How Virus Politics Divided a Conservative Town in
Wisconsin’s North
A
lightly populated area in the critical swing state of Wisconsin serves as a microcosm
for the way coronavirus politics is worsening partisan schisms across America.
Kirk
Bangstad, a Democratic candidate for Wisconsin state assembly, has made
little effort to win over voters who aren’t already appalled by Republicans’
handling of the coronavirus.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New
York Times
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Oct. 29, 2020
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MINOCQUA, Wis. — When coronavirus cases
began to spike in Wisconsin this fall, Rob Swearingen kept his restaurant open
and let customers and employees decide whether they wanted to wear masks.
Mr. Swearingen, a Republican seeking his fifth term in the Wisconsin State Assembly, didn’t require
other employees at his restaurant in Rhinelander to be tested after a waitress
and a bartender contracted the virus because, he said, nobody from the local
health department suggested it was necessary.
Kirk Bangstad, Mr. Swearingen’s
Democratic opponent, took the opposite approach at the brewpub he owns in
Minocqua, 30 miles away. He has served customers only outdoors, and when a teenage
waiter became infected after attending a party, Mr. Bangstad shut down for a
long weekend and required all employees to get tested.
Mr. Bangstad has
since turned his entire campaign into a referendum on how Republicans have
handled the coronavirus. On Facebook, he has served as a town shamer, posting
lists of restaurants and stores in Wisconsin’s Northwoods that have
disregarded state limits on seating capacity and don’t require masks.
With just days until the election, the
contest for Mr. Swearingen’s Assembly seat in this lightly populated area in
the Northwoods of Wisconsin serves as a microcosm for the way coronavirus
politics are playing out across America. Mr. Bangstad is unlikely to prevail in
a Republican-heavy district that covers parts of four counties stretching south from Michigan’s
Upper Peninsula,
but his effort to make the campaign a referendum on the virus echoes that of
former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has sought to make President
Trump’s handling of the pandemic the
central issue in the presidential contest.
Mr. Bangstad, a 43-year-old
Harvard-educated former professional opera singer, moved back to Wisconsin six years
ago from Manhattan, where he was a technology consultant and served as the
policy director for Anthony
Weiner’s 2013 mayoral campaign. Like Mr. Biden, he has eschewed
traditional campaigning. He has moved his entire effort online, including in
email and on the Facebook page of his brewpub, the Minocqua
Brewing Company.
But unlike the former vice president,
Mr. Bangstad has made little effort to win over voters who aren’t already
appalled by Republicans’ handling of the coronavirus. Many of them, he said,
are being duped by false or misleading statements by the president and the
conservative news media.
“A lot of them, I
feel, haven’t been equipped with the tools of media literacy or critical
thinking skills to be able to discern if they’re being told something that
doesn’t quite jell or is not true,” he said during an interview this week at
his shuttered restaurant overlooking Lake Minocqua.
Wisconsin’s 2020
campaigns are concluding while the state is in the midst of one
of the nation’s worst coronavirus outbreaks. On Tuesday, as the state set records
for the most new cases and deaths, Gov. Tony Evers said Wisconsin faces
an “urgent crisis” and urged citizens to stay home.
Oneida County, which
includes Minocqua and Rhinelander, where Mr. Swearingen operates the
Al-Gen Dinner Club and
has lived his entire life, has a virus rate nearly twice the state average over
the past two weeks.
Scott Haskins, whose wife, Pamela, is a
waitress at the Al-Gen, is among the county’s recent fatalities. Ms. Haskins
contracted the virus after working a restaurant shift in mid-September and was
hospitalized in early October. Mr. Haskins, 63, checked into the hospital with
the virus four days after his wife, according to his daughter, Kelly Schulz.
Two days later, Mr. Haskins suffered a stroke and died.
“The day after my dad passed, Governor
Evers put in the 25 percent capacity limit, and they weren’t abiding by it,”
Ms. Schulz said of the Al-Gen. “People were posting pictures of themselves
there on Facebook and it was pretty busy for a Friday night.”
Republicans who control the state
legislature this month successfully sued Mr. Evers to overturn the capacity limits on bars and restaurants he ordered. In
Oneida County, local sheriffs and town police departments weren’t enforcing
them anyway.
