The State | Letters: Who defended tea party protesters? The State You could have fooled me. I don't remember all of the First Amendment advocates coming out of the woodwork back when people were criticizing tea party members who were assembling to protest during the Obama administration. Obviously, some people ... |
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Letters: Who defended tea party protesters? - The State
The Tea Party, which began in the early years of the Obamas administration, had a lot less support than todays anti-Trump Womens marches.
You can see that in this graph of data from the Washington Post, which in late January 2017 asked about support for the Womens marches, and earlier queried about Tea Party support in April 2010.
The difference is substantial 60% support for the Womens marches and just 27% for the Tea Party.
Do the popularity of these protests matter? Yes.
Tea Party activities ramped up in opposition to the Affordable Care Act. Repealing the ACA, even if theres some sort of substitute (which would cover fewer people with weaker coverage), will cause further protests.
The Womens marches were remarkable, with millions gathered through the country and the world. More participated in Washington, D.C. than attended the Trump inaugural.
Its increasingly easy to organize events via text message and social media. Just look at what happened last weekend as people quickly gathered all around the country to protest Trumps Executive Order on refugees and immigrants.
The Tea Party had an impact on the 2010 midterm elections, which then limited what President Obama was able to accomplish. Its focused energy influenced Republican legislators to oppose Obama administration policy and brought voters to the polls.
If these early anti-Trump protests and associated political activities letter-writing campaigns and the like continue, remain highly popular and even grow, they will likely make a real political difference.
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Protests against Trump are far more popular than the Tea Party ever - Bangor Daily News
At the red-hot center of President Trump's first 10 days in office has been his strategist Stephen Bannon, who proclaims a global populist movement for "Judeo-Christian" values and against radical Islam.
Bannon is a passionate ideologue who is the intellectual center of the new administration. For nearly a decade he has been advertising his desire to turn America and the world upside down. He's now doing exactly that. Trump's "America First" trade policies and his anti-refugee travel ban are early glimmers of the revolution Bannon has long been advocating.
As the uproar over Trump's actions grows, it's important to distinguish between policies that are politically controversial and those that actually undermine the country's foundations. The haphazard executive order banning travel by people from seven Muslim-majority countries seems to be the latter: It strikes at America's core values.
The folly of the travel ban is that it is producing the opposite of what Trump says he wanted. It weakens America's alliances, emboldens our adversaries and puts the country at greater risk. It's not just misguided and heartless; it's dangerous. It affirms the Islamic State's narrative that it's at war with an anti-Muslim America.
The weakness of Bannon's strategy in these first days of Trump's presidency has been its impatience and disorganization. The White House's opening salvoes have been rushed, poorly planned shots that resulted in what Sen. John McCain called a "self-inflicted wound." In his seeming counsel to Trump, Bannon appears to have overlooked Benjamin Franklin's famous advice: "Haste makes waste."
Some critics have argued that Bannon is a white nationalist and, even, a neo-Nazi. What follows is a more measured account, sticking to his own explanations of how he sees the world and seeks to overturn the establishment's network of trade and security policies.
As with many revolutionaries, Bannon's story is that of a wealthy man who came to see himself as a vanguard for the masses. He rose from a middle-class life in Richmond, Virginia, through an uneventful stint with the Navy; but his life changed after he enrolled at Harvard Business School, joined Goldman Sachs, founded an investment firm, and made a fortune. He began directing conservative agitprop documentaries in 2004, but the 2008 financial crisis was a turning point. Bannon saw it as a betrayal of working people, and he embraced the tea party's conservative revolt against Republican and Democratic elites.
Bannon gained a powerful platform in 2012 when he became chairman of the hard-right Breitbart.com after the death of its founder, Andrew Breitbart. In an April 2010 speech to a tea party gathering in New York that was posted on YouTube, Bannon's radical rhetoric evoked the 1960s and fused left and right: "It doesn't take a weatherman to tell you which way the wind blows, and the wind blows off the high plains of the country through the prairie, and lighting a fire that's going to burn all the way to Washington."
By 2014, Bannon saw himself leading what he called a "global tea party movement" against a financial elite that he described as "the party of Davos." In a summer 2014 speech broadcast to a conference inside the Vatican, he railed against Wall Street bailouts and "crony capitalists." Racists and anti-Semites might get attracted to this movement, he said, "but there's always elements who turn up at these things, whether it's militia guys or whatever . . . it all gets kind of washed out, right?"
The rise of the Islamic State in 2014 gave Bannon a new rallying cry: "We are in an outright war against jihadist Islamic fascism," he told the Vatican audience. "I believe you should take a very, very, very aggressive stance against radical Islam."
Breitbart's London branch became a leading advocate of "Brexit," and on the day Britain voted to leave the European Union, it thundered: "There's panic in the skyscrapers. A popular revolution against globalism is underway." Bannon pressed that theme after Trump's victory, telling Breitbart's radio show on Dec. 30 it was only the "top of the first inning."
