Some of the seven Democrats who voted for Noem say they'd now oppose her in the wake of Trump's aggressive deportation plans and last week's incident involving Sen. Alex Padilla.

Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who voted against Noem, tore into her performance.

“It’s really hard to imagine someone doing a worse job as the secretary of homeland security,” Schiff said in an interview. “The draconian, inconsistent, inflammatory immigration policies; the lawlessness; the rendering of people outside the country to maximum-security prisons; the arrest of U.S. citizens; the constant, bizarre spectacle of her doing dress-up outside of a maximum-security prison; or in her various cosplay. It’s embarrassing, and it takes the focus off of what should be the heart of that job, and that is protecting our homeland security.”

  • Basic Glitch@lemm.eeOPEnglish
    14·
    1 day ago

    Exactly, especially when you look at how we got here.

    The Real Origins of the Religious Right

    This should be mandatory reading for all Democrats.

    You’re competing with advertisement campaigns that were persuasive enough to convince most people to vote for things they didn’t even support.

    Democrats picked up on the advertising part, but somehow haven’t realized that nobody is going to be persuaded by the moderate compromise bullshit. That is exactly what the Republicans were doing when Paul Weyrich got frustrated and started looking to civil rights organizations to strategize a movement to invigorate the right. It was quite successful.

    How do you pursuade? You at least pretend you have fucking skin in the game. You worry about your donors and what they will think second to your principles. You at least pretend you care more about what is happening than holding on to a position for 40+ fucking years as the country burns around you.

    Weyrich hailed as conservative pioneer

    Joining his boss, Colorado Republican Sen. Gordon Allot, one day at a meeting with civil rights and other left-leaning groups, Weyrich watched the liberal activists strategize as a coalition and was inspired to create a parallel apparatus on the right.

    “Here, before my eyes, was the whole panoply laid out,” Weyrich told reporter Ron Brownstein years later for a book on the rise of political partisanship in the capital. “I had seen the effectiveness, but I didn’t know the mechanics.”

    In 1973, Weyrich co-founded the Heritage Foundation with Edward Feulner, creating what would eventually be the dominant think tank on the conservative landscape. Initially funded by the Coors family, Heritage helped provide ideas and issues to the many young conservatives who were running for office in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and who would eventually become the party’s leaders.

    “In the early ‘70s, when most conservatives were reduced to wringing their hands and resigning themselves to life in the political wilderness, Paul just seemed to know what was needed to break the liberal stranglehold,” recalled Feulner.

    This is exactly where the Democrats are over 50 years later. Reduced to hand wringing and afraid to step out of line.

    There is a reason Weyrich partnered with people like Falwell and used fire and brimstone messaging. It gets attention. It refuses to compromise. It’s not worried about saying the wrong thing. It doesn’t really matter what you’re trying to get people to support. People are compelled to follow it based on the way it makes them feel. The feeling is what convinces.

    Weyrich has been dead for almost 2 decades, but people in the White House are continuing to use this same strategy, and usually just recycle his old playbooks bc they’re not as smart or creative as this evil bastard was. Take back the fucking narrative!

    • AlteredEgo@lemmy.ml
      1·
      1 day ago

      The democrats focus on LGBT, women and immigrant issues. Ultimately the big money will only come for causes that benefits big money, so you have to find other causes to distract from that.