A NEW POLL SUGGESTS THAT QANON IS THE FUTURE OF THE GOP

Yesterday, CBS and YouGov released the results of a survey of self-identified Republicans.

The key points: 80% of survey respondents who'd heard about Liz Cheney's removal from a leadership position in the House approved of the ouster. Given the choice of sounding like Trump cultists or merely loyal Republicans, they slightly favored the latter (52% said the ouster was good because Cheney "did not support Donald Trump," while 57% said it was good because "she's wrong about the election" and 69% say it's because she's "not on message with the party"; multiple responses were allowed). Loyalty to Trump is important according to 66% of the respondents; 67% of them think Joe Biden didn't win the 2020 election legitimately, but only 37% claim it's very important for Republican officials and candidates to support claims of election fraud (31% consider it "somewhat important"). They say it's more important for officials and candidates to propose important legislation, agree with them on economic issues, and agree on "culture and values." (Since "culture and values" probably means "hating immigrants, liberals, and the media," I'm sure they're telling the truth about the latter.)

Only 9% thought it was "very important" for Republican officials and candidates to "support the ideas of QAnon," while 20% said it was "somewhat important" -- but here's where it gets interesting. Among respondents aged 65 and older, 24% thought it was important to be aligned with QAnon. The number dips to 21% in the 45-64 age group.

But among younger Republicans, QAnon is much more important: 41% of those aged 30 to 44, and 44% of under-30s, said it was very important or somewhat important for Republican officials and candidates to support QAnon's ideas.

This is just one poll. But it suggests that the GOP isn't just the party of old white people who watch Fox -- it's also the party of younger white people who believe conspiracy theories they found on Facebook.

There's a difference based on age in response to another question: the one on loyalty to Trump. Among seniors, 73% think loyslty to Trump is very or somewhat important, a number that drops only slightly, to 69%, among those aged 45 to 64. But in the under-30 and 30-44 groups, the number declines to 59%. This suggests that, while they love Trump, they seem to love him somewhat less than their elders -- and like QAnon more. That could be the party's future.

IN THE GOP, TRUTH IS A NICHE PRODUCT

In this year's Virginia governor's race, the Republican nominee had to beat a couple of Trumpier challengers at the party's virtual convention. Now that that's accomplished, and he's running in a state where Donald Trump lost by 10 points last year, he can risk speaking the truth.

Before securing the GOP nomination for Virginia governor, Glenn Youngkin sidestepped questions about whether President Biden had legitimately won the White House....

Youngkin would say only that Biden is the president, had been sworn in and was living in the White House. Meanwhile, the former Carlyle Group executive played into Trump's baseless claims of widespread election fraud by making "election integrity" the centerpiece of his campaign.

But days after winning both the nomination and Trump’s endorsement, Youngkin appeared to change his rhetoric, saying in an interview on Fox Business: “I have said before that Joe Biden was legitimately elected our president. I mean, he took the oath. He’s sleeping in the White House. He’s unfortunately signing executive order after executive order.”

Yet it appears he never said that so explicitly or publicly, at least not before winning the nomination.

And in New York, where Trump lost by 23 points, the likely Republican candidate in next year's governor's race is making the same move (although he didn't wait to secure the nomination first):

Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) is "repositioning" his stance on Donald Trump's "Big Lie" about election fraud as he runs statewide for governor of New York in 2022....

Following the [January 6] insurrection, Zeldin took to the floor of the House and sided with the insurrectionists....

Zeldin then voted to overturn the election results.

The GOP congressman toned down his rhetoric, in an interview with Newsday....

Rep. Lee Zeldin repositioning himself now that he’s running for governor of NY. In interview with Newsday, Zeldin acknowledges Biden won the election — even though Zeldin sought to overturn it. https://t.co/4omLYGX99e

— Joel Siegel (@joelmsiegel) May 16, 2021

So that's the GOP plan, at least in blue states: Claim loyalty to Trump while reluctantly acknowledging that Biden won the election. Shake the Etch A Sketch and hope that Democratic efforts to point out the obvious shameless hypocrisy fall flat.

Has Trump himself suddenly become pragmatic? Has he made a conscious choice to continue backing Glenn Youngkin (and not attack Lee Zeldin) despite this apostasy on the election? Or do GOP strategists assume Trump won't notice the heresy?

Oddly, in the Virginia race, both parties are engaging in forms of Trump-bashing. From the Democrats, it's what you'd expect:

The Democratic Governors Association ... launched an online ad tying Youngkin to Trump and the “big lie” that Biden stole the White House. The Democratic Party of Virginia kicked off a “Where Trump Leads, Glenn Follows” rally on Richmond’s Capitol Square, with plans to take it around the state.

But Republicans attacked the likely Democratic nominee by trying to link him to Trump:

The Republican Governors Association blasted out a Fox News story that Trump, once a reliable Democratic donor, donated $25,000 to McAuliffe’s failed 2009 bid for governor. Years earlier, Fox noted, McAuliffe played golf with Trump, and as governor, he pledged to work with the newly inaugurated president at the National Governors Association dinner in February 2017, where Trump called him a “friend.”

... But Trump himself seemed to undercut the notion that he and McAuliffe are friends by bashing the Democrat in his endorsement of Youngkin.

This doubletalk might work if the mainstream media treats Youngkin and Zeldin as within-the-pale right-centrists while the right-wing media treats them as loyal Trumpists. (It's less likely to work in Zeldin's case, because he's in a bluer state, and because he's in Congress -- unlike Youngkin, who's a businessman -- and thus has a longer record of loyalty to Trump.)

Democrats will continue linking both men to Trump. But shouldn't they also try to attack the candidates from the right? Targeted online ads accusing Youngkin and Zeldin of being RINO swamp creatures who acknowledge the legitimacy of Biden's victory would dampen GOP turnout. Surely it's possible to direct these ads only to the Trumpiest people, maybe a few weeks before voting starts. Democrats shouldn't let the GOP get away with this two-step.

THE MATT GAETZ STORY IS FUN, BUT IT'S A DISTRACTION

I can't deny that this is entertaining:

When Rep. Matt Gaetz attended a 2019 GOP fundraiser in Orlando, his date that night was someone he knew well: a paid escort and amateur Instagram model who led a cocaine-fueled party after the event, according to two witnesses.

The Florida congressman’s one-time wingman, Joel Greenberg, will identify that escort to investigators as one of more than 15 young women Gaetz paid for sex, according to a source familiar with the investigation.

But what distinguishes this woman, Megan Zalonka, is that she turned her relationship with Greenberg into a taxpayer-funded no-show job that earned her an estimated $7,000 to $17,500, according to three sources and corresponding government records obtained by The Daily Beast.

It might lead to Gaetz's downfall. But nothing like this will happen:

How things will play out:

✅ Joel Greenberg will rat out Matt Gaetz

✅ Matt Gaetz will rat out Ron DeSantis

✅ Ron DeSantis will rat out Mitch McConnell

✅ Mitch McConnell will rat out Lindsey Graham

✅ Lindsey Graham will rat out Donald Trump

AND THEY’LL ALL GO DOWN!

