Just an item in today's Reliable Sources newsletter
Sen. J.D. Vance has asked Attorney General Merrick Garland if his department will "open an investigation" into The WaPo columnist Robert Kagan for authoring a piece waring that a "Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable."
According to Fox News, Vance is accusing Kagan of inciting “open rebellion” against the United States, for suggesting in his article, “A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending,” that Democratic-controlled states might resist federal power under a second Trump term should he move to enact his controversial plans to reshape the federal government to do his bidding.
“Resistance could come from the governors of predominantly Democratic states such as California and New York through a form of nullification,” wrote Kagan. “States with Democratic governors and statehouses could refuse to recognize the authority of a tyrannical federal government. That is always an option in our federal system,” he added that this sort of standoff is also possible from Republican-controlled states under a second Biden term.
In a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, Vance claimed that this amounts to inciting insurrection.
“As you know, prosecutors in the Department of Justice have embraced several stunningly broad interpretations of federal law in their bid to ensnare President Trump in criminal wrongdoing,” wrote Vance. “For example, prosecutors … argue that President Trump has conspired to ‘threaten’ or ‘intimidate’ one or more persons in their free exercise of the ‘right to vote, and to have one’s vote counted.’ By that standard, I would like to know whether a supporter of President Trump might be ‘intimidate[d]’ into foregoing the right to vote after learning that Robert Kagan has encouraged large blue states to rebel against the United States if Trump is elected. If so, I wonder further whether the editors of The Washington Post, having put Kagan’s call to arms in print, might have conspired to suppress the vote.”
Columnists enjoy broad-based protection to engage in such hypothetical scenarios by virtue of the First Amendment.
However, Vance’s demand to prosecute an opinion columnist comes as allies of Trump are ramping up their threats to curtail press freedom under a second Trump term. Kash Patel, a top security official in the Trump administration, threatened that Trump will “come after” reporters and other “conspirators” in media who “helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.”
Vance is being cutesy, of course. But don’t kid yourself. If Trump takes over the Justice Dept as he plans to do if he wins another term, this is exactly what they plan to do.
I watched that stupid also-ran debate last night and honestly, I have nothing much to say about it. They’re calling Haley the “front-runner” which she isn’t and praising Chris Christie for defending her but that’s about it. And everyone acknowledges that DeSantis is weird and Ramaswamy is a complete asshole. A few highlights:
Christie to Ramaswamy: This is the fourth debate that you would be voted in the 1st 20 minutes as the most obnoxious blowhard in America pic.twitter.com/vwDerGOwlB
Ramaswamy: If you want somebody who’s going speak truth to power, vote for someone who will speak truth to you. *starts talking how January 6th was inside job, replacement theory, how the 2016 election was stolen from Trump* pic.twitter.com/QbiYV29Q6L
I think that about covers it. These debates are pathetic. And yet CNN just announced that they are hosting two more of them in January. No, Trump won’t show up for them either.
By the way, according to Morning Joe, the ratings for the Newsom DeSantis debate were higher than for the Trump town hall with Hannity this week. I would guess it’s because a buch of Democrats tuned for the former but Trump has to be pissed anyway.
Why do left-leaning independents in North Carolina’s bluest precincts turn out less than Democrats in their neighborhoods when independents statewide (including the Trumpiest counties) turn out more?
Perhaps because Democrats are policy liberals and campaign conservatives. Taking chances? Not when every damned election is “the most important of our lifetimes.” Throwing the long ball? They are more inclined to fall on it. “Leave it all on the field” remains aspirational.
Most volunteer leaders see their state Democratic party’s efforts to organize outreach as “too little, too late.” One in four call their party unresponsive. A majority of respondents said the party does a terrible job targeting voters, saying that its lists are far too narrow.
This is my focus right now. Independents (UNAffiliated voters in NC) are the largest bloc of registered voters in NC: 36% (2.6 million voters). But statewide they voted against Democrats here 58% of the time in the last two elections. Democrats cannot win without them, but their traditional tactics, as Pepper recognizes, focuses only on “the most frequent voters.” This tactic leaves many “removed from the political conversation” in what I’ve dubbed “No Voter’s Land.” These are voters campaigns are reluctant to contact (using the tactics of the last war, you might say) because computer scoring deems them not good bets.
Self-identified independents are also the largest tranche of voters in Arizona, with Republicans second and Democrats third. But we’ll come back to that. In North Carolina it’s 36% Independents, 33% Democrats and 30% Republicans.
