GOP Support for Trump Fades, Polls Show

December 20, 2022 By David Lauter 9 Comments

Following a month of negative publicity, nonpartisan and partisan surveys signal a fall from grace.

 It’s been a rough month for former President Trump.

Since his Nov. 15 announcement that he plans to make a third run for the presidency, his legal problems have increased; his handpicked candidate, Herschel Walker, lost the Senate runoff in Georgia; he has endured widespread criticism over his public association with racists and antisemites; and a growing number of Republican figures have started to say publicly what they used to whisper in private: Trump is a liability for their party.

Just after the midterms, it appeared that the results would undermine the former president within the GOP. A raft of new polls show that this has occurred: Trump’s once-solid support among Republicans has cracked, and his approval within his adopted party has fallen to levels not seen since he won its nomination in 2016.

No one should count the former president out. If we’ve learned anything in the more than seven years that he’s dominated public attention, it’s that Trump has formidable survival skills and that Republican elected officials have little stomach for battling him. But for now, and perhaps for longer, the midterm results have shaken his hold on the party in a way that previous events — even the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — failed to do.

The evidence of a Trump fade could be almost as unwelcome at the White House as it is at Mar-a-Lago: President Biden and his aides have been planning a reelection campaign in large part around the argument that Trump poses a singular threat to American democracy. The former president’s recent social media post in which he called for the “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution” in order to place him back in office could serve as Exhibit A.

If Republicans nominate someone else, Democrats will argue that the candidate poses the same threat. But that’s a more difficult case to make to voters, especially if whoever emerges as the GOP nominee keeps a distance from Trump.

In this year’s midterm elections, candidates who closely tied themselves to Trump and his lies about the 2020 election — such as gubernatorial hopefuls Kari Lake in Arizona, Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Tudor Dixon in Michigan — all lost. But voters seemed perfectly willing to cast ballots for other Republicans, such as Govs. Brian Kemp in Georgia and Mike DeWine in Ohio.

The evidence for a Trump fade comes from surveys by both partisan and nonpartisan pollsters.

The most recent Wall Street Journal poll found Trump trailing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis 52%-38% in a hypothetical primary matchup. Perhaps worse for Trump, only 71% of Republicans had a favorable view of him. That’s down from 85% in March and the 90% or higher that polls typically found through most of his presidency.

At the same time, the share of Republicans who see Trump negatively has increased. The Economist/YouGov poll reported last week that 28% of Republicans had an unfavorable view of Trump — the worst rating since YouGov began tracking his image at the start of his presidency. Most of the change had taken place since August, the polling found.

A Suffolk University poll conducted for USA Today found that just 47% of Republicans want Trump to run again, compared with 45% who do not. The share that wants him to run dropped from 56% in October and 60% in July.

It’s possible that these polls have caught Trump at a temporary low from which he’ll rebound. He has been through a month of steady negative publicity and has a rival, DeSantis, who benefits from not having been tested in a national campaign.

But those negative headlines aren’t likely to go away any time soon.

Some of the most damaging stories for Trump have resulted from his own actions, including his decision last month to have dinner with Kanye West and Nick Fuentes, two of the country’s best-known antisemites. Some Trump supporters blamed the dinner on the former president’s staff and said that in the future, aides would more diligently screen his visitors, but Trump has never taken well to efforts to control him.

On Wednesday, Trump posted on social media that he had a “major announcement” scheduled for Thursday. It turned out to be the launch of a line of digital playing cards featuring cartoon versions of his image. That’s hardly as damaging as dinner with racists, but it’s not the sort of action likely to calm Republicans who worry that their former standard-bearer isn’t focused on the task ahead.

Then there are the legal problems.

Between now and the first primaries of 2024, Trump could face trials in three civil cases: New York state Atty. Gen. Letitia James has accused him and his company of financial fraud involving inflated claims about the value of his assets; the writer E. Jean Carroll has accused him of raping her in the 1990s, then defaming her after she made her allegations public; and investors who lost money in what they allege was a pyramid scheme by a company called American Communications Network have sued him and his adult children for promoting the plan in television ads and public appearances.

Trump has survived many lawsuits over the decades, but now he also has exposure in at least three criminal investigations.

The district attorney in Atlanta is investigating whether he violated Georgia laws with his telephone call on Jan. 2, 2021, pressuring Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” — the number he would have needed to overturn Biden’s victory in the state. And Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith is overseeing two federal investigations, one into the Jan. 6 attack and the other into the mishandling of classified documents and other records that Trump hid at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate.

Some Trump backers have suggested that if he were indicted in one or more of those cases, he could use the charges to rally Republican voters to his side. Perhaps. What the current polling suggests, however, is that bad news has encouraged many Republicans, including some inclined to sympathize with Trump, to look for an alternative candidate.

Right now, that’s DeSantis. Whether the Florida governor can maintain his high standing remains unknown — lots of candidates look great until the campaign begins. For now, however, he fulfills the need that many Republicans feel for a candidate who espouses Trump’s policies without his erratic personal behavior.

The Suffolk University poll found that 65% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they want “Republicans to continue the policies Trump pursued in office, but with a different Republican nominee for president,” compared with 31% who want Trump to run again.

“Republicans and conservative independents increasingly want Trumpism without Trump,” said the poll’s director, David Paleologos.

But, as Paleologos noted, the 31% who still back Trump could be enough to win Republican primaries in a multicandidate field, which is how Trump won in 2016.

And it’s possible that many of those who have stuck with Trump this far will remain with him. His remaining backers are disproportionately rural and white voters who did not go to college — groups that have been among his staunchest supporters since the 2016 campaign. DeSantis does better among groups of Republicans who were more skeptical of Trump to begin with, such as college-educated white voters.

