House Republicans became the Party of Q this week. Democrats won’t let voters forget it in 2022

The word "nightmare" is trending in Republican circles lately. Thursday Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina characterized the idea of Donald Trump testifying at his impeachment trial as "a nightmare for the country." Or as a Politico headline put it, "Trump's allies fear the impeachment trial could be a PR nightmare"—which is what Graham really meant.  

Democrats agree, and the House Democratic campaign arm is moving quickly to bring that nightmare home to the House GOP, which officially declared itself the QAnon caucus this week when 199 of its 211 members voted against stripping its chief Q adherent, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, of her committee assignments. 

In its opening salvo in the 2022 battle for control of the House, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released a campaign ad indicting House Republicans for standing "with Q not you." The ad places the conspiracy cult at the center of the deadly Jan. 6 riot, saying that QAnon "with Donald Trump, incited a mob that attacked the Capitol and murdered a cop."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi previewed the strategy this week when she referred to GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy as "Qevin McCarthy, Q-CA" in a tweet. McCarthy helpfully lived up to the moniker by refusing to remove Greene from her committee assignments and forcing his caucus to go on record in support of someone who not only espouses QAnon, but has also endorsed the execution of Pelosi and other Democrats and has verbally assaulted survivors of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. And frankly, that's just a small taste of Greene's abhorrent quackery.

House Democrats are betting that won't play well in the very districts that will likely decide control of the House for the second half of President Joe Biden's term.

"If Kevin McCarthy wants to take his party to ‘crazy town’ and follow these dangerous ideas, he shouldn't expect to do well in the next election,” Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, the new chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told Politico. "They can do QAnon, or they can do college-educated voters. They cannot do both."

According to Politico, the DCCC's $500,000 TV and digital ad campaign will run in the districts of seven vulnerable Republicans: Reps. Mike Garcia, Young Kim and Michelle Steel of California; Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida; Don Bacon of Nebraska; Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania; and Beth Van Duyne of Texas.

Democrats' early decision to nationalize the race is a notable departure from their strategy in 2018, when they deployed a hyper-localized message around health care that ultimately netted them an historic 41 seats. Of course, the backdrop to that strategy was the GOP's repeated efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which would have stripped millions of Americans of their coverage.

The backdrop to this decision were the horrific events of Jan. 6, an insurrection at the Capitol that Americans couldn’t have even imagined before they watched in horror as it played out in real time on screens across the country. A Yahoo News/YouGuv survey released this week found that 81% of Americans said the attack wasn't justified. And more than 9 in 10 Americans expressed revulsion about the attack, saying it made them feel “angry,” “ashamed” or “fearful.” 

Democrats will now have several weeks worth of a Senate trial to remind people of that revulsion and how the GOP underwrote that deadly attack before, during, and after it took place through its unyielding support of Trump's lies and its embrace of extremist groups like QAnon.

Democrats’ bet is that after they deliver results on COVID-19 relief, they will be able to head into 2022 saying that Democrats stood with the American people while Republicans stood with QAnon.

Donald Trump Meets With Kevin McCarthy At Mar-A-Lago To Plan 2022 Republican House Takeover 

On Thursday, House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy met with former President Trump in Florida where the two discussed plans at Mar-a-Lago on how Republicans could take back the House in 2022.

McCarthy’s meeting was “very good and cordial” with the former President, according to Trump’s team.

After the meeting, McCarthy tweeted, “United and ready to win in ’22”

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‘President Trump Has Agreed To Work With Leader McCarthy’ On 2022

A statement from the Trump-backed Save America PAC read, “President Trump has agreed to work with Leader McCarthy on helping the Republican Party to become a majority in the House.”

“They worked very well together in the last election and picked up at least 15 seats when most predicted it would be the opposite,” it continued. “They will do so again, and the work has already started.”

A statement from McCarthy’s team on the meeting read, “For the sake of our country, the radical Democrat agenda must be stopped.” 

“A united conservative movement will strengthen the bonds of our citizens and uphold the freedoms our country was founded on.”

Fox News reports that an aide familiar the meeting said its purpose was to move the Republican Party forward. 

The aide told Fox News, “They are catching up as McCarthy will be in the neighborhood.” 

“They’ve been on good terms for a while, and that will be important for the party moving forward” the aide added.

Liz Cheney A Top Target For Trump

CNN reports that Trump will bring his energy to bear on neoconservative Rep. Liz Cheney, the #3 Republican in the House. 

Cheney, along with nine other Republicans, voted with Democrats to impeach Trump in January.

According to CNN, Trump has been following the effort by House Republicans to remove Cheney from her leadership position. 

Just this week, America First Congressman Matt Gaetz, a top ally of Trump, flew to Wyoming to encourage Republicans to toss Cheney and elect someone else to Congress.

