McCarthy’s desperation to be speaker unites an entire coalition against the GOP and its Big Lie

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

The more things change, the more they stay the same ... and the more they don't.

First off, what’s stayed the same (and there is simply no nice to way to say this): GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is a lying sack of sh*t.

It's an observation McCarthy made necessary Wednesday, when he stood outside the White House following an Oval Office meeting and lied about House Republicans' fervent backing of Donald Trump's Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

Asked if he had any qualms about elevating Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York to a leadership post after she spent the last week spewing Trump's election fraud lies, McCarthy told reporters, "I don't think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election. I think that is all over with."

To state the obvious, McCarthy joined 138 members of his caucus in voting to reject certification of the 2020 results. McCarthy also orchestrated the ouster of the only member of the GOP leadership team who has loudly and consistently rejected Trump's lies on the matter, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming. McCarthy has also very publicly enlisted the help of Trump—chief promoter of the baseless fraud lies—in retaking control of the House next year. In essence, McCarthy has now built the foundations of House Republicans' 2022 strategy entirely on Trump's overt lies about "the legitimacy of the presidential election," as he put it.

As Cheney later told NBC News of McCarthy's debased leadership, "I think that he is not leading with principle right now ... and I think that it is sad and I think it’s dangerous.”

The operative word in Cheney's measured response is "dangerous." And when we look back on what is yet another pathetic and frightening episode in the Republican Party's continued detachment from reality, it may actually prove to be more of a turning point than it initially seemed.  

On Thursday, a group of about 150 high-profile disaffected members and former members of the Republican Party announced an alternative movement to help save democracy from the GOP, which they now view as a "material threat to the nation."

"We will not wait forever for the GOP to clean up its act," they wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. "If we cannot save the Republican Party from itself, we will help save America from extremist elements in the Republican Party."

The piece was authored by several people, including former Pennsylvania Congressman Charlie Dent, former George W. Bush secretary of transportation Mary Peters, and former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele.

What exactly they are proposing is admittedly squishy. They are urging likeminded Americans to join their "Call for American Renewal," an alliance that will apparently back politicians from either party in an attempt to defeat extremist Republicans. 

"We will fight for honorable Republicans who stand up for truth and decency, such as Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney, to name a few," they write. "But we will not rely on the old partisan playbook. We intend to work across party lines with other Americans to oppose extremists and defend the republic wherever we can."

But perhaps the most important takeaway from their piece is the fact that they have declared the Republican Party to be an unsalvageable trash heap in its current form—a virtual wasteland of corruption, bereft of principled ideas and leadership.

"Tragically, the Republican Party has lost its way, perverted by fear, lies and self-interest. What’s more, GOP attacks on the integrity of our elections and our institutions pose a continuing and material threat to the nation," they write. 

They are no longer working to save the Republican Party as we know it today, even if they will work to protect certain members of it. They have effectively declared war on the party leadership and its unholy alliance with Trump.

It may seem merely symbolic, but it's important—the more prominent Republicans who are willing to take this step, the better for democracy. It will free up some longtime Republican voters who have been harboring misgivings about the party to either vote Democrat or independent or not at all in the next few election cycles. Any of those options are good ones from the standpoint of trying to save our democracy.

In the meantime, some Republicans working within the party plan to make life as difficult as possible for GOP leaders like McCarthy. Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, one of 10 who voted to impeach Trump, tweeted Wednesday that McCarthy "wrongly" assumes GOP members like himself would vote for McCarthy as House speaker if Republicans manage to win the majority next year. It's also true that Kinzinger may not survive to take part in that vote, but a group called the Republican Accountability Project plans to do as much as possible to protect the 10 House Republicans who voted for Trump's impeachment, including both Cheney and Kinzinger.

Another possibility that will make liberals queasy but would also make McCarthy's life hell is the idea of a Cheney run for president in 2024, which she didn’t exactly shoot down in her NBC interview with Savannah Guthrie. Asked about the prospect, Cheney ultimately said she would do “whatever it takes” to keep Trump from occupying the Oval Office ever again.