Before winning
election to the Assembly, Mr. Swearingen, 57, was the president of the Tavern
League of Wisconsin, the powerful lobbying group for the state’s bars. He
fought the state’s efforts to ban smoking indoors at businesses, lift the
drinking age to 21 from 18 and lower the legal blood alcohol limit to drive.
He said his restaurant is not responsible
for employees who caught the coronavirus. No one from the local health
department ever called with questions, he said, and no contact tracers
contacted the restaurant. Mr. Swearingen said he has not had a test himself.
“There’s been no connection to the
restaurant to all these cases,” he said during an interview in the dining room
of the Al-Gen, which is bedecked with taxidermied heads of deer and black
bears. “These people are part-time, coming from different jobs and different
things.”
Of all the places where Democrats
barely bothered to compete in 2016, Wisconsin’s Northwoods may have been the
most neglected. Not only did Hillary Clinton skip
Wisconsin altogether,
county Democrats in this region didn’t even have yard signs to distribute, not
that there was much demand for them.
Mrs. Clinton was a “polarizing’’
candidate, said Matt Michalsen, a high school social studies teacher who ran
against Mr. Swearingen in 2016. “Personally, did I support her? No.”
Four years later, Mr. Bangstad has few
expectations that he will win. He sees his campaign largely as an effort to
increase Democratic turnout for Mr. Biden and cut into Mr. Trump’s margins by
focusing attention on the impact of the coronavirus on northern Wisconsin.
Mr. Bangstad wrapped the side of his
restaurant in a giant Biden-Harris sign that attracted the ire of the Oneida
County Board,
which sent a letter informing him that it exceeded the allowable size of 32
square feet. After Mr. Bangstad used the fracas to raise money and get more
attention for himself in the local press, the
board backed down.
At the same time, the
Biden campaign and local Democrats have put far more resources into northern
Wisconsin than they did four years ago. There are twice as many organizers
focused on the area than in 2016. And though the Clinton campaign swore off
yard signs as an unnecessary annoyance, the state party has made efforts to get
them in every yard that would take one.
“We distributed approximately 50 Hillary yard
signs four years ago, and we’re at more than 1,200 so far for Joe,” said Jane
Nicholson, the party chairwoman in Vilas County, just north of Oneida County.
There’s some evidence that Mr. Biden is
making up ground. A poll taken for Mr. Bangstad’s campaign this month found Mr.
Trump leading Mr. Biden in the district by five percentage points — a far cry
from his 25-point margin of victory in 2016. The same survey found Mr.
Swearingen ahead by 12 points, less than half his 26-point margin over Mr. Michalsen four years ago.
Mr. Trump won Wisconsin in 2016 by less
than 23,000 votes statewide. His gap in Mr. Swearingen’s district alone was
14,000 votes.
“If we’re in the low 40s there, that
means that we have blocked Trump’s path to pulling in the votes that he’d need
to cancel out other areas of the state,” said Ben Wikler, the chairman of the
Democratic Party of Wisconsin.
The Assembly race has engendered hurt
feelings and worsened political divisions in Minocqua, a town of about 4,000
full-time residents. Down the street from the Minocqua Brewing Company, Tracy
Lin Grigus, a Trump supporter who owns the
Shade Tree bookstore,
shook her head at Mr. Bangstad’s attempts to shame local businesses.
“On his Facebook,
he’s calling all of us up here idiots, like a mini Joe Biden,’’ said Ms.
Grigus, who doesn’t wear a mask in her store and doesn’t ask her customers to
do so. “It’s insulting to people that share the space with him and other
business owners. He’s like the only one in this town and surrounding towns that
went this far.”
Across Oneida Street,
the main drag through Minocqua’s small downtown, Casie Oldenhoff, an assistant
manager at the Monkey Business T-shirt shop, where signs instruct customers to
wear a mask, said Mr. Trump was to blame for the current wave of the pandemic.
“He’s just not taking care of us,” Ms.
Oldenhoff said. “He doesn’t care about what’s going on with the pandemic.”
Mr. Swearingen said he had little doubt
that Mr. Trump would do just as well in the Northwoods on Tuesday as he did in
2016. Enthusiasm for the president is higher, he said, as evidenced by the
regular boat and car parades adorned with Trump flags and
carrying young men concerned foremost about a Biden administration taking away
their guns.