Click here to read the full article in the LA Times

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Panel May Urge Criminal Charges Against Trump

December 18, 2022 By Staff Report 23 Comments

Besides insurrection, defined as an uprising aiming to overthrow the government, the panel is also considering recommending that prosecutors pursue charges of obstructing an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States, a person familiar with the matter told the Associated Press. The committee’s deliberations were continuing late Friday, and no decisions were formalized on which charges the panel would refer to the Justice Department.

The committee is to meet publicly Monday afternoon, when any recommendation would be made public.

The deliberations were confirmed by a person familiar with the matter who could not discuss it publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. A second person familiar with the deliberations confirmed that the committee was considering three charges.

The decision to issue referrals is not unexpected. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the vice chair of the committee, for months has been suggesting the panel might send the Justice Department criminal referrals based on the extensive evidence the nine-member panel has gathered since it was formed in July 2021.

“You may not send an armed mob to the Capitol; you may not sit for 187 minutes and refuse to stop the attack while it’s underway. You may not send out a tweet that incites further violence,” Cheney said about Trump on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in October. “So we’ve been very clear about a number of different criminal offenses that are likely at issue here.”

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the committee chair, detailed possible referrals last week as falling into categories that include criminal and ethics violations, legal misconduct and campaign finance violations. It would then fall to federal prosecutors to decide whether to pursue referrals for prosecution. Although they carry no legal weight, the recommendations would add to the political pressure on the Justice Department as a special counsel it appointed investigates Trump’s actions.

“The gravest offense in constitutional terms is the attempt to overthrow a presidential election and bypass the constitutional order,” committee member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told reporters last week. “Subsidiary to all of that are a whole host of statutory offenses, which support the gravity and magnitude of that violent assault on America.”

Raskin, along with Cheney and Reps. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) and Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose), made up the subcommittee that drafted the referral recommendations and presented them to the full committee.

Click here to read the full article in the LA Times

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Some Loudmouth Politicians Are Finally Wearing Out Their Welcome

November 27, 2022 By Steven Greenhut 18 Comments

Voters gave a cold shoulder to candidates endorsed by former President Donald Trump, and Los Angeles County voters gave the heave-ho to Sheriff Alex Villanueva.

In one typically funny Monty Python sketch, author Oscar Wilde walks into a drawing room and says something pithy to the Prince of Wales: “Your Highness, there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” Bystanders laugh for an extended time in a sycophantic manner.

Wilde says something else and, again, he evokes laughter. Once again, Wilde says something similarly inane, but suddenly he faces stunned silence. The Python troupe apparently was poking fun at an incident in Wilde’s career, but I thought of the skit in the context of Donald Trump and the midterms.

First, we have a former president who can think of nothing worse than not being talked about. Second, I’m reminded of how Trump continues to make, er, unusual comments that for years have evoked thunderous applause, but suddenly fewer people find them funny anymore. Something changed after the GOP’s electoral flop.

After Trump gave his big speech on Tuesday, most networks and even Fox News downplayed the rambling talk. The New York Post—a reliably pro-Trump publication—featured this headline at the bottom of its front page: “Florida man makes announcement.” Buried on Page 26, the Post published a brutal short item under the headline, “Been there, Don that.”

“With just 720 days to go before the next election, a Florida retiree made the surprise announcement that he was running for president,” the article explained. “Avid golfer Donald J. Trump kicked things off at Mar-a-Lago, his resort and classified-documents library.” Ouch.

Perhaps Trump Fever finally has broken, which is encouraging after digesting the substance of his speech. He championed law-and-order themes that are inappropriate in a constitutional republic. He vowed to restore public safety by sending the military into cities even if cities don’t want the “help.”

Trump even touted China’s model for handling drug dealers: “If you get caught dealing drugs, you have an immediate and quick trial. And by the end of the day, you’re executed.” Our Constitution assures due process for anyone accused of a crime. Only under totalitarianism can someone be accused of a crime, judged, and executed on the same day. That’s childish posturing, not serious policy.

Nationally, Trump was the biggest loser on Election Day, even though he wasn’t on the ballot. Fortunately, voters rebuked other politicians with a similarly un-American sense of justice. Los Angeles County voters gave the heave-ho to Sheriff Alex Villanueva. They chose former Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna, who seems like a normal reform-oriented lawman, by a 60-percent to 40-percent margin.

Unlike Trump, Villanueva at least conceded defeat. But his concession speech contained all the whiny, self-focused blather we’ve come to expect. “Every adversity I’ve faced throughout my years in law enforcement has always propelled me to a bigger stage, a bigger audience and a bigger voice,” he said. He certainly has a big voice, but perhaps voters had grown as tired of it as they’ve grown of Trump’s.

As NBC News reported, Villanueva “blamed defeat on what he claimed was a sweeping misinformation campaign and the use of ‘false narratives’ focused on issues including alleged deputy gangs, his alleged resistance of oversight by the county and Civilian Oversight Commission and other allegations of internal harassment and retaliation against purported whistleblowers.”

In April, Villanueva held a press conference where he pointed to a photo of a Los Angeles Times reporter and hinted that she may be a target in a criminal-leak investigation. He later relented, but instead of being observably concerned by the Times‘ reported allegations that “sheriff’s officials attempted to cover up an incident in which a deputy knelt on the head of a handcuffed inmate for three minutes,” he harangued the reporter.

Then there are the deputy-gangs allegations. Some deputies “have been accused of celebrating police brutality, intimidating and retaliating against fellow deputies, and running a shadow hierarchy that operates outside the chain of command,” per LAist.

