I wish I understood what all these Republicans running for president hope to get out of it. It can’t be that they actually believe they are going to win. We know that Donald Trump will never accept that he lost so he will proclaim that the winner stole it from him and many of his followers will believe him and they’ll stay home handing the election to Joe Biden. Remember, he even claimed that Ted Cruz stole the Iowa caucuses in 2016. After first conceding the race he turned around and tweeted:
“Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he illegally stole it. That is why all of the polls were so wrong any [sic] why he got more votes than anticipated. Bad!”
He removed the word “illegally” but then followed it up with:
He let that go when he started winning primaries but once he got the nomination he famously declared that he would only accept the results of the general election if he won.
He did win but he still wasn’t satisfied because he lost the popular vote so within a couple of weeks he was declaring that it was the result of voter fraud.
He even went so far as to create the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, and packed it with vote suppression activists to prove it. They were unable to do that of course because there were no facts to support it.
Fast forward to 2020 and we all know what happened. The results of his Big Lie are that even today, nearly three years later 63% of Republicans still believe the election was illegitimate. Yes, it has shrunk from the 71% who believed it was stolen right after January 6th and the number of Republicans who now believe Biden won the election fair and square has risen from 22% to 36%. Big deal. The vast majority of Republicans are still convinced that Donald Trump is the legitimate president and most of them are going to vote for him.
And why wouldn’t they? If you really believe that the election was stolen from him you must also think that he’s got a right and a responsibility to take the White House back from the usurper.
Even if any of the challengers to his claim to the throne wanted to explode the Big Lie (which thus far only seems to be former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie) it would be hard to know where to start. Trump had dozens of different reasons why the election was stolen from him and there are new ones every day. Whether it’s the mail-in ballot scheme or the election machine rigging or censorship of the Hunter Biden story or foreign interference, Trump has claimed at one time or another each was responsible for his loss.
He understands instinctively that when you are advancing a totally preposterous lie, the best thing you can do is offer as many rationales for it as possible. Some people will pick a particular reason and that’s good enough for them. Others just see it as “there’s an awful lot of smoke, there must be a fire.”
Most Republican officials, including his rivals, have therefore decided to either back Trump’s lie outright or simply say that the election was full of “problems” that need to be fixed, which tacitly amounts to the same thing. They will twist themselves into pretzels making that case.
Here is GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel:
You don’t get any more “establishment” than the Chair of the Republican Party and she says she does not believe the election was fairly decided. So, of course the rank and file are going to believe that as well.
So let’s say that one of the other candidates starts to make a move and turns this into a real race. And let’s say that they end up eking out a win. As we know Trump will not graciously concede and endorse his rival. And I do believe that many of his followers will stay home. But I also think there’s every chance that he will tell them to write him in and many of them will. He’s just not the quitting type.
Maybe these candidates thought (hoped?) he would be taken down by one of the criminal investigations that are dogging him in various places around the country. I’m not sure why they would have thought that changed anything, however. He claims that too is a rigged deal on behalf of the “deep state” and his followers are in lockstep with him on that as well. Most of these candidates are barely willing to even timidly suggest that taking classified documents might not be exactly legal so there isn’t going to be much pushback there either.
So why are all these people running? They have to know that Trump will never admit that he lost. He even protested when he won insisting that he actually won bigger but they cheated him out of it! And by now they must realize that his base is going to stick with him no matter what.
I would guess that many of them just want to remain relevant in politics. Maybe they think that if Trump beats Biden they can get a job in the cabinet. Some might even think they have a shot at VP although I can’t imagine Trump rewarding anyone who had the temerity to run against him in this race. He believes he is the president in exile and shouldn’t have to run for the nomination at all. I’d be shocked if he chooses someone from the pack.
Florida Gov. Ron Desantis may have been the one who believed his own hype and thought that because he won re-election handily he really was in a position to knock out Trump. He’s clearly starting to see the error in that calculation. Florida isn’t America and even there, he’s losing to Donald Trump by 20 points. He’ll be lucky to get out of this with a political career at all. But the rest of them aren’t dumb and they had to know that Trump would not stand for anyone else snatching away the nomination from him — that he would sabotage the ticket if he isn’t on it simply because he is congenitally incapable of admitting that he lost.