But he said he had never been involved in
a campaign as ugly as his own this year.
“We’ve been targeted by my opponent as
a den of Covid and all sorts of rumors in Facebook,’’ he said. “I’ve never
quite had to fight against Facebook in an election. He went after a couple of
other bars in the area, and one of the bar owners was livid that that bar was
on the list. It’s like, ‘Well, who are these people? It’s the mask police or
something.’”
For Mr. Bangstad, shaming Mr.
Swearingen and other Republicans who have fought against public health guidelines
is exactly the point.
“If you’re a citizen in this state, and
there’s one branch of government that’s trying to keep people healthy from
Covid, and you have the legislative branch and the judicial branch trying to
stymie him every single time he does it, it’s the saddest thing you’ve ever
seen,” he said. “As a Wisconsinite, I’m just completely ashamed.”
Andy Mills and Luke Vander Ploeg contributed
reporting.
'Where do you live?' Up north DA's race is a tale of
two states
Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel
Doug
Muskett says the first thing many voters asked him when he began running to be
district attorney in Iron County was, "Where do you live?"
Questions
of residency have dogged incumbent DA Matthew Tingstad ever since he was
elected in 2016. Wisconsin law allows nonresidents to run for district
attorney, as long as they live in the jurisdiction if and when they take
office.
Tingstad
lived and practiced in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, just across the Montreal
River from Hurley, and defeated a Hurley native (who's consolation was
being named circuit judge a year later) to become DA.
Though
Tingstad got a Wisconsin law license after he was elected, some wonder if he's ever
really moved to Iron County. Detractors have found
that his dismissed Michigan divorce and property tax records suggest he
continued living in the U.P. years after he took office, and the place he
lists as his local residence appears to be a pole barn at an oil company
lot in Kimbell, Wisconsin.
Muskett,
a Wisconsin native with a law office in the U.P. who practices in both states,
said he'd been renting in Ironwood but moved to Hurley within a week after
he decided to run in the August primary. He needed at least 200 write-in votes
in order to get on the Nov. 3 ballot as a Democrat to challenge Tingstad, a
former professional snowmobiler, who holds the office as a Republican.
Even
with the short notice, he got closer to 300 votes. "Two hundred is a lot
of votes in Iron County," he said, where only between 600 and 700 were
cast in the primary.
Tingstad,
44, said anyone can question his residency but noted that the state has
not because he's "legit," with a state law license, driver's license,
voter registration and kids in Hurley schools.
He said
he didn't want to give a specific address to protect his wife and children and
said he still owns his home in Bessemer, Michigan, as an investment property.
"It's
not a contest to see who can live closest to the courthouse," Tingstad
said. He considers himself a native of the area, while Muskett moved here from
Missouri and decided to run just weeks before the Aug. 7 primary.
"Is
he in it for the long haul?" Tingstad said. "I've been
a consistent part of the area about 40 years."
Muskett,
36, already does some public work for Iron County, acting as corporation
counsel for civil commitments and guardianships. He said what really convinced
him to run was some officials' concerns that Tingstad wasn't devoting
enough time to termination of parental rights, or TPRs, and children in
need of protective services cases, known as CHIPS petitions, in juvenile court.
Opal
Roberts chairs the human services committee of the Iron County Board
of Supervisors. She said the committee proposed the county hire a private
attorney to handle the TPRs and CHIPS cases.
Roberts
said human services felt it would save the county money in the long run, since
it must pay to keep children in foster care while their cases languish in court
and hold up permanent placements for the children.
But the
full county board did not approve the request, instead waiting to see the
outcome of the election, as Muskett says he would get those cases done,
and it would be covered by his DA's salary.
Tingstad
said there've only been three TPRs in Iron County in the last 20 years, and
he's done them all, and has more pending.
Muskett
said after a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article about Tingstad in July,
people were pressing him to run. The story focused on Tingstad's
fraud prosecution of a retired Iron County sheriff's deputy and Hurley
firefighter over the use of a credit card, and the defense's claims that
Tingstad had acted unethically — even criminally — in pursuing the case.
A special prosecutor has since determined Tingstad should not be
charged with misconduct in office, or simulating legal process, and a
judge declined to issue a criminal complaint.
