It is important for American citizens to come to realization that the tactics covered in this blog, used to be limited to the right-wing or extreme factions of the Republican Party. Unfortunately today, they are much more mainstream, especially with the rise in Trumpism.
Evolution of Right/Left Wings in the political arena started with French revolution when the members of the French National Assembly met to draft their Constitution. Those in support of the monarchy and King Louis XVI sat on the right side of the presiding officer marking it as their territory, while the liberals or the anti royals, who wished to do away with the monarchy sat on the left.
Fast forward to forty years ago, the right wing emerged in our country, America was introduced to some characters who's beliefs were so different than most: Jerry Falwell Sr.; Pat Robertson; Newt Gingrich; who at the time seemed so radical. 1980 extreme ideology in nothing in comparison with what our country is faced with today.
Typically HEALTHY Right Wing Politics stands for:
Limited Government: Favor smaller government with fewer regulations, along with greater autonomy for the individual and business
Free Market Capitalism: endorsing free-market economic systems, where supply and demand determines the price and businesses operate with minimal government
Low Taxation: believe that taxes should be low, and reduce the tax burden on corporations & individuals that will stimulate economic growth
Nationalism: prioritizes a strong and controlled borders
Traditional over Modern values: call for more traditional values on social issue and marriage
Tough Law Enforcement: favor tough laws enforcement policies, advocating for stricter sentencing and maintaining order.
Strong Military Defense: call for a more robust military and national defense system
Individualism: emphasize individual rights and self-reliance, favoring limited government intervention in personal matters
Deregulation: seek to reduce government regulation on industries, allowing businesses more freedom.
Climate skepticism: skeptic about the extent of human impact on climate change and resist environmental regulations.
Limited immigration: America needs to protect itself before protecting others
MAGA Trumpism and the Freedom Caucus pushes conservatism to the extreme right
In the graphic above the PEW Research center uses DW-NOMINATE to measure the liberal/conservativeness of US House of Representative members. "In simplified form, DW-NOMINATE assigns each representative a score ranging from -1 (most liberal) to +1 (most conservative), based on their roll call voting patterns."
Freedom Caucus
The House Freedom Caucus, is a congressional caucus consisting of GOP members of the US House of Representatives. It is generally considered to be the most conservative and furthest-right group within the House. Unlike most of the dozens of caucuses and single-issue groups on Capitol Hill, the Freedom Caucus doesn’t publicize its membership, which reportedly is by invitation only.
Republican Party aka the Right Wing Attacks on our Democracy
Extremists in Congress
The Freedom Caucus along with other GOP Trump loyalists seem to have three goals in mind: 1) conduct the former president's bidding, 2) denigrate any President Biden accomplishment, and 3) Impeach, prosecute, retaliate against any democrat to tarnish Biden's re-election. So much time has been spent on these "endeavors" that the 118th congress has passed only 27 bills.
In 2023, the Republican-led House has passed only 27 bills that became law, despite holding a total of 724 votes. In 2013, for example, when Republicans controlled the House and Democrats controlled the Senate, just as they do today, the House passed 72 bills that were signed into law.
Harri Leigh from Spectrum news writes: "The term “Do Nothing Congress” was famously coined by former President Harry S. Truman in 1948. That year, however, Congress passed 511 bills that were signed into law. For comparison, the last 10 Congresses averaged 391 bills signed into law per term."
Read more about 118th US House productivity here.
Extreme overreach by Government
In June of 2022 the Supreme Court in Dobb's v Jackson decision ruled in favor of ending Row v Wade, giving the states the rights to determine whether abortions will be legal. Since this reversal of a 50+ year president, 14 states have outlawed abortion, with several others moving to ban them as well. Most state laws have varying degrees of exception clauses, outlining when an abortion can be legally performed.
Exceptions to state abortion bans generally fall into four general categories: to prevent the death of the pregnant person, to preserve the health of the pregnant person, when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, and where the embryo or fetus has lethal anomalies incompatible with life.
A study reported in JAMA Internal Medicine, estimates that in the 14 states that banned abortions post Dobbs reversal of Roe v Wade, that 64,565 women became pregnant after being raped, but few if any obtained in state abortions, despite false exception clauses published by the GOP.
