Examples of GOP Leadership

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Please, not this!!

PAC to draft Tucker Carlson for president launches
A political action committee to get former Fox News host Tucker Carlson to run for president is making its launch with an ad that praises him for mocking “woke nonsense” — and is aiming to pull the GOP presidential field to the right.
The Draft Tucker PAC, a hybrid PAC that filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission in late April shortly after Carlson was ousted from Fox News, debuted an ad on Thursday evening that is set for an initial weeklong ad on the conservative Newsmax cable channel next week.

“Republicans need a new leader, and Tucker Carlson is ready to lead,” the ad says. “No one in America is more articulate and pins down leftists in both parties better than Tucker.”

It compares the former Fox News host to the late radio host Rush Limbaugh.
“Tucker Carlson is witty, sharp, and mocks woke nonsense,” the ad says. “Tucker will whip Biden in a debate.”

Chris Ekstrom, a former Texas congressional candidate and GOP donor, is the PAC’s chairman and a financial backer of it.
Ekstrom said he knows Carlson “vaguely,” and that he was approached about forming the PAC prior to Carlson being terminated by Fox News, but thought it was not feasible if he was still a primetime host. But with that concern now gone, he thinks a Carlson presidential run is a “realistic opportunity.” He finds neither former President Trump nor Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) “fully satisfactory.”

“I’m very concerned that they’re going to not move the debate as far right as it ought to be,” Ekstrom said. “If Tucker Carlson entered the race in a reasonable amount of time and just continued in the same territory that he was covering at Fox, I think that’d be a rude awakening for both President Trump and Governor DeSantis.”

Charlie Kolean, a GOP political consultant who is working as the PAC’s executive director, thinks voter enthusiasm for Carlson can also influence the rest of the primary field.

“I think it will move the conversation to the right, just in a macro way, with candidates taking more solid stances rather than being like a moderate Republican,” Kolean told The Hill.

Carlson has repeatedly dismissed the idea of a White House run, saying in 2021 that he could do it if he was “the last person on earth” and joking about a run earlier this month, telling an Insider reporter that he would announce a presidential run in New Hampshire before saying: “Totally kidding. Sorry.”

But that has not kept his fans from urging him to make the jump.
Republican presidential candidate and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy said when Carlson was ousted from Fox News that he would make “a good addition to the race.”

Kolean said that even if Carlson is not seriously considering a presidential run right now, the recruitment campaign makes sense for those who want to see him as a candidate. He noted former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson launched a 2016 run despite previously saying he had no desire to do so after a well-funded Draft Ben Carson super PAC formed.

Ekstrom said he thinks Carlson has been “testing the water for quite a while,” including speaking at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa in 2022, an event that traditionally has been a stop for potential presidential candidates.

Kolean said the PAC is “exceptionally well-funded,” and that it will “easily” spend at least $150,000 just building name recognition alone. The group aims to sponsor polls and expand to radio and digital ads. Its yet-to-be-announced board will be made up of “major conservatives.”

“I can tell you that money is not going to be a problem,” Ekstrom said.
thehill.com

PAC to draft Tucker Carlson for president launches

A political action committee to get former Fox News host Tucker Carlson to run for president is making its launch with an ad that praises him for mocking “woke nonsense” — and is aiming to pull the…
thehill.com thehill.com
 
cannabineer

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
printer said:
Please, not this!!

PAC to draft Tucker Carlson for president launches
A political action committee to get former Fox News host Tucker Carlson to run for president is making its launch with an ad that praises him for mocking “woke nonsense” — and is aiming to pull the GOP presidential field to the right.
The Draft Tucker PAC, a hybrid PAC that filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission in late April shortly after Carlson was ousted from Fox News, debuted an ad on Thursday evening that is set for an initial weeklong ad on the conservative Newsmax cable channel next week.

“Republicans need a new leader, and Tucker Carlson is ready to lead,” the ad says. “No one in America is more articulate and pins down leftists in both parties better than Tucker.”

It compares the former Fox News host to the late radio host Rush Limbaugh.
“Tucker Carlson is witty, sharp, and mocks woke nonsense,” the ad says. “Tucker will whip Biden in a debate.”

Chris Ekstrom, a former Texas congressional candidate and GOP donor, is the PAC’s chairman and a financial backer of it.
Ekstrom said he knows Carlson “vaguely,” and that he was approached about forming the PAC prior to Carlson being terminated by Fox News, but thought it was not feasible if he was still a primetime host. But with that concern now gone, he thinks a Carlson presidential run is a “realistic opportunity.” He finds neither former President Trump nor Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) “fully satisfactory.”

