In 2009 Republicans Predicted That The Economic Stimulus Package Would Only Make The Recession Worse And Cause More Unemployment
The results show they couldnât have been more wrong. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 ended the recession after only a few months. Although 750,000 people were losing their jobs each month when Obama took office, after the Recovery Act was passed the rate of job loss immediately decreased each month and within a year the economy showed positive job growth.
Considering the severity of the 2008 economic collapse and the total opposition by Republicans to do anything at all to stimulate the economy, it is remarkable that the US economy recovered as quickly as it did.
Looking at the rate of job loss and job creation, its easy to see that the stimulus of 2009 was highly successful in stopping the job losses and turning the economy around.
Most Republicans Said That President Obama Should Be Impeached Because Of The 2012 Attack On The Us Consulate In Benghazi
Their own investigations, however, proved them wrong. Every Congressional inquiry, including those by the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee, concluded that the Obama administration did nothing wrong regarding Benghazi, that there was no stand down order given, and that neither the President nor anyone in his administration lied about it. Each and every Republican investigation has reached this same conclusion, but Republicans continue to exploit this tragedy for political gain.
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Lies Damned Lies And The Truth About Joe Biden
Joe BidenKentucky state lawmakers vote to scrap school mask mandateArkansas governor pushes back against Bidenâs vaccine mandateRNC vows to sue over Biden vaccine, testing mandateMORE. I know him, said the House Speaker authoritatively, and that was that.
Does Bidens record warrant such confidence? Not really. In fact, Biden has a long history of lying about himself, about his past and about events that never took place.
Democrats want the 2020 campaign to be a referendum on President Trump. Fine, but if this is to be a contest of characters, it is only appropriate that Joe Bidens history of fabrication and deceit often intended to bolster his intellectual credentials also be fair game.
Over the past year, Biden thundered that the Obama administration didnt lock people up in cages. He also claimed that, Immediately, the moment started, I came out against it. And I was always labeled one of the most liberal members of Congress. Politicos rating of all three assertions? False.
No one should be surprised. Lest we forget
A video is making the rounds in which Biden boasts at a 1987 rally, âI went to law school on a full academic scholarship ended up in the top half of my class.â
Biden also maintained that he âgraduated with three degrees from undergraduate schoolâ and was the outstanding student in the political science department.
That commentary holds up well, as today more than ever Biden blunders into conversational crevasses, with no way out.
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Nothing There: More Republicans Are Calling Out Trumps Election Lies
WASHINGTON The more we learn about Donald Trumps baseless, false and discredited claims about the 2020 election, the more baseless, false and discredited those claims have become.
Just consider the revelations over the past week from Republicans:
- In Michigan, a GOP-led investigation by its state Senate concluded that it found no evidence of widespread or systematic fraud in Michigans prosecution of the 2020 election.
- Regarding Arizona, a report co-authored by former Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson criticized the so-called audit of the election results in that state, saying it does not meet the standards of a proper election recount or audit, and that its being conducted by an inexperienced, unqualified contractor.
- And over the weekend, ABCs Jon Karl writing for the Atlantic had former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr debunking Trumps claims about the 2020 election results. If there was evidence of fraud, I had no motive to suppress it. But my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there, Barr said. It was all bullsh!#.
Predictably, Trump lashed out at those GOP findings.
Michigan State Senators Mike Shirkey and Ed McBroom are doing everything possible to stop Voter Audits in order to hide the truth about November 3rd, the former president said in a statement, which even included those state senators phone numbers.
Even Bill Barr doesnt buy them.
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Republicans Cant Understand Democrats
Only one in four Republican voters felt that most or almost all Democratic voters sincerely believed they were voting in the best interests of the country. Rather, many Republicans told us that Democratic voters were brainwashed by the propaganda of the mainstream media, or voting solely in their self-interest to preserve undeserved welfare and food stamp benefits.
We asked every Republican in the sample to do their best to imagine that they were a Democrat and sincerely believed that the Democratic Party was best for the country. We asked them to explain their support for the Democratic Party as an actual Democratic voter might. For example, a 64-year-old strong Republican man from Illinois surmised that Democrats want to help the poor, save Social Security, and tax the rich.
But most had trouble looking at the world through Democratic eyes. Typical was a a 59-year-old Floridian who wrote I dont want to work and I want cradle to grave assistance. In other words, Mommy! Indeed, roughly one in six Republican voters answered in the persona of a Democratic voter who is motivated free college, free health care, free welfare, and so on. They see Democrats as voting in order to get free stuff without having to work for it was extremely common roughly one in six Republican voters used the word free in the their answers, whereas no real Democratic voters in our sample answered this way.
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Former Republican Voter After Capitol Riot: ‘i Want No Association With This Party Anymore’
Like so many Republicans, Im sick and tired of talking about saving a party that shows few signs of wanting redemption, which makes it increasingly hard to hold on to the tattered remnants of a once-proud party. Indeed, since the insurrection more than 30,000 Republican voters have dropped their affiliation with the GOP, with many echoing the words of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, I can no longer call myself a fellow Republican.