Deputy gangs undermine trust in law enforcement and could violate citizens’ rights, but Villanueva calls them “cliques” and claims to have handled the problem. He defied subpoenas to testify and viewed the allegations as a political smear. He seemed unconcerned that some of his deputies may sport tattoos with alleged gang names such as Banditos and Executioners.

“I don’t expect deputies to get tattoos of Hello Kitty,” he said during a re-election kickoff event. “These are grown men and women and the tattoos they put on themselves. That’s an expression of their First Amendment right.” Wow.

Click here to read the full article at Reason.com

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John Eastman’s Sorry Excuse for Jan. 6

November 24, 2022 By The Editorial Board 4 Comments

The Trump adviser claims he didn’t tell Pence to reject electors. Here are receipts.

In the lead-up to the Jan. 6 riot, John Eastman gave President Trump legal advice that was terrible, and now he’s trying to argue it was merely awful. In a letter to these pages on Nov. 14, Mr. Eastman, a former law professor of some distinction, denies he argued that Vice President Mike Pence “could unilaterally reject electoral votes and simply declare President Trump re-elected.”

Mr. Eastman claims he made only a modest proposal, Swiftian allusion intended: “The advice I gave to then-Vice President Pence was that he accede to requests from hundreds of state lawmakers to delay proceedings for a short time so that they could assess the effect of illegalities on the conduct of the election.” Mr. Eastman specifically refers to a conversation during an Oval Office meeting on Jan. 4, 2021.

But his position is contradicted by the sworn testimony of Mr. Pence’s legal counsel, Greg Jacob. According to Mr. Jacob, Mr. Eastman argued at the Jan. 4 meeting that it would, in fact, be “legally viable” for the VP to reject electors. Mr. Eastman advised against this plan only because it would be “less politically palatable.” That concession apparently didn’t last.

The debate was renewed the next morning, Jan. 5. “When Mr. Eastman came in,” Mr. Jacob testified, “he said, I’m here to request that you reject the electors. So on the 4th, that had been the path that he had said, I’m not recommending that you do that. But on the 5th, he came in and expressly requested that.” A piece of Mr. Jacob’s handwritten notes is in the public record. The top reads: “John Eastman meeting 1/5/21.” Then: “Requesting VP reject.”

There also are the two memos Mr. Eastman produced in advance of Jan. 6, which circulated among Mr. Trump’s advisers. “Here’s the scenario we propose,” the first one says. The VP “announces that because of the ongoing disputes,” seven states have “no electors that can be deemed validly appointed,” and “Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected.” The second memo offers a menu of options. One is for Mr. Pence to outright reject electors.

A final thing to point out is that the argument in Mr. Eastman’s letter isn’t a defense. It’s more like a plea bargain to a lesser transgression against the American republic. Asking Mr. Pence to reverse the 2020 election directly was appalling. Asking the VP to stall the Electoral College, so that state legislatures could reverse the 2020 election, was also appalling.

Suppose Mr. Pence had tried to delay. The result would have been a constitutional crisis. Federal law sets the time for choosing presidential electors, and it’s Election Day in November. Mr. Trump wanted state lawmakers to overrule the will of the voters two months later, and two weeks before the scheduled transfer of power, despite no proof of widespread voter fraud. Doing this could have led to violence.

Also, the 12th Amendment says the Electoral College shall be tallied “in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives.” Democrats controlled the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi would not have permitted any joint session to reconvene and tally those phony electors. With no Electoral College count by noon on Jan. 20, who’s next in line to become President? The Speaker of the House. Or perhaps the Supreme Court would have intervened.

Getting this history right matters. “The Vice President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors,” Mr. Trump tweeted on Jan. 5, 2021, the day before the riot. He didn’t come up with that idea himself.

Click here to read the full article in the Wall Street Journal

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Elon Musk Restores Trump’s Twitter Account After 51.8% Vote in Favor of Reinstatement

November 21, 2022 By Associated Press 2 Comments

Elon Musk reinstated Donald Trump’s account on Twitter on Saturday, reversing a ban that has kept the former president off the social media site since a pro-Trump mob attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress was poised to certify Joe Biden’s election victory.

Musk made the announcement in the evening after holding a poll that asked Twitter users to click “yes” or “no” on whether Trump’s account should be restored. The “yes” vote won, with 51.8%.

“The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” Musk tweeted, using a Latin phrase meaning “the voice of the people, the voice of God.”

Shortly afterward Trump’s account, which had earlier appeared as suspended, reappeared on the platform complete with his former tweets, more than 59,000 of them. However his followers were gone, at least initially.

It is not clear whether Trump would actually return to Twitter. An irrepressible tweeter before he was banned, Trump has said in the past that he would not rejoin even if his account was reinstated. He has been relying on his own, much smaller social media site, Truth Social, which he launched after being blocked from Twitter.

And on Saturday, during a video speech to a Republican Jewish group meeting in Las Vegas, Trump said that he was aware of Musk’s poll but that he saw “a lot of problems at Twitter,” according to Bloomberg.

“I hear we’re getting a big vote to also go back on Twitter. I don’t see it because I don’t see any reason for it,” Trump was quoted as saying by Bloomberg. “It may make it, it may not make it,” he added, apparently referring to Twitter’s recent internal upheavals.

The prospect of restoring Trump’s presence to the platform follows Musk’s purchase last month of Twitter — an acquisition that has fanned widespread concern that the billionaire owner will allow purveyors of lies and misinformation to flourish on the site. Musk has frequently expressed his belief that Twitter had become too restrictive of freewheeling speech.