“I’m very concerned that they’re going to not move the debate as far right as it ought to be,” Ekstrom said. “If Tucker Carlson entered the race in a reasonable amount of time and just continued in the same territory that he was covering at Fox, I think that’d be a rude awakening for both President Trump and Governor DeSantis.”

Charlie Kolean, a GOP political consultant who is working as the PAC’s executive director, thinks voter enthusiasm for Carlson can also influence the rest of the primary field.

“I think it will move the conversation to the right, just in a macro way, with candidates taking more solid stances rather than being like a moderate Republican,” Kolean told The Hill.

Carlson has repeatedly dismissed the idea of a White House run, saying in 2021 that he could do it if he was “the last person on earth” and joking about a run earlier this month, telling an Insider reporter that he would announce a presidential run in New Hampshire before saying: “Totally kidding. Sorry.”

But that has not kept his fans from urging him to make the jump.
Republican presidential candidate and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy said when Carlson was ousted from Fox News that he would make “a good addition to the race.”

Kolean said that even if Carlson is not seriously considering a presidential run right now, the recruitment campaign makes sense for those who want to see him as a candidate. He noted former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson launched a 2016 run despite previously saying he had no desire to do so after a well-funded Draft Ben Carson super PAC formed.

Ekstrom said he thinks Carlson has been “testing the water for quite a while,” including speaking at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa in 2022, an event that traditionally has been a stop for potential presidential candidates.

Kolean said the PAC is “exceptionally well-funded,” and that it will “easily” spend at least $150,000 just building name recognition alone. The group aims to sponsor polls and expand to radio and digital ads. Its yet-to-be-announced board will be made up of “major conservatives.”

“I can tell you that money is not going to be a problem,” Ekstrom said.
thehill.com

PAC to draft Tucker Carlson for president launches

A political action committee to get former Fox News host Tucker Carlson to run for president is making its launch with an ad that praises him for mocking “woke nonsense” — and is aiming to pull the…
thehill.com thehill.com
Click to expand...
because this is the face of a true leader.

1684611811658.jpeg
 
printer

printer

Well-Known Member
Abortion battles fuel push against ballot measures
After a string of defeats at the ballot in red and purple states in the 2022 election, a growing number of GOP-controlled state legislatures and anti-abortion groups are pushing back.
They are working to restrict or even ban citizen-led ballot initiatives, which have been used by progressive groups to bypass conservative lawmakers.

Some of the proposals set new requirements for signature gathering, making it more difficult to put a question on the ballot. Others would raise the passage threshold to 60 percent or higher, rather than a simple majority.
The pushback has been building for several years, as voters tried to circumvent GOP opposition to policies like Medicaid expansion, marijuana legalization, family leave and mandatory minimum wage.

“We started to notice this in 2017. After a wave of progressive ballot measures were passed, we started to see an uptick. And then it really started to escalate in 2020 and 2021,” said Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, executive director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, an organization that supports progressive ballot measures.

Then last June, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and local activists sought to protect abortion in their states.
That “threw fuel on the fire when it comes to efforts to restrict ballot measures,” Hannah Ledford, deputy executive director and campaigns director of the ballot measure group Fairness Project, said in an email.
Every state that put abortion on the ballot in 2022 voted in favor of protecting access to the procedure in some way, including Republican-leaning Kentucky and Kansas.

“Last year was a wake up call for us as the pro-life movement for how much work we have to do,” said Kelsey Pritchard, the state public affairs director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America (SBA).

Pritchard noted abortion rights groups spent tens of millions of dollars across the country last year, and said SBA and the anti-abortion movement needs to be much more proactive in its messaging leading up to 2024.

The latest fight is happening in Ohio, where a coalition of abortion rights groups have been gathering signatures to put a constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would allow legal abortion up until the point of fetal viability, at about 24 weeks.

Ohio passed a six week abortion ban shortly after Roe was overturned, but it is currently on hold by a court. Abortion is still legal for up to 22 weeks.
The state ballot board certified the amendment in March, allowing the groups to move ahead with gathering the more than 400,000 validated signatures needed to put the question to voters.

Marcela Azevedo, president of Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights, said the groups are on target to meet the July deadline for submitting the signatures, and predicted the measure would pass in November.

But GOP lawmakers are simultaneously trying to change the state’s rules on ballot measures that have been in place for more than 100 years.
Lawmakers last week voted to create a special election in August, in order to put their own constitutional amendment on the ballot. It would need support from only 50 percent of voters, but if passed, it would raise the threshold of all future measures to a 60 percent supermajority.
“This August election, it’s obviously extremely undemocratic,” Azevedo said. “These extremist politicians … they’re trying to cheat the system.”

