Deal struck on Jan. 6 commission, with House vote scheduled next week

Posted on May 14, 2021 by Joan McCarter

After months of foot-dragging and obstruction from Republicans to the forming an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, a bipartisan deal has emerged. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had delegated Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson to work with ranking committee member John Katko of New York to find a solution. One, it should be noted, that has been greeted tepidly by Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

Thompson and Katko have crafted legislation to create a commission modeled after the 9/11 panel. It would have 10 members, half of them appointed by Democratic congressional leaders, who would also appoint the chair. Republicans would appoint the other half, including the vice chair. Critically, if the chair and vice chair agree, the panel would have the power to issue subpoenas. So, problematically, they can veto each other's efforts to subpoena witnesses or documents. On the other hand, the chair is given sole power to get information from federal agencies and to appoint staff.

That, New York University law professor Ryan Goodman tells Greg Sargent at The Washington Post, gives the forces of truth a chance to prevail. "Thanks to powers invested in the Chairperson alone, the Democratically-appointed members would have significant control over the direction of the investigation," Goodman said, helping to prevent Republican appointees from "engaging in mischief." He added that the "Chairperson would be able to move ahead quickly with getting information from the government without needing a vote," saying that the chair can "appoint staff" who would "shape how the investigation and hearings unfold."

The bill specifies that those members cannot be "an officer or employee of an instrumentality of government"—i.e. there can be no currently serving government officials on the panel. They must have "national recognition and significant depth of experience in at least two" areas: previous government service; law enforcement; civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy; experience in the armed forces or intelligence or counterrorism; and a background in cybersecurity or technology or law. A final report, including recommendations for preventing future attacks, would be due at the end of this calendar year.

McCarthy told reporters Friday morning that he hadn't looked at the text yet (he's been too busy installing Trump's toady in leadership to pay attention, I guess), but continues to have concerns about the scope. Namely that "you got to look at the buildup before, and what went on afterward," meaning the BLM and antifa straw men.

The House is voting on the bill next week, along with a supplemental funding bill to beef up Capitol security. It will pass, and should get at least a handful of Republican votes, if not a few dozen, including one from Rep. Liz Cheney, who got a coveted Wall Street Journal quote Friday (take that, Stefanik). "I hope we'll be able to really have the kind of investigation we need about what happened on Jan. 6," Cheney said.

"As I have called for since the days just after the attack, an independent, 9/11-style review is critical for getting answers our [Capitol Police] officers and all Americans deserve," Katko said in a statement announcing the agreement. "This is about facts, not partisan politics." Thompson said in his statement. "I am pleased that after many months of intensive discussion, Ranking Member Katko and I were able to reach a bipartisan agreement. […] Inaction—or just moving on—is simply not an option. The creation of this commission is our way of taking responsibility for protecting the U.S. Capitol."

As of this writing, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell hasn't reacted to the announcement that a deal has been struck, or that the legislation should advance in the House as soon as next week. In the past, he's been critical of the effort, casting it as "partisan" and demanding that the commission also encompass "the full scope of the political violence problem in this country," meaning those BLM and antifa straw men again.

One of the problems with McCarthy and McConnell potential foot-dragging is, of course, whether it would pass in the Senate with the filibuster. The other problem is that the two of them are responsible, along with Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, for appointing half of the commission members. That gives them more opportunity to delay, with the clock ticking on the still-unformed commission's deadline for the end of the year for a report and recommendations.

On the other hand, McConnell has no love for Trump. Here's a pretty much hands-off way for him to damage Trump and to fight the Big Lie. He could make sure that at least some of the five Republican appointees aren't Trumpers. There are plenty of former Republican officials who would relish the opportunity to serve as his proxy.

It's also incumbent on someone in Republican leadership to acknowledge reality, especially as the lunatic fringe of the House Republicans have taken over and are in full denial mode. There was the truly ugly revisionism on display in this week's House Oversight hearing, where Republican Rep. Paul Gosar called even investigating the events of Jan. 6 an assault by the "deep-state" on "law-abiding citizens," and GOP Rep. Andrew Clyde said that day in the Capitol looked like a "normal tourist visit." The nation's dumbest man (yes, dumber than Sen. Ron Johnson) Rep. Louie Gohmert took to the floor Friday to flat-out lie about the events of that day.

Here's McConnell's chance to counter what's happening in his party in the House, including the ouster of Cheney in deference to Trump and the Big Lie. After Trump's acquittal on his second impeachment, McConnell excoriated Trump. He said that Trump was "practically and morally responsible" for the attack. "This was an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories orchestrated by an outgoing president who seemed determined to either overturn the voters' decision or else torch our institutions on the way out," McConnell said. "A mob was assaulting the Capitol in his name," he said. "These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags and screaming their loyalty to him."