The
defense still wants Tingstad disqualified, but that motion is pending before a
judge from another county, and the underlying case, filed in 2017, doesn't have
a current trial date.
The
defendant in the fraud case, Darrell Petrusha, had also filed a complaint with
the Wisconsin Attorney General's Office about Tingstad's apparent continued
Michigan residency, with several documents to back his suspicions. But the
state declined to investigate, and Tingstad told the Journal Sentinel in July
he didn't want to talk about where he lives.
"Not
a single person I know believes (Tingstad) lives in Iron County," Muskett
said. If you're the DA, he said, "your answer shouldn't be
'I don't want to discuss that,' it should be 'Come on over for
dinner.'"
Tingstad
said if Muskett is making an issue of where Tingstad lives, he must not have
any issues with how Tingstad's performing his job as DA.
Muskett grew
up near Manitowoc, went to UW-Eau Claire and got his law degree at Washington
University in St. Louis. He practiced a while there before joining his uncle
and cousin's U.P. law office where he does both criminal and civil cases
in Michigan and Wisconsin
Tingstad
was raised not far from Hurley in Bessemer, Michigan, played junior
hockey out west before college at Northern Michigan University, and made enough
money as a freestyle snowmobiler to help pay for law school at the University
of Wyoming. After graduation, he returned to the U.P. to practice law.
In
some rural areas, district attorney is one of the few steady jobs for a
lawyer that doesn't involve lots of travel. It pays more than $100,000 a
year in Iron County. Across the Michigan border in Gogebic County, with
about three times Iron County's 5,600 population, the prosecuting attorney
earns less.
There
are no TV ads and little news coverage about the race, and with COVID-19, not
even much traditional door-knocking going on in the campaign. A week from the
election, an estimated 1,400 votes of an expected 3,500 or so have already been
cast, said Iron County Clerk Mike Saari.
Donald Trump tried to attack Former McCain Campaign Strategist Steve Schmidt (a
lifelong Republican) on Twitter and, in his reply, Schmidt didn't hold back:
>> “You’ve never beaten me at anything. This isn’t our first dance. Did you like, Covita? We are
so much better at this than your team of crooks, wife beaters, degenerates, weirdos and losers.
>> You are losing. We heard you loved Evita. You saw it so many times. Where will you live
out your years in disgrace? Will you buy Jeffrey Epstein’s island? One last extra special deal
from him? Or will you be drooling on yourself in a suite at Walter Reed? Maybe you will be in
prison?
>> I bet you fear that. The Manhattan US Attorney may not be around to cover for you or your
crooked kids anymore. Eliza Orlins doesn’t believe in different sets of rules for the Trumps.
What about the State Attorney General? You know what you’ve done.
>> Oh, Donald. Who do you owe almost $500 million in personally guaranteed loans to? It's all
coming down. You think you and your disgusting family are going to be in deal-flow next year?
Are you really that delusional?
>> You are lucky Chris Wallace interrupted you after Joe Biden said you weren’t smart. You
started to melt down. That’s the place that hurts the most. Right? Fred Sr., knew it. You’ve spent
your whole life proving it. You aren’t very smart. You couldn’t take the SAT on your own. What
was the real score? 970? We both know you know.
>> Are the steroids wearing off? Is the euphoria fading? Do you feel foggy? Tired? Do you
ache? How is the breathing? Hmmm. Are you watching TV today? We will have some nice
surprises for you. Everyone is laughing at you. You are a joke. A splendid moron turned deadly
clown.
>> Did you watch Senate candidate Martha McSally in her Arizona debate against American
hero, fighter pilot, test pilot, astronaut Capt. Mark Kelly? She is so embarrassed by you. She is
ashamed and full of self-loathing for the choice she made in following you over the cliff. She is in
free fall now. She will lose, like most of them, because of you.
>> We hear from the White House and the campaign everyday. They are betraying you. They
are looking to get out alive and salvage careers and their names. It’s Ivanka Trump and Jared
Kushner vs. Donald Trump Jr., and Kimberly Guilfoyle on the inside. They are at war over
scraps and who gets to command what will be the remnants of your rancid cult.