A few more rough numbers. Independent registrants turn out statewide at 6.5% below Democrats. Horseshoes and hand grenades, if there are more independents than Democrats, and they vote 58% against Democrats, but turn out 6.5% less, we begin to see why results of statewide races, even with healthy Democratic turnout, are so narrow.
In North Carolina’s bluest precincts in its most urban counties, however, independents turn out at 12% less than Democrats. Why? Are the nonvoters less engaged than their voting independent neighbors? Or are Democrats not engaging them?
Well.
Can’t see the forest for the trees
Democrats’ principle targeting tool is NGP Van’s VoteBuilder database, another source of complaint among the campaignerati. Its very premise is microtargeting. Every voter gets assigned a support score based on a variety of factors. But when it comes to voter outreach targeting independent voters have three strikes (or more) against them.
Strike1: Not a registered Dem. Strike2: Do they vote in R primaries (allowed in NC)? Looks like an R-leaner. Or they (the vast majority) don’t vote in Democratic primaries and are written off as potential R-leaners. Strike3: Are they an irregular voter? Lowest priority for voter contact efforts.
When it comes to independent voters, VoteBuilder sees individual trees and misses the forest. The forests campaigns miss are those precincts where independents who turn out vote 60, 70, 80-90% with Democrats but turn out at 12% less than their Democrat neighbors, almost twice what it is in Trump-country counties.
I’ve calculated which precincts those are. VoteBuilder doesn’t. It’s not how it works, or at least it’s not how it’s used in the field. If we could coax those low-scoring independents in specific precincts off their couches, Democrats score. Birds of a feather. They’ll vote like their voting independent neighbors. If their turnout matched Democrats’ in those precincts (not likely), there are an additional 56k votes for Democrats. But if they simply matched independents’ statewide average turnout, we’re still talking an extra 25k.
Arizona Democrats could do the same since their voter rolls also have partisan registration. Likely, the pattern I see in NC is repeated there.
Robert Kagan’s doomsaying article about a Trump dictatorship and The Atlantic‘s“If Trump Wins” series sounded loud alarms. And then some. I cautioned Monday that overdoing the shock treatment can backfire. Along with the warnings people need hope and plans for action. Kagan got that message from his readers and is back today with an attempt at offering some, reluctantly. His heart isn’t in it.
It’s not that we didn’t know what to do, Kagan begins. It’s that we didn’t do it when chances were better for stopping Trump. He offers “several things people could do to save the country but almost certainly won’t do, because they selfishly refuse to put their own ambitions at risk to save our democracy.” Feeling hopey yet?
For one, Never-Trump forces could throw all their support behind Nikki Haley as the least odious Republican presidential candidate. Probably won’t work, but go for it, Kagan suggests. A majority of the GOP are committed cultists. A smaller faction wants Trump as their best chance of beating Joe Biden. A third group, about six percent, say they’ll support Trump unless he’s convicted. So good luck, Nikki.
The other option is less direct but has a better chance of success. Raise doubts about Trump’s electability. “The way to do that is to warn those Republicans still capable of listening that a Trump presidency really does pose a risk to our freedom and democracy and the Constitution.,” Kagan argues. That’s what he, The Atlantic, and “sleepwalking into dictatorship” Liz Cheney are doing.
Republicans own freedom. It is their worship word. Anat Shenker-Osorio argues that Democrats have to take it back. Freedom is a universal American value. Democrats have to run on it. The Lincoln Project needs to take up that message too. Which side are you on?
— Anat Shenker-Osorio 🟧 (@anatosaurus) July 13, 2022
We must continue to make this election a referendum on freedom v. fascism. Do not get sucked into their attempts to change the topic. pic.twitter.com/DV8IpyyDxg
“In short, the way to beat Trump is to make him seem unelectable, and the way to make him seem unelectable is to show that he is unacceptable,” Kagan offers:
Trump’s dictatorial tendencies and open disdain for the Constitution can become his greatest vulnerabilities — they might be his only vulnerabilities — if sufficiently highlighted for the American voter, and he and his advisers likely know it. Trump’s bizarre assertion that he would be a dictator only on “Day One” of his presidency to “close the border” was, believe it or not, an attempt to deflect the charge. (But what if it takes two days?) Democrats have gotten mileage in downballot races by painting their Republican opponents as lawbreaking, MAGA radicals. Trump is aware that he needs to hold on to some normal, non-cultist Republicans — that is why he has taken a more moderate position on abortion than much of the rest of the party. Trump is nothing if not a shrewd politician (the people who persist in claiming he’s an idiot should have a talk with themselves), and he knows he cannot win the general election on cult votes alone.