Having said all that, it's now largely going to be up to McConnell to do something about it.

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

Posted on May 13, 2021 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.

Removing Liz Cheney isn’t a turning point for the Republican Party, it’s a post-extinction event

Posted on May 6, 2021 (Updated May 7, 2021) by Mark Sumner

No Democrat loves Liz Cheney. Over the years she has consistently taken positions that were among the most conservative, most regressive, and most aggressive of any Republican in Congress. She is among those most protective of the wealthy, most willing to sacrifice the environment, and most willing to ignore injustice. Looking back at the key votes of this past year, Cheney voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, against the Paycheck Fairness Act, against a bipartisan bill expanding background checks, against the SAFE Banking Act, and against the American Dream Act. She also voted against removing Marjorie Taylor Greene from committees.

In fact, Cheney cast a “No” vote on every single key vote in 2021—except one. That one exception was her vote on Jan. 13 in favor of impeaching Donald Trump for his role in inciting an insurrection against the U.S. Capitol.

Cheney is, in every way, a perfect example of the kind of Republican that progressives have fought so hard for decades. And that’s exactly why she’s being removed from her post. Because that Republican Party no longer exists.

Cheney got a chance to have her own say in The Washington Post, in which made it clear that her struggle with Donald Trump is on a level that goes beyond policy. “Trump is seeking to unravel critical elements of our constitutional structure that make democracy work—confidence in the result of elections and the rule of law. No other American president has ever done this.”

Cheney also calls out House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who was willing to tell at least a modicum of the truth a week after being forced to flee from the House chamber. “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters,” McCarthy said on Jan. 13. “He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding.” At the time, McCarthy suggested that Trump deserved to be censored by Congress.

Fast forward three months, and McCarthy was not only visiting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, but defending his actions on Jan. 6. With each passing week, McCarthy has moved more and more to not just defend Trump, but rewrite the history of the past four years, including the assault on the Capitol. His willingness to surrender any sign of honesty has earned McCarthy a spot that The New York Times described as “an alpha lap-dog inside Mr. Trump’s kennel of acolytes.”

Trump left office in shame, with an approval rating that matched the worst of his term in office and a record number of impeachments attached to his name. Republicans, including McCarthy, might have decided to move away from Trump and champion their agenda with someone else at the head. It might even seem logical that the 56-year-old congressional leader might push himself forward, seizing the opportunity to stand in the spotlight far from Trump’s orange glow.

Except … there is no Republican agenda. Not any more. That Republicans failed to adopt a party platform in 2020 wasn’t just some fluke of Trump’s bungled management. It’s a 20-gigawatt Broadway sign signaling that there is no there there, with a footnote that McCarthy may be the weakest “leader” Congress has ever seen.

That’s not to say that Republicans aren’t trying to pass bills. It’s just that those bills have no real purpose beyond making people angry. Making people angry—on both sides of the political spectrum—isn’t just the modern Republican brand, it’s all that remains of their party of trolls. Their base has no demands other than to be fed lies that make them angry, and to see Republicans taking action that makes everyone else angry.

Which is why they went crawling back to Trump. He knows how to spread nonsense that makes people angry, and that’s all the party is about.

Liz Cheney, with her positions and her ideas is an alien to this party. She’s talking about a turning point in a party that turned to ash years ago. Meanwhile, the Gaetz-Greene-Boebert base of the party, both in and out of Congress, see her as an alien who, rambling about conservative principles, might as well be High Martian.

So they’ll get rid of her. But only after Politico publishes a few editorials about how “Democrats love Cheney” without bothering to quote a single Democrat. Because then Republicans get to be angry at Cheney and convinced they’ve also upset Democrats. That’s their idea of a win these days.

“While embracing or ignoring Trump’s statements might seem attractive to some for fundraising and political purposes,” wrote Cheney in her editorial, “that approach will do profound long-term damage to our party and our country.” But she’s wrong about a critical point here. The tense.

That damage has already been done.

Cheney: ‘History is watching.’ House Republicans: Screw that, Trump is watching

Posted on May 6, 2021 by Laura Clawson

Rep. Liz Cheney, for now the third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, has decided she cares more about principles and how history will judge her than she does about the Trumpist orthodoxy of today’s Republican Party. For that, she’s about to be ousted from House Republican leadership and replaced by someone more loyal to Trump but less conservative on the issues, with a simple majority vote of the House Republicans coming as soon as next week.