Despite my own pessimisms about the Grand Old Party, I believe its salvation can still be found in our guiding principles, which do not include putting kids in cages, spewing lies and conspiracies and fermenting deadly insurrections. For those Republicans who remain behind, its time to refocus on what it means to be a Republican. While former President Donald Trump spent four years trying to reshape as much of the Republican Party into his image as possible and, failing that, setting the rest on fire, I agree with Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., who said, There is a real split for the future of the party, and that epic battle has commenced. Bring it on!
My fellow Republicans must stop playing stupid.
The Big Lie Is Gop Gospel
Cheney is not alone in suffering consequences for challenging Trumps allegations.
- Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who defended the states counting process against Trumps attempts to interfere with it, was stripped of his voting power on the State Election Board as part of Georgias new voting restrictions law.
- In a special House election in Texas held on in early May, the Trump-critical Republican in the race Michael Wood got 3 percent of the vote.
- In January, Michigan Republicans removed Aaron van Langevelde, a GOP attorney who broke with the party to certify Bidens victory in Michigan, from his post on the states Board of State Canvassers.
- At the Utah Republican Partys convention this weekend, Sen. Mitt Romney perhaps the GOPs leading Trump critic was booed and called a traitor.
At the same time, Republicans who have embraced falsehoods about the election have been elevated.
Rep. Elise Stefanik , who appears likely to replace Cheney in the No. 3 spot, backed Trumps anti-election efforts to the hilt. Most egregiously, she falsely asserted that there were 140,000 illegal votes in Georgias Fulton County alone which would amount to more than 25 percent of all the votes in the entire Democratic-leaning county. The breakout Republican stars in the House of Representatives, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert , both egged on the January Stop the Steal rally that culminated in the attack on Capitol Hill.
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The Ugly Truth: Republicans Want More Poverty And Crime
The Republican Party is running a huge scam right now, similar to the one they ran in 1992 when President George H.W. Bush was setting up phony cocaine busts across the street from the White House having achieved his position by running his infamous Willie Horton ad four years earlier.
When Democrats work to lift people out of poverty, it lifts the entire economy. As Republicans work to cut taxes on rich people and spending on poor people, it whacks the economy.
Here’s the essential formula:
- Increase levels of inequality in the country to the point where poverty and homelessness are a crisis.
- Do this with huge, trillion-dollar tax cuts for rich people so they get massively richer, while gutting social safety net programs and supports for working-class people like unions.
- Poverty and homelessness increase, which produces an increase in crime, and that freaks out middle-class peoplethe majority of voters.
- Then, build your political identity and campaign around being “tough on crime” while completely ignoring the fact that the poverty you helped create is largely responsible for much of that crime.
- Blame the poverty-driven crime, instead, on “welfare” programs Democrats have put into place to try to soften the blow of the poverty caused by Republican policies.
- Get elected, create more poverty rinse, wash, and repeat.
And then there’s inequality, which it turns out is at least as consequential as poverty as a driver of criminal behavior.
As their research notes:
The Gop Elite Gave Us This Party
This dire outcome was not inevitable: The best evidence we have suggests that the rise of the Big Lie is the direct result of strategic choices by Republican leaders.
A new paper by Dan Hopkins, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, analyzes data from a panel survey, which looks at roughly the same group of people over time, running between 2007 and 2020. The survey asked people to rate the fairness of the US electoral system on a scale of 1 to 5, and tracked the changes over time.
What they found was a striking consistency: Support for the American system is both high and reasonably stable when assessed via this measure, Hopkins writes. Though there are some fluctuations, with partisans evaluating the system as somewhat less fair when the other party is in power, generally theyre small.
Hopkinss last survey wave was in October 2020 which means the results dont reflect the false allegations lobbed in the aftermath of Bidens victory. The stability documented here was very likely shattered by Trumps post-election actions, Hopkins concludes.
Other data confirm this supposition. A report from the Voter Study Group analyzed Pew surveys, conducted after every presidential election since 2004, on whether voters thought their vote was counted fairly. You see the same general stability documented in Hopkinss paper, with a majority of voters in both parties saying they were very confident their vote was counted accurately in every year except 2020:
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Read The Supreme Court Dissenting Opinion On Roe V Wade
For nearly 50 years, ever since Roe v. Wade was issued in 1973, it has been the opposite, with Republicans on a sustained offensive to overturn the decision chipping away at its protections in red-leaning states, working to advance conservative judicial nominees and invoking the issue as a litmus test in GOP primaries. And publicly, conservatives on Friday did take a victory lap.
Life wins! Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, said in a prepared statement. Millions of Americans are celebrating todays ruling and a pro-life movement that has worked tirelessly for decades.
