, 58 percent of Republicans and 55 percent of Democrats said the same, a 12-percentage-point jump on both sides in just the past two years. Those most engaged in the political process — people who say they regularly vote and either volunteer for or donate to campaigns — expressed even more negative views of the other party.
The negativity spilled over into voters’ feelings about their own parties as well.
An overwhelming number of people — 87 percent on both sides — said their own party either made them feel frustrated, afraid or angry or some combination of the three.
Though majorities on both sides — 64 percent of Republicans and 73 percent of Democrats — said their party made them hopeful, far fewer said they felt enthusiasm or pride. Among Republicans, 23 percent said their party made them enthusiastic, versus 26 percent of Democrats. Sixteen percent of Republicans and 26 percent of Democrats said their party made them proud. Republicans were far more likely than Democrats to express frustration with their own party.
Still, nearly everyone identifying with a party, and a big majority of those who leaned toward one, said they would definitely or probably vote for that party’s candidate for president.
“Some people are candidate-centered, some people are party-centered, some people are issue-centered,” said Christina Greer, a political science professor at Fordham University. “But at the end of the day, I think party-centered politics tend to win out, largely because it’s the shortcut,” she said, noting that going with general feelings about a party is easier than delving into issue specifics.
The poll was conducted in English and Spanish in two segments, one from March 2 to March 28 and the other from April 5 to May 2, before Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump became their parties’ presumptive nominees. Some 4,385 respondents participated. The margin of error for the full survey sample is plus or minus 2.3 percentage points.
Most survey respondents said they had at least a few close friends who are members of the opposing party, but few said they had a lot. Among those who are married or living with a partner, 77 percent of both Republicans and Democrats said their significant other was in the same party. Fewer than 10 percent said they were paired with a member of the opposite party.
Friendships across party lines lead to softened animosity toward the opposition, but negative views remained pervasive.
Among Republicans, 52 percent said Democrats were more closed-minded than other Americans; 47 percent said they were more immoral; 46 percent said they were lazier; 45 percent said they were more dishonest; and 32 percent said they were more unintelligent. Among Democrats, 70 percent said Republicans were more closed-minded; 35 percent said they were more immoral; 18 percent said they were lazier; 42 percent said they were more dishonest; and 33 percent said they were more unintelligent.
“It suggests that there’s certainly a personal dimension to this,” Doherty said. “It’s not just about the parties. It’s about the people in those parties.”
Participants were asked to give ratings on a scale on which zero represents the most negative rating and 100 the most positive. On that scale, Republicans gave their own party an average score of 68, Trump a 60, Democrats a 29 and Clinton a 12. Democrats gave their party a 76, Clinton a 73, Republicans a 31 and Trump an 11.
In a sign of the political acrimony, Republicans’ distaste for the opposition extended beyond President Obama to the first lady. Nearly six in 10 members of the GOP gave Michelle Obama a “very cold” rating of 24 or under, including a full 40 percent who gave her the lowest possible score of zero.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Bradley effect: "... Americans who intend to vote for Trump are too embarrassed to admit it when asked for their preference in surveys."Reading the comments on articles, Trumpeteers are never embarrassed to support him!
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COMMENTS:
* Rump is unfit to be a skunk catcher let along President. Rump is also a liar, cheat who doesn't pay his bills, his employees, his taxes and other stuff, he is egomaniac and narcissist person and hates everyone that doesn't measure up to standards of what he thinks they should look like especially women. Rump will throw the Constitution out the window like George W Bush did along with the Bill of rights and any other laws that he doesn't like.
* Started? Seems to me, with what he has been saying this entire campaign - and especially over the last couple of weeks - that he should stop. I can't think of any presidential candidate in a very long time who has wreaked havoc upon his own campaign and the party he represents quite like Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton doesn't have to do a whole lot to keep improving her standing in the polls (for what that's worth), all she needs to do is talk about the issues, what she will do or what she would like to get done as President. Trump will continue to ruin his own chances by spouting off about everything, being rude, crude and lying about just about everything he brings up. When I said he should stop, that was for his sake. I want him to continue, because it has made this race all the more entertaining.
