Tag: MAGA

Commentary: With RNC Shakeup, MAGA Brings Accountability to the Republican Party

Arizona Sun Times Staff
Michael Whatley and Lara Trump (composite image)

An insidious institutional rot has long afflicted the Republican Party and the broader conservative movement. Historically, this has presented a vexing problem for grassroots activists desperate to change the status quo. Now, after Herculean efforts by players big and small, it appears that the rabble-rousing of the MAGA faithful is finally paying off.

New Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Whatley and Vice Chairwoman Lara Trump have brought immediate change to the institution, working with senior Trump campaign advisor Chris LaCivita to streamline this leviathan. Whereas former RNC Chairwoman Ronna Romney-McDaniel did not make the systemic changes needed to support a modern campaign infrastructure, the new team has wasted no time taking a hatchet to overpriced, underworked, and misaligned elements of the organization.

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Trump Ramps Up Black Male Voter Outreach in Swing States amid Biden’s Declining Support: Report

Arizona Sun Times Staff
Trump Meeting

Former President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign is ramping up its efforts to target black male voters in crucial swing states, The Washington Post reported.

The former president has been making gains with black voters as President Joe Biden has been hemorrhaging support, polls have shown. Trump’s campaign will likely focus on black men who own guns and frequently attend church in order to grow his base, advisers told the Post, who were granted anonymity to characterize private conversations.

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Commentary: The Way Another Newsom Recall Effort Helps America

Arizona Sun Times Staff
Gavin Newsom Meeting

California isn’t as bad as millions of people outside the state have been led to believe. No, not every downtown street is awash in homeless drug addicts, schizophrenics, and predators. No, not every retail shopping district has crumbled under the onslaught of brazen shoplifters and smash-and-grab gangs. And despite almost every major “news” network in the nation pretending that an allegedly unprecedented onslaught of bomb cyclones is literally washing the entire state into the Pacific Ocean, overall California still has the best weather in the world.

Nonetheless, California is broken. Even if you aren’t one of the millions of Californians who doesn’t have to step over syringes and feces day after day merely to walk your children to school or get to work and back, and even if you aren’t one of the hundreds of thousands of business owners who no longer has a business or one of their employees who no longer has a job, California is broken.

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Commentary: America Can’t Afford Never Trump’s Nihilism

Arizona Sun Times Staff
Ron DeSantis

It was a wise decision for Ron DeSantis to end his presidential campaign when he did. There would have been no point in prolonging a bitter and divisive primary battle when Trump has clearly won already. By endorsing Trump, DeSantis opened the door to repairing some of the damage from what turned out to be a disastrous career move. And he did the right thing for the country by signaling to his supporters that it was time to unite and focus on ending the Biden regime.

Unfortunately, just a day later, DeSantis took a gratuitous swipe at Trump. It was chum for many of DeSantis’ hardcore supporters, who remain full of spite after months of back-and-forth with the MAGA “cult.”

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Federal Investigators Demanded Banks Search Private Transactions for Words Like ‘MAGA,’ ‘Trump’

Arizona Sun Times Staff
Cabelas Store

On Wednesday, the Republican majority on the House Judiciary Committee revealed even more drastic examples of government surveillance and breaches of privacy in the aftermath of the protest on January 6th, including the searching of Americans’ private bank transactions.

According to Fox News, the Judiciary Committee and the subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government described their latest findings in a letter obtained by Fox. The letter states that investigators ordered banks to search through their customers’ private transactions for key terms such as “MAGA” and “Trump,” while also claiming that the purchasing of “religious texts” were a sign of “extremism.”

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Commentary: The Intellectual Foundations of MAGA

Arizona Sun Times Staff
MAGA Hat

Republicans are dumb. They are easily led suckers, voting against their own best interests, manipulated by dangerous demagogues. This accusation is accepted as fact by most Democrat voters and is relentlessly reinforced by the media Democrats rely on. From MSNBC, Democratic strategist James Carville says Republicans “have a lot of stupid people that vote in their primaries.”  From New York Magazine, “Is DeSantis Just Not Dumb Enough for Republicans?” From Vanity Fair, “Is the Sheer Stupidity of Republican Politics Breaking Through?”