His efforts to reshape the site have been both swift and chaotic. Musk has fired many of the company’s 7,500 full-time workers and an untold number of contractors who are responsible for content moderation and other crucial responsibilities. His demand that remaining employees pledge to “extremely hardcore” work triggered a wave of resignations, including hundreds of software engineers.

Users have reported seeing increased spam and scams on their feeds and in their direct messages, among other glitches, in the aftermath of the mass layoffs and worker exodus. Some programmers who were fired or resigned this week warned that Twitter may soon fray so badly it could actually crash.

Musk’s online survey, which ran for 24 hours before ending Saturday evening, concluded with 51.8% of more than 15 million votes favoring the restoration of Trump’s Twitter’ account. It comes four days after Trump announced his candidacy for the presidency in 2024.

Trump lost his access to Twitter two days after his supporters stormed the Capitol, soon after the former president had exhorted them to “fight like hell.” Twitter dropped his account after Trump wrote a pair of tweets that the company said cast further doubts on the legitimacy of the presidential election and raised risks for the Biden presidential inauguration.

After the Jan. 6 attack, Trump was also kicked off Facebook and Instagram, which are owned by Meta Platforms, and Snapchat. His ability to post videos to his YouTube channel was also suspended. Facebook is set to reconsider Trump’s account suspension in January.

Throughout his tenure as president, Trump’s use of social media posed a significant challenge to major social media platforms that sought to balance the public’s interest in hearing from public officials with worries about misinformation, bigotry, harassment and incitement of violence.

But in a speech at an auto conference in May, Musk asserted that Twitter’s ban of Trump was a “morally bad decision” and “foolish in the extreme.”

Earlier this month, Musk, who completed the $44 billion takeover of Twitter in late October, declared that the company wouldn’t let anyone who had been kicked off the site return until Twitter had established procedures on how to do so, including forming a “content moderation council.”

On Friday, Musk tweeted that the suspended Twitter accounts for the comedian Kathy Griffin, the Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson and the conservative Christian news satire website Babylon Bee had been reinstated. He added that a decision on Trump had not yet been made. He also responded “no” when someone on Twitter asked him to reinstate the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ account.

In a tweet Friday, the Tesla CEO described the company’s new content policy as “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.”

Click here to read the full article at the OC Register

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GOP Elites Want to Turn from Trump. Will the Base Let Them?

November 19, 2022 By Melanie Mason 13 Comments

Forget the scathing editorials from conservative media blaming former President Trump for the GOP’s mediocre midterm. Never mind their underwhelmed reception to his 2024 presidential launch. Disregard the major donors who are bailing this time around.

Keith Korsgaden is firmly on board for a Trump reprise. He’s quite sure he’s not alone.

“There are 74 million people that voted for Donald Trump in 2020, and those 74 million of us still feel the same way — that he’s one of us,” Korsgaden said. The Visalia restaurant owner has been a Trump supporter since that momentous descent down Trump Tower’s escalator in 2015.

There may not be quite the unanimity that Korsgaden predicts, but his loyalty underscores a stark reality: Republican power brokers may be ready to break from Trump, but a significant slice of Republican voters? Not so much.

As the 2022 midterm election wheezes to an end, the start of the 2024 campaign feels both uncharted and uncannily familiar. Trump began his bid for a comeback — the first attempt by a former president since Herbert Hoover — as the front-runner for the Republican nomination who nonetheless appears vulnerable to a serious intra-party challenge.

The fundamental question facing the Republican Party during this long run-up to the next election is who truly is in control: the elected officials and opinion leaders who have shaped their party’s agenda from the top, or the grassroots bloc of Trump faithful who have ruled from below. The latter may have shrunk in numbers since the former president left office, but they still command outsize influence in GOP primaries — and there may be just enough of them to propel Trump forward in a crowded field of competitors.

Republicans face daunting scenarios: an ugly primary battle that could aggravate ideological tensions within the party, or an easy waltz to the nomination by a candidate with proven unpopularity among crucial voters such as women and independents.

“I don’t believe he is completely intractable from the Republican Party,” said Mike Madrid, an anti-Trump GOP consultant. “Here’s what I do believe — I believe the Republicans have so swallowed the hook that when you rip it out, it’ll bring up all its guts and probably kill it.”

Republican elites have been here before, publicly breaking from Trump after the predatory vulgarity of the leaked “Access Hollywood” tape, his equivocation in denouncing white supremacists in Charlottesville, and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol that was catalyzed by his false allegations of election fraud. But so long as Trump was able to mobilize infrequent voters to back him or his endorsed candidates, his influence on the party was never in doubt.

It may be different this time. In tones typically reserved for Trump, media personalities are speaking reverently about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ 19-point romp to reelection. The party’s strong performance in Florida’s congressional races also enhanced DeSantis’ reputation for carrying down-ballot candidates to victory. By contrast, top party figures have pointedly noted, Republicans have struggled in three consecutive national elections since Trump won the White House in 2016.

“If a political party can’t stay committed to their central premise, which is winning elections, then what’s the point?” said David Kochel, a veteran Republican strategist.

There is some evidence the GOP is ready to move on. A recent NBC poll found that 62% of Republicans said they considered themselves more a supporter of the party than of Trump, the highest number since the question was first polled in January 2019. Club for Growth, a conservative group once allied with Trump, circulated pollsshowing DeSantis with a healthy lead over the former president in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states on the path to the GOP nomination, as well as Florida and Georgia.

Christine Matthews, a pollster who has Republican clients, said the sense that primary voters ready to look beyond Trump is “very real,” driven by their belief that he is hobbled by his antagonistic relationship with the media.