* His successful campaign strategy during the primaries will NOT work in the General Election. And he does NOT want to accept that fact !!! If he loses, he will blame EVERFY ONE ELSE, including his loyal vote bank for not showing up on the election day. He does NOT need those loyal followers any more !!!
* Where this theory falls down is where the Trump fans are "embarrassed" to admit they're voting for him. While they absolutely should be embarrassed, they wear their childish ignorance like a badge of honor and can't seem to contain themselves when asked for their puerile opinion.
* Trump is the poster boy for serious campaign reform. Note that while this multi-year circus has been going on the Australians elect their entire government in 21 days.
* Bradley effect? Trump supporters don't have enough morals to be ashamed of supporting him.
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He’s lined up excuses, but Donald Trump knows he’s losing
By Steve Benen, June 20, 2016
For much of 2015, Donald Trump’s standing primary stump speech included quite a few references to public-opinion polls. The New York Republican saw all the surveys showing him dominating GOP polls for months, and he was eager to tout his advantage on a daily basis.
That bravado, like his polling edge, is long gone. Though national surveys showed Trump neck and neck with Hillary Clinton a month ago – some polls even showed him inching ahead – the Republican’s recent antics have pushed his support to depths unseen in quite a while.
On Friday, Trump was reduced to tweeting about a dubious national poll – which showed him losing. (As a rule, presidential candidates don’t brag about survey results in which they’re behind.)
The New York Times, which noted that Trump “rarely, if ever, acknowledges he might be losing at anything,” reported that the candidate conceded late last week that he’s not, at present, winning.
As for the assertion that Trump hasn’t “started yet,” he’s now been running for president for a full year, and he wrapped up the GOP nomination in early May. I’m reasonably certain he has “started,” but if he hasn’t, perhaps Trump might want to explain exactly what he’s waiting for.
Over the weekend, Trump added that the latest polling shows he’s “essentially even” with Clinton, which is true if you define “even” as “not particularly close.” In fact, the Washington Post reported over the weekend, “Not only are Trump’s poll numbers slipping, they are at a low that no one, Republican or Democrat, has seen in the past three election cycles…. The margin by which he trails Hillary Clinton now mirrors McCain’s deficit to Barack Obama in 2008. McCain rebounded after the Republican convention — but it’s important to remember that we’re comparing Trump to the worst Republican performance in a general election since 1996.”
But perhaps most interesting of all was something Trump told an audience in Denver.
“When I poll, I do fine, but when I run I do much better,” Trump told supporters. “In other words, people say I’m not going to say who I’m voting for, don’t be embarrassed, I’m not going to say who I’m voting for and then they get it and I do much better, it’s like an amazing effect.”
It’s unclear if Trump knows what he’s saying, but this is actually a provocative point. Some political observers believe in something called the “Bradley effect,” and Trump evidently believes it’s in effect right now, skewing the poll results.
In case anyone needs a refresher, in California’s 1982 gubernatorial campaign, polls showed then-Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley (D) comfortably ahead in the statewide race. The polls, however, were wrong – and Bradley lost in a very close contest.
Some social scientists argued soon after that the pre-election data were off for a very specific reason: voters lied to pollsters about their intentions towards Bradley, an African American, who ran against a white rival. The “Bradley effect” was born.
The Wikipedia description is as good as any: the theory “posits that the inaccurate polls were skewed by the phenomenon of social desirability bias. Specifically, some white voters give inaccurate polling responses for fear that, by stating their true preference, they will open themselves to criticism of racial motivation. Members of the public may feel under pressure to provide an answer that is deemed to be more publicly acceptable.”
The theory has plenty of critics, and some political scientists question its validity. Your mileage may vary.
Either way, it’s notable that Trump is apparently on board with the idea. We shouldn’t necessarily believe the polling, he’s arguing, because Americans who intend to vote for Trump are too embarrassed to admit it when asked for their preference in surveys. Once you account for the fact that Trump supporters feel a sense of shame, and don’t want to acknowledge their true beliefs to pollsters, maybe he’s doing far better than the data suggests.
