Cook: Trump Is Dragging Down Republican Candidates With Him

Cook is usually a lagging indicator. They do not move on a dime. If they move a race from "leans Republican" to "toss up," it probably means you should expect a big loss for the GOP. Yesterday, Amy Walter, one of their top prognosticators, used the word "tsunami." It's July; I would interpret that to mean Cook foresees a mass GOP drowning in November-- an actual; threat to to basic well-being of the party's existence. This isn't just about swing states and swing districts-- you can start anticipating painful Republican losses in "solid red" states like Alaska, Texas, Arizona, Georgia and Montana. And that isn't just about electoral votes but about Republicans up for reelection-- or running for-- congressional and state and county legislative seats as well. "This election," wrote Walter, "is looking more like a Democratic tsunami than simply a Blue wave. President Trump, mired in some of the lowest job approval ratings of his presidency, is trailing Biden by significant margins in key battleground states like Pennsylvania (8 points), Michigan (9 points), and Wisconsin (9 points). He’s even running behind Biden in his firewall states of Florida and North Carolina."

She doesn't understand the difference between a Blue wave and an anti-red wave. There's no enthusiasm for Biden or the crappy party he "leads." All the enthusiasm is for stuffing Trump down a toilet and flushing. But the Beltway insiders will never understand that and will continue babbling like chimps about "a Blue wave." Fine, who cares; it ends up with the same results anyway.

Cook changed some of their electoral college predictions "to reflect this reality." All have moved towards the Democrats and all are laughably behind reality. Their best predictions are always the day after the election anyway. They move Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Nebraska’s 2nd district from toss up to lean Democrat. And Maine, which for whatever insane reason, was in the lean Democrat column moved to likely Democrat. Cook is so funny. They also moved Maine's 2nd district from likely Republican to just lean Republican. And she wrote that "Georgia has joined Arizona, North Carolina and Florida in the Toss Up column, although, at this point, Biden would be slightly favored to win at least Arizona and Florida."

Even Republican strategists she spoke with understand that Trump has now reached "a permanent loss of trust and faith of the majority of voters. In talking with strategists on both sides this last week, it’s also clear that Trump is dragging Republican congressional candidates with him as well. Plugged in strategists on both sides tell us that Trump is running behind in districts he easily carried in 2016. As one GOP strategist told us this week, 'I’d be surprised if any House GOP challenger is able to outperform Trump-- they are tied to him.' Meanwhile, Democratic Senate candidates-- even those in second and third-tier races-- are pulling in eye-popping second-quarter fundraising totals."




I spoke to a handful of candidates running strong in prohibitively red districts. Iowa progressive, J.D. Scholten, pointed out that his right-wing Trumpist opponent, Randy Feenstra "ran his primary campaign on the theme that he's best positioned to 'deliver' for Trump. But Trump's policies have systematically ravaged Iowa's farmers and rural communities in everything from the disastrous trade war to abuses of the Renewable Fuel Standard to corporate bailouts. Iowans don't need nor want another career politician who's beholden to corporate interests and afraid to stand up to power. We understand why folks voted for Trump-- they were looking for change and solutions, but unfortunately, that's not what we got. Our campaign is gaining traction with Trump voters, Republicans, and voters across the political spectrum because we're fighting for them: farmers, workers, and rural communities."

Georgia progressive Lisa Ring told me that through her experiences she's concluded that the most dangerous thing we can do is assume we can predict political outcomes. "Every action," she said, "has the potential of harming or propelling a campaign but the ever-changing nature of politics renders an important development, insignificant within hours. In general, the failures of the Trump administration should be harmful to every legislator or candidate who remains loyal to it. However, it is what Democrats choose to do with the failings of the GOP that will make a difference. Or not.

"Simply pointing out that Rep. Buddy Carter is a Trump lackey who has followed his every direction in order to gain Trump’s official endorsement, is not enough," she continued. "Instead, I must remind the people of my district that Carter and Trump worked hand in hand to destroy the middle class, working class, and disadvantaged, by taking away whatever healthcare they had, letting small businesses fail, allowing our infrastructure to crumble, protections to be rolled back, and failing the millions of unemployed, as well as the millions of infected Americans who were provided no assistance and no leadership during a pandemic that is not even close to being over. 2016 and beyond, should have taught us not to rely on polls or predictors, but rather to continue to focus on the issues, and reach voters one on one. These times are unprecedented and we cannot sit back and analyze with numbers, beliefs that defy all reason. Instead let us hit the streets(virtually, if it must be) and connect truthfully to people who need answers and solutions to the very real problems they face daily."

Texan Julie Oliver shared something that has changed in a pretty big way since the 2018 campaign. "What we’ve seen over the last two election cycles is a growing number of 'independent' voters in TX-25. Some folks share that they’re former Republicans who have lost their party and will never vote for another Trumpublican, like Rep. Roger Williams, again. Sometimes we encounter these newly independent voters when we are phone-banking, or in the pre-pandemic world when we were able to canvass, but what we are seeing in this election cycle that really didn’t happen in the midterms is that many former Republicans reach out to our campaign unsolicited."

Yesterday, Astead Herndon wrote specifically about the Trumpist base in Georgia and Arizona being nonplussed about the GOP establishment Senate candidates. "Many Republican candidates face a perplexing electoral landscape this year, given that Mr. Trump’s conduct has endeared him to the party’s most conservative groups, but has soured some suburban moderates and seniors who are vital parts of any swing state coalition. These candidates are walking a tightrope, made more difficult by a voter base that doesn’t just want to elect Republicans, but rather loyal foot soldiers who take on Mr. Trump’s political and cultural enemies. It is the long-term political war over how Trumpism is best expressed-- not the short-term battle over Mr. Trump himself-- and how a party that has been driven by early-morning tweets for four years will seek to survive the next 40."

In the run-up to the 2018 midterm elections, a record number of House Republicans chose not to seek re-election rather than face conflict with the conservative base, and even a favorable Senate map saw Republicans lose in states like Arizona and Nevada.

With Mr. Trump on the ballot this year, it will be even harder for candidates to paper over the differences, and the uneasy relationship between the party’s most right-wing voters and the statewide Republicans like Ms. Loeffler and Ms. McSally who rely on their votes is bursting into the open.

Governors in both Arizona and Georgia are currently confronting this political challenge, after opening up their states’s economies at the urging of the president and those in the media who support him, only to face pressure to reverse course after coronavirus cases surged.

Polling also shows that Ms. Loeffler and Ms. McSally are underdogs in their respective races, facing an energized Democratic electorate in addition to their inner-party wrangling.

