From The Hill:
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) says in a new interview that there is a “hostage situation” in the Republican Party.
The freshman lawmaker and self-described democratic socialist told Rolling Stone that “a lot of Republicans” know they should speak out against President Trump, but don’t.
“In the Republican Party, there’s a hostage situation going on,” she told the magazine. “There are a lot of Republicans that know what the right thing to do is — not just on impeachment but on a wide range of issues — and they refuse to speak up.”
Ocasio-Cortez called it “an unacceptable position” for GOP figures not to stand up to the president.
“We’re not in the realm of politics anymore,” she said. “These are not questions of politics. These are questions of society. These are questions of equal treatment. These are questions of civil rights.”
She also said that she would vote to impeach Trump “no question,” but acknowledged that some lawmakers “come from very tough districts where their constituents are torn” on their support for the president, making it difficult to easily commit to voting for impeachment.
She rejected the argument that some lawmakers have different intentions “behind closed doors” despite voting with Trump.
“If they vote the same way, what does it matter?” she said. “I don’t care what’s in your heart if how you are voting is the same as someone who is actually racist.
“I am tired of people saying, ‘I’m gonna vote the same way as bigots, but I don’t share the ideology of bigots.’ Well, you share the action and the agenda of bigots. We need to hold that accountable.”
Yup.
“We need to hold that accountable.”
In both parties.
Those Dems that “come from very tough districts where their constituents are torn?”
I am sorry.
Better to to take a chance of losing an election than to continue to let Trump run roughshod over the entire government (and most of the population) of this country.
I mean…really!!! When was the last time you heard about an ex-congressperson on the breadlines? They are set up for life in the DC/Democrat/Republican revolving door system. Whatever big money got them in will simply continue to pay them as insider lobbyists. All you need to do is look at the fate of the Dem insider that AOC beat in the primary.
Former Rep. Joseph Crowley, who lost to Ocasio-Cortez, joins top lobbying firm
Riiiight…
$$$$$$$$$$$$$!!!
Hustle for them on the inside, then continue hustling for them on the outside.
The very essence of what’s wrong with this system today.
I’ve been watching this blog for several days.
Has anyone here yet praised Elizabeth Warren for her stand against Big Money in her campaign?
Elizabeth Warren is making the most ambitious promise yet for getting money out of politics
I haven’t read all of the comments, but I didn’t notice any praise for her.
Why?
Hmmmmm?
Too badly branded by that Pocahontas thing?
Or too far left…not that far left, really…for the DNC?
Nice.
Keep up the good work.
Later…
AG
I’ve been watching this blog for several days, too, and I have yet to see Arthur Gilroy taking a stand against Trump Administration rules intended to defund Planned Parenthood or Trump’s appointment of cranks to a White House panel intended to attack climate science or his schemes to divert appropriated funds for his “Mexico will pay for it” wall.
Why?
Hmmmmm?
Has Arthur been too badly exposed as a Ron Paul aficionado and manipulative troll?
Nice.
Keep up the good work.
You write:
I have “taken a stand” against every last little bit of the Trump administration for two plus years, and against Trump himself before Democratic party incompetence and corruption allowed him to be elected president.
You haven’t seen it?
Look up for the latest.
Idiots and/or DNC hustlers, the lot of you neocentrist trolls!!!
I hold you and people like you totally responsible for the whole Trumpist mess.
And…you’re about to make the same mistake again.
I can see it coming.
And I dread it.
AG
AG, you oppose Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ policy agenda. Stop lying.
It’s laugh-inducing to observe you squirming away from the exact policy position mentioned by Joel here. You claim in broad bromides that you oppose Trump and his movement…
…but you oppose the civil rights protections Roe v. Wade granted women. That is the impact of your frequently expressed and defended desire to “BREAK UP THE U.S.!!!”
You’re a Ron Paul evangelist. Ron Paul moved a Bill in Congress which would have prevented the Federal Judiciary from having jurisdiction over reproductive rights issues. Ron Paul personally opposed abortion rights and Federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
We’re not going to let you get away with your bullshit any more. Make the case honestly for your New Confederacy and we’ll see if the community agrees that, for one of many regressive examples, the Democratic Party platform should include a plank which allows States to force women to carry pregnancies to term.
Your stupidity and/or neocentrist DNC partisanship know no bounds.
AG
Your pathetic avoidance of substantive answers to questions, your refusal to even acknowledge stuff you have written here in the last, your ridiculous insults know no bounds.
