天地争霸美猴王
With Trump a No-Show at Debate, GOP Wannabes Can Attack, Defend or Ignore_我的网站
一 |
GOP front-runner and four times-indicted Donald Trump will not be physically present at Wednesday evening's first 2024 presidential primary debate. But he'll be there anyway as the troubled candidate remains the dominant figure – and issue – of the nominating contest.
Typically, early debates are a chance for poll-laggers to make an impression, either by delivering a well-placed zinger at a top-tier candidate or shining with a smart response to a question. The front-runners tend to have targets on their backs, which could result in a weakened position or a stronger one, if they handle attacks from primary rivals well.
But in the case of the debate in Milwaukee on Wednesday, the participants are in an awkward, perhaps no-win situation: The front-runner won't even be there, and the rest of the field can't attack him without alienating the very voters they'd need to sew up the nomination, should the legally imperiled Trump be forced to suspend his campaign.
Trump is "going to be the huge, spray-tanned elephant in the room. He's going to be what everybody is thinking about, even though he's not there," says Dave Cohen, a political science professor at the University of Akron.
That means the eight candidates who have qualified for the debate – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson – have few choices, and none is terribly appealing.
They can attack Trump, defend him or try to ignore him – which debate moderators are not likely to let pass, Cohen says. None of those approaches helps a candidate emerge as a better choice than Trump without angering Trump's rank-and-file loyalists.
"They're in a difficult spot, strategically," says Stephen Smith, professor at the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. But "it's one they've earned," he adds.
Only a few have been willing to criticize Trump directly, and it's not appeared to have endeared them to GOP primary voters.
Christie – who worked on Trump's transition team before turning on him – has been the most aggressive in his attacks on Trump, saying the former president lacks the "character" to serve in the Oval Office and needling Trump for skipping the debate, which Christie last week called "completely disrespectful" to GOP voters.
The tactic – essentially making himself the marquee foil of Trump – is based on the gamble that if Trump ends up leaving the race, Christie will emerge as the most prominent truth-teller and default new front-runner.
It's not going so well, so far: National polls have Christie in the low single digits. A recent Des Moines Register/NBC poll in Iowa puts Christie in sixth place with 5% support among GOP caucus-goers.
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson – who arguably on paper has the most complete and traditional resume for a Republican presidential contender – is also polling in the low single digits, his criticism of Trump not moving the needle at all.
Former Vice President Mike Pence has stepped up his criticism of Trump's behavior – saying the former president asked him to put him above the Constitution by asking him to refuse to certify the 2020 election results – but hasn't made it as personal.
Pence recently said he was not aware of any "broad-based effort" to declassify records before Trump left office, undercutting the former president's claim that the classified documents he is accused of taking and improperly keeping at his Mar-a-Lago resort were, in fact, declassified. But Pence has also been reluctant to say Trump should be treated like any other politician who has been convicted of a felony – meaning, ousted from office.
"I think that needs to be left to the American people. Look, let’s let the former president have his day in court. Let’s maintain a presumption of innocence in this matter," Pence told ABC on Sunday.
Former U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley – the only woman who will be onstage Wednesday night – has cautioned that Trump's legal troubles could cost Republicans the general election. She hasn't directly criticized the former president but didn't shy away earlier this month by reminding people of how much worse Trump's situation is getting.
"Like most Americans, I’m tired of commenting on every Trump drama. I’ve lost track of whether this indictment is the third or fourth or the fifth," Haley said during an appearance on “Good Morning New Hampshire” radio show with Jack Heath – before the fourth indictment out of Georgia’s Fulton County.
Others have responded to questions about Trump with attacks on the criminal justice system and its prosecutors themselves.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is running a distant second to Trump in most polls, decried the "weaponization of government" after Trump's third indictment – though he conceded he had not actually read the document. DeSantis also acknowledged recently that the 2020 election was not stolen, telling NBC "of course he lost" when asked about Trump's discredited claims of a fraudulent 2020 contest – a comment not likely to endear him to Trump's most devoted supporters.
Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina called the recent indictment of Trump "un-American and unacceptable. We need a better system than that."
Tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who has edged upward in a couple of state polls, has walked a similar line.
"These are politicized persecutions through prosecution,” he said at a town hall meeting last week. “It would be a lot easier for me if Donald Trump were not in this primary, but that is not how I want to win this election," he added.
And North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum is just deflecting the matter entirely.
"I do trust the voters. ... They want presidential elections to be about the future, a vision for the future," Burgum told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday after being asked about Trump's troubles.
In reality, it is the candidates not named Trump who will have the most to prove or explain Wednesday night, analysts say. DeSantis, whose campaign has been flailing, might need to explain why he suggested some Republicans backing Trump are "listless vessels" – a cringe-worthy similar remark to 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton reference to the "basket of deplorables" in Trump's base.
As the front-runner among the also-rans, DeSantis will likely take the heaviest rhetorical artillery from the GOP field at the debate. Most of the rest will be struggling to get out of single digits – with the possible exception of Burgum, who is still trying to get the American public to recognize his name.
Trump, meanwhile, said he plans to counter-program with the airing of a taped one-on-one interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Thursday – a day when the political news would typically be dominated by post-debate analysis – Trump will be the star player in an unprecedented legal and political drama, turning himself in for processing at a Fulton County jail.
"He's cutting right into the shadow of the debate" with that timing, Smith says. As he undoubtedly will during the debate itself.
。 Pope Francis’s July 24-29 tour of Canada included a long-overdue apology to Native Canadians for the Catholic Church’s central role in abuses perpetrated at the country’s network of residential schools.,The notorious boarding school system was funded and organized by Canada’s federal government and run by Catholic and Protestant churches. It oversaw the forceful and systematic assimilation, abuse, enslavement and even murder of Native Canadian boys and girls from the mid-19th to late 20th centuries. It was a particularly brutal and cruel, but by no means first or only, tool of oppression experienced by indigenous peoples during the European colonialists’ history in North America.,“I am here because the first step of my penitential pilgrimage among you is that of again asking forgiveness, of telling you once more that I am deeply sorry. Sorry for the ways in which, regrettably, many Christians supported the colonizing mentality of the powers that oppressed the indigenous peoples. I am sorry. I ask for forgiveness, in particular, for the ways in which many members of the Church and of religious communities cooperated, not least through their indifference, in projects of cultural destruction and forced assimilation promoted by the governments of that time, which culminated in the system of residential schools,” Francis said at the former site of the Ermineskin Residential School in Maskwacis, Alberta on July 25.,The pope assured his apology was “only the first step” of “a serious investigation into the facts of what took place in the past and to assist the survivors of the residential schools to experience healing from the traumas they suffered.”,Pope Francis Holds Mass in Quebec During Visit to Canada to Apologize to Indigenous Community28 July, 13:01 GMT,Assimilation,More than 150,000 Native children passed through the residential school system over its 160+ year history. Children were prohibited, often by physical punishment, from speaking their native languages, having their ancestors’ religious concepts replaced with Christianity, and facing their cultural traditions and social norms substituted for those of the colonialists.,The first experimental residential school was opened in Brantford, Ontario, in 1833, but the system only became a federally-mandated, national, industrial-scale tool of subjugation in the 1880s after Sir John A Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, ordered the commissioning of a report on the residential school system model being operated in the United States.,The report, entitled ‘Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds’, became the basis for Canadian state-church cooperation in solving the Indian “problem” by removing indigenous children from the influences passed down to them by their communities and family units.,© WikipediaIndian Residential School, (Fort) Resolution, Northwest TerritoriesIndian Residential School, (Fort) Resolution, Northwest Territories© Wikipedia,Along with forced assimilation, students were subjected to other forms of torment, including sexual abuse by priests and teachers, forced labor, and slavery. As of 2021, the National Center for Truth and Reconciliation has been able to identify 4,117 documented deaths of First Nations, Inuit and