Tag Archives: Republican Party

Current Affairs, Politics, Science & Health, Times They Are A-Changing

The Dark Heart of the Republican Party – The Atlantic

Embracing the politics of sadism, the GOP base hits a new low.

By Tom Nichols, November 1, 2022

Nancy Pelosi with her husband, Paul Pelosi, in 2019 in Washington, DC. (Zach Gibson / Getty)

A Spreading Cancer

It might seem late in the game to point to any one event as a final or conclusive moment in the decline of the Republican Party. And I have no doubt that if the GOP returns to power this winter, its worst members will find new ways to appall decent people while gamboling about in jester’s bells for its base. (As my Atlantic colleague Adam Serwer has put it so well, “The cruelty is the point.”)

But the reaction among Republican elected officials and their conservative-media life-support system to the beating of Paul Pelosi—by a man named David DePape, who was charged with attempting to kidnap Speaker Nancy Pelosi and admitted to planning to torture her—feels different.

I am not alone; my friend Mona Charen, among others, also senses that this event marks a new level of depravity in the GOP. I have struggled for a few days to decide why, exactly, this moment seems like an inflection point.

In terms of actual damage, January 6 was far worse than one violent crime in San Francisco. Republican leaders—and here I will leave aside Donald Trump, who is in a class of hideousness all by himself—have said far worse things over the past five years. But a parade of Republicans somehow think that an unhinged, hammer-wielding intruder putting an old man in the ICU is funny.

Source: The Dark Heart of the Republican Party – The Atlantic

Current Affairs, Politics, Television, Times They Are A-Changing

Biden attacks Trump and his Republican supporters as a threat to democracy : NPR

By Frank Ordonez, Updated September 1, 20229:31 PM ET

President Joe Biden speaks outside Independence Hall on Sept. 1, in Philadelphia.
Evan Vucci/AP

President Biden on Thursday warned Americans that democracy is under attack from a faction of the Republican party led by former President Donald Trump, and called on Democrats, mainstream Republicans and independents to “speak up, speak out, get engaged — vote, vote, vote.”

In a rare prime time speech, Biden attacked his predecessor, saying that “too much of what’s happening in our country today isn’t normal.” The speech came just two months ahead of midterm congressional elections, where Democrats are fighting to keep their slim majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives.

Biden said the Republican party is “dominated, driven, intimidated by Donald Trump” and his supporters, calling it “a threat to this country.”

Source: Biden attacks Trump and his Republican supporters as a threat to democracy : NP