>> It’s almost over now. You are the greatest failure in American history. You are the worst
president in American history. Disgrace will always precede your name. Your grandchildren and
great-grandchildren will grow up ashamed of their names.
>> One day, I suppose there will be some small and not-much-visited library that bears your
name. It will be the type of place where a drunk walks by, staring at the wall for a minute, before
deciding it is beneath his dignity to piss on. That’s what is waiting for you.
>> Joe Biden is a better man. He’s smarter. He’s winning.
>> Do you remember when you didn’t want to name Donald Trump Jr., Donald because you
were worried about him being a loser named Donald? You were right about that. He is.
>> But it is you who will be remembered as America’s greatest loser. You will be crushed in the
election!”
>>
>>
Prestigious medical
journal calls for US leadership to be voted out over Covid-19 failure
By Jacqueline Howard, CNN
(CNN)In an
unprecedented move, the New
England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday published an editorial
written by its editors condemning the Trump administration for its response to
the Covid-19 pandemic -- and calling for the current leadership in the United
States to be voted out of office.
"We rarely publish editorials signed by all the
editors," said Dr. Eric Rubin, editor-in-chief of the medical journal and
an author of the new editorial.
The editorial, which Rubin said was drafted in August, details
how the United
States leads the world in Covid-19 cases and deaths. So far, more than
7.5 million people in the United States have been diagnosed with Covid-19 and
more than 200,000 people have died of the disease.
"This crisis has produced a test of leadership. With no
good options to combat a novel pathogen, countries were forced to make hard
choices about how to respond. Here in the United States, our leaders have
failed that test. They have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy,"
the editorial says.
It does not endorse a candidate, but offers a scathing critique
of the Trump administration's leadership during the pandemic.
"Anyone else who recklessly squandered lives and money in
this way would be suffering legal consequences. Our leaders have largely
claimed immunity for their actions. But this election gives us the power to
render judgment," the editorial says. "When it comes to the response
to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders
have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. We should not abet
them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep
their jobs."
The New England Journal of Medicine began publishing in 1812.
There have been only four previous editorials collectively signed by its
editors in the recent past: one in 2014 about contraception; an obituary that same year
for a former editor-in-chief; an editorial that year about standard-of-care
research and an editorial in 2019 about abortion.
"The reason we've never published an editorial about
elections is we're not a political journal and I don't think that we want to be
a political journal -- but the issue here is around fact, not around opinion.
There have been many mistakes made that were not only foolish but reckless and
I think we want people to realize that there are truths here, not just
opinions," Rubin said.
"For example, masks work. Social distancing works.
Quarantine and isolation work. They're not opinions. Deciding not to use them
is maybe a political decision but trying to suggest that they're not real is
imaginary and dangerous," he said. "We don't have the right leaders
for this epidemic. I think we need better leadership."
The New England Journal of Medicine is not the only medical or
scientific publication to take a political stance amid the pandemic and ahead
of this November's presidential election.
In September, the magazine Scientific
American announced it was endorsing former vice president and
Democratic candidate Joe Biden over President Trump, who it criticized for
dismissing science. That announcement marked the publication's first
endorsement of a presidential candidate in its 175-year history.
Levin
Report
Trump Casually Confirms Medicare Is on the Chopping
Block
From “I’m not going to cut
Medicare or Medicaid” to hell yes I’m coming for your social safety net.
By Bess Levin
Something you’ve probably noticed about Donald Trump
by now is that the man is a full-fledged pathological liar. Whether it‘s
big lies like “imminent” attacks on Americans or small lies
like the number of
people at a Beto O’Rourke rally, if there’s an opportunity to lie,
the 45th president of the United States will jump on it like a spread of fast food laid out on the
White House’s finest china. For Donald J. Trump, no lie is too ridiculous, as
evidenced by the claims that Hurricane Dorian was going to hit
Alabama, that Ivanka Trump has created 14 million jobs, and that he,
Donald Trump, “saved” the
pre-existing provision in Obamacare. Some people collect stamps or take up
Jazzercise—Donald Trump lies.