Even some conservative columnists can’t criticize the Democrats without taking a shot at those stupid Republicans. Daniel Henninger, writing for the Wall Street Journal, characterized national politics this year as “The Stupid Party vs. the Evil Party.” As for the leader of the Republican Party, we have this from The New Republic, “Trump Is an Extremely Dumb Fascist.” And as James Carville said, “When stupid people vote, you know who they nominate? Other stupid people.”

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Commentary: Only Trump Can Save America

RealClearWire

I believed that Republican voters were ready for a new post-Trump chapter of the America First movement. I now believe I was wrong. Those of us who backed Ron DeSantis – or the other Republican candidates – should read the room. Former President Trump winnowed the field effortlessly and then crushed the remaining three candidates in Iowa. He leads in the polls everywhere else. It is time to coalesce and unite behind the clear preference of the GOP grassroots, Donald John Trump.

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Commentary: A Pointless Republican Primary

Arizona Sun Times Staff
Trump AF1

President Trump will almost certainly be the Republican nominee. He is far ahead in every primary poll. His supporters originally worried that he would be too polarizing and would go down in flames in the general election, but it appears he will also win the general election against incompetent, unpopular, and increasingly demented Joe Biden.

Indictments, lawfare, media propaganda, and phalanx-style opposition from the organs of conservatism have all been arrayed against Trump. He has also earned the contempt of the managerial class’s elite: the judges, the academics, and the think tankers, as well as the GS and SES class around Washington, D.C.

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Hillary Clinton: ‘There Needs to Be a Formal Deprogramming’ of MAGA ‘Cult Members’

Arizona Sun Times Staff

During an interview on CNN Thursday, failed 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called for the “formal deprogramming” of Trump supporters, labeling them as “MAGA extremists” and “cult members.”

“We had very strong partisans in both parties in the past, and we had very bitter battles over all kinds of things—gun control and climate change and the economy and taxes—but there wasn’t this little tail of extremism, waving, you know, wagging the dog of the Republican Party as it is today,” Clinton, 75, told host Christiane Amanpour.

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Commentary: Hillary’s ‘Deprogramming’ Wish and the FBI’s Latest Excuse to Hunt MAGA ‘Terrorists’

Julie Kelly

To the surprise of no one paying attention, Newsweek just confirmed the FBI is targeting supporters of Donald Trump in advance of the 2024 election. “The federal government believes that the threat of violence and major civil disturbances around the 2024 U.S. presidential election is so great that it has quietly created a new category of extremists that it seeks to track and counter: Donald Trump’s army of MAGA followers,” investigative journalist William M. Arkin reported on October 5.

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Commentary: The Strange Pandemic of ‘White’ Disparagement

Arizona Sun Times Staff

One of the tenets of the early civil rights movement some 65 years ago was ending racial stereotyping.

When Martin Luther King, Jr. called for emphasizing the “content of our character” over “the color of our skin,” the subtext was “stop judging people as a faceless collective on the basis of their superficial appearance and instead look to them as individuals with unique characters.”

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Commentary: ‘Chasing’ Ballots is Not Enough

Admin

Apparently there’s some confusion about what some of us are actually proposing for winning in 2024. The best place to start in clearing up that confusion is by defining terms correctly.

We argued here and here, that if MAGA wishes to turn out its voters and win, the movement and its candidates must aggressively pursue their vote by securing their consent, and then, protecting them by implementing that agenda. Some have found these arguments less than persuasive because they fear Republicans are joining the Democrats in their less-than-honest methods of securing votes. So, we must explain further for those who appear confused.

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Commentary: Republicans Can Expose Joe Biden’s Phony Nationalism by Embracing MAGA

Admin

Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech, like his entire presidency, was an astonishingly cynical performance. There were plenty of hollow boasts about things Biden hasn’t actually achieved, but he went further than the usual partisan spin. He conveyed, to a primetime audience, a Potemkin village version of his administration’s goals. While he did plug gun control and an anti-police bill, there were few mentions of identity or race. He mostly talked about economics. In fact, he presented himself as a champion of national revitalization.