Cheney refuses to participate in the lie that the election was stolen from Trump—the lie that spurred the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol—so Republicans are swiftly moving to strip her of her leadership role and replace her with Rep. Elise Stefanik, who has been all in on the Big Lie. Rep. Steve Scalise, the second-ranking House Republican, has publicly backed Stefanik over Cheney, while House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is reportedly supporting Stefanik behind the scenes after becoming increasingly critical of Cheney in public. And, on Wednesday, Donald Trump himself loudly endorsed Stefanik.

Cheney is defiant, on Wednesday evening publishing a Washington Post op-ed defending her position and calling out McCarthy for having changed his. McCarthy, she accurately charged, has “changed his story” from his Jan. 13 statement that “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.”

“The Republican Party is at a turning point, and Republicans must decide whether we are going to choose truth and fidelity to the Constitution,” she wrote, going on to call for Republicans to support criminal investigations of the Capitol insurrection, support a bipartisan January 6 commission with subpoena power, and “stand for genuinely conservative principles, and steer away from the dangerous and anti-democratic Trump cult of personality.”

Most Republican lawmakers, of course, will do nothing of the sort. Instead, Cheney’s House colleagues are set to vote her out next week, replacing her with Stefanik, who was elected as something of a moderate and has a much less conservative lifetime voting record than Cheney. The Club for Growth is not happy about that—though it also doesn’t seem to be defending Cheney—tweeting “Elise Stefanik is NOT a good spokesperson for the House Republican Conference. She is a liberal with a 35% CFGF lifetime rating, 4th worst in the House GOP. House Republicans should find a conservative to lead messaging and win back the House Majority.”

Back in 2017, Stefanik opposed Trump on key issues, like his withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, and voted against the tax law that was the major Republican legislative achievement of the Trump years. In late 2018, she took criticism from male Republicans for trying to help Republican women win primaries. But in 2019, she became one of Trump’s fiercest defenders during his first impeachment. It appears she had realized what would be her quickest path to leadership, and she has continued to remake herself in the Trumpy style, down to the LOTS OF CAPS in a Thursday morning tweet assailing Twitter, a private business, for “unconstitutional overreach” in having suspended her communications director.

To be clear, this is not a fight with a hero and a villain. It’s a fight between someone whose principles are largely punitive far-right ones that do include a basic respect for the democratic process and someone who apparently has no strong principles beyond her own advancement—if being a non-Trumpy Republican looks like the way to go, she’s that, and if Trump looks like the winning horse, she’s riding him. One of them is concerned that “History is watching. Our children are watching”—but is looking to create a Republican Party that is strong enough, in the long term, to hand over the maximum amount of power to the biggest corporations and promote endless war. The other is much less worried about history or policy than about getting the immediate promotion, thankyouverymuch. And today’s Republican Party is with the latter, less tied to any specific principle than to Trump—at least as long as he’s got the biggest megaphone and the most committed base—and definitely willing to jettison little things like election results or any pretense of non-racism to keep the Trump base motivated.

Kevin McCarthy must face consequences for promoting Trump’s Big Lie

Posted on February 27, 2021 (Updated March 1, 2021) by Darrell Lucus

Donald Trump still has a hammer lock on the Republican Party. That was amply demonstrated in the days after all but seven Senate Republicans voted to acquit Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. Of those who joined the bipartisan rebuke of Trump’s conduct and voted to convict, Sen. Richard Burr and Bill Cassidy have been censured by their state parties, while the other five face calls for their censure.

Yet an even clearer and starker indication of the hold Trump still has on the GOP came much earlier, on Jan. 28, when House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy flew to Mar-a-Lago to meet with him. The topic? How to take back the House in 2022. This came on the heels of McCarthy voting to object to the certification of Joe Biden’s victory, hours after the insurrection—thus not only giving succor to the insurrection, but to the false claims of election fraud that triggered it.

It is impossible to overstate just how outrageous this was. The leader of the House Republicans, the second most powerful Republican on Capitol Hill, saw fit to publicly kiss the ring of a man who spent months attempting to steal a second term—an effort which culminated in a deadly insurrection that came frighteningly close to claiming the lives of members of both chambers of Congress (and the vice president). And yet, as near as can be determined, McCarthy has faced almost no blowback for it, nor for effectively promoting the Big Lie by voting to object.

To be sure, Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz have gotten well-deserved scorn, and even calls for their expulsion, for their “leadership” in the effort to object to the certification of Joe Biden’s victory. Sen. Lindsey Graham has crassly declared that the GOP needs Trump’s help to win. He has been pilloried in the reality-based community for this, and rightly so. But it is one thing for backbench senators to subvert the will of the American people. It is quite another for the leader of the House Republicans to do so.

