Donald J. Trump had rough week after he questioned an Indiana-born California federal judge’s neutrality due to his Mexican heritage. Many Republicans denounced the presumptive nominee’s comments as racist. While some say they’ve had enough of Trump, many will still vote for him.
Blogger Charlie Pierce puts it all in context: this contempt of judges is not a defect but a feature of Republican politics, and Pierce correctly says Trump’s behavior is an exaggeration, not an aberration.
Part of the conservative brand within the Republican Party has been to attack the integrity of the judicial process, and of the individual judges working within it, every time a decision comes down that sets the flying monkeys aloft.
Republicans, Feel the Quease? For those Republicans feeling queasy due to Trump’s comments — that Speaker of the House Rep. Paul Ryan (R) characterized as “a textbook definition of a racist” — relief may be at hand. Hillary Clinton’s campaign has a public-service-minded web service for the suffering GOP called Republicans against Trump. Visitors to the site can simply fill out a form, take a pledge and get a free bumper sticker.
And if anyone is wishing to keep score, MSNBC has complied a tally of 64 well-known Republican power brokers and office holders that will never support Trump (but offer no alternative) and a few that will be voting for Hillary.
Here in Vermont the two Republican gubernatorial candidates have taken different tracks dodging Trump. Bruce Lisman is undecided,still apparently withholding judgment on Trump, still “listening to what he has to say.” What do you suppose he will have to hear from the Donald to make up his mind?
And Phil Scott keeps talking about his own common-sense leadership. Apparently though, that “leadership” doesn’t include speaking out against fellow Republican Trump’s racist language.
So for now Scott is reluctant to show much leadership, and he’s looking ever more embarrassingly foolish behind the Jim Douglas for President fig leaf.
Two things I want to know about Phil Scott:
1) In order to avoid a conflict of interest he says he is going to put his construction company (which contracts with the state) in a “blind trust” if he gets elected governor. How can there be a blind trust with only one known asset in it? An asset, as he has stated, that he wants back in good financial condition once he is out of office. It doesn’t make any sense.
2) If it is a conflict of interest for the governor to own a company that does business with the state, why isn’t it a conflict of interest for the lieutenant governor? I’d say there is a conflict that has been hiding in plain sight for years.
Scott was instrumental in arranging the way the state funds highway roundabouts and Phil could have problem if someone cared to wave it about.
He has told VTdigger in 2015 one thing about Dubois while he and Dubois had previously done another.
“When a project he has supported as an elected official goes out to bid, Scott said he makes sure his company does not seek the contract.”
Yet he bid on at least three contacts (2008-2013)for highway roundabouts. Scott was instrumental in arranging the way the state funded the roundabouts he bid on!
Dubois did not get them-Dubois was outbid-he would say the system works.
However the point is he kind of didn’t tell the truth about his business with the state . Who is in a blind trust?
http://www.greenmountaindaily.com/2016/05/04/candidate-phil-scotts-roundabout-bid/
“Scott was instrumental in arranging the way the state funded the roundabouts he bid on! ”
This is not surprising. Dubois has, though, won a pretty good amount of state contracts where our tax dollars are going to finance Phil Scott’s construction company. I wonder if he pays his workers decently.