It's Harder For Some Republicans To Hop On The Hillary Bandwagon Than It Is For Others

Trump's most recent mail-order bride, the one he thinks would make a perfect First Lady, posing with a gun and a thong... nice boots. Not joining #GOPWomenWithHer

Writing for the NY Times this morning, Patrick Healy makes the point that "Should she win the presidency, Hillary Clinton would quickly try to find common ground with Republicans on an immigration overhaul and infrastructure spending, risking the wrath of liberals who would like nothing more than to twist the knife in a wounded opposition party... Deeply confident that she would perform better as the president than as a political candidate, Mrs. Clinton wants to pursue a whole new approach at the White House to try to break through years of partisan gridlock, according to a dozen campaign advisers and allies who described her goals and outlook. From policy goals and personnel to her instinct for patiently cultivating the enemy, Mrs. Clinton thinks she would be a better dealmaker than President Obama if she finds willing partners on the other side."

Marty Torrey, the head of Republicans for Hillary, wrote on the group's website that "The carnival atmosphere, media coverage, Twitter-based, and cash-crazy nature of this year’s election has thus far managed to avoid addressing what criteria matter most in the selection of our next President: experience, seriousness, intelligence, bipartisanship, global awareness. Yes party loyalty matters, but at this point in what will one day become our history, loyalty to country matters more."

The Republican Party establishment has spent so many years-- decades-- demonizing the Clintons that as much as it's partially inoculated her from even legitimate charges about her corruption and malfeasance in the eyes of normal people, it's made it intensely difficult for Republicans fleeing from the horrors of Trumpism to embrace her candidacy. That said, Ben Howe, a contributing editor of Red State said aloud what many Republicans are thinking: "I am a fiscal conservative and I am a social conservative. That will not change. But I will not vote for an egomaniacal authoritarian. Nope. #ImWithHer." Larry Pressler, a former Republican senator from South Dakota is thinking along the same lines: "I can’t believe I’m endorsing Hillary Clinton for president, but I am…this morning, I woke up and told my wife, ‘Did I really do that?’ But I did…this election is starting to sound like the German elections in the late 1920s, this is a very dangerous national conversation we’re slipping into." Richard Armitage, George W. Bush's Deputy Secretary of State seems to understand that Hillary is more of a mainstream Republican than Trump is. "He doesn’t appear to be to be a Republican, he doesn’t appear to want to learn about issues. So I’m going to vote for Mrs. Clinton." One of the anchors of the Republican foreign policy establishment, Brent Scowcroft, who served as National Security Adviser to both Ford and Bush, is taking the extra step away from Trumpism as well: "The presidency requires the judgment and the knowledge to make tough calls under pressure. I believe Hillary Clinton has the wisdom and experience to lead our country at this critical time."

A few weeks ago Torrey, a retired US Navy Commander, sent out a Country Before Party letter to likely Republicans horrified by Trump and Trumpism, launching the website. "A campaign to pick a President shouldn’t be a made-for-TV brawl," he wrote. "Rather, selection should be about capabilities and experience." In a clear departure from one of Trumpism founding tenets, he declared that "Nobody makes money off www.gop4hrc.com. So if someone is looking to donate, or looking to advertise or make a buck, they should look elsewhere."

Torrey, who had been Chief of Staff for New York Republican Congressman John Sweeney, wrote that "My experience with then Senator Clinton and her staff was very positive and bipartisan. All interaction was straightforward and about getting things done for the people of New York and the country. A lot of the negatives I read and hear about Hillary Clinton during this campaign simply do not match up with my own experiences and interaction with her and those around her for over 15 years."

And that same attitude is inherent in the Clinton endorsement from Hank Paulson, George W. Bush's Treasury Secretary, the TARP guy, who had previously been Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs: "When it comes to the presidency, I will not vote for Donald Trump…I will not cast a write-in vote. I’ll be voting for Hillary Clinton, with the hope that she can bring Americans together to do the things necessary to strengthen our economy, our environment and our place in the world."