The leadership of the Republican Party in situ, January 28, 2021. pic.twitter.com/40lYItNPpw
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) January 28, 2021

McCarthy objected to Biden’s victory, and then embraced Trump, despite knowing full well that Trump had told the biggest lie in a political career shot through with them. The fact that McCarthy hasn’t had his feet held to the fire for either of these outrages can only be described as political malpractice of the highest order. It’s long past time to correct that oversight.

Minutes after the insurrection died down and the Capitol had been finally secured, Dave “I’ve seen enough” Wasserman, House editor of Cook Political Report, tweeted that McCarthy had acknowledged what the nation already knew: Trump had lost the election.

A few weeks after the election, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy acknowledged Trump's clear loss to me and I asked him if the president's refusal to concede would lead the country down a dangerous road. His response: "Maybe."
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) January 6, 2021

Wasserman doubled down the next day, noting that McCarthy objected to the certification of Biden’s victory even after repeatedly acknowledging to Wasserman that Biden had won. Then, five days after the insurrection, Wasserman revealed that McCarthy had previously told him that if Trump made good on his repeated threats to reject any result other than his reelection, he knew he’d have to enter the fray.

True story: the day before the election, House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy told me that if Trump refused to concede, he and McConnell would eventually have to come out and issue a joint statement acknowledging the result. In the end, McCarthy left McConnell twisting in the wind.
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) January 11, 2021

McCarthy knew that Trump was blowing smoke when he claimed the election had been stolen. And yet, McCarthy remained silent even in the face of reports of election officials being harassed, trolled, and threatened due to these claims. He remained silent even as an employee at Dominion Voting Systems was forced into hiding after being targeted with vicious smears and threats.

When I first saw these reports, my thoughts turned to Frank DiPascali, who helped Bernie Madoff run his Ponzi scheme from 1986 until Madoff’s arrest in December 2008. Though he died before he could be sentenced, DiPascali pleaded guilty to his role in the racket, nine months after Madoff’s scheme imploded. He admitted that he had known since at least the early 1990s that Madoff wasn’t trading. And yet, not only did DiPascali squander numerous chances to come clean over the previous two decades, but he actually helped Madoff further the scheme. For instance, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission, when Madoff realized he was on the brink of collapse, DiPascali persuaded Madoff to use the remaining balance in Madoff’s now-infamous Chase account to cut $350 million in checks to relatives and favored investors.

McCarthy’s behavior in the months after the election isn’t much different from DiPascali’s behavior in the last two decades of Madoff’s fraud. Based on Wasserman’s accounts, McCarthy knew the Big Lie was, well, a lie—and he didn’t do a damn thing about it. He didn’t speak out publicly, nor did he tell Jim Jordan, Mo Brooks, Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs, Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and the rest of the Sedition Caucus to call off their plans to object.

We won't forget what you said on 11/5/2020 and your complicity in the insurrection @GOPLeader: "Trump won this election, so everyone who’s listening, do not be quiet. We cannot allow this to happen before our very eyes... join together and let’s stop this.” pic.twitter.com/bLOieBxlh2
— Alfred Spellman (@AlfredSpellman) January 20, 2021

This was a time where the leader of the House Republicans had a chance to, you know, lead. In this case, it was a chance that McCarthy was morally, and almost certainly legally and constitutionally, required to take. He blew that chance eight ways to Sunday. In so doing, McCarthy did something that, on paper, takes a lot of effort: For a time, he made McConnell look like a paragon of integrity.

What in the world could McCarthy have been thinking, you might ask? Well, one answer can be found in a profile that The New York Times ran on him in January, days after Trump was impeached for a second time. McCarthy was getting a lot of blowback from Republican constituents back home in California’s 23rd district, based in Bakersfield and the Central Valley, for not being supportive enough of Trump. When McCarthy publicly stated that Trump bore responsibility for the attack during the certification of the Electoral College votes, hours after the Capitol had been secured, it ruffled a lot of feathers among his Republican constituents. According to The Times, at least one local tea party activist, who ran against McCarthy in 2016, is giving serious thought to primarying McCarthy again in 2022. Before Trump, it would have been unthinkable for a party leader in the House to face a substantive primary challenge.