On April 18, 2007, the United States Supreme Court dealt a devastating blow to women’s health, reproductive rights, and equality. In a 5-4 decision that puts politics before women’s health, the Court upheld the first-ever federal ban on abortion methods – called by its sponsors the “Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.” The Court upheld the ban despite the fact that it fails to contain any exception to protect women’s health.
The New York Times reports that once Roe was reversed, three dozen House GOP hoped to propose legislation for a national ban on abortion. However, shortly after the 2022 midterms, when the republicans had predicted a "red-tide" in hopes of taking over the House fizzled, the interest in pursing a national ban has subsided.
It seems that "possibly" the may be embracing the fact that 69% of American voters think abortion should be legal in the first three months of pregnancy, according to a recent Gallup poll, a record high.
Follow all the latest new on Abortion and reproductive legislation here on V4C's website.
Fake News Media
Coined by Trump in his 2016 campaign in response to the media's negative . The news media is often referred to the fourth branch of government, acting as a check and balance oversight holding elected officials accountable. It has served our country well for 200+ years, however now with Trump's attacks and there proliferation of social media, trust in the media is decreasing. CNN reports in 2016, 70% of the Republicans said they trusted the national new media; by 2021 it decreased to 35%.
Rule of Law
Four months into Trump's presidency he fires James Comey, Director of the FBI for investigating possible Russian interference connections with his 2016 campaign. Read more about this is an earlier blog; Is this Presidential? Trump's Abuse of Power here. The FBI and the Department of Justice were subjected to countless attacks of false accusations by Trump, which have not let up today.
Since being indicted 4 times, with 91 felony charges, the entire judicial system have been slandered and falsely accused of improprieties by Trump and his acolytes. Calling the Jan 6th convicted felons along with those detained awaiting trail hostages on his 2024 campaign, denigrating the judicial system, falsely giving permission to his followers to believe as he does that Jan 6 was not a coup/riot.
Rise in Authoritarianism
Heather Cox Richardson writes in her January 24th Letter from an American: "Rising authoritarians depend on the idea they are, so being as vulnerable -or as a loser - hits them much harder than it does a normal political candidate." It is quite easy to tell when someone get's under Trump's skin on an issue as he typically goes on a meltdown rant on Truth Social, his social media platform. Shortly before the E. Jean Caroll defamation trial was sent to the jury, Trump went off a rant of a mix of 37 videos, tweets, news articles and rants over two hours., Similarly, Trump spent most of the Christmas weekend sending a barage of posts on his Truth Social platform, attacking President Biden and special counsel Jack Smith lamenting about Trump's impression in the fall in grace "from our once great USA"
The frequency and fervor of the posts made by the former president is unprecedented. It is hard to imagine former President's Obama, Bush, Clinton, or Carter, making any post similar to Trump's typical slanderous lies, much less find evidence of any ever being made.
Weaponizing Government
Shortly after seating a GOP majority for the 118th congress Speaker McCarthy appointed, James Comer as chair the House Oversight Committee. The majority of this committee's work has been spent "investigating" Hunter Biden in hopes proving Trump's "Biden Crime Family" conspiracy theory. To date no tangible evidence has been uncovered, and a key GOP witness testifies there is no evidence that President Biden profited from son Hunter Biden's business dealings.
Many of the Oversight hearings turn into a circus of shouting matches and senseless GOP rebuttal .... see the video of Hunter Biden's surprise appearance earlier in January here.
Comer's committee recently turned their focus to Trump Retribution, by formally launching impeachment investigations into President Biden, despite the fact they haven't been able to unearth any evidence to date. Clearly a political move as 2024 election heats up, hoping to counterbalance Trump's s two impeachments,
Impeachment of Secretary of Homeland Security Mayorkas
CBS reports: "This hearing is about the human costs of Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas' egregious misconduct and failure to fulfill his oath of office," said GOP Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee, the committee's chairman. Republicans have repeatedly accused Mayorkas of failing to enforce the nation's laws as a record number of migrants arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border. Expending such an effort to impeach Mayorkas despite the fact that Biden would appoint another democratic Secretary likely to follow similar policies.