...A recent survey of Arizona voters from the New York Times and Siena College found Ms. McSally trailing her Democratic opponent, the former astronaut and U.S. Navy Captain Mark Kelly, by nine percentage points.

In a recent Fox News poll of the Arizona race, just 73 percent of Republicans supported Ms. McSally, while 88 percent of Democrats supported Mr. Kelly.

“They don’t buy her as a bona fide very conservative Republican,” said Chuck Coughlin, a longtime Republican political consultant in Arizona.

The candidates’ struggles speak to how real divisions among Republicans have been obscured by Mr. Trump’s victory in 2016, and could erupt again should he lose in November.

...Several Republicans in Arizona and Georgia said in interviews that the problem is not with Ms. Loeffler’s or Ms. McSally’s messages, but whether the base is buying the candidates as authentic.  As a sign of their shared troubles among Republicans, some of the most negative publicity for both senators in the past year has come courtesy of Fox News, the cable outlet that is often sympathetic to the president.

...“The electorate has changed a lot,” Mr. Coughlin said, adding that the current Republican Party has “moved away from that narrative that people were originally attracted to. And in my view, has become one that’s reactive to the identity politics of the left.”

Everyone knows He's Certifiably Insane-- But The Media Feels Uncomfortable Using The "C" Word

The new Emerson Poll of Wisconsin voters shows only three Democrats into double-digits in their primary:

• Bernie- 39%
• Biden- 24%
• Elizabeth Warren- 14%

But it also shows that any of that trio (as well as Beto) would beat Trump in a general election matchup. Kamala and Klobuchar would both tie him in a head to head if the election were held today. In other words, Wisconsin, a state he eon in 2016 looks bad for Trump going into 2020. A fully 40% of Trump voters in the state said they voted for him primarily because they didn't like Hillary. Hopefully, the Democrats won't nominate another Wall Street mushy centrist.

If Roy Blunt's experience in Missouri after he voted against Trump's phony state of emergency, Trump's party is cracking and splintering. McClatchy reported yesterday that Blunt was "disinvited from a local GOP gathering in Christian County, Missouri, next month amid a backlash over his vote... [which] angered ardent Trump supporters across Missouri, who saw it as a betrayal."

“I am so disappointed in you now that I can hardly speak,” wrote Wanda Martens, a member of the Christian County Republican Central Committee, in an email to Blunt’s office. “Why could you not support my president in the emergency declaration? President Trump tried every available means to work the Senate to resolve the border issue and build the much needed wall. He is well within his presidential powers to do this.”

Martens serves as the local party committee’s events chair. She told the senator in her email, which was obtained by The Kansas City Star, that she did not want to see him when the local party holds its Lincoln/Trump Day Dinner on April 6 in Ozark, Missouri, one of the most conservative areas in the state.

“Please don’t try to tell me that I don’t understand. I understand completely,” Martens wrote. “I hate it when someone calls you the establishment and that you are part of the swamp, but maybe they were right.”


...John Adams, a 74-year-old retiree who lives in south Kansas City, said he’s voted for Blunt in every election he has run for elected office. He’ll never vote for him again.

“I used to support Blunt. I just can’t do it anymore,” Adams said. “I’m sorry. He’s not supporting my president in the way that I anticipated.”

Adams said he’d support another Republican in the primary if Blunt runs again in 2022. And if Blunt wins the GOP nomination, Adams said he’d sit out Election Day rather than cast a ballot for Blunt again, even against a Democrat.

“I absolutely felt betrayed.”

The Republicans have cultivated these ignorant crackpots and allowed them to take over the party. They are reaping what they have sown-- all the garbage from Trump straight down to Wanda Martens. At least Trump can blame it on his bad brain. Early the morning, attorney George Conway, the highly respected and universally admired husband of one of Trump's top lieutenants, Kellyanne Conman, started tweeting out passages from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. No one could read them and claim they don't describe Trump to a "t." Here's one; what do you think?

Conway has been poking where the corporate media has pretty much just plain refused to go-- into Trump's obvious mental illnesses, which sometimes-- more and more frequently-- seem to spiral out of control. He's been asking if the country needs a "serious inquiry" into Trump's drastically deteriorating mental state. Everyone seems to agree... except some of the people on the Christian County, Missouri Republican Central Committee. And Kellyanne. Yesterday she told reporters that she doesn't share her husband's concerns.
 It's been more than apparent for quite a few years now that she certainly doesn't share the country's concerns either.

Is America Really Up Against An Internal Fascist Threat?

That should be apparent to anyone who's been watching the metastization of the worst features of right-wing populism within the American conservative movement and within the Republican Party. If the non-progressive bulk of the Democratic Party establishment is moving more in the direction of an Eisenhower Republican posture, it's been pushed there by a drastic lurch to the right-- exacerbated by, but by no means begun by, Trump... more a headlong plunge than a mere lurch, by the GOP. And this isn't going to get any better, primarily because conservatives don't see a way forward for the Republican Party within the confines of democracy. The radical right-- and not just a morons like Trump-- is done playing by a set of rules that they feel are stacked against them. And that means anything goes.

Conservatives freaked out when people without property were allowed to vote, when ex-slaves and their descendants were allowed to vote, when women were allowed to vote, when young people were allowed to vote. They flip out when their schemes to prevent voting by groups unlikely to embrace conservatism are prohibited and when their endeavors to water down the vote of those people are declared unconstitutional. Ever since the Patriots beat the British and their conservative American allies in the late 1770s, conservatives have felt they've never gotten a break.

Trump's buffoon-like reflexive fascism was easier for conservatives to embrace than it would have been if they thought they could get anywhere without the populists, nationalists and, yes, fascists, who worship him. Over the weekend Jeremy Rosner from the quintessential Democratic establishment polling firm, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, wrote an OpEd for The Hill, The Democratic and Anti-democratic parties, explaining a realignment of America’s two major parties that will not be mostly defined by demographics but by ideas about democracy and the rule of law. "To put it simply, we are headed for an era in which America may well have a Democratic Party and an Anti-democratic Party." Headed for? How many Republicans do you see standing up to Trump? Yes, a few... a very few.