“They’re able to justify moving on from him by saying, ‘The media will never give him a fair shot. They’ll always be against him. So even though we really like him and think his policies were great, it’s probably time for someone new,’” Matthews said.

So far, the consensus pick for that someone new is DeSantis, who offers the former president’s instinct for culture war combat in a less chaotic presentation. 

“DeSantis is the stock to buy, Trump is the stock to sell in politics,” said Matt Mackowiak, a Texas-based GOP strategist.

The most pressing challenge for DeSantis will be how to parry Trump’s attacks, Mackowiak said. The Florida governor “has survived a lot of attacks from a lot of people, but Trump is different. He just is.”

By announcing his bid before the Senate runoff race in Georgia next month, Trump risks even more of a rupture with his party if Republicans end up losing that race.

Many GOP operatives still smart over the Georgia Senate runoff in January 2021, when Trump’s fixation on his election loss dampened turnout among his supporters and Democrats went on to win the two races and control of the Senate. 

One of those victors, Sen. Raphael Warnock, is hoping Trump will have a similar effect on the electorate this time around. On Thursday, his campaign released an ad that is solely footage from Trump’s 2024 announcement, in which the former president endorses Warnock’s GOP challenger, Herschel Walker. The commercial ends with two taglines: “Stop Donald Trump” and “Stop Herschel Walker.”

Some of Trump’s onetime allies in conservative media have been withering in their criticism about his drag on the party after his preferred candidates flopped in key Senate and House races in last week’s election. The New York Post has been especially lacerating; the day following his 2024 kickoff, it tersely teased “Florida Man Makes Announcement” on the cover and buried the story about the speech on page 26 with the headline, “Been there, Don that.”

Other outlets greeted Trump’s candidacy with similarly unenthused headlines. “Trump 3.0 is a changed man — he’s now a loser,” said the Washington Examiner. “Oh, Trump Believes in Yesterday,” opined Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal. The National Review’s take was simply titled, “No.”

“The way and force [with which] they’ve turned on him has blown my hair back,” said Howard Polskin, whose daily newsletter, TheRighting, rounds up headlines from the conservative media ecosystem.

But recent GOP history is full of cautionary tales about the challenges of reorienting the party, especially if its most committed voters aren’t on board.

In 2012, after two consecutive bruising presidential losses, party stalwarts decided it was necessary to remake Republicans’ image. Fox News’ Sean Hannity said he “evolved” in his thinking on immigration and endorsed a pathway to citizenship. The Republican National Committee commissioned what was widely called an autopsy, which prescribed softening stances on social issues and promoted immigration reform as a way to attract voters of color, young people and women. 

The Republican grassroots felt differently. Conservative shock jock Rush Limbaugh railed against the document. Four years later, the party backed a candidate whose hard-line immigration stance could be summed up with the phrase, “Build the Wall.”

“We were projecting what we thought was going to be best for the party onto the voters, rather than listening to what the voters wanted and trying to fashion a party that appeals to them,” said Tim Miller, a former RNC official who worked on the report.

For years, party leaders tried to steer conservatives to more electable candidates, leading to John McCain and Mitt Romney becoming the GOP nominees. Both lost in the general election.

“Donald Trump broke the mystique” of that strategy, Miller said, by being a candidate who gave the grassroots what they wanted and still won a general election. Now, “it’s hard to see them buying an electability argument again,” said Miller, who has been a fierce Trump critic.

Despite myriad commentators and editorials decrying Trumpism as a cause for the most recent GOP disappointments, some supporters of the former president haven’t been persuaded.

“Blaming President Trump is preposterous,” said Celeste Greig, a longtime GOP activist from Northridge. She said the fault lies more with poor campaign efforts by local and state parties.

Greig said that in her wide network of conservative stalwarts, “I haven’t found any of my friends, any of my acquaintances, that said he shouldn’t run.”

For all the high-profile breaks from Trump, others were quick to show their support. Grassroots favorites such as Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia swiftly endorsed Trump’s 2024 bid. Sen.-elect J.D. Vance of Ohio, who won the primary thanks to the former president’s backing, penned an op-ed titled, “Don’t Blame Trump.” 

“What will be critical to watch will be how Fox News prime time treats him,” said Polskin, who tracks conservative media. “They are by far the biggest megaphone in the biggest right-wing media universe.” 

The crowded right-wing media ecosphere may also pressure some of the bigger outlets to return to Trump’s camp. When Fox News recognized Biden’s 2020 win, Trump publicly bashed the channel and urged his supporters to move to smaller, more hard-line channels — OAN and Newsmax — and Fox’s ratings plunged. 

Even if this current antagonistic tone persists from major outlets, a vast array of podcasts, streaming shows and conservative websites will continue to generate plenty of Trump-aligned content.

“We’re in a new media terrain,” said Heather Hendershot, professor of film and media at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, contrasting the monolithic audience in the network era to the current fractured media landscape. “You can’t point back to as splintered a moment as it is today.”

That’s a reason Korsgaden, the committed Trump fan, has not been swept up in the DeSantis fervor of the major conservative outlets. He is not a fan of Trump’s swipes at the Florida governor, but he thinks DeSantis has plenty of time for a White House bid in the future. And good luck to any media personality or party leader who tries to convince him otherwise.

Click here to read the full article on LA Times

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What Divided Government Means for Washington

November 18, 2022 By Tarini Parti, Natalie Andrews, and Lindsay Wise 3 Comments

Republicans’ narrow control of the House of Representatives will usher in a return to divided government in Washington next year, likely shattering the chances of any major legislation, stoking divisions within the GOP and putting President Biden on defense as the new Congress investigates his administration.