Last Friday's travel ban echoed themes Bannon has developed over a half-dozen years. It brought cheers from the right-wing parties in Europe that are Bannon's allies. "Well done," tweeted Dutch populist Geert Wilders. "What annoys the media and the politicians is that Trump honors his campaign promises," tweeted French right-wing leader Marine Le Pen.
Bannon undeniably has a powerful radical vision. But this time, he may have blundered. The travel ban has triggered a counter-revolt among millions of Americans who saw his target as the Statue of Liberty.
David Ignatius writes a foreign affairs column. He has also written eight spy novels. "Body of Lies" was made into a 2008 film starring Leonard DiCaprio and Russell Crowe. He began writing his column in 1998. To read more of his reports, Click Here Now.
Washington Post Writers Group.
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Bannon Leading a 'Global Tea Party Movement' - Newsmax
Senate Democrats are dispensing with talk of cooperation and preparing to fight President Trump across the board, delaying his nominees where possible and filibustering his Supreme Court pick if necessary.
Despite their minority status in the Senate, Democrats are under increasing pressure from their progressive base to stand up to a president they consider authoritarian and illegitimate. These activists demand that Democrats emulate Tea Party conservatives' opposition to President Obama by doing everything in their power to obstruct President Trump.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is facing especially intense scrutiny in his own backyard from liberals who believe any cooperation smacks of appeasement that will only "normalize" Trump.
"We are coming out on Tuesday with boxing gloves, barbells, and a demand that Schumer strengthen his resistance and fight fight fight the horrible policies coming out of the Trump administration," read a post in the Facebook group What The Fuck, Chuck. "No appeasement, no dealmaking, no collaboration: we need powerful resistance and leadership of all the Senate Democrats to fight the administration!"
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Thus Democrats boycotted a scheduled Tuesday vote on the Senate Finance Committee to advance the nominations of Trump's designated secretary of the treasury, Steven Mnuchin, and health and human services secretary, Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga.
Both nominees are accused of providing misleading testimony and disclosures. Democrats have pressed Munchin on foreclosures by the bank he once managed and Price on his healthcare stock investments while serving on a committee overseeing the industry.
"This is about getting answers to questions, plain and simple," the committee's ranking member Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said in a statement. "Ethics laws are not optional, and nominees do not have a right to treat disclosure like a shell game."
Senate Democrats also invoked a little-used rule to delay a Judiciary Committee vote on the nomination of their colleague Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., for attorney general. While Sessions has the votes to prevail in the full Senate, opposition to his nomination has been energized by the backlash against Trump's immigration executive order.
Sessions has had a strong influence on Trump's immigration policy and the senator's former aide Stephen Miller, now serving in the White House, reportedly had a hand in drafting the executive order along with top strategist Stephen Bannon.
Also from the Washington Examiner
Every president since Harry Truman has sent the Times an autographed portrait.
02/01/17 4:36 PM
Trump fired acting Attorney General Sally Yates Monday night after she instructed Justice Department lawyers not to defend the controversial order. Democrats said Tuesday that the country needed an attorney general like Yates, not Sessions.
"That's what an attorney general must be willing and able to do," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said of Yates' refusal to follow Trump's orders. "I have no confidence Sessions will be able to do that."
Republicans were angry about the moves. Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, called the committee Democrats' behavior "the most pathetic thing I've seen in my whole time in the U.S. Senate." Hatch was originally elected in 1976.
The typically straitlaced Hatch also said, "I'm very disappointed in this type of crap."
The Cabinet nominees are a sideshow leading up to the main event: resisting Trump's Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. Gorsuch's confirmation as the successor to late Justice Antonin Scalia would preserve the conservative majority on the court.
Also from the Washington Examiner
Meanwhile, groups that support gun control restrictions reacted with caution.
02/01/17 4:26 PM
While Senate Democrats cannot filibuster Trump's executive branch nominees without Republican defections, they can use this procedure to block Gorsuch on their own by requiring a 60-vote threshold for his confirmation or forcing GOP leaders to do away with this requirement using the "nuclear option." Republicans currently control the Senate 52 to 48.
Democrats not only wish to deny Trump an opportunity to leave a conservative imprint on the Supreme Court. They view it as payback for Senate Republicans' failure to confirm Obama's final high court nominee Merrick Garland after Scalia's death last year.
"The Democrats should treat Trump's SCOTUS pick with the exact same courtesy the GOP showed Merrick Garland," tweeted former Obama senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer. "Don't flinch, don't back down."
"The most fundamental thing that must be understood about tonight's announcement is that this is a stolen seat," said Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore. in blistering statement.
"This is the first time in American history that one party has blockaded a nominee for almost a year in order to deliver a seat to a President of their own party."
