The Whole GOP Will Fit In The Grave Trump Is Digging For Himself

I think everyone sane can agree with this tweet from Republicans for a New President: "Trump is a failed president who abuses his power to enrich himself and destroy constitutional checks. We MUST stop him before he succeeds." They went on to say that they are "calling on current and former principled Republicans to join us." Another group of anti-Trump Republicans, Stand Up Republic responded: "The GOP has lost its way, and the American people need to see principled Republicans still exist and have a better vision for the country than Trumpism offers. That's why we and @Principles_1st will be co-hosting a counter convention to the RNC." They should have been aware that Trump was unsuited for the presidency-- and especially for a national emergency of this scope. Yesterday, Tony Schwartz, author of Art of the Deal, the book that launched Trump's public persona told HuffPo: "I’ve always assumed, like most people have, that the primary motivation is to be loved and admired and recognized and praised. That is a motivation but the deeper motivation is domination, is to win. And that is a function of the fact that he has no conscience. And let’s be clear. No conscience."

We may not agree with the #NeverTrump Republicans on much else, but at least they're doing their part to liberate America from the fascist threat:

For three and a half years, the nation and the Republican Party have suffered under the failed leadership, corrupt dealings, and incessant lies of Donald J. Trump. Rather than maintain their principles, other Republican leaders sold their integrity for personal benefit and became his enablers.

Especially amid Depression Era unemployment and nearly one hundred thousand U.S. pandemic casualties, much of which could have been avoided, principled and former Republicans must now unite in offering a vision for better leadership and a brighter future for America.

That’s why, in partnership with Principles First, we are hosting the first ever Convention on Founding Principles concurrent with the Republican National Convention.

The event will feature speakers, thinkers and leaders from across the country who share our commitment to principled conservatism and political renewal in America. Delegates will present, deliberate and ratify organizing principles, vote for preferred candidates, and plan future actions.

Friday a large team of Guardian journalists, spread out all over the world, reported that it isn't only in the U.S. where people are horrified by Trump's catastrophic shortcomings in the face of the pandemic that neither he nor his brain-dead followers see as serious. Trump's failed regime "has repeatedly claimed that the U.S. is 'leading the world' with its response to the pandemic, but it does not seem to be going in any direction the world wants to follow. Across Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America, views of the U.S. handling of the coronavirus crisis are uniformly negative and range from horror through derision to sympathy. Donald Trump’s musings from the White House briefing room, particularly his thoughts on injecting disinfectant, have drawn the attention of the planet. 'Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger,' the columnist Fintan O’Toole wrote in the Irish Times. 'But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.'"

The U.S. has emerged as a global hotspot for the pandemic, a giant petri dish for the Sars-CoV-2 virus. As the death toll rises, Trump’s claims to global leadership have became more far-fetched. He told Republicans last week that he had had a round of phone calls with Angela Merkel, Shinzo Abe and other unnamed world leaders and insisted “so many of them, almost all of them, I would say all of them” believe the U.S. is leading the way.

None of the leaders he mentioned has said anything to suggest that was true. At each milestone of the crisis, European leaders have been taken aback by Trump’s lack of consultation with them-- when he suspended travel to the US from Europe on 12 March without warning Brussels, for example. A week later, politicians in Berlin accused Trump of an “unfriendly act” for offering “large sums of money” to get a German company developing a vaccine to move its research wing to the U.S.

The president’s abrupt decision to cut funding to the World Health Organization last month also came as a shock. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, a former Spanish foreign minister, wrote on Twitter: “There is no reason justifying this move at a moment when their efforts are needed more than ever to help contain & mitigate the coronavirus pandemic.”

A poll in France last week found Merkel to be far and away the most trusted world leader. Just 2% had confidence Trump was leading the world in the right direction. Only Boris Johnson and Xi Jinping inspired less faith.

A survey this week by the British Foreign Policy Group found 28% of Britons trusted the US to act responsibly on the world stage, a drop of 13 percentage points since January, with the biggest drop in confidence coming among Conservative voters.

...Trump’s decision not to take part in a global effort to find a vaccine, and his abrupt severance of financial support to the WHO at the height of the pandemic, added outrage and prompted complaints that the US was surrendering its role of global leadership.

“If there is any world leader who can be accused of handling the current crisis badly, it is Donald Trump, whose initial disdain for Covid-19 may have cost thousands of Americans their lives,” an editorial in the conservative Estado de São Paulo newspaper said last month.

The newspaper said Trump had only decided to take Covid seriously after finding himself “cornered by the facts”-- and expressed shock at his decision to halt WHO funding.

“Even by the standards of his behaviour, the level of impudence is astonishing for the holder of an office that, until just a few years ago, was a considered reference in leadership for the democratic world,” it said.