Is there anything to this? I doubt it – there was some chatter about this during the GOP primaries, but the polls tended to be pretty accurate – though it says quite a bit about Trump’s candidacy that he’s been reduced to reassuring partisans by telling them that he has secret supporters who don’t want to admit they’re voting for him.
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COMMENTS:
* Rump is unfit to be a skunk catcher let along President. Rump is also a liar, cheat who doesn't pay his bills, his employees, his taxes and other stuff, he is egomaniac and narcissist person and hates everyone that doesn't measure up to standards of what he thinks they should look like especially women. Rump will throw the Constitution out the window like George W Bush did along with the Bill of rights and any other laws that he doesn't like.
* Started? Seems to me, with what he has been saying this entire campaign - and especially over the last couple of weeks - that he should stop. I can't think of any presidential candidate in a very long time who has wreaked havoc upon his own campaign and the party he represents quite like Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton doesn't have to do a whole lot to keep improving her standing in the polls (for what that's worth), all she needs to do is talk about the issues, what she will do or what she would like to get done as President. Trump will continue to ruin his own chances by spouting off about everything, being rude, crude and lying about just about everything he brings up. When I said he should stop, that was for his sake. I want him to continue, because it has made this race all the more entertaining.
* His successful campaign strategy during the primaries will NOT work in the General Election. And he does NOT want to accept that fact !!! If he loses, he will blame EVERFY ONE ELSE, including his loyal vote bank for not showing up on the election day. He does NOT need those loyal followers any more !!!
* Where this theory falls down is where the Trump fans are "embarrassed" to admit they're voting for him. While they absolutely should be embarrassed, they wear their childish ignorance like a badge of honor and can't seem to contain themselves when asked for their puerile opinion.
* Trump is the poster boy for serious campaign reform. Note that while this multi-year circus has been going on the Australians elect their entire government in 21 days.
* Bradley effect? Trump supporters don't have enough morals to be ashamed of supporting him.
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He’s lined up excuses, but Donald Trump knows he’s losing
By Steve Benen, June 20, 2016
For much of 2015, Donald Trump’s standing primary stump speech included quite a few references to public-opinion polls. The New York Republican saw all the surveys showing him dominating GOP polls for months, and he was eager to tout his advantage on a daily basis.
That bravado, like his polling edge, is long gone. Though national surveys showed Trump neck and neck with Hillary Clinton a month ago – some polls even showed him inching ahead – the Republican’s recent antics have pushed his support to depths unseen in quite a while.
On Friday, Trump was reduced to tweeting about a dubious national poll – which showed him losing. (As a rule, presidential candidates don’t brag about survey results in which they’re behind.)
The New York Times, which noted that Trump “rarely, if ever, acknowledges he might be losing at anything,” reported that the candidate conceded late last week that he’s not, at present, winning.
“I’m four down in one poll, three and a half in another that just came out, and I haven’t started yet,” Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, said in a phone interview on Thursday night, a thought he volunteered as he dismissed concerns from Senate Republicans that he may be a drag on their candidacies in the fall.And if the race for the presidency was limited to Republican voters, that might be a relevant observation.
“And I have tremendous Republican support,” Mr. Trump said.
As for the assertion that Trump hasn’t “started yet,” he’s now been running for president for a full year, and he wrapped up the GOP nomination in early May. I’m reasonably certain he has “started,” but if he hasn’t, perhaps Trump might want to explain exactly what he’s waiting for.
Over the weekend, Trump added that the latest polling shows he’s “essentially even” with Clinton, which is true if you define “even” as “not particularly close.” In fact, the Washington Post reported over the weekend, “Not only are Trump’s poll numbers slipping, they are at a low that no one, Republican or Democrat, has seen in the past three election cycles…. The margin by which he trails Hillary Clinton now mirrors McCain’s deficit to Barack Obama in 2008. McCain rebounded after the Republican convention — but it’s important to remember that we’re comparing Trump to the worst Republican performance in a general election since 1996.”
But perhaps most interesting of all was something Trump told an audience in Denver.