Sarah Longwell, executive director of the Republican Accountability Project and publisher of The Bulwark, pushed the idea of a Cheney bid for the GOP nomination in a Thursday post, but most certainly as a Republican, not a third-party candidate.

"Of course Cheney should run for president as a Republican," Longwell wrote. "She will almost certainly lose. But there is a long and noble tradition in running for president in order to shape a party, to organize and persuade voters, to lend prominence to an issue."

Cheney running for the GOP nomination would be the worst-possible-case scenario for congressional Republicans who have now bet their entire party on Trump. She would be a loud and constant reminder of the Big Lie they have embraced and the fact that they all sold their souls for political gain.

While no strategy is exactly clear or well-formed at the moment, it does seem like McCarthy's actions have advanced the thinking of some never-Trumpers and unleashed a more difficult political environment for the party overall. Many who had hoped that they could somehow influence the direction of the GOP without having to declare war on it appear to have been disabused of that notion. What happens now remains to be seen, but taking an action that cements an entire coalition against your cause is about the worst of all possible worlds for a supposed political leader. Congrats, McCarthy. 

Finally sinking in for Republicans that they blew the first major battle of Biden’s presidency

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

Republicans in Washington are finally starting to realize they botched the first big political battle of Joe Biden's presidency, according to Politico. That belated revelation comes as a new poll from Politico/Morning Consult showed the American Rescue Plan garnering 72% support among voters (with just 21% opposing it) and Biden notching a 62% approval rating in the survey. Over the weekend, a CBS-YouGov survey also found that 71% of Americans think the $1.9 trillion plan will help the middle class more than wealthy Americans—which is true.

In retrospect, Republicans are now wondering whether their laser-like focus on the great Seuss-silencing and Potato Head scandals of 2021 really met the political moment. Hmm.

“Whenever there is something that goes into pop culture and now all this cancel culture stuff, it is catnip for the base and the media and Republicans are going to talk about that,” GOP strategist Doug Heye told Politico.

Shocker—Republicans got caught up in a useless round of conservative media-fueled demagoguery while the rest of America reeled from the greatest public health disaster in a century. Democrats simply blew right past Republicans to answer the national need. But what confounds GOP strategists is that the Republican party really mounted no concerted effort to oppose the Democratic legislation as it gained widespread traction and was broadly embraced by voters.

That's left people like Steve Bannon crying in his coffee. “It’s a fairly popular bill that polled well because it’s been sold as a COVID relief bill with direct cash payments to Americans—what’s not to like?” Bannon said. “However, that’s not what the bill is. That’s a huge problem because 2022 has already started and you don’t see the fight here.”

The Republican National Committee, for instance, issued a meager two statements about the bill. Conservative media went down the Seuss-Potato rabbit hole. And GOP lawmakers—who helped Donald Trump crank up the national debt by $7.8 trillion—apparently felt a little squeamish about suddenly attacking pandemic-related spending. 

“Republicans lost credibility on [the deficit] issue during the Trump years, especially the first couple years when we had the power to do something about it,” said Brendan Steinhauser, a GOP consultant. “There was no interest in doing anything about it. It was just, ‘let’s not even talk about spending or the debt or deficit or anything like that.’”

Even Democrats have been baffled by the Republican whiff on such a major battle. John Anzalone, an external Biden adviser and former Biden campaign pollster, was amazed that Republicans settled on framing the package as unrelated to COVID-19 when so many Americans who will get the relief money are specifically reeling from pandemic-related illness, joblessness, and financial struggles.

“This is just really mind-boggling,” Anzalone said. “At a time that we’re going through three or four crises at once, they have basically just punted. They've completely punted.”

But the lack of a coordinated GOP campaign with only helter-skelter attempts to mount an opposition is really emblematic of a much bigger problem for the Republican party—it no longer knows what it is or what it stands for. With no core values to operate on after they spent four years surrendering the party to a completely unmoored Donald Trump, Republicans don't have any go-to plays or even messengers for that matter.

And once again, their main messenger—Trump—was so consumed with his own pity party over the lost election and impeachment that it crippled the party's ability to settle on a line of attack and prosecute it in the media.