I think the is that they all just want to be in position in case he moves beyond the Big Lie and takes the Big Sleep. For all the yammering about Biden’s age, Trump’s not a young man either. This primary is basically a kind of death watch, hoping that if it should happen, one of them will be the next in line and he or she will have preserved themselves tas MAGA’s heir apparent by never being disrespectful to the late leader.
The problem is that people like him tend to live long lives. And even if he doesn’t he will rise up from the grave to claim the deep state had him deep-sixed to prevent him from becoming president again and then demand a recount. In this election, for the GOP it’s Trump or no one. Either they let him have it or he’ll burn the party down. This is all a wasted exercise.
The failure of Rep. Jim Jordan’s (R-Ohio) House Judiciary Committee hearing last week to generate any kind of coherent narrative might have been expected (Washington Post):
Blame it on the “MAGA persecution complex” — the vast array of outlets in the right-wing media ecosystem that incentivizes GOP lawmakers to pander to conservative victimization and grievance. It’s feasting on so many claims of persecution that it’s essentially eating itself to death.
At last week’s hearing, Republicans alleged that the FBI investigated conservative parents at school board meetings. (That’s entirely baseless.) They insisted FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, a registered Republican, personally sicced the FBI on conservatives. (Wray called this “insane.”) They claimed the FBI has eagerly persecuted Trump. (The FBI has actually been rule-bound and cautious.) They railed that FBI plants incited the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. (The central evidence of this has collapsed.)
Republicans even insisted the FBI is riddled with anti-Catholic bias based on a field-level memo about radical right-wing Catholics that is indeed problematic. But Wray admitted to a serious error, declaring it subject to internal review. Presenting one example of abuse at a huge agency as proof of another vast conspiracy is silly.
And so on. “The zone-flooding conspiratorial antics will keep on coming. The MAGA persecution complex requires no less,” Greg Sargent concludes.
Grievance is in the right’s DNA as much as the South’s loss in the Civil War. I’m sorry, The War of Northern Aggression.
The trade show area of political conferences is lined with of booths filled with vendors and staff from nonprofit groups. Lots of tech firms with the latest in campaign software — for fundraising, for campaign communications and social media, for data management. I feel like strolling through dressed as Darth Vader and intoning, “Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed.”
That sentiment is not mine alone. Micah L. Sifry discusses a survey of volunteers from 31st Street Swing Left, Markers for Democracy and Swing Blue Alliance. He summarizes their report, “The Experience of Grassroots Leaders Working with the Democracy Party,” calling it “sobering.” One bullet speaks to a pet peeve of mine and a current project (bolded):
One volunteer I spoke with recently complained that VoteBuilder/VAN is not only clunky but still has “a 1980s interface.” While Democrats may attempt to update their software, there is a reluctance to update their strategies.
There is a systematic overreliance on tech to solve Democrats’ problems. When I hear, “Our campaign will be data-driven,” I wince. Too many political problems cannot be solved with more tech. NC Democrats’ new chair, Anderson Clayton, 25, scolds, “Democrats don’t have a messaging problem. They have a showing-up problem.”
The critiques from the report may be overbroad. In places such as Lavora Barnes’ Michigan and Ben Wikler’s Wisconsin, the proof is in the wins. But in general, “outside the box” thinking is almost nonexistent and even discouraged.
I’m looking for this new generation of leaders to address that rather than introduce new-and-improved light sabers.
(h/t SR)
Can he be any more obvious? Is there even one of his supporters who cringes when he transparently sucks up like this?
Former President Trump praised the judge overseeing his classified documents case as his legal team seeks a postponement of his trial in Florida.
Trump’s motion for a continuance of the trial, filed last Monday, awaits a decision by Judge Aileen Cannon, an appointee of the former president who presided over his initial challenge to the FBI search of his Florida home.
