Thread: 2020 US Presidential Race

They really are sore losers.

US Senator Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said he will raise objections next week when Congress meets to affirm president-elect Joe Biden's victory in the election, forcing House and Senate votes that are likely to delay the final certification of Biden's win.

President Donald Trump has, without evidence, claimed there was widespread fraud in the election.

He has pushed Republican senators to pursue his unfounded charges even though the Electoral College this month cemented Biden's 306-232 victory and multiple legal efforts to challenge the results have failed.

A group of Republicans in the Democratic-majority House have already said they will object on Trump's behalf during the January 6 count of electoral votes, and they had needed just a single senator to go along with them to force votes in both chambers.

Without giving specifics or evidence, Hawley said he would object because some states, including notably Pennsylvania did not follow their own election laws. Lawsuits challenging Biden's victory in Pennsylvania have been unsuccessful.

"At the very least, Congress should investigate allegations of voter fraud and adopt measures to secure the integrity of our elections, Hawley said in a statement.

He also criticised the way Facebook and Twitter handled content related to the election, characterizing it as an effort to help Biden.

Biden transition spokeswoman Jen Psaki dismissed Hawley's move as antics that will have no bearing on Biden being sworn in on January 20. "The American people spoke resoundingly in this election and 81 million people have voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris," Psaki said in a call with reporters.

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows praised Hawley on Twitter for unapologetically standing up for election integrity.

When Congress convenes to certify the Electoral College results, any lawmaker can object to a state's votes on any grounds. But the objection is not taken up unless it is in writing and signed by both a member of the House and a member of the Senate.

When there is such a request, then the joint session suspends and the House and Senate go into separate sessions to consider it.

For the objection to be sustained, both chambers must agree to it by a simple majority vote. If they disagree, the original electoral votes are counted.

The last time such an objection was considered was 2005, when Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio and Sen.
Barbara Boxer of California, both Democrats, objected to Ohio's electoral votes by claiming there were voting irregularities. Both chambers debated the objection and rejected it. It was only the second time such a vote had occurred.

As president of the Senate, Vice President Mike Pence will preside over the January 6 session and declare the winner.

US: Missouri senator Josh Hawley to contest Biden's electoral win - The Week

As you hardly find on "respected" MSM the Christmas speach of POTUS, you too will hardly find anything from a respected member of Republicans. And he is quite active in writing. What The Guardian tells us about him is nothing against what can be found from him on "disrespected" media I do not dare to mention here...


Newt Gingrich: Democrats are trying to 'brainwash the entire next generation'

The 77-year-old Republican former House speaker says Trump will ‘remain a dominant figure for a fairly long period of time’

Tue 29 Dec 2020 01.00 EST

Some blame Donald Trump. Others blame social media. And those with longer memories blame Newt Gingrich for carving up America into blue states and red states racked by mutual fear, suspicion and alienation.

As speaker of the House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999, the Republican arguably did more than anyone else to sow the seeds of division in Washington. “Newt Gingrich turned partisan battles into bloodsport, wrecked Congress, and paved the way for Trump’s rise,” reflected the Atlantic magazine in 2018.

But now the 77-year-old party grandee, former history professor and author of three books lionising Trump must contemplate a new chapter in which the ultimate outsider president makes way for Joe Biden, the ultimate insider who has promised healing, unity and a return to pre-Gingrich norms.

So where does the Republican party go from here? “I’m guessing, but I think we’re going to be the commonsense reform party,” Gingrich says by phone from Rome, where his wife, Callista, is American ambassador to the Vatican.

“You look at the degree to which the bureaucracies don’t work. You look at these Democratic governors who are petty dictators and you look at the challenges facing us – whether it’s a collapsing education system, a collapsing infrastructure, competing with China – and you know that the Democrats, as the party of government employee unions and liberalism, aren’t going to be able to deal with any of this.”

As the dust of last month’s elections settled, Marco Rubio, a Republican senator for Florida and potential White House contender in 2024, called for the party to cool its love affair with big corporations. “The future of the party is based on a multiethnic, multiracial working-class coalition,” he told the Axios website.

Gingrich believes it is already on the way but, as seems habitual among many in Trump’s orbit, he again pivots to a critique of the other side. “It is becoming that partly because the left is so desperately committed to being the party of very wealthy people living in enclaves, explaining that the police don’t matter because they have their own security guards.”