"This realignment, in large part," he wrote cautiously, "was driven by a crucial strategic choice the Republican Party made over the past decade, as described in a recent piece for The Atlantic by Vann Newkirk II. Soon after the GOP’s 2012 presidential defeat, Reince Priebus... led a post-mortem analysis that was unusually blunt and prescient. It said the GOP must make big reforms in its outlook and agenda or risk electoral marginalization. In particular, it called for the GOP to support comprehensive immigration reform, liberalize its views on gay rights, demand reforms on corporate governance, and stop talking like a bunch of 'stuffy old men' who leave younger voters 'rolling their eyes at what the party represents.'" That was seen by the populist-right as a recipe for RINO-ism, so none of the recommendations were taken seriously, let alone adopted. "Instead," wrote Rosner, "it relied on tactics aimed at preserving power for a party that represented a steadily shrinking share of the population, mostly defined by non-urban, lower-educated whites. These tactics included gerrymandering, voter suppression, manipulation of the census process and efforts to stack the federal judiciary with like-minded jurists." Trump only made this tendency-- part of the nature of conservatism to begin with-- much, much worse-- and devoid of societal norms or even guard-rails.

If Republicans after 2012 decided to go outside democratic norms to preserve their power, rather than to reform and align with the values of a majority of the rising American electorate, Donald Trump in 2016 put that strategy on steroids. His presidential candidacy-- built on racially-charged language, offensive comments about women, nationalism and appeals to less-educated whites-- snugly fit the imperatives of a party that was drifting away from a majority of the public. So, too, the recent power-grabs by Republican legislatures in North Carolina, Wisconsin and Michigan, which have moved to strip incoming Democratic governors or attorneys general of traditional powers, simply to preserve Republican power, even in the face of a popular vote for change.

Trump didn't order, nor coordinate, those moves. They came pretty naturally to a Republican Party obsessed with power and financial greed over and above any "American ideals," which most conservative never truly embraced anyway. Rosner is looking for a happy ending and suggests that "the Trump-era moves to preserve Republicans’ power may have crossed an important line-- a legal line. Disclosures by special counsel Robert Mueller and the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York suggest that some on the GOP team lied, during and/or after the 2016 election, about their interactions with the Russians, and Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, has pleaded guilty to his part in a hush-money scheme during the campaign involving two women who say they had extramarital affairs with Trump. The march to apparent illegality was not confined to the 2016 presidential race. In the 2018 race for North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, it now appears that the campaign of GOP candidate Mark Harris, the uncertified winner, may have run an illegal scheme to skew absentee ballots in his favor. The new legislative power-grab schemes in Wisconsin and Michigan almost certainly will face court challenges. Many Republicans who themselves are not breaking electoral laws or subverting democratic institutions are still condoning their party’s anti-democratic bent by refusing to condemn such actions. The slide toward extra-constitutional, illegal and anti-democratic tactics to preserve GOP power is becoming its new brand."

The Trump base is too thick to understand and conservatives who do understand seem to be increasingly opting for the Republican Party tribalism they're comfortable with.

Some analysts suggest issues of race, gender and education will be dominant drivers in upcoming elections, since those demographic fault lines were so visible in recent voting. But another dynamic may define 2020 even more strongly. Should the various Trump investigations produce more evidence of law-breaking, a defining dividing line between the parties could become the question of democracy-- which party is for it, and which is trying to subvert it.

Already, the incoming Democratic majority in the House has vowed that its first major bill will focus on democracy-- making it easier to vote, limiting big money in politics and ensuring presidential candidates are more transparent about their finances.

Will half-assed Democratic band-aid policies work while hypocrisy dominates the party establishment, essentially nothing more than another wing of deadly conservatism?

All this mirrors what happened after Watergate. A year before Nixon’s resignation, the dominant issues were the economy and the oil embargo. By the 1974 midterm, a focus on campaign finance reform helped to sweep in the 49-seat Democratic gain that became known as the “Watergate babies.” And two years later, the focus on ethics and reform was enough to sweep in a moral reformer and Washington outsider from Georgia.

It could be that Republicans in coming months will begin to change path on issues tied to democracy and the rule of law, as new revelations emerge about Trump and as they ponder the extent of their losses in the recent House elections. They might finally begin to act on Reince Priebus’s post-2012 urgings to adjust their policies and outlook. But if they continue to double down on preserving their power by any means, even as their voter base shrinks, their anti-democratic brand could become even more pronounced.

More likely, someone snuck into Rosner's room and shot him up with some pure diacetylmorphine. I'd count on Bernie winning before I'd count on the Republican or the conservative establishment changing stripes.

Its Own Penchant For Appealing To Racists Killed Off The California Republican Party. The Same Thing Will Happen In Texas

Still Not Working For Them

“The California Republican Party isn’t salvageable at this time,” wrote former Assembly Republican leader Kristin Olsen this week. “The Grand Old Party is dead-- partly because it has failed to separate itself from today’s toxic, national brand of Republican politics.” She tried to blame Trump, rather than the hateful zombies at the base of the party, lured by the messaging of people like herself as much as by Trump. The party was headed to the garbage heap of history when Trump was still calling himself a Democrat. Fortunately for Democrats, many Republicans have an even worse way of looking at the party’s demise-- one that will only make the hole they’re in deeper and less escapable. Former state party chair Shawn Steele, a member of the RNC, argues that it wasn’t Trump who lost Orange County for the party. He laid the blame on millions of dollars in “dark money” raised by Democrats, who he said were aided by better organization and help from the tech industry in Silicon Valley. And-- without any substantiation-- Steele also claimed Democratic voter registration drives produced “borderline fraudulent turnout rates” in some key districts. As long as the GOP steeps itself in that kind of delusion, it will never get back on its feet.

No California seats flipped from blue to red, or even came close to that, despite some corruption issues hanging over a few of the less savory members of Team Blue. These are the California seats that did flip this cycle-- every one of them from red to blue:

• CA-10 (Central Valley)- Josh Harder will be replacing Jeff Denham
• CA-25 (Santa Clarita/Antelope Valley)- Katie Hill will be replacing Steve Knight
• CA-45 (central Orange County)- Katie Porter will be replacing Mimi Walters
• CA-48 (coastal Orange County)- Harley Rouda will be replacing Dana Rohrabacher
• CA-49 (Orange County/San Diego)- Mike Levin will be replacing Darrell Issa.

As it stands right now, Gil Cisneros is likely to win in CA-39, C.J. Cox may replace David Valadao in CA-21 and there is even a remote chance that Ammar Campa-Najjar will wind up beating Druncan Hunter in CA-50. The Orange County before and after map is startling-- especially to Republicans. As I’ve said many times, what Bavaria was for the Nazi Party, Orange County was for the Republican Party. And, they’ve been losing ground there year by year, one district at a time until… now there are none! [NOTE: Last yesterday, Gil Cisneros finally did beat Republican Young Kim, meaning there are now no Republicans representing Orange County in Congress-- just six Democrats. This is a political earthquake.]