— Jon Cooper 🇺🇸 (@joncoopertweets) May 13, 2021

(Ron DeSantis, who spent a few years in the House but was never in the Senate, will rat out Mitch McConnell? Hunh?)

I may be wrong, but my current understanding is that Greenberg is the bigger fish here, not Gaetz, in terms of quantity and severity of crimes. The idea that there will be some kind of mafia roll up is a fantasy.

— HardPressed Jess (@JesseBaggs) May 14, 2021

We're living through a crisis of democracy. It's the most important political story right now. Gaetz is certainly adjacent to some of the people who threaten democracy, but this scandal isn't related to the democracy crisis in any way. Most of what threatens democracy now isn't a crime at all -- it's not a crime for the right-wing dark money group Heritage Action to write vote suppression legislation for battleground states under Republican control, and turning the Heritage-written bills into laws makes the suppression legal.

And even if Gaetz were to bring down a handful of Republican politicians, in all likelihood they'd be replaced by other Republicans who'd just get right back to the work of suppressing votes and ensuring that Democrats can't win future elections.

The Gaetz scandal is an old-fashioned political scandal, all about hedonism and corruption. I know most of you will say, "But isn't the GOP the party of 'family values'?," but Republicans haven't used that phrase in many years, and while they still oppose abortion and are now obsessed with trans people, their favorite president is a notorious libertine and they don't have a problem with that.

The democracy crisis isn't about pleasure or indulgence. In many ways, it's the opposite: The people who want to crush democracy are zealots, like members of ISIS or the Khmer Rouge. They're passionate about eliminating or neutralizing the opposition, not about sex or drugs.

Consider Marjorie Taylor Greene. I know there are reports that she cheated on her husband, but what clearly stirs her blood most isn't sex or even CrossFit -- it's the harassment and bullying we see in that newly unearthed video from 2019:

New: A since-deleted video from 2019 shows MTG harassing @AOC's office through a locked door. Calling her "crazy eyes" and telling her through the office's mailbox slot to "get rid of your diaper" while telling the office to open the door and come out. https://t.co/QgcJucs4o8 pic.twitter.com/ccTufF90Z9

— andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) May 14, 2021

Republicans want absolute power -- they've already made it effectively impossible for Democrats to win control of the legislatures in many states, and that's what they'd like to do nationwide. For years, Republicans have found it amusing to carry around "Liberal Hunting Permit" cards; people like Greene who think that way are now part of the government. If they ever have full governmental control, they want us all reduced to non-citizens, at the very least.

That's the real crisis. It's fun to watch Gaetz squirm, but we need to focus voters' attention on a story that's not salacious but is much more important.

IF TRUMP IS STAGING A COMEBACK, MAYBE THAT'S A GOOD THING

For a while, it looked as if Donald Trump would spend his post-presidential days as a greeter at Mar-a-Lago -- he was off social media, he hadn't found a way to communicate regularly with the public, and he wasn't doing the rallies that were his favorite form of self-aggrandizement.

But now he's back online (after a fashion), he's been receiving supplicants -- and, according to the Daily Mail, he's planning rallies again:

Former President Trump will hold two rallies in June as he looks to capitalize on a series of crises engulfing President Joe Biden and lay down a marker for 2024, according to an adviser familiar with planning.

Those will be followed by a third event around July 3....

Factors under consideration are whether to appear at events with candidates that he has already endorsed or whether to travel to locations that reflect a specific campaign topic.

Trump has also teased the idea of visiting the border....

I don't want him back. I don't miss having that whining, grating, hectoring voice in my ears every day. But Trump's return, if it happens, might be good for us.

We know that President Biden is popular -- but Biden's popularity doesn't seem likely to preserve the Democratic majority in the House and effective majority in the Senate. The party out of power generally does well in a president's first midterms. Some observers believe that Republicans could take the House back based on their likely redistricting gains alone. And "generic ballot" polling points to Republican gains. New election laws in Republican-controlled states will hurt Democrats, too.

Democrats win the presidency when voters are fed up with Republicans -- but Democratic voters tend to relax after electing a president. They forget what they were angry about. It happened in 1994 and 2010.

Which is why Trump's comeback might be a good thing. The only good midterm election a Democratic president has had in the past thirty years was in 1998, when Democratic voters had a clear and present enemy: Newt Gingrich's merry band of impeachers. Next year, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz might not be enough -- the politically engaged know who they are, but other Democratic voters might need more motivation to turn out. Trump might provide that motivation.

We know Trump's popularity is fading:

The Washington Post reported over the weekend on a Republican retreat held last month that featured a polling briefing for GOP members.

When staff from the National Republican Congressional Committee rose to explain the party's latest polling in core battleground districts, they left out a key finding about Trump's weakness, declining to divulge the information even when directly questioned about Trump's support by a member of Congress, according to two people familiar with what transpired. Trump's unfavorable ratings were 15 points higher than his favorable ones in the core districts, according to the full polling results, which were later obtained by The Washington Post.

In these battleground districts, "strongly unfavorable" views of the former president were twice as high as "strongly favorable" views.

Trump's numbers might rise if he emerges from hiding, as GOP voters recall why they first fell in love. But many of these voters didn't turn out to vote in 2018, because they didn't think it was worth the trouble if their God Emperor wasn't on the ballot. And he may have thoroughly alienated a small but significant sliver of the GOP electorate, who won't respond to his ranting (which will be more unhinged than ever).

So it might be good to have him out there. It might be good to have im back on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Less engaged Democratic voters might not vote unless they're voting against him. So welcome back, Donnie.

NEEDS MORE PARTISANSHIP

This op-ed by five members of the new Republican anti-Trump organization is ... um, well-intentioned:

Alongside dozens of prominent Republicans, ex-Republicans and independents, we are announcing “A Call for American Renewal,” a nationwide rallying cry against extremist elements within the GOP, and highlighting the urgent need for a new, common-sense coalition....

We want to give voice to the millions of Americans who feel politically homeless and mobilize them to help chart a new path forward for our country....

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....

We will not wait forever for the GOP to clean up its act. If we cannot save the Republican Party from itself, we will help save America from extremist elements in the Republican Party....

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.

Together with our patriotic allies in other parties, our movement will stand against fearmongers, conspiracy theorists and the opportunists who seek unbridled power.

In order to have an impact, these people don't need to persuade Democratic voters (who already understand the problem) -- they need to persuade some fellow Republicans. Polls suggest that Trump has lost his appeal for a small but somewhat significant percentage of Republican voters. These people would appear to be reachable.

But they can't be reached if this group stresses working "across party lines" with "patriotic allies in other parties." Even Trump skeptics in the GOP believe that there simply aren't any "patriotic allies" in the Democratic Party. That's what their politicians and the right-wing media have told them for decades.

