Tag: GOP

How the House GOP vote-counter brings his ‘dysfunctional family’ to the table

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Emmer’s insistence on being a gentler enforcer of party discipline is certain to be a challenge, given the intra-GOP sparring on display in the early weeks of the new Congress and Republicans’ long list of daunting legislative priorities. Further complicating his task: the two-time former House Republican campaign chief knows the party’s best hope of keeping — or even expanding — its tiny majority involves winning on blue and purple turf.
So after a speaker’s race that saw Kevin McCarthy heeding the conference’s most vocal conservatives to win the job, Emmer is looking to 2024 with a more balanced approach that focuses on getting his colleagues to respect their vast ideological differences.
“We’re not there yet,” he said, “but we took a huge step with that speaker’s race.”
That’s not to say Speaker McCarthy and his leadership team won’t need to occasionally use the iron fist in a majority that’s so tight they can only afford to lose four votes. (Emmer is even planning to meet with one of his party’s most famous disciplinarians, Rep. Tom DeLay, a former GOP whip nicknamed “The Hammer” by his members.)
But the GOP’s strategic detente has mostly paid off so far, powering their conference through the chamber’s first freewheeling floor debate on a bill in seven years, known as considering legislation under an “open rule.” Emmer and his team navigated 57 fast-paced amendment votes on that bill that tackled a slew of contentious energy issues, pitting various regions against each other.
In the end, they fended off nearly all proposed changes. Republicans boasted about how quickly they ticked through votes.
Still, they have far bigger battles ahead. Conservatives are itching to punish President Joe Biden at every turn. Party leaders are confronting Congress’ most volatile debt-limit fight in at least a decade. Then there’s a crop of ambitious rank-and-file members with wildly different visions to move the party forward.
All the while, there’s lingering internal bad blood from McCarthy’s 15-ballot speaker vote — the kind of personality clashes that Emmer, a former youth hockey coach and dad of seven, knows well. As McCarthy’s No. 3, Emmer used his office as home base for McCarthy’s nascent leadership team and most vocal detractors to hash out deals that ultimately won the Californian the gavel.

Matt Gaetz, left, who remained among the last Kevin McCarthy-for-speaker holdouts, said he respected Tom Emmer’s approach.
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Alex Brandon/AP Photo
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who remained among the last McCarthy-for-speaker holdouts, said he respected Emmer’s approach.
“I’ve always found him to be an honest guy. A lot of people who don’t necessarily ideologically align with Tom on every issue respect the fact that he doesn’t lie to people,” Gaetz said.
Gaetz even said he saw Emmer — a fervent McCarthy supporter — as sympathetic to the speaker’s skeptics and instrumental in reaching many of their demands: “I never got the sense that he was lobbying for me to vote for McCarthy.”
Emmer won similar praise from their conference’s moderates, the same group most often at odds with Gaetz and the right flank.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), an outspoken centrist from a suburban swing district, said Emmer has won his trust by understanding issues that he and other battleground Republicans cannot bend on.
And he says that’s in large part due to Emmer’s background as the conference’s former campaign chief: “Knowing people’s districts and that we’re not all in R+30 districts — that’s what I value about him.”
“We tend to have a tendency to go, ‘it’s 100 or zero.’ And he has the ability to say it’s really about a 75-25,” Bacon said, describing Emmer’s openness to compromise.
The Minnesotan faced one of his first major tests on that last month, when Democrats used the free-for-all floor debate on the U.S. oil reserve bill to force Republicans into tough votes. Several states’ Republicans, including Florida and those around the Great Lakes, had to swallow opposition to protecting their home state’s water resources.
There was “a lot of moaning and whining,” recalled House Rules Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.). But Cole said of Emmer: “He and his guys got ‘em all through.”
“A campaign guy knows every member really well, and particularly the members in the vulnerable districts that are most apt to be under pressure,” said Cole, also a former NRCC chief.
Another case of Emmer and party leaders white-knuckling their way to a floor win: the recent expulsion of his fellow Minnesotan, Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Emmer, who calls Omar “the face of antisemitism in the Democrat Party,” helped land key votes for McCarthy — though some GOP lawmakers later privately said they’d rather have skipped the exercise altogether.
And Minnesota Democrats took notice of Emmer’s public Omar bashing, warning that the moment would make it tougher to work with him. Some Democrats privately pointed to the Omar votes as proof Emmer is more strident than his outwardly affable persona — a trait perhaps unsurprising in a former NRCC chair. (“I’m just a dumb hockey guy from the Midwest,” he joked in typical self-deprecating style).
In fact, the Emmer of two decades ago was more bombastic, championing Ron Paul for president and endorsed by Sarah Palin in his bid for governor. But as Emmer has risen up the leadership ladder, his colleagues say he’s softened the edges of his politics, pointing to his vote for same-sex marriage protections last year.
“The yes vote was the right vote,” he said of that bill, despite some pushback in his party.
Despite Republicans’ underwhelming November midterms performance, Emmer still narrowly beat out two other GOP colleagues for the whip job. But it wasn’t without drama, and Emmer appeared to make a thinly veiled dig at Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) after his allies blamed Emmer’s team for bruised feelings over an anonymous quote about Banks’ employment of Tucker Carlson’s son.
“All this ‘shock and awe’ garbage stuff — that’s not how leadership races work,” Emmer said. “Leadership races, I believe, are based on relationships, performance, plan, and frankly, implementation and success.”
Rep. Mike Garcia (R-Calif.), a member of Emmer’s whip team whose southern California district favored Biden by double-digits in the last presidential race, said the Minnesotan has viewed his job as helping party leaders identify potentially toxic votes — like those for Floridians and Midwesterners on the energy bill — to lessen the political pain later on: “That’s his job — to prevent those votes from becoming a reality.”
In truth, Emmer may not be able to stop all of them. And his toughest task in the two years ahead may not even be the warring between the GOP’s conservative base and its growing group of battleground-district centrists.
The GOP’s “biggest issue” in the first few weeks of session, he said in the interview, has actually been attendance, after House Republicans ended Democrats’ pandemic-era practice of proxy voting. Emmer, though, remains fully supportive of squelching the practice.
Burgess Everett contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 17, 2023
Justice strongest candidate against Manchin, GOP poll says