Democrats have also succumbed to a liberal theology, he argues, echoing a rightwing “culture wars” talking point. “What you have, I think, is a Democratic party driven by a cultural belief system that they’re now trying to drive through the school system so they can brainwash the entire next generation if they can get away with it.”

A red tsunami beat the blue wave at the polls, he continues, pointing to unexpected Republican gains in the House, victories in state legislatures and various defeats for leftwing causes in state referendums. He singles out for praise Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, whose political action committee dedicated to electing Republican women reaped dividends.

“What an amazing job she did. If we were liberals, the covers of all these women’s magazines would be ‘The year of the Republican woman’ but of course, that would be so politically incorrect they couldn’t do it. So the only place that’s truly an anomaly is the presidential race. I think it’s an anomaly so I find myself engaged as a historian every day trying to figure out what in the devil is going on.”

Though there is no factual basis for this claim, Gingrich shares Trump’s view that fraud must be the explanation and has said so on the conservative Fox News network. “I don’t see how any reasonable human being can – you can argue over how much it was – but it’s clearly the most in our lifetime,” he insists.

Trump’s homeland security department described the election as the most secure in history; his justice department uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud; state officials including Republicans reported no significant irregularities; judges tossed out numerous Trump campaign lawsuits.

Yet 18 Republican attorneys general and 126 House Republicans backed a preposterous lawsuit to invalidate millions of votes that was given short shrift by the supreme court. The failed coup was the latest measure of Trumpism’s spread into every organ of the Republican party.

But ultimately, Gingrich believes, Trump’s future sway over the party will depend on Trump himself. “He’ll remain a dominant figure for a fairly long period of time, depending on how hard he wants to work at it and how serious it is. People fade pretty quickly if they don’t pay attention. This is a country of enormous restiveness.”

Does he expect Trump to run for president again in 2024? “I have no idea,” admits Gingrich, who sought the Republican nomination himself in 2012. “He certainly can look at [former presidents] Andrew Jackson and Grover Cleveland and then make his own mind up.

“If he does run, he’ll be very formidable and part of it’s going to be based on what happens with Biden. If Biden ends up drifting into a really serious recession, the temptation for Trump to run on ‘I told you so, would you like to go back to my economy?’ may be overwhelming.”

Biden will inherit overlapping crises of public health, the economy, racial injustice, the climate and democracy. Even in more serene times, incumbent presidents typically suffer losses in the House midway through their first term. With Democrats now holding only a fragile majority, the Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, could claim the speaker’s gavel in 2022.

Gingrich, who was a member of Congress for 20 years, muses: “As a historian, I’m pretty cheerful. When [Bill] Clinton won, we picked up 54 seats two years later and when [Barack] Obama won, we picked up 63 seats two years later. I don’t know that the House Democrats get slaughtered on that scale but I’m 99% sure that McCarthy is the next speaker of the House.”

Control of the Senate, meanwhile, hinges on two runoff races in Georgia early next month. If Republicans preserve their narrow majority, will Biden be able to work with the majority leader, Mitch McConnell?

Gingrich, just seven months younger than the president-elect, says bluntly: “He won’t have any choice. That’s the genius of the American system. But if he wants to get nothing done, he doesn’t have to work with Mitch.

“Mitch’s memoir, called The Long Game, really helped me understand him much better. He’s a very long-term player and he’s very self-contained so he’s not intimidated by anything. When he finally forged an alliance with Trump, it was astonishingly productive if you’re a conservative and has given us probably two generations of conservative judges.

“Particularly if we win the two Georgia seats, which I think we will, Biden’s going to have to decide, does he want to try to move to being a moderate Democrat, in which case his left will rebel and go crazy, or does he want to stick with the left in which case nothing will get done? And Mitch will be happy with either outcome.”

There is a historical rhyme here with the 1990s when Gingrich led a Republican majority against a centrist Democratic president in the shape of Clinton. There may be lessons from that experience for both sides.

“An immense amount got done but it’s also why the left hates Clinton. He signed welfare reform, he signed capital gains tax cut, he signed four balanced budgets. It’s nothing to do with his personal behaviour. It’s very much like what happened to the prime minister in Great Britain, Tony Blair: both of them were centrist and both of them were viciously repudiated by their left even as they were popular in the country. It’s just fascinating stuff.”