When Trump refused to deny he would act as a dictator with Sean Hannity at his Fox News town hall, he did it deliberately with a “wry humor,” Adam Serwer told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes Wednesday evening [timestamp 10:50], to both bait opponents and maintain a thin sliver of deniability. His Day One pronouncement was a signal to his base of authoritarian followers that he would indeed rule as dictator. But many of his close acolytes are less reserved and talk like “low-level technicians on the Death Star.” Their gleeful anticipation of a Trump dictatorship needs more disinfecting sunlight.
There are many Americans who would run from him if they see a hint of Trump ruling as a dictator, strategist David Plouffe told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes Wednesday evening [timestamp 8:50]. People like Kash Patel are actively promising that a second Trump administration would investigate opponents and target the oppressed. Trump himself has said he would terminate provisions of the Constitution that did not serve his needs.
Taking a page from the dictator’s playbook, Kagan explains, Trump is already trying to inoculate himself against those charges with an “I know you are but what am I?” strategy of declaring Joe Biden the real dictator.
In time-honored fashion, Trump is going for the biggest lie. His goal is to delegitimize the trials and convince Republican voters that he is the victim of corruption and abuse of the judicial system. He has just begun making that case, but he is going to bang it like a bass drum for the next year.
Can he succeed in establishing this as the narrative? You bet he can, and for the reasons outlined in the previous essay: As he becomes the presumptive nominee, the vast Republican campaign apparatus will be at his disposal, putting out his line on an hourly basis.
What that six percent with Trump unless he’s convicted need to hear ahead of the primaries from Republicans still keeping the faith — and not from Democrats and Post columnists — is that they are right, Kagan believes, “that the Biden administration is not a dictatorship, that the trials are not an abuse of power, and that if Trump is convicted, justice will have been done,’ Kagan writes. That “would not take a lot of speeches, or well-placed interviews, or appearances on Sunday shows, by the right people to change the conversation.”
Imagine if the wing of the Republican Party that still believes in defending the Constitution identified itself that way, as “Constitutional Republicans” implacably opposed to the man who blatantly attempted to subvert the Constitution and has indicated his willingness to do so again as president.
But don’t hold your breath. It will require courage in short supply among Republicans.
Many people responded to my last essay by insisting that a majority of Americans oppose Trump, and they are right. But the way our system works today, that popular majority is prevented from coalescing. Many blame the electoral college or the two-party prejudice built into our system, and they might well be right. But, folks, are we going to fix these problems before November? The question is how best to bring this majority together in a coalition of Democrats and Constitutional Republicans to prevent a dictatorship this coming year. Afterward, we can look at reforming the system. First, the system has to survive.
A woman whose fetus has a fatal condition is petitioning a Texas court to let her override the state’s total abortion ban and terminate the pregnancy—the first such case since before Roe v. Wade.
Lawyers for the Center for Reproductive Rights filed suit on behalf of Kate Cox, a 31-year-old from Dallas-Fort Worth who learned last month that her fetus has Trisomy 18, a chromosomal anomaly that causes developmental delays so severe that most infants do not survive more than two weeks. Cox’s attorneys are seeking a temporary restraining order against Texas’ abortion bans to allow her to end the pregnancy without leaving the state.
Attorney Nick Kabat from the Center for Reproductive Rights said this is the first time a pregnant woman in a medical emergency has filed a lawsuit seeking access to abortion since Roe was decided more than 50 years ago.
“It’s a statement of where we are that what this case is about is a medical emergency,” he said. “This is not Jane Roe. Kate Cox is in the middle of a medical crisis.”
“You can just imagine how crazy it is that in the middle of a medical crisis, she has to reach out to lawyers, run to court, and try to get a court order, he added. “It’s really heartbreaking that this is where we are historically.”
The mother of two learned she was pregnant with a third child in August, but soon received devastating news from her doctors, according to the suit. Ultrasounds in October revealed the fetus had an umbilical hernia, a twisted spine likely due to spina bifida, a neural tube defect, clubbed feet, irregular skull and heart development, and other serious medical conditions. An amniocentesis in November showed the fetus had what doctors had feared: full Trisomy 18, an almost always fatal condition.