McCarthy may have taken a trip to Florida to smooth things over back home in Bakersfield, but he seems to have forgotten that he is not only the congressman for CA-23, he is also the leader of the House Republicans. As such, he would have the inside track to becoming speaker if the GOP retakes the House. If McCarthy has any ambitions of peeling off swing voters and suburbanites in 2022, being seen publicly with a man who stirred up a deadly insurrection can only be described as an unforced error. It’s particularly outrageous when combined with the fact that he knew Trump had lost and said nothing for months.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) blames *you* as he tries to clear up his statements on whether Trump bears responsibility for the January 6th attack on the Capitol or not. “I also think everybody across this country has some responsibility," Rep. McCarthy says. pic.twitter.com/aBeGBsA9sJ
— The Recount (@therecount) January 24, 2021

Recall that in 2020, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi caught a lot of scorn from the right for ripping up a copy of Trump’s State of the Union speech. Self-promoting conservative law professor (and Fox News pundit) Jonathan Turley went as far as to call for Pelosi to step down saying that she forgot she was representing the whole House.

McCarthy’s meeting with Trump is far, far worse. There is something wrong if merely ripping a copy of a speech draws more hackles than meeting with a president who spread pernicious lies about an election being stolen, then incited a deadly insurrection to overturn his defeat. By meeting with Trump, McCarthy thumbed his nose at the many police officers who were injured, including one who died in the line of duty and two others who died by suicide soon after. He thumbed his nose at those who were harassed, trolled, and threatened as a result of the Big Lie that he knew it was a lie. That’s hardly behavior becoming of someone with ambitions of representing the whole House.

McCarthy will never resign, of course. But that doesn’t mean we can’t make him answer for his misdeeds. According to the latest Cook Partisan Voting Index, there are only four districts in California with ratings of R+10 or worse. McCarthy sits in one of them; with a PVI of R+14, on paper, it’s the reddest district in the state. There’s no denying it: This district is one of the few red smudges left in a state that has turned an unrecognizable shade of blue. But the trendline suggests that if done right, a Democrat can at least keep McCarthy tied down.

Bakersfield is undergoing considerable demographic change, for one thing. Once dominated by the descendants of people who fled Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas during the Dust Bowl, figures from the 2010 census showed Bakersfield was 45% Latino and 38% non-Hispanic white. According to The New York Times’ profile from January, Bakersfield is now majority Latino. This shift suggests that the city’s Latino population is growing too rapidly for neighboring CA-21, which has long served most of the Latinos in the Fresno-Bakersfield corridor.

Add that to the fact that McCarthy’s district as a whole is currently just barely majority white, at 50.5%. Wasserman suggested earlier this month that CA-23 could potentially become whiter and more Republican in redistricting. But that seems hard to believe if Bakersfield is already majority Latino, or close to it. While Wasserman argues that it’s very likely the state’s nonpartisan redistricting commission will create two Latino-majority districts in the Fresno-Bakersfield corridor, mathematically it’s hard to see how the 23rd would not absorb more Latino voters if its central city is already majority-Latino. Coupled with the right candidate, policies, and outreach, this shift can only help Democrats.

The vote margins between McCarthy and his challenger are a FIFTH of McConnell’s. CA-23’s demographics (+30% Latino) are similar to CA-25, whereas Kentucky is 87% white. CA-23 can be flipped by investing in Latino working class enfranchisement and turnout.#GetThatMangone https://t.co/Uc22ihrsS2
— Ricardo Gutiérrez (@icaito) June 17, 2020

Beyond demographic shifts and redistricting, Trump actually underperformed in a McCarthy’s district, which the Grey Lady describes as an area with “bobbing oil pump jacks (that) dot the landscape like a page out of West Texas,” with a strong historical bent of social conservatism. In other words, classic MAGA territory. According to the latest numbers crunched by the folks at Daily Kos Elections, while Mitt Romney won this district over Obama 61-36 in 2012, Trump only won it 58-36 in 2016 and 57-41 in 2020. Contrast that with IA-04, the former balliwick of Steve King, now held by Randy Feenstra. It swung from a 53-45 win for Romney to a 61-33 win for Trump in 2016 and 63-36 in 2020. Or OH-05, Jim Jordan’s domain. It swung from a 56-42 win for Romney to a 64-31 win for Trump in 2016 and 67-32 in 2020. What’s more, in 2020, McCarthy sits in the only district in the Fresno-Bakersfield corridor, long one of the more conservative parts of the state, where Trump won by double digits.

Moreover, McCarthy’s own winning percentages have been tailing off. After winning his first five terms with 70% or more of the vote, his totals have actually dwindled since Trump: 69% in 2016, 63% in 2018, and 61% in 2020. It’s no coincidence that McCarthy’s vote totals have tailed off as his Democratic challengers have spent more money. His 2016 challenger only raised $35,300 for the entire cycle. By comparison, his 2018 challenger raised $106,000; an improvement, but still nothing to write home about. His 2020 challenger, Kim Mangone, raised $1.6 million … not what you’d expect for a Democrat in an R+14 district.

If the blue team plays it right, McCarthy could potentially face a reckoning back home for first remaining silent the wake of the Big Lie, and then kissing Trump’s hand after said lie triggered an insurrection. There’s already at least one Democrat running against him: naval veteran and ironworker Bruno Amato.

YouTube Video

Looking at his website, Amato doesn’t have the look of the sacrificial lambs and Some Dudes that typically surface in districts that are R+10 or worse. Moreover, it’s not often that you see Democrats already stepping up to run in districts this red.

Amato has a lot of work ahead of him, as will any other Democrat challenging McCarthy. This is a tough, tough district. But given the prospect that he’ll be running in a district that will be a bit more Latino than its predecessor, there’s a chance that he’ll be in a position to give McCarthy heartburn.

But we can do even better than that. Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman Sean Patrick Maloney should tie McCarthy’s duplicity about the Big Lie around the GOP like an anchor. For the last two cycles, the Republicans have tried to position the Democrats as a radical socialist mob. It would more than even the score to point out that the leader of the House Republicans remained silent about the Big Lie despite knowing that it was a lie, even after that lie stirred up an actual mob. That he did so to put out fires back home is no excuse, and Maloney and his team ought to remind the nation that this is not the kind of behavior we should expect from the likely speaker of a Republican-led House. If swing voters and suburbanites recoil from McCarthy over his embrace of Trump, it will all but assure that the GOP stays in the minority.

One way or another, McCarthy must answer for behaving beneath the dignity of someone who has ambitions of becoming speaker. We can make McCarthy do some heavy lifting in his own district, tie his duplicity around the entire House Republican Conference, or some combination of the two. Either way, McCarthy must learn that when you have ambitions of representing the whole House, you cannot forsake your oath in the name of keeping the wolves from your door back home.

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

Posted on February 16, 2021 (Updated February 17, 2021) 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.

Republicans say they want an investigation into Capitol attack. How deep will they let it dig?

Posted on February 15, 2021 by Laura Clawson

Forty-three Republican senators protected Donald Trump from accountability for inciting the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol when they voted to acquit in his second impeachment trial. They’re going to have a challenge protecting him—and maybe themselves—through the likely next phase of the response to the Jan. 6 attack: an investigation by a bipartisan commission similar to the 9/11 commission. The question is how serious and how empowered such an investigation will be, and Democrats need to ensure that the answer is “very.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for such an investigation in early February, writing to House Democrats, “It is also clear that we will need to establish a 9/11-type Commission to examine and report upon the facts, causes and security relating to the terrorist mob attack on January 6.” Retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré is already leading a security review, but the question of protecting the U.S. Capitol as a physical building is different from understanding how Jan. 6 happened—from incitement to active planning to responses while it was underway—and not just Congress but the whole nation needs to understand that.

We need to know more about Trump’s actions. The House impeachment managers laid out his public-facing statements showing that he absolutely called his supporters to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 in an attempt to prevent Congress from certifying President Biden’s election win, and that he continued to encourage them even as they were breaching the Capitol. But we know there’s more. Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler has described a phone call between House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Trump in the midst of the attack in which McCarthy asked Trump “to publicly and forcefully call off the riot,” only to have Trump tell him, “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.” McCarthy told Herrera Beutler about the call. He needs to tell investigators about it, too.

And Herrera Beutler’s Friday statement on that call pointed out that McCarthy isn’t the only likely witness: “To the patriots who were standing next to the former president as these conversations were happening, or even to the former vice president: if you have something to add here, now would be the time,” she said. That didn’t happen in time for the impeachment trial, but those people are still out there, and a bipartisan commission with subpoena power could potentially uncover some of them, along with many other facts that are necessary for ensuring this never happens again … but potentially very inconvenient for Trump and some other Republicans.

We also need to know more about failures by the Capitol Police and others tasked with protecting the Capitol. How did they miss the signs that this wasn’t going to be a peaceful free speech rally? We need to know who at the Pentagon did what with regard to National Guard deployments ahead of Jan. 6 and as the Capitol was under attack.

Lawmakers from both parties have called for a 9/11-type investigatory panel, but some of the Republicans are likely to either push for tight limits on what can be investigated or entirely back off those calls as impeachment—and the need to distract from it by acting very serious about some form of response to the attack—recedes into the past.

