Monthly Archives: July 2020

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. listens at left as Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks during a news conference prior to a town hall-style meeting in Aston, Pa., Monday, April 23, 2012.

Jae C. Hong | AP

A second set of stimulus checks could be on the way, but the ink on the deal hasn't dried yet.

On Thursday, a group of Republican senators introduced a bill that would lower the sum the government sends out to $1,000. Previous Republican and Democrat proposals have called for $1,200 checks to adults and $500 to dependents.

Under the terms of the new bill, the $1,000 checks would be sent to all Americans, regardless of their age or dependent status.

The bill is called the Coronavirus Assistance for American Families Act. It was proposed by Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La.; Steve Daines, R-Mont.; Mitt Romney, R-Utah; and Marco Rubio, R-Fla.

In order to qualify, both adults and dependents would need valid Social Security numbers. Under the bill, a qualifying family of four could potentially receive $4,000 $600 more than they received in the CARES Act.

Unlike the CARES Act, this proposal would include all adult dependents, including college students and individuals with disabilities.

"Much of the burden of the pandemic has fallen on parents and children," Cassidy said in a statement. "This legislation prioritizes their needs by providing resources for school supplies, childcare, and other unexpected expenses."

Single and married taxpayers with no children would receive less compared to the first stimulus checks. Single individuals would get up to $200 less, while married couples would see up to a $400 reduction.

Democrats have also advocated for raising dependent pay with the second round of stimulus checks. The HEROES Act, passed by the House in May, called for $1,200 per dependent for up to three per family. Under that plan, families could receive as much as $6,000 total.

Under this new Republican proposal, the income qualifications would be the same as the first checks. Individuals with income of up to $75,000, heads of households making up to $112,500 and married couples earning up to $150,000 would be eligible for full stipends. Checks would be reduced by 5% for every dollar above those thresholds.

Consequently, the thresholds at which the checks would phase out would be slightly lower than the first round, according to the Tax Foundation. Individuals with income above $95,000 would not receive payments, rather than the $99,000 cut off in the CARES Act. Those who are married and filing jointly would not receive checks for income over $190,000, down from $198,000 in the first round.

Read more here:

Republican senators propose $1,000 stimulus checks - CNBC

The death of Herman Cain, attributed to the coronavirus, has made Republicans and President Trump face the reality of the pandemic as it hit closer to home than ever before, claiming a prominent conservative ally whose frequently dismissive attitude about taking the threat seriously reflected the hands-off inconsistency of party leaders.

Mr. Cain, a former business executive and candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, had an irreverent, confrontational style that mirrored the presidents own brand of contrarian politics. In his more recent role as a public face for the presidents re-election campaign, he became an emblem of Trump-supporting, mask-defiant science skeptics, openly if not aggressively disdainful of public health officials who warned Americans to avoid large crowds, cover their faces and do as much as possible to limit contact with others.

His view was shared by many conservatives, who have applied a hard-nosed, culture-war mentality to the virus, the most serious public health crisis in a century.

Mr. Trump wrote in praise of Mr. Cain on Twitter on Thursday, calling him a Powerful Voice of Freedom and all that is good.

But Mr. Cains death showed how ill suited that mind-set is to the countrys current predicament. More than 150,000 Americans have died in a pandemic that is ravaging parts of the country where conservative leaders long resisted taking steps that have slowed the virus elsewhere, such as mask mandates and stay-at-home orders.

Those include places like Tulsa, Okla., where Mr. Cain attended a Trump campaign rally in June and showed his disregard for safety precautions on social media shortly before receiving a diagnosis for the virus.

With a uniformity that has defied rising death tolls in their own backyards, Republicans at the federal, state and local levels have adopted a similar tone of skepticism and defiance, rejecting the advice of public health officials and deferring instead to principles they said were equally important: conservative values of economic freedom and personal liberty.

From Arizona to Texas, as infection rates soared and hospital beds filled up, Republican governors stood in the way of local governments that wanted to do more. They overruled city mask mandates, arguing that it amounted to a form of government overreach. They said that requiring businesses to close or limit their capacity would strangle the economy and save few lives. They accused the news media and political opponents of exaggerating the risks to hurt the presidents chances for re-election.

They scorned the experts and mocked those who heeded the governments warnings. Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, a close ally and vigorous defender of the president, walked around the Capitol in March wearing a Hazmat-style gas mask as he prepared to vote on coronavirus relief legislation.

The governor of Oklahoma, Kevin Stitt, posted a picture of himself eating dinner with his family at a crowded restaurant a few days after the World Health Organization formally declared a pandemic. Its packed tonight! his caption read.

And this month in Missouri, Gov. Mike Parson scoffed at the idea of a mask mandate, telling a cheering crowd of supporters, You dont need government to tell you to wear a dang mask.

Yet the virus more than occasionally reminded them that it strikes people of all political stripes indiscriminately.