This will be a continual problem moving forward for Republicans. It's not only a question of, “what do they stand for?” but one of, “who can even carry that message”?

People like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina made feeble attempts at smearing the legislation, calling it "reparations" for Black farmers. Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas skewered Democrats for not excluding inmates from getting relief. But Cotton had voted in favor of a COVID-19 package under Trump that also included payments for those very same inmates. 

The lack of both message and messenger has left Republicans hoping against hope that relief that has already started hitting bank accounts and will continue to target life-saving funds to the nation's neediest will somehow plummet in popularity.

“It’s at the peak of its popularity right now and the more it becomes unpopular we’ll pound against them,” said one GOP aide.

But who exactly will do the pounding and what in the heck will they say? No one even has a clue—least of all, Republicans.

Eric Swalwell files second major lawsuit against Trump, allies for inciting deadly Capitol siege

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

Rep. Eric Swalwell filed a new lawsuit Friday in DC's federal District Court against Donald Trump and his closest allies for inspiring the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol that claimed five lives and injured more than 100 police officers. The second federal suit of its kind, it accuses Trump, Don Jr., Rudy Giuliani, and GOP Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama of violating federal civil rights and anti-terrorism laws by inciting the riot, aiding the rioters, and inflicting lasting emotional harms on members of Congress, according to CNN.

Last month, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi filed a lawsuit against Trump, Giuliani, and the right-wing extremist groups the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. Both lawsuits cite violations of a Reconstruction-era law designed to insulate Black Americans from intimidation by white supremacists. 

Swalwell, who was in the House chamber on Jan. 6 and later served as an impeachment manager, charges that the defendants incited the Capitol attack through their repeated claims that the election was stolen, their urging of supporters to attend the rally, and their specific encouragement of rally attendees to march to the Capitol and commit violence.

"Trump directly incited the violence at the Capitol that followed and then watched approvingly as the building was overrun," the lawsuit said. "The horrific events of January 6 were a direct and foreseeable consequence of the Defendants' unlawful actions. As such, the Defendants are responsible for the injury and destruction that followed."

Trump told rally attendees they must "show strength" and "fight like hell" and then directed them to "walk down Pennsylvania Avenue," while falsely telling his supporters that he would march with them to the Capitol.

Brooks told rally goers, "Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass."

Giuliani famously declared, "Let's have trial by combat!"—a reference to settling disputes through a personal battle between two opposing sides.

Naturally, Don Jr. offered rally goers the most dismal slogan of them all, but also literally threatened anyone who failed to act. "You can be a hero, or you can be a zero," he said at the rally. "If you're gonna be the zero, and not the hero, we're coming for you, and we're gonna have a good time doing it." Nice touch.

The lawsuit alleges, "The Defendants, in short, convinced the mob that something was occurring that—if actually true—might indeed justify violence, and then sent that mob to the Capitol with violence-laced calls for immediate action."

The defendants are all named in their personal capacities, forcing them to hire private attorneys and depriving them of hiding behind their public offices. As CNN notes, if either lawsuit proceeds, Trump and his allies would have to go through the discovery process and be subject to depositions—all of which could turn up fresh evidence about their personal involvement in the event.

Trump is the GOP now, and he’s already a drag on the party

Posted on (Updated by Kerry Eleveld

The establishment wing of the GOP officially caved to Donald Trump the moment Minority Leader Mitch McConnell confirmed last week that he would "absolutely" support Trump for president in 2024 if he were nominated.

McConnell's declaration ensured that what was once presumed to be a chance for the Republican Party to retool in a post-Trump era is now simply a gruesome extension of the Trump era.

But while damn near all the GOP congressional lawmakers charged with leading the party have now surrendered the entire Republican enterprise to Trump, it's worth noting the existence of discontent among a small but still meaningful group of Republican and conservative-leaning voters.

Numerous political analysts have fixated on Trump's hold over the party while failing to acknowledge his potential for dooming the GOP electorally. One data point many have touted is an oft-cited Politico/Morning Consult poll taken last month following Trump's acquittal of impeachment charges that found 54% of Republican voters/leaners would choose Trump in a primary contest if it were held today. The poll also found that 57% of Republican voters/leaners believed Trump should play a major role in the Republican Party moving forward.