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The poll was commissioned by the Senate Leadership Fund, the top GOP super PAC with close ties to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Justice has not decided to enter the race yet, though he’s said he that is “leaning” toward a bid. Manchin similarly has not decided whether he will run for reelection and has indicated he’s in no rush to decide.
“Senator Manchin continues to consider the best way he can serve his state and country. But make no mistake, he will win whatever race he enters,” said Sam Runyon, a spokesperson for Manchin.
Justice has near-universal name ID in West Virginia, according to the poll, and would start with an early lead in a potential three-way primary among Morrisey and Mooney. The survey shows Justice with 53 percentage points in the primary, Morrisey with 21 percent and Mooney with 16 percent. The poll was taken in early February and has a 4.1 percentage point margin of error.
Morrisey won the GOP primary in 2018, defeating former Rep. Evan Jenkins (R-W.Va.) and erratic coal businessman Don Blankenship. Mooney has not run statewide in West Virginia before but did win a hotly contested House primary against Rep. David McKinley (R-W.Va.) last year. And Justice has prevailed in two governor races, first as Democrat and then as a Republican. He now has high approval ratings — something Manchin once enjoyed as governor as well.
And in a race against Manchin, Justice leads 52-42, according to the poll, while the Democrat leads Mooney in a potential head-to-head 55-40 and Morrisey 52-42. Manchin defeated Morrisey by about 3 points in 2018.
The West Virginia Senate race is expected to once again be a marquee race in 2024 after Manchin held on in 2018, with Republicans seeing it as a prime pick-up opportunity and Democrats looking to defend every seat they have amid a tough map in 2024. But Mooney is still the only one officially in the race, with Manchin, Justice and Morrisey all still weighing their options. Justice has indicated he will make a decision soon.
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#Justice #strongest #candidate #Manchin #GOP #poll
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 15, 2023
GOP to ‘tighten’ rules for earmarks while embracing their revival

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Lawmakers would still be free to secure money for projects like building bridges or water systems, according to six people familiar with the decision who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“We want to be even clearer about not doing commemorations, not doing ‘monuments to me,’ making sure there’s absolutely no personal entanglements,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the party’s No. 2 appropriator in the House.
The move is, in part, a result of Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s bargain with his Freedom Caucus detractors during the speaker’s race last month. It’s also the latest step in a longtime push to defuse the political risk behind the GOP’s overwhelming support for continuing earmarks — which were banned by Congress more than a decade ago at the behest of Tea Party activists aggrieved by member abuses of them.
Under the newest constraints, House Republicans can claim they’re cracking down on federal overreach, all while enjoying the spoils of a process that fiscal conservatives have famously derided as a “gateway drug to spending addiction.”
But the new spin won’t necessarily ward off ultimatums from the sizable group of earmark opponents who made themselves known after the November midterms. A quarter of the conference opposed the push to eliminate the GOP’s conference-wide ban on earmarks in a secret-ballot vote — a critical bloc that McCarthy and his team will need for broader spending bills this year.
House Appropriations Committee Chair Kay Granger (R-Texas) said in an interview that she has been socializing earmark ideas widely so none of the caucus’ 222 members are caught off-guard. “I talk to as many members as I can,” she said, “because I don’t want to make a decision that will be such a surprise to people.”
Embracing earmarks will afford Republicans more control under divided government, allowing them to dictate which projects will get billions of dollars in federal cash rather than leaving those decisions to the Biden administration.
“When people elect us, they have expectations that we will improve at least their district,” Granger said. “And as long as we do that, and it’s perfectly open … you’ll know who did what and why. And I think that’s what we owe the public.”