After his mask stunt, Mr. Gaetz learned that he might have been exposed to someone who was infected and attended the Conservative Political Action Conference. He said he would enter quarantine, and he did not end up having the virus. Mr. Stitt tested positive for the virus this month, the first governor in the country to do so. He continues to resist pressure to issue a mask order, calling it a personal preference.

And this week, adding to the list of people with direct access to the president who have tested positive was Robert C. OBrien, the national security adviser. Others include Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Fox News commentator who is dating Donald Trump Jr. and is helping lead the Trump campaigns fund-raising efforts.

Among some conservative defenders of the president, there is a sense that complaints about masks and other mandates as a threat to personal freedom are overblown.

Grover Norquist, a conservative activist who lobbies for lower taxes and regulations and has served on the board of the National Rifle Association, said that using Mr. Cains death to attack Republicans is going two steps too far. But he added, Theres a difference between not being excited about being told what to do and refusing to do it altogether. But on something like this, when youre out in public, you should wear a mask because its not about you.

Yet there have been few indications that the spate of coronavirus cases among Republicans is leading to any kind of major reckoning in the party. After Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas tested positive this week, he blamed his diagnosis on wearing a mask.

Mr. Trump, who has spoken of being rattled by the death of an old friend who contracted the virus, has been photographed only rarely with a mask on and has repeatedly said he does not consider wearing one the appropriate step for him. He has allowed, however, that he is supportive of mask-wearing by others.

The visuals that emerged from the White House from the beginning of the pandemic suggested an attitude that was, at best, not overly cautious. At an event at the White House in March with executives from Walmart and Walgreens in which Mr. Trump praised his administrations preparedness, he shook hands and patted the backs of multiple people, prompting critics to complain that the president was sending mixed signals to the public.

When the virus re-emerged after it initially appeared to have been subdued, it took weeks of public pressure and private lobbying by advisers and friends before Mr. Trump more frankly acknowledged the toll the resurgent virus has taken across the American South and West.

Even some of the harshest critics of Republican leadership said they did not think that Mr. Cains death would cause much reflection inside the party.

Evan McMullin, who ran against Mr. Trump as a third-party candidate in 2016, wrote on Twitter that Mr. Cain was the first senior casualty of the science denial Trump cult.

In an interview, Mr. McMullin said he had little hope this was a wake-up call. I wish that was the case, he said. Many voters who support the president live in a totally different, alternate information environment in which the news of Herman Cains death his visit to the Trump rally, his decision to not wear a mask wont reach them.

Mr. Cain was eager to display his disregard for the experts and their warnings. Before the Trump rally in Tulsa, which local public health officials had urged the campaign to postpone, Mr. Cain urged people to Ignore the outrage and to defy the left-wing shaming!

Mr. Trump did at one point reschedule the rally, but only after an outpouring of anger that it had been scheduled for the day of Juneteenth, the holiday commemorating the emancipation of slaves.

When the rally went forward on June 20, Mr. Cain, one of the most prominent African-American Trump supporters and a member of his Black Voices for Trump coalition, posed for a photo with other Black attendees. None, including him, wore masks.

A few hours before the event, the campaign had disclosed that six Trump campaign staff members who had been working on the rally had tested positive for the coronavirus during a routine screening.

Mr. Cain tested positive on June 29. On July 2, his staff announced that he had been hospitalized. Weighing in on the no-mask policy for a Trump rally planned at Mount Rushmore on July 3, Mr. Cains Twitter feed was approving: PEOPLE ARE FED UP!

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Will Herman Cains Death Change Republican Views on the Virus and Masks? - The New York Times

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) Is Tennessees Republican primary for U.S. Senate the nastiest in the country as the national publication POLITICO calls it?

It was a question for the two top GOP candidates today in midst of their negative ad blitz.

William Francis Hagerty IV is not a regular guy. He is entitled, self-dealing. His friends in the ruling class are not like you and me, said one ad for Manny Sethi that has been playing statewide.

Trump conservatives cant trust Manny Sethi. Sethi served on the board of the Massachusetts Medical Society, an organization that supported Obamacare, said an ad getting similar airplay for Bill Hagerty.

The commercials are just a bit of the ad blitz from the two frontrunners in Tennessees Republican Senate primary. They are part of POLITICOs nastiest pronouncement and so is Hagertys pronunciation of Sethis name while questioning his opponents conservative credentials.

During an early voting event on July 17, Hagerty repeatedly pronounced his main opponents name as SED-dee instead of SEH-thee.

While appearing on This Week with Bob Mueller on Thursday, Hagerty who served as the presidents U.S. Ambassador to Japan did not mention his opponent by name while repeating themes seen in the ads.

We have a situation where you have a Democrat running in a Republican primary, Hagerty told News 2s Mueller. You have someone defending Obamacare.

At exactly the same time Thursday, Sethi who is a Vanderbilt trauma surgeon, held a town hall in a Nashville suburb where he tried to counter President Trumps endorsement of Hagerty for the Republican Senate nomination.

Now more than ever, we have got to support the president, got to have his back, Sethi told the town hall event.