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Commentary: The Unbearable Lightness of Pining Backward

Admin

DISCLAIMER: Nearly everything I say in this essay I have already said at least once and, in most cases, more than once. At the same time, some points that might have borne repeating—such as why I think theoretical topics like this matter—I intend to skip. They’re all covered in the last one and, anyway, Paul Gottfried, to whom I am mostly responding, didn’t question the relevance of the subject matter. Those of you annoyed by repetition, uninterested in theoretical matters, or who just want MAGA red meat, do all of us a favor and don’t read this.

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Commentary: The Fake, and Real, Domestic Terrorists

Arizona Sun Times Staff

To hear the government tell it, a homeless guy who lived in the dilapidated basement of a vacuum repair shop with no running water is as much a danger to society as was Timothy McVeigh and the Tsarnaev brothers.

Adam Fox, according to the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Michigan, should spend the rest of his life in prison for conspiring to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020. After a jury could not reach a verdict in Fox’s case last April, the Department of Justice retried Fox and his remaining co-defendant Barry Croft, Jr. in August; both men were found guilty the second time around.

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Trump Accuses Biden of Waging Unprecedented ‘Political Repression’ That Will Backfire in Election

Just the News

Former President Donald Trump leveled a blistering attack Saturday night against the man who succeeded him in the White House, telling a rally in Ohio that Joe Biden’s Justice Department was waging unprecedented “political repression” against MAGA supporters while his inflationary economic policies were “incinerating trillions of dollars of middle-class wealth.”

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Commentary: The Regime’s ‘Operation MAGA Fascist’ Gains Ground

Arizona Sun Times Staff

After nearly two years of lies related to the events of January 6, 2021, the regime finally has admitted the truth: The widening legal dragnet to scoop up Donald Trump, his associates, and his voters has nothing to do with the four-hour disturbance on Capitol Hill that afternoon. It is, rather, a thus-far successful crusade to criminalize wrongthink about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

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Commentary: No Bump for Biden from His Dark ‘MAGA Republican’ Speech as Race for Congress Comes into Focus

Admin

President Joe Biden received no bounce in polls from his dark Sept. 1 speech in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania outlining the supposed “threat” to “the very foundations of our republic” posed by former President Donald Trump and the so-called Make America Great Again (MAGA) Republicans.

58 percent disapproved of his handling of his job before the speech, and 57 percent afterward, the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll showed.

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The Morning Ritual with Garret Lewis: Kari Lake on ‘Soul of the Nation’ Speech,” Grassroots Politicians’ ‘Existential Threat’ to Dems’ Agenda

Julie Carr

Friday morning on The Morning Ritual with Garret Lewis, host Lewis welcomed GOP nominee for Governor of Arizona, Kari Lake to the show to comment upon Joe Biden’s Soul of the Nation prime time speech.

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Victor Davis Hanson Commentary: Here Come the Bad Old Days

Admin

There is no end of history. Instead, civilization is a constant fight to embrace what has worked for the common good through the ages – and to reject what in the past has failed abysmally.

Bad and bankrupt ideas, protocols, and ideologies – like McCarthyism, communism, various cults, or fascism – resurface not because of their intrinsic or lasting value or record of success, but because civilizations become less vigilant and allow human vanities, ignorance, arrogance, and evil to reassert themselves.

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‘Full Monty Mussolini’: Biden’s Primetime Speech Mocked, Slammed on Social Media

Arizona Sun Times Staff

President Joe Biden’s Thursday evening speech targeting supporters of former President Donald Trump was mocked on social media, with many users poking fun at the stage.

The speech, held in Philadelphia, marked continued attacks on supporters of Trump, reiterating earlier attacks in which he claimed Republicans embraced “semi-fascism” at an Aug. 25 fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee in Maryland, and also attacked “MAGA Republicans” during a Tuesday speech in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Biden called “MAGA Republicans” a threat to democracy and doubled down on his rhetoric calling supporters of former President Donald trump “extremists.”