“When I poll, I do fine, but when I run I do much better,” Trump told supporters. “In other words, people say I’m not going to say who I’m voting for, don’t be embarrassed, I’m not going to say who I’m voting for and then they get it and I do much better, it’s like an amazing effect.”
It’s unclear if Trump knows what he’s saying, but this is actually a provocative point. Some political observers believe in something called the “Bradley effect,” and Trump evidently believes it’s in effect right now, skewing the poll results.
In case anyone needs a refresher, in California’s 1982 gubernatorial campaign, polls showed then-Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley (D) comfortably ahead in the statewide race. The polls, however, were wrong – and Bradley lost in a very close contest.
Some social scientists argued soon after that the pre-election data were off for a very specific reason: voters lied to pollsters about their intentions towards Bradley, an African American, who ran against a white rival. The “Bradley effect” was born.
The Wikipedia description is as good as any: the theory “posits that the inaccurate polls were skewed by the phenomenon of social desirability bias. Specifically, some white voters give inaccurate polling responses for fear that, by stating their true preference, they will open themselves to criticism of racial motivation. Members of the public may feel under pressure to provide an answer that is deemed to be more publicly acceptable.”
The theory has plenty of critics, and some political scientists question its validity. Your mileage may vary.
Either way, it’s notable that Trump is apparently on board with the idea. We shouldn’t necessarily believe the polling, he’s arguing, because Americans who intend to vote for Trump are too embarrassed to admit it when asked for their preference in surveys. Once you account for the fact that Trump supporters feel a sense of shame, and don’t want to acknowledge their true beliefs to pollsters, maybe he’s doing far better than the data suggests.
Is there anything to this? I doubt it – there was some chatter about this during the GOP primaries, but the polls tended to be pretty accurate – though it says quite a bit about Trump’s candidacy that he’s been reduced to reassuring partisans by telling them that he has secret supporters who don’t want to admit they’re voting for him.
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We knew Lincoln. We knew Kennedy. #BrightOrangeBigot, you're no Lincoln and no Kennedy.
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Thursday, June 23, 2016
"'[Trump's] just a shark, a self-promoter out to see how far his out-of-control ego can take him.'" Sosa has #TruthlessTrump's number.
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COMMENTS:
* If people could step back and look they would see all of us have opinions that cross the left right line. The fact that the people we elect always vote on party lines means they aren't doing what is best for the country but what is politically best for them.
* Again, I must ask: How delusional must you be to be a member of the party of so-called Christians if you are a person of color? It is the party of, by and for white people. It is the party where the KKK finds a home. Why on God's earth would you feel you are welcome among them if you are a person of color. I won't even bother with asking why a woman would be a member of the party of so-called Christians because according to their beliefs, women are subordinate to men, so if their men tell them to, (and since are such "good Christans") they must obey.
* Given Trump's consistent tendency to take the low road, he will probably respond by saying Sosa and his entire family should be deported.
* I have trouble grasping the concept of a "Latino Republican," particularly one from Texas,
* The Republican Party platform is the reason why we have people like Donald Trump. They basically embrace all things Trump. The only problem is that Trump is the only one dumb enough to say these things in public. It's a party whose policies are pretty hard on the minorities. They're constantly adding bills to make LGBT discrimination ok. They want to reduce government spending on poor, minorities and immigrants. And now they're shocked that their party attracted people like Donald Trump? Give me a break!
* If you are a minority, of color, have an accent, are elderly, are poor, are disabled, are unemployed, are sick, are a woman, are gay, want good health, want clean air, clean water, non-toxic foods, safety in the workplace, want gun control, womens right to choose, a minimum wage increase, equal pay for your work you are a Democrat not a Republican and dont think you are accepted by republicans.
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Top Latino Republican says, ‘Farewell, my Grand Old Party’
By Ed O'Keefe, June 22, 2016
One of the few Hispanic political operatives able to help Republican candidates win large percentages of Latino voters says he will leave the GOP if it nominates Donald Trump for president.