The members of this anti-Trump group can talk about the threat to America posed by the Trumpist GOP mainstream, but the average Republican voter is undoubtedly thinking: What about the threat to America posed by the evil Democrats?

Which is why this manifesto needs more partisanship. These folks need to tell fellow Republicans that they want a new GOP that will defeat us.

They write this:

Some no doubt will urge us to join the Democratic Party. We believe that inching toward a single-party system would be dangerous and would fail to represent the diverse viewpoints in our nation.

America cannot have just one party committed to preservation of its democratic institutions. There must be at least two, if not more.

Do even Trump-averse Republican voters believe that Democrats are committed to preservation of America's democratic institutions? They've been told for years that we aren't. Why would they think we are?

If these anti-Trumpers were combining a denunciation of Trumpism with the message "This is how we'll beat the Democrats," a few GOP voters might respond well to it. But even the rare Republican voters who admit that Joe Biden won in 2020 don't want to live in a country where Democrats can win. So this effort won't reach any of them.

DOES FLORIDA HAVE AN EXTRADITION TREATY WITH AMERICA?

Back when Donald Trump was still president, people would regularly ask on Twitter: To which country will Trump flee to avoid being taken into custody by law enforcement after he loses the election?

Trump hates foreign countries. He doesn't even like most of America. All his life he's had enough money to travel the world and stay in the best hotels, but he prefers sleeping in his own bed.

So I always responded with the same answer:

I'm sticking with the answer I've given here for a while: Trump will move to Florida and Gov. DeSantis will make up a completely fake "states' rights" reason why Trump can't be extradited. And DeSantis's popularity among Republicans will soar.

— Steve M. (@nomoremister) January 12, 2021

Now I learn from Politico Playbook that I was nearly right:

Law enforcement officials in Palm Beach County, Fla., have actively prepared for the possibility that Manhattan District Attorney CY VANCE could indict former President DONALD TRUMP while he’s at Mar-a-Lago, according to two high-ranking county officials involved in planning sessions.

Among the topics discussed in those meetings: how to handle the thorny extradition issues that could arise if an indictment moves forward.

An obscure clause in Florida’s statute on interstate extradition gives Gov. RON DESANTIS the ability to intervene and even investigate whether an indicted “person ought to be surrendered” to law enforcement officials from another state....

I think DeSantis would have made up a reason not to allow Trump's extradition even if there was nothing in the law giving him that power. - I imagined him deploying the National Guard or state troopers to defend Trump. But if he can legally prevent Trump from being extradited, he absolutely will.

There's one wrinkle, however, according to Politico:

... as Mar-a-Lago prepares to close down for the season and Trump relocates to Bedminster, N.J., it isn’t just the Florida heat he’s leaving behind: He could lose a key piece of political protection.

... New Jersey’s extradition statute is similar to Florida’s, giving the governor the power to investigate an out-of-state warrant. But its governor is Democrat PHIL MURPHY, who is no fan of Trump’s, and would not likely intervene to stop Trump’s extradition. In the event of an indictment, Trump’s lawyers could also negotiate a condition of surrender, which could cut local law enforcement out. An attorney for Trump declined to comment.

Maybe Trump will cut a deal, but I assume he has enough friends in high (or low) places in New York City and New York State to get him advance warning of any impending indictment, at which point I expect him to quietly slip back into Florida.

If he can't avoid extradiction, I suppose he will negotiate for a dignified arrest and a quick release. But if he were the anti-establishment hero he and his cult followers think he is, he'd be begging for arrest, or even a short stay in jail. He'd become the wingnut Mumia. It'll never happen, though. He's too soft and pampered.

LIZ CHENEY WOULDN'T BE DOING THIS IF THE TRUMPERS WERE NEOCONS, WOULD SHE?

I have nothing good to say about Liz Cheney's career up to now, but I respect what she's doing at this moment to try to preserve democracy in America. I support her in this effort, although I don't expect to support her in any other effort.

But why is she doing it? I'd like to believe she's doing it simply because she believes our public officials should be elected legitimately. But I have my doubts.

The Trumpers think democracy can be dispensed with. The pre-Trump GOP worked hard to minimize Democrats' voting strength wherever they could, but the Trump GOP is taking this to dangerous new levels. It would be nice to believe that that's primarily what's bothering Cheney.

But I'm sure she's also noticed that Trumpists brag about their rejection of "globalism" and "endless wars." Trump, in his new blog, called Cheney "a warmonger whose family stupidly pushed us into the never-ending Middle East Disaster, draining our wealth and depleting our Great Military, the worst decision in our Country’s history." Trump's acolytes talk the same way: A Matt Gaetz press release from 2020 is titled "Gaetz Slams Forever Wars, Praises President Trump’s America First Foreign Policy."

Is that the real reason Cheney has made opposing Trump her life's work?

In her speech on the House floor last night, she suggested that without ever saying it. The speech was full of Reaganite neocon buzzwords:

"In 1992, I sat across a table from a young mayor in Russia and I listened to him talk of his dream from liberating his nation from communism. Years later, for his dedication to the cause of freedom, Boris Nemtsov was assassinated by Vladmir Putin's thugs.

"In Warsaw – in 1990 – I listened to a young Polish woman tell me that her greatest fear was that people would forget. They would forget what it was like to live under Soviet domination. That they would forget the price of freedom.

"Three men, an immigrant who escaped Castro's totalitarian regime; a young man who grew up behind the Iron Curtain and became his country's minister of defense; and a dissident who spent years in the Soviet gulag have all told me it was the miracle of America captured in the words of President Ronald Reagan that inspired them.

"And I have seen the power of faith and freedom. I listened to Pope John Paul II speak to thousands in Nairobi in 1985. And 19 years, I watched that same pope take my father's hands, look in his eyes and say God bless America...."

(John Paul is the Reaganites' favorite pope. There's no contest.)

"As the party of Reagan, Republicans have championed democracy, won the Cold War, and defeated the Soviet communists. Today, America is on the cusp of another Cold War, this time with Communist China. Attacks against our democratic process and the rule of law empower our adversaries and feed Communist propaganda that American democracy is a failure. We must speak the truth, our election was not stolen, and America has not failed...."

Liz Cheney is doing the right thing for the wrong reason. I'm glad she's doing the right thing. But I think it's likely that she's doing it because she wants to restore neoconservatism's place in the GOP, not because she wants to save deomcracy.

STOP DITHERING AND JUST DO IT

Threats are not enough:

More than 100 Republicans, including some former elected officials, are preparing to release a letter this week threatening to form a third party if the Republican Party does not make certain changes, according to an organizer of the effort.

The statement is expected to take aim at former President Donald J. Trump’s stranglehold on Republicans, which signatories to the document have deemed unconscionable....

“This is a first step,” said Miles Taylor, an organizer of the effort and a former Trump-era Department of Homeland Security official who anonymously wrote a book condemning the Trump administration. In October, Mr. Taylor acknowledged he was the author of both the book and a 2018 New York Times Op-Ed article....

