Every Republican In Congress Is A Trump Republican

Killer by Nancy Ohanian

Yesterday saw a growing consensus that all Trump does is make everything worse. IT's almost as if he wants to start a second American Civil War! Yesterday, This Week reported that some Trump advisors-- including Kushner-in-law-- "don't think there's any political benefit in Trump addressing the nation from the Oval Office since the few times he's done so haven't turned out so great." Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), on State of the Union went even further, indicating that Trump is a poor leader who doesn't know how-- or is unwilling to-- "lower the temperature" and that he's "continuing to escalate the rhetoric-- the opposite of the message that should be coming out of the White House."

The Lincoln Project is out with another killer ad today, "Flag of Treason," although I would have called it "A Time for Chosing." Obviously it's about Trump, but if you think about it more closely, it about every Republican in the Senate and every Republican in the House who continues to enable him, many strictly for their own careerism. Seantors up for reelection in November, especially Cory Gardner (R-CO), Steve Daines (R-MT), Martha McSally (R-AZ), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), David Perdue (R-GA), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Susan Collins (R-ME), Joni Ernst (R-IA) and, most of all, Mitch McConnell (R-KY) should watch this clip and think about their own roles. And their constituents should watch it and ask the same question about them before they decide how to vote in November. Why don't the DNC, the DSCC and the DCCC come up with ads this good?





David Nather, reporting for Axios detects a crack in the GOP shield protecting Trump. I don't see it (nor does Nather, but it makes good copy). He wrote that the psycho-president's "mockery of coronavirus masks, his false claims about the dangers of voting by mail and his insinuations that a cable TV nemesis was involved in a murder are testing more high-profile Republicans' willingness to look the other way." And then adds a caveat: "Republicans learned a long time ago how dangerous it is to alienate Trump’s base-- which is why any hint of disagreement, even a whisper, is so remarkable when it happens." But, come on... this counts as a crack in the GOP shield?

This week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made a point of embracing the public health recommendations-- putting on a mask at appearances in Kentucky and declaring, “There should be no stigma attached to wearing a mask."

• He’s not the only Republican to counterprogram Trump. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said wearing a mask is "about loving your fellow human being. … You are not wearing it so much for yourself as you are wearing it for that person that you will come in contact with," per CNN.
• North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum urged his state’s residents to “dial up your empathy” and called the mask debate “a senseless dividing line.”
• Even Trump favorite Sean Hannity declared: “If you can't social distance, please wear the mask.”

...After Trump threatened to withhold funds from Nevada for sending out mail voting ballots, its Republican secretary of state, Barbara Cegavske, pushed back in a statement: “For over a century, Nevadans, including members of the military, citizens residing outside the state, voters in designated mailing precincts, and voters requesting absentee ballots, have been voting by mail with no evidence of election fraud.”

After Trump announced Friday that the U.S. will sever its ties with the organization, Senate health committee chair Lamar Alexander [who is retiring in a few months] said in a statement: "I disagree with the president’s decision."

There should be a close look at the mistakes the organization may have made on the coronavirus, Alexander said, but "the time to do that is after the crisis has been dealt with, not in the middle of it."

Republicans were more subtle in distancing themselves from Trump's tweet warning the Minneapolis protesters that "when the looting starts, the shooting starts."

But there was an unmistakable difference in the tone of McConnell's statement-- which declared that "our city, our state, and our country have to pull together"-- and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's statement on Twitter that George Floyd's memory should be honored by "rebuilding America into a more perfect union."

As Nather wrote... "not exactly a revolt." Nope. Republicans have pretty much decided to go down with the ship. By all means, throw them an anchor. Republicans in the House who once tried cultivating quasi-moderate images despite Trump, are all silent now. Where are Fred Upton, John Katko, Alex Mooney, Elise Stefanik, Brian Mast, Jaime Herrera Beutler, Vern Buchanan, David Joyce, Tom Reed, Steve Chabot and Mario Diaz-Balart today? Not to mention the Senate "moderates" like Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and... well, there are no others, unless you want to count Mitt Romney, Rob Portman and [giggle] Cory Gardner. Down with the ship-- as many of them as possible!

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

Chuck Hagel: "I'm Surprised That Our Midwestern Republican Leaders Have Not Been More Vocal"

Hagel won 2 Purple Hearts as an infantryman while Señor T was pretending he had a boo-boo

Republican Congressman Carlos Curbelo is representing a very blue Miami area district. Obama beat McCain 50-49% and then beat Romney 53-46% there  In 2016 Hillary absolutely pulverized Trump 56.8% to 40.5%, driving the district's PVI from R+1 to its current D+6. Even the virulent incompetence from the DCCC that Republicans in blue districts have learned to count on won't save Curbelo in a cycle with the kind of anti-Trump/anti-GOP tsunami that's forming now. (And, yes, the DCCC has managed to find one of their typical lesser-of-two evils candidates to back). Curbelo recognizes he's got to go further left than the Democrats to have any chance at reelection this year. So, while Pelosi's utterly dysfunctional caucus dickers and bickers about how to deal with Trump's rotten DACA sabotage, Curbelo says he will not vote to keep the government open unless Trump agrees to the bipartisan DACA fix most members of Congress-- and most Americans-- want.

