Republican party

If you’ve ever thought about buying a MyPillow, Cockburn advises that you do so now — they may not be around for much longer. After months of lawsuits, the company’s owner and Donald Trump devotee Mike Lindell announced last week that he is broke and millions of dollars behind in unpaid legal bills. "We've lost everything, every dime," Lindell told NBC News. "All of it is gone."  Last Thursday, the legal team representing Lindell in three defamation lawsuits filed to separate themselves from the company due to millions in unpaid bills. The pillow magnate said he is not trying to stiff his attorneys but simply cannot afford to pay them.

In Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, a posse of violent ne’er-do-wells forced by circumstance into a house together descend, through duplicity, avarice and lies, into bloody chaos which leaves everyone dead. The title is a fitting one for the eight Republicans who crossed party lines to vote with House Democrats, unanimous in their belief that they are better off without Kevin McCarthy as speaker. In doing so, they ensured the House is controlled by Democrats in all but name. As the speaker race begins, the odds favor Steve Scalise or Jim Jordan — both more satisfying to the right wing than McCarthy, but far less capable of fundraising as he did to protect the tenuous hold of moderates in blue states.

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.