The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment of the Trump-Like Candidates and a Leap to the White House

Editor’s Note: Julian Zelizer, a CNN political analyst, is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author and editor of 24 books, including, “The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment.” You can follow him on his social media accounts. The views that he expresses are his own. CNN has more opinion on it.

It looks like Donald Trump is going to make another run at the presidency. Sources told CNN that top aides have been eyeing a possible launch date on November 14 when Trump will make his return to the presidential campaign trail. Trump, it seems, is hoping to be the first person since President Grover Cleveland to win two non-consecutive elections.

Donald Trump has already launched a bid for the White House, so his indictment could tear the nation apart at a time when our democracy is in crisis. Both parties and the voters alike will be very concerned about the White House and Control of Congress being up for grabs when the 2020 presidential campaign kicks off.

Trump hasn’t won an election in over a year. There are better options for Republicans as they attempt to win over a national electorate in 2024. The party grassroots will decide the nominee, and the former president is still emotional about it. The launch will provide early clues as to whether the resilience that would have doomed ordinary political careers is starting to fade.

If the midterm campaigns have shown the Democrats anything, it is that the Republicans remain a strongly united party. Very little can shake that unity. After Trump left office, the party did not change in substantive ways and the “never trump” contingent did not emerge as a dominant force. Liz Cheney was removed from the party.

Even with unconventional and deeply flawed candidates such as Herschel Walker and Dr. Mehmet Oz running for key Senate seats, recent polls are showing that the GOP is in relatively good shape overall going into the midterm election on Tuesday. Several seats are being defended by Democrats, while candidates in blue states like New York are at risk.

Ms. Stefanik’s reinvention has made her a case study in the collapse of the old Republican establishment and its willing absorption into the new, Trump-dominated one. Her climb to fame is a cautionary tale, as Republicans prepare to take control of the House. Mr. Trump’s obsession with litigating his own defeat has left him at once the party’s most potent force and its greatest liability, blamed by many Republicans for their failure to win the Senate in November and for a House majority that, some fear, may be too narrow to govern effectively. Republican politicians and voters are now agonizing anew over the price of their alliance with Mr. Trump. Mr. Ryan told the satellite radio station it was crystal clear. If we stay with Trump, we will lose. If we dump Trump, we start winning.”

A GOP victory would make Trump even more arrogant. At this point, he isn’t being held accountable. Despite the ongoing criminal investigations, Trump is still considered a political figure.

A criminal prosecution of an ex-president and current presidential candidate by the administration that succeeded him would subject the country’s political and judicial institutions to more extreme strain than even Trump has yet managed. The ex-president has already claimed persecution over investigations he faces – and an early declaration of his 2024 campaign has given him the chance to frame them as politicized.

If Trump is not prosecuted, he would unleash a ferocious assault on the President, who has been struggling with a shaky economy and a divided party. If election deniers win control of the legislature after the elections, Trump will likely use his loyalists to make sure he gets the victory he wants. Trump will also come to the race having been to this rodeo before, which will mean he can perfect the technique and rhetoric that put him into office in 2016. And now that Elon Musk has purchased Twitter, Trump could be reinstated – giving him a way to direct and shape the media conversation once again. Since he was banned from social media, Trump hasn’t indicated whether or not he will come back.

The Big Picture: The White House and Biden’s Restricted Right-Handed Side of the Capitol, in the Age of Differing

Washington is bracing for a sharp shock. The big story since November is the red wave that didn’t show up. The reality of divided government will be dawning this week. A House Republican majority, in which radical conservatives now have disproportionate influence, will take over one half of Capitol Hill. Republicans will fling investigations, obstruction and possible impeachments at the White House, designed to throttle Biden’s presidency and ruin his reelection hopes.

As 2023 opens, a repeat White House duel between Trump and Biden – which polls show voters do not want – is the best bet. But shifting politics, the momentous events in the months to come and the vagaries of fate means there’s no guarantee this will be the case come the end of the year.

The balance of the House is not yet determined, but Kevin McCarthy is facing a revolt from his right wing that could derail his speakership ambitions. The hardliners are threatening to stop supporting McCarthy unless he agrees to their demands.

The Biden administration continues to rely on a Trump-era pandemic emergency rule, known as Title 42, that allows border authorities to turn migrants away at the US-Mexico border. In fiscal year 2022, amid mass migration in the Western hemisphere, US border encounters topped 2 million, according to US Customs and Border Protection data. Of those, more than 1 million were turned away under Title 42.

McCarthy said that impeachment would never be used for political purposes. “That doesn’t mean if something rises to the occasion, it would not be used at any other time.”

McCarthy tried to keep his support forUkraine intact, even with the fact that the GOP’s defense hawks vow not to abandon the country during the war with Russia.

“How many members vote for someone else will show the strength (of the anti-McCarthy group),” Rep. Bob Good, a Virginia Republican who is a “hard no” on McCarthy, told CNN. “I think the second ballot is going to have more candidates. Republicans are already letting us know they want to be considered.

McCarthy suggested that a speaker’s fight could hurt GOP chances of keeping the majority in the next election, saying that their refusal to get on board was also hurting his ability to begin recruiting new House candidates.

Stay in Mexico: “stay there” as a strategy to keep the U.S. from defaulting under Trump and Nancy Pelosi

He said that “stay in Mexico” should be the name of the game for anyone who wants to get into the US.

To help stem the flow of fentanyl coming across the border, McCarthy said “you first do a very frontal attack on China to stop the poison from coming,” and then “provide the resources that the border agents need” and “make sure that fentanyl anytime anybody who wants to move it, you can prosecute him for the death penalty.”