Merkley argued Trump should have nominated Garland instead. Because he did not, the senator concluded, "This is a stolen seat being filled by an illegitimate and extreme nominee, and I will do everything in my popular to stand up against this assault on the Court."
While the Supreme Court nomination fight was always likely to be contentious because of the high stakes on issues ranging from abortion and religious liberty to the death penalty and affirmative action, the all-out opposition to Trump wasn't inevitable.
Trump isn't an ideological movement conservative. He is more closely aligned with Rust Belt Democrats on trade and manufacturing than with his own party.
Congressional Democrats initially signaled they would be open to cooperating with Trump on an infrastructure plan that will at minimum contain billions in new government spending. The president is a New Yorker who once had a cordial relationship with Schumer, to whom he has donated money in the past.
But blue state Democrats are facing incredible pressure to oppose a president their constituents overwhelmingly voted against and who did not win the popular vote, none more so than Schumer. The Democratic leader has voted for every Trump nominee who has so far been confirmed by the Senate, including CIA Director Mike Pompeo, whom Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., voted against on civil libertarian grounds.
Schumer has since announced he will vote no on eight of Trump's Cabinet picks. New York progressives organized by What The Fuck Chuck demonstrated in Brooklyn Tuesday, saying "heartened but not mollified" by his newfound anti-Trump resolve.
Schumer voted to confirm Gorsuch for a federal judgeship in 2006, but greeted his Supreme Court nomination by promising "an exhaustive, robust and comprehensive debate" of the jurist's fitness to serve. Schumer expressed "serious doubts" about Gorsuch's ability to meet his standards.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., faced down liberal activists in Providence who were outraged by his vote to confirm Pompeo at CIA. "You are entitled to an explanation of why I have voted for some of the defense nominees and I will concede right off the bat that I may have been wrong," he said.
Outside the auditorium, a protester shouted through a bullhorn about Pompeo, "This is a man who sees international politics and world history as a clash between Judeo-Christians and Muslims, who thinks Edward Snowden should be executed, who supported torture and who refused to say that he thinks, to use Trump's term, that it is categorically wrong to 'take out' the families of accused terrorists."
Even before Trump, Bernie Sanders' Democratic primary campaign against Hillary Clinton was animated by the base's desire for Democrats to fight more, rejecting the centrist politics of Clinton's husand.
Up to seven Democratic senators have expressed varying degrees of support for an up-or-down vote on Gorsuch, the maximum number liberals can afford to have defect if there are going to mount a filibuster. But progressives might exert the same kind of pressure Republicans got from the Tea Party.
They are already receiving similar warnings. "Democrats are at risk of missing the point of what was an almost revolutionary election," said Republican strategist Christian Ferry. "People looking at what goes on in Washington and saying, 'Enough is enough.'"
Ferry managed Lindsey Graham's presidential campaign and was deputy campaign manager for John McCain in 2008, neither of whom have been reflexive Trump supporters. But he warned Democrats against listening only to their base.
"They lost a presidential election they thought was a sure thing," he said. "They need to grow their party." Ferry also warned that opposing everything Trump does as radical and extreme could produce a "boy who cried wolf" effect.
But with thousands of demonstrators protesting Trump's immigration initiatives and turning out for post-inaugural women's marches, Democrats may have a hard time turning a blind eye to their base's enthusiastic opposition.
Top Story
President Trump and his daughter Ivanka departed the White House for Dover Air Force Base in Delaware Wednesday afternoon to witness the arrival of Chief Petty Officer William "Ryan" Owens, who was killed during an intelligence gathering raid in Yemen last weekend.
Owens, a member of the Navy's SEAL Team Six, was killed in a clandestine raid at an al Qaeda facility that Trump had authorized early Sunday morning. The operation left four additional U.S. service members wounded and marked the first military fatality under the new administration.
Trump, who was to be joined by Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., upon arriving at Dover, had a "very somber and lengthy" conversation with Owens' family on Tuesday.
02/01/17 3:38 PM
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Democrats running Tea Party playbook against Trump - Washington Examiner (blog)
One Southwest Michigan Tea Party leader says he thinks President Donald Trumps executive order on immigration and refugees last week had a good idea at its core. Gene Clem, President of the Van-Kal Tea Party in Kalamazoo, tells WSJM Newssomething needed to be done to keep the country safer.
There were certain areas where there are currently active groups, like ISIS and Abu Sayyaf and some other ones, that are known to be actively trying to get people in the United States as refugees, Clem said. So, it kind of makes sense to pick out those areas and say, Well, lets look at them much more carefully.'
Clem does think the way the executive order was implemented should have been better, though. He says theres something wrong when folks with green cards find themselves stuck at airports without knowing whats going on. Hes expecting to see positive effects of the order once the smoke clears, and tells us thats what hes heard from most other Tea Partiers hes spoken with in recent days.
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Tea Party Leader Discusses Trump Immigration Order - News/Talk 94.9 WSJM