Statewide, Republican registration numbers have dropped so precipitously, that they now rank lower than decline-to-state voters. Last year, the California GOP delegation in the House was the biggest. That’s over… probably for the foreseeable future. Even if Valadao survives, he has only taken 51% of the vote and he can expect a stronger and more focused campaign against him in 2020. Hunter-- disgraced and likely to be headed to prison-- will probably resign before the term ends. A special election might go poorly for Republicans who sold voters on Hunter’s supposed “innocence.”

Over the weekend, reporting for Politico, Carla Marinucci wrote that Republicans are lashing out at the state party in the wake of the disaster. “Near political annihilation… has left even longtime conservative stronghold Orange County bereft of a single Republican in the House of Representatives; a growing chorus of GOP loyalists here say there’s only one hope for reviving the flatlining party: Blow it up and start again from scratch.” Easier said than done.

“I believe that the party has to die before it can be rebuilt. And by die-- I mean, completely decimated. And I think Tuesday night was a big step," says veteran California GOP political consultant Mike Madrid. “There is no message. There is no messenger. There is no money. And there is no infrastructure.”

Republicans like Madrid also mourned another low point this week: the defeat of Southern California Assemblyman Dante Acosta, marking the demise of the last GOP Latino legislator-- in a state where Latinos comprise the fastest-growing electorate.

“The California Republican Party isn’t salvageable at this time. The Grand Old Party is dead,” wrote former state GOP Assembly leader Kristin Olsen, who startled fellow Republicans with a brutally frank op-ed this week saying Republicans must acknowledge their “serious problem” in California, particularly the effects of toxicity of President Trump.

GOP strategist John Weaver, who has worked California races and also has represented the presidential campaign of Ohio governor John Kasich, seconded Olsen’s view, tweeting that the effects of the Trump presidency have doomed any chance of resurrection. “In one fell swoop Trump & Republicans who willingly handcuffed themselves to him have turned Orange County into a GOP wasteland," he tweeted this week. “You want to see the future? Look no further than the demographic death spiral in the place once considered a cornerstone of the party.”

Madrid argues that many California Republican leaders remain in complete denial of the fact that their continued support of Trump presidency has sealed the fate of the GOP-- and last week’s midterm elections revealed the true extent of the GOP’s rot in California, where the state party has now shrunken to third party status.

“Now, it’s just open warfare. The barbarians have broken through the gates. The army is in full retreat," said Madrid, who adds there’s no hope left for a party that for years has been on a path toward destruction. “Burn it to the ground. I want to reconstitute."

… [A] leading pro-Trump Republican voice-- former gubernatorial candidate Assemblyman Travis Allen, a far-right conservative who fully supports the president’s wall and immigration policies-- has kicked off his campaign to head the state GOP, announcing that it’s time to “take back California.”

But a growing number of Republicans in the party’s #NeverTrump wing-- which includes prominent strategists like Rob Stutzman and Luis Alvarado-- insist that a new beginning will rely heavily on a full-throated repudiation of Trump’s caustic divisiveness. They believe the rebuilding process could require years, if not generations, to rid the state GOP of the taint of a president who is blamed for ramping up anti-immigrant sentiment in a state that is home to more immigrants than any other in the country.

This isn’t the first time the dilapidated Republican Party in California has faced a dire outlook-- or debated the notion that it must be completely overhauled. In 2007, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was lambasted by Republicans when he delivered an address to their state convention warning that the GOP was “dying at the box office" because they lacked inclusive messaging and policies, particularly to minorities who now dominate the state’s demographics.

And in assuming the leadership of the party in 2013, former state Sen. Jim Brulte predicted it would take at least six years to rebuild the structure and fundraising strength of the Republican Party in California. He warned then that Republicans would need to “either stop the bleeding and/or start turning it around” in 2014-- or the party will be in the pits “for the rest of the decade.”

None of that altered the party’s downward trajectory, however, or caused a wholesale rethinking among some leading candidates and party leaders. Madrid cites the recent gubernatorial contest in which Republican nominee John Cox, who described himself repeatedly as a “Jack Kemp” Republican, pushed for Trump policies that are abhorrent to many Californians.

“It is completely unfathomable...for a Republican nominee to run on building a wall," said Madrid, a nationally recognized expert on Latino voting trends who noted that the party has spent 20 years trying to extricate itself from the damage done by Prop. 187, the anti-illegal immigration ballot measure that eviscerated Latino support in the state. “And everyone acts like it’s normal...Cox was running on that, in California. Are you out of your mind?”

Madrid, who most recently advised the gubernatorial campaign of former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democrat, said the party needs to stop looking for silver bullets-- like a gas tax repeal-- and confront the disintegration of some of the state GOP’s once most reliable electorates, especially college-educated voters and women.

“We hemorrhaged college-educated Republican voters on Tuesday night. The ‘diploma divide’ is a very real thing,” he said. “The smaller it gets, the more monolithic is gets. The whiter it gets. The more populist-nationalist it gets. What you’re seeing in the Republican Party is that it’s the party of white identity politics.”

Democratic political strategist Darry Sragow says if the party continues on its current path, its complete disintegration is entirely predictable.

“They’re down to 24 percent registration. And the reason is that they have a huge deficit with Latinos, with African Americans... and with Asian Americans. And they now have a deficit with whites," he said. “You’re talking about a party where 77 percent of Republican likely voters in California are white. And the population that’s white here is 39 percent.”

His advice: “They have to take down the ‘whites only’ sign from the clubhouse door," Sragow says. “And if they’re willing to allow people who aren’t white into the club, they may be able to recover."

“I think that the GOP is capable of turning itself around, because it’s a well-established brand," he said. “The problem is, the people who manage the party are going to have to be willing to do that. And by definition, they are the opposite of that. They have no interest in that.”

Death Spiral

Trump's Political Operation... A Joke

Who gives Trump his political advice? I mean the day to day stuff? Whoever it is is definitely an amateur. See that tweet below? You won't see the generic one-size-firs-all endorsement on Trump's Twitter feed. He took it down when someone mentioned to him that though Steve Stivers' district is also in the Columbus area, he isn't the faceless candidate Trump is going to flying into Columbus to back this weekend. Tuesday is the special election between state Senator Troy Balderson (R) and Franklin County recorder Danny O'Connor (D). Trump's clown and his original tweet was featured yesterday in the Columbus Dispatch and was all over local TV news coverage last night. He's never met Balderson and doesn't know who Stivers, chair of the NRCC, is either. The tweet was up for just about 10 minutes before someone came into Trump's cave and told him to take it down. They replaced it with some inauthentic bullshit calling Balderson "true talented."

