Ted Cruz Disowns One GOP Nazi... But Not the Nazi Faction In The Party And Not Any Of The Other Fascists Running As Republicans This Year

You know there is an actual fascist wing of the Republican Party-- and since Trump's occupation of the White House, it has been gaining strength. More and more neo-Nazis have been winning GOP primaries, as we saw Friday in North Carolina. The party establishment is embarrassed and would rather hide the connection between overt fascists and the Republican Party, but the hated-talk radio and Fox brainwashed base hears the Nazi campaign rhetoric and recognizes it as pure GOP, but a little more extreme. Republican neo-fascists in Virginia, Illinois, Wisconsin are proudly representing the GOP, leaving the party... uncomfortable.

Ted Cruz is one of the most right-wing Republicans in the Senate and he's running scared as Beto O'Rourke continues to make inroads in his campaign to replace him. This week Cruz decided to draw a line in the sand between the overt Nazis and himself.

Republican primary voters picked a self-avowed Nazi, Arthur Jones, to go up against one of the most right-wing Democrats in Congress, Dan Lipinski, in their Chicagoland district. The crap Jones is spouting in his campaign is a little to close for comfort for Cruz, who felt compelled to tweet to his fans in Illinois to voted for Lipinski rather than Jones. I wonder what Cruz would have done if Jones was running against a progressive-- say Marie Newman, who Lipinski recently beat in a hot primary 48,675 to 46,530, the thanks to the right-wing big money PAC financed by Cruz-backers, No Labels-- instead of Jones. Here's the very dramatic Cruz tweet:

This week, state Republicans let a deadline pass that would have allowed them to run someone as a third-party candidate to provide Republican voters with an alternative candidate to vote for. The GOP said the ballot requirements, including having to collect more than 14,000 signatures, was too burdensome and costly in a district Democrats dominate.

Republicans missed several chances, including in the primary, to challenge Jones or oust him from the ballot. The party failed to recruit a candidate to challenge him in the March primary where he went unopposed, did not draft a write-in candidate in the primary, and failed to knock him off the ballot by challenging his signature petitions.

Jones celebrated his role in sidelining Republicans, telling POLITICO this week: “I snookered them.”

So far Cruz hasn't had anything to say about a Republican from the fascist wing of the GOP running for the U.S. Senate in Virginia, Corey Stewart, who narrowly edged the mainstream conservative, Nick Freitas because another extremist, E.W. Jackson, drew votes away from Stewart.

• Corey Stewart- 136,410 (44.86%)
• Nick Freitas- 131,131 (43.12%)
• E.W. Jackson- 36,537 (12.02%)

Not a peep out of Cruz about Stewart, who might be sitting next to him in the Senate next year. That's odd, since Arthur Jones has no chance to win at all and he's running for a House seat, where Cruz never served. In fact, just yesterday, the Washington Post reported that Corey Stewart’s Republican nomination for U.S. Senate from Virginia has prompted an identity crisis within the state GOP, with some donors and activists saying they are so turned off, they are willing to vote for his Democratic opponent, Sen. Tim Kaine... Stewart almost won the gubernatorial primary last year-- by celebrating guns and Confederate statues, lambasting illegal immigrants, and associating with white nationalist Jason Kessler and Paul Nehlen, a Wisconsin candidate barred from Twitter because of anti-Semitic and racist posts. And, interestingly, Cruz hasn't chimed in on the race to replace Paul Ryan, where one of the leading Republican candidates-- probably second after the Ryan clone (Bryan Steel)-- is fascist Paul Nehlen. There are 6 candidates in the August 14 Republican primary to pick the sacrificial lamb to run against Randy Bryce. and in a crowded primary like that, there is no telling what will happen. Lots of GOP voters want to vote for Jeremy Ryan who they think is Paul Ryan's cousin and could well draw votes away from Steil, who Paul Ryan has endorsed and is helping raise money for. The fascist candidate, Nehlen, is a multimillionaire who has yet to deploy any of his own fortune in the race and has raised $189,613 so far. In 2016 Nelhen raised $1,451,04 from Republican donors sympathetic with his fascist agenda. And, by the way, he and Corey Stewart are allies. Cruz has nothing to say about Nehlen or the Nazi factions within his own party, just about the hapless Arthur Jones in Chicago.

