Bernie Sanders Slams Republican Party: ‘They’re A National Disgrace’
Senator Bernie Sanders began by calling the entire Republican party a “joke” during an interview on Wednesday, but even that dismissive statement wasn’t enough to encapsulate the frustration and disgust he feels towards the GOP, particularly the Republican candidates still in the run for their party’s nomination. And in slamming the GOP, Sanders took the media to task, as well, placing some of the blame for Republican extremism and their political antics on the media’s relentless coverage of their more flamboyant remarks rather than focusing on their actual policy positions.
“[…] I think if we had a media in this country that was really prepared to look at what the Republicans actually stood for rather than quoting every absurd remark of Donald Trump, talking about Republican Party, talking about hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks for the top two tenths of 1 percent, cuts to Social Security and Medicare, Medicaid, a party which with few exceptions, doesn’t even acknowledge the reality of climate change, let alone do anything about it, a party which is not prepared to stand with women in the fight for pay equity, a party that is not prepared to do anything about a broken criminal justice system or a corrupt campaign finance system, I think, to be honest with you — and I just don’t, you know, say this rhetorically, this is a fringe party. It is a fringe party. Maybe they get five, 10 percent of the vote.”
Sanders’ own policy positions are very different from the GOP platform, and Sanders says that he and his opponent, Democratic frontrunner and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have focused much more on the issues. Republicans, however, have had very little substantive policy debate and have focused instead on petty attacks. This has turned the GOP race into a “national disgrace” and an “international embarrassment,” Sanders told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow during Wednesday’s televised town hall. For Bernie Sanders, there is simply no comparison between the race between himself and Clinton, which has been referred to as “the good fight” by Rolling Stone, and that of their Republican counterparts.
“[…] Let me say that comparing us to the Republicans, you know, the bar — that’s a pretty low bar to overcome. Uh, and I think what is really a — a national disgrace — and I think this is not just what, you know, average Americans are saying, but what many sane Republicans are saying. This country faces enormous crises. You know, massive levels of income and wealth inequality, a declining middle class, climate change, uh, the pay equity issue for women.
“And what Republican candidates have now stooped to is to starting attacking each other’s wives. I mean this is an international embarrassment. I think people around the rest of the world think we are pretty crazy.
“So I think compared to that, at least, you know, what Secretary Clinton and I are trying to do, and while we have very different points of view, we are trying to discuss the real issues facing the American people and I think most objective Americans appreciate that a lot more than the kind of circus that is taking place on the Republican side.”
Earlier that day, during a rally in Madison, Wisconsin, a state that Sanders seems poised to take in the primary, Sanders said something similar, stating that the American people are “flabbergasted” by the race for the presidential nomination on the Republican side. The “low blows” and increasingly personal attacks from the Republican candidates, Sanders said, are “beyond comprehension to average Americans.”
“[…] Trump is nobody’s fool. He knows how to manipulate the media and you say an absurd thing and the media is all over it. And my concern is that today in America, you’ve got millions of people who are struggling economically. They want to know how we’re going to expand the middle class. Overwhelmingly, people think we should raise the minimum wage. Vast majority of people think climate change is real and a threat to our planet. They want to do something about that. What do we do? Vast majority of the people think the wealthiest people in this country should start paying their fair share of taxes. But if we don’t discuss those issues, it creates the climate for people like Donald Trump to do much better than he really has a right to do.”
[Photo by Prince Williams/WireImage/Getty Images]
