GOP Challenges are Everyone's Challenges

On Sunday, Nebraska State Senator John McCollister challenged the Republican Party to, well, to #BeBest. 

His plea came in the aftermath of the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, with the El Paso incident looming large, given the shooter's alleged anti-immigration, white supremacist 'manifesto;'  I haven't looked for it online, and won't, so I can't speak to it directly. 

Here's what McCollister posted on his Facebook page:

As you might imagine, his post caused a ruckus, in Nebraska and elsewhere, with pros and cons (probably not literal cons, but you never know) chiming in. Many thanked him for his candor, including more than a couple who wrote about leaving the Rs within the past couple of years; you can randomly connect some dots there and you'd be right, based on the comments. And on the other hand, many people thought he was out of line and that Democrats are to blame for all the evil in the world, including racism because Rs are not racist, Ds are. 

But it was this response to McCollister that sort of sums everything up. It's a press release, tweeted by the Nebraska Republican Party, in which Executive Director Ryan Hamilton suggested McCollister change his registration.  

John McCollister has been telegraphing for years that he has little if nothing in common with the Republican voters in his district by consistently advocating for higher taxes, restrictions on Americans' Second Amendment rights, and the pro-abortion lobby. His latest false statement about Republicans should come as no surprise to anyone who is paying attention, and we're happy he has finally shed all pretense of being a conservative. 

And, Hamilton made a generous offer:

I am happy to send a change of voter registration form along to his office so he can make the switch officially, and start, for once, telling the truth to voters in his district.

Note that the official response doesn't address the point McCollister was trying to get across -  unless you consider calling it "false" to be addressing the point. And regardless of your opinion on Trump and racist comments and white supremacists, McCollister's statement was relatively factual. 

Trump did talk about shithole countries, and he did tell four women of color, three of whom were born here, to go back to where they came from, and it is also true that he is a prolific liar, although it might not be entirely accurate that he lies more than he tells the truth. And of course, we all know the Rs are the party of Lincoln, and many Republicans are better than this.

McCollister is also correct that Republican senators and representatives, certainly those who serve us in the US Senate and House of Representatives, look the other way when Trump and others in the party misbehave, particularly when it comes to issues of race. They've been seen physically scurrying away from reporters, in fact.

Based on the response of the GOP chair, I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that it may also be true in Nebraska that elected officials turn a blind eye when the president says what he says, does what he does, allows what he allows at rallies, and so forth. And I don't think it's a very long limb, either, if the response is any indication.

So, let's compare what happened in Nebraska with what Republicans are dealing with in Ohio.

In a deleted post, state Representative Candice Keller (who lives about 30 miles from Dayton)  complained about liberals blaming the wrong things after mass shootings. And then she pointed a whole lotta fingers at where the blame really lies. Take a look:

And here is how some Ohio Republican officials responded:

• Jane Timken, the state's Republican Party chair, said "Our nation is reeling from these senseless acts of violence and public servants should be working to bring our communities together, not promoting divisiveness." She called for Keller's resignation, calling her statements "shocking and unjustifiable."

• Todd Hall, chair of the Butler County Republican Party (where Keller is running for the state senate in 2020) said that this was a time for "prayer and reflection" not Keller's comments, adding "some want to politicize these events, and I cannot condone such comment and behavior."

Interesting, isn't it? Two states, two GOP elected officials, two different takes on the state of things, and both end with a rejection of the person's ideas. 

The question is, which version of the GOP will win out in the long run?

Sunday School 8/4/19

I made myself pay attention to one classroom this morning. Simply because it was the first transcript I found, it was Meet the Press.  I may visit some of the others tomorrow, but I don't have the heart for it today, because I know it will be more of the same.

On the show today: New Jersey Senator Cory Booker and former HUD Secretary and San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, both of whom are among the many Democratic presidential candidates; Dayton OH Mayor Nan Whaley; El Paso Congresswoman Veronica Escobar; and Mick Mulvaney, the acting Chief of Staff.

Here's Nan Whaley, on her city being hit with multiple tragedies this year:

I mean, for us in Dayton, we - this is actually the second tragedy to hit our city this summer. First, we had a tornado that tore through Dayton in May. And now, we face this mass shooting. The difference is that one of these tragedies was completely preventable. And one of these tragedies has happened, now, 250 times this year, in our country, And yet, nobody can be moved to do anything about it. 

This is Escobar responding to Chuck Todd's question on what she sees as her responsibility, as an elected official in DC:

My primary responsibility, right now, Chuck, is to be with the community, comfort the community, be of service to the community... so my primary responsibility is here, with my community.  But as a legislator, all of us, as legislators, Chuck, we have to talk about what's really happening and we have to speak the truth.  It's not politicizing an event.. that truth is we have not just a gun epidemic in this country, but we have a hate epidemic in this country.