Hispanic anger and opposition to Trump is nothing new and is widespread, but Lionel Sosa's concerns are notable. Sosa, a Texas-based ad maker and one of the few Hispanic political consultants to help Republican candidates win over large percentages of Latino voters, lay down a marker this week in an op-ed in his hometown newspaper.
If the Republican Party nominates Trump, "I'll have to bid farewell, hoping that one day soon, it comes to its senses," he wrote Tuesday in the San Antonio Express-News. "Here's my thinking. This madness could be temporary because our nominee is not really a Republican. Not a real conservative. He's just a shark, a self-promoter out to see how far his out-of-control ego can take him.
"Instead of 'Tear down this wall,' the party promotes a new and bigger wall," Sosa added. "A thousand points of light has been replaced by a thousand points of anger. In place of compassionate conservatism, our nominee promotes callousness, extremism and racism. And instead of a unifier, the party now cheers the ultimate 'us against them' proponent. Divisiveness incarnate."
Sosa is a leading expert on how to win over Hispanic voters. Drawn to the Republican Party as a child by Dwight D. Eisenhower, he helped Texas Republican Sen. John Tower win reelection in 1978 with 37 percent of the Hispanic vote — an unheard-of sum at the time. In 1980, he worked on the presidential campaign of Ronald Reagan, who coined a phrase still used by GOP candidates eager to win over Hispanics, including former Florida governor Jeb Bush: "Latinos are Republican. They just don't know it yet." That's a way of suggesting that if wooed properly, many Latinos, who generally are socially and economically conservative, would gladly vote for GOP candidates.
Fear of Trump sparking a surge in citizenship, voter applications Play Video2:46The campaign of the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, is sparking a surge in the number of citizenship applications and voter registrations among Hispanics fearful of his immigration policies. Since January, California alone has seen a boost of 218 percent in Democratic registration and among Hispanics, registration is up 123 percent. (Alice Li/The Washington Post)
Sosa's political success led to work from Barcardi, Coors and other companies eager to reach Latino customers. He's now mostly retired, but said he's keeping close tabs on the election. So how would he try to salvage the GOP brand?
"I could try to sell the real Republican Party but that would do no good, because right now, Republicans need Donald Trump and Donald Trump needs Republicans," he said. "It’s one in the same. So 'Republican' is Donald Trump. Can I sell that? No. To Latinos? Absolutely not."
The only way the Republican Party could hope to restore its image with Latinos is if Trump issues "a blanket apology" for his comments about Mexican immigrants and revokes his call to build a large wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
"It has to be an apology that says, 'I didn't mean to insult you.' ... He would have to acknowledge that Latinos are the new generation of American talent. That kind of recognition — a complete turnout — would help," Sosa said. "But it depends on how forceful his campaign is about it and how many resources he spends trying to reach out."
And that seems unlikely, given that Trump has doubled down on his wall talk and has refused several times to apologize for his comments about immigrants.
Despite a recent push by Republican convention delegates to unseat Trump, his nomination is looking near-certain. Sosa said that he and many other Republicans he knows in Texas are increasingly listless.
"We’re confused," he said. "We’re lost, our leader has left us, and if it continues like this, I know I’ll have to leave my party."
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COMMENTS:
* If people could step back and look they would see all of us have opinions that cross the left right line. The fact that the people we elect always vote on party lines means they aren't doing what is best for the country but what is politically best for them.
* Again, I must ask: How delusional must you be to be a member of the party of so-called Christians if you are a person of color? It is the party of, by and for white people. It is the party where the KKK finds a home. Why on God's earth would you feel you are welcome among them if you are a person of color. I won't even bother with asking why a woman would be a member of the party of so-called Christians because according to their beliefs, women are subordinate to men, so if their men tell them to, (and since are such "good Christans") they must obey.
* Given Trump's consistent tendency to take the low road, he will probably respond by saying Sosa and his entire family should be deported.