Yesterday, CNN reported on another group of Republicans backing Clinton, Republican Women for Hillary. Chris Moody wrote about a steering committee meeting over glasses of wine and champagne at the swanky St. Regis Hotel in DC. "Five young Republicans busily brainstormed how they could help Hillary Clinton become the next president of the United States. The group included an unlikely gang of pro-Clinton foot soldiers, including a Mississippi-born Southern Baptist who got her start in GOP politics as an intern in the second Bush White House, a conservative health care policy analyst who has volunteered for anti-abortion causes and a former president of the Cornell University College Republicans." That shouldn't sound like too much of a push. After all, Hillary herself was a GOP activist into her twenties and was the president of the Wellesley College Young Republicans in her formative years. They share a lot of core conservative values with her but their motivation for jumping the partisan fence was to stop Trump.

"It's really important that Republican leaders, especially Republican women leaders, stand up right now and say we're not OK with Trump representing our party," said Jennifer Lim, a group founder who works at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and has spent much of her life volunteering for Republican causes and campaigns. "This is not a position I ever wanted to find myself in. But it's important that when things like this happen that people speak up."

Lim's role as a leader within the new group is independent of her day job. But earlier this week, the Chamber clashed with Trump over his embrace of protectionist trade policies, which the business group opposes.

Over the next several months, members of Republican Women for Hillary plan to provide cover for Republicans looking to speak out against Trump, whose surprising rise has torn the party apart.

Faced with a choice between Clinton and Trump, some Republicans have begrudgingly agreed to support him while others are simply opting out of the election. But for these women who founded the group, (and one man who has joined in solidarity), Trump's bombastic style, offensive rhetoric toward women and minorities, slapdash policy "suggestions" risk destroying the party.

This is the post-primary Never Trump movement in action. Their new organization, which is not affiliated with the Clinton campaign, is part support group and part activist hub: They intend to host off-the-record social events for like-minded conservatives and sponsor get-out-the-vote efforts for Clinton. They started in May by launching accounts on Facebook and Twitter and are planning to make an appearance at the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia next month.

Making the switch to openly support a Clinton for president wasn't a decision they came to lightly, the group's members said.

"It has been tough for me to come to this point where I can vote for a candidate who has been very against what I've been working for for most of my professional career," said Meghan Milloy, who works for the conservative American Action Forum think tank and has formerly campaigned for Republicans like Trent Lott, Mitt Romney and Haley Barbour. "That being said, I can't vote for someone like Donald Trump because he's overtly racist and misogynist."

Lim said she intends to knock on doors, make phone calls for Clinton and will donate to the Democratic campaign, a step she has never taken in her life.

Which candidate is the bigger liar? It's not even close

Her temporary transition to Democratic volunteer might seem all too convenient at first: She was recently married to Tim Lim, the founder of a media buying firm called Precision that has a contract with the Clinton campaign. But, she said, her reasons for supporting Clinton are genuine and purely strategic. Her current activism is about stopping Trump from winning the general election, preserving the the Republican Party and the conservative values it promotes, she said.

"Our group isn't about selling Clinton. It's about using your vote to keep Trump out of office," Lim said. "We're not going to be in the business of convincing people that Hillary Clinton will be the savior of all of our policy issues. We're trying to convince people that your vote has a political and moral purpose, and it's important to use that."

"This was a long road for me to get here," she added.

It is Republican women like these that Clinton has made a concerted effort to reach during as part of her campaign.

Recent data suggest that it's working. National opinion polls show Clinton leading Trump among several demographic groups, notably women voters. Meanwhile, an ABC News/Washington Post survey conducted in June found that 77 percent of women have an unfavorable view of Trump.

As for policy, there are only a few areas where the group's leaders said they could agree with Clinton, which mostly involves foreign policy and trade. More importantly, however, they see her as a reasonable person-- especially compared with the unpredictable Trump-- and someone Republicans could possibly work with.