The diagnosis meant Cox’s fetus is unlikely to survive past birth or much longer, according to the suit. It also poses threats to her own health; because she previously gave birth twice by C-section, inducing labor early carries a “serious risk of uterine rupture,” while having a full-term C-section would make subsequent pregnancies higher risk, the suit states. Cox has already been to the hospital twice during her pregnancy, once for days of severe cramping and diarrhea and again for leaking amniotic fluid.
Doctors advised Cox that the safest option would be a dilation and evacuation abortion, the suit states. But Texas has barred abortion since shortly after the Supreme Court overturned Roe last year, except in narrow circumstances when it is necessary to save the life of a pregnant patient.
Texas wants to make this woman carry this doomed fetus for the next four months and go through childbirth, risking her own physical health in the process and almost certainly damaging her mental health and her family’s well being. What kind of monster would force her and her family to go through that? It’s sick.
NEW HAMPSHIRE IS a state that puts a lot of stock in the concept of freedom. “Live Free or Die” is stamped on its license plates; it’s home to the libertarian-bating “Free State Project”; and just a few weeks ago, the governor celebrated its ranking as the “freest state” in the country, according to the Cato Institute.
But that embrace of freedom apparently only extends so far. A group of Republicans from both the state House and Senate have announced plans to introduce a bill that would ban almost all abortions after just 15 days gestation.
The bill is effectively a total ban on abortion. The absolute earliest a woman can confirm she is pregnant is with a blood test 10 days after ovulation. But this proposed law does not ban abortion 15 days after ovulation — it bans abortion at 15 days gestation, counted from the first day of a woman’s last menstrual cycle… which means it would ban abortion before some woman have even had conceived. The only proposed exception to the law is for a medical emergency.
If passed, it would be among the most restrictive in the country.
Abortion is currently legal through 24 weeks gestation in New Hampshire; medical professionals who provide abortions after that point face both civil and criminal penalties. (Earlier this year, members of both the Republican and Democratic House caucuses sought to remove criminal and civil penalties associated with that ban, but the effort failed in Senate.)
Republicans currently hold a trifecta in New Hampshire, with GOP majorities in the House and Senate and a Republican occupying the governor’s mansion. But control of the House — the largest in the country with 400 members — sits on a knife’s edge. There are 198 Republicans and 195 Democrats, three independents, and four vacant seats.
You can imagine what these people will define as a medical emergency. It appears that these people in red states are just barreling ahead with their dystopian agenda.
It would be nice to think these GOP candidates for president (other than Donald Trump) would be questioned about this in tonight’s debate but I wouldn’t count on it. Nikki Haley has said she’d sign the most conservative “pro-life” bill that would hit her desk. Maybe they could ask her if she would sign this one if she were governor of New Hampshire. She’s said she’d sign a 6 week ban. Why not this?
They’re now holding the kind of Fox News hissy fits we’ve come to expect from the Freedom Caucus types in the House.
It’d a good thing everyone is dressed in a suit or someone might think they are playing undignified childish games:
A classified briefing for senators on the White House‘s request for aid for Israel and Ukraine became “heated” Tuesday, with Republican members storming out of the meeting.
The briefing, led by the secretaries of defense and state, as well as the director of national intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was held behind closed doors to allow all 100 senators to ask questions about the administration’s funding request.
But it fell apart, senators from both parties said, after Republicans began asking about the border. GOP members in both chambers have demanded serious changes to immigration policy to address rising migrant crossings in exchange for passing new aid for Ukraine.
They didn’t like what they heard.
“People got up and walked out, because this is a waste of time,” Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., told reporters.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., called it “the most heated briefing in the SCIF [sensitive compartmented information facility] I’ve seen.”
“What most, or many, Republican senators want to talk about here is the border, and Sen. Schumer would prefer not to do that in this venue; obviously, there’s nobody there to talk about the border,” Hawley continued, referring to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “So that was a point of some heated disagreement.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said: “It started off pretty bad … a lot of tension in the room because nobody talked about the border. In case you don’t have a television or you’ve been living in a cave, you would know that most Republicans feel like we need to address the broken border.”
This was a classified briefing by foreign policy and defense experts. Why would it be necessary to have a briefing in an SCIF with border experts? It’s a domestic issue.
Obviously, it isn’t. It’s the Republicans putting on a show for their MAGA constituents over the border which they consider to be their best issue going into the election.