But Republicans running in elections this year have been preparing since the publication of a draft ruling last month in POLITICO to turn the political debate away from Roe as sharply as possible,seemingly cognizant of its downsides. In a messaging memoobtained by Axios in May, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the partys campaign arm, urged Republicans to depict Democrats as fixated on extreme views on abortion, while asserting that Republicans support for abortion restrictions is reasonable and Republicans are focused on getting the economy back on track and keeping your family safe.
Republicans wont want to deflect from the economy whatsoever, said former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, who ran unsuccessfully for a U.S. Senate seat this year, because thats what people are feeling every day.
He added, I think its a case we can win.
Traits Of The Parties Trump And The Gop
Slightly more than half of U.S. adults say the Democratic Party is too extreme in its positions, while a somewhat larger share say the same about the Republican Party. Similarly, while 61% say the phrase too often makes excuses for party members with hateful views describes the Republican Party very or somewhat well, 51% say this about the Democratic Party.
Americans are slightly more likely to say the Democratic Party supports policies that interfere too much in peoples lives than to describe the Republican Party this way .
The Democratic Party holds a sizable advantage with the public on being seen as respectful and tolerant of different types of people. Nearly six-in-ten say this describes the Democratic Party at least somewhat well 38% say the same for the GOP.
And while the Democratic Party also holds modest advantages on respecting the countrys democratic institutions and traditions and on governing honestly and ethically, neither party rates highly among the public on these measures. While 45% characterize the Republican Party as respecting the countrys democratic institutions, 51% say the same about the Democratic Party. And just 37% say the phrase governs in an honest and ethical way describes the Republican Party at least somewhat well, with 43% saying this description applies to Democrats.
Partisans overwhelmingly offer criticisms of the other party while evaluating their own in generally positive terms.
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In 1993 When The Brady Law And The Assault Weapons Ban Were Passed Republicans Predicted Increasing Rates Of Crime And Murder
Thankfully, just the opposite happened. While the rate of violent crime had increased steadily from the 1970s into the 1990s, it suddenly began to drop after 1993 and continued to decline for more than ten years. What could have happened in 1993 to precipitate such a sudden and prolonged drop in crime? Thats the year Congress passed the Assault Weapons Ban and the Brady Law, which mandated background checks and a waiting period to buy a gun.
Despite Republican predictions to the contrary, the Brady Law and the Assault Weapons Ban were followed by the most dramatic reduction in violent crime since the FBI started keeping statistics. The graphs below, based on the actual numbers from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports website, show how the rates of murder and violent crime in the US dropped suddenly after the 1993 Brady Law and Assault Weapons Ban were passed.
These charts show the rate of murder and violent crime over 35 years based on numbers from the FBI Uniform Crime reports.
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The Real And Far Scarier Reason Republicans Think Biden Is Illegitimate
Many conservatives dont think the 2020 election was stolen. But they believe democracy itself has betrayed America, by allowing the wrong people to take charge
regardlessregardless
Earlier this month, Team Trump claimed in court that their efforts to nullify Joe Bidens victory could not possibly have been fraudulent or be described as a criminal conspiracy, because those in and around the White House had merely been acting on the basis of sincerely held suspicions.
This sparked the latest round in the never-ending debate over whether or not Republicans actually believe that the election was stolen from them. Politically, it is important to push back against the opportunistic ways in which Republicans up and down the country have been using the big lie. But if we are trying to understand what is animating the rights rapidly accelerating radicalization against democracy, binary assumptions of Republicans as either true believers or power-hungry cynics are not very helpful and actually obscure more than they illuminate. In some fundamental way, Republicans are both. What we really need to grapple with is why so many Republicans are convinced the outcome of the election was illegitimate regardless of whether or not there were specific procedural irregularities.
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Who Is Following The Jan 6 Hearings
The hearings are unlikely to be a factor in shaping Republican views because most say they are paying little to no attention to the investigation. According to this latest poll, 58 percent of Americans said they were paying at least some attention to the hearings, while another 41 percent said they were paying little to no attention, including 56 percent of Republicans. Democrats are the most reliable audience for the Jan. 6 hearings, with 80 percent following along.
Its almost an article of faith for a Republican to say, Im not paying attention to this stuff, Ayres said.
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No matter how earth-shattering these hearings are, there is also little to suggest they will inform the way people vote during the November midterms. In fact, only 9 percent of U.S. adults said it will be top of mind for them this fall, including 17 percent of Democrats and 2 percent of Republicans. A far larger share of Americans 37 percent said they care most about inflation, including 57 percent of Republicans and 42 percent of independents.
For Democrats, abortion ranked as the top concern. Following the Supreme Courts overturning of Roe v. Wade and the loss of federal protections for the medical procedure in June, 29 percent of Democrats and 18 percent of Americans overall picked abortion as what matters most to them.
Chart by Megan McGrew/PBS NewsHour
