What GOP senators said about Charlottesville

    Given Trump's unwillingness to clearly condemn the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, it is interesting to see which GOP senators felt inclined to distance themselves from their Nazi wing. Below I follow the statements collated by Ari Plachta of Haaretz. Updates and corrections are most welcome in the comments.

    Called the attack "domestic terrorism":

    Cruz
    Graham (updated via Foxnewssunday)
    Gardner 
    Collins 
    Crapo
    ​Grassley​
    Scott

    Condemned White Nationalists/White supremacists by name:

    McCain,
    Rubio,
    Lankford,
    Hatch (called them Nazis)
    Portman
    Ernst (mentioned "racist hatred", so half points)
    Daines (full points for "this is bigotry. Thiis is racism")
    Sasse (full points for rejecting "blood and soil nationalism")
    Flake

    Condemned Bigotry by name:

    McConnell (also mentioned hate)
    Boozman (also mentioned hate)
    Sullivan (also mentioned hate)
    Isakson (also mentioned hate)
    Thune (also mentioned hate)
    Cornyn (also mentioned "hate-filled violence")
    Toomey (mentioned "racism" and "hate")
    Heller (mentioned "racism" and "hatred")
    Fischer (mentioned "racism" and "hatred")
    Tillis (also mentioned hate)
    Moran (also mentioned racism)

    Condemned only hate (without designating the haters) - 1 point:

    Todd Young (bonus point for "fringe hatred")
    Pat Roberts (bonus point for "their values are not American values")
    Kennedy
    Blunt
    Alexander 
    Corker
    Capito​
    Cassidy
    Inhofe (half points for "saddened")

    Mentioned only violence in general terms (half a point for effort):

    Johnson
    Perdue
    Strange

    Entirely silent (no points):

    Shelby
    Murkowski
    Cotton
    Risch
    Paul
    Cochran
    Wicker
    Burr
    Hoeven
    Rounds
    Lee
    ​Enzi

    Comments

    And WSJ has decided both sides are at fault. Insane. 

    Mr. Trump was widely criticized for his initial statement Saturday afternoon that condemned the hatred “on many sides” but failed to single out the white nationalists. Notably, David Duke and his allies read Mr. Trump’s statement as attacking them and criticized the President for doing so.

    The White House nonetheless issued a statement Sunday saying Mr. Trump “includes white supremacists, KKK, Neo-Nazi and all extremist groups” in his condemnation. As so often with Mr. Trump, his original statement missed an opportunity to speak like a unifying political leader.

    Yet the focus on Mr. Trump is also a cop-out because it lets everyone duck the deeper and growing problem of identity politics on the right and left. The politics of white supremacy was a poison on the right for many decades, but the civil-rights movement rose to overcome it, and it finally did so in the mid-1960s with Martin Luther King Jr. ’s language of equal opportunity and color-blind justice.

    That principle has since been abandoned, however, in favor of a new identity politics that again seeks to divide Americans by race, ethnicity, gender and even religion. “Diversity” is now the all-purpose justification for these divisions, and the irony is that America is more diverse and tolerant than ever.

    The problem is that the identity obsessives want to boil down everything in American life to these categories. In practice this means allocating political power, contracts, jobs and now even salaries in the private economy based on the politics of skin color or gender rather than merit or performance. Down this road lies crude political tribalism, and James Damore’s recent Google dissent is best understood as a cri de coeur that we should aspire to something better. Yet he lost his job merely for raising the issue.

    A politics fixated on indelible differences will inevitably lead to resentments that extremists can exploit in ugly ways on the right and left. The extremists were on the right in Charlottesville, but there have been examples on the left in Berkeley, Oakland and numerous college campuses. When Democratic politicians can’t even say “all lives matter” without being denounced as bigots, American politics has a problem.


    Great idea, thanks for your work!

    Going outside your Senators category, I would like to say that Speaker Ryan actually surprised me, by Sat. @ noon tweeting

    The views fueling the spectacle in Charlottesville are repugnant. Let it only serve to unite Americans against this kind of vile bigotry.

    and @ 7:13 pm following up with

    Our hearts are with today's victims. White supremacy is a scourge. This hate and its terrorism must be confronted and defeated.

    More so because he's from Wisconsin rather than because he's a right winger.  I'm originally from Wisconsin, and this is not the usual way for Wisconsinites of any political stripe to speak on anything "touchy", so strongly. More often than not Wisconsinites will do a "don't want to get in an argument with anyone but...." kind of thing.

    I should add that on the original news thread, I was surprised that Trump commented so quickly. I still stand behind that. He tweeted on it before the car hit the crowd! Up until the car hit, seemed to me that he would just ignore what was going on there unless forced to say something.

     


    Interesting on Ryan.

    I put this up because it's one of those either/or events where people reveal themselves whatever they choose to do or not do. 16 GOP senators making it clear that they stand against the white supremacist wing of their party actually was a positive surprise. 


    Ryan's still on message, as he was since noon Sat., Rubio and Young too:

    Ryan, other Republicans outraged by Trump news conference

    @Politico.com, Aug. 15

    President Donald Trump sparked a barrage of Republican outrage on Tuesday after he blamed “both sides” for the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia — including from House Speaker Paul Ryan.