The Meeting Indicates GOP Needs Very Popular Trump

The meeting was reportedly set up after Trump’s team learned McCarthy would be fundraising in Florida.

It is no secret McCarthy would like to replace Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker if his party can take back the House in two years.

Trump invited McCarthy to Mar-a-Lago and the House Republican Leader was quick to accept.

What this also signifies besides the upcoming midterm is that top Republican leaders appear to have no plans to break away from Trump following the January 6 Capitol Hill attacks.

McCarthy had said that Trump bore some responsibility for the attack.

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McCarthy Criticized Trump After Capitol Violence

Opposing impeachment on the House floor on January 13, McCarthy still said “the President bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters.”

“He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding,” McCarthy added. “These facts require immediate action by President Trump.”

As for whether or not Trump’s speech that day provoked the attack, McCarthy said last week, “I don’t believe he provoked it if you listen to what he said at the rally.”

It is likely that this subject was not a focus when McCarthy and Trump met Thursday at the former president’s resort.

Whether Republican leaders like it or not, Republican voters still very much support President Trump. 

An Axios poll from the week after the Capitol incident showed that 92% of Republican voters want to see Trump run for President again in 2024.

The post Donald Trump Meets With Kevin McCarthy At Mar-A-Lago To Plan 2022 Republican House Takeover  appeared first on The Political Insider.

Trump plots death-by-a-thousand-cuts for Republican Party

Aides to Donald Trump have apparently jingled some keys in front of him just long enough to divert him away from forming his own party, but that has only renewed his focus on torturing what remains of the Republican Party. First and foremost, that means figuring out how to exact revenge on Republicans who crossed him on impeachment, such as Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming. 

But Trump's dark cloud extends far beyond some dozen or so GOP congressional lawmakers all the way into the states, where parties are veering far right. Arizona is perhaps the best example, where the Republican Party voted to censure former GOP Sen. Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain for opposing Trump, and Republican Gov. Doug Ducey for failing to steal the election for Trump (i.e., certifying the election results).

At the same time, Trump also plans to meddle in the GOP's effort to retake the U.S. Senate. In fact, he's already arguably hobbled the party's efforts—after being censured, Ducey decided not to run for the state’s Senate seat in 2022, where newly elected Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly will be trying to win a full term following his special election victory last November. 

But Arizona's Senate race is just the beginning. Republicans are now facing 2022 battles for open seats they currently control following Republican Senate retirements in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina—a list that could easily expand. And this is where Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Trump will almost surely be at loggerheads over who the party should nominate to run for those seats. In Ohio, for instance, Trumper and seditionist Rep. Jim Jordan seems like a shoo-in for backing by Trump. But while Jordan's radical stances and questionable personal history are a perfect fit for his district, he's likely not the strongest statewide candidate. 

More broadly, McConnell surely wants to claim ownership over the center of gravity of the national party, but that will be impossible as long as Trump is squatting on his turf. That is particularly true because Trump remains a fundraising juggernaut at the moment, with tens of millions in PAC money at his disposal and almost no limitations on what he can do with it. And as we all know, Trump has zero allegiances to achieving real goals for the party, such as winning back the Senate or retaking the House. Trump's only real goal is getting revenge and maintaining his stranglehold on the GOP. If Trump blows a few elections in the process, meh—that's of little concern to him as long he can throw his weight around. 

Speaking of which, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is still trying to claw his way back into Trump's good graces after admitting on the House floor that Trump played a role in helping to incite the Capitol riot. Of course, McCarthy also went full seditionist, opposing certification of the election results and voting against Trump's impeachment. But Trump only ever fixates on the negative—it's part of his charm. 

So state Republican parties are severing their ties to the moderating forces that once made the GOP safe for suburban voters, Trump and McConnell are about to go to war on Senate candidates, and McCarthy is chasing his own tail in the House and coming up short every time. On top of that, an ominous fundraising cloud continues to hang over the seditionist caucus.

Other than that, everything's perfectly copacetic. Oh, and if you want some insight into how those warring factions have been working out electorally for Republicans, look no further than Georgia, where twin GOP losses just handed control of the Senate to Democrats.

It’s time for Lisa Murkowski to leave the GOP

The Republican Party and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski have always had a rocky relationship. The daughter of Senate giant Frank Murkowski, she has always seemed an odd fit for a party that has evolved ever right. 

She was appointed to her seat in 2002, and cruised easily with a primary victory in 2004 before squeaking out a general election win 49-46. But in 2010, during the apex of the frothy tea party-movement, Murkowski was ousted in the Republican primary against Sarah Palin-backed Joe Wilson (remember her?). She is a senator today because during her write-in campaign, Alaska Democrats rallied around the lesser-of-two-evils. Yet as we saw Thursday, Alaska is shifting leftward while Senate Republicans are headed into the minority. Republicans back home hate her. So why fight it? It’ll soon be time for her to ditch the GOP, become an independent, and caucus with the Democrats. 