Mr. Taylor declined to name the signers. Reuters reported earlier that the former governors Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania and Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey will sign it, as will former Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters and former Representatives Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, Barbara Comstock of Virginia, Reid Ribble of Wisconsin and Mickey Edwards of Oklahoma.

I've said for years that Republicans who are disgusted by the extremist drift of the party should stage a big public departure from the party. I said this in 2015, in 2013, in 2012, in 2011, and probably several other times. It never happened. It's still not happening. These people are still terrified.

Christie Whitman is afraid to leave the party? Why? As I've noted many times, she wrote a book denouncing her party's extremism in 2005.

Is she still patiently waiting to be told that she was right, the party was wrong, and everything will change now? The party's only gotten worse. She hasn't held an elected or appointed position in politics since 2003. She's 74 years old. What career opportunities does she believe she's putting at risk if she cuts her Republican ties altogether?

Miles Taylor, author of the then-anonymous op-ed "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration," is 34. He has a career to protect. But he's already burned, dynamited, and nuked his bridge to the Republican Party as it currently exists. Nobody cares whether he still claims membership -- he's a pariah. And if the party becomes what he wants it to be, he can return if he leaves now. So what's he afraid of?

But this half-measure is getting the kind of media attention I always hoped a mass resignation would get, so maybe it's worth it. Still, when none of these folks actually leave the party, and when no one more prominent or currently in office joins them, attention is likely to fade. The party will get worse. And the response will probably be ... more half-measures like this, until it's too late, because we're a post-democratic one-party state run by conspiracy-mongering extremist authoritarians. We could be there in four years. So stop dithering.

WHICH GOP WILL THE MEDIA SAY THIS IS?

Tom Hilton is right (and I'd say that even if he didn't mention me).

"Meet the GOP"
--Lauren Boebert, who while insurrectionists were *in the Capitol* looking for the Speaker, tweeted out her location.
--Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar, who organized the rally (based on a lie) that turned into the insurrection.

— Tom Hilton (@TVHilton) May 11, 2021

(This is what @nomoremister has been saying since forever, but IMO the Cheney purge drama is the hook we could use to give it traction.)

— Tom Hilton (@TVHilton) May 11, 2021

I'm thinking about this in connection with the Virginia governor's race, which is taking place this year. The state GOP just chose its nominees for governor and other statewide offices in a virtual convention, avoiding a primary, it appears, out of fear that primary voters would have chosen an extremely Trumpy candidate, like state senator Amanda Chase, who has called herself "Trump in heels" and who, among other things, urged Trump to declare martial law in order to prevent Joe Biden from being declared the winner of the presidential election; she also wears a gun on her hip on the floor of the Senate, and she's said that Derek Chauvin's murder conviction "makes me sick."

All of this would have made her a problematic gubernatorial candidate in a state Trump lost by 10 points. And yet Chase led in a couple of polls of would-be Republican primary voters.

The virtual convention, with far fewer voters than there would have been in a primary, chose Glenn Youngkin, a wealthy venture capitalist, as the gubernatorial nominee instead. And although Virginia is becomining bluer and bluer -- the state hasn't elected a Republican governor since 2009 -- Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report thinks Republicans have a shot this year.

To put it in perspective: a 22 pt margin sounds like a lot, but Northam (D) won it by 37 in 2017 and Biden won it by 42. This fall will test whether the blue shift is permanent up and down the ballot, or back to being more elastic w/ Trump out of office. #VAGOV

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) May 11, 2021

Bottom line: Dems have an initial advantage for #VAGOV, but it's competitive w/ Youngkin (and his deep pockets) as the GOP nominee. Dems shouldn't assume Virginia's anti-Trump shift is automatically a durable, pro-Democratic shift.

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) May 11, 2021

Youngkin is no Amanda Chase. But he's not an old-school Republican moderate, either. The New York Times, for instance, expects him to run as a right-centrist, but can't help noticing that he really isn't one.

At the recent candidates’ forum, Mr. Youngkin aligned himself with Mr. Trump’s lies about a rigged 2020 election, declaring “voter integrity” a top issue and referring to Dominion voting machines — the subject of conspiracy theories on the far right — as “the most important issue” of the campaign.

He pledged to restore a state voter identification law, to replace the entire state board of education and to institute the “1776 Project,” a curriculum of “patriotic education” proposed by a commission established under Mr. Trump that has been derided by mainstream historians.

Although Mr. Youngkin is expected to pivot to reach independent voters, Democrats are sure to remind them in the fall of his most Trumpy declarations from the nominating race, and that he campaigned this month with one of his endorsers, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a bête noire of the left.

Yes, and he's certainly tried to appeal to all the right's grievances.

Critical Race Theory has no place in our schools. When I’m Governor, I will make sure our kids learn real math, not a political ideology.

Vote Glenn Youngkin on May 8th! pic.twitter.com/f8VnMfP9ar

— Glenn Youngkin (@GlennYoungkin) May 6, 2021

As governor, I will stand up for our constitutional rights and stop Big Tech from censoring conservatives.

Find your polling location to protect our 1st Amendment rights in the Virginia GOP Convention today: https://t.co/DipGsFBQci pic.twitter.com/FHi8hTpoMt

— Glenn Youngkin (@GlennYoungkin) May 8, 2021

But if he spends as much money as most observers expect him to spend to rebrand himself as a mainstream guy, will the press let him get away with it?

That's an important question going into the elections over the next few years: Will Republicans get away with talking MAGA talk to MAGA people without being branded as extremists because their messages to everyone else sound relatively reasonable? And, ultimately, does it even matter whether an individual candidate talks the language of Trump and Tucker Carlson? Isn't the party so extreme overall that every party member deserves to wear the extremism as a scarlet letter?

As Tom says, Democrats ought to be branding the party right now, and for the foreseeable future. But the press needs to tell the truth about the party, too. The stink of Trumpism and Carlsonism is on all of them. The pre-Trump, pre-Carlson party was bad enough, but things are worse now. GOP candidates shouldn't be able to act as if nothing's wrong.

NO, CAITLYN JENNER WON'T MAGA HER WAY TO THE GOVERNOR'S MANSION

Polling suggests that California governor Gavin Newsom is likey to survive a recall election -- but if you're concerned that the surveys might be underestimating right-wing opposition to Newsom (which is possible), don't worry about Caitlyn Jenner as a potential Trump-like replacement. California had a lot of Trump voters in 2020 -- six million of them -- and it wouldn't take too many of them to give Jenner a win if Newsom were to be recalled. (In a California recall, the winner of the replacement election doesn't need to win a majority of the vote.) But even though Jenner is being aided by quite a few Trump advisers, she's no Trumper.

Breitbart reports:

California gubernatorial candidate, former Olympian, and reality TV celebrity Caitlyn Jenner declared Monday on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” that the 2020 presidential election was not stolen from former President Donald Trump....

