Tag: republican party
RNC Taking Unprecedented

RNC Taking Unprecedented Steps To Write 2024 Platform In Total Secrecy

The Republican Party has recently argued, according to NPR, that "an unwieldy platform could be weaponized by Democrats and the media."

As a result, in "a break with tradition," the Republican National Convention has decided to launch its platform privately this election cycle, Semafor reports.

The news outlet notes that the party's choice "to keep spectators and media out of the room, at Milwaukee’s Baird Center, was reported last week by the New York Times."


Trump campaign staffers Chris LaCitiva and Susie Wiles wrote in a memo last week, "For decades, Republicans have published textbook-long platforms that are scrutinized and intentionally misrepresented by our political opponents. The mainstream media uses their bully pulpit to perpetuate lies and misrepresentations, and the voters are often left believing we stand for something different than we actually do."

Semafor reports the pair "did not cite examples in the memo, but in 2016, the committee’s tweak to languageabout defending Ukraine generated bad headlines; well into 2018, it was inspiring questions from a special counsel. In 2020, the decision to punt on the platform inspired some embarrassing coverage, but not too much."

Politico reported Tuesday that "two hardline anti-abortion delegates to next week’s GOP platform committee have been stripped of their positions, according to several members of the Republican National Committee, underscoring a broader fear among evangelicals and other social conservatives that the party is poised to moderate its stance on abortion at the direction of former President Donald Trump."

The news outlet noted that a Trump campaign official argued the two delegates — "longtime party activist LaDonna Ryggs and former state party chair Chad Connelly" — were never "on the platform committee and maintained that two other people were the ones properly elected to the body by South Carolina’s convention delegates, suggesting that the 'state party' had tried to circumvent the RNC."

Additionally, Politico reports, "Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council and a member of the platform committee, accused RNC Chair Michael Whatley of 'stalling tactics' in a letter on Monday about efforts to ensure the meetings are open."

Perkins said that keeping the meetings private "heightens speculation that the GOP platform will be watered down to a few pages of meaningless, poll-tested talking points.'"

RNC committee person Oscar Brock said, "The lack of transparency is unwelcome. When people operate behind closed doors, you always have to wonder what the outcome is going to be.”

Semafor emphasizes, "The decision to pull curtains around the platform won’t stop coverage of what’s in it, but it will prevent the real-time drama of prior years."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Maricopa County recorder Stephen Richer

Arizona GOP Official Says She'd 'Lynch' Her Party's Own Election Official

Shelby Busch, who is vice chair of the Maricopa County, Arizona Republican Party, was recently heard threatening the life of county recorder Stephen Richer — the top election administrator for the Grand Canyon State's most populous county.

MSNBC columnist Jahan Jones reported that during a recent GOP event, Busch made the remark about Richer, who is Jewish, to laughter from the audience.

"If Stephen Richer were in this room, I would lynch him," she said. "I don’t unify with people who don’t believe in the principles we believe in and the American cause that founded this country."

Busch added that she would prefer the county have someone in the office who would be "a good, Christian man that believes what we believe."

Richer, in the meantime, has been subjected to numerous death threats, particularly in the wake of the 2022 gubernatorial and U.S. Senate elections in which Democrats prevailed in both races. This is despite Richer being a Republican himself.

“If lynching is in your vocabulary you need to have a heart to heart with yourself,” Richer said, according to AZfamily.com. “That shouldn’t be in your vocabulary given the history of that term and it shouldn’t be on your vocabulary to say about anyone you with whom you disagree.”

According to Phoenix-based TV stations KTVK and KPHO, Busch is now facing calls to walk back her statement, though she insists the comment was made "in jest." The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Phoenix (JCRC) condemned both Busch and the Maricopa County GOP in an official statement.

"We urge Ms. Busch to retract and apologize, and the Maricopa County Republican Party to stand against such rhetoric," the JCRC stated.

Maricopa County has been instrumental in Democrats' recent success in Arizona. Democrat Katie Hobbs defeated Republican Kari Lake by approximately 17,000 votes, with her victory made possible by her 38,000-vote advantage in the Democratic-leaning county. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) had a more robust margin of victory over Republican challenger Blake Masters, whom he dispatched by a 51-46 margin.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

'Absolute Bloodbath' Roils RNC As Trump Seizes Control Amid Purge Of Party

'Absolute Bloodbath' Roils RNC As Trump Seizes Control Amid Purge Of Party

With Ronna Romney McDaniel gone, the Republican National Committee (RNC) now has the ultra-MAGA leadership that Donald Trump wanted — including Trump loyalist Michael Whatley replacing McDaniel as chair and Lara Trump as co-chair.

But the changes at the RNC go beyond Whatley (who formerly chaired the North Carolina Republican Party) and Lara Trump, who is married to Donald Trump's son, Eric Trump.

According to Politico's Alex Isenstadt and The Guardian's Hugo Lowell, mass firings are underway — a purge a GOP source described as an "absolute bloodbath."