Mr. Biden, who downsized his agenda to get bills through a Congress narrowly controlled by Democrats, will now have to contend with House Republicans who have said they plan to pressure him to cut government spending and make other policy changes by threatening to withhold votes to keep the government open or to ensure that the U.S. meets its debt obligations.

The extent of their leverage will likely be limited by Republicans’ performance in the midterms, which fell far short of the blowout many in the party had predicted. The GOP has won enough seats to capture the House majority, the Associated Press said. But supporters of former President Donald Trump and congressional leaders were already blaming each other for the smaller-than-expected margin, a possible sign of divisions to come.

Legislating will likely grind to a near halt, including some bills that once saw bipartisan support but have recently drawn skepticism from Republicans, such as assistance for Ukraine in defending itself against Russia. Republicans will get to push a competing agenda if they can hold their caucus together on key priorities—a daunting task with such a small majority.

“Everybody’s relevant, nobody’s irrelevant,” said Rep. Thomas Massie (R., Ky.). When asked what the razor-thin majority would look like, he said: “Go ask Joe Manchin,” referring to the centrist Democrat who is a key swing vote in the Senate.

Republican leaders say their plans include boosting border security, restricting abortion, encouraging more pay for police and reversing Democrats’ plans to expand the Internal Revenue Service. They will also use their oversight authority to investigate the Biden administration and the president’s family.

“A new Republican House is going to view its mandate as to stop the Biden administration, and I don’t see a whole lot of opportunities for them to necessarily work together,” said Brendan Buck, who worked for Paul Ryan and John Boehner when they were GOP House speakers.

Democrats won a crucial victory in Nevada to retain their hold on the Senate, regardless of the outcome of a coming runoff in the Georgia Senate race. The Democrats’ slim majority in the Senate means a priority for the party in the next two years will be confirming Mr. Biden’s nominees for judges and positions in the executive branch.

Meanwhile, the 2024 presidential campaign is kicking off, with Mr. Trump on Tuesday announcing another run for president.

Several of Mr. Trump’s endorsed candidates lost key races, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is seen as a potential challenger to Mr. Trump for the GOP presidential nomination, won easily. The shadow primary could deepen divisions within the House GOP’s narrow majority between Mr. Trump’s loyalists and those ready to move on.

Mr. Biden said after the midterms that it remains his intention to run again but said he wasn’t in a hurry, adding that he expected to make a decision by early next year. Democrats’ performance in the midterms could help Mr. Biden fend off any potential primary challengers as he makes his final decision.

Still, more voters disapproved than approved of the job being done by the president, and more than half of the electorate thinks Mr. Biden, 79 years old, lacks “the mental capacity to effectively serve as president,” according to preliminary results from a poll of more than 94,000 registered voters for The Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press and Fox News.

The midterm results add Mr. Biden to the list of U.S. presidents who lost House majorities roughly two years after they took office, but unlike his immediate predecessors, Mr. Biden staved off heavy losses.

Former President Barack Obama—who in 2010 lost more than 60 seats and control of the House and saw Democrats’ Senate majority narrowed by six seats—called the outcome a shellacking. Mr. Trump responded to his party’s setback in 2018—when Republicans lost more than 40 seats in the House and the majority—with a defiant, nearly 90-minute press conference. Congressional probes followed both elections; Mr. Trump was impeached twice and acquitted twice in the Senate.

After wrangling members of their own parties to pass some priorities in the first two years of their presidencies, Messrs. Obama and Trump turned to executive authority after the midterms, as Mr. Biden is expected to do. Mr. Biden and Democrats would likely block most Republican proposals. Overriding a veto requires a two-thirds vote in the House and Senate.

Republicans say they could use must-pass bills to push for spending cuts and other priorities, threatening government shutdowns, but it could be difficult to unite the conference around a strategy. The government was shut down in 2013 under Mr. Obama, when some Republicans pushed to repeal Obamacare as part of a spending package. A spending fight between Congress and the Trump administration after the 2018 midterms turned into the longest shutdown in U.S. history.

Generally in shutdowns, government employees miss paychecks, but essential government functions remain open. They haven’t significantly affected economic output, but a prolonged stalemate can affect the stock market. They can have a negative effect politically as polls in recent years have shown voters disapprove of shutdowns.

“When you’ve got divided government, you have the tools that you have at your disposal, and walking away from those tools is dereliction of duty,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R., Texas). “You’re not going to pass grand bipartisan bills to save America.”

Mr. Biden said at a press conference recently that voters don’t want constant political fighting and that he plans to invite leaders of both parties to the White House in the coming weeks.

“I’m prepared to work with my Republican colleagues,” he said. “The American people made clear, I think, that they expect Republicans to be prepared to work with me as well.”

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.)—who is favored to become speaker in the new Congress, though he faces an uphill climb in securing the needed votes—has pointed to legislation to raise the federal debt ceiling as an opportunity to push for spending cuts. In 2011, a standoff with the GOP-controlled House over the debt ceiling sent stocks plunging, leading to Standard & Poor’s decision to downgrade the U.S. credit rating for the first time.

Mr. McCarthy has said the House GOP wouldn’t write a blank check for aid to Ukraine, and he has said House Republicans will try to undo legislation that gave the IRS $80 billion to hire tens of thousands of workers, audit more high-income Americans, improve taxpayer service and implement better technology.

Many GOP lawmakers have signed on to a proposed federal abortion ban at 15 weeks of pregnancy, which Democrats campaigned against ahead of the midterms. Early results show the issue helped Democrats win in many races. A survey compiled by the Associated Press found that 10% of those who voted called it the most important issue.