Republicans have little room for error. GOP leaders made promises to their more conservative members that each of the 12 spending bills will come to the floor individually — something of a herculean task when Republicans can only lose four votes on the floor given their narrow majority. Already some members and senior aides are predicting that at least some of the bills won’t make it past committee.
Negotiations on earmarks are ongoing and details are tightly held. But the final guidelines could be announced as soon as this month.
McCarthy is helping with the sales pitch, using the phrase “federal nexus” to describe what kinds of projects should be approved, Cole said — meaning ones that have a direct tie to the federal government. And the speaker is consulting with members who represent his conference’s wide range of ideological identities, from the Freedom Caucus to the Republican Governance Group, as he paves a path for the next two years of spending bills.
It’s not clear exactly how many changes Republicans will adopt. For example, some GOP members initially sought to cap the number of projects allowed per lawmaker — from a limit of 15 to as few as 10. But other Republicans pushed back on that method, arguing it could benefit urban-area members, whose projects cost more on average than those in rural communities.
Other adjustments have won more support, such as adding more steps to the application process to ensure each project is needed. Republicans also generally support reining in the types of projects.
“There’s just an effort to tighten it, focus it, make sure it stays clean,” Cole said. He offered an example of what constitutes an acceptable “federal nexus” earmark project in his home state: a monument to honor the victims of the 1995 Oklahoma City domestic terrorism attack. A county museum, on the other hand, would not qualify.
As for the tighter application process, he deadpanned: “I can’t believe Republicans are going to be this bureaucratic, but I think we probably are.”
In the Senate, spending leaders in both parties have already vowed to keep earmarks going this year and have not revealed any changes to the system.
Keeping the earmark process “clean” is a concern prompted by more than just accountability — multiple lawmakers served prison sentences for bribery and kickbacks before Republicans banned the practice in 2010.
Democrats already drastically tightened earmark rules when they revived the custom during the last Congress, barring earmarks from going to for-profit recipients and to projects that could financially benefit specific lawmakers. No earmarks were allowed in the defense spending bill or the measures that fund congressional operations and the State Department.
“We were very, very careful,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), her party’s top appropriator in the House, said this month about the earmark comeback. She added that she heard an overwhelming sentiment from members on both sides of the aisle that the return of earmarks was both a “big success” and “enormously fair.”
The numbers back her up on that point, with earmarks attracting thousands of requests from lawmakers in both parties last term and ultimately steering more than $16 billion to specific projects in their districts during the current fiscal year.
Tanya Snyder and Olivia Beavers contributed to this report.
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#GOP #tighten #rules #earmarks #embracing #revival
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 13, 2023
GOP senator: ‘Vast majority’ want ‘a different direction’ than Rick Scott on Social Security

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“We’re never going to not fund defense. But at the same time we — every single year, we look at how we make it better,” Rounds said. “And I think it’s about time we start talking about Social Security and making it better.”
In his State of the Union speech last week, President Joe Biden highlighted Scott’s (R-Fla.) “Rescue America” agenda released during the 2022 campaign, which would sunset all federal programs including Social Security and Medicare. Those programs don’t currently require ongoing congressional approval, so the plan puts benefits in jeopardy, Biden asserted.
Some Republicans — a handful of whom heckled the president for the statement in his address Tuesday — have characterized the threat as dishonest. The plan’s text online states: “All federal legislation sunsets in 5 years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again.”
“We should be saying, let’s plan now, so that Social Security has a long run ahead of it, more than 75 years. And why don’t we start talking about the long-term plans, instead of trying to scare one another?” Rounds said Sunday.
He said he did see ways to make Social Security and Medicare better.
Possible reforms to Social Security could include “moving up by a couple of months” the time when full benefits start, or changing the amount of income subject to Social Security-related taxes, Rounds said.
“Simply looking away from it and pretending like there’s no problems with Social Security is not an appropriate or responsible thing to do,” Rounds said. He added: “Republicans want to see Social Security be successful and be improved.”
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#GOP #senator #Vast #majority #direction #Rick #Scott #Social #Security
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 13, 2023
GOP intelligence chair ‘stumped’ by Biden-Pence-Trump document handling