Asked on “Sunday Morning Futures” on Fox News whether he believes the judge will grant the motion, Trump said he did not know.
“I know it’s a very highly respected judge. A very smart judge, and a very strong judge,” Trump said.
When host Maria Bartiromo noted that Trump appointed the judge in the case, Trump said, “I did, and I’m very proud to have appointed her.”
“But she’s very smart and very strong, and loves our country,” Trump said. “We need judges that love our country so they do the right thing.”
Cannon was confirmed as a district judge in the Southern District of Florida with a bipartisan vote in November 2020.McCaul ‘very confident’ NDAA will be a bipartisan bill Mark Kelly ‘concerned’ about impact of No Labels on Biden campaign
Rulings from Cannon substantially slowed the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) investigation into Trump over his handling of classified documents upon leaving the White House, in one instance barring prosecutors from using the classified documents they seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
Cannon was twice overturned by a higher court, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which greenlit the DOJ’s use of the documents and disbanded the special master process.
This is too much. I think we know what he’ll do if she “betrays” him by following the law. I wait with bated breath to find out …
It’s going to be very interesting to see how this one plays out.
And, as with everything else, it’s a long, slow evolution that’s been accelerated at warp speed by the presence of Donald Trump in American politics:
There are 26 Republican governors. Three of them showed up here this week at the annual summer meeting of the National Governors Association.
And of those three, one left after the first night, and another had little choice but to attend — his chairship of the group began at the conclusion of this year’s gathering.
Striding the Hard Rock Cafe casino stage like a megachurch pastor, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox used his maiden speech as NGA chair to implore his fellow governors to make the organization a model of robust yet civil debate.
“If we’re ever going to find our better angels again, it has to start with us setting the example of how to disagree better,” Cox said.
But it’s hard to do much disagreeing, or have a conversation at all, when nobody is listening: Fewer than a half-dozen governors were still in attendance for his remarks Friday, the session’s closing day, and they were all Democrats.
After more than a century of bringing together the nation’s governors, the NGA — long a wellspring of ideas, forum for best practices and platform for innovating policymaking — is at grave risk of falling victim to the silos plaguing most every other element of American politics.
That’s the bad news. The good news is if any governor can reverse or at least slow this trend, it’s Cox.
“A bipartisan organization in a partisan world is always going to struggle, there’s no question about that,” the earnest Utahan acknowledged in an interview before vowing to round up more Republicans for next summer’s meeting. “I’ll definitely be cajoling them next time.”
It won’t be easy.
Republicans and Democrats increasingly prefer to exist in separate political spheres rather than debate one another, let alone try to find consensus.
This sorting plays out on television, where right and left have their preferred cable networks and joint appearances between lawmakers or candidates on network shows are increasingly rare; it’s a way of life in Congress, where the parties have separate lunches and spend much of their free time raising money with their co-partisans; and of course, division is the mother’s milk of politics online, where algorithms push users toward the reinforcing content they crave.
Then there’s the fact that one of our two political parties has for seven years been in the grip of a demagogue who simultaneously benefits from and accelerates this polarization while driving Republicans further away from mainstream institutions.
Despite this descent, the NGA remained a vibrant if overshadowed bipartisan institution. I can recall attending the group’s summer meeting in 2017 and finding a robust turnout of governors from both parties.
At least for the chief executives, it was a storied association.
Besides the opportunities to learn from one another, and often poach a bit, the group’s meetings offered the governors attention from the media, business community and lobbyists that they couldn’t easily attract to Jefferson City or Montpelier. (Former Washington Gov. Gary Locke was thrilled to attend the meetings, he told people, because he knew the late Washington Post columnist David S. Broder would be in attendance.)
There’s the annual winter meeting in Washington, D.C., always paired with a White House dinner with the president, and the more casual and rotating summer conclave. Particularly for new governors or those with little national profile, these were must-attend events — a way to sell their state, their story and themselves.
Chairing the NGA offered even more visibility, luring ambitious governors like Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander, Arkansas’s Bill Clinton and Minnesota’s Tim Pawlenty to take control of the group and bolster their profile ahead of future presidential bids.
