cagle

<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/heres-why-republican-party-has-abandoned-reality">https://www.alternet.org/heres-why-republican-party-has-abandoned-reality</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx vid</font></div><div><b>Here's Why the Republican Party Has Abandoned Reality</b></div><div><b>It's Trump's GOP now.</b></div><div>By David Akadjian / Daily Kos September 16, 2018, 7:58 AM GMT</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">This year, the Republican candidate for governor in Georgia was decided in a special runoff election between Brian Kemp and Casey Cagle, the top two finishers in the Republican primary. Before the runoff election, Casey Cagle was secretly recorded talking about the craziness of the Georgia Republican primary. He said:</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The problem is in a primary—and you and I are just talking off-the-record frank—they don’t give a shit about those things. Okay. In the general election, they care about it. Okay. But they don’t care about it in a primary. This primary felt like it was who had the biggest gun, who had the biggest truck, and who could be the craziest.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Kemp quickly pounced on these remarks and used them to win the runoff by 40 points—which, ironically, validated Cagle’s remarks.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Here in Ohio, I saw the same thing in our race for governor. The entire race was about  who was the most conservative. Mary Taylor called Mike DeWine a “liberal” and DeWine said Taylor was a criminal, so “lock her up.</span>”</div><div>
</div><div>You’ve probably seen something similar in a race where you live. Conspiracy theorists are falling out of trees in Republican primaries.</div><div>
</div><div>So why is this going, on and what can we learn from it?  </div><div>
</div><div>Politicians are cowards</div><div>
</div><div>Almost a year before the 2016 election, Devin Nunes spoke with The New Yorker about then-House Speaker John Boehner’s ouster.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Nunes told the author that one of the biggest changes he’s seen since his arrival in 2002 is the <b>rise of online media outlets and for-profit groups that spread bad or even false information:</b></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>I used to spend ninety per cent of my constituent response time on people who call, e-mail, or send a letter, such as, ‘I really like this bill, H.R. 123,</b>’ and they really believe in it because they heard about it through one of the groups that they belong to, but their view was based on actual legislation.<b> Ten per cent were about ‘Chemtrails from airplanes are poisoning me’ to every other conspiracy theory that’s out there. And that has essentially flipped on its head.</b></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Today, the calls and emails are 90 percent about the bad information and conspiracy theories, and only a small percentage are about things that are actually true.</span></div><div>
</div><div>Of course today, we know Nunes as the point man from the House Intelligence Committee who keeps trying to push the lie that it was Hillary Clinton who actually colluded with Russia. Nunes is also a global warming denier even as Fresno, the largest city in his California district, experienced a record consecutive days with highs that topped 100 degrees.</div><div>
</div><div>Nunes is now one of the leaders in disinformation.</div><div>
</div><div>Why?</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Because Fox News and other right-wing conspiracy media outlets have made him famous. His fame has brought in $7.4 million in campaign donations, the most of any California Republican. This is also three to seven times any previous amount he’s raised.</span></div><div>
</div><div>So … conspiracy away!</div><div>
</div><div>In three years Nunes went from Freedom Party critic to one of the lead conspiracy theorists in Congress. Along the way, he threw out every principle he once might have had.</div><div>
</div><div>He’s not a leader. He’s a Fox News puppet.</div><div>
</div><div>[vid]</div><div>
</div><div><b>Devin Nunes calls his own paper, The Sacramento Bee, ‘fake news’ </b></div><div>
</div><div>It’s important to understand that this is not just true for Nunes, but for most politicians</div><div>
</div><div>It’s easy for liberals to see this with Devin Nunes because he’s a lying conspiracy theorist Republican.</div><div>
</div><div><b>The mistake we often make, however, is seeing Democratic politicians differently. They’re not conspiracy theorists like Nunes. But they also don’t tend to be leaders like we want them to be. They have to get elected, too. So they will do what it takes to get elected. </b>They will champion causes that are hot-button issues in the media. They will talk about what they think they can talk about in order to win. If an issue is going to hurt them politically, they may avoid it.</div><div>
</div><div><b>The simple model for what they’re doing looks like this:</b></div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>Social change -> political change -> policy change</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Social change is cultural change. </span>It is what is popular in the public mind. Political change is winning elections. And policy change is when politicians write legislation.</div><div>
</div><div>Politicians will do what those who get them elected want.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">If we look at someone saying this on the Democratic side, it looks like Barack Obama in 2009 talking about health care. Obama took a page out of President Franklin Roosevelt’s playbook. <b>FDR</b> once met with a group of activists who wanted support for new, bold legislation. After listening to their arguments, he then said, “You’ve convinced me<b>. Now go out and make me do it.”</b></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>...</b></span></div></div>