    “We must be clear,” Ryan said after Trump’s remarks. “White supremacy is repulsive. This bigotry is counter to all this country stands for. There can be no moral ambiguity.”

    Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said on Twitter, “Mr. President, you can't allow #WhiteSupremacists to share only part of blame.” Added Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.): “This is simple: we must condemn and marginalize white supremacist groups, not encourage and embolden them.” [....]


    Speaker of the House actually more powerful in some ways than Senators because, AHEM: third in line for the presidency of all the people.  Cynical me just sayin...showing how he can do it better? Maybe knows something we don't?


    Don't want to sound cynical, but his Democratic opponent Randy Bryce got a fawning Rolling Stone profile and has 135K twitter followers and his campaign ad already has more views than some of Hillary's more successful 2016 ads. Pretty promising fundraising too. Ryan is even agreeing to do a Town Hall. Someone looks like they're sweating. 


    ah, thanks for sharing that, I hadn't been watching that angle, that could indeed be part of what is going on


    Lindsey Graham also said this early Sunday, I noticed it because I was following the GOP political angle:

    Graham: Trump must do more to distance himself from white supremacists

    By Mallory Shelbourne @ The Hill,  08/13/17 09:48 AM EDT

    Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Sunday said President Trump needs to do more to distance himself from white supremacists who support his presidency.

    “I would urge the president to dissuade these groups that he’s their friend,” Graham told “Fox News Sunday.”

    “I like President Trump. It’s up to him to correct the record here, not me,” Graham later added [....]

     
    But then his statement that I like President Trump is probably a lie, so there's that. wink Which doesn't make the whole any less apropos, I guess, because the whole statement is about the smart political thing to do.

    The modern Republican Partty cannot be normalized. The white supremacists came to protest the removal of a statue of a terrorist, Robert E. Lee. Most Republicans in Congress would run from discussing if Confederate statues should come down. Scratch the surface and they would be reluctant to say that white supremacists Bannon, Gorka, and Miller should be fired. The Republicans in Congress are in lockstep with Trump on issues of race. They are doing public relations.


    Lawrence O''Donnell is tearing Trump a new one regarding Trump's racism tonight. The segment will be available at MSNBC later today.

    Edit to add:

    Kevin Plank, CEO of Under Armour, quit the manufacturing council just like, Kenneth Frazier. Plank is white. We await Trump's tweet attack on Plank. His response to Frazier's departure was swift.

    http://www.marketwatch.com/story/another-ceo-under-armours-kevin-plank-q...

    2nd Edit to add:

    Intel CEO Brian Krzanich quit the manufacturing council 

    https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/14/intel-ceo-quit-trumps-manufacturing-coun...


    Charleston Post & Courier current "Top Story"

    South Carolina U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham calls for Trump to 'come down like a hammer' on white supremacists

    By Jamie Lovegrove, Aug 15, 2017 Updated 4 hrs ago

    [...] The South Carolina Republican called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to go to Virginia and "personally handle domestic terrorism investigations" and alleged civil rights abuses by the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis "who took this young woman's life." [....]

    Graham additionally proposed the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security form a task force on the threat of white supremacist groups and report back to Congress with potential solutions for cracking down on them.

    "This is an opportunity for the Trump administration to come down like a hammer on white supremacists," Graham said during a news conference in his Columbia office. "And I hope they do." [....]

    Graham pointed to Scott, the only African-American Republican currently serving in the U.S. Senate, as an indication of the racial progress the country has made.

    "At the end of the day, America is changing and South Carolina is changing for the better," Graham said. "Don't let these people drag us back into the darkness."


    Rubio did a string of six tweets on it early this evening, responding to Trump today:

    The organizers of events which inspired & led to are 100% to blame for a number of reasons. 1/6

    They are adherents of an evil ideology which argues certain people are inferior because of race, ethnicity or nation of origin. 2/6

    When entire movement built on anger & hatred towards people different than you,it justifies & ultimately leads to violence against them 3/6

    These groups today use SAME symbols & same arguments of & , groups responsible for some of worst crimes against humanity ever 4/6

    Mr. President,you can't allow to share only part of blame.They support idea which cost nation & world so much pain 5/6

    The groups will see being assigned only 50% of blame as a win.We can not allow this old evil to be resurrected 6/6

    Deep thoughts by Mitt Romney on Sat. night

    got more emphatic preacher/elder today

     


    McCain, last night:


    At least some Republicans in Congress are addressing Trump directly.


    Trump is "slamming" Lindsay Graham and Jeff Flake today

    @ Fox News:Trump slams two GOP senators who criticized him on Charlottesville

     


    Just for the record, Gardner reacted much more strongly than you have him listed, on both TV and twitter, see my post here. Part of the problem is that he did it early on


    WaPo has published  this interactive chart, major work on it:

    Where Republican senators stand on President Trump

    By Nicole Lewis, Amber Phillips, Kevin Schaul and Leslie Shapiro, Aug. 18, 2017

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