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Since the revelations that all three of them have possessed classified documents, members of Congress have expressed outrage at the apparent mishandling, though much of it has fallen along defensive partisan lines. There’s also been a certain befuddlement, particularly among those in Congress who sometimes handle classified material, as to why anyone would take any of this material home.
“They are not to be taken lightly. And we’re just amazed as people keep finding them stuffed in the strangest places, like behind Biden’s Corvette,” Turner said, referring to the discovery of documents in Biden’s garage.
Sensitive materials have been found in Biden’s Wilmington, Del., home, and in a private office space associated with him. The FBI found a classified document in a consensual search of Pence’s suburban Indianapolis home Friday, after one of his lawyers found a dozen classified documents in the home in January.
In the first high-profile discovery, law enforcement found a large number of classified documents while executing a search warrant for former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last year.
Turner has previously pondered how and why these classified documents ended up where they did.
“I can’t imagine a circumstance where anyone would believe that they need to have them in their home,” he said last month on ABC’s “This Week.”
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#GOP #intelligence #chair #stumped #BidenPenceTrump #document #handling
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 12, 2023
Utah Republican wants GOP to nominate a governor for president

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Cox said they were “all fantastic” after Todd threw out some names of Republican governors: New Hampshire’s Chris Sununu, Florida’s Ron DeSantis and South Dakota’s Kristi Noem, as well as former Govs. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas and Nikki Haley of South Carolina.
For his part, Murphy, who has been pushing for President Joe Biden to run for another term, did suggest that one Republican governor run for president: “Spencer Cox.”
Cox, though, said he was running for reelection as governor of Utah.
Murphy and Cox both said they were proud of the cooperation between America’s governors on a range of issues at last week’s national conference, regardless of their political affiliation. Murphy is the current chair of the National Governors Association, Cox the vice chair.
“We passionately disagree and we’re best friends,” Cox said of his friendship with Murphy. Cox also said governors are more pragmatic because of their obligation to “get stuff done.”
The last current or former governor to be nominated by the Republican Party for president was former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in 2012; Romney lost but is now a U.S. senator from Utah.
Democrats have not nominated a governor since Bill Clinton of Arkansas in 1992. He won that election and then was elected to a second term in the White House in 1996.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 12, 2023
Florida GOP hands DeSantis wins on Disney, migrants ahead of likely ’24 bid

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“The reality is we have a governor setting up a presidential bid, and this is basically his attempt to get earned media time on Fox News,” Rep. Anna Eskamani (D-Orlando) said during Friday floor debate opposing a special session bill that would expand a DeSantis-championed migrant flight program.
Republican legislative leaders convened the special session at DeSantis’ urging but downplayed suggestions that they were reluctantly pushed into it by the governor. Yet they couldn’t answer basic questions about the bills before the Legislature approved the measures.
“You guys are making inquiries, and I look forward to talking about it. But I think the governor is on the right path,” Speaker Paul Renner (R-Palm Coast) told reporters Friday when asked how the state spent millions on the migrant flight program.
The migrant proposal approved by lawmakers expands the controversial program that DeSantis used to fly nearly 50 mostly Venezuelan migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard in September. The new bill allows the state to spend money to move migrants from anywhere in the U.S., not just those currently in Florida. A Democratic state lawmaker, Sen. Jason Pizzo (D-Miami), sued DeSantis last year, claiming that the $12 million previously earmarked for the program only allowed the state to transport migrants who were in Florida.
Yet questions remain over how the state spent millions of dollars that lawmakers previously appropriated for the migrant transport program. In September, DeSantis paid an outside vendor — which was a former legal client of the governor’s public safety czar, Larry Keefe — to fly migrants to Massachusetts. Florida paid at least $1.5 million to arrange several sets of flights from Texas to Democratic strongholds in September, but it later approved a further $1.9 million in payments in October that the governor’s office has not yet publicly explained.
Public records also later showed that Keefe used a private email account that made it appear as if the messages were from “Clarice Starling,” the protagonist from the “Silence of The Lambs,” when coordinating the program.
Renner said he couldn’t answer questions about whether it was appropriate for DeSantis administration staffers to use private emails that disguise their true identity because he was not familiar enough with the Keefe emails.
During a Wednesday news conference, Senate President Kathleen Passidomo (R-Naples) said it was “above my pay grade, or a different pay grade I guess I should say” when asked about specifics of the program. She directed some questions to Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie, who will be in charge of the migrant flight program under the special session bill given final passage Friday.