[…]
Republican participation has slowly tailed off, though. A few conservative states, like Florida and Texas, stopped participating in the association at all, no matter their governor.
Then, in the Trump years, some Republican governors stopped coming or sequestered themselves while in attendance because they didn’t want to face questions from the press about the president’s latest eruption. (The GOP executives needn’t have much worried this year — I didn’t see another national journalist, and there were few cameras besides C-SPAN.)
Since 2018, there’s been a turnover in states that has left both fewer Republican governors and fewer Republican governors of the sort who want to discuss best practices or share a soft-serve cone or bumper car on the boardwalk with their Democratic counterparts.
Blue-state Republicans such as Maryland’s Larry Hogan and Massachusetts’s Charlie Baker have been replaced by Democrats, and many purple states have elected or reelected Democrats.
In some states, where new Republicans have taken office, governors like Nevada’s Joe Lombardo have appeared reluctant to participate in the NGA. At last month’s Western Governors Association conference in Colorado, Lombardo told people he thought the NGA was a Democratic-leaning group, according to a source familiar with the conversation.
A Lombardo representative said he didn’t come to the NGA because of scheduling issues, but he and other Republican governors almost always find time to attend events hosted by the Republican Governors Association, which is dedicated to electing the party’s governors.
Fittingly for this polarized moment, it’s the RGA that has become the preferred organization for most GOP governors. That’s why the winter gathering of governors is usually well-attended across party lines: In addition to the White House invite, there are always ancillary fundraising events in Washington that ensure donors and therefore a good turnout.
Now, to be sure: Natural disasters kept some governors away this year. Others found the Eastern Seaboard location (with no major airport nearby) forbidding, and there was also a dip in turnout from some Democratic governors, if not nearly as significant as with Republicans.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, told me he thought some Republicans stayed away for the same reason they did during Trump’s administration: “I don’t think they want you to ask them about the former president.”
Walz pointed out that the two governors staying for the conference didn’t need to worry about that: Cox has been clear about his distaste for Trump, and Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt is already supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
But what I found alarming was the talk racing through the hallways of the Hard Rock (which, in a reminder that Trump can never be fully escaped, was formerly his Taj Mahal): The NGA’s summer meeting may come to an end, replaced by only regional meetings that would likely reflect the partisanship of the region. That may be a safer space, to borrow a phrase, but it would be tantamount to surrender, a concession that even with governors the partisan chasm is just too deep to sustain a national organization.
This all may sound like so much nostalgia for a bygone day. Yet many of the governors do stand apart from their counterparts in Congress for their seriousness of purpose, their executive leadership in the face of crisis and, yes, their willingness to forge coalitions across party lines.
“It’s one of the more unique organizations where folks across the aisle can find common ground,” as New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, the outgoing NGA chair, put it.
The Democrat Murphy and Republican Cox, who spent the last year as vice chair, offered an example of the productive work that can be done by the group, as they and their wives spent much of their time together addressing the country’s youth mental health crisis.
The paltry turnout here may prove ominous, or it may be altogether fitting for the “Disagree Better” initiative of Cox, who in the days before the conference toured Gettysburg, Independence Hall and Valley Forge.
The whole party is polluted. There is no saving it.
He’s a hard right establishment Republican. And it’s just not good enough. Why?
During the event, Carlson asked the former governor about his veto of the first-in-the-nation gender-affirming care ban for minors.
Hutchinson said at the time of his veto that he believes the law went too far and was an example of government overreach.
On Friday, the former governor said that he believes only two genders exist and he would not personally support a member of his family changing genders, but he does not think the government should be involved in the decision.
“There should not be any confusion on your gender. But if there is confusion, then parents ought to be the ones that guide the children,” he said. “That to me is a fundamental principle.”
Hutchinson added that he would have signed a bill that only banned gender-affirming surgery for minors because a parent should not be able to consent to that “permanent change.” But the Arkansas law, which went into effect after the state legislature overrode his veto, bans all forms of care, including surgery, puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy.
