GOP To Use Bush-Rove Anti-Gay Hate Playbook To Battle Obama Re-Election
The GOP has decided to use the Bush-Rove playbook of the early 2000s campaigns to drive voters to the polls by using anti-gay hate and a focus on social issues like gay marriage, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal, religion, and abortion to battle President Obama’s re-election bid, which he announced Monday. Karl Rove, the man who claimed he would install a permanent Republican majority, used wedge issues like marriage equality to win the elections of 2000 and 2004, but left, some say in disgrace, when his tactics ultimately made his boss, George W. Bush, one of the most-unpopular presidents in recent history.
It took less than twelve hours after Obama’s announcement for the GOP’s Republican National Committee (RNC) to launch a new website, “Hope Isn’t Hiring,” as its latest Internet Alinsky-style attack against a prominent Democrat. Previous similar GOP sites included “Fire Nancy Pelosi,” “GOP Valentine,” and the now-defunct “BarackBook,” a Facebook-like parody that reportedly included statements like, “Barack Obama is now friends with Antonin ‘Tony’ Rezko.â€
Read: “What The GOP Means By “Jobs Billsâ€
“Hope Isn’t Hiring,” essentially a fundraising site for the GOP’s upcoming billion-dollar campaign against the incumbent president whose poll numbers have remained remarkably consistent — and consistently above his Republican predecessors — lists five major “issues” in tabs at the top, including “Obama’s spending, Obamacare, Obamanomics, Broken promises, and Social issues.” The latter’s headline, in an attempt to appear like a legal arraignment, states, “The Case Against Obama: Social Issues,” and includes questionable rhetoric like, “Despite It Being The Law Of The Land, Obama Refused To Continue To Defend The Defense Of Marriage Act In Court,” “Obama Repealed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell While U.S. Troops Are Still On The Battlefield,” and, “Obama Opposed California’s Prop 8 And Has Expanded Government Recognition Of Same-Sex Couples.”
Many of the statements are decidedly anti-gay and homophobic, while others continue the GOP war on women and children, re-awakened after the November 2010 elections that gave the GOP control of the House of Representatives, a majority of governorships, and a heightened presence in other state and local governments.
Read: “The GOP’s War On Women And Children“
Yet this is a major gamble on the part of the GOP, which has decided to ignore polls which find that the majority of the American people do not want their government to focus on social issues. In fact, a recent Gallup poll found that only 17% of Americans who vote or lean Republican say social issues and moral values are important, and rank them third of four major categories, after government spending and business and the economy.
The “Hope Isn’t Hiring” attack on Obama and the gay community also flies in the face of other studies which show that 51% of voters oppose DOMA, the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act that bans the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage (even conservatives are evenly split on DOMA,) and three nationwide polls that show a majority of Americans support marriage equality.
“And you’d have thought the Republican National Committee would have gotten over the gay-baiting, what will all the senior level gays working Republican Hill offices, the RNC, and considering that the former head of the RNC, Ken Mehlman, was himself gay,” wrote gay activist and blogger John Aravosis, in “RNC thinks gays shouldn’t be permitted to visit their partners’ death bed,” Monday evening. “You’d think with all of that, the RNC would know better than to start gay-baiting yet again. But the Republican party just can’t help itself. Hate, intolerance and bigotry is what they know best, whether it’s racism against blacks and Latinos, sexism against women, or homophobia against gays. If it’s not about who you’re supposed to hate today, the Republican party just isn’t interested in hearing about it,” the well-known Washington, D.C.-based blogger stated.
“It’s just mind-blogging that with all of the challenges that face us as Americans, the Republican Party apparatus would resort to this demeaning fundraising stunt so that the red-meat crowd will become energized,†said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s largest LGBT advocacy organization, Monday night.
HRC rightly points to poll after poll showing Americans of all political affiliations support the LGBT community, and offers these facts:
- According to an ABC News/Washington Post poll last year, 77 percent of Americans supported allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military. According to a November 2010 Pew Research Center Poll, 63 percent of moderate Republicans and 47 percent of Republicans overall supported open service. A May 2010 Gallup poll found that 53% of conservatives supported open service.
- Just a few weeks ago, an ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 53 percent of Americans support marriage equality. A growing number of Republicans are beginning to support the same rights, benefits and obligations for all Americans irrespective of their sexual orientation. The same ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 31 percent of Republicans overall and 29 percent of conservatives support marriage equality. Last year, the Pew Research Center found that 41 percent of moderate and liberal Republicans supported marriage for all Americans.
- According to a 2009 Pew Research  Center poll, 58 percent of Republicans believe that gays and lesbians “face a lot of discrimination.â€
It appears that the RNC has horribly misread the strong opinions of Americans. An HRC/Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research Poll conducted last month found:
- Sixty-nine percent of Americans believe that the Republican Congress is doing a fair or poor job of focusing on issues important to the American people.
- Eighty percent of Americans believe that Republican Congress is doing a fair or poor job creating jobs and improving the economy.
- Seventy-one percent of Americans believe that the Republican Congress is doing a fair or poor job of keeping their campaign promises. And 74 percent believe that the Republican majority is doing a fair or poor job of dealing with the federal deficit.
- When giving a list of priorities, 54 percent of Americans rated the economy and jobs as their top priority; only 5 percent of Americans rated gay marriage as their top priority.
What the GOP and the RNC, whose new Chair, Rence Priebus has been conspicuously quiet since his election earlier this year, decide to do next will pave the way for the 2012 elections. But it’s clear that they’ve decided to look back at what worked then, not realizing this is a new millennia, and the American people, who have changed in the past decade, have more on their minds than social issues.
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