During a lengthy Wednesday hearing in the Senate, Pizzo grilled the bill sponsor, state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia (R-Spring Hill), about his proposal, but Ingoglia repeatedly said he couldn’t comment on the program because of pending litigation.
Lawmakers this week were also unable to answer questions about a measure lawmakers approved that allows a statewide prosecutor to charge individuals with election-related crimes. The change came about after the DeSantis-created Office of Election Crimes and Security highlighted last August the arrest of 20 people for allegedly illegally voting in the 2020 election because they had previous convictions for serious crimes like murder.
Those arrests, however, have come under scrutiny after POLITICO and other outlets reported that the defendants were told by state and local election officials that they were allowed to cast ballots. Judges tossed the charges against three defendants in part because the Office of Statewide Prosecution does not have jurisdiction in the election fraud cases. The bill lawmakers approved now clarifies that the office has authority to file such charges.
Yet lawmakers approved the changes to the office without knowing if it would retroactively apply to the defendants who had already been charged by the Office of Statewide Prosecution.
“I can’t answer that,” Passidomo said during her Wednesday press conference. “I would generally say these bills are not retroactive.”
Renner on Friday said he also was not sure, but thought the bill could be retroactive. He said regardless, the bill was needed because DeSantis’ new office racked up early losses in court.
“These new rules will be hashed out in the courts, and the courts will make the determination as to what may or may not apply retroactively,” he said. “What we are doing here is to make sure the jurisdictional issue is solved. There are some cases that went the other way, and so we want to make sure we have the ability to do what we always do, make it easy to vote, and hard to cheat.”
Lawmakers this week also approved a bill giving Florida and DeSantis more control over the Reedy Creek Improvement District, which has given Disney World the right of self-governance at its Orlando-based theme park for more than five decades. Lawmakers last year stripped Disney World of its self-governing status after top Disney officials publicly criticized Florida’s law that bans teachers from leading classroom instructions on sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms from kindergarten through third grade. The law is widely known as “Don’t Say Gay.”
Legislators renamed the district, took away some little-used powers and gave DeSantis more authority over the company by creating a five-person oversight board he will appoint.
The week before the session began, DeSantis publicly pushed lawmakers to convene in Tallahassee to approve the Disney bill and hinted at other unspecified priorities. Lawmakers were quietly concerned the session was being called too soon and a Disney-focused bill was not yet ready. Legislators filed the Disney bill last and needed to amend it, adding to the sense that the special session was being hurried.
“This legislation was not rushed at all, like has been reported,” Fred Hawkins, the St. Cloud Republican who sponsored the bill, said Friday, acknowledging the open perception lawmakers had to hurry the bill. “This was thought out, that’s why the bill was so large.”
Republican legislative leaders also defended their decision to call a sixth legislative session in less than a year to help fix DeSantis’ previously passed priorities. The governor or legislative leader called two special sessions in 2021 and four in 2022.
“I think we frequently have special sessions,” Renner said Friday. “As I said, we do not wait around to fix problems and each of these bills in my mind had some time sensitivity to it.”
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#Florida #GOP #hands #DeSantis #wins #Disney #migrants #ahead #bid
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 11, 2023
The GOP Is Starting to Plot Against Donald Trump

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It is also a conversation reminiscent of one many had before. Back in 2016, senior Republicans fretted that putting Trump on top of the ticket would spell certain doom. “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed,” later Trump acolyte Lindsey Graham notoriously tweeted. “And we will deserve it.” Those concerns proved to be unfounded, of course, as Trump prevailed over a split Republican field and then went on to defeat Hillary Clinton while Republicans held the House and Senate. But this time around, few Republicans think Trump can pull it off again, not after spending the last three years nursing his grievances over 2020, and especially not after his hand-picked candidates were walloped in the midterms.
Back in 2020, the buzzword among Democrats was “electability,” as the need to defeat Trump came to outweigh any other concerns or considerations including those of ideology, vision, competence and style. And the winner of the “electability” primary, at least for donors and liberal pundits, was Joe Biden, which led to most of his competitors dropping out and endorsing him when he was still trailing in the delegate count to Bernie Sanders. Republicans are now hoping that a similar dynamic plays out on their side this year and that even Trump loyalists will understand the stakes. Trump did not respond to requests for comment.
“I don’t think it is fair to call Donald Trump a damaged candidate,” said Eric Levine, a top GOP fundraiser who has been calling on the party to move on from Trump since the 2020 election and the uprising at the Capitol. “He is a metastasizing cancer who if he is not stopped is going to destroy the party. Donald Trump is a loser. He is the first president since Hoover to lose the House, the Senate and the presidency in a single term. Because of him Chuck Schumer is the Leader Schumer, and the progressive agenda is threatening to take over the country. And he is probably the only Republican in the country, if not the only person in the country, who can’t beat Joe Biden.”
The big fear among donors like Levine and other party players is that, like in 2016, a number of challengers to Trump will jump into the primary and linger too long, splitting the field and allowing Trump to win. And some of these top Republicans are meeting with potential candidates and telling them that if they want to run, they should by all means do so — but that they should also be prepared to drop out well before voting begins in order to make sure that the GOP puts their best candidate forward against Biden.
“I am worried about this, but experience is a good teacher, and there is no education in the second kick of a mule,” said Scott Jennings, a Republican strategist and longtime adviser to Senator Mitch McConnell. “My hope is that those exploring a race [for president] right now are asking themselves what is best for the party.”
Bob Vander Plaats, the president of The Family Leader, a socially conservative advocacy group, is one of the most sought-after endorsers in the Iowa Caucus. He said that he is speaking with every potential candidate about the need to not overstay their welcome in the race.
“I tell them that there is an open and fair playing field here in the state of Iowa, and that we will introduce you to our base, and we will give you all kinds of opportunities for you to introduce yourself. And if you have the call in your heart to run for president, I am the last person to tell you to not to.
“But,” he also tells them. “Do not listen to your consultants, who have a vested interest in you staying in. I can help you decide if you should stay in or not.”