“We need a 9/11 Commission to find out what happened and make sure it never happens again, and I want to make sure that the Capitol footprint can be better defended next time,” Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday, but let’s wait to hear the series of things he doesn’t want included and witnesses he doesn’t want called in the investigation. The second item on Graham’s list is likely to become a big Republican talking point—refocusing the response from “what happened and how can we understand it” to “what physical fortifications do we need.” It’s the Republican way: guns, not accountability.

Republicans will also start screaming if, for instance, some of their own start getting called as witnesses. It would be very interesting to hear from Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, for instance, or Reps. Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene.

But a 9/11-type commission isn’t the only investigation in the works. Graham himself could be drawn into an investigation into efforts to overturn the Georgia election. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger recorded the phone call in which Trump pressured him to “find 11,780 votes” because of an earlier phone call in which Graham asked him to illegally reject large numbers of ballots. That Georgia investigation obviously will focus on Trump. Trump also faces the possibility of a criminal investigation into Jan. 6. That’s a very remote possibility now, but given an empowered, detailed (the 9/11 commission investigated for 20 months) look into what happened … well, we can dream.

It’s unlikely that too many people will come out fully against an investigation into the attack on the Capitol. The thing to watch is what limits Republicans want to place on it. What questions do they think should be off limits? What witnesses do they not want called? Especially from people like Graham and Cruz and Hawley, that’s going to be a signal of where the really important information is—and both Democrats and good-faith Republicans need to be willing to pursue it.

Republicans say they want an investigation into Capitol attack. How deep will they let it dig?

Posted on February 15, 2021 by Laura Clawson

Who is Donald Trump’s most gutless toady?

Posted on February 14, 2021 by Aldous J Pennyfarthing

The result of the latest Trump impeachment trial was a fait accompli when Mike Pence was pulled from his mother’s womb, saw his shadow, and scurried back home like a frightened baby wallaby for six more weeks of gestation.

The evidence now makes it abundantly clear that Donald Trump incited a riot, delighted in the mayhem, knew Mike Pence was in mortal danger, and not only did nothing to protect his unflinchingly loyal VP after hearing about his potential, you know, murder but actually sought to further incite the rioters by tweeting hateful lies directly at him.

And what was Pence’s response to all this?

Crickets.

And not cool, genetically engineered murder crickets or anything—just plain old regular crickets.

Senate Republicans acquitted Donald Trump of high crimes and misdemeanors twice. So make them pay: Donate $1 right now to each of the Democratic nominee funds targeting vulnerable Senate Republicans in 2022.

The Washington Post:

[A]fter four years of obedience as vice president, Pence has no plans to condemn Trump or to speak out during the Senate impeachment trial, people close to the former vice president said. He is still operating from a playbook of obsequiousness that became second nature — he never aired his grievances publicly and delivered his often rose-colored counsel to Trump only in private, one-on-one settings.

I wonder if there’s a literal “playbook of obsequiousness,” and if so, does Mother let him read it after bedtime?

Oh, but Pence’s continued public deference to Trump doesn’t mean his feelings weren’t hurt by Trump’s decision to let him be hanged in public so Trump wouldn’t have to give up his extra White House ice cream scoop and unlimited free airplane rides. They were. You’d just never know it from talking to him.

But the rift that emerged between Trump and Pence — after Trump encouraged a frenzied mob that later chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” as it stormed through the Capitol, in search of the then vice president — is unlikely ever to fully heal, people close to Pence said.

One ally described the former vice president as frustrated with what Trump did and said it would forever change his relationship with Trump. This person added, however, that Pence does not share the animus or fury that some of his former aides have for the president.

Do Republicans feel some weird frisson of excitement when Trump brutally attacks or betrays them? Is this something we mere mortals simply can’t understand? Because if any of my bosses had ever treated me this disrespectfully, I’d have immediately FedEx’d them my company-issued gimp costume (without dry-cleaning it first!) and never spoken to them again.

But Republicans keep coming back for more.

Why?

And it’s not just Milquetoast Mike Pence.

Trump gave out Lindsey Graham’s private cell phone number at a rally, and Graham eventually became his champion.

Trump implied Ted Cruz’s wife was ugly and that his dad had a hand in JFK’s assassination, and Ted became his gracious and loyal servant.

Kevin McCarthy was harassed and nearly killed by Trump’s mob, and Trump refused to lift a finger to protect him. Nevertheless, McCarthy still flew down to Florida three weeks later to kiss his ring.

And despite knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that Trump is the human equivalent of dumpster sushi, Mitch McConnell gladly wolfed down every rancid, mealy bite for years.