Back in the U.S., Trump appears to be digging his own grave-- one big enough to fit the whole Republican Party. Reporting for Reuters, Jarrett Renshaw wrote from Pennsylvania yesterday that Trump has made no secret of his disdain for mail-in voting, proclaiming frequently-- without evidence-- that such balloting is riddled with fraud. "Republican leaders say his messaging may be hurting the party’s chances to win in Pennsylvania," wrote Renshaw, "where Democrats are dominating a surge in requests to vote by mail in the midst of the pandemic. With less than three weeks to go before the primary, 1,178,475 Pennsylvania voters have applied for absentee ballots, a 14-fold increase from 2016. Nearly 70% of those requests have come from registered Democrats, state data as of May 13 show. That margin is far wider than the 55% to 45% registration advantage held by Democrats in the state... The balloting features competitive statewide and local races whose outcomes could be determined by the large contingent of absentee voters."

That’s a worrisome harbinger for Republicans looking ahead to the general election, if coronavirus remains a health threat and Democrats continue their mail-in advantage, according to Lee Snover, head of the Republican Party in Northampton County, about 70 miles northeast Philadelphia. Northampton is one of three Pennsylvania counties whose voters flipped to Trump after supporting Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.

Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 by the slimmest of margins-- just 45,000 votes, or less than a percentage point. At stake are 20 Electoral College votes, out of 270 a candidate needs to win the presidency. Pennsylvania is one of a handful of former industrial “Rust Belt” states that could decide this year’s election.

“It’s a real problem and could be really troubling come November,” Snover said. Trump supporters “simply don’t trust the process, and the president’s comments have not helped things, for sure.”

It’s not just Pennsylvania. Republicans nationwide appear less eager to embrace voting by mail. Just one-third of Republicans said they are at least somewhat likely to vote by mail in November, compared to two-thirds of Democrats and half of independents who said so, according to an April 30-May 4 Monmouth University poll.

The Republican National Committee said it has had a team on the ground in Pennsylvania since 2016 and is aggressively educating volunteers and supporters about the process to vote by mail.

“Republican voters are much more traditional, they generally like to vote in person,” said Rick Gorka, a senior member of the Republican National Committee and part of the Trump Victory re-election campaign. “Some level of discomfort is expected, but that’s why we are diligently working to retrain voters.”

IN TRUMP THEY TRUST

But Pennsylvania Republicans such as Frank Miller, a 51-year old business owner, could prove tough to persuade. He lives in Luzerne County, a politically divided region in the northeastern part of the state. Miller says there is no way he would vote by mail in November, pandemic or no pandemic.

“Most Trump supporters are like me-- we trust Trump but no one else,” Miller said. “When I see Democrats pushing it, I know there must be a sinister reason for it.”

Mail-in balloting has emerged as another highly charged issue in America’s polarized politics. Republicans in states across the country are engaged in legal battles to stop Democratic attempts to expand mail-in voting in response to the biggest U.S. health crisis in a century.

In Texas, the Democratic Party and a coalition of voters and civil rights groups have filed several lawsuits to expand mail balloting in light of the coronavirus. The Republican-led state government opposes those efforts, arguing mail ballots are prone to fraud and there’s not enough time or money to implement such a sweeping change.

In Nevada, several conservative groups have sued to block Democratic Governor Steve Sisolak’s plan to hold congressional and local primaries in June entirely by mail, arguing that, among other things, it violates the U.S. Constitution.

Lawmakers in Pennsylvania, which has a Democratic governor and a divided legislature, have gone the other way. Last year the state passed legislation making it easier for citizens to vote by mail.

November will mark the first general election in which any registered voter in Pennsylvania can request an absentee ballot without having to provide an excuse such as illness or travel, and evidence to back it up. Those restrictions severely limited the number of people who could vote absentee in the past; mail ballots accounted for just 4.6% of all ballots cast there in the 2016 general election.

...Statewide, Democrats have sent texts to at least a million supporters, logged 500,000 calls and hosted over 1,200 attendees in online training sessions, according to the state party.

Republicans, too, are gearing up. Even as Trump denounces mail balloting, his campaign has organized virtual training in Pennsylvania to teach volunteers how to get Republicans to register for absentee ballots, which can be done online or by mail...

‘WE COULD PAY A PRICE’

Voting-rights advocates have denounced Republican efforts to limit mail-in voting as particularly unfair to minorities and low-income Americans, who tend to vote Democratic and also have been hit hardest by the coronavirus outbreak.

But the Republican Party has created risks for itself by sewing doubts among its own members about casting absentee ballots in the midst of a public health emergency, said Robert Stein, a political science professor at Rice University who has studied mail balloting.

“It’s a terrible mistake for Republicans,” Stein said. “There is one party embracing innovation and there’s another fighting an obstacle, the president.”

Stein said the party that does the best job mobilizing supporters to vote by mail could gain the advantage if coronavirus is still raging in November and depresses in-person turnout.

In Pennsylvania, that prospect is worrying Sam DeMarco, head of the Republican Party in Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh. He said if his party continues to lag Democrats badly in mail-in voting, Republicans will be under tremendous pressure to get their supporters to the polls on Election Day to overcome the absentee-ballot deficit, a big gamble in a pandemic.

“We don’t want to start the election down 500,000 votes,” DeMarco said. “Republican leaders in the state need to embrace it or else we could pay a price.”