Is Trump Really A Fascist?

Author Clive Irving thinks so. Yesterday he wrote an OpEd for the Daily Beast, It Is Happening Here, Trump Is Already Early-Stage Mussolini. He started by posing a couple of questions: "Is there a moment when a fanatical leader can be stopped before he takes a nation into the abyss? A moment when those with the moral determination to stop him can act before it is too late?" He realizes that "Trump stress tests this republic’s defenses against a demagogue. History has such moments. They need to be heeded... In Italy the moment came on Aug. 16, 1924." Before Mussolini supporters murdered socialist member of parliament Giacomo Matteotti, Mussolini was an elected prime minister and hadn't made himself a dictator. Before he was killed, Matteotti was preparing to give parliament a dossier exposing a series of crimes, including murder and corruption, carried out by Mussolini’s henchmen since he became prime minister.

The murder of Matteotti outraged millions of Italians who, until that moment, had been ready to turn a blind eye to fascist thuggery. For a while a 200,000-strong fascist militia had been used to suppress criticism of Mussolini, who in his regular belligerent public speeches had referred to liberty as “a more or less putrid goddess” who needed to be eliminated.

...Of the institutions that might have stopped Mussolini right then, the monarchy, in the person of the ageing King Victor Emmanuel, (Mussolini called him “physically no more than a half-cartridge”) was ineffectual; the Vatican was fearful of taking sides and strongly averse to the socialists who were seen as godless secularists; the parliamentary opposition, briefly vocal after the death of Matteotti, had reverted to factionalism. Mussolini had already made sure that the newspapers were cowed into blind obedience.

This is not Italy in 1925. Nonetheless there is no comfort to be gained from the gap in place and time. There are too many clear similarities in the Trump administration’s language, techniques and actions.

First, there is the flashpoint issue designed to make populations feel insecure-- and therefore, to justify a draconian response.

Trump has used immigration as that issue from the day of his notorious candidacy-launching “rapists and murderers” speech.

And, like Mussolini, Trump is surrounded by his own hard core of fanatics eager to use that issue to achieve their own ideological purposes.

Mussolini was greatly under the influence of Roberto Farinacci, a lawyer and one of the most unrelenting dogmatists of the fascist movement. Trump has Stephen Miller, under the nebulous title of political adviser, who has for years been in lockstep with Attorney General Jeff Sessions in whipping up fears about the browning of America (which is, in any case, already demographically inevitable).

The ultimate ghastly achievement of the Miller-Sessions axis has been the “zero tolerance” policy for those crossing the Mexican border without permission. In other words, the automatic criminalization of refugees.

All along, Miller and Sessions knew that in Trump they had an easy accomplice. The man who created the birthing smear against Obama and who thought the fascists at Charlottesville were OK was innately racist, and they exploited it.

In fact, “zero tolerance” has the same intransigent tone, the same absolutism and the same indiscriminate cruelty that Mussolini conveyed in his speeches when he used the unrest that he had himself fomented to justify seizing absolute power.

And the language used in attacking immigrants is based on lies used with the same frequency and conviction that was recommended by the original fascist dictum that if a lie is repeated often enough it becomes accepted as fact.

Immigration across the Mexican border has been continually presented as a threat to public safety. Thousands of innocents fleeing from terror in Central America are equated with terrorists. The MS-13 gangs become shorthand for a crime wave that doesn’t exist.

And Trump, as ever an empathy amputee, is still using words like “infest” and “invade” as a catch-all term for thousands of people who are refugees and asylum seekers.

Forced into stopping the separation of children from parents-- albeit when it had become untenable-- Trump pulled a sordid stunt by inviting to the White House a group of people who had lost loved ones to crimes committed by illegal immigrants. This sad and bewildered group found themselves suddenly complicit in sustaining the toxic fiction that nobody is safe when sharing the streets of our cities with illegal immigrants.

Where Mussolini had his militia, Trump has Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE. Created in 2003, ICE was a child of the response to 9/11, part of the Bush administration’s plan to reinforce institutions to deal more effectively with terrorism, and it fell under the Department of Homeland Security.

Probably because of the haste of that change-- and the priorities given to anti-terrorist powers-- ICE has suffered from weak oversight. As a result, it has a long record of abusing detainees through both the Bush and Obama administrations and now in the era of Trump it seems alarmingly unfettered.