"We can put our differences aside to have a safer option that's better for the country as a whole," Milloy said. "The fear of Donald Trump is, to me, more than the fear of Hillary raising capital standards on banks."

These are not people likely to suddenly embrace progressive values and principles or back Democratic candidates beyond Hillary. And if someof them stick to the Democratic Party, they are likely to pull it towards the right the way party switchers like Patrick Murphy, Charlie Crist and... Hillary Clinton have.

Larry Pressler-- A Relentless Warrior In The Republican War Against Women

It took long enough— and let’s hope it isn’t too little/too late— but Harry Reid and Guy Cecil finally responded to the growing anger, primarily from Democratic senators and donors, and have let the DSCC get to work in South Dakota. Above is their first ad against one of the three Republicans, Mike Rounds (the GOP Establishment favorite), being going up against Rick Weiland. DSCC polling shows its a winnable race. We’ve been subtly nudging them in that direction since the beginning of the year.

South Dakotans know how corrupt Mike Rounds is— which is why the former governor can’t get traction in the polls beyond partisan Republican voters— some of whom he has to share with teabagger Gordon Howie and former U.S. Senator Larry Pressler. Pressler, a bit of a nut job, is trying— desperately— to present himself as a Greg Orman-type independent. Pressler, though, has a record in government, a long and sordid one. He’s tap-dancing all over, from his home in DC— where he ran a ridiculous, short-lived campaign for mayor— to the trips he takes out to South Dakota, claiming first he’s a “friend of Obama” and then explaining he only meant that he won’t necessarily vote with his fellow Republicans to impeach the president after the midterms.

latest polling

He’s also trying to do something Rounds can’t— reach independent-minded women. Yesterday he was on MSNBC with Steve Kornacki claiming he does not want to overturn Roe v Wade. Pure opportunism— flying right in the face of his ugly career in Congress. He was no friend of women when he was in the House or in the Senate— part of the reason South Dakota voters turned him out of office in the first place. This is the Larry Pressler record on issues specifically important to women— going back 35 years:

• Voted For Strict Restrictions allowing federally-funded abortions only to save the mother’s life... not in cases of rape or incest, a position to the right of Ronald Reagan’s. (Schweiker Motion. 9/24/1979)

• Voted to Prohibit federal funds in life-threatening situations or for victims of rape or incest. (Weicker Amendment. 10/3/1984)

• Voted For Denying Women in the District of Columbia from funds for abortions, except to save the life of the mother, something that made his subsquent run for mayor of DC totally untenable. (Simpson Motion. 11/7/1985)

• Voted Against raising the income ceiling for food stamp eligibility. (Stafford Amendment. 11/12/1985)

• Voted to Maintain restrictions on funds for the District of Columbia for the payment of abortions except to save the life of the mother. (9/16/1986)

• Voted against allowing women in the District of Columbia funding for abortions except when the mother’s life is in danger. (Harkin Motion. 9/30/1987)

• Voted to continue debate preventing a vote to provide unpaid, job-protected leave to parents of newborn children. (Byrd Motion. 10/7/1988)

• Voted to oppose the dependent care tax credit and to make it refundable. (Mitchell Substitute Amendment. 6/22/1989)

• Voted to support persons convicted of or charged with a sexual offense involving a minor from coaching, teaching or serving as a role model to minors within the District of Columbia. (Armstrong Motion. 3/1/1990)

• Voted to support the exclusion of private, non-profit organizations performing abortions from receiving direct federal funding under Title X of the Public Health Service Act of 1970, a state block grant program. (Hatch Amendment. 9/25/90)

• Voted to confirm Clarence Thomas as Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. (10/15/1991)

• Voted to support President Bush’s override of a bill forcing employers to give workers up to 12 weeks unpaid leave to care for newborns or ill family members. (9/24/1992)

• Voted to oppose an override of President Bush’s veto of a bill allowing taxpayer-funded family planning clinics to advocate abortion as a family planning method. (10/1/1992)