Ballot measures are expensive and challenging undertakings, and efforts to change the signature requirements or increase the threshold for passage would make them even more so.

“What we’re seeing across the country is a power grab of who gets to say and get to participate in our democracy. And it really is an undermining of the will of people,” Melody Fields Figueredo said.

The disconnect between politicians and the voters is only growing as legislative districts become more gerrymandered and partisanship increases.

Since 2017, voters in seven states have passed Medicaid expansion through ballot measures when their state government refused to. Voters in a dozen states have passed minimum wage increases since 2013.

Mike Gonidakis, the longtime president of the anti-abortion group Ohio Right to Life, said he helped push the amendment for the 60 percent threshold over the finish line in the state legislature.

Gonidakis said abortion is a “policy decision” that should be made by elected representatives, not enshrined in the constitution.

“They want to put weed in our constitution next, you know, mandatory minimum wage, abortion. Those are policy decisions that we have elections every two, four years, to elect men and women to the legislature to make those decisions. Our Constitution needs to be protected,” Gonidakis said.
“We will have an election and you can decide if it should be 50 or 60 percent. And that’s democracy at its finest,” Gonidakis said.
Aside from Ohio, legislatures in North Dakota, South Dakota, Idaho, Arizona, Missouri, Florida, and Arkansas all discussed efforts to block or limit citizen-sponsored ballot initiatives.

Arkansas voters previously rejected a 2022 effort to make it harder to get a constitutional amendment ballot question, but then in March the legislature passed similar requirements as a bill, which Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) signed into law.
A Missouri bill would have required a 57 percent majority to approve constitutional amendments, but senators couldn’t break a filibuster to pass it this session.

Getting a ballot measure enacted is already difficult in Florida, where a 60 percent vote is required to approve a change to a constitutional amendment. Lawmakers this session considered increasing it to 67 percent.
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) also recently signed a six-week abortion ban.

Still, a coalition of abortion rights groups including local chapters of Planned Parenthood and the ACLU this month launched a citizen-led ballot initiative campaign to try to put abortion protections on the ballot in Florida.
thehill.com

Abortion battles fuel push against ballot measures

After a string of defeats at the ballot in red and purple states in the 2022 election, a growing number of GOP-controlled state legislatures and anti-abortion groups are pushing back. They are work…
thehill.com thehill.com
 
Last edited:
Roger A. Shrubber

Roger A. Shrubber

Well-Known Member
printer said:
Abortion battles fuel push against ballot measures
After a string of defeats at the ballot in red and purple states in the 2022 election, a growing number of GOP-controlled state legislatures and anti-abortion groups are pushing back.
They are working to restrict or even ban citizen-led ballot initiatives, which have been used by progressive groups to bypass conservative lawmakers.

Some of the proposals set new requirements for signature gathering, making it more difficult to put a question on the ballot. Others would raise the passage threshold to 60 percent or higher, rather than a simple majority.
The pushback has been building for several years, as voters tried to circumvent GOP opposition to policies like Medicaid expansion, marijuana legalization, family leave and mandatory minimum wage.

“We started to notice this in 2017. After a wave of progressive ballot measures were passed, we started to see an uptick. And then it really started to escalate in 2020 and 2021,” said Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, executive director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, an organization that supports progressive ballot measures.

Then last June, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and local activists sought to protect abortion in their states.
That “threw fuel on the fire when it comes to efforts to restrict ballot measures,” Hannah Ledford, deputy executive director and campaigns director of the ballot measure group Fairness Project, said in an email.
Every state that put abortion on the ballot in 2022 voted in favor of protecting access to the procedure in some way, including Republican-leaning Kentucky and Kansas.

“Last year was a wake up call for us as the pro-life movement for how much work we have to do,” said Kelsey Pritchard, the state public affairs director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America (SBA).

Pritchard noted abortion rights groups spent tens of millions of dollars across the country last year, and said SBA and the anti-abortion movement needs to be much more proactive in its messaging leading up to 2024.

The latest fight is happening in Ohio, where a coalition of abortion rights groups have been gathering signatures to put a constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would allow legal abortion up until the point of fetal viability, at about 24 weeks.

Ohio passed a six week abortion ban shortly after Roe was overturned, but it is currently on hold by a court. Abortion is still legal for up to 22 weeks.
The state ballot board certified the amendment in March, allowing the groups to move ahead with gathering the more than 400,000 validated signatures needed to put the question to voters.

Marcela Azevedo, president of Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights, said the groups are on target to meet the July deadline for submitting the signatures, and predicted the measure would pass in November.