I had a feeling that when Bannon went on a rampage warning Republicans in Congress as well as candidates not to accept any Koch money or face "punishment," that it could be traced back to Señor Trumpanzee. And sure enough... just hours later, the Trump-conrtroled RNC puppet, Ronna Romney, chimed in with the same message! "I am contacting you to let you know how we are responding-- and how the President has responded."

We work with our primary data vendor-- Data Trust-- to help gather, scrub and build the largest data set that has ever been created so that our analytics are incredibly accurate.

Unfortunately, while we were building these state-of-the-art capabilities, the Koch Network built their own competing data platform (i360). They have sold this data platform to some Republican campaigns, but that data is often not shared with our data eco-system and therefore does not benefit other Republican candidates including the President. This is why we contract exclusively with Data Trust-- because we know they are a vendor who we can count on to help work with us, not against us, to grow our data capabilities.

From the beginning, the RNC had concerns about any outside entity building a data operation to compete with ours because we knew they could potentially weaponize that data against Republicans if their business interests conflicted with electing Republicans.

Sadly, our concerns were recently proven true.

In closing I want to be very clear: the RNC proved in 2014 and 2016 that the Party is the only entity which can be trusted with the data Republicans candidates need to win up and down the ballot-- and this week proves why it is NECESSARY that the Party keep building on our successful operation.

The Koch political operations don't necessarily give money to candidates. They do independent expenditures for their favored candidates, often attacks on Democrats. And, legally, they can't discuss those campaigns with the candidates. So do Republican candidates get "punished" by Trump if the Koch brothers run TV ads against Democrats or for Republicans? So far they're spending millions in Wisconsin (against Tammy Baldwin) and Missouri (against Claire McCaskill). Did Trump tell Ronna what to do about that yet?


UPDATE

This morning, The Hill reported that Bannon was still on his anti-Koch warpath. He referred to them as con artists and their operation as "a conscious scam." He also said that Paul Ryan "should have been removed" as Speaker as soon as he announced he was retiring from Congress and that Ryan is retiring "because he never supported" Señor Trumpanzee. He said he would like to see Mark Meadows or the Ohio ex-wrestling coach enmeshed in a couple of sex scandals become the GOP leader instead of Ryan. He also denigrated Mitch McConnell (again).

Bannon argued the Koch network had lost some of its biggest donors after backing a number of losing candidates during the 2012 election cycle.

Now, he alleged, it was run by “con artists.”

“The Koch network is a conscious scam,” he insisted. “It’s an open secret in conservative circles that they are a scam, ok? And that’s why no big donors are with them anymore. They are fleecing these smaller donors…because these guys haven’t gotten the word. But it’s a total scam.”

Bannon also insisted, “Those aren’t donors. Those are marks. This is a con job.”

James Davis, a spokesman for the Koch network, responded: “We just had our largest summer seminar ever with more than 500 attendees. Our discussion focused on uniting the country to help remove barriers that are preventing people from reaching their potential. Toward that end, we look forward to working with anyone whenever possible, to help people improve their lives.”

If Bannon’s opprobrium for the Koch network is particularly sharp, it is only part of a broader picture where he argues that the GOP has not yet changed to reflect the enthusiasm for Trump among the party’s base.

“The apparatus-- the donor class-- by and large I think still opposes President Trump, particularly the larger donors,” he complained.

Are You Enjoying The Trump V Koch War? You Should

Trump always seems to make sure that there are people in his circle who are bigger morons than he is. It probably makes him feel smart. So is he ready to get rid of the nightly TV shows' clownish oaf? Also the morning shows'. It probably takes the psychic pressure off him that it's Giuliani getting lambasted on CNN and MSNBC in primetime everyday. Don McGahan, on the other hand, is an actual lawyer, not a p.r. flack. Gabriel Sherman in Vanity Fair yesterday: McGahn's hatred for Rudy is hotter than 1,000 burning suns. He wants Trump to fire him. Trump, we're hearing, isn't happy with Giuliani's myriad of missteps either. But Trump has other craziness on his mind now-- his war against the Koch network.

Yesterday, another one of the losers Trump drew into his circle-- and then fired but still keeps around... sub rosa-like-- Bannon was running his mouth again. Bannon thinks he's a Trump enforcer-- and maybe he is.

He was sending out a message (from Trumpanzee?) that if Republican candidates take Koch money, there could be a price to pay, or as he so gracefully put it: "punishment." Who exactly is the "we" is this sentence from his CNBC interview Tuesday? "You take Koch money, it's going to be toxic. We are going to let people know that if you take Koch money there's a punishment." And by "people," who does he mean? These two?

"If you take money from people who are against the president and are looking to put a knife in the back of the president, you are going to pay," he hissed menacingly.

Bannon, in an interview with Politico that ran over the weekend, had urged the Kochs to "shut up and get with a program" in backing Trump's agenda in this fall's midterm elections. But on Tuesday, he ratcheted up his already-heated rhetoric.

"Let's start holding the Kochs accountable. It's a con job and they are a total scam," Bannon said Tuesday. "They are promoters and it's a total Ponzi scheme. They never raise as much money as they talk about and no one ever knows who their donors are.

" ...The strategist declined to elaborate on what the punishment would look like. The Koch network traditionally backs Republican candidates, but has recently said it is open to supporting Democrats who favor the group's policies.

Funny that the Republican establishment-- including the Kochs-- and the Democratic establishment-- including Pelosi-- have all identified the same Public Enemy #1: 28 year old establishment-killer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Why are they all so afraid of her, maybe even more than the fear Bernie and Elizabeth Warren? The power of ideas and the ability to communicate them to a mass audience. I'm planning on getting into that later today. Meanwhile, let's stick to the Bannon vs Koch gunfight while it still lasts and can be savored.

Bannon said he doesn't believe the widely influential Koch organization is as powerful as it used to be. His political operation, he said, will go on a "continual pressure" campaign against the Koch network, its donors and any candidate who accepts money from the organization.

"We are going to find out who they [the donors] are. We are going to identify people who the Kochs back. We're not just going to sit there and allow them to destroy the Trump presidency," Bannon said.

The outrage from Trump and Bannon came after Koch network officials told financial backers at a summit over the weekend that they are no longer committed to solely backing Republican candidates in this year's congressional midterm elections. The group said it is leaving the door open to potentially supporting Democrats who back their policy initiatives.