Last December the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, belatedly responding to disturbing reports about the treatment of immigrants, confirmed widespread cases of the abuse of detainees in ICE jails across the country.

The abuse included strip searches in violation of rules, failure to provide medical care, physical abuse by guards and unsafe and unhygienic conditions. Other reports have indicated systemic sexual harassment and abuse.

Indeed, since the arrival of “Zero tolerance” ICE has shown all the signs of going rogue. It scooped up and bundled off detainees to many parts of the country in the confidence that nobody was looking—until the whole miserable farrago of family separations was suddenly exposed. It remains belligerently opaque in its methods, consistently rebuffing the attempts of lawmakers to inspect its premises.

Not even Mussolini could have imagined concentration camps for babies. But that is where we are.

Trump and the White House are, in theory, constrained by Congress, an independent judiciary, a government staffed by people who are supposed to follow the law and a free press.

Looked at in the context of Mussolini’s Italy, how well are these constraints performing?

The judiciary is yet to be fully tested, but the Supreme Court is looking worryingly complaisant after its blessing of Trump’s Muslim travel ban, shaped indelibly by his splenetic Islamophobia. In contrast, the professionals at the Department of Justice have so far, in spite of Sessions, managed to secure their integrity.

The bureaucracy is far more wobbly. It is already deeply corroded by Trump appointees, most egregiously at the EPA, where Scott Pruitt’s vainglorious excesses and pandering to lobbyists has distressed even some Republicans.

The most obvious failure, though, is Congress. It is, at best, in denial and, at worst, calculatingly supine.

In Mitch McConnell the Senate has a majority leader who has spent years perfecting his impersonation of Uriah Heep, piously lamenting the lack of bipartisan support for any legislation, particularly on immigration, while making sure there is none. He has been typically AWOL during every stage of Trump’s moral depravities.

In the House Paul Ryan, half out the door already, was revealed as spineless long ago and now looks like a beaten man.

At least we still have the free press at the top of its form. But, at the same time, we also have Fox News, serving basically as a state propaganda machine so sycophantic and so malign that Mussolini would have found it exemplary.

Before we descend into hell let’s make sure we recognize the signs of its approach. They are all there now, in plain sight. History does not have to repeat itself.

Oops, Irving seems to have forgotten to mention the congenitally supine nature of the establishment Democrats. They may make a little noise here and there but they are utterly worthless. If that's all we have protecting the country from a fascist take-over, we might as well all start stockpiling food and water and building secret compartments behind bookcases in our homes. Schumer, in fact, is bound to be part of a deal that suspends the Constitution sooner or later. Ultimately-- beyond the theatrics-- he certainly has more contempt for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Alan Grayson than he has for his old campaign donor, Donald J. Trump.

A Virtuous Cycle: Trump Toxicity And Anti-Trump Turnout

Digby's tweet was so strong and to the point yesterday; every word completely precise-- like a Joni Mitchell song. "God he's dumb. Malevolent too. And psychologically unfit. But really, really dumb. I can't think of anyone in history with this particular combination. We just don't have a roadmap to deal with a very stupid, dishonest, narcissistic demagogue. It's a lethal combination."

Lethal-- and for Republican candidates TOXIC. Let's look at a couple of polls that were released today in Virginia. First, the new Monmouth poll in VA10. Mediocre establishment Democrat Jennifer Wexton is already killing GOP incumbent Barbara Comstock, 49% to 39%, among likely voters voters. At the same time Quinnipiac released a poll showing incumbent Tim Kaine (D) eviscerating Trump's neo-Nazi Republican Corey Stewart 54% to 36%. Furthermore, with Trump as the titular head of the GOP, just 32% of Virginia voters have a favorable opinion of the party, while 59% have an unfavorable opinion. Pollster Peter Brown: "Virginia, which was once a solidly red state, has made the full transition to a blue bastion. Voters in the Old Dominion are happy with the way things are going in their state and they give their statewide Democratic office-holders good approval ratings."

The more desperate Trump gets-- he hates being labeled "a loser"-- the more he alienates independent voters and discourages mainstream Republicans. He was quick to endorse the neo-Nazi Virginia Senate candidate, even as McConnell's NRSC said that Stewart is on his own and not going to get any help from the party establishment.