Deal wid it.
past, not last
Yep, Arthur, I’m going to make exactly the same mistakes again. I’m going to turn this blog into a Joe Biden Fan Club and try to suppress your Beto O’Rourke Fan Club.
I’m going to dodge all substantive criticism and just fling insults and attack, attack, attack and threaten to undermine any candidate who is not The Chosen One According to Me. My model for this behavior is one Arthur Giroy.
The “model” for your own behavior is the DNC in 2016.
As above, so below.
AG
LOL. You got nothin’.
I will give you this: if the Democratic Party platform becomes one favored by Ron Paul, it would certainly be a change.
The problem is that one change is not as good as another. That’s the business you’ve been trying to sell us, to which we say Fuck No.
Here’s a news story to discuss:
Ron Paul Is Supporting Russia’s Illegal Occupation of Crimea
The libertarian godfather has become one of the biggest cheerleaders for the “referendum” that will lead to Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula.
James Kirchick
03.16.14 4:07 PM ET
In the Crimea crisis, it seems Ron Paul thinks that libertarianism stops at water’s edge.
The former Republican congressman and libertarian icon has long enjoyed a mixed reputation in the United States. While many admire Paul for his small government views on civil liberties, other shy away from a politician who has criticized the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and allowed a series of racist and conspiratorial news letters to be published under his own name.
However, the former congressman whose presidential bids in 2008 and 2012 helped elevate libertarians from a political afterthought to a key constituency in the Republican Party and whose son, Rand Paul is poised for a 2016 bid for the White House, has now started a new chapter of his career. He’s defending the chauvinist and imperialist Russian regime of President Vladimir Putin.
Over the past several weeks, Paul has become one of the most vocal American supporters of Russia’s invasion and occupation of Crimea, a semi-autonomous region of Ukraine. In the aftermath of a revolution that drove out its ally in Kiev, Viktor Yanukovych, Moscow is attempting to annex the province by holding a “referendum” Sunday in hopes that it will provide a patina of legality to its blatantly illegal land grab. Paul, long a foe of military action and democracy promotion efforts overseas, has not been content to limit himself to criticisms of American policies in Eastern Europe. He has gone out of his way to legitimize and justify the actions of Putin.
“He’s no angel but actually he has some law on his side,” Paul said earlier this week on the Fox Business Network. “They have contracts and agreements and treaties for a naval base there and the permission to go about that area.”…
…for Ron Paul and the acolytes at his think tank, a motley crew of Putin apologists and admirers of post-Soviet thugs, Sunday’s sham election is all about the spirit of 1776. He recently wrote that “The only question that remains is whether there will there be an honest election, and I don’t see any reason there can’t be.” He did this on the website of his Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, which, in light of current events might be better called the Ron Paul Institute for Russian Aggression and Economic Exploitation (Its director, Daniel McAdams, has referred to the American ambassador to Ukraine as an “outlaw.”)
Paul bases his support of the Crimean referendum on libertarian grounds, as if what’s happening half a world away under the watchful eyes of the Russian military is akin to a Tea Party protest demanding less federal control over education policy. “There should be a right of secession,” Paul said on Fox. One cannot consider Paul’s defense of the Crimean “secession” without first becoming familiar with his nostalgia for the American one.
A crucial element of Paul’s worldview and that of his paleoconservative brethren is that America began to go to hell in a hand-basket with the Union victory in the American Civil War. Abraham Lincoln’s firm use of executive power to crush the slaveholding states’ attempt to secede initiated, in their view, the centralization of federal government power that continues to this day. The 1992 issue of the Ron Paul Survival Report (the name of which was a deliberate appeal to the then burgeoning far-right “survivalist” movement preparing for racial apocalypse) stated that “the right of secession should be ingrained in a free society” and that “there is nothing wrong with loosely banding together small units of government. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, we too should consider it.” Ironically, while Paul was applauding Ukrainian independence 20 years ago, he is now cheering the Crimea’s forcible reintegration into Russia…
…There is an irony in a so-called “libertarian” defending the likes of Vladimir Putin. Ron Paul and his ilk claim to support individual rights, free markets, and a foreign policy of non-violence, yet here they are defending a man who hounds gays, presides over a kleptocratic mafia state, and invades his neighbors. Paul shirks the label of “isolationist,” preferring instead that of, “non-interventionist,” which is true only in the sense that he opposes interventionism–of even the non-violent sort–undertaken by the United States and its democratic allies. When it comes to violent Russian intervention in the affairs of its sovereign neighbors, however, Paul agrees with none other than former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who said that Moscow retains a “sphere of privileged interests” among the ex-vassal states of the Soviet Union. Why would a formerly elected official in America lend ideological cover to a foreign dictator’s assault on the basic human rights of his own people?