Lowell, in an article published by The Guardian on March 11, reports, "Donald Trump's new leadership team at the Republican National Committee started the process of ousting scores of staffers on Monday night, clearing out its ranks as they prepare to bring the Committee under the wing of the Trump 2024 presidential campaign, sources familiar with the matter said.

"The RNC, according to Lowell, "is expected to cull about 60 people across the political, data and communications departments."

"At least five members of the senior staff will be let go," Lowell explains, "and some third-party contracts may also be cancelled…. In ousting large swathes of the RNC, the new chair, Michael Whatley, and the new co-chair, Lara Trump — the former president's daughter-in-law — moved to reorganize the Republican Party's central committee to fall squarely behind the Trump campaign just days after they were formally elected."

Lowell adds, "The RNC is being brought under the Trump campaign to such an extent, the sources said, that the firings are mainly to ensure there is no overlap in roles between the RNC and the campaign. The Trump campaign, for instance, already has robust political and communications teams."

Isenstadt, reporting for Politico, notes that "Trump advisers have described the RNC's structure as overly bloated and bureaucratic."

"The RNC had about $8 million at the end of December, only about one-third as much as the Democratic National Committee," Isenstadt reports. "Under the new structure, the Trump campaign is looking to merge its operations with the RNC. Key departments, such as communications, data and fundraising, will effectively be one and the same."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Haley Is Out, But Deep Wound In Republican Party Remains Unhealed

Haley Is Out, But Deep Wound In Republican Party Remains Unhealed

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley suspended her campaign on Wednesday, leaving Donald Trump as the last Republican presidential candidate standing. Again.

But as she announced the end of the campaign, Haley did not endorse Trump. “I have always been a conservative Republican and always supported the Republican nominee,” said Haley. Then she cited former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in saying, “Never just follow the crowd. Always make up your own mind.”

“It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him,” she continued. “And I hope he does that.”

While her departure may mean that Trump can coast through the remaining primaries, it certainly doesn’t mean that the open wound in the Republican Party is going to heal.

A better understanding of how the Haley campaign feels about Trump and Trump supporters might be gleaned from this exchange between Haley’s communications director, Nachama Soloveichik, and Trump supporter Kari Lake, the front-runner for the Republican nomination in Arizona’s Senate race.

Haley’s whole primary campaign was based on the knowledge of the subset of Republican voters who say they won’t vote for Trump in November. Even in Trump’s wins on Super Tuesday, Haley picked up 23 percent of Republican votes in North Carolina, 29 percent in Minnesota, and 35 percent in Virginia, with 95 percent or more of the total vote reported in each state. Those are all states that Trump desperately needs to keep in his win column.

Even in deep-red states like Tennessee and Arkansas, Trump is walking away with less than 80 percent of the vote. That doesn’t mean these states are likely to swing to President Joe Biden in November, but it is a good signal that a significant portion of the GOP is unwilling to hold their nose and go MAGA. It’s fair to read much of the vote Haley has received not as showing their love for the ex-governor, but as showing their distrust of the party’s authoritarian leader.

“I don’t know. I did not vote for Biden the last time,” said one former Republican who bolted from the party in the last year. “I don’t know that I could do it this time. But I don’t know if I could vote for Trump.”

The schism goes both ways. As Daily Kos’ Kerry Eleveld reported on Tuesday, Trump is engaged in a purge of the Republican Party. He has declared that moderate Republicans are no longer welcome and that Haley supporters are “permanently barred” from joining the MAGA elite.

With Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump set to empty the party’s remaining funds into Trump’s account, and Trump making it clear that there is no party outside of MAGA, those voters who have voted against Trump in the primaries may find there’s no home for them remaining in the Republican Party. Though they may have a home elsewhere.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell may have managed a half-hearted endorsement, but former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney can’t bring himself to go even that far.

“I think we agree that we have looked at his behavior, and his behavior suggests that this is a person who will impose his will if he can, on the judicial system[,] on the legislative branch, and on the entire nation,” Romney said on “Meet the Press” in December.

Meanwhile, Trump says the Republican Party is getting rid of the Romneys. “We want to get Romneys and those out,” Trump told the crowd at a Virginia rally recently. Haley responded with a statement that “Trump is actively rejecting people from the Republican Party — a losing strategy in November and a recipe for extinction in the long run.”

We can only hope.

For at least two decades, the Republican Party has become increasingly hostile to anyone who didn’t hold to a very specific set of conservative beliefs. That requirement already cost Republicans the moderates and liberals who used to exist in their party.

The entry of Trump has upended the entire Republican platform, replacing it with the One Commandment: Obey Trump.

The party going to the polls in November is not McConnell’s party, or Romney’s party, or anything that would be recognized by any Republican candidate going back to Abraham Lincoln. It’s a classical authoritarian party, devoted to the rule of just one man—the one who says he’d beat Lincoln even if the 16th president teamed up with George Washington.

There’s no doubt that Trump’s cultish followers are enthusiastic to see their golden calf perched back on his altar, and Republican dissidents may wander home before November. But right now, the Republican Party appears to be split between those who want to see democracy only weakened and those who want to see it completely stripped away.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

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