“They all agree right away,” he added.
Leading donors who have spoken with the top-non-Trump contenders like Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo and Mike Pence say that all get it, that none of them are looking to play the spoiler and are aware of the dangers to the party, if not the country, of a Trump Redux. For evidence, these donors point to the potential candidate’s public statements and recent memoirs, in which all are critical of Trump in one way or another.
“Does Mike Pence really want his legacy to be that he got four percent of the vote and helped elected Donald Trump?” asked one adviser to a major Republican giver. “Same goes for [Mike] Pompeo, same goes for [Nikki] Haley. They want to get traction, of course, but there is a higher motivation to pull out more quickly based on what it would mean for the country and the party.”
Yet if the Haleys and Pompeos of the world end up running, they are doing so to win, and despite what they tell donors now, once they start getting a warm reception on the stump it can be hard to stop. “Everybody on every campaign says, ‘Why is it our responsibility to keep Donald Trump from winning?’” said GOP strategist Dave Carney. “You have some people that are just running to sell books, but most of the folks that are looking at this are doing so because they think there is a path for them to win.”
Trump seems to recognize how the prospect of a crowded field would help him, keeping quiet even as some of his former closest aides consider their own campaigns, and training his fire instead on Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who is leading him in some polls. Trump has been reluctant to take the bait as his former ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, taunts her former boss by calling for a “new generation” of leadership. Trump is Trump, so he has hit back occasionally, but has also said publicly that Haley “should do it,” a sign that, as former chair of the South Carolina Republican Party Katon Dawson put it, “Trump has a solid 31 [percent]. And if it’s a big field a solid 31 can carry you to the nomination. The only way to defeat him is if some of these folks team up.”
The question is how, and on this, even some of the Republican rich are at a loss on how to proceed. No more are there party bosses with the power to clear the field. The rise of online fundraising means that even the effect of the donor class can be limited. And while leaders of religious and grassroots groups hold sway, they have their own politics to think about, and can’t very well step much beyond where their members want to go.
“I don’t even know who would be having these kinds of conversations,” said Jennings. “There is no convening authority. You just hope the candidates figure it out and we don’t come in to next January with another John Kasich running around dividing the field.”
On the Democratic side, back in 2016, the party’s donors and senior leadership united well before the primaries behind Hillary Clinton only to see the folly of that approach when her weaknesses as a candidate revealed themselves as she struggled to fend off a challenge from Bernie Sanders.
For Republicans, the likeliest beneficiary of any similar effort would be DeSantis, who is outpacing Trump in some head-to-head polls. DeSantis has advantages, not least among them the fact that he just raised over $200 million for his reelection bid, and that he has a knack for using his perch in the Florida statehouse to hammer Democrats over culture war issues. But he is untested on the national stage, and there are persistent whispers that he can be clumsy about the normal give-and-take of politics. Many party bigwigs say they would rather watch the process play out for at least a year before picking favorites, with the understanding that if candidates now polling in the single digits don’t see their prospects improve, they move to consolidate behind one Not Trump after the first couple of primaries. “The great hope for DeSantis is that he breaks through quickly, and that convinces everyone else there is no path,” said one former Trump adviser who now thinks the former president can’t win.
One oddity of the current moment is that the weaker Trump seems, with federal and local investigations piling up and his campaign launch landing with a thud, the higher the chances that more possible candidates will launch their own bids, seeing a path to victory more likely. And the more candidates enter, the easier it becomes for Trump to win with an increasingly smaller share of the vote.
There may be no convening authority, but there are conversations among donors and party activists who point to how on the other side of the aisle, in 2020, nearly the entire remaining Democratic field dropped out almost at the same time and endorsed Biden. Republicans fret that there is no equivalent of a Nancy Pelosi or a Jim Clyburn in their party who can apply pressure to the dreams of would-be presidents. Still, donors are talking now about pooling money together once the primary gets under way in earnest and a true Trump alternative emerges.
“Donors have wised up,” said Liam Donovan, a GOP strategist. “That is the main control mechanism. There is not going to be oxygen for a lot of these guys, and there are not going to be resources.”
There is already some movement along these lines.
“I don’t see a big bunch of donors coming behind Trump at this point,” said Andy Sabin, a metal mogul who gave over $100,000 to Trump over the years and who opened his Hamptons estate for a Trump fundraiser in 2019. “I wouldn’t give Trump a fucking nickel, and that hasn’t changed. As we get closer Trump is going to see the handwriting on the wall. Now, he may not care if he fucks everybody up. Trump worries only about Trump, so he may not care if we lose as long as he has his day in the park, but I don’t know any donor that wants to give a red nickel to Trump.”
Sabin isn’t alone. Stephen Schwarzman, the CEO of Blackstone who donated $3.7 million to Trump and Trump affiliated groups over the last several years, said after the midterms that “It is time for the Republican Party to turn to a new generation of leaders, and I intend to support one of them in the presidential primaries.” Ken Griffin, the CEO of Citadel who gave $60 million to Republican candidates and campaigns in the 2022 cycle, also said after the midterms that “I’d like to think that the Republican Party is ready to move on from somebody who has been for this party a three-time loser,” and announced his support for DeSantis.
These public clarion calls, donors and party leaders say, are all part of a larger strategy to raise an alarm on Trump’s weaknesses; they hope that GOP primary voters start prioritizing electability like their Democratic counterparts did four years ago. Republicans tend to get enthralled with several candidates throughout the course of a presidential primary. The hope this year, senior strategists said, is that voters’ minds stay focused on who can best beat Biden, so that even if DeSantis — or whomever the frontrunner of the moment is — stumbles, attention and affection coalesces around the next Non-Trump in the field.
There is a concerted effort afoot to reach out even to some of Trump’s most loyal voters. Evangelical leaders have said they are reminding their voters about comments Trump made after the midterms in which he seemed to blame evangelicals for the disappointing results and accused them of “disloyalty” for not already lining up behind his ’24 effort. Plus, they say, even the evangelical movement needs to start thinking long term, and Trump would come into office an immediate lame duck.
“Trump can only offer four more years,” said Dave Wilson, the president of the Palmetto Family Council, an influential evangelical group in South Carolina. “How are we going to build a movement that goes beyond the next four years to the next eight years to the next twenty years, that parallels what we have seen over on the progressive side?”
For many party leaders however, such sentiments are just a hope. There is as of now no real effort to consolidate the field, no real plan among the donor class to pull their billions behind a single non-Trump candidate. There is a belief that somehow the Republican collective consciousness has learned from 2016 and that candidates, donors and party leaders will move in concert behind the right person once the process starts to play out.
“Republicans are very motivated to defeat Joe Biden,” said Tom Rath, a longtime Republican hand in New Hampshire. “The Trump people aren’t at the table for them, but there are already discussions happening about what we do. If we get in a situation where Trump is winning primaries with 40 percent of the vote and losing badly to Biden, I think you are going to see those discussion begin to accelerate, to say the least. We just hope it’s not too late by then.”
CLARIFICATION: This article has been updated to clarify the recipients of Ken Griffin’s recent political donations.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 9, 2023
House GOP opens politicized-government probe with a Fox News-ready lineup