Meanwhile, this weekend everyone has been chitter-chattering about Arizona lame duck Jeff Flake making a Senate floor speech comparing Señor Trumpanzee to Stalin. I'd rather Flake use his vote to stop just one-- any one-- of Trump's legislative priorities... but we all know that's never going to happen.

Chuck Hagel isn't in Congress any more. He was a mainstream conservative from Nebraska, a senator from 1997 til 2009 and then Obama's Secretary of Defense (a nomination filibustered by his old colleagues from the GOP, the first time a Secretary of Defense nominee was ever fillibustered). Interesting sidenote that seems to have been lost to history: Hagel was CEO of American Information Systems, later known as Election Systems & Software, a computerized voting machine manufacturer, which seems to have played a pivotal role in an election that made Hagel the first Republican in twenty-four years to win a Senate seat in Nebraska. In 2008, both Obama and McCain talked about putting Hagel on their tickets.

Over the weekend, Hagel was back in the headlines, talking about the pickle Señor Trumpanzee has placed the GOP in. He wrote that Señor T "is doing great damage to our country internationally. He's an embarrassment... intentionally dividing the country and the world."

Hagel, who served two terms in the Senate, said his fellow Republicans may face a moment of truth later this year with the investigation of Russian influence and interference in the 2016 presidential election already probing inside the doors of the Republican White House.

"We take an oath of office not to a president, not to a party, not to a philosophy, but to the Constitution of the United States," he said.

"I was philosophically a Republican with a conservative voting record," Hagel said, "but that did not mean I would always go along with the party.

"In the end, you need to make a decision based on the right thing for the country," he said.

Hagel, who was wounded twice in combat in Vietnam, parted company with Republican President George W. Bush on the Iraq war and was widely criticized within the GOP for his action with Vice President Dick Cheney often acting as one of Hagel's sharpest critics.

As secretary of defense, Hagel said, he saw Russian cyber activity in all areas of the U.S. economy, with attempts to penetrate commercial and financial networks as well as the Department of Defense.

"The Russians were up to a lot of mischief," he said. "They were probing and they do have the capability of getting better and stronger. We can't discount that."

Hagel left the Pentagon in 2015, a year before the presidential election.

Now, Hagel said, the country has "a president who minimizes his own intelligence community and that is quite astounding."

Is There Any GOP Resistance To Trumpism? Well... There's Justin Amash

In Trump's press conference marathon of lies and distortions last week, he claimed his well oiled machine of a regime has made tremendous strides in getting his agenda passed. "I don’t think there’s ever been a president elected who in this short period of time has done what we’ve done,: said noted historian Donald J. Trumpanzee. Unless he means 'failed so spectacularly and turned off more people,' that was just another lie. The Republican-controlled Congress has largely ignored his incoherent and nonsensical forays into their territory. His much-ballyhooed infrastructure plan-- "first hundred days"-- seems to be nothing more than a whole lot of tax breaks designed to make it more profitable for big corporations to build things they were already planning on building anyway. He's still coming to grips with the fact that Republicans in Congress don't want to build-- or even fix-- anything.

Recently Time or some other news magazine ran a photo of McCain on the cover as the face of the Resistance to Trump. What a joke! Trump-- like Lindsey, Flake, Rubio and Sasse-- are all talk and no action. With the exception of a purely symbolic McCain vote against Mick Mulvaney's nomination to be director of OMB (because he isn't as much as a warmonger as McCain would prefer), these "resisters," all voted to confirm every one of Trump's nominees to the Cabinet From Hell. These are the real resisters to Trumpism. And on the Republican side? Don't count on much, at least not yet.

Interestingly, some of the ears to the ground House members who were being recruited by the NRSC to run for Senate in 2018 have taken their names out of consideration. Top choices, Sean Duffy, Pat Meehan, Evan Jenkins and Susan Brooks aren't running against Tammy Baldwin (WI), Bob Casey (PA), Joe Manchin (WV) and Joe Donnelly (IN). Kevin Cramer looks like a no-go against Heidi Heitkamp (ND) and Ann Wagner has been telling friends she's not going to run against Claire McCaskill (MO). Trump won each of those states. Here are the margins between him and Hillary:

• Wisconsin- 47.9% to 46.9%
• Pennsylvania- 48.8% to 47.6%
• West Virginia- 68.7% to 26.5%
• Indiana- 57.2% to 37.9%
• North Dakota- 64.1% to 27.8%
• Missouri- 57.1% to 38.0%

Trump won 51 of North Dakota's 53 counties. He beat Hillary in 109 of Missouri's 114 counties and in all 55 of West Virginia's counties. Even in Pennsylvania, where the vote was closer, Trump won 56 of the state's 67 counties. But the NRSC can't recruit any of their first choices. House members have their ears to the ground; they sense what's coming, the same way animals sense when an earthquake is about to hit.