Here's Booker, after stating the the president is "responsible" and "contributing to what's going on right now" responding to the question "If the president doesn't, doesn't accept the responsibility that you believe he has, what is your  - what would you like the other elected Republicans to do?"

Well, to me, Martin Luther King said it so eloquently. What we have to repent for is not just the vitriolic words and violent actions of the bad people, but the appalling silence and inaction of the good people. There is complicity in the president's hatred that undermines the goodness and the decency of Americans regardless of what party. 

To say nothing in a time of rising hatred, it's not enough to say that, "I'm not a hatemonger, myself." If you are not actively working against hate, calling it out, you are complicit in what is going on. And so this is a moral moment in America, like we have seen before, where demagogues and fear mongers, hatemongers, have risen. We need moral clarity and healing and love in our nation. We need leaders that are capable of doing that. 

Castro, in response to the question of what he sees as what we need to start tackling, said this after talking about "common sense gun reform"

There is this very toxic brew of white nationalism that is arising. And I know that it doesn't reflect by any means, by any means the vast, vast majority of Americans. But unfortunately, what we see is an increasing number of these incidents, these mass shooting incidents. And so we need to pay attention to this, and we need to do something about this...The FBI Director has said that this is a particular problem right now in the United States. 

Todd wondered if the president can lay "any role, constructive role" or "because of how often he uses the language of racial resentment, does he just not have the credibility to do anything to fix this problem?" Here's Castro's response:

This president started his campaign in 2016 on a path of racial resentment and fanning the flames of bigotry. That's how he believes he won in 2016. That's how he thinks he's going to win in 2020. Unfortunately, he doesn't have any credibility anymore. You know, when he didn't step up right away and condemn the neo-Nazis after Charlottesville, (and) allowing that crowd for 13 seconds to chant, "send her back" a couple of weeks ago, he doesn't have any credibility.

 But you know what, Chuck? Like all Americans, I hope, I still hope that this president will do what most presidents have done throughout our history, which is to realize that we have to do everything that we can do to try and unite Americans instead of fanning the flames of bigotry.  He has to be a big enough man, a big enough person in these moments to do that. 

Mulvaney was asked this question: "...in fairness, Mr. Mulvaney, the President has spent the last month on Twitter stoking racial resentment in different ways and you can, you can try to rationalize that he was speaking about specific incidents, but taken together these sick people as you're describing, they hear what they want to hear. Does the president not have a responsibility to speak with a higher moral clarity when it comes to violence, a higher moral clarity when it comes to refugees?"

Here's how he responded.

Right, Chuck, let me put it to you this way. Even if he did speak the way that you want him to speak, and I get the fact that some people don't approve of the verbiage the president uses, I get that, alright? But even if they did, your point that you just made is absolutely right. People are going to hear what they want to hear. My guess is this guy is in that parking lot in El Paso Texas in that Walmart doing this even if Hillary Clinton is president. In fact, he'd probably go out and blame Hillary Clinton for doing it. 

These are crazy people, sick people, and until we figure out why we are creating this many people like this in this culture, why we are giving them such wide audiences on social media, why we are making weapons available to them when they probably shouldn't get them. Let's talk about background checks, something we have worked on tin this administration. Those are the conversations to have. Not giving Cory Booker a chance to run for president this morning by blaming Donald Trump. That is really disappointing. 

There was some additional back and forth on politics, and on policy, and on the president's "dehumanizing rhetoric", and then the question, "Is he not the president of all Americans here? It does seem as if he's always more worried about how his base is going to react to something than how the American, you know, moral fabric is protected.?

He absolutely is the president of all Americans, alright...Listen, we're going to have policy discussions, but my guess is, you show me how you feel about the president, and I'll show you who you think was responsible for the shooting. 

Todd did not drop it there, adding "well, unfortunately, it does appear this was a political motive of this domestic terrorist." And here was Mulvaney's final thought.

This was a political motive by a crazy person with a gun. How do we stop crazy people from getting guns? That's a - -if we can't agree on that, if we can't figure out a way to prevent that from happening, there's very little hope for this nation. Let's try and fix what allows sick people to get these types of weapons.

Lots to digest here.

Oh - one more thing: Mexico is most unhappy with us; at least six of those killed and several of the injured in El Paso were Mexican nationals. Our neighbors to the south are thinking that we should be doing more to protect their citizens.

See you around campus.