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“I’m deeply concerned about the use of this select subcommittee as a place to settle scores, showcase conspiracy theories and advance an extreme agenda that risks undermining Americans’ faith in our democracy,” said Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-V.I.), her party’s top member on the panel.
Republicans defended their strategy, arguing that whistleblowers — some of whom will testify publicly — have been privately raising concerns to the committee staff. Others have met behind closed doors with the panel, including as recently as this week.
“I have never seen anything like this. Dozens of, dozens of whistleblowers, FBI agents, coming to us … Not Jim Jordan saying this, not Republicans, not conservatives, good, brave FBI agents,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chair of the panel and the broader Judiciary Committee.
Yet two of the GOP witnesses who set the tone for the panel’s work are currently employed Fox News contributors with gripes against their onetime organizations to match: former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who recently left the Democratic Party, and former FBI agent Nicole Parker.
It’s not just the Fox News contributors who set the panel up to deliver a grievance-fueled message to the party base. The GOP witnesses included two GOP senators — Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin — as well as constitutional lawyer Jonathan Turley, a favored witness for Republicans in recent years. Another former FBI official, Thomas Baker, testified.
It’s the panel’s first hearing after Speaker Kevin McCarthy agreed to create it last month as he sought to lock down conservative votes and win the gavel. And the broad scope of the hearing — the “weaponization of the federal government,” a mission similar to the panel’s own name — is likely to serve as a springboard into a litany of topics that all fuel outrage on the right, although many of the GOP witnesses are particularly critical of the FBI’s actions dating back to the 2016 presidential campaign.
And the vast scope of the hearing in some ways mirrors the panel’s blurry boundary lines in its relationships with other House investigative work. Many of the 12 Republicans on the subcommittee — including Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) and Mike Johnson (R-La.) — have suggested they want to dig into matters that are also being pursued by the wider Judiciary Committee, the Oversight Committee and other panels.
Jordan, who chairs the Judiciary panel and the new subcommittee, wields subpoena power for both panels, making him primarily responsible for sorting out any overlap in jurisdiction. Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) has stressed his coordination with Jordan, who preceded him as the top Republican there.

