Standing Up to the President-Elect

By PoetCSW -
English: Donald Trump speaking at CPAC 2011 in...
English: Donald Trump speaking at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Republicans in the House and Senate, especially the leadership of the GOP, must at least symbolically reject the president-elects choices for his inner circle of advisors. Though some of these posts do not require Senate confirmation, the Senate should and must demand that Donald Trump remove some members of his transition team and his "kitchen cabinet" of conspiracy nuts.

I never imagined as a libertarian that my worst nightmare might be a Republican president. The following individuals should be nowhere near the White House: Stephen K. Bannon and Frank Gaffney. This should not be open to debate. The Senate should refuse to confirm any cabinet secretary until these two men are shown the door.

Yes, I understand that Bannon and Roger Ailes advised and helped control Trump during the campaign. I don't care. These are not the sorts of people with whom the GOP should be associated.

Standing up to Donald Trump will not be easy for the Republicans. Their voters elected Trump. But at some point, the GOP has to consider the long-term implications of embracing radical fringe zealots. You cannot claim to be a party of merit and individualism and then allow the president to surround himself with men of demonstrable prejudice.

By indicating they will not accept anyone the president wants with a rubber stamp voter, the Republicans would earn some respect. They also need to vocally reject some of the ideals and theories of the fringe that claims to be "alt right" when it is actually "alt lunatic."

I could not vote for Hillary. I certainly could not vote for Donald Trump.

The Republican Party must not acquiesce. Stand up for what the party was founded to be.

Too bad I expect this blog post to be like the writings of so many conservative and libertarian thought leaders… ignored.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The 90% Tax Rate Myth

By PoetCSW -
Image
[NOTE Augusut 8, 2017:  The marginal and effective U.S. Tax rates mentioned in this 2011 post have been supported by research conducted by Thomas Piketty (Paris School of Economics), Emmanuel Saez (UC Berkeley and NBER), and Gabriel Zucman (UC Berkeley and NBER). These economic researchers are well-respected by progressives. Data are data, though we differ on interpretations. "Income" vs. "Wealth" presents much of the challenge, as wealth accumulates but is not taxed in the United States. Distributional National Accounts:  Methods and Estimates for the United States published July 6, 2017, includes the following table: As the table shows, the effective tax rate for the top 1 percent peaked at 45 percent of income in 1944-45. Unfortunately, the overall revenue intake of the United States kept growing and the burden has been falling most on the bottom 50 percent. Tax increases on the middle and lower classes reduce potential economic growth since these individ
Read more

Call it 'Too Depressed to Blog'

By PoetCSW -
Though the contemporary Republican Party has never been libertarian enough for me or many others focused on economic issues, we at least imagined the GOP would lead a President Trump, who came into office with no governing experience and a platform that was populist and nationalist. The GOP has failed to do much practical at all. If you, like me, at least hoped Trump would be contained by party orthodoxy, the year has been nothing but disappointment after disappointment. Civil Rights: Hard to think of anything the GOP or Pres. Trump has proposed with which I agree, from gender issues to voting rights, the GOP is allowing Trump to lead on these subjects — in the wrong direction. Gay marriage should never have been a national issue. Private matters are private, between consenting adults. The libertarians and social conservatives will always be in conflict on these issues. On voting rights, I am okay with a basic national ID standard, as is being implemented for the TSA via ne
Read more

Seattle’s Minimum Wage Hike May Have Gone Too Far | FiveThirtyEight

By PoetCSW -
Image
Minwage3 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Researchers at the University of Washington, asked by Seattle to study the increase in the city's minimum wage have some difficult news for the city and previous research on wages : Seattle’s Minimum Wage Hike May Have Gone Too Far | FiveThirtyEight : The study is far from the last word on the impact of Seattle’s law, let alone the $15 minimum wage movement more generally. Indeed, just last week another study used similar methods to reach seemingly the opposite conclusion: A report from the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at the University of California, Berkeley, found that Seattle’s minimum wage, “raises pay without costing jobs,” as a press release on the study announced.   The UW study was the most data-complete study of its kind. The UW researchers work in only one of four states with complete hourly wage data. The other studies? Done in states that required "estimating" and "models" in the more e
Read more