* I have trouble grasping the concept of a "Latino Republican," particularly one from Texas,
* The Republican Party platform is the reason why we have people like Donald Trump. They basically embrace all things Trump. The only problem is that Trump is the only one dumb enough to say these things in public. It's a party whose policies are pretty hard on the minorities. They're constantly adding bills to make LGBT discrimination ok. They want to reduce government spending on poor, minorities and immigrants. And now they're shocked that their party attracted people like Donald Trump? Give me a break!
* If you are a minority, of color, have an accent, are elderly, are poor, are disabled, are unemployed, are sick, are a woman, are gay, want good health, want clean air, clean water, non-toxic foods, safety in the workplace, want gun control, womens right to choose, a minimum wage increase, equal pay for your work you are a Democrat not a Republican and dont think you are accepted by republicans.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Top Latino Republican says, ‘Farewell, my Grand Old Party’
By Ed O'Keefe, June 22, 2016
One of the few Hispanic political operatives able to help Republican candidates win large percentages of Latino voters says he will leave the GOP if it nominates Donald Trump for president.
Hispanic anger and opposition to Trump is nothing new and is widespread, but Lionel Sosa's concerns are notable. Sosa, a Texas-based ad maker and one of the few Hispanic political consultants to help Republican candidates win over large percentages of Latino voters, lay down a marker this week in an op-ed in his hometown newspaper.
If the Republican Party nominates Trump, "I'll have to bid farewell, hoping that one day soon, it comes to its senses," he wrote Tuesday in the San Antonio Express-News. "Here's my thinking. This madness could be temporary because our nominee is not really a Republican. Not a real conservative. He's just a shark, a self-promoter out to see how far his out-of-control ego can take him.
"Instead of 'Tear down this wall,' the party promotes a new and bigger wall," Sosa added. "A thousand points of light has been replaced by a thousand points of anger. In place of compassionate conservatism, our nominee promotes callousness, extremism and racism. And instead of a unifier, the party now cheers the ultimate 'us against them' proponent. Divisiveness incarnate."
Sosa is a leading expert on how to win over Hispanic voters. Drawn to the Republican Party as a child by Dwight D. Eisenhower, he helped Texas Republican Sen. John Tower win reelection in 1978 with 37 percent of the Hispanic vote — an unheard-of sum at the time. In 1980, he worked on the presidential campaign of Ronald Reagan, who coined a phrase still used by GOP candidates eager to win over Hispanics, including former Florida governor Jeb Bush: "Latinos are Republican. They just don't know it yet." That's a way of suggesting that if wooed properly, many Latinos, who generally are socially and economically conservative, would gladly vote for GOP candidates.
Fear of Trump sparking a surge in citizenship, voter applications Play Video2:46The campaign of the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, is sparking a surge in the number of citizenship applications and voter registrations among Hispanics fearful of his immigration policies. Since January, California alone has seen a boost of 218 percent in Democratic registration and among Hispanics, registration is up 123 percent. (Alice Li/The Washington Post)
Sosa's political success led to work from Barcardi, Coors and other companies eager to reach Latino customers. He's now mostly retired, but said he's keeping close tabs on the election. So how would he try to salvage the GOP brand?
"I could try to sell the real Republican Party but that would do no good, because right now, Republicans need Donald Trump and Donald Trump needs Republicans," he said. "It’s one in the same. So 'Republican' is Donald Trump. Can I sell that? No. To Latinos? Absolutely not."
The only way the Republican Party could hope to restore its image with Latinos is if Trump issues "a blanket apology" for his comments about Mexican immigrants and revokes his call to build a large wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
"It has to be an apology that says, 'I didn't mean to insult you.' ... He would have to acknowledge that Latinos are the new generation of American talent. That kind of recognition — a complete turnout — would help," Sosa said. "But it depends on how forceful his campaign is about it and how many resources he spends trying to reach out."
And that seems unlikely, given that Trump has doubled down on his wall talk and has refused several times to apologize for his comments about immigrants.
Despite a recent push by Republican convention delegates to unseat Trump, his nomination is looking near-certain. Sosa said that he and many other Republicans he knows in Texas are increasingly listless.
"We’re confused," he said. "We’re lost, our leader has left us, and if it continues like this, I know I’ll have to leave my party."
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