Correspondent Dana Bash asked, “Do you believe that the election was stolen?”

Jenner said, “No, I believe in the system, but I believe in the — what we need to do in the future is we are a democratic republic, we need to have integrity in our election system. I’m not going to go on the past, you know. We’re in a post-Trump era, and they still keep talking about him.”

Bash asked, “Are we, though?”

Jenner said, “We are in a post-Trump era.”

Bash said, “I don’t think he believes that.”

Jenner added, “We have moved forward. ”

(Jenner apparently doesn't realize that Trump's voters haven't.)

Also:

Caitlyn Jenner ... said in an interview that illegal aliens should have a pathway to citizenship.

“I am for legal immigration, okay,” Jenner said in an interview with Dana Bash set to air on CNN on Monday night. “What’s been happening on the border was honestly one of the reasons I decided to run for governor.”

“I was watching people dying come across the river, kids in cages — whatever you want to call them,” said Jenner, a reality TV star and former Olympic gold medalist.

“They should have a chance at citizenship?” Bash asked.

“Absolutely, yeah,” Jenner said. “They should. I mean, there’s a lot of people, but personally I have met some of the most wonderful people who are immigrants, who have come to this country and they are just model citizens.”

That would explain this:

... only anemic support has surfaced for reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner .... according to a new UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll that was co-sponsored by the L.A. Times.

The survey’s results were especially bleak for retired Olympic gold medalist Jenner, as just 6% of Californians who took part in the survey said they would vote to have her replace Newsom — a vast majority of Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated or independent voters said they would not be inclined to support her candidacy....

The poll found that leading the Republicans in the race were former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and Rancho Santa Fe businessman John Cox, who lost handily to Newsom in the 2018 governor’s race, although each had backing from just 22% of those polled. Former Northern California Rep. Doug Ose registered 14% support.

You'd think Jenner would be doing fairly well on name recognition alone, but she has no support among Newsom opponents because she won't talk the MAGA talk. So if you thought being a celebrity gave Donald Trump a massive amount of leverage in 2016 and if you blame New York gossip columnists and the people who put The Apprentice on the air for Trump's political career, please note that it took a lot more than that for Trump to win. He gave a large segment of the electorate what it wanted: racism, rage, greivance. Without that, celebrity would have gotten him nowhere, just as celebrity alone is getting Caitlyn Jenner nowhere.

REPUBLICANS ARE SUPPRESSING VOTES AND PURGING LIZ CHENEY. SOMEONE ELSE MUST BE TO BLAME!

The Republican Party is engaging in a high-profile bad act -- it's about to make Liz Cheney an unperson -- so, naturally, some in the "liberal media" are thinking: How can we blame this on both sides? Obviously, the purge of Cheney by the Republicans must be partially the Republicans' fault, but there's no way it can be entirely their fault! Right?

According to Hayes Brown, writing for NBC News. the rest of the blame goes to Twitter, for kicking Donald Trump off the platform. What's the connection between that and Cheney's upcoming show trial? I've read Brown's explanation more than once, and I barely understand it. Hayes writes:

I would say Trump is actually in a precarious position. Even as he holds court at Mar-a-Lago for a stream of GOP luminaries seeking to kiss the ring, it's still unclear exactly how much juice Trump the person holds inside the party versus Trump the brand....

... Trump's vision for tearing down the walls against autocracy has found a home in the Republican Party. And without his particular attention-grabbing self-aggrandizement, two things are happening.

First, it's allowing the work to proceed unhindered. Without Trump's constant interjections to sway priorities, Republicans are basically working on autopilot, like a computer in a post-apocalyptic world still running protocols based on the last commands put into its mainframe. It's the kind of plodding, relatively long-term strategic thinking — even if it's in the interest of short-term goals like winning elections — that's impossible with Trump looming over you, dropping new tweets into his feed every few hours that upend whatever you've been working on.

If I understand this correctly, Brown is saying that Trump himself has lost a lot of clout, but Trump's ideas, particularly about elections, have become GOP dogma. I'd say that means he hasn't lost any clout in the GOP at all, but Hayes is a professional pundit and I'm not, so he must be much smarter than I am.

Brown goes on to say that Trump's absence from Twitter makes it impossible for him to dominate everyone's attention. But Brown also says that Republicans are following his orders anyway. So what difference does it make whether he's on Twitter or not? Well, according to Brown, if Trump were on Twitter, he'd be contradicting himself several times a day, and Republicans wouldn't be quite so relentless about their pursuit of his agenda because the agenda itself would keep changing.

But why would it be changing now? What's motivating Trump is personal vengeance. Trump changes his mind about some things, but one thing he never changes his mind about is wanting to destroy anyone who's displeased him. Brown says Trump couldn't maintain focus when he was on Twitter, but if that's the case, he did a remarkable job of faking it between Election Day and his post-January 6 ban. We had a surge of COVID cases, we had vaccines to distribute, we had a presidential transition that needed to be conducted in an orderly fashion, and we had a country desperate for an additional round of pandemic relief -- and yet all Trump could focus on was the alleged election "steal." He's perfectly capable of concentrating on one subject if the subject is directly connected to his ego.

So Brown is wrong -- Trump's election agenda and the purge of Cheney would actually be a more urgent priority for the GOP if Trump were still on Twitter, because Trump would be tweeting about nothing else. What else does Brown say?

And second, it's allowing Republicans to work in the relative shadows. Yes, my fellow columnists and I have been raising the alarm about the GOP's attempts to infuse Trump's lies into state election laws for months. But it's also true that without Trump commanding the microphone, it has become easier to tune out these warnings. Even in March, just two months into the Biden era, audience numbers were falling across the news industry compared to when Trump was in office.

But when Trump was on Twitter -- and was in the White House -- he tried to steal the election in plain sight, using every means at his disposal, and many Republicans were right there with him. He was stopped, but not because we were paying attention. He was stopped because he didn't hire competent lawyers and never found actual evidence of election theft, and because, fortunately, there were enough officials in both parties who didn't want the legitimate election results overturned.

Removing Trump from Twitter hasn't made it easier for Republicans to pass new vote suppression laws and purge Liz Cheney. They passed vote suppression laws with great ease during Trump's presidency, and before it. They purged anti-Trump legislators like Jeff Flake and Justin Amash while Trump was in office.

But the media loves shifting blame from Republicans, doesn't it?

IF ONLY THEY'D USE THAT FORCE FOR GOOD

CNN's Harry Enten thinks politicians won't be able to increase our vaccination rate.

A look at the data reveals that the vaccine hesitant group, however, are not big Trump lovers. They’re actually likely not to be Republican. Instead, many of them are people who are detached from the political process and didn’t vote for either major candidate in 2020.

Enten is distinguishing between the vaccine hesitant -- the people saying that they'll wait and see before getting vaccinated -- and the vaccine resistant -- those who simply don't want it or who'll get it only if compelled to. The resisters are mostly Republican. The hesitators aren't.