"I know this is uncomfortable," Emily Seidel, chief executive officer of Americans for Prosperity, told a group of donors on Sunday. "If you are a Democrat and stand up to [Sen.] Elizabeth Warren to corral enough votes for financial reform that breaks barriers for community banks and families, you're darn right we will work with you."

Charles Koch himself told reporters that he hopes to see people in power who will back policies that will "move toward a society, mutual benefit, equal rights, where everybody has the opportunity to realize their full potential." He added, "I don't care what initials are in front or after somebody's name."

On Monday, the network announced that it wasn't planning to back Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., against Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp in a race Republicans see as a prime opportunity for a Senate seat pickup.

Bannon said the Koch network has received everything it has wanted from the Trump administration, including comprehensive tax reform, business deregulation and conservative Supreme Court justices, including the recent nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Yet, he said, none of that matters to the Kochs because they didn't support Trump during the election.

The Kochs are huge players in GOP politics and are just getting started trying to buy control over the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. Last cycle alone, just one Koch-owned entity, Americans for Prosperity, spent $13,309,199 in independent expenditures for GOP candidates. They spent over a million dollars each smearing Katie McGinty (D-PA), Patrick Murphy (D-FL), Deborah Ross (D-NC), Ted Strickland (D-OH), Evan Bayh (D-IN), Jason Kander (D-MO) and Russ Feingold (D-WI), most of whom were favored candidates to win at one time or another during the cycle and all of whom were defeated.

They're just getting started but so far this cycle, Americans for Prosperity has spent $2,970,865 on behalf of Republicans, the biggest money going to smear Democratic incumbents Claire McCaskill (MO) and Tammy Baldwin (WI). It's probably just a coincidence that the Kochs and the Kremlin always seem to have the same targets.

Dear Republicans, This is what you gave the keys to your party. One day you'll wake up and puke all over yourselves and ask for forgiveness.

Ted Cruz Disowns One GOP Nazi... But Not the Nazi Faction In The Party And Not Any Of The Other Fascists Running As Republicans This Year

You know there is an actual fascist wing of the Republican Party-- and since Trump's occupation of the White House, it has been gaining strength. More and more neo-Nazis have been winning GOP primaries, as we saw Friday in North Carolina. The party establishment is embarrassed and would rather hide the connection between overt fascists and the Republican Party, but the hated-talk radio and Fox brainwashed base hears the Nazi campaign rhetoric and recognizes it as pure GOP, but a little more extreme. Republican neo-fascists in Virginia, Illinois, Wisconsin are proudly representing the GOP, leaving the party... uncomfortable.

Ted Cruz is one of the most right-wing Republicans in the Senate and he's running scared as Beto O'Rourke continues to make inroads in his campaign to replace him. This week Cruz decided to draw a line in the sand between the overt Nazis and himself.

Republican primary voters picked a self-avowed Nazi, Arthur Jones, to go up against one of the most right-wing Democrats in Congress, Dan Lipinski, in their Chicagoland district. The crap Jones is spouting in his campaign is a little to close for comfort for Cruz, who felt compelled to tweet to his fans in Illinois to voted for Lipinski rather than Jones. I wonder what Cruz would have done if Jones was running against a progressive-- say Marie Newman, who Lipinski recently beat in a hot primary 48,675 to 46,530, the thanks to the right-wing big money PAC financed by Cruz-backers, No Labels-- instead of Jones. Here's the very dramatic Cruz tweet:

This week, state Republicans let a deadline pass that would have allowed them to run someone as a third-party candidate to provide Republican voters with an alternative candidate to vote for. The GOP said the ballot requirements, including having to collect more than 14,000 signatures, was too burdensome and costly in a district Democrats dominate.

Republicans missed several chances, including in the primary, to challenge Jones or oust him from the ballot. The party failed to recruit a candidate to challenge him in the March primary where he went unopposed, did not draft a write-in candidate in the primary, and failed to knock him off the ballot by challenging his signature petitions.

Jones celebrated his role in sidelining Republicans, telling POLITICO this week: “I snookered them.”

So far Cruz hasn't had anything to say about a Republican from the fascist wing of the GOP running for the U.S. Senate in Virginia, Corey Stewart, who narrowly edged the mainstream conservative, Nick Freitas because another extremist, E.W. Jackson, drew votes away from Stewart.

• Corey Stewart- 136,410 (44.86%)
• Nick Freitas- 131,131 (43.12%)
• E.W. Jackson- 36,537 (12.02%)

Not a peep out of Cruz about Stewart, who might be sitting next to him in the Senate next year. That's odd, since Arthur Jones has no chance to win at all and he's running for a House seat, where Cruz never served. In fact, just yesterday, the Washington Post reported that Corey Stewart’s Republican nomination for U.S. Senate from Virginia has prompted an identity crisis within the state GOP, with some donors and activists saying they are so turned off, they are willing to vote for his Democratic opponent, Sen. Tim Kaine... Stewart almost won the gubernatorial primary last year-- by celebrating guns and Confederate statues, lambasting illegal immigrants, and associating with white nationalist Jason Kessler and Paul Nehlen, a Wisconsin candidate barred from Twitter because of anti-Semitic and racist posts. And, interestingly, Cruz hasn't chimed in on the race to replace Paul Ryan, where one of the leading Republican candidates-- probably second after the Ryan clone (Bryan Steel)-- is fascist Paul Nehlen. There are 6 candidates in the August 14 Republican primary to pick the sacrificial lamb to run against Randy Bryce. and in a crowded primary like that, there is no telling what will happen. Lots of GOP voters want to vote for Jeremy Ryan who they think is Paul Ryan's cousin and could well draw votes away from Steil, who Paul Ryan has endorsed and is helping raise money for. The fascist candidate, Nehlen, is a multimillionaire who has yet to deploy any of his own fortune in the race and has raised $189,613 so far. In 2016 Nelhen raised $1,451,04 from Republican donors sympathetic with his fascist agenda. And, by the way, he and Corey Stewart are allies. Cruz has nothing to say about Nehlen or the Nazi factions within his own party, just about the hapless Arthur Jones in Chicago.

Is Trump Really A Fascist?