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Tea Party Patriots Slam Biden for ‘Dehumanizing’ Anti-Republican Speech

Peter D'Abrosca

A Tea Party group slammed President Joe Biden for his Thursday night primetime address, in which he labeled Republican supporters for former President Joe Biden “a threat,” and accused them of extremism. 

“Tonight, President Biden continued his tirade of dishonest rhetoric against those he fears. He repeated his lies that ‘MAGA Republicans’ are dangerous, doubling down on his errant claims that they’re extremist,” the Tea Party Patriots said in a press release. “As a point of fact, the only person in this one-sided back and forth who is dangerous is Joe Biden himself. For centuries oppressive governments have used derogatory labels and incendiary language to target and debase their political opponents, inevitably leading to violence against them from the masses. What Biden is doing is no different.”

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State Rep. Parker Blasts Ousted Arizona Speaker Bowers for Calling GOP ‘Fascist’

Rachel Alexander

Republicans furious with Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R-Mesa), mainly over denying election fraud and blocking election integrity bills, voted him out of office earlier this month, choosing a Trump-endorsed candidate instead. Bowers lost by almost 30 points to former legislator David Farnsworth, who he was running against for Senate (Bowers was term limited in the House). Bowers spoke out about his massive loss during an interview with The Guardian. 

He compared being voted out of office to “fascism.” He said, “The thought that if you don’t do what we like, then we will just get rid of you and march on and do it ourselves — that to me is fascism.” Bowers was referring to voters being upset about a multifaceted election integrity bill he killed using a technical maneuver. Among other things, HB 2596 would have given the legislature the power to reject election results, allowing an elector to call for a new election. 

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Commentary: The MAGA Book of Political Offense

Admin

by Theodore Roosevelt Malloch   Too many conservatives constantly stay on the defensive. They have no strategy, let alone tactical plans or a complete gamebook to go on offense and run up points. You don’t win by playing defense. You win by scoring points and controlling – dominating – the…

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Biden Declares ‘MAGA Crowd’ to Be the ‘Most Extreme’ Political Group in American History

Arizona Sun Times Staff

On Wednesday, Joe Biden labeled the entirety of his political opposition as “the most extreme political organization” in the history of the United States.

Axios reports that Biden made the remarks from the White House while he was taking questions about the recent leak of a draft of the Supreme Court’s apparent decision to overturn the pro-abortion ruling of Roe v. Wade. Speaking about the broader implications of the court throwing out legalized abortion nationwide and returning that decision to the states, Biden soon descended into hypothetical extremes.

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Democrat Incumbent Switches Districts, Leaving Texas 15th Congressional District an Open Target

Aaron Gulbransen

Incumbent Democrat U.S. Representative Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX-15) has elected to run for reelection in TX-34, leaving Texas’ Fifteenth Congressional district an open seat.

Redistricting changed the district lines and made an already competitive TX-15 an even more appetizing target for Republicans, who already have a nominee while the Democrats are scheduled to have a run-off in late May.

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Commentary: The Right’s Political Campaigns Need to Change as Its Political Landscape Has Become America First Supporters

Arizona Sun Times Staff

Everyone knows how the 2016 election transformed the American electorate overnight. Many voters were shaken from their “tax cuts and gun rights” slumber and awakened to the decline and corruption of America’s culture, economy, and entire political system.

After that election, Republican voters watched many of their own representatives betray the MAGA movement rather than help their constituents change the status quo. Internet searches for the phrase “GOP establishment” increased by a hundredfold. The “deplorables”—also known as the people—laid siege to the elites with tremendous energy.

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Trump Salutes Maricopa County Audit, Atty. Gen. Brnovich, Teases AT&T Boycott at 45K-Strong Arizona Rally

Neil W. McCabe

President Donald J. Trump gave his full support to Arizona conservatives, who are still investigating the handling of the 2020 presidential election, and he expressed confidence that state Attorney General Mark Brnovich would take action on the findings of the Maricopa County audit and other investigations Saturday at his Canyon Moon Ranch rally in Florence, Arizona.