The most recent Kaiser poll helps illustrate that the vaccine hesitant group doesn’t really lean Republican. Just 20% of the group called themselves Republican with an additional 19% being independents who leaned Republican. The clear majority (61%) were not Republicans (41% said they were Democrats or Democratic leaning independents and 20% were either pure independents or undesignated).

This is very much unlike the vaccine resistant group, of whom 55% are Republican or Republican leaning independents. Just 21% of that group are Democrats or Democratic leaning independents.

A large percentage of the hesitators aren't voters at all.

People who are not registered to vote are among the most likely to say they’re in the wait-and-see camp. In a Monmouth University poll last month, 34% of adults who were not registered to vote said they wanted to “see how it goes” (i.e. wait-and-see) before getting a vaccine. That was significantly higher than the 10% of registered voters who said the same.

So how do we reach them? I'm hoping the numbers change once the vaccines reach full approval -- not just because full approval might persuade a few holdouts that the shots are safe, but because, for once, capitalism might act on behalf of the public good, even if that's not the primary intention. Here's a detail from last week's vaccine news:

Pfizer and BioNTech have begun the process of applying for full approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration of its coronavirus vaccine, the companies announced Friday morning....

If the vaccine is fully approved, it sets the stage for Pfizer and BioNTech to begin advertising the shots directly to consumers....

America is one of only two countries on Earth that allow direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising. (New Zealand is the other.) This combined with the drug industry's relentless marketing of pricey new products to doctors is one reason our healthcare costs are so high.

However, Big Pharma is good at selling us drugs we didn't know we wanted. The drug industry knows how to make us want to walk into our doctors' offices and ask for a new drug we've seen on TV or in Web ads.

So maybe consumer advertising will succeed where earnest entreaties haven't. And if not, there's always free beer.

SOCIALISM SUCKS! SOCIALISM DOESN'T SUCK ENOUGH!

I'm back. Thank you, Yas, for some great work while I was away.

I just spotted this in my neighborhood:

This isn't unprecedented -- Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA and other right-wing groups like to sneak around and make their presence felt this way on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, after which they delude themselves into believing that they've successfully redpilled the libs. (They haven't -- Donald Trump got 12.3% of the Manhattan vote in 2020.)

But consider the slogan "Socialism Sucks." This is meant to convey the notion that liberalism (which is what right-wingers mean when they say "socialism") plunges its helpless subjects into a well of inescapable misery.

But what's really upsetting to the right about "socialism" is that, for ordinary people who've struggled through the pandemic, it doesn't suck enough:

An unexpected slowdown in hiring nationwide has prompted some Republican governors to start slashing jobless benefits in their states, hoping that the loss of generous federal aid might force more people to try to return to work.

The new GOP cuts chiefly target the extra $300 in weekly payments that millions of Americans have received for months in addition to their usual unemployment checks. Arkansas on Friday became the latest to announce plans to cancel the extra benefits, joining Montana and South Carolina earlier in the week, in a move that signals a new effort on the part of Republicans to try to combat what they see as a national worker shortage....

“More states are expected to follow,” predicted Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.), the top Republican on the tax-focused House Ways and Means Committee in a statement Friday....

Or maybe the real point is that "socialism" is good, but for the wrong people. Despite all the pundit chatter about the Republican Party becoming the new home of the working class, this is old-school Republicanism -- exactly what Michelle Malkin meant in 2012 when she praised Mitt Romney, the party's presidential candidate at the time, in this sneering way on Fox News:

Romney types, of course, are the ones who sign the front of the paycheck, and the Obama types are the one who have spent their entire lives signing the back of them.

In economic matters, Republicans always regard the capitalists as the good guys. Workers are always the bad guys. Republicans may grumble about "woke capitalism" and piously proclaim that they'll no longer take corporate PAC money, but they still side with the owners any time the working class asks for (or actually gets) a break.

Maybe she's just smarter than Kevin

 

Illustration by hotlittlepotato via Wired.

An interesting claim in this WaPo story: Liz Cheney seems to think there is evidence she has the politics right, and party management seems to be trying to hide the evidence from members:

When staff from the National Republican Congressional Committee [at an April retreat] rose to explain the party’s latest polling in core battleground districts, they left out a key finding about Trump’s weakness, declining to divulge the information even when directly questioned about Trump’s support by a member of Congress, according to two people familiar with what transpired.

Trump’s unfavorable ratings were 15 points higher than his favorable ones in the core districts, according to the full polling results, which were later obtained by The Washington Post. Nearly twice as many voters had a strongly unfavorable view of the former president as had a strongly favorable one.

Cheney was alarmed, she later told others, in part because Republican campaign officials had also left out bad Trump polling news at a March retreat for ranking committee chairs. Both instances, she concluded, demonstrated that party leadership was willing to hide information from their own members to avoid the truth about Trump and the possible damage he could do to Republican House members, even though the NRCC denied any such agenda.

The districts in question aren't identified, but they would be the ones that came out particularly close in 2020, or that Republicans flipped, in Minnesota and Michigan and Iowa, Arizona and California, New York and New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and others, maybe even in Texas and Florida, enough of them to give one party or the other a more decisive control over the House than the Democrats have now. Not only is Trump hated in these places, but President Biden is very popular, with an overall favorability rating of 54%, compared to Trump's 41%; Vice President Kamala Harris is also more popular than Trump, and so are the two big initiatives Biden is trying to pass.

Cheney's calculation is apparently that the party doesn't have a chance of winning the House unless individual members are allowed to detach themselves from Trump to some extent, while the safe Republican seats will remain safe for the party regardless; nobody's forcing those candidates to de-Trumpify anyway, on the contrary primary threats are making them double down, and even if they didn't Republicans would win anyway—who else are those voters going to vote for? Kevin McCarthy, in contrast, is basically thinking only of the damage Republicans can do, in primaries against incumbents seen as insufficiently loyal to the retired emperor, and maybe worried especially about his own status, as a prisoner like Boehner and Ryan before him of the crazies who could get him deposed at any time.

It's reassuring to be able to think of Cheney not as some kind of unexpectedly noble martyr to Truth who would rather die than lie, but merely smarter than McCarthy, which takes no stretches of the imagination at all. On the other hand I wouldn't be concerned about the party recognizing its mistake and taking her advice, either; fear rules among Republicans, McCarthy especially, and probably some kind of PTSD (Post-Trumpatic Stress Disorder) from which it will take them time to recover. She may be right, technically, but it's not going to do her much good (sour Glenn Greenwald said she'd probably end up a host on MSNBC, which would be funny if he'd meant it as a joke) and it's not going to do her party any good at all for the time being. It's ended up making me a little more hopeful for 2022 than I otherwise might have been, so I thought I'd share that.

Cross-posted at The Rectification of Names.

Distrust Doom Loop

Doom Loop: Richmond Mural Project 2014, by Onur and Wes21, photo by Brandon Bartoszek, 2019.