And, as Alex Burns reported in the New York Times yesterday Democratic turn out is through the roof, especially in the most competitive primary races. "In more than 20 of the most competitive House races of 2018," he wrote, "the share of Democrats voting in primaries notably increased, compared with 2014, the last midterm election cycle. Democrats have appeared to be more enthusiastic than Republicans about the 2018 elections, showing up in huge numbers to protest" ugly neo-fascist Señor Trump.

Democratic turnout has risen more sharply than Republican turnout has in at least 123 congressional districts, including districts in states like California and New Jersey, where Republican incumbents are most vulnerable.

That turnout pattern is highly encouraging to Democrats who hope to flood the polls in November and unseat Republicans, even in districts that typically lean to the right. Midterm campaigns often hinge on voter enthusiasm: Without a presidential race to draw casual voters to the polls, the party out of power tends to benefit from disproportionate turnout among Americans who feel angry or aggrieved about politics in Washington.

That’s exactly what happened in the first midterm election of Barack Obama’s presidency, when Republicans and disaffected independent voters showed up in powerful numbers and pro-Obama voters did not. Democrats lost 63 House seats as a result, handing Republicans control of the House.

The turnout pattern in the primary season that year looks a lot like 2018 so far, except with Republicans displaying far greater enthusiasm then. In 186 congressional primaries in 2010, the share of Republicans voting was higher than in the prior midterm election. Democrats improved upon their 2006 numbers in just 35 primaries in 2010-- a convincing indication, months before the general election, that the president’s party was in a slump.

There have been important exceptions to the trend of powerful Democratic enthusiasm this year, and Republicans have been encouraged by robust turnout among Republican voters in a number of statewide primaries, in places like Ohio and Texas.

And there are exceptions to the exception. Burns explained that Democratic voting surged in some parts of Texas, like in the massive south Texas district, swingy TX-23, where Republican Will Hurd is largely seen as a dead man walking. In far redder districts like TX-36 and TX-10, both entirely  ignored by the DCCC, Dayna Steele and Mike Siegel did very well on primary day, both winning unexpectedly big victories. "We are," Dayna told me today, "in the fight of our lives here in southeast Texas. However, far from being discouraged, we are highly encouraged by the thousands of good people who are stepping up to say, 'Enough!' and joining our fight. I've said it all along and I will say it again-- this is not a Democratic or Republican thing, this is an American thing, and we are all going to have to fight, speak up, and donate together to win back our beloved country."

Siegel is running in TX-10, which includes a substantial portion of Austin as well as well as improving Democratic terrain in western Harris County. "This district was drawn to strongly favor a Republican," Siegel says, "but as Austin and Houston expand outwards, it has become much more diverse. And as McCaul attacks our healthcare, separates immigrant children from their parents, and cuts government programs to pay for his tax cuts, he becomes increasingly vulnerable to replacement."

Siegel’s campaign and others will benefit from strong statewide candidates, including Lieutenant Governor candidate Mike Collier, Attorney General candidate Justin Nelson, and Beto O'Rourke for Senate. The latest Texas Tribune poll suggests that Nelson is within the margin of error, running against an indicted incumbent, and that Collier and O'Rourke are within striking distance. Strong statewide candidates are key in Texas, because voters can choose to vote "straight ticket" and thus avoid making race-by-race decisions. If enough Republicans avoid that button because they like Beto or Collier, then Siegel and Steele and other down-ticket candidates will have a stronger chance at pulling an upset.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

62 Million Archie Bunkers voted for what you see here. 62 Million Trumpists. 62 Million fans of Trump's brand of extreme fascism. It was already bad enough the we've had decades of creeping, incremental fascism from our two major political parties but that just wasn't enough for those who voted for the man who, according to at least one of his ex-wives, keeps a book of Hitler's speeches by his bedside. 62 Million longed for a completely totalitarian regime of brutality and they're getting it. They hate those who protest against police who murder. They support those who steal children from the arms of their parents and lock those children in cages. It's the stuff of the original old nightmarish German and Russian fairytales. Republicans do all this while they falsely profess to be pro-family and chant that "every child deserves a mother and father." 62 Million republicans, fake independents and even some democrats looked at Trump, saw the obvious, and still said "that's my guy". For the majority of them, Trump was the hero they have been waiting for, and, still is.