And while many of Trump’s lies are stupid and
pointless and have little effect other than to potentially drive a person to
scream “Jesus Christ do you ever tell the truth about anything you unrepentant
lunatic,” other lies very much impact people’s lives. For instance, the one he told on the 2016
campaign trail about how he will never touch Medicare (or Social Security, for
that matter), which he basically admitted on Wednesday was another one of his
patented whoppers. (Without actually admitting it, of course; the Second Law of
Trump Lies is to never, ever cop to the fact that he’s completely full of shit,
even if there is literally audio or video proving as
much.)
In an interview with CNBC, Trump was asked, “Entitlements
ever [going to] be on your plate?” To which the man who said “I’m not going to
cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut
Medicare or Medicaid” responded, “At some point they will be. We have
tremendous growth. We’re going to have tremendous growth. This next year
I—it’ll be toward the end of the year. The growth is going to be incredible.
And at the right time, we will take a look at that. You know, that’s actually
the easiest of all things, if you look, cause it’s such a big percentage.”
Asked specifically about Medicaid, Trump told host Joe Kernen,
“We’re going to look” and then launched into a typical speech about how he‘s
done so much for African Americans, who despise
him, and failing to give his predecessor any credit whatsoever for the
numbers.
That Trump would lie about a plan to slash
“entitlements” obviously comes as little surprise, given that lies for him are
like oxygen for other living things. Also, there was a hint about it last
August, when Senator John Barrasso told the New York Times
that Republicans had brought up the prospect of gutting “Social Security,
Medicare and other contributors” to the budget deficit to the president, who
reportedly “talked about it being a second-term project.” So this must be very
exciting for them.
|
What is your vote plan? Wisconsinites can now cast
their ballot in-person starting today (October 20) during the early voting
period. Voters can request and vote an
absentee ballot in-person in their municipal clerk’s office or other
designated early vote location possibly through November 1, 2020. Office hours vary by municipality.
Some municipalities may not offer weekend in-person absentee hours. Contact your municipal clerk for absentee voting hours.
There’s no time like now to
cast your ballot for Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and all labor-endorsed
2020 candidates on the ballot this fall. Help us turn out the union vote.
Join our virtual phone banks to union families at wisaflcio.org/mobilize.
If you have requested an absentee ballot by mail, track your ballot at
https://myvote.wi.gov/en-us/TrackMyBallot. Check to make sure your
ballot is processed. Joe Biden has a plan to create
millions of good-paying, family-supporting union jobs, promote worker safety,
and put working people first during this unprecedented economic downturn.
Biden respects the dignity of work and is proud to support working people,
our unions, and our middle class. Use your power. Use your voice.
Be a 2020 voter. In Solidarity, Stephanie Bloomingdale,
President Dennis Delie,
Secretary-Treasurer |
Democratic vs Republican Stand on Controversial
Issues*
The Democrats and Republicans have varying ideas on many
hot button issues, some of which are listed below. These are broadly
generalized opinions; it must be noted that there are many politicians in each party who have different and
more nuanced positions on these issues.
Social Programs
Democrats across the board believe that
government should run such programs
as
Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, unemployment benefits, and
programs that support seniors and people in
need. They believe more tax dollars
should
be funneled into these programs.
Republicans question the need for these
programs and want to abolish many of
them,
favoring private businesses to take over select ones.
Tax Policy
Both parties favor tax cuts, but each party
takes a different view on where those
tax cuts should be applied. The Democrats
believe there should only be cuts for
middle-
and low-income families but believe that taxes should be higher for
wealthy individuals and corporations. The Republicans believe there
should be
tax
cuts but only for those in the higher income brackets and corporations.
Democrats support progressive taxes. A progressive tax system is one
where
high-income individuals pay taxes at a higher
rate. This is the how federal
income tax brackets are currently set up. For example, the first $10,000
in
income is taxed at 10% but income over $420,000 is taxed at 39.6%.
Some Republicans are proponents of a "flat tax"
where all people pay the same percentage of their income in taxes regardless of
income level. This would result in middle- and low-income earners paying the
same tax rate as wealthy individuals.
Minimum Wage
Democrats favor an increase in the minimum wage to help
workers.
Republicans oppose raising the minimum wage claiming it
hurts businesses.
Abortion
Democrats support a woman’s right to choose and keeping
elective abortions legal and safe.
Republicans do not believe in a woman’s right to choose
and believe abortions should not be legal and that Roe v. Wade should be overturned.