Carlson pushed back on Hutchinson’s position, questioning how gender-affirming care is treatment and arguing that a responsibility exists to prevent this.
Hutchinson reiterated his view and said he did not support an Obama-era policy that required schools to allow transgender students to use the bathroom consistent with their gender identity.
Carlson then cut Hutchinson off, asking about the distinction that Hutchinson was drawing and if he supports allowing children to change their gender but not be able to use a different bathroom. Hutchinson expressed frustration in a briefly tense moment.
“Let me finish what I said. Let me finish, if you don’t mind,” Hutchinson said.
He said the government should not be “pushing an agenda” in schools, which is what he opposes. He said parents and faith should guide these “difficult” decisions and the government should stay out.
You do not deviate from the hate, even a little bit.
Unless you are Trump , of course. He is not bound by any rules. He makes them up as he goes along.
Wait. The Insurrection Act? Where did that come from? Trump did amend that post later to say Espionage Act, but it appears that the Insurrection Act is on his mind. You have to wonder if maybe he’s gotten a target letter from the Special Council.
There is good reason for him to worry about that.
Jennifer Rubin looked at a new prospective prosecution memo which sees Donald Trump potentially facing some very serious charges based upon the public evidence. One of them is the likelihood of being charged under the Insurrection Act:
Building on a prior prosecution memo, a group of seven former prosecutors and defense attorneys — lawyers with decades of collective constitutional and criminal law experience — published at Just Security a voluminous updated memo giving their best estimate (and advice to Smith) as to what to expect.
The authors at Just Security consolidated the seven-part conspiracy the House select committee set out into three essential prongs. They explained the first prong: “Trump knew he lost the election but did not want to give up power, so he worked with his lawyers on a wide variety of schemes to change the outcome. Those schemes included creating fraudulent electoral certificates that were submitted to Congress, implicating statutes such as 18 U.S.C. § 371, which prohibits conspiracies to defraud the United States” and 18 U.S.C. §1001, which prohibits false statements to the government. Second, after the phony elector scheme failed, Trump tried to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to obstruct the joint session in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512. And third, when that too failed, “Trump went to his last resort: triggering an insurrection in the hope that it would throw Congress off course, delaying the transfer of power for the first time in American history. This implicated statutes such as 18 U.S.C. § 2383, which prohibits inciting an insurrection and giving aid or comfort to insurrectionists.”
Applying the first two statutes — fraud and obstruction of an official proceeding — to the facts should not be difficult; operating under a lower evidentiary threshold, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter already found that Trump and lawyer John Eastman “probably” violated those laws.” Since then, the authors pointed out, evidence concerning seven slates of phony electors procured with Trump’s direct knowledge has come to light. These slates were allegedly assembled “with the purpose that those electors be submitted to Congress and the National Archives, and that the false slates of electors were in fact submitted to Congress.” Fortunately, a parade of witnesses was left behind — ranging from Pence and his chief of staff and lawyer to former Trump campaign and White House staff to the electors themselves. If former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has “flipped,” Smith will have an even more compelling case.
The incitement charge might be trickier, given the difficulty in proving Trump’s intent to cause violence, First Amendment issues for his Jan. 6, 2021, speech on the Ellipse, and the lack (so far) of definitive evidence connecting Trump to the militia groups. Given the gravity of the offense, the authors suggested proceeding but with a narrower approach based on Trump’s original call-out to his supporters, “his infamous 2:24 PM tweet targeting Pence and his 187 minutes of inaction in derogation of his affirmative duties while the riot raged.” Under a narrower approach, prosecutors could omit the speech on the Ellipse.
The authors concluded: “Based on all the available evidence, case law, and analogous historical precedent, Donald Trump’s combined support for the insurrectionists and inaction while the insurrection was ongoing seems to more than pass the bar to support charges under DOJ policy for engaging in the January 6, 2021, insurrection and providing support, aid, or comfort to the insurrectionists under the criminal insurrection statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2383.”
