DonViejo
DonViejo's JournalGOP confidence in Senate majority builds
Republicans are growing much more optimistic about their chances of saving their Senate majority. Less than 100 days before the election, unconventional Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has yet to become the albatross many Republicans feared.
He and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton are running about even in most polls, though Democrats hope their candidate will get a boost after her convention. In the critical states of Ohio, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, GOP candidates are running as strongly as they were before Trump became the party’s presidential nominee.
“If the election were held today, it’d be exactly like a midterm election. Good campaigns are going to win. There’s no landslide,” said David Carney, a New Hampshire-based Republican strategist. “The bases are baked in. I don’t see dramatic shifts anywhere.”
Republicans and Democrats say the fight to win control of the 115th Congress will start in earnest this weekend, now that both parties have laid out their markers during national conventions.
more
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/289763-gop-confidence-in-senate-majority-builds
Political Wire's Quote of the Day -- From Lindsey Graham
“There used to be some things that were sacred in American politics, that you don’t do, like criticizing the parents of a fallen soldier, even if they criticize you. If you’re going to be leader of the free world, you have to be able to accept criticism, and Mr. Trump can’t.”
— Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), quoted by the New York Times, adding that “unacceptable” doesn’t even begin to describe Donald Trump’s behavior.
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https://politicalwire.com/2016/07/31/quote-of-the-day-1340/
How the ‘Stupid Party’ Created Donald Trump - By MAX BOOT
It’s hard to know exactly when the Republican Party assumed the mantle of the “stupid party.”
Stupidity is not an accusation that could be hurled against such prominent early Republicans as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root and Charles Evans Hughes. But by the 1950s, it had become an established shibboleth that the “eggheads” were for Adlai Stevenson and the “boobs” for Dwight D. Eisenhower — a view endorsed by Richard Hofstadter’s 1963 book “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life,” which contrasted Stevenson, “a politician of uncommon mind and style, whose appeal to intellectuals overshadowed anything in recent history,” with Eisenhower — “conventional in mind, relatively inarticulate.” The John F. Kennedy presidency, with its glittering court of Camelot, cemented the impression that it was the Democrats who represented the thinking men and women of America.
Rather than run away from the anti-intellectual label, Republicans embraced it for their own political purposes. In his “time for choosing” speech, Ronald Reagan said that the issue in the 1964 election was “whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant Capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.” Richard M. Nixon appealed to the “silent majority” and the “hard hats,” while his vice president, Spiro T. Agnew, issued slashing attacks on an “effete core of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.”
William F. Buckley Jr. famously said, “I should sooner live in a society governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the 2,000 faculty members of Harvard University.” More recently, George W. Bush joked at a Yale commencement: “To those of you who received honors, awards and distinctions, I say, well done. And to the C students I say, you, too, can be president of the United States.”
Many Democrats took all this at face value and congratulated themselves for being smarter than the benighted Republicans. Here’s the thing, though: The Republican embrace of anti-intellectualism was, to a large extent, a put-on. At least until now.
more
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/01/opinion/how-the-stupid-party-created-donald-trump.html?partner=IFTTT&_r=0
Trump's confrontation with Muslim soldier's parents emerges as unexpected flash point
By ALEXANDER BURNS, MAGGIE HABERMAN and ASHLEY PARKER New York Times AUGUST 1, 2016 — 5:06AM
Donald Trump reeled Sunday amid a sustained campaign of criticism by the parents of a Muslim American soldier killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq and a rising outcry within his own party over his rough and racially charged dismissal of the couple.
The confrontation between the parents, Khizr and Ghazala Khan, and Trump has emerged as an unexpected and potentially pivotal flash point in the general election. Trump has plainly struggled to respond to the reproach of a military family who lost a child, and he has repeatedly answered the Khan family’s criticism with harsh and defensive rhetoric.
And Trump’s usual political tool kit has appeared to fail him. He earned no reprieve with his complaints that Khizr Khan had been unfair to him or with his repeated attempts to change the subject to Islamic terrorism.
Hillary Clinton reprimanded Trump, saying at a church in Cleveland that Trump had answered the Khan family’s sacrifice with personal disrespect, and with disrespect for U.S. traditions of religious tolerance.
more (no pay wall)
http://www.startribune.com/trump-s-confrontation-with-muslim-soldier-s-parents-emerges-as-unexpected-flash-point/388787491/
Pope says it wrong to identify Islam with violence
Source: Reuters
Pope Francis said on Sunday that it was wrong to identify Islam with violence and that social injustice and idolatry of money were among the prime causes of terrorism.
"I think it is not right to identity Islam with violence," he told reporters aboard the plane taking him back to Rome after a five-day trip to Poland. "This is not right and this is not true."
Francis was responding to a question about the killing on July 26 of an 85-year-old Roman Catholic priest by knife-wielding attackers who burst into a church service in western France, forced the priest to his knees and slit his throat. The attack was claimed by Islamic State.
"I think that in nearly all religions there is a always a small fundamentalist group," he said, adding "We have them," referring to Catholicism.
-snip-
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-pope-islam-idUSKCN10B0YO
Irish pub puts Donald Trump’s photo on urinal for patrons to relieve themselves
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A pub in Dublin has posted Donald Trump’s photo on the urinal in the men’s room, allowing patrons an opportunity to pee on the Republican nominee’s face.
The Adelphi pub told Irish media that they haven’t had any complaints yet, but if Trump is elected by U.S. voters in November, they will remove it.
“If he is elected by the people of the United States, we will take it down immediately as we feel it would then be disrespectful to the American people,” Tony McCabe, the bar’s manager, told Entertainment.ie.
“I just felt that it was a way for some people to express their feelings towards Mr. Trump’s views and to make their trip to the bathroom a ‘wee’ bit more entertaining,” he joked.
more
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/07/irish-pub-puts-donald-trumps-photo-on-urinal-for-patrons-to-relieve-themselves/
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Name: DonGender: Male
Hometown: Massachusetts
Home country: United States
Member since: Sat Sep 1, 2012, 03:28 PM
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