“On the debt limit, on funding the government, on Ukraine, on a whole host of issues, every piece of legislation is going to be about trying to get it across the finish line with someone having a problem that they need to contend with,” said Ron Bonjean, a former senior House GOP aide. “It’s going to be legislative quicksand for the next couple of years.”

Although there is little appetite for major bipartisan bills, there could be support from both parties for narrow bills dealing with regulations on cryptocurrency, tech companies and China, some lawmakers and aides said.

Separate from the legislative jockeying, House Republicans are preparing broad investigations of the Biden administration, including scrutiny of the president’s handling of the southern border. The U.S. Border Patrol arrested a record 2.2 million people caught crossing the southern border illegally in the past year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Lawmakers have also said they would look into the U.S.’s chaotic troop withdrawal from Afghanistan; the origins of the Covid-19 virus and pandemic policies; and the foreign business dealings of Mr. Biden’s son Hunter Biden. Both Bidens have denied wrongdoing. The younger Mr. Biden has said the Justice Department is investigating whether he paid his taxes.

They could also look into the Justice Department’s operations under Attorney General Merrick Garland, who infuriated many GOP lawmakers when he authorized the application for a warrant to seize records with classified material that Mr. Trump took to his home in Florida. The search was part of an investigation into possible mishandling of classified information as well as violations of laws governing retention of presidential records. Mr. Trump has called the probe an effort by Democrats to undermine him.

The White House bolstered its legal team over the summer, hiring Washington defense lawyer Richard Sauber and Ian Sams, who was a spokesman for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. That group is expected to grow ahead of the new Congress, according to people familiar with the planning.

Top Republicans have played down the possibility of impeaching Mr. Biden, but rank-and-file members, who would likely have more power in a narrow House majority, have called for such a move. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) has introduced articles of impeachment against Mr. Biden.

During the Obama administration, Republicans dug into the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, and a government loan guarantee to the failed solar company Solyndra.

Click here to read the full article in the Wall Street Journal

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California Wins Leave GOP Poised to Seize US House Control

November 16, 2022 By Michael R. Blood 1 Comment

Two threatened U.S. House Republicans in California triumphed over Democratic challengers Monday, helping move the GOP within a seat of seizing control of the chamber while a string of congressional races in the state remained in play.

In a bitter fight southeast of Los Angeles, Republican Rep. Michelle Steel defeated Democrat Jay Chen in a district that was specifically drawn to give Asian Americans, who comprise the largest group in the district, a stronger voice on Capitol Hill. It includes the nation’s largest Vietnamese community.

East of Los Angeles, Republican Rep. Ken Calvert notched a win over Democrat Will Rollins. With 80% of the votes tallied, Calvert, the longest serving Republican in the California congressional delegation, established a nearly 5,500-vote edge in the contest.

Ten races in the state remained undecided as vote-counting continued, though only a handful were seen as tight enough to break either way.

It takes 218 seats to control the House. Republicans have locked down 217 seats so far, with Democrats claiming 205.

Should Democrats fail to protect their fragile majority, Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield would be in line to replace Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco.

In the 45th District anchored in Orange County, Steel, a South Korean immigrant looking for a second term in Congress, faced Chen, a Navy reservist and the son of immigrants from Taiwan. The race was being watched nationally for what it says about the preferences of the Asian community.

The candidates initially made inflation and hate crimes against Asian Americans key issues. But the race took an ugly turn and most of it focused on accusation and recrimination.

Chen’s advertising depicted Steel as an extremist who would threaten abortion rights, while Republicans accused Chen of “racism” after he told supporters an “interpreter” was needed to understand Steel’s remarks, arguing that Chen was mocking her accented English. Chen said he was referring to “convoluted talking points” that he said Steel uses to sidestep issues.

Steel also distributed flyers depicting Chen as a communist sympathizer, while Chen has said his grandmother fled China to escape communist rule.

In California, the primary House battlegrounds are Orange County — a suburban expanse southeast of Los Angeles that was once a GOP stronghold but has become increasingly diverse and Democratic — and the Central Valley, an inland stretch sometimes called the nation’s salad bowl for its agricultural production.

The tightest remaining contest in the state emerged in the Central Valley, where Democrat Adam Gray seized a tissue-thin lead after Republican John Duarte jumped ahead by 84 votes in a fight for an open seat in District 13.

Underscoring the tightness of the contest, Gray’s campaign formed a committee to begin raising money to finance a possible recount. Those costs, which are paid to county election officials, fall on the campaign committee or voter that requested a recount. Generally, such requests cannot be made until a month after the election.

The latest returns showed Gray leading by 761 votes, with nearly 80% of the votes tabulated.

In Orange County, one of the state’s marquee races tightened when an updated vote tally showed Republican Scott Baugh slashing in half a narrow edge held by Democratic Rep. Katie Porter. Porter, a star of the party’s progressive wing, was leading the former legislator Baugh by about 2,900 votes — or just over 1 percentage point — with nearly 80% of the votes counted.

In another battleground district north of Los Angeles, Republican Rep. Mike Garcia held a comfortable edge over Democrat Christy Smith in their third consecutive match-up, after Garcia claimed the first two.

The latest returns — with about two-thirds of the votes counted — showed Garcia with 54.4%, to 45.6% for Smith.

In a statement on Twitter, Smith said her chances for seizing the seat had “narrowed significantly” and “it’s likely Garcia holds the seat.”

Democrats also were holding significant margins in several districts, including the Central Valley’s 9th, where Democratic Rep. Josh Harder had a nearly 13-point edge over Republican Tom Patti.