Author Clive Irving thinks so. Yesterday he wrote an OpEd for the Daily Beast, It Is Happening Here, Trump Is Already Early-Stage Mussolini. He started by posing a couple of questions: "Is there a moment when a fanatical leader can be stopped before he takes a nation into the abyss? A moment when those with the moral determination to stop him can act before it is too late?" He realizes that "Trump stress tests this republic’s defenses against a demagogue. History has such moments. They need to be heeded... In Italy the moment came on Aug. 16, 1924." Before Mussolini supporters murdered socialist member of parliament Giacomo Matteotti, Mussolini was an elected prime minister and hadn't made himself a dictator. Before he was killed, Matteotti was preparing to give parliament a dossier exposing a series of crimes, including murder and corruption, carried out by Mussolini’s henchmen since he became prime minister.

The murder of Matteotti outraged millions of Italians who, until that moment, had been ready to turn a blind eye to fascist thuggery. For a while a 200,000-strong fascist militia had been used to suppress criticism of Mussolini, who in his regular belligerent public speeches had referred to liberty as “a more or less putrid goddess” who needed to be eliminated.

...Of the institutions that might have stopped Mussolini right then, the monarchy, in the person of the ageing King Victor Emmanuel, (Mussolini called him “physically no more than a half-cartridge”) was ineffectual; the Vatican was fearful of taking sides and strongly averse to the socialists who were seen as godless secularists; the parliamentary opposition, briefly vocal after the death of Matteotti, had reverted to factionalism. Mussolini had already made sure that the newspapers were cowed into blind obedience.

This is not Italy in 1925. Nonetheless there is no comfort to be gained from the gap in place and time. There are too many clear similarities in the Trump administration’s language, techniques and actions.

First, there is the flashpoint issue designed to make populations feel insecure-- and therefore, to justify a draconian response.

Trump has used immigration as that issue from the day of his notorious candidacy-launching “rapists and murderers” speech.

And, like Mussolini, Trump is surrounded by his own hard core of fanatics eager to use that issue to achieve their own ideological purposes.

Mussolini was greatly under the influence of Roberto Farinacci, a lawyer and one of the most unrelenting dogmatists of the fascist movement. Trump has Stephen Miller, under the nebulous title of political adviser, who has for years been in lockstep with Attorney General Jeff Sessions in whipping up fears about the browning of America (which is, in any case, already demographically inevitable).

The ultimate ghastly achievement of the Miller-Sessions axis has been the “zero tolerance” policy for those crossing the Mexican border without permission. In other words, the automatic criminalization of refugees.

All along, Miller and Sessions knew that in Trump they had an easy accomplice. The man who created the birthing smear against Obama and who thought the fascists at Charlottesville were OK was innately racist, and they exploited it.

In fact, “zero tolerance” has the same intransigent tone, the same absolutism and the same indiscriminate cruelty that Mussolini conveyed in his speeches when he used the unrest that he had himself fomented to justify seizing absolute power.

And the language used in attacking immigrants is based on lies used with the same frequency and conviction that was recommended by the original fascist dictum that if a lie is repeated often enough it becomes accepted as fact.

Immigration across the Mexican border has been continually presented as a threat to public safety. Thousands of innocents fleeing from terror in Central America are equated with terrorists. The MS-13 gangs become shorthand for a crime wave that doesn’t exist.

And Trump, as ever an empathy amputee, is still using words like “infest” and “invade” as a catch-all term for thousands of people who are refugees and asylum seekers.

Forced into stopping the separation of children from parents-- albeit when it had become untenable-- Trump pulled a sordid stunt by inviting to the White House a group of people who had lost loved ones to crimes committed by illegal immigrants. This sad and bewildered group found themselves suddenly complicit in sustaining the toxic fiction that nobody is safe when sharing the streets of our cities with illegal immigrants.

Where Mussolini had his militia, Trump has Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE. Created in 2003, ICE was a child of the response to 9/11, part of the Bush administration’s plan to reinforce institutions to deal more effectively with terrorism, and it fell under the Department of Homeland Security.

Probably because of the haste of that change-- and the priorities given to anti-terrorist powers-- ICE has suffered from weak oversight. As a result, it has a long record of abusing detainees through both the Bush and Obama administrations and now in the era of Trump it seems alarmingly unfettered.

Last December the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, belatedly responding to disturbing reports about the treatment of immigrants, confirmed widespread cases of the abuse of detainees in ICE jails across the country.

The abuse included strip searches in violation of rules, failure to provide medical care, physical abuse by guards and unsafe and unhygienic conditions. Other reports have indicated systemic sexual harassment and abuse.

Indeed, since the arrival of “Zero tolerance” ICE has shown all the signs of going rogue. It scooped up and bundled off detainees to many parts of the country in the confidence that nobody was looking—until the whole miserable farrago of family separations was suddenly exposed. It remains belligerently opaque in its methods, consistently rebuffing the attempts of lawmakers to inspect its premises.

Not even Mussolini could have imagined concentration camps for babies. But that is where we are.

Trump and the White House are, in theory, constrained by Congress, an independent judiciary, a government staffed by people who are supposed to follow the law and a free press.

Looked at in the context of Mussolini’s Italy, how well are these constraints performing?

The judiciary is yet to be fully tested, but the Supreme Court is looking worryingly complaisant after its blessing of Trump’s Muslim travel ban, shaped indelibly by his splenetic Islamophobia. In contrast, the professionals at the Department of Justice have so far, in spite of Sessions, managed to secure their integrity.

The bureaucracy is far more wobbly. It is already deeply corroded by Trump appointees, most egregiously at the EPA, where Scott Pruitt’s vainglorious excesses and pandering to lobbyists has distressed even some Republicans.

The most obvious failure, though, is Congress. It is, at best, in denial and, at worst, calculatingly supine.

In Mitch McConnell the Senate has a majority leader who has spent years perfecting his impersonation of Uriah Heep, piously lamenting the lack of bipartisan support for any legislation, particularly on immigration, while making sure there is none. He has been typically AWOL during every stage of Trump’s moral depravities.

In the House Paul Ryan, half out the door already, was revealed as spineless long ago and now looks like a beaten man.

At least we still have the free press at the top of its form. But, at the same time, we also have Fox News, serving basically as a state propaganda machine so sycophantic and so malign that Mussolini would have found it exemplary.

Before we descend into hell let’s make sure we recognize the signs of its approach. They are all there now, in plain sight. History does not have to repeat itself.

Oops, Irving seems to have forgotten to mention the congenitally supine nature of the establishment Democrats. They may make a little noise here and there but they are utterly worthless. If that's all we have protecting the country from a fascist take-over, we might as well all start stockpiling food and water and building secret compartments behind bookcases in our homes. Schumer, in fact, is bound to be part of a deal that suspends the Constitution sooner or later. Ultimately-- beyond the theatrics-- he certainly has more contempt for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Alan Grayson than he has for his old campaign donor, Donald J. Trump.