Could Biden, who is making overtures to Republicans and giving little voice to the left in his cabinet, pay a similar price? “He will.”

The Clinton v Gingrich years are also often cited as the start of the rot in American democracy. Gingrich was a political pugilist who hurled insults, played to the cameras and set about blowing up the bipartisan consensus. His Contract with America proposals in 1994 helped Republicans win a majority in the House for the first time in four decades.

Clinton was impeached for lying under oath and obstructing justice to conceal an extramarital affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Gingrich declared it “the most systematic, deliberate obstruction-of-justice cover-up and effort to avoid the truth we have ever seen in American history”.

Looking back, does he accept the view that, among the causes of today’s hyperpartisan climate in Washington, he played a role akin to a coal-fired power station?

“We had been in the minority for 40 years and unless you had a clear, vivid, polarising message and style, you were going to be in the minority for 40 more years,” he says frankly. “So I did my job, but I also proved over and over again I could work with Clinton. I worked with Democrats all the time. It wasn’t a pathology. It was a professional job.”

Today’s dysfunction, rancour and tribalism cannot be pinned on one person alone but has multiple causes that run deeper, acknowledges Allan Lichtman, distinguished professor of history at American University in Washington. But Gingrich certainly had an outsized role.

“He was the original polariser,” Lichtman says. “Way back when he was first elected decades ago he criticised the mainstream Republican members of Congress because he thought they were too acquiescent and not engaged in sufficiently vigorous political warfare against the Democrats.

“He was also, very importantly, one of the architects of one of the most pivotal elections in modern American history, the midterm elections of 1994, when Republicans took over the House and the Senate for the first time since the first two years of Dwight Eisenhower. That election also greatly contributed to polarisation because it wiped out a lot of moderate southern Democrats and replaced them with very conservative southern Republicans.”

Newt Gingrich: Democrats are trying to 'brainwash the entire next generation' | Newt Gingrich | The Guardian

What's the definition of insanity again?

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn his election loss in Wisconsin, his second appeal in as many days to the high court over the result in the key battleground state.

Trump’s newest appeal is over the loss of a lawsuit he filed in federal court seeking to void the state’s election and have the Republican-controlled Legislature appoint electors to cast the state’s 10 electoral votes.

The lawsuit was rejected first by a federal judge whom Trump had appointed and then by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, adding to dozens of defeats for Trump in electoral challenges around the U.S.

Trump’s campaign on Tuesday asked the high court to take on his lawsuit brought in state court that sought to toss out hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots cast in Wisconsin’s two largest liberal counties. The Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected that lawsuit 4-3 earlier in December.

Trump lost the state to Democrat Joe Biden by about 21,000 votes.

Trump makes 2nd request to Supreme Court over Wisconsin loss

Originally Posted by Klondyke

Gingrich believes it is already on the way but, as seems habitual among many in Trump’s orbit, he again pivots to a critique of the other side. “It is becoming that partly because the left is so desperately committed to being the party of very wealthy people living in enclaves, explaining that the police don’t matter because they have their own security guards.”

Gingrich is out of his mind. Everyone knows that the GOP are the party of the super rich. The shit he said is laughable. The youth have turned away from the GOP because they can see them for the spineless hypocrites they are. The GOP is losing the demographic war, and they are well aware of it.

A judge Trump appointed himself no less.

A US judge has rejected a lawsuit from a Republican congressman that sought to allow vice president Mike Pence to reject electoral college votes for Joe Biden when Congress meets on Wednesday to certify his victory over president Donald Trump.


The latest long-shot attempt by Trump’s Republican allies to overturn the November election result was dismissed by one of Trump’s own appointees to the federal bench, Jeremy Kernodle.


He ruled that representative Louie Gohmert of Texas and a slate of Republican electors from Arizona could not show they suffered any personal harm “fairly traceable” to Pence’s allegedly unlawful conduct and, therefore, lacked legal standing to bring the case.





The standing requirement “helps enforce the limited role of federal courts in our constitutional system. The problem for plaintiffs here is that they lack standing,” Kernodle wrote.