• Voted to oppose Family Medical Leave Act. (2/4/1993)

• Voted to oppose states and local governments from providing general welfare assistance to able-bodied individuals unless they are participating in workfare programs. (6/22/1993)

• Voted to support an amendment to prohibit the promotion or distribution of condoms without parental consent. (2/8/94)

• Voted to oppose making peaceful obstruction as well as violent intimidation outside abortion clinics a federal crime subject to civil damage awards. (5/12/1994)

• Voted to oppose expansion of government-mandated and government-defined “standard benefits package” included in the Clinton Health Security Act to include coverage of various specific preventive services for pregnant women and their babies. (8/16/1994)

The AARP warns voters that if Pressler wins the Senate seat he will vote to increase the retirement age for Social Security and vote to decrease the cost-of-living allowance. He may be trying to present himself as a moderate today but his record is the record of an extremist and a right-wing loon, opposing the minimum wage, opposing parental leave, opposing campaign finance limits, and opposing greater disclosure for his lobbyist pals. He was one of the few senators to oppose honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. with a holiday and he had a consistentkly homophobic, hate-filled voting records when it came to equality for the LGBT community. HRC rated him a ZERO. So the National Education Association and so did NARAL. The video below shows him contradicting his claims on Kornacki’s show yesterday by claiming he would vote to repeal Roe v Wade if he gets back into the Senate.

The DSCC is attacking Rounds— a good first step— but ignoring Pressler. If you’d like to help Rick Weiland get out the word on Pressler, you can do that here.

Who’s Larry Pressler? An Old, Broken Clock

Ryan Casey is a 2001 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, and a 2010 graduate of the Georgetown Public Policy Institute at Georgetown University. He is Chairman of the Lincoln County Democratic Party in Sioux Falls, SD, and served as Chairman of South Dakota's delegation to the 2012 Democratic National Convention. You can follow him on Twitter @RyanCaseySD.

-by Ryan Casey

Sure, he endorsed Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, but that was only because he was sniffing around for a presidential appointment, after flirting with a run for DC Mayor and losing a Republican primary for U.S. House in 2002. Even now, Pressler won’t say whether he’d caucus with the Republicans or the Democrats; apparently he’s been reduced to auctioning his core values to the highest bidder.

His other claim to liberal fame these days is his (tepid) support for marriage equality, which puts him just to the right of that all-time patron saint of South Dakota progressives, Dick Cheney.

Pressler’s decades-long record as a Republican Congressman and Senator, however, tells a different story. There’s a reason South Dakota voters sent him out to pasture in 1996 and hired Tim Johnson instead. We decided it made a lot more sense to choose a trustworthy, genuine public servant like Tim as our senator than a phony, Beltway opportunist.

In fact, it was only last year that Larry Pressler supposedly searched his heart and quit the Republican Party. That’s right, as the national GOP careened off the rails after 2008 and ventured completely into crazytown—highlighted by the rise of the Tea Party, Birtherism, the War on Women, debt ceiling brinksmanship and the demonization of families on food stamps… after all that, Larry Pressler was still a Republican. Only in 2013, once it was clear that Mike Rounds would be the GOP nominee for the U.S. Senate— despite his glaring liabilities as a back-bencher governor and a glass-jawed Senate candidate— did Pressler experience his epiphany on the ugly side of partisanship. How convenient.

But just for old time’s sake, let’s review Pressler’s actual record on Capitol Hill:

Buddies with MLK, Er…What?!

Pressler has laughably said he marched with Dr. King in the 1960s.

But if Larry was such a stalwart champion of Civil Rights, why was he one of just 22 senators to vote against the establishment of Martin Luther King Day in 1983? Did he truly oppose honoring the slain Civil Rights leader, or was he just trying to curry favor with the right wing ahead of his 1984 reelection campaign? With Larry, we just never know!

Then again, as he positioned himself for a run for DC mayor, Pressler actually told the Weekly Standard, “I have a lot of African American friends.”