So, true, it's Trump's party for the most part now. But if you dip into the crosstabs of that poll, 17% of GOP voters said Trump should only play a minor role while another 18% wanted him to play "no role" at all. That's a decent chunk of the Republican electorate that is reflective of at least a portion of the party's voters who cast a vote for Biden last November while still choosing to vote for GOP candidates down ballot. While it's hard to know exactly how much that slice of the anti-Trump conservative electorate has grown since his cultists stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, the Politico/Morning Consult survey shows that a sizable slice of the GOP coalition has completely soured on him. It’s not the majority by a long shot, but it’s more than enough to potentially sink Republicans in a general election where razor-thin outcomes are poised to determine winners/losers for the foreseeable future.

In fact, while Trump won the straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend, he didn't exactly dominate it. Trump won the survey of potential Republican 2024 candidates at 55%—not a ringing endorsement given how Trumpy the leanings of the crowd at this right-wing conspiracy-laden conference. But perhaps even a bigger surprise was the fact that only 68% of conference goers wanted him to run again—suggesting that a decent swath of the GOP coalition has misgivings about Trump. That's not a dominant starting point for Trump given that he spent most of his term hovering around 90% approval among Republican voters.

‘It’s really bad news for Republicans’: Continued GOP defections could upend party primaries

Posted on (Updated by Kerry Eleveld

The great GOP exodus continues in some of the very states that will prove most critical in the battle for control of Congress in the midterms. In Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports that some 19,000 voters have left the Republican Party since Donald Trump's Jan. 6 siege at the Capitol. And while that represents a tiny slice of the state's 8.8 million registered voters, the number of voters who have left the GOP accounts for about two-thirds, or 64%, of overall defections—up from a third or less in typical years, according to the Inquirer.

The data on exactly who is leaving the GOP—pro-Trumpers or never-Trumpers—are still a little murky. Based on interviews, the Inquirer concludes that the defections are fueled more by a swath of older, formerly loyal and highly engaged Republicans who have been turned off by Trump's takeover of the party. 

"Former Republicans interviewed largely were united in why they left," writes the outlet, "They saw it as a protest against a party that questioned the legitimacy of their votes and the culmination of long-simmering frustration with Trump and his supporters, who now largely control the GOP."

Lifelong Republican Diane Tyson, 68, renewed her license at the DMV on Jan. 5 and opted to wait until after the pro-Trump Jan. 6 rally in Washington before deciding whether to change her party affiliation. The attack that unfolded along with her watching her congressman vote to nullify the Keystone State's election results sealed the deal. Tyson officially became an independent on Jan. 7.  

“I knew I could not be a Republican anymore,” she said. “I just can’t—it’s not who I am. The Republican Party has gone down a deep hole that I want no part of. I don’t want an ‘R’ after my name.”

Similarly, 70-year-old Tom Mack, who has been a Republican since the late 1970s, offered, "It’s not the Republican Party I know. ... It’s drifted far away from my beliefs."

If the Inquirer is right about about the demographics of the GOP defectors and the trend holds, the Republican Party could end up saddled with a slew of right-wing primary winners heading into the 2022 general election contests. The party will also be losing some of its most active and loyal voting base—the people who are more likely to turn out in off-year elections and non-presidential cycles. 

The whole cocktail will make it that much harder for Republican candidates who prevail in the primaries to muster the votes to beat Democrats in the midterms. “If these voters are leaving the party permanently, it’s really bad news for Republicans,” Morris Fiorina, a political scientist at Stanford University, told Reuters.

Reuters homed in on GOP defections in the three battleground states of Florida, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina and found that roughly three times more Republicans as Democrats had left their party in recent weeks. In all three states, the outlet also noted that defections were concentrated in the urban and suburban areas surrounding big cities—areas where sagging GOP support for Trump helped deliver the presidency to Joe Biden.

Based on interviews, Reuters also concluded that Trump was the main catalyst fueling the exodus, though some party switchers did say they don’t believe the Republican Party was supportive enough of Trump. 