What makes this whole Political stunt "remarkable" is the GOP is seeking to impeach Myorkas for not securing the the border, while at the same time Speaker Johnson is refusing to vote on a Senate Bill bipartisan bill negotiated by Senator Lankford, a republican from Oklahoma.
Playing politics, so Trump has something to campaign on, is passing up on a golden opportunity to pass the biggest and most meaningful bipartisan immigration reform in over 30 years!
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, has been strongly lobbying his caucus to pass this in the Senate and has approached the houue GOP. NPR reports: "He's told fellow Republicans that the border package, is a rare opportunity to get stronger policies through Congress."
Big Lie
Trump's continued insistence that the 2020 Presidential election was rigged in the absence of any shred of evidence along with 60+ failed court challenges, has resulted in 30% of Americans think Biden only won because of large scale voter fraud. Faith in the electoral process in America is at an all time low. The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey finds that fewer than half of Americans – 44% — have “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of confidence that the votes in the next presidential election will be counted accurately.
Free and Fair Elections
To date formal challenges to Donald J. Trump’s presidential candidacy have been filed in at least 35 states, according to a New York Times review of court records and other documents.
Right after Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Trump should be removed from their state's ballot, Republican Party Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel used the social media platform X to denounce the ruling as "election interference."
"This irresponsible ruling will be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and our legal team looks forward to helping fight for a victory," she wrote. "The Republican nominee will be decided by Republican voters, not a partisan state court."
Yet, shortly after Trump won the New Hampshire primary, the second state of 50, the RNC chair stated “We need to unite around our eventual nominee, which is going to be Donald Trump, and we need to make sure we beat Joe Biden,” McDaniel said in a Fox News interview the night of the New Hampshire primary.
Nikki Haley followed up stating “The American people want to have their say in who is going to be their nominee,” she said. “We need to give them that. I mean, you can’t do that based on just two states.”
Later the RNC proposed a resolution declaring Trump the Presumptive 2024 Nominee, which was pulled at the surprisingly by request of the Trump team.
Spike in Voter Suppression Legislation
Vote 4 Change has closely covered GOP voter suppression tactics starting with the dramatic spike in 2021 in a blog entitled ; Your ability to vote is under attack! This tidal wave of legislation in 2021 was the most ever since the Brennan Center began tracking voting legislation.
State legislators across the country, in 2021 have passed sweeping legislation that will make it harder to vote. This legislation is being driven by the GOP republican party and election deniers who continue to make false claims about election fraud, in hopes to restrict the number of voters to increase their ability to be re-elected
In 2021 19 states passed laws which will restrict access to vote, and in 2022 the trend accelerated and became more widespread with 39 states passing election interference legislation.
Voter restrictions include:
· Limiting or eliminating mail in voting
· Making it more difficult to register to vote
· Excessive requirements for voter identification
· Harder to stay on voter rolls and to vote
Election interference bills passed will
· Permit partisan actors to interfere with election results
· Add resources to prosecute election crimes
· Allow for an alternate slate of electors to overturn elections
· Threaten election officials with criminal penalties
· Allow for a biased outside partisan review of election results
Up until 2021 none of these type of access restrictive and election interference legislation existed in this outrageous magnitude.
Hopefully the tide is turning as there were more pro-voter legislation introduced or enacted in 2023 versus 2022, with the majority of pro-voter legislation occurring after the 2022 midterms.
Want to learn more about the GOP Voter Suppression efforts click here
Foreign Policy
GOP led house have abandoned a consistent US policy of protection of our national security.
Trump has telegraphed while his dislike for NATO, and has all but stated out loud on his 2024 campaign his intentions to leave NATO. Without a strong alliance with NATO, America as well as all other European countries will lack the tools needed to keep Russia and President Putin from invading other countries besides Ukraine.
Linking passage of military funding to Israel and Ukraine to deep spending cuts elsewhere in government, has NEVER been a strategy by prior presidential administrations.
Senator Tommy Tuberville held promotions of 451 military officers in opposition to Pentagon rules that allow travel reimbursement when a service member needs to travel out of state to get an abortion or other reproductive care.
Trump's right about one thing lately..... "This is not America"
At least not the America we grew up in and love.