Click here to read the full article in AP News

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Voter Beware: Divided Government Will Be Utter Chaos

October 24, 2022 By Doyle McManus 18 Comments

With election day two weeks away, Republican prospects of taking control of the House of Representatives, already strong, appear to have solidified. Barring the unexpected, President Biden’s next two years will be shaped by challenges from a House led by some of his most zealous opponents.

That isn’t unusual; every president for the last four decades has contended with divided government. Sometimes, that has arguably been a good thing — a constructive check on executive power.

Not now.

The House won’t merely be held by Republicans. It will be led by Republicans loyal to former President Trump, many of whom refuse to accept Biden’s legitimacy as president.

Most members of the new majority will have been elected with Trump’s endorsement. There will be almost no Trump critics in the House GOP — none who dare voice their qualms, at least. The caucus has been purged.

Of the 10 House Republicans who voted in favor of impeaching Trump after his supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, eight retired or lost primary elections. Only two are still on the ballot.

Of the likely members of the next majority, well more than half have questioned or denied the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. January’s incoming members will, not incidentally, be in the House when it considers the results of the presidential election of 2024.

Meanwhile, the ranks of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus are swelling. The group has been recruiting members among this year’s candidates and is on track to boast at least 46 next year, an all-time high.

The likely next House speaker, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), is a Trump loyalist too. As Republican floor leader during the Trump administration, McCarthy worked to forge a relationship with the volatile president, who rewarded him with the slightly demeaning nickname “My Kevin.” McCarthy broke with Trump oh-so-briefly over the Jan. 6 riot but flew to Mar-a-Lago three weeks later to seek forgiveness.

McCarthy has made clear that other Trump acolytes will gain under his speakership. He has promised Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of the founders of the Freedom Caucus, the chairmanship of the powerful Judiciary Committee. He has promised Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who once suggested that California’s wildfires were caused by Jewish-funded space lasers, a seat on the Oversight Committee, which is likely to launch an investigation of Hunter Biden, the president’s wayward son.

Jordan and the Freedom Caucus were once considered GOP gadflies, in-House critics who challenged the less disruptive conservatism of Speakers John Boehner and Paul D. Ryan. Greene was considered an outlier whose ability to grab headlines was a problem, not an asset.

No longer. Both are now core members of a GOP conference whose mission is to fight the Biden administration to a standstill. Their agenda begins with deep spending cuts in domestic programs, which they argue are needed to shrink the federal budget deficit and quell inflation.

Some members have already declared their willingness to shut down the federal government to get their way.

“Shut it down if necessary,” Rep. Bob Good of Virginia said last week. “Gridlock is a good thing compared to the alternative.”

Even worse, several have said they plan to block an increase in the federal debt ceiling — a move that would raise the specter of the government defaulting on its debts and risk a global financial crash. McCarthy said he too would be willing to block a debt limit increase as a tactic to force spending cuts.

“OK, we’ll provide you more money, but you got to change your current behavior,” he told the newsletter Punchbowl News.

Government shutdowns and debt-ceiling hostage dramas tend to backfire on the party that launches them. Most voters don’t enjoy watching the economy being held hostage by politicians. McCarthy presumably knows that — but he also knows his majority includes many who would relish a showdown, either on principle or to pander to right-wing voters.

In another sign that Republican radicals are in the ascendance, McCarthy said he wants to impose limits on future U.S. aid to Ukraine, a hobbyhorse of Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

“Ukraine is important, but … it can’t be a blank check,” McCarthy said.

It adds up to a recipe for a series of collisions — not only with the Biden White House but with the Senate. No matter how the election turns out, the Senate is almost certain to be narrowly divided between the parties — and because of its 60-vote filibuster rule, any major legislation will need support from at least a few senators on both sides.

In an earlier generation, Americans often viewed divided government as a sensible way to check the power of the president and even an opportunity for bipartisan deal-making.

Virginia’s Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin sought to evoke that brand of nostalgia this month, arguing that GOP control of Congress could be “a calming influence.”

Click here to read the full article in the LA Times

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Joe Biden Grabs Young Girl’s Shoulders, Tells Her ‘No Serious Guys Until You’re 30’

October 17, 2022 By Ethan Letkeman 1 Comment

“Now, a very important thing I told my daughters and granddaughters: ‘No serious guys until you’re 30,’” the president said while grabbing the girl’s shoulders.

“Okay,” the unidentified girl said while laughing nervously, “I’ll keep that in mind.” Another woman in the background could be heard agreeing with Biden, repeatedly saying, “At least.”

Kaden D’Almeida — who filmed the moment — appeared to be waved off by a secret service agent from filming further after the president gave his awkward relationship advice to the young girl.

The encounter occurred at Irvine Community College in Irvine, California, where the president gave remarks on lowering inflation and pharmaceutical drug costs.

The president has offered the same dating advice to younger individuals before.

While visiting a group of elementary school students in Philadelphia, after a young girl told the president she was nine, Biden responded, “The only thing I want you to remember — no serious guys till you’re 30 years old,” Breitbart News reported.

As Breitbart News has documented, Biden has a long history of making uncomfortable remarks to — or having uncomfortable public encounters with — women.

While visiting a Haitian cultural center in Miami in October of 2020 during the presidential campaign, Biden told a group of young girls who had just performed a traditional dance that he wanted to “see them dancing when they’re four years older.”

In the middle of a speech honoring military personnel last year, the president told one veteran that his young daughter looked like she was “19-years-old, sitting there with her — like a little lady with her legs crossed.”

As vice president, Biden was also seen on camera appearing to sniff the hair of young children during the swearing-in ceremonies of congressional members.

Click here to read the full article at Breitbart

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