But the sentiment of Nassau County Floridian Diana Hepner, 76, suggests that Republican Party leaders really blew their opportunity to pivot away from Trump following the election and reestablish itself as something beyond a cult of personality.

“I hung in there with the Republican Party thinking we could get past the elements Trump brought,” Hepner said. “Jan. 6 was the straw that broke the camel’s back.” Now Hepner is hoping to be a "centrist influence" on the nominating contests in the Democratic Party. 

Political observers generally agree about the inflated rate of GOP defections, what remains to be seen is whether the trend continues and how it affects the contours of the nominating contests that are already taking shape.

In North Carolina, for instance, the GOP saw a slight uptick in party affiliations following Trump's acquittal, a reversal after weeks of declining registrations following the lethal Jan. 6 riot. There’s still a lot of time between now and next year, but the Jan. 6 riot does appear to be an inflection point. And despite Trump’s acquittal, the impeachment trial really gave Democrats an opportunity to reinforce for voters Trump’s culpability for the murderous assault on the Capitol.

Last week, following the vote to acquit Trump, there was a slight increase in weekly NC Republican Party registration changes, reversing the downward trend pic.twitter.com/ufrBnwuYOj

— Michael McDonald (@ElectProject) February 21, 2021

Don’t look now, but GOP already in disarray over Senate battleground races

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

With any luck, Donald Trump will apply the very same kiss of death he did in the Georgia Senate runoffs to at least a half dozen 2022 races that stand to decide the fate of the Senate.

In fact, we are already seeing Trump's toxic sludge begin to seep into those races in critical states like North Carolina and Pennsylvania, swing states with open seats that are potentially fertile ground for Democratic pick ups.

In Pennsylvania, the vote of retiring GOP Sen. Pat Toomey to convict Trump has already pitted county parties against Republican moderates like former Rep. Ryan Costello, who is eyeing a bid to replace Toomey. In saner times for the GOP, Costello might be the type of statewide candidate with crossover appeal that the Mitch McConnell wing of the party would champion. 

But Costello has made the fatal error of defending Toomey's vote against Trump. "Former Trump aides, in turn, are making plans to torpedo Costello before he announces a campaign," writes Politico.

Cue Trump-pardoned grifter Steve Bannon. "Any candidate who wants to win in Pennsylvania in 2022 must be full Trump MAGA," Bannon, a former member of the most corrupt White House cabal in American history, told Politico. Bannon also called Costello a "sellout to the globalists" in a separate statement.

Costello had the temerity to claim the rush to censure to Toomey will "hurt Republican candidates," and he even called a censure resolution drafted by his home county, Chester County Republicans, "staggeringly dumb."

The statement of one GOP county official that went viral really summed up the Trump loyalty test and why the inanity of his cultists is anathema to any reasonable voter. “We did not send him there to vote his conscience. We did not send him there to do the right thing, whatever he said he was doing,” Washington County Republican chair Dave Ball told Pittsburgh television station KDKA Monday. “We sent him there to represent us, and we feel very strongly that he did not represent us.” 

Of course, Toomey represents nearly 13 million constituents and a majority of Keystone State voters rejected Trump at the ballot box last November.

As Trump advisers promise to take aim at Costello, the former congressman dismissed the effort. “They can say whatever they’d like, it won’t bother me,” he said. “It might help my fundraising, to be honest with you.” Costello has also dissed "Sloppy Steve" Bannon's broadside because "he's forever indebted for his pardon."

So Pennsylvania is off to a rousing start, but North Carolina isn't any less intriguing. Similar to Toomey, the state's retiring GOP senator, Richard Burr, voted to convict Trump. But Burr is vacating his seat under the cloud of a trading scandal in which he dumped a bunch of stock just before the pandemic tanked the market. While Trump lost Pennsylvania by about 80,000 votes, he narrowly won North Carolina by roughly 74,000 votes.

But Burr's conviction vote forced state Republicans to choose sides with nearly all of them lining up behind Trump. According to CNN, the state party censured Burr, he was banned from at least one county GOP headquarters, and every Republican eyeing his seat took Trump's side. So much for moderation—whoever wins that primary will almost surely be the most Trumpy of the bunch. And certainly the prospect of Trump daughter-in-law Lara Trump potentially entering the race is already pushing the GOP primary to extremes.

The problem isn't lost on GOP strategists in the state, who fear Trump's brand took a big hit in the aftermath of Capitol insurrection. But they also aren't speaking openly about it. "They're all making a play for the primary," one state Republican strategist told CNN anonymously. "But my worry is that we're going to lose the seat because we get the Trumpiest guy of the bunch."

On the flip side of the equation, Trump's influence already has Republican strategists fretting he could doom their chances in potential pick-up races. In particular, they fear Trump's tinfoil hat loyalists such as Arizona GOP party chair Kelli Ward and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene could kill whatever chances they have to defeat Democratic incumbent Sens. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Raphael Warnock of Georgia.  

These races and more are likely to offer a bevy of Trump-inspired surprises for Republicans throughout the 2022 cycle. 

‘I don’t want to eat our own’: Senate Republicans fret over Trump-McConnell schism ahead of 2022

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell first saw Donald Trump's pointed screed skewering him as a “dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack,” he laughed, according to CNN. 

That's certainly the image McConnell's allies want to project, as they assure reporters in multiple stories the the Minority Leader is moving on from Trump, likely won't ever speak to him again, and remains laser-focused on one thing only: retaking control of the Senate in 2022. In essence, Trump is riffraff and canny McConnell doesn't have time for it.

What is undoubtedly true in all that projection is the fact that McConnell's every waking moment is devoted to reclaiming power over the upper chamber. Power is everything to McConnell and it's only fitting that it's the legacy issue he cares about most. "Mr. McConnell needs to be returned to his top role after the 2022 elections to become the longest-serving Senate leader in history in 2023, a goal the legacy-minded Kentuckian would no doubt like to achieve," writes The New York Times. The Times also reports that one GOP senator said McConnell might have triggered a rebellion if he had voted to convict—which is exactly why he didn't. But think about that—McConnell, worshipper of raw power, didn't have the political juice to lead his caucus and so he once again fumbled the opportunity to navigate a way out of Trump's wilderness. 

Whatever McConnell wants everyone to believe about his cool, cunning strategery, 42 members of his caucus voted to acquit Trump and several of them are openly losing their minds about the Trump-McConnell schism. 

Trump's chief sycophant, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, is beside himself trying to find enough adjectives to convey how invaluable Dear not-Leader remains to the party. Since the acquittal vote, Graham has cast Trump as the most "vibrant," "consequential," and "potent force" of the Republican party in various interviews. Oh, and don't forget, daughter-in-law Lara Trump is "the future of the Republican Party." (Talk about single-handedly killing your own credibility.)

Anyway, Graham fretted about the internecine warfare Tuesday on Fox News, saying, “I’m more worried about 2022 than I’ve ever been ... I don’t want to eat our own.” Graham said that if McConnell didn't understand how essential Trump is, "he's missing a lot."

Trump ally Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has been a little more menacing in his denunciations of McConnell. “I think he needs to be a little careful," Johnson said in a radio interview earlier this week on The Ross Kaminsky Show. "When the leader of the Senate conference speaks, he has to understand what he says reflects on all of us. And I didn’t appreciate his comments, let’s put it that way.”

Johnson told the Times that McConnell could kill GOP chances with pro-Trump voters. “You are not going to be able to have them on your side if you are ripping the person they have a great deal of sympathy for in what he has done for this country and the personal toll President Trump has shouldered,” he said.

Poor Trump. The murderous riot he inspired has really taken a toll on him and his cultists. 

But Johnson isn't wrong about the Trump-McConnell feud being a vote killer—he's just over-representing one side of it. Sure, pro-Trumpers have already proven they're not particularly jazzed about turning out in support of Senate Republicans if Trump isn't on the ticket. But on the other side of the equation, a whole bunch of once-dedicated GOP voters are abandoning the party over Trump's post-election rampage against a free and fair contest that he quite simply lost. Trump's months-long campaign to overturn those results, underwritten by the vast majority of congressional Republicans, has done incalculable damage to the party.

So however steely McConnell's resolve, Trump is still the noxious blow torch McConnell has repeatedly failed to neutralize. 

Trump is back, he’s rabid as ever, and the GOP is sure to be collateral damage

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

Fresh off his Senate GOP acquittal, Donald Trump reinserted himself into the national political arena with none other than a 625-word screed lashing out at GOP Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as a “dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack." 

Credit where credit's due—the assessment isn't entirely off the mark. But it was the second portion of that sentence that cued up the 2022 fight to the death between Trump and McConnell. "If Republican Senators are going to stay with him," Trump said of McConnell, "they will not win again." He also accused McConnell of getting played “like a fiddle” by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and declared McConnell’s “Beltway First agenda” a loser compared to his own America First agenda. Trump’s broadside was entirely predictable after McConnell tried to absolve his own acquittal vote by declaring Trump “practically and morally responsible” for the lethal Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.

Overall, Trump's statement, issued through the pro-Trump PAC Save America, was a lesson in revisionist history. He took credit for the victories of House GOP candidates last November despite the fact that a decisive number of ticket-splitting voters rejected him personally at the ballot box. He 100% scapegoated McConnell and Georgia's GOP officials for the Senate runoff losses in which Trump helped thoroughly muddle the message of the GOP senators. And he claimed credit for McConnell's own reelection, writing, "Without my endorsement, McConnell would have lost, and lost badly." Oh, Trump also generously threw in a non sequitur about McConnell's "substantial Chinese business holdings," a swipe at both McConnell and his wife Elaine Chao, who has family business ties to China and resigned from Trump's Cabinet following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

But the lasting impact of Trump's first opportunity to refill the political air with his noxious fumes was his declaration of war on whatever is left of the McConnell wing of the party (frankly, not much, which I plan to write about over the weekend).

"I will back primary rivals who espouse Making America Great Again and our policy of America First," Trump pledged. In other words, the price of admission in Trump's tent is ultimate loyalty—the surest way to boost the party's most dismal sycophants to any number of Republican primary victories.  

McConnell, on the other hand, has been perfectly clear that his sole criteria for candidates is their ability win a general election. “I personally don’t care what kind of Republican they are, what kind of lane they consider themselves in,” McConnell told The Wall Street Journal. “What I care about is electability.” McConnell added, "That may or may not involve trying to affect the outcome of the primaries.”

But the 2022 Senate map virtually ensures that Trump and McConnell are on a collision course. A total of 34 seats are up in 2022, 20 of which are held by the GOP. With key races for control of the chamber taking place in swingy states like Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, McConnell will almost surely favor different candidates than Trump for some of those races. And even in races where they manage to agree, Trump's massive overcompensation for his flagging ego all but guarantees he'll manage to muck up the message for Republican candidates—witness Georgia.

McConnell declined to issue a response to Trump’s outburst, but he deployed his braintrust of former aides to channel his inner monologue. 

“It seems an odd choice for someone who claims they want to lead the G.O.P. to attack a man who has been unanimously elected to lead Senate Republicans a history-making eight times,” Billy Piper, a former McConnell aide, told The New York Times. “But we have come to expect these temper tantrums when he feels threatened — just ask any of his former chiefs of staff or even his vice president.”

It’s on.

The Republican Party is destined to get exactly what it deserves: More Donald Trump

Posted on (Updated by Kerry Eleveld

Take some time to survey the barren landscape of budding 2024 GOP hopefuls and it's hard to escape the conclusion that Republicans have little choice but to stick with Donald Trump for now.

Following the devastating Jan. 6 riot, GOP lawmakers had the perfect inflection point to part ways with Trump on the most basic of principles—the U.S. commander in chief shouldn't launch an attack on the nation's seat of government and then gleefully watch it unfold. The only Americans who could argue with that logic are dead-to-rights seditionists.

But instead of capitalizing on a golden opportunity, the nation’s three most-powerful elected Republicans melted into a telling puddle of uselessness. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy folded within weeks, rushing down to Mar-a-Lago to kiss Trump's ring. Vice President Mike Pence—the man Trump targeted for physical harm during the insurrection—refused to step forward and take a stand for himself or even his family members, who had joined him at the Capitol on Jan. 6 for certification of the election results. It's honestly impossible to think of anything more pathetic than that. 

But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is running a close second to Pence. After more than a decade of being celebrated by D.C. reporters as the Senate GOP's master puppeteer, McConnell followed his caucus rather than led it on impeachment. Despite putting on a show for corporate donors with a scathing indictment of Trump, McConnell voted to acquit because he didn't have the juice to convince his caucus that protecting a U.S. president who launched an attack on the homeland probably wasn't a great precedent. Senate Republicans have now left Americans to wonder, what on earth could possibly be an impeachable offense?

But yeah, three peas in a pod—Pence, McConnell, and McCarthy—demonstrating the complete moral bankruptcy of the Republican Party and sheer inability of anyone among GOP electeds to demonstrate something that might be mistaken for leadership.

Cue the Tuesday Politico/Morning Consult poll showing 53% of GOP voters would vote for Trump if a primary were held today. The closest second was Pence at just 12%—apparently that's what being a spineless loyalist gets you. That said, no one else even makes double digits at this point. The poll also found that 57% of Republican voters want Trump to play a major role in the GOP going forward. That represents a comeback of sorts for Trump since Jan. 7 when some 40% hoped Trump would play an active role.

What's both striking and problematic about recent polling among Republicans is that while Trump remains the most dominant figure in the GOP, he also divides conservative voters. For instance, while 57% of GOP voters wanted a major role for Trump, 17% favored a minor role for him, and 18% wanted no role for Trump at all. That's a deep split.

The latest Civiqs polling notes a similar phenomenon. Of the 43% of respondents who said they voted for Trump, about two-thirds (28%) said they think of themselves as "Trump supporters" while the other third considers themselves "Republican Party supporters." 

So while Trump is bound to continue his role as a dominant force in the Republican Party, he’s also bound to divide the party amongst itself. 

Pelosi planning a 9/11-style inquiry into the Capitol siege

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

In a letter to her colleagues Monday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised the formation of an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and the security failures surrounding it.

In the interest of safeguarding the nation's security, Pelosi said a 9/11-type commission must be established to “investigate and report on the facts and causes relating to the Jan. 6, 2021, domestic terrorist attack upon the United States Capitol complex” as well as “the interference with the peaceful transfer of power.” Establishing such a commission will likely require legislation in the vein of how the 9/11 Commission was formed. Pelosi also said a supplemental appropriations bill would be necessary to fund increased security measures for the Capitol and congressional members in the near term. 

“It is clear from his findings and from the impeachment trial that we must get to the truth of how this happened,” Pelosi wrote. 

Pelosi isn't the only congressional lawmaker who wants to know what the heck happened on Jan. 6 to make the Capitol breach possible. Even the likes of Trump sycophant Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told Fox News Sunday, "We need a 9/11 Commission to find out what happened and make sure it never happens again." Of course, Graham could turn on a dime if Donald Trump is somehow implicated in the security failures—which he surely will be. The only question concerning Trump's (non)involvement in the flagging law enforcement presence is to what extent Trump helped hobble the response.

Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who ultimately voted to convict Trump of the impeachment charges, also expressed genuine interest in getting to the bottom of the breach and security failures. 

“Why was there not more law enforcement, National Guard already mobilized, what was known, who knew it, and when they knew it, all that, because that builds the basis so this never happens again in the future,” Cassidy said Sunday on ABC News’ This Week.

Naturally, House Republicans have already established themselves as a part of the problem. The latest conspiracy theory of the tinfoil hat caucus appears to be that Pelosi herself kneecapped the Jan. 6 response. They ask a series of probing questions in their latest letter to Pelosi and then complain that they haven't been adequately consulted on the latest security measures being taken at the Capitol, including the installation of magnetometers at entrances to the House chamber.

Anyway, if the tinfoil hat caucus is really on to something, then Pelosi's independent commission will ultimately be an investigation of ... herself. Genius.