Gun control laws
Democrats favor preserving the Second Amendment while
adopting gun controls laws that require strict background checks to keep guns
out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill. They believe this will help prevent massacres
like those that have occurred in the nation’s schools.
Republicans oppose gun control laws.
Democrats are reluctant to using military force against
countries like Iran, Syria, and Libya.
Republicans have a more hard line stance against
countries like Iran, with a higher tendency to deploy the military option.
Energy
Issues and the Environment
There have always been clashes between the
parties on the issues of energy and
the environment. Democrats believe in
restricting drilling for oil or other avenues
of
fossil fuels to protect the environment while Republicans favor expanded
drilling and dismiss the idea that it has a
negative environmental impact.
Democrats support alternative energy
solutions, such as solar and wind power,
while the Republicans favor allowing the
market to decide which forms of
energy are practical. Republicans also deny
that there is a climate warming
problem which threatens future
generations.
Democrats are progressive in their views,
believing that crimes which do not
involve violence, such as using drugs, should
have lighter penalties and
rehabilitation. They are also against capital
punishment.
Republicans generally believe in harsher
penalties when someone has committed
a
crime, including for selling and the use of illegal drugs. They also generally
favor
capital punishment.
The parties have different views on the
education system of the country, but
both agree there needs to be change.
Democrats favor more progressive
approaches to education, such as
implementing the Common Core System,
while Republicans tend to favor more
conservative changes such as longer hours
and more focused programs. They are also
divided on student loans for college,
with Democrats favoring giving students more
money in the form of loans and
grants
while Republicans favor promoting the private sector giving loans.
Foreign Policy
U.S. foreign policy has traditionally been relatively
consistent between Democratic and Republican administrations. Key allies have
always been other Western powers like the UK, France. Allies in the middle east
were—and continue to remain—countries like Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain.
Nevertheless, some differences can be seen based on the
Obama administration's handling of relations with certain countries. For
example, Israel and the U.S. have always been strong allies. A major
contributor to tension has been the Obama administration's Iran policy. The
U.S. tightened sanctions on Iran in Obama's first term but negotiated a deal in
the second term that allowed international inspections of Iranian nuclear
facilities. The U.S. and Iran also found common ground against the threat from
ISIS.
Republicans in
Congress opposed the Iran deal and the easing of sanctions against Iran.
Another country where the Democratic Obama administration
reversed decades of U.S. policy is Cuba. Republican Rand Paul supported the
unfreezing of relations with Cuba but his opinion is not shared by a majority
of Republicans. Republicans like
presidential contenders Marco Rubio and Ted
Cruz have publicly
opposed the normalization of relations with Cuba.
Politicians from both parties are often heard saying that
"The immigration system in this country is broken." However, the
political divide has been too wide to let any bipartisan legislation pass to
"fix" the system with "comprehensive immigration reform."
In general, the Democratic Party is considered more
sympathetic to the immigrant cause. There is widespread support among Democrats
for the DREAM Act which grants conditional residency (and permanent
residency upon meeting further qualifications) to immigrants who came to the U.S. when they
were minors.
Republicans have been opposed to the act.
Republicans favor legal immigration to be
"merit-based" or "point-based". Such systems allow entry
visas only to individuals with in-demand skills who can contribute to the
economy. The flip side of such a system is that not enough visas may be
available for family-based immigration.
A merit-based system is also the opposite of the what the
Democrats profess: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore."
Abraham Lincoln belonged to the Republican Party, so the
roots of the party lie in individual freedom and the abolition of slavery.
Indeed, 82% of the Republicans in the U.S.
Senate voted in favor
of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 while
69% of Democrats did, but that was because the then strong Southern wing
of the Democratic party was vehemently opposed to civil rights legislation.
In any case, the present dynamic is that minorities like Hispanics and African Americans and are much more likely to vote Democratic than Republican. There are prominent
African American Republicans like Colin Powell who have now said they will vote
democratic.
Democrats criticize the GOP for pushing for voter ID laws. They believe that these laws disenfranchise
senior, black and Hispanic voters who tend to be poorer and unable to obtain ID
cards
Republicans believe these laws are necessary to prevent
voter fraud while it has been proven that voter fraud is virtually non-existent.
*Compiled
from several published articles.
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