A spokesman for Trump referred questions to Pence’s office. A spokesman for Pence declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Gohmert did not immediately comment.

US judge dismisses suit filed against Pence seeking to overturn election result | US elections 2020 | The Guardian

Originally Posted by bsnub

Gingrich is out of his mind. Everyone knows that the GOP are the party of the super rich. The shit he said is laughable. The youth have turned away from the GOP because they can see them for the spineless hypocrites they are. The GOP is losing the demographic war, and they are well aware of it.

so if the young are turning away from the GOP why are we seeing young Republicans defeating your Democrats in the House.

Originally Posted by RPETER65

why are we seeing young Republicans defeating your Democrats in the House.

Oh since they are not seventy years old that makes them young? They are not that young. You can deny reality all you want, but the young voter is overwhelmingly blue.

The GOP’s Demographic Doom

The Republicans’ demographic trap - The Boston Globe

How Republicans are losing young voters

Originally Posted by bsnub

Oh since they are not seventy years old that makes them young? They are not that young. You can deny reality all you want, but the young voter is overwhelmingly blue.

Anything under 60 is young for repeater

They're still at it.
Demanding an emergency 10 day audit. (at this late stage of the game)

Ted Cruz and other Republican senators oppose certifying election results
Republicans say they will reject presidential electors from states where Trump campaign contested results unless audit completed

Ted Cruz of Texas, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and nine other Republican US senators or senators-elect said on Saturday they will reject presidential electors from states where Donald Trump has contested his defeat by Joe Biden, “unless and until [an] emergency 10-day audit” of such results is completed.

Ted Cruz and other Republican senators oppose certifying election results | US news | The Guardian

Biden should simply make them 'acting' heads of whichever department and make an end to this crap. Don't even engage. They will performing the function wit the same authority.

The system is fucked and won't be remedied anymore without a complete overhaul and that's not going to happen.

Enough is enough

Originally Posted by panama hat

Biden should simply make them 'acting' heads of whichever department and make an end to this crap. Don't even engage. They will performing the function wit the same authority.

Exactly, just as Trump did.

Originally Posted by Cujo

Exactly, just as Trump did.

Yup. It's time to get over this 'they go low, we go high' bullshit. The rules have been changed.

Cruz & Co. have spent months lying about the election being stolen and are now saying there should be an investigation citing the fact that people believe them.

The GOP is an anti-democracy party full of morons and for morons.

It is unpatriotic and treasonous. The founding fathers would be livid and out with muskets and a hangman's noose to string those traitorous GOP bastards from high trees.

Originally Posted by Norton

Stupid of course cuz going to live with them the rest of what I figure will be a very short political career.

Cruz is the worst and most opportunistic and spineless of the bunch—he’s all in for a guy who abused his wife and father—and he studied Constitutional law at Harvard.

How try-hard Rafael from Canada has managed to stay in office this long makes me think that everything is bigger in Texas including the morons.

Pot n kettle here init? A pair of opportunistic lyin kunts.

Originally Posted by AntRobertson

everything is bigger in Texas including the morons.

As someone who has had the misfortune of visiting the place on several occasions I can confirm that to be the truth and then some.

Originally Posted by bsnub

It is unpatriotic and treasonous.

"There are two parties now, traitors and patriots."

ulysses s. grant
1861

Originally Posted by AntRobertson

Cruz is the worst and most opportunistic and spineless of the bunch

and guess who trump accused of cheating in an election?

ted cruz.
iowa caucus in 2016.

Originally Posted by AntRobertson

everything is bigger in Texas including the morons.

Originally Posted by bsnub

As someone who has had the misfortune of visiting the place on several occasions I can confirm that to be the truth and then some.

I take offence at these comments!

Well, not really, but it's the rural/small town folk, isn't it? Talking politics with my relatives in Dallas and they were vehemently anti-Trump as were almost all of their friends.

It was a different kettle of fish when their 70 year old auntie from Hicksville came into the room though. Shocking to hear her speak.

These people do exist. Scary scary Mary.

Originally Posted by AntRobertson

Cruz is the worst and most opportunistic and spineless of the bunch

True

You haven't been much online lately

Did the governor cave in to your demands for better wifi coverage on the roof in Waikeria ?