Ohio Special Election A Week From Today-- Trump's GOP Civil Way Is Screwing It All Up For The Republicans

Trying to out wing nut each other in a moderate district

On Saturday we took a look at one of the districts Republicans in the Ohio legislature has effectively gerrymandered to protect their own party, OH-12. As we said, the central Ohio district spreads out from Columbus' northern University District and the suburbs north and east of the city-- Worthington, Dubin, Westerville, New Albany, Gahanna to Delaware County in the north and way up to Mansfield and Bellville and as far east as Newark, Zanesville and beyond. The PVI is R+7, safe for the GOP in any cycle except one with a Trump-inspired massive blue tsunami. Trump won it 53.2 to 41.9 in 2016 and voters there are feeling buyers' remorse now.

On Monday morning, Elena Schneider noted at Politico that there's another, more local problem for Republicans in the district a bitter civil war... and just in time a special election a week from today. "The race," she wrote, "pits the two wings of the House Republican Conference against each other, going all out to nominate rival candidates. On one side is the scrappy co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Jim Jordan, who is lining up behind Melanie Leneghan, a self-described Trump Republican. Jordan is going up against former Rep. Pat Tiberi, a close ally of GOP leadership who resigned from his seat in January and has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars from his old campaign account to boost state Sen. Troy Balderson as his successor." Club for Growth just started running this nasty ad attacking Balderson:



It's the kind of messaging (anti-healthcare) that could work in a Republican primary-- and backfire with independents in the general election.

It’s the latest in a series of mainstream-versus-outsider battles in Republican primaries around the country. But some of Balderson’s backers say there is more than intraparty politics at stake: They argue that a Leneghan primary win would put the GOP in danger of losing another special election this summer, in a district that’s been held for decades by Republicans like Tiberi and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Democrats have already flipped a Senate seat in Alabama and a House seat in Pennsylvania in recent months, and House Republicans would dearly love to avoid a repeat in August.

“[Leneghan] is out-of-step with mainstream Republicans that dominate that district, and we’ve got a bunch of candidates dividing up that majority, so we could pick someone who doesn’t represent the district with her pretty extreme viewpoints,” said Matt Borges, the former Ohio Republican Party chairman. “We’re looking at a situation where every seat counts to hang on the majority. We don’t need any self-inflicted wounds.”

Borges added: “I don’t want to see another Pennsylvania-18,” referring to the March special election in southwestern Pennsylvania, where Democrat Conor Lamb beat much-criticized Republican Rick Saccone in a district that Trump carried by almost 20 points in 2016. The president carried Ohio’s 12th District by a smaller margin in 2016, with 53 percent of the vote.

Another national Republican strategist put the situation in Ohio even more bluntly: “If she wins, the seat’s probably gone.”

Jordan dismissed that possibility in an interview with Politico, saying, “That’s always what the establishment and the swamp says.

“You’ve got to turn out the grassroots, if you’re going to win a special. So she’s the best one equipped to do that. She’s the best equipped to win the general,” Jordan said.

Jordan compared Leneghan to fellow Ohio Rep. Warren Davidson, the tea party- and Club-backed congressman who won the special election to replace former House Speaker John Boehner in 2016-- and promptly joined the House Freedom Caucus, the group of conservative hard-liners who had forced Boehner from the speakership.

“I guess you could say Melanie Leneghan will actually do what Republicans are supposed to do,” Jordan says in a pro-Leneghan TV ad aired by the super PAC House Freedom Action.

Tiberi took to the airwaves himself days after Jordan’s ad went up, and the former congressman has spent nearly a half-million dollars from his old campaign account to boost Balderson. Tiberi has said he wants “our next congressman to be worthy of the job,” calling Balderson a “conservative fighter who will stand for what’s right, not what’s easy” in his ads.

The former congressman has also invoked the March special election in Pennsylvania when asked about the race to replace him, telling The Columbus Dispatch that “we just saw last month in western Pennsylvania, a seat that Donald Trump won by twice as many votes [in 2016], go to a Democrat because the Republican was too conservative for the district.”

Balderson and Leneghan have often sounded similar notes during the primary campaign. Both promise to “end sanctuary cities” and build a wall on the Mexican border in their ads, and both have pledged to stand with Trump.

They are leading the Republican pack in Tiberi’s old 12th District, according to internal polling shared with Politico. But a handful of other candidates still have a path to victory in next week’s primary, including Tim Kane, a veteran and first-time candidate who’s running as an alternative to “career politicians.” Kevin Bacon, a state legislator since 2006, also has name recognition in the district.

“With this many candidates in the field, anything can happen,” said Mark Weaver, a Republican consultant working with Bacon.

But it’s Balderson and Leneghan who have drawn national attention to the primary. Club for Growth President David McIntosh called it an example of an “authentic conservative versus a ‘Main Street,’ but really a liberal to moderate, Republican.” That diagnosis has brought the Club for Growth into conflict with other forces within the GOP in primary after primary in recent years, especially in Republican-leaning House districts where an incumbent has retired. When Tiberi was considering a Senate run in 2017, the Club released polling showing him trailing its favored candidate and later ran ads suggesting Tiberi was “standing in the way” of health care reform.

...Balderson and his allies are not conceding the conservative space to Leneghan. Defending Main Street, a super PAC backed by the Republican Main Street Partnership, which frequently spars with the Club in Republican primaries, is also going negative in the race. Defending Main Street is attacking Leneghan in digital ads, stamping “Fake Republican” across her picture.

“As a township trustee, Leneghan authorized the paving of her own street. What paid for it? Your taxes,” the digital ad says. Defending Main Street has already spent $250,000 in positive TV ads boosting Balderson.

Fund for a Working Congress, another outside group, also dumped anti-Leneghan mailers on the district, attacking her for “[voting] to give herself a raise” and “[putting] herself before voters.”

“It is Pat’s seat, so I think he has a good sense of who should replace him,” said Sarah Chamberlain, president and CEO of the Republican Main Street Partnership. “Leneghan is running as the ultra-conservative in the race, but if you look at her voting record, it leaves question marks.”

Last week in Arizona there was a huge swing away from the GOP in a much redder district. If the swing is that big in OH-12, whichever Republican wins the primary will lose the seat. And in Arizona, the far right candidate who did win, Debbie Lesko, didn't campaign as an extremist... but the day after she scraped by with a margin of less than 5% (in a district Trump won with a margin over 20%), she announced she's joined the neo-fascist Freedom Caucus. She had been supported by Jordan as well.