Metis children in residential schools. However, new graves continue to be discovered, and former Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner Murray Sinclair estimates that more than 6,000 children may have died in the residential school system over the period of its operation.,In his bombshell 2016 book “Murder by Decree: the Crime of Genocide in Canada,” writer and former United Church of Canada reverend Kevin Annett challenged the NCTR over its conservative estimates on the residential school deaths, detailing the commission’s suppression of eyewitness testimony and archival documentation, and estimating that the true death toll may have run in the tens of thousands. Annett documented how the system included a monthly “death quota” and involved the use of germ warfare, and believes that as many as 50,000 children may have perished in the residential school network.,Exploitation,Residential schools were by no means the first instance of settlers’ mistreatment of Canada’s indigenous population, with Britain’s victory against the French in the North American theater of the Seven Years’ War of 1754-1763 sealing their fate of subjugation and colonial land grabs, as well as the relentless and cynical exploitation of the most loyal tribes.,At the conclusion of the war in 1763, King George III issued a royal proclamation declaring all lands west of the Appalachian Mountains and the colonies of what would ultimately become the early United States as Native territories, outlawing their settlement or purchase by colonialists, and requiring treaty negotiations for any changes to the arrangement. In Canada –organized from the remnants of New France under the name ‘Quebec’, lands to the west and north of the colony were proclaimed Indian territory.,Centuries later, scholars continue to fiercely debate the correct interpretation of the proclamation, and whether it was meant as a permanent guarantee of Native rights to lands beyond the then-existent colonies, or a mere opportunity for colonists to catch their breath before continuing an aggressive push west.,© Photo"The British Governments in Nth America Laid down agreeable to the Proclamation of Octr. 7, 1763," Gentleman’s Magazine (London, 1763)"The British Governments in Nth America Laid down agreeable to the Proclamation of Octr. 7, 1763," Gentleman’s Magazine (London, 1763)© Photo,Even as colonists repeatedly broke the 1763 treaty’s terms throughout the rest of the 18th and 19th centuries through wars of aggression and by taking advantage of divisions within Native tribes through cunning and trickery, many Natives remained loyal to the Crown.,Perhaps nowhere was this better exemplified than in the story of Joseph Brant, an 18th-century Mohawk military and political leader who led his warriors in defense of the British Empire during the American Revolutionary War of 1775-1783, and whose efforts proved decisive in halting an American advance into what is now Canada.,In return for the loyalty shown by Brant and his fellow Mohawks, Quebec Governor Sir Frederick Haldimand promised that after the war, his people would be granted more than 8,090 square km of land around the Grand River Basin in southern Ontario. However, after the war ended in 1783, the settlers would gradually chip away at their commitments, with the Native-administered area now known as the Six Nations Reserve shrinking to just 183 square km of land, two percent of what Brant was originally promised.,Brant’s story was repeated in one form or another throughout the 19th century, and today just 0.36 percent of Canada’s total landmass has reserve status for its Native communities.,© Wikipedia / National Archives of CanadaJoseph Brant, watercolour by William ArmstrongJoseph Brant, watercolour by William Armstrong© Wikipedia / National Archives of Canada,Discrimination,Notwithstanding decades of recognition by successive governments of the historical injustices done to indigenous people, and lip service to improving their social and economic standing, Canada’s community of 1.67 million Natives continues to struggle with a broad spectrum of problems more typically characterizing countries of the so-called Third World than of a thriving, highly developed First World nation.,The Council of Canadians estimates that some 73 percent of First Nations’ water systems are at medium or high risk of contamination, with dozens of indigenous communities still lacking basic access to clean drinking water, despite billions of dollars in aid doled out by Ottawa every year to developing countries, and over a billion dollars in support sent to Kiev this year amid the Ukrainian security crisis.,Along almost every social indicator, from poverty and access to housing to crime, education, and healthcare, Native communities continue to rank below other Canadians. Nowhere is this exemplified better than in average life expectancy. While other Canadian men and women live on average to an age of 79 and 84 years, respectively, among the First Nations, Metis and Inuit, these figures drop to 72.5 for men and 77.7 for women.。Current article:http://www.qiniaohongfangfoguisenzhai.cyou/j5hw/y828sm.html
Published on:05:37:44