Democrats, mindful of the TV-caliber lineup, selected their own camera-friendly witnesses. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) — a constitutional lawyer and veteran of recent major Democratic investigations — sat alongside Grassley, Johnson and Gabbard, ready to parry allegations that his party regards as conspiracy theories. And Elliot Williams, a former Obama Justice Department official who now contributes to CNN, took alongside the other witnesses during a second panel.
Raskin warned that the subcommittee “could take oversight over a very dark alley” and that the panel’s name was “pure physiological projection.”
“Not because ‘weaponization of the government’ is its target, but because weaponization of the government is its purpose. What is in a name? Well, everything is here,” Raskin added.
And the White House fired off an opening salvo against the panel ahead of the hearing, calling it a “Fox News reboot of the House Un-American Activities Committee” that “weaponizes Congress to carry out the priorities of extreme MAGA Republicans in Congress.”
In a standard practice for fellow members, Raskin, Johnson, Grassley and Gabbard only give opening statements, sparing them from questions that would force them to go toe-to-toe with their political opponents.
The decision to rely heavily on GOP, or GOP-aligned witnesses, is a sharp-turn from the last prominent select committee — the Jan. 6 panel. That Democratic-run investigation largely relied on Republicans and officials within Trump’s orbit to tell the story of his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, culminating in the violent attack on the Capitol.
Grassley and Johnson discussed, among other matters, their Hunter Biden investigation and their belief that the then-Trump-era FBI worked to undercut their probe of the now-president’s son as the 2020 election drew closer.
“I’ve ran countless investigations. In the past few years, I’ve never seen so much effort from the FBI, the partisan media, and some of my Democratic colleagues to interfere with and undermine very legitimate congressional inquiries,” Grassley said.
The hearing came in the wake of a back-and-forth between Jordan and the Justice Department over his subpoena last week for documents related to certain Biden administration decisions regarding threats against school officials during the pandemic.
The Justice Department, in a letter obtained by POLITICO, told the Ohio Republican that it remained “ready to discuss next steps” on his request for documents and urged him to “reconsider engaging.”
“We are committed to working in good faith to respond to your requests and remain ready to discuss your informational needs and priorities for review and production of pertinent documents,” the department added.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 9, 2023
‘He rope-a-doped them’: Democrats celebrate GOP jeers at SOTU

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Schumer said on Democrats’ side of the room Tuesday, “there was excitement” as Biden was “hitting it out of the park.” The contrast with the Republican side of the room, he said, will be “remembered for quite a while, by anybody who watched it.”
At one particularly tense moment, GOP lawmakers booed the president when he claimed Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset — referring to Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-Fla.) proposal to wind down all laws after five years. Biden went off-script as the outrage from Republicans on the floor grew louder, attempting to clarify “I don’t think it is a majority of you” and finally saying, “So folks, as we all apparently agree, Social Security and Medicare, off the books now, right?”
Schumer said Wednesday “there is no way” to eliminate the deficit in 10 years — a goal of Republican leadership — without slashing Medicare and Social Security, though House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) did pledge Tuesday that he wouldn’t touch the two programs in the ongoing debt limit fight. The New York Democrat also called Biden “deft” for letting Republicans “walk into his trap” by essentially making them assert to the public they aren’t for cutting Medicare and Social Security.
“Joe Biden was so deft. He let them walk into his trap. He rope-a-doped them,” Schumer said. “And now all of America has seen the Republican Party say, ‘No, we’re not going to cut Social security and Medicare.’ He did a service.”
Vice President Kamala Harris called the Republican jeering “theatrical” and applauded the president for being “in command” and staying “focused on the American people” as opposed to “the gamesmanship that was being played in the room.”
“The president, it’s his nature and it’s his commitment to the American people to work across the aisle,” Harris said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “That’s not going to stop even if some people are cynical about it.”
Assistant Democratic leader Rep. James Clyburn (S.C.) said Biden’s speech could be a preview for his 2024 campaign for reelection, should he make good on his stated intentions to mount another White House bid. Clyburn added that “it was the best effort I’ve seen” from Biden in a “long, long time,” and praised his “maturity” in responding to the hecklers.
“I saw in him last night the kind of maturity that the American people would like to see in a president,” Clyburn said. “He took on the hecklers. Let them have their say. Gave them a nice little smile and responded in a very positive way.”

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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 8, 2023