Like Hagerty, Sethi was asked about the race becoming the countrys nastiest Republican primary and he, too, returned to themes seen in ads.

Yeah, I think its really unfortunate, began Sethi. Its driven by my opponent and his millions of dollars of swamp money.

As the primary approaches, those ads will continue to be everywhere with whatever the candidates want to say about each other.

As for issues they might face as a U.S. Senator, both the Republican candidates expressed skepticism at extending federal unemployment payments of $600 a week.

Bob Muellers entire interview with Hagerty can be seen Saturday at 6 p.m. on News 2.

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Top Senate candidates respond to their race called the countrys nastiest Republican primary - WATE 6 On Your Side

After Mitt Romney lost the 2012 presidential race, the Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, commissioned an internal party study to examine why the party had won the popular vote only once since 1988.

The results of that so-called autopsy were fairly obvious: The party needed to appeal to more people of color, reach out to younger voters, become more welcoming to women. Those conclusions were presented as not only a political necessity but also a moral mandate if the Republican Party were to be a governing party in a rapidly changing America.

Then Donald Trump emerged and the party threw all those conclusions out the window with an almost audible sigh of relief: Thank God we can win without pretending we really care about this stuff. That reaction was sadly predictable.

I spent decades working to elect Republicans, including Mr. Romney and four other presidential candidates, and I am here to bear reluctant witness that Mr. Trump didnt hijack the Republican Party. He is the logical conclusion of what the party became over the past 50 or so years, a natural product of the seeds of race-baiting, self-deception and anger that now dominate it. Hold Donald Trump up to a mirror and that bulging, scowling orange face is todays Republican Party.

I saw the warning signs but ignored them and chose to believe what I wanted to believe: The party wasnt just a white grievance party; there was still a big tent; the others guys were worse. Many of us in the party saw this dark side and told ourselves it was a recessive gene. We were wrong. It turned out to be the dominant gene.

What is most telling is that the Republican Party actively embraced, supported, defended and now enthusiastically identifies with a man who eagerly exploits the nations racial tensions. In our system, political parties should serve a circuit breaker function. The Republican Party never pulled the switch.

Racism is the original sin of the modern Republican Party. While many Republicans today like to mourn the absence of an intellectual voice like William Buckley, it is often overlooked that Mr. Buckley began his career as a racist defending segregation.

In the Richard Nixon White House, Pat Buchanan and Kevin Phillips wrote a re-election campaign memo headed Dividing the Democrats in which they outlined what would come to be known as the Southern Strategy. It assumes there is little Republicans can do to attract Black Americans and details a two-pronged strategy: Utilize Black support of Democrats to alienate white voters while trying to decrease that support by sowing dissension within the Democratic Party.

That strategy has worked so well that it was copied by the Russians in their 2016 efforts to help elect Mr. Trump.

In the 2000 George W. Bush campaign, on which I worked, we acknowledged the failures of Republicans to attract significant nonwhite support. When Mr. Bush called himself a compassionate conservative, some on the right attacked him, calling it an admission that conservatism had not been compassionate. That was true; it had not been. Many of us believed we could steer the party to that kinder, gentler place his father described. We were wrong.

Reading Mr. Bushs 2000 acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention now is like stumbling across a document from a lost civilization, with its calls for humility, service and compassion. That message couldnt attract 20 percent in a Republican presidential primary today. If there really was a battle for the soul of the Republican Party, we lost.

There is a collective blame to be shared by those of us who have created the modern Republican Party that has so egregiously betrayed the principles it claimed to represent. My jaccuse is against us all, not a few individuals who were the most egregious.

How did this happen? How do you abandon deeply held beliefs about character, personal responsibility, foreign policy and the national debt in a matter of months? You dont. The obvious answer is those beliefs werent deeply held. What others and I thought were bedrock values turned out to be mere marketing slogans easily replaced. I feel like the guy working for Bernie Madoff who thought they were actually beating the market.

Mr. Trump has served a useful purpose by exposing the deep flaws of a major American political party. Like a heavy truck driven over a bridge on the edge of failure, he has made it impossible to ignore the long-developing fault lines of the Republican Party. A party rooted in decency and values does not embrace the anger that Mr. Trump peddles as patriotism.

This collapse of a major political party as a moral governing force is unlike anything we have seen in modern American politics. The closest parallel is the demise of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, when the dissonance between what the party said it stood for and what citizens actually experienced was so great that it was unsustainable.

This election should signal a day of reckoning for the party and all who claim it as a political identity. Will it? Ive given up hope that there are any lines of decency or normalcy that once crossed would move Republican leaders to act as if they took their oath of office more seriously than their allegiance to party. Only fear will motivate the party to change the cold fear only defeat can bring.

That defeat is looming. Will it bring desperately needed change to the Republican Party? Id like to say Im hopeful. But that would be a lie and there have been too many lies for too long.

Stuart Stevens is a Republican political consultant and the author of the forthcoming book It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump, from which this essay is adapted.

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I Hope This Is Not Another Lie About the Republican Party - The New York Times