Breaking: On further consideration, Brooks ("Our Pathetic Herd Immunity Failure") thinks the New Deal may have been OK:

The New Deal was an act of social solidarity that created the national cohesion we needed to win World War II. I am not in the habit of supporting massive federal spending proposals. But in this specific context — in the midst of a distrust doom loop — this is our best shot of reversing the decline.

Not, to be sure, because it rescued millions of Americans from hunger, homelessness, and despair, but because it created "cohesion". Which prepared us for the Second World War. And probably would have prepared us for the Covid-19 pandemic too, if we'd only had a good Great Depression beforehand for an excuse. You don't want a New Deal every day, because that's awfully expensive, but it's just the thing to get you out of a Distrust Doom Loop (the phrase sounds a little like Tom Friedman in a panic attack, but is Brooks's own, premiered in an article in The Atlantic last October).

Maybe if Trump had offered people a little New Deal in 2019, he'd have saved us from the Distrust Doom Loop of 2020.

And if something had given David Brooks more of a social cohesion feeling he would have handled it better himself, almost exactly a year ago, as our friend reminds us:

@DougJBalloon @nomoremister @Yastreblyansky @bluegal

David Brooks May 14, 2020:

"When the governors of Georgia and Florida opened up a bit, many commentators on the left treated them as if they were serial killers"

David Brooks today:

"Our pathetic herd immunity failure."

— Boswood - for a Job Guarantee (@Bosengood) May 7, 2021

Distrust Doom Loops are a hell of a thing. 

Of course on the other hand you don't know you're in a Distrust Doom Loop until the Doom shows up. It's amazing that Roosevelt and his Brain Trust seem to have realized that a war was around the corner and buckled down to work right away, creating social trust by the ton, in plenty of time to win the war when it showed up.

That hardly ever happens. The Obama administration, for example, may have made elaborate preparations for a pandemic, but did absolutely nothing to create social trust, other than trying to get the entire population access to affordable health care, in spite of David F. Brooks's frequent pleas to them to think more about the social trust issue and stop trying to solve everybody's problems with complicated and expensive government programs.

Or maybe, hear me out here, maybe Roosevelt and the Brain Trust weren't thinking about the coming war at all. Maybe they were actually thinking about rescuing millions of Americans from hunger, homelessness, and despair just because they thought that was their job. Maybe the trust in government that largely lasted for the next 40 or 50 years had to do with the fact that the government installed in 1933 actually was trustworthy. 

And maybe instead of deploying just enough New Deal to get you through the specific context of that Distrust Doom Loop you could use moderately massive government spending (the kind of thing the Lincoln administration meant by suggesting that the people should be governed by the people on behalf of the people and then proceeding to a massive expansion of public education and transportation infrastructure in the middle of a civil war) all the time, even when it seems inconvenient, with the idea that if the government was trustworthy all the time those unpredictable Distrust Doom Loops would never arise. Just a thought.

Cross-posted at The Rectification of Names. 

Literary Corner: The Committed Woke

In memory of the great Merle Haggard, who may not have smoked marijuana in Muskogee, but certainly did in every other town on the circuit:

We don't get up early in Biloxi
We don't set our radio alarms
We don't ever wear a mask on Main Street
Or brag on vaccinations in our arms

We don't go for wokie in Muskogee
Or Tupelo or old Sault Saint-Marie
We don't buzz on coffee in Kentucky
Cause dead asleep is where we want to be

I"m proud to be unwoke in Oklahoma
I'm proud to be asleep in Tennessee
I"m proud to linger in my bed in Texas
Cause I love livin right and sleepin free


We don't allow no racism in Tulsa
We drove it out a hundred years ago
We had to drive our black folks all out with it
But nothing in this life comes free, you know

We don't take to critical race theory
We like lettin well enough alone
Criticize your forebears if you want to
I"ll be here just sleepin like a stone

I"m proud to be unwoke in Oklahoma
I'm proud to be asleep in Tennessee
I"m proud to linger in my bed in Texas
Cause I love livin right and sleepin free

Another Steele Dossier?

Updated 5 May

This is kind of interesting, reported in England by The Telegraph (paywall) and picked up by the Sydney Morning Herald: It seems Christopher Steele compiled a second dossier on Donald Trump, this one directly for the FBI, after Trump took office:

The second dossier contains raw intelligence that makes further claims of Russian meddling in the US election and also references claims regarding the existence of further sex tapes. The second dossier is reliant on separate sources to those who supplied information for the first reports.

The fact the FBI continued to receive intelligence from Steele, who ran MI6’s Russia desk from 2006 to 2009 before setting up Orbis, is potentially significant because it shows his work was apparently still being taken seriously after Trump took hold of the reins of power.

It was, was it? We'd been given to believe FBI broke off relations with Steele in November 2016, after David Corn revealed the existence of the original dossier in a Halloween article in Mother Jones—not that at that point that they didn't trust his research, but that they couldn't trust him to stay away from the press, which is understandable (I can also understand Steele's point of view, that the FBI didn't seem to be doing anything with the material he'd showed them, even as they publicly reopened an obviously bogus investigation into Hillary Clinton, and someone who appeared to be a tool of the Russian government was dangerously close to getting elected president of the United States, and he and Glenn Simpson felt morally obliged to do something).

But it's not exactly true that the FBI broke off with Steele. DOJ's Bruce Ohr kept talking to Steele, and the FBI was aware, and opinions on it in the Bureau differed:

(Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian active measures, vol. 5, p. 851)

And of course in September 2017 FBI agents working on Robert Mueller's investigation team interviewed Steele, over a two-day period, at a hotel near Steele's office in London, as we know from the DOJ Inspector General report on the origins of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, in which it provided a lot of the material for IG Horowitz's discussion of the unreliability of the original dossier, or at least the bits that were used to support the surveillance orders on Carter Page. 

I had thought, based on the way Horowitz (and eventually the Senate Intelligence Committee) presented it, that this interview was a kind of hostile interrogation meant to challenge the veracity of the original dossier, but the Telegraph story mentions it in reference to this second dossier, as discussing the research that went into it—

Joe did what? He didn't—yet

 

Republican Chuck Hagel and Democrat Joe Lieberman in 2008, when they were both being considered for cross-the-aisle vice presidential candidacies. Remember who won the vice presidency? Via Politico.

Really interesting tidbit from Anita Kumar/Politico, passing on what look to me like some pretty carefully orchestrated hints from the White House as to what's likely to happen to the Biden agenda this summer, after he's finished with the essential task of looking hopeful for Republican cooperation:

But Biden aides also are hinting that there are time limits to how long that engagement will last. They say the president hopes to make progress on both spending bills — either as a pair or individually — by Memorial Day and sign them into law this summer. And the calendar creates some urgency: By the end of his first year, members of Congress will be consumed by the midterms and then the next presidential race. The White House also knows how a drag-on legislative process can consume a presidency and party.