Yesterday’s Alaska poll by Public Policy Polling (PPP) confirmed what we have been seeing in our own Civiqs data, and what I’ve been hearing from insiders—that Alaska is a battleground state this year—at the presidential, Senate, and House levels.

According to PPP, impeached racist Donald Trump has a narrow 48-45 lead against presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden in the presidential contest. In the Senate race, incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan leads by a woeful 39-34 against independent (and de facto Democrat) Al Gross, despite the latter having a name ID of almost zero. And in the House race (Alaska only has one), Democrat Alyse Galvin leads long-time Republican incumbent and crank Don Young 43-41. 

But here’s something else that is really interesting: only 29% of poll respondents approved of Murkowski when asked about her job approvals, compared to 55% who disapproved. That’s not a base upon which one builds a successful reelection campaign, which she will in 2022.

Amazingly, among Republicans, those job approval numbers are an eye-popping 17-71%! She is loathed inside her own party. Meanwhile, Democrats’ approvals of her are at 41-41%!

Of course, Democrats like her because she’s become a thorn on the GOP’s side. While she voted to acquit Trump during his impeachment trial, she has legislatively bucked the GOP in key moments—the vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the only Republican “no” vote on Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation vote, a rare “no” on George W. Bush’s PATRIOT Act, a vocal critic of Trump’s racist border wall, the list goes on. She has needled her caucus leader, Mitch McConnell, for his unwavering focus on judges. “It’s unfortunate that we’re kind of viewing [judicial nominees] as this is the one thing we can do,” she said. “We’re not focusing on [legislation] as much as I think we should or we could.” Republican Senate whip John Cornyn, in charge of getting his colleagues to vote however leadership wants them to vote, said, “I would say she’s the most independent.” 

There is definitely no love lost between her and Trump. After her Kavanaugh vote, he did what Trump does and lashed out on Twitter: 

Few people know where they�ll be in two years from now, but I do, in the Great State of Alaska (which I love) campaigning against Senator Lisa Murkowski. She voted against HealthCare, Justice Kavanaugh, and much else...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 4, 2020

Trump was joined by Alaska’s most famous grifter: 

Hey @LisaMurkowski - I can see 2022 from my house...

— Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) October 5, 2018

Murkowski hasn’t backed down, by any measure. Where Maine Sen. Susan Collins pretends to be oh-so-concerned before caving to Trump and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Murkowski just doesn’t give a damn. When former Trump defense secretary Gen. James Mattis unloaded on Trump, Murkowski singularly stood out among her cowardly caucus by underscoring the important of that criticism.

“I was really thankful. I thought General Mattis’ words were true and honest and necessary and overdue,” she told reporters. “When I saw General Mattis’ comments yesterday I felt like perhaps we are getting to a point where we can be more honest with the concerns that we might hold internally. And have the courage of our own convictions to speak up.” 

She added that she was “struggling” over whether she could support Trump.

So it’s obvious, Republicans hate her and are gunning for her. Murkowski isn’t stupid, and she sees the dangers she faces in a Republican primary. That’s why her crew is pushing a ballot initiative that would replace party primaries with a “jungle primary,” in which all candidates run on the same line. The top four finishers (regardless of party) would advance to a runoff to determine the ultimate winner. 

That could certainly save her hide, but why bother? What is keeping her a Republican, at this point, besides fealty to the legacy of her father? She can strike out and build her own legacy. 

Alaska has a rich tradition of Democratic-caucusing independents. She doesn’t need to become a Democrat, just caucus with them. Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer, I’m sure, would be happy to let her keep her committee assignments, and in particular, her chairmanship of the Energy and Natural Resources committee—of obvious importance to Alaska. 

Obviously, it would be stupid of her to do this before November, while Republicans still control the chamber. But she’ll have to decide, if Democrats take the Senate (which is likely at this point), whether she wants to live in the hapless minority in a new, filibuster-free Senate, or whether she wants to keep her chairmanship, her influence, and—perhaps most importantly—the ability to vote her conscience without having to deal with the likes of McConnell, Cornyn, and the rest of the male-dominant Republican Party.

It would also be the ultimate “fuck you” to Trump and Palin, and you know Murkowski wants to deliver that message. The disdain is visceral. 

Ultimately, she won’t win reelection on the strength of Republican voters. Her base is now Alaska Democrats. They are the reason she is in the Senate today, and they will be the reason she keeps her job, even if the jungle-primary ballot initiative is enacted. So why not own it? 

Given Alaska’s shift leftward in recent cycles, it’s also the smart political-electoral play. 

Alaska presidential elections Republican vote % 2016-Trump 2012-Romney 2008-McCain 2004-Bush
51.3
54.8
59.4
61