Republican party

An admission of personal bias: I have little to no respect for academics or intellectuals who write about the Congress of the United States. As a student, I was taught by brilliant professors about the dynamics of legislative decisions and negotiation, the nooks and crannies of process and debate, the give and take, the game theory at play. Then, when I arrived on Capitol Hill, within a month I discovered that a certain member had completely changed his position on a piece of legislation — a 180-degree reversal from where he stood before. When I asked an aged veteran legislative aide about why this was possibly the case, he looked at me, bemused, and asked — “He’s getting a divorce. Which lobbyist do you think his wife slept with? This is personal, not politics.

In the closing months of the 2022 midterms North Carolina residents began receiving text messages and phone calls from unfamiliar numbers, a ritual all too familiar to a swing-state voter. The benevolent voice on the line had seen the recipient’s name on a petition to allow the Green Party on the ballot and wanted to ensure the signature was on the up and up. With validity confirmed the anonymous caller would reveal himself to be a Green Party representative. “If the Green Party is on the ballot, it’ll take votes away from Democrats, giving Republicans a huge advantage. It will help them win North Carolina in 2022 and 2024. There’s far too much at stake to let this happen. Are you interested in asking to have your name removed from this petition or leave it as is?

Fresh off a narrow defeat in her gubernatorial race, Kari Lake is seeking to remake the Arizona GOP in her image — rather than in John McCain’s. Her moves include plans to primary Republicans who did win their elections as recently as last November — and they come as the former journalist is keeping multiple professional irons in fires, all while freezing the GOP field in next year’s high-stakes Senate race.  While most Arizona strategists expect Lake to announce a Senate campaign this fall, there is also speculation that she is competing to be Donald Trump’s running mate. “We drove a stake through the heart of the McCain machine,” Lake bragged.

Sparks flew during a series of testy exchanges about “nonconsensual nudes,” domestic terrorism and social media censorship as FBI director Christopher Wray testified before the House’s Judiciary Committee. The hearing marked Wray’s first appearance to Congress since Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to investigate former president Donald Trump. It kicked off with some snide remarks from committee chair Jim Jordan, who chided his Democratic counterpart for mispronouncing a name, perhaps because he missed an earlier deposition. Republicans portrayed Wray as disconnected with his own department, while Democrats used him as a stand-in to praise all law enforcement.

The gloves were off in the House of Representatives this week after Georgia congressman Marjorie Taylor Greene called her Colorado colleague Lauren Boebert “a little bitch.” The gruesome twosome used to be thick as thieves. What happened?  The fight erupted over impeachment articles that Boebert introduced Tuesday and tried unsuccessfully to force a vote on. Greene, who drafted her impeachment articles in 2021 and again this May, publicly accused Boebert of copying. On Wednesday, Boebert again tried unsuccessfully to force a vote on her impeachment resolution.  During the vote, Boebert confronted Greene over comments the congresswoman had made to the press. C-SPAN’s camera’s caught part of the exchange in a center aisle of the House floor.

For all the splits on the right at the moment, it’s worth taking note of rare unity in decrying former House Speaker Paul Ryan’s comments about the culture war to CBS This Morning on Monday.  Former wide receiver turned morning host Nate Burleson asked Ryan about what he described broadly as a GOP movement to prioritize the culture war. “Republican lawmakers around the country are pushing legislation when it comes to banning books, it could be trans rights, call it 'anti-woke,' however you want to label it,” Burleson said. “Is this a good approach? Is that a good strategy? You're a football fan, is that how you should approach the game?” https://twitter.com/CurtisHouck/status/1668604854539804674 “I’m not a culture war guy,” Ryan answered.

"Negative partisanship” is a notorious feature of American politics. In presidential elections especially, voters don’t vote for the party and candidate they like; they vote against the party and candidate they fear. This is one reason third-party politics is a waste of time. If voters want to prevent the worst outcome, they will always choose the most viable alternative over the best alternative. For Joe Biden in 2020, it was enough that he wasn’t Donald Trump. For Trump in 2016, it was enough that he wasn’t Hillary Clinton. Next year, we’ll find out whether the voting public now views Biden as more like Clinton or still considers him better than Trump.

Extremists have got to learn to take half a loaf. Just like the cheap labor-demanding GOP donors, pro-lifers need to be told: you can’t get everything you want. If Republicans give you this, they’ll lose their jobs, and the people who’ll replace them want you dead. Unlike a lot of people complaining about the anti-abortion zealots, I am an anti-abortion zealot. That’s why I’m begging them to stop pushing wildly unpopular ideas. These fanatics are going to get millions more babies killed when Democrats win supermajorities in both houses of Congress and immediately pass a federal law making abortion-on-demand the law of the land.