The Original PAC-man

Larry Pressler shook down Big Money lobbyists and special interests before it was even cool. Back when he first got to Washington, lobbyists weren’t completely running the show. But Pressler held the dubious honor of having taken more PAC contributions than anyone else in the Senate or the House. That’s right— out of 535 Members of Congress, no one had a bigger hand out to Big Money than Larry Lee Pressler. To absolve himself, Pressler figured he could wipe away the stink by forbidding his staff from talking to lobbyists. But he was busted by the Associated Press: “At the same time Sen. Larry Pressler was barring his staff from talking to lobbyists for the telecommunications industry, he was soliciting the same lobbyists for thousands of dollars in campaign contributions."

Not only was Pressler raking in telecom lobbyist money at the very same time he was writing their laws for them, he had a penchant for spending these campaign funds… on himself. The Argus Leader pointed out in 1994: "The [finance] reports dating to 1991 offer few clues to explain how or why Pressler and his wife incurred so many expenses that required reimbursement, or how any of the $500,000 spent related to campaign activities."

And even with a Washington culture awash in Big Money, the Argus notes how Pressler’s big spending on himself stood out. "Pressler's total was significantly more than any other senator...."  Along with the gaudy campaign expense tabs for things like luxury hotels, maid services and the opera, Pressler drew a salary of more than $125,000 from his campaign for reelection, in addition to his Senate salary and generous benefit package.

At the End of the Day, a Phony

Larry Pressler has made not getting busted in the Abscam sting the crown jewel highlighting his civic virtue. But putting aside the fact that the hidden camera footage portrays Pressler more as a confused and paranoid huckster than an honorable public servant, how much credit should we give him for doing what he’s supposed to do? Even back in 1980, the Washington Post called out Pressler for embellishing his supposed heroism. "Pressler did a pretty classy job of conning the American public about his supposed Sir Galahad role. The videotapes show he chatted amicably with the FBI undercover agent both before and after the vague offer of money. The meeting lasted about half an hour… Nothing very heroic, perhaps, but nothing Pressler had to lie about. Apparently he couldn't resist the temptation to work his personal political Abscam on the public.”

It’s tough to know whether Harry Reid really thinks he can ride an “Independent” Larry Pressler to another two years as Majority Leader. But South Dakota Democrats have a far better choice in our own nominee, Rick Weiland. Rick is a Democrat in the grassroots, populist mold of George McGovern, Tom Daschle and Tim Johnson, busting his hump as he visits all 311 towns across South Dakota— twice— to Take Back our government from Big Money corporate interests and their lobbyists. In addition to offering up a Constitutional Amendment to limit corporate political spending, Rick wants to protect Medicare as seniors currently know and love it, strengthen Social Security, and raise the minimum wage. Rick Weiland is our clear choice.

We don’t need to settle for the broken clock. No thanks, Larry. You can contribute to Rick’s campaign here.




UPDATE: DSCC Won’t But GOP Is Going After Pressler

The Beltway has finally discovered there’s a big race in South Dakota. Lawrence Lessig’s PAC and the DSCC both put in a million dollars, Lessig for Weiland and the DSCC against Rounds. As Greg Sargent put it in his Washington Post column this morning, this race tests whether or not “Democrats can win even on difficult political terrain by unabashedly campaigning on an economically populist platform excoriating big money’s influence in politics and its role in rigging the economy against working and middle class Americans.” The Washington Examiner emphasized that the GOP is ready to go on the attack against Pressler.

Insiders say there is a very simple solution and it’s a reason they remain encouraged that this problem will be mitigated: Run television ads that target Pressler for supporting Obama and administration policies. That could be more imperative now that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and other liberal groups have seized on the new polls and announced plans to attack Rounds.

A loud, ugly Republican civil war pitting Rounds against Pressler— with teabagger Gordon Howie howling in the background— would certainly help lock up the race for Weiland.