Jordan was on the inside helping during the attempted coup and yet for some reason he, like all members of congress, seems to be immune to any sort of accountability for it.
Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) on Tuesday discussed the potential criminal liability of election-denying Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump.
“I think that there’s no question that Jim Jordan has something to hide, probably a lot to hide,” Cheney — who has dropped severalbombshellrevelations in her new bestselling book, “Oath and Honor” — suggested to MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace.
“If you go back and look at the phone records, as well as what he’s said himself about his discussions and his conversations with Donald Trump on the 6th, the very significant role he played in the lead-up to that, [Jordan] was clearly one of the masterminds in terms of helping to facilitate Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the [2020] election and of course refused to comply with the select committee subpoena,” noted the ex-lawmaker, referring to a House panel order for Jordan to testify in connection with the 2021 attack.
Jordan, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, is likely “doing everything he can to help Donald Trump, to do Donald Trump’s bidding,” Cheney continued. “And I think that he has so many questions of his own to answer that people just need to go back and look at the record.”
He is “very clearly at the heart of what was an attempt to seize power and overturn an election,” she added.
Wallace asked Cheney if Jordan, who in October failed in his bid to replace Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as House speaker after his ouster, had any criminal exposure to the insurrection.
“I think he has a lot of questions to answer,” Cheney replied.
He does, but apparently nobody’s going to ask. Why is that?
Kevin McCarthy is leaving at the end of the year. He thought he could finesse Trump and the crazies and he failed. They ate his face. After enabling them for years and completely humiliating himself at the feet of Donald Trump, there was never any chance they wouldn’t. But then he’s always been a little bit dumb. (Liz Cheney says Johnson is smarter which isn’t saying much. He’ll be happy to blow the place up.)
MyKev is hurt, obviously. And he’s pissed. After all he’s leaving Johnson’s majority one less seat. They will be down to two and there’s a rumor that another one is going to resign as well. They’d better hope everyone else stays very healthy.
He’s also upset that Trump didn’t really support him in his time of need. But I’m not expecting him to sign on with the Lincoln Project any time soon. The man has a backbone made of silly putty and a brain made of mashed potatoes. Whatever he does will be wrong.
Trump was asked by his faithful servant Sean Hannity last night if he would reassure the public that he has no plans to be a dictator and abuse his power. His answer was telling:
WATCH: Hannity repeatedly asks Trump if he plans to “abuse power” and be a “dictator” — he doesn’t say no. pic.twitter.com/jh1iHZVeAS
Let’s remember that Trump believes the presidency has dictatorial power. He made that clear many times:
Hannity wanted so desperately for him to unequivocally deny it but he didn’t do it because it’s a big applause line for his feral mob. They love it when he’s swinging his tiny hands around like that.
Meanwhile,earlier in the day:
Kash Patel says as Trump’s next CIA Director he will lead “patriots” appointed by Trump in an all-out effort to prosecute and jail people in government and the media: “We will find the conspirators in govt and the media. Yes, we are going to come after the people in the media.” pic.twitter.com/NuLyqOIKWO
Patel was hired in February 2019 as a staffer for President Trump’s National Security Council (NSC), working in the International Organizations and Alliances directorate, and in July 2019 became Senior Director of the Counterterrorism Directorate, a new position created for him.[18] According to The Wall Street Journal, Patel led a secret mission to Damascus in early 2020 to negotiate the release of Majd Kamalmaz and journalist Austin Tice, both of whom were being held by the Syrian government.
In February 2020, Patel moved to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI),[21] becoming a Principal Deputy to Acting Director Richard Grenell.
In January 2021, Axios reported that Trump had considered Patel for appointment as Acting Director of the Central Intelligence Agency to replace Gina Haspel. According to Axios, Patel was to be appointed Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency immediately before a planned dismissal of Haspel, allowing him to head the agency in an acting capacity. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Ezra Cohen-Watnick confirmed parts of the Axios report. Patel declined to comment.
In November 2020, Patel was made chief of staff to Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher C. Miller, a move that followed Trump’s firing of Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. Patel reportedly argued that Esper was disloyal to Trump by refusing to deploy military troops to Washington to quell the George Floyd protests.