Because this statute has not been used since the Civil War (although several militia leaders were convicted under a related statute for seditious conspiracy), and because other, more easily provable charges are available, Smith might not want to charge this most serious crime. However, the authors made a persuasive case that if Attorney General Merrick Garland keeps his promise to follow the law and the facts, the charge would be unavoidable. Indeed, no charge better captures the essence of Trump’s alleged coup attempt. Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and one of the co-authors of the Just Security memo, told me: “Smith can charge this case in a way that is straightforward but fully captures the use of deception, pressure, and ultimately violence to thwart the peaceful transfer of power in a way that pushed democracy in America to the brink.”
As for potential defenses, the authors found no legitimate claim of presidential immunity to commit crimes and no evidence that Trump acted in good faith. (“They all knew that Trump had lost the election in each of the states that submitted phony electoral certificates — and they knew the express purpose of submitting those electoral certificates was to overturn a lawful election. Indeed, the central plotters … expressly acknowledged that the scheme was unlawful.”) Likewise, a defense based on advice of counsel is not available when the lawyers themselves are alleged to be co-conspirators.
Even without knowing the grand jury testimony (especially from Pence) that remains secret, Smith’s case, as the authors at Just Security laid out, would be devastating. In digging out each nugget of information, piling one on top of another and applying them to the elements of the alleged crimes, the memo makes an overwhelming case for indictment on three easily comprehensible charges. It therefore is practically inconceivable Smith would fail to bring an indictment.
Florida Republicans think so. That’s how batshit insane they are. And Ron DeSantis has empowered them:
The Brevard County Republican Executive voted by a supermajority this week to call upon Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to ban sale and distribution of Covid “and all related vaccines” in the state, Florida Today reported.
The nonbinding resolution also demanded that “Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody seize all remaining doses in the state for safety testing, ‘on behalf of the preservation of the human race,’ the resolution states,” the report said.
The resolution is part of a trend among GOP county officials in the state, and “closely mirrors” a measure advanced in February in Lee County. Last month a similar resolution was passed in Tampa Bay Hillsborough County, bringing the total to more than half a dozen counties, the outlet reported.
Here’s some verbiage from the resolution in Brevard County, according to Florida Today:
“Strong and credible evidence has recently been revealed that Covid-19 and Covid-19 injections are biological and technological weapons,” the Brevard draft resolution says, citing claims that have been disproven and disputed by respected medical groups.
“An enormous number of humans have died or been permanently disabled” by the vaccine, it says. “Government agencies, media and tech companies, and other corporations, have committed enormous fraud by claiming Covid-19 injections are safe and effective.”
Florida Today did add this disclaimer:
“The four-page resolution cites a mix of news and government sources, legitimate scientific papers — including a Swedish study, purported to show that the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine alters human DNA, that its authors have said has been misinterpreted by vaccine critics — and fringe websites.”
It continues:
“The resolution includes references to data from a 2021 Pfizer study showing more than 1,200 deaths and 42,000 ‘adverse cases’ associated with the vaccine worldwide between December 1, 2020, and February 28, 2021, but fails to include other important context.”
The report notes that, “By March 1, 2021, more than 72 million doses of the vaccine had been administered and more than 48 million people vaccinated in the United States alone, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
“The CDC has acknowledged some complications have occurred with different versions of the shot, but says ‘severe reactions’ are rare and the benefits of vaccination ‘continue to outweigh any potential risks,’ according to its website,” the report states.
The New York Times COVID-19 tracker reported as of today that 67 percent of Brevard County residents – and 93 percent of its seniors – have received the primary vaccination against COVID-19.
DeSantis tells everyone within earshot that he wants to turn the United States into Florida. I don’t think we can afford to let him do that.
I’ve never forgotten the first time I encountered an essay by the late, great Molly Ivins. She described happenins inside the “Austin Funhouse,” a.k.a, the Texas state capitol where, pre-Viagra, overstimulated legislators often went to “fist city.”
In Michigan they hit lower, says Michigan Democrats’ state Senate Majority Whip Mallory McMorrow.