The president said he was counting on state Attorney General Mark Brnovich to investigate how the 2020 presidential election was handled in Arizona.

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Commentary: Securing America’s Border and Communities Is Our Government’s First Duty

Admin
Group of people at a Trump rally, man in a "Keep America Great" hat

Remember when President George W. Bush said this?

I’ve had a lot of experience with dealing with borders, as the Governor of Texas. I know there’s a compassionate, humane way to deal with this issue. I want to remind people that family values do not stop at the Rio Grande River.

It was January 2005. Bush had just won reelection with a campaign strong on national security. Then after narrowly defeating John Kerry, Bush did what Bushes tend to do when they think they’re secure: He lurched to the Left and betrayed the base of his own party. He cast Americans who want a strong, secure border as racists—just four years after we had been attacked by international terrorists who exploited our weak immigration system to kill thousands of us. Bush behaved as if Americans didn’t know that Mexicans living south of the Rio Grande believe in family. Millions of Americans have Mexican heritage themselves. But they or their ancestors chose to be Americans.

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GOP Alaska Senator Murkowski Announces Reelection Bid, Prepares for Battle with Trump Allies

Arizona Sun Times Staff
Lisa Murkowski

Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski announced Friday that she will seek reelection in 2022, setting up another tough primary battle that includes efforts by former President Trump to unseat her.

A campaign video for Murkowski does not directly mention the challenge from Trump but warns voters about the race attracting much outside interest.

“In this election, lower 48 outsiders are going to try to grab Alaska’s Senate seat for their partisan agendas. They don’t understand our state and frankly, they couldn’t care less about your future,” she says.

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Commentary: Two Unique, Powerful Forces Will Influence the Midterms

RealClearWire

If the 2022 midterm elections had an official soundtrack, it would be the ominous music from the 1975 movie “Jaws.”

Although the election is 13 months away, mounting intensity feels like great white sharks are circling our national boat with a convergence of two powerful, never-before-seen political forces. Both forces are hangovers from the 2020 election with the potential to make the 2022 midterms the most tumultuous in modern American history.

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Commentary: New January 6 Stories That Complicate the Media Narrative

Arizona Sun Times Staff

The Associated Press reported in August that Robert Reeder, a Maryland man, pleaded guilty to “parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.” He argued for leniency because, “he is a registered Democrat who wasn’t a supporter of former President Donald Trump.” So why did he join the incursion into the Capitol building? Because, he says, he was an “accidental tourist” with nothing better to do.

But an online group that calls itself Sedition Hunters recently tweeted a picture it says shows that same “accidental tourist” attacking a police officer. Curiously, the “accidental tourist,” who didn’t support Donald Trump, happened to be wearing a red “MAGA”-style hat. His attorney argued in court, “Mr. Reeder is not politically active, is not and has never been a member of any right-wing or anti-government or extremist group and has, unfortunately, been publicly grouped with many others (whose) views he abhors.”

The story reminds one of John Sullivan, a Black Lives Matter activist who infiltrated the January 6 incursion to encourage violence, bully police officers, and generally stoke mayhem. While many of the trespassers remain locked up without bail, Sullivan mysteriously received pre-trial release.

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Commentary: Paul Ryan Was an Ineffective Leader of the Republican Party

Arizona Sun Times Staff
Paul Ryan

We aren’t actually governed by Paul Ryan, whose brief time as House Speaker ended in what can only be described as a surrender. Ryan bolted from the Speaker’s chair the minute the 2018 elections were over. He was happy to leave Congress to take a “cashing-in” job on the Fox Corporation board while his party took an electoral bath in those midterms he could blame on Donald Trump.

But as readers of The American Spectator know, in this space we’ve been exploring the premise that Americans are governed by people who suck. And Ryan put himself in that category even from outside the elective-office sphere this week when he offered up a tired and tiresome narrative about the future of the Republican Party.

What is it with these washed-up politicians, who are clearly the party’s past, demanding the GOP follow their instructions as to its future? Do we have to exhume the remains of Nelson Rockefeller and Thomas Dewey or conduct seances with them for guidance in how to defeat the 21st-century Left?

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