AEI policy director Kori Schake argued that although neither Patel nor others were “confirmable”, the shakeup was primarily a matter of “spite” toward the Pentagon establishment. Foreign Policy magazine connected the move to Trump’s “refusal to accept the election results”. Based on interviews with defense experts, Alex Ward of Vox suggested that Patel’s appointment was “not sinister”, would “not change much”, and may have served an effort to accelerate the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. According to an unnamed source quoted by Vanity Fair, Miller was a “front man” during his time as Acting Secretary of Defense while Patel and Cohen-Watnick were “calling the shots” at the Department of Defense. Another source told the magazine that Patel was the most influential person in the U.S. government on matters of national security.
After the November 2020 election, Patel reportedly blocked some Department of Defense officials from helping the Biden administration transition, according to NBC.
He remains in Trump’s inner circle and is expected to hold a powerful position in a new Trump White House.
Trump tried to overturn the election results and incited his mob to storm the capitol to stop the transfer of power. And people are asking if he plans to be a dictator? Of course he does. he just ran out of time.
Update — Jonathan Chait has this right:
This exchange is best understood as Trump enjoying the idea of himself as dictator. Trump has always admired dictators and has longed to be granted the obsequious deference they are afforded. As president, his favorite moments were trips to places like North Korea, where he spoke admiringly about the way his counterparties were treated. (“He’s the head of the country,” Trump said of Kim Jong-un. “And I mean, he’s the strong head. Don’t let anyone think anything different. … He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.”)
His allies have always found this trait embarrassing and wished to deny it. Republicans are angrily attacking media coverage of Trump’s promises to turn the government into a weapon of vengeance as a smear campaign.
“There is no longer any pretense. Not even a fig leaf about fairness,” complains Fox News self-style media reporter Howard Kurtz. “It’s not that [Trump] shouldn’t be held accountable for his own rhetoric and social-media posts, but I have never seen anything like this in my professional lifetime.”
Could the reason that Trump’s authoritarian threat is being covered in a different way than any previous candidate be that no previous presidential candidate has explicitly promised to use his power to crush his enemies as vermin? Kurtz does not consider this possibility. Media bias is the only explanation.
Trump’s allies likewise insist that coverage of his plans is actually a scheme to seed violence against Trump. “All of these articles calling Trump a dictator are about one thing: legitimizing illegal and violent conduct as we get closer to the election,” proclaims Senator J.D. Vance. “This extreme and dangerous genre — of claiming Trump is Hitler (because, they say, he might do what Democrats are doing right now) — should probably be given the name ‘Assassination Prep,’” warns the Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway.
The whole pretense of these complaints is that Trump has done or said nothing dangerous or unusual, and that reporting on his plans and public statements is a form of dangerous incitement. They are all but begging Trump to give them a shred of deniability. He can simply say, even with a wink, that he doesn’t wish to become America’s Putin. He won’t give them even that — because, to Trump, being called “dictator” is a compliment his ego won’t permit him to deny.
I love it that Howard Kurtz is having a fit over the coverage. Good. The media must keep it up so that it will finally penetrate to the people who are not paying close attention.
Get ready for another magical night in American politics. Yes, the fourth Republican Presidential Second Place Debate is tonight, being broadcast by an obscure cable channel called News Nation. The whole country is crackling with excitement at the prospect watching of the last four standing, Former New jersey Gov., Chris Christie, Florida Gov. Ron Desantis, Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and Former S. Carolina Gov Nikki Haley going mano-a-mano once again.
Actually these debates have been the most boring political rituals in human history. The presidential race may be heating up and the stakes could not be higher but these events cannot wind up too soon. Their only purpose is to help the GOP base figure out who might be an adequate replacement if Donald Trump keels over at the Mar-a-Lago omelette bar one Sunday and I’m not sure most Republican voters really care who that might be.
DeSantis’ previous position as first runner-up has been usurped by Haley who is still riding the little boomlet that has pundits declaring that she is “surging” in Iowa and New Hampshire. The truth is that she’s pulled even with DeSantis for second place in the first and overtaken him for second in New Hampshire. That might mean something if it weren’t for the fact that Trump is leading both of them by nearly 30 points in Iowa and is leading Haley by 26 points in New Hampshire. (DeSantis has dropped to 4th there.) Nationally, Trump leads by nearly 50 points. So this Haley surge is reminiscent of past forgettable moments like when Newt Gingrich briefly took the lead in the GOP primary in 2012.
