QAnon

Thursday November 10, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday November 10, 2022

Trump team pushes to delay 2024 launch as DeSantis star rises in GOP

Former president Donald Trump’s standing as the dominant figure in the Republican Party was challenged Tuesday night by a string of election results that even some of his advisers viewed as wounding to his political future.

February 4, 2021

Trump is taking blame from Republicans for disappointing performances by many of the candidates he backed, at the same time that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis won a landslide reelection, instantly elevating his profile as a serious 2024 presidential contender.

In a sign of Trump’s diminished and newly uncertain footing, some longtime allies are now encouraging Trump to delay a presidential announcement he had planned for next week as a victory lap for a red wave that didn’t materialize.

“Republican chairmen across a wide spectrum of states were counting on Donald Trump to deliver victory for them last night and he didn’t, they are let down,” David Urban, a top adviser to Trump’s winning 2016 campaign in Pennsylvania and a longtime ally, said Wednesday. “It is clear the center of gravity of the Republican Party is in the state of Florida, and I don’t mean Mar-a-Lago.”

February 26, 2021

The immediate cause for Trump advisers to discuss delaying his promised “very big announcement” scheduled for Tuesday at Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach, Fla., resort, was a Senate runoff in Georgia. Trump’s handpicked Senate candidate, football legend Herschel Walker, trailed incumbent Democrat Raphael G. Warnock by about 1 point as of Wednesday afternoon, with neither candidate clearing 50%, leading to a runoff on Dec. 6.

“Everything is about Herschel. I’ll be advising him to put it off until after the runoff,” said Jason Miller, a longtime adviser and sometime spokesman for Trump. “I’m not alone when I say President Trump’s best moves are to put all his efforts to get Herschel Walker elected.”

Trump has been eager to jump into the 2024 race, to the point that he kicked off a last-ditch scramble by aides and Republican leaders to stop him from announcing his candidacy on Monday night, on the eve of the election. Instead, Trump said he would make an announcement next Tuesday.

October 10, 2020

But the election returns so far have failed to add up to the blowout Trump was hoping to capitalize on, and he gave only brief, subdued remarks Tuesday night from a watch party at Mar-a-Lago, in the path of a hurricane and subject to an evacuation order.

Two people present with Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday night said he was in good spirits, but one of these people said he spent time on Wednesday fuming about the loss by his endorsed candidate, Mehmet Oz, in the Pennsylvania Senate race and the Republican adulation of DeSantis.

By contrast, DeSantis spent election night celebrating a whopping, nearly 20-point victory with supporters chanting for him to run for president. A person close to the governor described his team as “euphoric” and called Tuesday’s results “disastrous” for Trump.

July 21, 2020

“I have never seen anything like it, and I don’t think any Republican has in Florida,” said Brian Ballard, a longtime powerful lobbyist in Florida. “He has realigned voting coalitions in Florida that I think will benefit the party for generations. After the election yesterday, he is even more so a leader in the Republican Party.”

Two DeSantis allies predicted the governor would wait until Florida’s legislative session ends in May to announce a White House bid, and in the meantime would campaign for Walker in the Georgia Senate runoff. A spokesman did not immediately respond to questions about DeSantis’ plans for the Georgia runoff or the 2024 race.

October 12, 2016

People who’ve worked with DeSantis say gaming out his moves is difficult because he keeps decision-making to himself, his wife and his chief of staff. A longtime legislative aide in Tallahassee said Tuesday’s results showed that DeSantis is a viable alternative to Trump, but that may not matter if Trump barrels ahead anyway.

“Nobody thinks the path for DeSantis is taking Trump head-on at this point,” the aide said, expecting Trump would “run the party to the ground.”

Even before Tuesday’s election results, Trump viewed DeSantis as a threat, according to the former president’s advisers, and Trump did not wait for polls to close to start attacking him. He mocked him last week as “Ron DeSanctimonious.” On Monday, he threatened to release damaging information about DeSantis should he run, according to the Wall Street Journal. (The Washington Post) 

From sketch to finish, see the current way Graeme completes an editorial cartoon using an iPencil, the Procreate app, and a couple of cheats on an iPad Pro … These sped up clips are posted to encourage others to be creative, to take advantage of the technology many of us already have and to use it to produce satire. Comfort the afflicted. Afflict the comforted.