The Trumpists twist Romans 13 from their bible using a quote that was once used to justify slavery and later used to justify Hitler's nazism. They twist the Bible for their own sick purposes just like sick Muslim terrorists twist the verses in the Koran. Trump supporters look at the little boy in tonight's meme and they see MS-13 because they have embraced and nurtured their hates and their fears and allowed themselves to be programmed to do so. They tweet things about the need to electro-shock this boy. They call him a "monkey". This is the result of decades of conservatism. It's not the end result, though. That's shaping up to be even worse. Republicans in Virginia have recently nominated an avowed and proud white supremacist as their candidate named Corey Stewart for the U.S. Senate. Sure, there are already white supremacists in the Senate but now they aren't even pretending to be something other than what they are. And the Trump-supporting Stewart is no outlier. Stewart was one of the organizers of the infamous Charlottesville nazi parade of Trump's "very fine people." In Illinois, republican voters have nominated Neo-Nazi and holocaust denier Arthur Jones for the House Of Representatives. Represent indeed.

On Monday, Trump's "very fine" Secretary of Homeland Security Kristjen Nielsen had so much contempt for lives and truth that she publicly stated, "We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period." just like Trump's first press secretary, Sean Spicer stood before the media and told the nation that the crowd at his idol's inauguration was the biggest ever. Did Nielsen think we wouldn't find out? It's probably more of an issue of her not even caring if we found out. In any event, to the 62 Million, it's all "fake news." If the KKK's David Duke had Trump's money and corporate backing, he'd be in the White House instead of Trump, chanting "America First" and burning crosses on the White House lawn. Stay tuned. There's little doubt that the same 62 Million would have voted for him as well, and they may yet have the opportunity. Oh, happy day.

Trump Won Two Races On Tuesday

In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, Señor Trumpanzee was up tweeting his love for neo-Nazi racist Corey Stewart, a crackpot he had fired as Virginia state campaign chair in 2016, who had just won the Republican nomination to face Tim Kaine in November. Stewart won with less than 50% in the 3-man race.

• Corey Stewart- 136,544 (44.9%)
• Nick Freitas- 131,267 (43.1%)
• E.W. Jackson- 36,624 (12.0%)

The two other candidates are mainstream conservatives while Stewart is an unelectable Trumpist on the extreme fringes, Stewart caused a bring brouhaha in those fringes when he endorsed the out-and-out Nazi and Hitler lover, Paul Nehlen who is running against Randy Bryce in Wisconsin. Stewart: "One of my personal heroes, not from Virginia, but from the great state of Wisconsin, is Paul Nehlen, who had a lot of courage and took on Speaker [Paul] Ryan, and I can't tell you how much I was inspired by you."

As we noted Wednesday morning, Trump helped knock off Mark Sanford in South Carolina. This is the tweet, that Trump put up when he was still basking in the glow of being fucked by Kim Jong-Un-- and then took down pretty quickly, presumably to prevent a brawl with the NRCC and Paul Ryan.

Right wing radio host and former right-wing member of Congress, Joe Walsh lashed out at Trumpanzee, Jr. for his snark about Sanford's loss and noted that Sanford is a principled conservative who voted with Trump 87% of the time. As I mentioned, Kim has a general in his army murdered for not applauding for him enthusiastically enough. Walsh also challenged Freedom Caucus chieftains Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan to say something about Trump destroying one of their members. So far... crickets.

Alex Isenstadt tried explaining what happened to Politico readers yesterday. Sanford has always been a contrary guy but, his friends say, "in taking on Trump he took it a step too far."

His defeat is bound to raise fears among Republicans about the political perils of crossing a president who remains deeply popular with GOP voters. In recent days, Sanford himself had expressed concern that a loss in the primary would discourage what dwindling GOP dissent among against the White House remains.

At the heart of Sanford’s downfall was a fundamental miscalculation, those close to him said: That he could go after the Republican president-- vigorously, and sometimes in deeply personal ways-- and get away with it.