But GOP lawmakers are simultaneously trying to change the state’s rules on ballot measures that have been in place for more than 100 years.
Lawmakers last week voted to create a special election in August, in order to put their own constitutional amendment on the ballot. It would need support from only 50 percent of voters, but if passed, it would raise the threshold of all future measures to a 60 percent supermajority.
“This August election, it’s obviously extremely undemocratic,” Azevedo said. “These extremist politicians … they’re trying to cheat the system.”

Ballot measures are expensive and challenging undertakings, and efforts to change the signature requirements or increase the threshold for passage would make them even more so.

“What we’re seeing across the country is a power grab of who gets to say and get to participate in our democracy. And it really is an undermining of the will of people,” Melody Fields Figueredo said.

The disconnect between politicians and the voters is only growing as legislative districts become more gerrymandered and partisanship increases.

Since 2017, voters in seven states have passed Medicaid expansion through ballot measures when their state government refused to. Voters in a dozen states have passed minimum wage increases since 2013.

Mike Gonidakis, the longtime president of the anti-abortion group Ohio Right to Life, said he helped push the amendment for the 60 percent threshold over the finish line in the state legislature.

Gonidakis said abortion is a “policy decision” that should be made by elected representatives, not enshrined in the constitution.

“They want to put weed in our constitution next, you know, mandatory minimum wage, abortion. Those are policy decisions that we have elections every two, four years, to elect men and women to the legislature to make those decisions. Our Constitution needs to be protected,” Gonidakis said.
“We will have an election and you can decide if it should be 50 or 60 percent. And that’s democracy at its finest,” Gonidakis said.
Aside from Ohio, legislatures in North Dakota, South Dakota, Idaho, Arizona, Missouri, Florida, and Arkansas all discussed efforts to block or limit citizen-sponsored ballot initiatives.

Arkansas voters previously rejected a 2022 effort to make it harder to get a constitutional amendment ballot question, but then in March the legislature passed similar requirements as a bill, which Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) signed into law.
A Missouri bill would have required a 57 percent majority to approve constitutional amendments, but senators couldn’t break a filibuster to pass it this session.

Getting a ballot measure enacted is already difficult in Florida, where a 60 percent vote is required to approve a change to a constitutional amendment. Lawmakers this session considered increasing it to 67 percent.
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) also recently signed a six-week abortion ban.

Still, a coalition of abortion rights groups including local chapters of Planned Parenthood and the ACLU this month launched a citizen-led ballot initiative campaign to try to put abortion protections on the ballot in Florida.
thehill.com

Abortion battles fuel push against ballot measures

After a string of defeats at the ballot in red and purple states in the 2022 election, a growing number of GOP-controlled state legislatures and anti-abortion groups are pushing back. They are work…
thehill.com thehill.com
Click to expand...
The republicans are so fucked, anything they do is just a delaying measure, a few more stolen days...
with it taking the DOJ this long to do FUCKING ANYTHING....i'm really hoping for a rico case that will get rid of pretty much the whole freedumb carcass and several more radical fucknut seditionists. That will crank the party wide open, and all those stolen state legislatures won't have any support from dc at all.
There's also a lot more talk by a lot more influential people about expanding the supreme court to 13, which would curb the republicans advantage there, and would also offset the worse that the circuit courts are doing as well.
Just imagine, gerrymandering fights going all the way to a supreme court where they would actually have a chance.
 
Budzbuddha

Budzbuddha

Well-Known Member
Nothing to see here folks - just another authoritarian piece of shit …. Peeling an orange.

( subliminal ? ) …. De Shithead stripping florida clean ? Dig at the Fat Orange ?

Then again , Fuck this guy. May he get rainbow ass hammered by Mickey , goofy and all the clan.

And Fuck Time Magazine for wasting paper on Himmler’s love child.


IMG_4783.jpeg
 
cannabineer

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
Budzbuddha said:
Nothing to see here folks - just another authoritarian piece of shit …. Peeling an orange.

( subliminal ? ) …. De Shithead stripping florida clean ? Dig at the Fat Orange ?

Then again , Fuck this guy. May he get rainbow ass hammered by Mickey , goofy and all the clan.

And Fuck Time Magazine for wasting paper on Himmler’s love child.


View attachment 5292614
Click to expand...
aside from the obvious personal insult, maybe that’s him dismantling Florida’s economy …
 
cannabineer

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
Roger A. Shrubber said:
and sometimes the answer is "Both"....He IS a world class asshole, and the photographer WAS trying to imply something (i don't believe desantis can see enough shades of grey to come up with anything that isn't painfully obvious, so whatever is being implied, is being implied by the photographer, and not desantis.)
Click to expand...
option 3 is that unSanitary has a campaign advisor who thought it up.
 
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