What is significant about the Haley boomlet isn’t this minuscule surge in her polling, it’s the massive surge in her donations from billionaires. It’s not just the Koch network which garnered huge headlines when it was announced that its Americans for Prosperity Action fund was endorsing her for president after laying out of presidential politics for some time. Haley attended at fundraiser New York attended by top Wall Street financiers on Monday and raised a whopping $500,000 in one fell swoop.
CNBC reported that the event was held at the “luxurious Upper West Side penthouse of former Facebook executive Campbell Brown and her husband Dan Senor, chief public affairs officer at hedge fund Elliot Investment Management” which was founded by GOP megadonor Paul Singer. (According to Theodore Schliefer of Puck News, everyone was slightly disappointed that Singer himself was not in attendance because everyone on Wall St. is waiting on tenderhooks to see who he has decided to back.) But, among those who were there were:
Cliff Asness, a co-founder of investment firm AQR Capital Management, Kristin Lemkau, CEO of JPMorgan Chase’s wealth management division, Robert Rosenkranz, head of Delphi Capital Management and Ray Chambers, a philanthropist who once had a stake in the NHL’s New Jersey Devils were all spotted.
CNBC notes that Lemkau showed up just days after her boss Jamie Dimon exorted people to back Haley at a conference hosted by The New York Times’ DealBook franchise. Dimon put it like this, which was laughable:
“Even if you’re a very liberal Democrat, I urge you, help Nikki Haley, too. Get a choice on the Republican side that might be better than [Donald] Trump,”
There is at least one liberal Democrat who stepped up early to help Haley in order to stop Donald Trump, Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, who has funded a number of causes in opposition to Trump, but he’s a rarity. Liberal donors would generally rather spend their money on Democrats than Republicans.
The question is why in the world are these rich donors suddenly backing Haley so strongly when they are very unlikely to get much of anything out of it? As Pucks’ Schleifer observed:
[P]lenty of the people donating six or seven figures to Haley or DeSantis at this point don’t reasonably expect their candidate to win, a phenomenon I’ve never experienced before. The dominant feeling among major donors is a sense of apathy—that this is Trump’s race to lose, to say the least.
What is she doing that has them so enthralled that they are throwing away their money on her doomed campaign? The easy answer is that these people all have way too much money so these millions are just pocket change to them anyway and they can take a flyer. If there’s ever been a better reason to raise their taxes to better fund the government, I’ve never seen it. And that may hold the real answer to the question of why they are now looking at Nikki Haley.
As you’ll recall, in the last debate Haley broke dramatically with Donald Trump by declaring that “any candidate that tells you they’re not going to go after Social Security and Medicare is not being serious.” She didn’t sugar coat it with the usual euphemisms by saying “we need to reform entitlements” and she’s made it clear that she not only wants to raise the retirement age, she also wants to reduce benefits for current beneficiaries by changing the cost of living formula. None of that is new for the pre-Trump GOP, but it’s been off the table since he took office.
In fact, one of Joe Biden’s finest hours was when he goaded the congressional Republicans into insisting they had no intention of threatening the programs:
Joe Biden and the Democrats have made it clear that if they get the majority they plan to raise the caps on Social Security and Medicare taxes to shore up the program. These people are adamantly opposed to that and will do anything to prevent it.
As CNN reported, the Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity Action made it clear in their endorsement why they are backing Haley:
Emily Seidel – a top official in the influential political network associated with billionaire Charles Koch – praised the former UN ambassador’s “courage” for advocating changes to “an entitlement system that makes promises it can’t keep.”
And they aren’t the only ones:
“We need a complete reevaluation of entitlements,” Ken Langone, the billionaire co-founder of Home Depot who is weighing backing Haley
In fact, I think we can assume that Haley’s eagerness to cut these programs is a primary motive behind the surge in big donor interest in her campaign. They may realize on some level that she is not going to win this time but they are signaling that this is the way to a billionaire’s heart. If you’re willing to force poor elderly people into even worse penury than they already are, you are their kind of gal. They are investing in a future when Donald Trump is no longer telling his followers what they want to hear.
It will be interesting to see how Trump handles this. Although he’s vaguely indicated that he thinks cuts could be offset by growth for some reason, for the most part he’s held fast to his promise that the two vital programs cannot be cut and he’s kept the party with him. But as we can see, that’s a very tenuous promise. The real owners of the Republican Party are preparing to reassert themselves and this one little populist promise will die the day that Trump is finally out of politics. Haley is savvy enough to see that coming out strong on this issue tells the billionaires everything they need to know about who she really serves.