It’s inconceivable, but it is what it is. If these guys got into a gruesome clown car accident and you had to Frankenstein them together to confect one historically awful legislator, you’d be hard-pressed to locate a spine or recover a single languorous ball.

So who do you think is the worst? Answer the poll question and find out!

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This could be the last day of Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial … but it doesn’t have to be

Posted on February 13, 2021 by Mark Sumner

You know what the Senate is doing next week? Nothing. They’re not in session next week. You know what they could be doing? Listening to witnesses. House impeachment managers could call witnesses in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, and it wouldn’t take away one minute of productive time. They could call former chief of staff Mark Meadows and ask him to detail Trump’s actions on the afternoon of Jan. 6. They could call Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and have him discuss calls from both Trump and Lindsey Graham. There’s absolutely no reason they could not call Mike Pence and have him confirm that he, not Trump, finally authorized the use of the National Guard. They could call every member of the Trump White House who resigned following Jan. 6 and ask them a simple question: “Why?”

And, based on a story repeated by CNN last night, they should call House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler. They could then recount the call, in which McCarthy reportedly tried to get Trump to send help to the besieged Capitol, only to be told that the rampaging mob of insurrectionists were “more upset about the election” that the Republican members of Congress hiding in their offices.

The House managers could call for those witnesses. But as of Friday evening, all indications were that they will not. Which means that Saturday could mark the end of Donald Trump’s second impeachment, and of the Republican Party’s experiment with democracy.

Saturday, Feb 13, 2021 · 2:49:20 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

This only increases the reasons that there should be witnesses. If McConnell isn’t going to whip for votes, or even provide cover for those who do vote to convict, there’s no reason to rush to conclusion.

NEW ... McConnell will vote to acquit, he says in an email to his colleagues.
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) February 13, 2021

Friday consisted primarily of a three-hour “defense” of Trump by his legal team. However, that three-hour period only seemed to contain about five minutes of information, as Trump’s team repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly replayed the same utterly expected clips—an 11-minute montage of Democratic politicians using the word “fight” in various contexts, and another series of clips showing violence from … honestly who knows? All of it simply leaned into the prime Fox News fantasy that last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests were incredibly violent, that Democratic officials were fine with that, and that what Trump did leading up to Jan. 6 was just “ordinary political rhetoric.”

For the Ted Cruz caucus, all this was great. And they should have been happy, since Cruz was just one of several Republican senators who actually camped out in the conference room with the Trump legal team and helped them plan their “strategy.” Apparently, having a team of puppets ready to repeat what you tell them is something many Republicans find satisfying.

The Washington Post kept a running list of the lies being told by Trump’s legal team. That list didn’t quite get to the 30,000+ claims of their boss, but then, they only had three hours. And they certainly gave it a try.

The list of statements taken out of context was legion. The effort to claim that Trump never championed violence was ludicrous. And the claim that, when Trump mistyped “calvary” rather than “cavalry,” it meant that he was talking about giving D.C. in injection of Jesus rather than a flood of militia, was just eye rolling.

But the strangest statement might have been when attorney Michael van der Veen claimed that “One of the first people to be arrested was the leader of antifa.” But apparently antifa is composed of leprechauns, because van der Even added that “sadly, he was also among the first to be released”; apparently he just pulled a Keyser Söze. It’s not actually possible to attach a fact to this statement, since van der Veen was simply, what’s that word? Lying. But so far as anyone has been able to tell, van der Veen may be making this claim about … the only Black guy arrested for going into the Capitol. As LA Magazine reports, the guy was an “apolitical” rabble-rouser who “thrives on chaos.” His biggest role in the insurrection seems to be that he’s the guy who filmed the shooting of Ashli Babbitt. His connection to antifa appears to be … completely nonexistent.

In any case … if things go according to schedule today, there will first be closing arguments from each side. Then the Senate will proceed immediately to a vote on whether to convict Trump on the single article of impeachment. Should enough votes be collected for conviction, there would then be a second vote on disqualifying Trump from holding public office in the future. That second vote would require only a simple majority.

However, this whole schedule would be upset should the House managers request witnesses. If that happens, it will be up first, with a vote on calling witnesses. That vote would also require only a simple majority. In Trump’s last impeachment proceeding, the vote to hear witnesses lost 51 to 49.

Should there be a vote to hear witnesses, the Senate will likely be done for the day, while the House managers round up whoever they want to speak. Just remember—every claim that hearing witnesses is somehow keeping the nation from dealing with the Trump pandemic, the Trump recession, or the various other Trump disasters, is simply a lie. Next week, the senators weren’t going to be doing any of that. There is time to do this thing right.