 

 

Tuesday February 8, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday February 8, 2022

How conspiracy theorists steered Canada’s anti-vaccine trucker protest

February 26, 2021

Thousands of demonstrators have successfully occupied Canada’s frigid capital for days, and say they plan on staying as long as it takes to thwart the country’s vaccine requirements.

The brazen occupation of Ottawa came as a result of unprecedented coordination between various anti-vaccine and anti-government organizations and activists, and has been seized on by similar groups around the world.

It may herald the revenge of the anti-vaxxers.

The so-called “freedom convoy” – which departed for Ottawa on 23 January – was the brainchild of James Bauder, an admitted conspiracy theorist who has endorsed the QAnon movement and called Covid-19 “the biggest political scam in history”. Bauder’s group, Canada Unity, contends that vaccine mandates and passports are illegal under Canada’s constitution, the Nuremberg Code and a host of other international conventions.

Friday February 26, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday February 26, 2021

CPAC and the New Republicanism

The golden statue of the former president being wheeled through the halls of the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday may have been a touch on the nose, considering the obvious Old Testament allusion.

February 4, 2021

But if you were looking for clues about the direction of the Republican Party after the Trump years, an effigy of Donald Trump in an American flag bathing suit may be as symbolic as any golden calf.

In recent years, CPAC has evolved from a family reunion of Republican libertarians, social conservatives and a hawkish foreign policy establishment into Trump-chella.

This year has been no exception, with speaker after speaker focusing on the pet issues of the former president. “Are your votes being distorted?” one ominous video asked, flashing photos of President Biden on the big screen. Mr. Trump plans to address the crowd on Sunday and anything he says about his future political ambitions will inevitably overshadow the entire event.

Yet, the former president may not end up running again — continuing legal issues could kill his bid — but there’s little question that he leaves the party reshaped in his image. Even though Mr. Trump often failed to articulate a comprehensive policy doctrine, he has fundamentally remade what being a Republican means.

That shift was made strikingly clear in the remarks of politicians who hope to lead their party into the future — with or without Mr. Trump.

October 12, 2016

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a rock star in conservative circles right now, laid out a pretty concise summary of the new conservatism in his speech on Friday: Anti-“adventurism” abroad, anti-big technology companies, anti-immigration, anti-China and anti-lockdowns.

“We cannot — we will not — go back to the days of the failed Republican establishment of yesteryear,” he said, proclaiming Florida to be an “oasis of freedom” in a country suffering from the “the yoke of oppressive lockdowns.”

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who opened his remarks with a jokeabout his much-criticized trip to a Cancún resort, cast conservatives as Jedi “rebels” against the “rigid conformity” of the socialist left — a call to arms at an event steeped in complaints of cultural victimhood. This year’s conference is titled “America Uncanceled.”

But Mr. Cruz also had a message for members of his own party.

March 24, 2015

“There’s a whole lot of voices in Washington that want to just erase the past four years, want to go back to the world before,” he said.“Let me tell ya right now: Donald J. Trump ain’t goin’ anywhere.”

Josh Hawley, a junior senator from Missouri, after defending his efforts to contest the election results as “taking a stand,” proclaimed a “new nationalism” that included breaking up technology companies, standing up to China and tightening borders. The “oligarchs” and “corporate media,” he said, want to divide Americans with “lies” like systemic racism. Hours before his speech, Mr. Hawley announced legislation requiring a $15 minimum wage for corporations with revenues over $1 billion.

None of the men, it’s worth noting, made any reference to Mr. Biden, a sign that the party continues to lack any cohesive line of attack against the new administration. 

But what was equally striking is how far the speeches differed from traditional Republican ideology. A party that has defined itself as defenders of the free market now believes big technology companies wield too much power and the government needs to put more restrictions in place. Concerns about interventionism abroad have replaced hawkish doctrine as the driving foreign policy force. Nativism has gone mainstream and the politics of cultural grievance, focused heavily around race, dominate among conservatives that once delighted in mocking sensitive liberal “snowflakes.” (Continued: NYT)