“Mark had a long and storied career, he was a very famous and successful politician. But he didn’t read the tea leaves right, and that came back to haunt him,” said former state Rep. Chip Limehouse, who hails from a prominent Charleston family and has known Sanford for years. “Mark misjudged it, attacking Trump. That’s what killed him.”

...State Rep. Katie Arrington, Sanford’s rival, cast the congressman as a disloyal Never Trumper. She aired commercials highlighting cable news clips spotlighting negative comments that he’d made, including one instance when he said Trump should “just shut up” and stop spending so much time paying attention to critics. Arrington portrayed the incumbent as an obstructionist who was hell-bent on getting in the president’s way.

“He made a calculation in the post-Trump election that he was going to stand on principle... But there’s an expectation out there, at least in South Carolina’s 1st District, that you have to show deference to the president,” said Scott English, a former Sanford chief of staff who remains close with the congressman. “In this race, the ideas didn’t matter nearly as much as whether he’d been sufficiently loyal to the president in the eyes of voters.”

Trump himself stayed out of the race until just hours before the polls closed on Tuesday, when he sent out a surprise tweet calling for the congressman’s defeat. Arrington’s campaign rushed out a robocall to 50,000 homes highlighting the president’s last-minute endorsement.

Other South Carolina pols say that while Sanford’s opposition to Trump was his undoing, other factors were at play. Some people close to the congressman believe that voters never really got over his affair, which destroyed his national ambitions. Others say there was general exhaustion with a politician who’s been around since the mid-1990s and that voters were ready for someone new like Arrington, a political newcomer serving her first term in the state legislature.

In what was perhaps an early sign his political strength was abating, Sanford received just 55 percent in his 2016 primary, against an opponent who spent little.

Others say Sanford simply failed to run an effective race this year, allowing himself to be out-worked. Sanford’s lethargic reelection bid was a lightly-staffed, shoestring affair. Many of the advisers who guided his gubernatorial and congressional campaigns were not involved.

After realizing he was in trouble, the ever-frugal congressman, who hadn’t spent money on TV ads in five years, rushed out a slate of commercials. Some went after Arrington directly. Others tried to make the case that Sanford had cooperated with the White House.

While Arrington relentlessly cast Sanford as anti-Trump, his backers worried, Sanford struggled to find a coherent message.

“She got up on TV early and defined the message, and he let her define him,” said state Rep. Nancy Mace, a Sanford supporter.

...His political career appears to be over.

Sanford's ultra-gerrymandered district-- from which African-American neighborhoods are largely excluded-- has an R+10 PVI. But it isn't exactly Trump country. With the exception of the 6th district, into which almost all the state's black neighborhoods were congruously dumped, SC-01 had the lowest turnout for Trump-- 53.5%-- on any district in the state. So... can Democrat Joe Cunningham win in November? Only 32,385 votes were cast in the relatively sleepy Democratic primary on Tuesday-- compared to 64,369 votes in the GOP primary. Cunningham won with 71.5% of the vote and there's a lot of excitement, especially in Charleston about his chances. He's not a Blue Dog and the DCCC has ignored his race. But his issues page points to someone who's kind of "progressive-light." On healthcare, for example:

I believe that healthcare is a right, not a privilege. No one in America should go bankrupt because they get sick. In the United States, no one should forego necessary or preventative care because they are unable to afford it.

...With Republicans trying to rip away coverage from millions of Americans and raise premiums and deductibles, as well as the cost of prescription drugs, it’s time we take a stand. One of the many ways we can improve our current healthcare system is by encouraging the federal government to negotiate with drug companies to lower medication prices for people on Medicare, similar to how the Veterans Affairs Department does. Another possibility is allowing more middle class families to qualify for tax breaks to reduce their healthcare costs. We should also explore lowering the Medicare age requirement from 65 to 55 over the course of ten years.

Not bad; not single payer/Medicare-For-All either. The last Democrat the district elected was in 1978-- 4 decades ago. Even a huge blue wave would have to be extra-huge-- and Trump would have to melt down in late October-- for Cunningham to pull this off. So far Arrington raised $583,373 (of which $402,059 was self-funded) and Cunningham raised $527,390 (100% from individual donors). She spent $384,262 and he spent $377,843. Both have seriously depleted war chests-- 199,111 for her and $149,547 for him. My guess if that the GOP will pour money into her campaign while the DCCC will continue to ignore his.