“Biden and the people around him understand you have to get as much done this year as possible,” said Republican Chuck Hagel, who served with Biden in the Senate and later served as Defense secretary in the Obama administration. “At what point then — if you’re not making any progress on any front and you've been willing to compromise on some things — do you have to go it alone. That’s a decision they’re going to have to make. You don’t have a lot of time.”

Namely, that (just as Minority Leader McConnell announced that there will be zero Republican votes for any Democratic infrastructure bill) the White House knows nothing is going to happen with Republicans on the Jobs Plan and Families Plan, and is now preparing us for the next phase, after the negotiations on whether to have negotiations break down irretrievably sometime around the end of the month or early June, when they will begin issuing the final outlines of the legislation to consist—I always wanted to be the Dr. Bill Kristol of the left, so I'll make this a formal prediction—of two budget reconciliation packages, one devoted to the whole $4-trillion tax proposal and the physical infrastructure of the Jobs Plan and the "social infrastructure" of the Families plan, and later on one devoted to raising the debt ceiling.

Raising the debt ceiling? What? Yes, kids, that's something I just happened to land on the other day; it seems the debt ceiling, memorable for the way Senate Republicans used it to torture President Obama, has been basically suspended since 2015—the suspension expires every so often but they always renew it in time, most recently in August 2019, and it's due to be renewed again on 1 August, but Republicans have been threatening to start up with the debt ceiling battles again, most recently and loudly on 21 April:

Senate Republicans on Wednesday signaled they might oppose any future increase to the debt ceiling unless Congress also couples it with comparable federal spending cuts, raising the specter of a political showdown between GOP leaders and the White House this summer.

Republican lawmakers staked their position after a private gathering to consider the conference’s operating rules this session, issuing what GOP leaders described later as an important yet symbolic statement in response to the large-scale spending increases proposed by President Biden in recent months.

“I think that is a step in the right direction in terms of reining in out-of-control spending,” Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) told reporters after the meeting.

But it's just remotely possible that Ted doesn't remember what I happen to remember, and what President Joe Biden unquestionably knows very well, which is that the Senate Parliamentarian has ruled (you may have read about it here) that Congress is entitled to as many as three more reconciliation bills this year, one each devoted devoted to tax, spending, and the debt ceiling. So Democrats will be able to raise the debt ceiling before 1 August without any Republican votes, and without submitting to any Republican extortion attempts. 

So that, I think, is pretty much how they're going to manage it. (And just in case you think I really am Bill Kristol, please recall that I did this 25 January for the American Rescue Plan, passed with no Republican votes on 11 March.)

And that's what old Chuck Hagel and Kumar's anonymi are signaling in this report, for anybody who needs to know: there's a time limit within which the Republicans have to decide whether to shit or get off the pot, it's only two or three months away, and they're expected to be unable to do it, whether because they're too divided or because they're not divided enough. 

It's very cool that Hagel was chosen to deliver the message, a good old relic of the Senate of bygone days of friendship and comity who wasn't too proud to cross the aisle and be a Democrat's defense secretary. That alone should make Manchin feel warm all over. 

No, I don't know that Manchin himself will be able to live up to the opportunity, so those bills could still fail to pass—I do tend to think, because his explanation of what he wants is so incoherent (he wants spending of $3 or $4 trillion, he wants it all paid for out of revenues, but he doesn't want too many taxes), that he's really holding out for something specific. In 2009 Joe Lieberman held out for ditching the public option from the Affordable Care Act, because that's what Connecticut's insurance companies paid him to do; Manchin doesn't have something like that, surely, but he wants something. If he manages to make up his mind to go with the program, it will be a good thing, and not necessarily the end of Biden's, and our, run of good luck—that's when it will be time to go back to talking about getting rid of the filibuster, and either Manchin or the Republicans may find themselves interested in taking a more helpful attitude. I hope it's both, but that is not something I'd bet on.

Cross-posted at The Rectification of Names.

Unparliamentary Language

Erskine May, 1st Baron Farnborough, KCB, Under Clerk of the Parliaments from 1871 to 1886. Via Wikipedia.

Lovely buried lede in this Guardian story about Prime Minister Boris Johnson's inveterate lying, which is becoming increasingly hard for Britain to live with:

On Tuesday an exasperated cross-party group of MPs went to see [Speaker of the House of Commons Lindsay] Hoyle. Their message: the parliamentary protocols drawn up in Victorian times no longer work. “We need new rules for this Trumpian era of British politics,” Green MP Caroline Lucas told the Radio 4 Today programme. The MPs want to be able to call him out – and the charge sheet against him is long.

Under the ministerial code, an MP who makes a false statement to the Commons is supposed to correct the record. Johnson has repeatedly ignored this obligation, making a litany of inaccurate claims which he subsequently fails to fix. Seemingly, Erskine May, the sideburned baron who established parliamentary procedure, did not envisage a PM like Johnson.

Basically, they're asking permission to use unparliamentary language and call Johnson a liar, preferably to his face at Question Time.

“I can’t possibly call the PM a liar in this house,” [SNP House leader Ian] Blackford said, beaming in remotely from Scotland. “But … are you a liar, prime minister?”

There was an awkward silence. It was as if Johnson – facing off at the dispatch box against the Labour leader, Keir Starmer – was genuinely mulling an answer.

Johnson is really an extraordinary liar, and has been one from the beginning of his first career as a journalist, when he was fired from The Times of London over a fabricated quote attributed to his own godfather, the historian Colin Lucas, in a front-page piece on the discovery of the Rose Palace of the sodomitical king Edward II.

“The trouble was that somewhere in my copy I managed to attribute to Colin the view that Edward II and Piers Gaveston would have been cavorting together in the Rose Palace,” he claimed.

Alas, Gaveston was executed 13 years before the palace was built. “It was very nasty,” Mr Johnson added, before attempting to downplay it as nothing more than a schoolboy blunder.

More significant were the falsehoods about the European Union he used to send his next employer, The Daily Telegraph, as their Brussels correspondent from 1989 to 1994:

His articles, like those in several other Eurosceptic newspapers, contained many of the claims widely described as “Euromyths”, including plans to introduce same-size “eurocoffins”, establish a “banana police force” to regulate the shape of the curved yellow fruit, and ban prawn cocktail crisps.

When questioned about them in parliament, he denied suggestions they were a figment of his imagination.

“There is a great deal of effort being made to deprecate those who think we should leave the EU and everything we say is somehow mythical”, he replied.

That doubling down in the face of the evidence that he was lying is pretty Trumpy, in spite of the fustian Oxford diction, and it had a real effect, 30 years later, in creating the anti-Europe culture in Britain that propelled him through Brexit, with the ridiculous claim that leaving the EU would save Britain £350 million per week that the country was sending to Brussels and could be applied to funding the National Health Service. Lying about their devotion to the beloved NHS has been a Conservative specialty for a long time, of course: