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George W. Bush officials come out against Trump in open letter
Republicans who served top roles in President George W. Bush’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Transportation (DOT) are coming out against Donald Trump's presidential campaign.
The 12 former officials — and one former Energy Department official — criticized the Republican in an open letter Wednesday, led by former EPA head Christine Todd Whitman and former Transportation Secretary Mary Peters.
“We believe in effective government, a society of hope and optimism balanced with realism, and a politics of civility and honesty. None of these values are present in Donald Trump’s campaign,” the ex-officials wrote.
The former Bush officials did not endorse Democrat Hillary Clinton
Hillary Rodham Clinton
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for president, but said that Trump is not qualified to hold the office.
The Bush family’s lament
Their distaste for Donald Trump was no secret. But they saw no point in publicizing it.
From Miami to Houston, Crawford to Kennebunkport, members of the Republican Party’s first family remained quiet for months, avoiding cameras and questions about presidential politics and focusing their few fundraiser appearances on assisting the GOP candidates who would be forced to share the November ballot with a nominee they detest.
But given the Bush clan’s proximity to public life, and their progeny’s desire to one day return the family to power, it was only a matter of time before they could hold their tongues no longer.
Over a 24-hour span that began with Jeb Bush's surprising and sardonic cameo in Sunday's Emmy Awards broadcast and Monday night’s reports that his father, former President George H.W. Bush, had told a family friend privately that he intended to support Hillary Clinton, the Bushes returned to the headlines, and are giving Trump just the establishment foil he so capably exploits.
"He probably loves that former President Bush isn't backing him because it underlines his whole case against the establishment," one former Jeb Bush campaign staffer said. "I bet he's highlighting it in his stump speech before long."
George W. Bush, who is headed to Washington this weekend to headline a fundraiser for Senate Republicans and attend the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, has shared in private settings for months his fear that he will be “the last Republican president.” And while Bush family loyalists say they do not know whether he is joking, they are certain he cannot support Trump.
Another Bush for Hillary! Barbara Bush spends Saturday night in Paris partying with Huma Abedin at a Clinton fundraiser
-Huma Abedin and Anna Wintour hosted a Clinton fundraiser Saturday
-A $500-$1,000 reception was followed by a $5,000-$10,000 per ticket dinner
-Barbara Bush, 34, one of George W. Bush's two daughters, attended dinner
-Grandfather George H. W. Bush is voting for Hillary, uncle Jeb isn't voting
originally posted by: VictorVonDoom
I'm not going to pretend that I've read all this yet, but I have skimmed through it and I wanted to tell you how refreshing it is to see such a thorough compilation of topics that should help people to see what is really going on in this country today. I believed that after the election was over that the partisan bickering on ATS would taper off and we could once again focus on the real roots of our problems, but the divide and conquer campaign seems as strong as ever.
It’s time to turn the two-party system into a three-party system
The hulking, wounded elephant in the room of American politics is the disgraceful, scandalous performance of the two political parties over the past 50 years.
“Elephants” are truths that are obvious but too big, too established or too awkward to talk about. It’s easy to ignore them. We follow the parties like sports — sometimes frantically, sometimes with disgust, but most voters don’t have a favorite team; we follow the players, elections and the fights in Washington.
We don’t view the two parties through a wider lens. We don’t think about if they serve their proper function. We don’t really take them seriously as institutions.
Why? Mostly because we have no expectations that parties are anything but, well, political — in the worst sense of word. Congress passes laws. The president signs them and is commander in chief. The Supreme Court judges laws. Parties don’t belong to that great chain of governing — they are just the two teams that supply the players and trash talk.
Unfortunately, we assume the two-party system permanent and unalterable.
But the term “two-party system” is a misnomer. Nothing in the Constitution sanctions a two-party system. The two-party duopoly is an accident of history, not the work of the framers.
Dem. Rep. Rangel: We Need to Save the GOP for the Good of the Two-Party System, the Country
Sunday on “The Rita Cosby Show” on WABC Radio, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) said that the GOP needs to be saved in order to have a properly functioning two-party system.
“My concern is the destruction or the imploding of the Republican Party. They’re so torn apart, and as partisan as I am, I really think the salvation of this republic is the two-party system,” Rangel explained. “Democrats need another party in order for people like me to see what we think is best.”
He later added, “If there’s no opposition, if there’s no challenge, then this is not the country that our forefathers were thinking about. So we have to have healthy political parties. The two-party system is just as important as having a Democratic party… to me.”
Nader Sues Democratic National Committee for 2004 Dirty Tricks
On October 30, Ralph Nader, Peter Camejo, and six voters who wanted to vote for Nader in 2004, filed a lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee. The lawsuit, Nader v Democratic National Committee, 2007ca-7245B, was filed in the District of Columbia Superior Court. The complaint is 70 pages long. It details the national Democratic Party’s extensive support for challenges to Nader’s ballot positions, in states in which elections officials had accepted Nader’s petitions and placed him on the ballot. The complaint goes into great detail, including a coordinated effort to sabotage individual petition sheets in Oregon (anti-Nader activists were instructed to sign a petition sheet in the space reserved for the circulator, and then to line it out, which had the effect of ruining all the signatures already on that sheet). The complaint also talks about harassment of Nader circulators in Ohio and Oregon. The complaint also deals with incidents in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin. The lawsuit asks for a jury trial, in a claim for monetary damages.
Two-Party-System Implodes As Top Republicans Formally Support Democrat
Trump may be a “bridge too far,” but why are Republicans voting for Hillary Clinton?
In fact, this election has revealed the truth about the US two-party system.
There is only one party: pro-war and pro-technocratic (corporatist).
The fundamental mythology of US politics is that the Democrats are socialist-oriented and Republicans believe in freedom and individual human rights.
But Hillary is corporatist, not socialist.
Meanwhile Trump, whose rhetoric sometimes adopts certain libertarian and free-market overtones, is pilloried by Republican leaders who increasingly state they will vote for Hillary.
The Founding Fathers Tried to Warn Us About the Threat From a Two-Party System
John Adams said:
There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.
George Washington agreed, saying in his farewell presidential speech:
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty
Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind, (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight,) the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
It serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.
There is an opinion, that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the Government, and serve to keep alive the spirit of Liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in Governments of a Monarchical cast, Patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in Governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And, there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be, by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.
What's wrong with the two party system?
In Texas this week is a highlighted example of what is wrong with a two party system. Namely, that it is about to become a one party system. This leaves the voters with NO CHOICE at the polls. Sound familiar? The Iraqi’s had no choice in their last election either.
Texas, for decades in the 20th century, was a one party Democrat state. The governors were Democrat, both houses of Congress were Democrat, and most of the judges were Democrat. Republicans have been making inroads, since the time of Ronald Reagan, to the seats of power by garnering support from the corporations in the big cities and the ranchers in the rural areas. In the last 12 years, the Republicans have managed to take the governorship, both houses of congress and a host of judge seats. Texas is again a one party state.
But the Republicans, recognizing the Democrat's one party stronghold was temporary, now seek to insure their stranglehold becomes permanent. They are in special session as I write these words, redrawing congressional districts to eliminate Democrat incumbent districts and to gerrymander in such a way as to eliminate the last remaining districts supporting Democrats.
It is NOT that the people have changed from Democrats to Republicans; large cities in Texas remain Democrat. The Republicans are carving up the cities on the district maps so that a small portion of a city becomes a part of a large rural Republican district. In this way they will be able to nullify the Democrats votes at the polls in 2004 by overwhelming a small portion of a city's Democrat vote with a large number of rural area Republican votes. This will insure a Republican majority for that district in 2004 and eliminate the Democrat district altogether.
Time to end the two party system?
The Two party system, which is the system that only the United States has adopted, is seriously flawed. It doesn't allow the people to really express their true beliefs, and in fact, limits the choices to two corrupt institutions.
For those who believe in freedom of expression, and freedom of choice, the answer is obvious, end the two party system. This would require coalitions to gain control of congress.
The reality is that if you're a Democrat, even if you're a fiscally conservative, socially moderate, and a touch internationalist, defined by having great respect and deference for the United Nations, you're never going to amount to much in the Democratic Party. You simply put, can't gain influence over the extreme left wing radicals that are the titular heads of the party.
If you're a Republican who believes in open and honest Government, smaller and less intrusive Government, and individual liberty, you're similarly doomed to spend your life slamming your head into the wall of the Blue Blood Republicans who want watered down versions of the Democratic Policies.