But, like I said, there's no real resistance to Trump coming from the Senate yet-- not on the level you find it coming out of Democratic senators, especially ones like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren (both of whom are also going to be facing their homestate voters in 2018). And while there are no Republicans in the House going on the attack the way, say Ted Lieu is doing, the Wall Street Journal has noticed the same thing we have-- namely that principled libertarian Justin Amash (R-MI) isn't playing nice-nice with Trump by any stretch of the imagination. Monday, under the headline Justin Amash Emerges As Leading Critics Of Fellow Republican Justin Amash, The Journal took note of his social media challenges and even taunts to Trump. Amash has even taken Ryan and McCarthy to task for being Trump enablers and suck-ups. "Lately, our leadership team seems to be going along with the president regardless of the situation. It’s possible that over time the leadership team will recognize that things are getting out of hand and will try to restrain the president."

Although he didn't do as well as Romney had, Trump managed to win Amash's district in November-- with 51.6%. Amash was reelected with 58.4%. Unlike many House Republicans, he's not afraid of Trump and his crackpot supporters and that was apparent in Natalie Andrews' Journal article. "President Donald Trump’s 'constant fear-mongering' about terrorism is 'irresponsible and dangerous.' He needs to 'stop attacking the legitimacy of the judiciary.' He picked an attorney general with 'anti-liberty' positions on surveillance and police seizure of property. Those tough assessments come not from one of the president’s critics in the Democratic Party, but from a conservative Republican House member whose district decisively backed Mr. Trump in the election. Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan has emerged as one of the leading Republican critics of the president, using a tool Mr. Trump himself often employs-- an assertive presence on Twitter-- to challenge and even taunt the president. While other House Republicans who were skeptical of Mr. Trump during the presidential campaign have since toned down their criticism, Mr. Amash, who has 100,000 Twitter followers, has remained a vocal critic."

Mr. Amash says his opposition is based on principle, as a libertarian concerned about government overreach and adherence to the Constitution. While many Republican lawmakers hold similar beliefs, Mr. Amash has been an especially outspoken proponent of smaller government, even on issues-- such as reducing surveillance-- where his views put him out of step with the more mainstream elements of the GOP.

“To me, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a Republican in the White House or a Democrat in the White House. I have a duty to defend liberty, defend the rule of law and protect the rights of all of my constituents,” said Mr. Amash.

...Amash acknowledged that a president has wide latitude to ban refugees, though not green-card holders. But he called Mr. Trump’s ban on refugees from certain countries “harsh and unwise,’’ and said well-vetted refugees should be admitted.

When Mr. Trump attacked the federal judges who put his immigration order on hold, Mr. Amash counseled the president to “stop attacking the legitimacy of the judiciary.”

Mr. Trump has said his immigration policies are needed for national security and that judges are overstepping their role by hindering him.

The son of a Palestinian refugee father and a Syrian immigrant mother, Mr. Amash says his ideals come from a deep love of country instilled by his immigrant parents. When his father dropped him off at school every morning, he’d tell him he could do anything in the U.S. It’s with that perspective that he objects to the immigration ban.

“Most immigrants come here to make a better life, and they want to assimilate and be a part of our nation,” said Mr. Amash, who was born in Grand Rapids. “I think we need to remain a country that is welcoming to those immigrants. If my dad’s family didn’t have the generosity of Americans to bring him here, then I wouldn’t be sitting right here in Congress.”

Mr. Amash says he supports congressional investigations into alleged communications between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russian operatives, and on Friday requested an immediate briefing from Attorney General Jeff Sessions, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation James Comey and Michael Dempsey, the acting Director of National Intelligence. He posted the letter to Twitter.

There are now 4 House Republicans who have signed on to a bipartisan bill-- the Russian Sanctions Review Act-- to prevent Trump from unilaterally ending Russian sanctions without informing Congress-- Charlie Dent (PA), Adam Kinzinger (IL), Michael Turner (OH) and Tom Rooney (FL). A similar bill in the Senate is being co-sponsored by 3 Republicans-- Lindsey Graham (SC), John McCain (AZ) and Little Marco (FL) with Democrats.