I wonder who is pulling her strings. I have never seen a freshman Congressman get so much press. She beat a sitting white Congressman in an overwhelmingly Puerto Rican district at a time that Dems are beating racial/feminist drums nonstop. Color me not surprised.
I have nothing against her and I’m disgusted by (R)’s who dismiss her as “a mere bartender” because she worked her way through school as if that’s something to plebian to admit.
Still, after the first month, why is she still on front pages?
. . . why!
A big reason is that she drives the wingnuts completely crazy, they talk about her almost as much as they talk about Nancy Pelosi.
“…why is she still on front pages?”
#1-She’s smart as a whip.
#2-She’s not in any way averse to self-promotion. (Not a criticism.)
#3-She takes damned good picture.
#4-She apparently has no fear of losing.
#5-Even the most stupid politicians, controllers and observers (Well…maybe not the most stupid. But close.) realize that the 2020 election is likely going to hinge on getting out the Hispanic vote. She’s Hispanic; she’s popular; she’s honest (as pols go, at any rate), and she’s going to be a real leader in the Democratic Party over the next number of years. That goes for whether the Dems actually win in 2020 or are essentially blown out of the water by their own greed, stupidity and dishonesty.
AOC is a survivor.
Watch.
AG
Hispanic vote fizzled Tuesday. Hispanics are the largest ethnic group in Chicago now. Run off is between two black women. Idiot Centrist Bill daley campaigned on changing the state constitution to cheat city workers out of their pensions. Was listening too much to his Republican buddies. Daley’s are now in the ashcan of history. Lesbian black woman got more WHITE votes than Daley! And in the conservative Northwest side!
“Hispanic vote fizzled Tuesday?”
Why?
No one really talking to Hispanics directly and clearly, more than likely. Preferably someone with at least some understanding of the transplanted Hispanic/U.S. cultures, which are now entering their 2nd, 3rd and even 4th generations of U.S. residence and acculturation.
AOC did it in the Bronx with the Nuyoricans…that’s how they refer to themselves, bet on it…and Dominicans/Central Americans etc..
O’Rourke can do it with Mexicans and other Central Americans at the very least. He grew up in the hood…El Paso. Bet on that as well…majority Hispanic for many years. He speaks fine Mexican-accented Spanish.
It’s acultural thing, Voice. Many black pols (Let alone a Chicago Daley!!!) simply didn’t come up in that culture, and as a result they tend to lack a certain…empathy…with the cultural norms in place.
Result?
Most often?
No outpouring of votes.
So it goes.
AG
Gosh, you’d think the bartender had been trained as a trial lawyer. Or had actually prepared her five minutes of question time to elicit important details, unlike most of her Democratic colleagues. But all Voice in the Wilderness can see is her skin color and ethnicity. Kind of ironic for a guy who is forever ranting about evil identity politics.
What the fuck are you talking about, asshole? I said the complete opposite. Don’t post while high.
JDW doesn’t get “high,” Voice.
He’s the lowest!!!
And he’s got some strong competition for that rank here on the Pond.
Just another kneejerker.
Ignore him.
AG
Arthur, do you support the moral and policy views of your political hero Ron Paul on this issue?
Ron Paul
February 13, 2018
My opposition to the legality of abortion was strongly influenced during my years of being an OB/GYN. One specific incident really solidified it for me, as I described in my book Liberty Defined (see below).
As someone who believes in the Constitution, I consider it a state-level responsibility to restrain violence against any human being. I disagree with the Roe v. Wade decision. The states should be allowed to minimize or ban abortions.
While in Congress, I proposed the limiting of federal court jurisdiction of abortion. This can still be done with a majority vote in Congress and the signature of the President.
There’s no need to wait on the Supreme Court to someday repeal Roe v. Wade.
There is also the Pauls’ stance on civil rights that AG endorses. The Pauls want to try something “different” – LOL!!!!
Gee, that’s quite a set of views Arthur put forth at the link you share here, Don.
Reproductive rights are civil rights.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Beto O’Rourke do not support any of Arthur Gilroy’s views on a broad set of domestic civil rights.
His recent copious output of fanboy diaries for Beto and AOC are simultaneously fraudulent, panicky and pathetic.
Tell me the last time you posted anything that wasn’t some sort of grievance about alleged racial identity politics…and then resorted to racial identity politics in making the criticism. I know, it only counts when somebody else does it.