A weak speaker and a pro-Trump group in the Republicans are threatening to cause a series of spending showdowns with the White House in order to get rid of the debt ceiling by the middle of the year, which could cause the US to default.

If you want to give a person a higher limit, you should first say that you need to change your behavior so you don’t keep raising it. He said so. “You shouldn’t just say, ‘Oh, I’m gonna let you keep spending money.’ No household should do that.”

McCarthy acknowledged Republicans were willing to raise the debt ceiling under Trump but said it was different now because Democrats spent trillions of dollars under Biden.

When pressed on whether he’s willing to risk a default by using the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip, McCarthy insisted that wouldn’t happen: “People talk about risking it. You don’t risk a default.”

McCarthy has promised to bring back freshman congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene to her committee assignments, even after she was stripped of her assignments last year for her inflammatory remarks.

McCarthy, who will have a direct say in assigning committee assignments, said that there are no restrictions on what committees he can serve. A key role in GOP investigations in a majority will be played by the House Oversight Committee, according to the woman who wants it.

“She’s going to have committees to serve on, just like every other member … Members request different committees and as we go through the steering committee, we’ll look at it,” he said. She can put through the committees she likes, like any other member that gets elected in our conference.

The other members of the group have also spouted conspiracy theories. Most recently, some Republicans have mocked the brutal attack on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, or peddled fringe conspiracy theories about the incident.

Towards a Hard Line for the Speaker of the House: The Case for a Red Line in the House of Freedom Caucus

He wants the president to not call half the nation idiots or say bad things about them because they have different opinions. “I think leadership matters, and I think it probably starts with the president. And it will start with the speaker as well.”

There need to be a discussion about whether he should be speaker of the house, according to a leader of the House Freedom Caucus. We need to have a frank discussion about what we are going to do going forward.

Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado said it was a “red line” for her, but not everyone in the Freedom Caucus is united on whether to make that a hard line.

The Freedom Caucus, a group that includes dozens of hardline members, have been meeting in Washington, DC, this week for their new member orientation, where they have begun to plot out their strategy for the speaker’s race. They see an opportunity because of the slimmed-down majority and plan to use it to their advantage in the GOP-led House.

McCarthy supporters have also contemplated using hardball tactics, including trying to kick critics off their committees if they don’t fall in line and threatening to team up with Democrats to elect a more moderate speaker. The group began wearing “O.K.” buttons around the Capitol in a joking nod to McCarthy’s opposition.

CNN projected that the Republicans will have a majority in the House of Representatives, but has yet to give a projection on who will have control.

The NO KNOWS movement: Delayed internal elections to prevent a reshuffle and a loss for the C-leagues

Norman said the group would like to have a longer list of rules changes. They are also pushing to delay next week’s internal leadership elections, though there is no indication McCarthy plans to do so.

Norman said taxpayers who voted for the representatives in deserve the credit.

Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, one of the five “hard no” votes, said on the call he would not be backing McCarthy, despite all the demands that he has given in to. Some hardliners put out a letter calling some of McCarthy’s concessions insufficient, though they did say progress is being made.

The C team should not be starting with a small majority. We need to put our star players in a position to shine bright so that we can attract more people to our policies and ideas.

And yet, House Republicans are poised to kick off their new majority on Tuesday without a clear sense of who their leader will be – raising the prospect of a brutal, once-in-a-century floor fight that could delay establishing committees, conducting oversight or legislating. On Tuesday morning, the conference will gather one last time before the speaker vote, where McCarthy’s supporters are hoping for a last-minute resolution but are bracing for the worst.

A small, but vocal, group of GOP senators has been calling to delay their leadership elections so they can have a “family discussion” about why the GOP underperformed. At least one Republican,Josh Hawley of Missouri, is promising to oppose McConnell for GOP leader.

Indeed, the small group of Republicans known as the “Never Kevin” movement – confident that Biggs could not win a majority of the House – has been trying to recruit a viable alternative, and claim “several” Republicans have privately told them they would be interested in running if McCarthy drops out. Their goal is to show that McCarthy isn’t strong on the first ballot and they hope that will encourage other candidates to join them.

Florida senator Rick Scott is among those calling for the election of Senate leadership to be delayed this week.

“A lot of people have called me to see if I’ll run,” Scott said. Is we still going to win Georgia? I’m not going to take anything off the table.”

Measuring the drapes: The misfortune of Emmer, Scott, McConnell and Toomey during the primaries

It’s a stunning reversal of fortunes – and potential moment of reckoning – for the once-bullish GOP, with party leaders now scrambling to quell the brewing rebellions in their ranks and explain why the election did not go their way. The disappointing results have made it harder for Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, head of the House GOP’s campaign arm, to become the party’s whip, a position that would only be available if Republicans capture the majority.

“They’ve been measuring the draperies, they’ve been putting forth an agenda. Nancy Pelosi told CNN that they had not won it yet. “After the election is concluded, depending on who was in the majority, there’ll be judgments made within their own party, in our own parties, as to how we go forward.”

Ahead of the upcoming return of the House and Senate to Washington this week, finger pointing has already begun, and those discussions are likely to intensify.

The party has placed the blame for the failure of certain candidates in Senate races on Trump. The Kentucky Republican’s group spent more in Senate races than any other group, despite the fact that Trump’s group spent less.

“There’s a very high correlation between MAGA candidates and big losses,” said retiring Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey. “I think my party needs to face the fact that if fealty to Donald Trump is the primary criteria for selecting candidates, we’re probably not going to do really well.”

McConnell and Scott have been at odds every election cycle when it comes to campaign strategy, with Scott taking a hands-off approach in the primary, while McConnell sounded the alarm about candidate quality.

Even though he would have little chance of succeeding, Scott was not ruling out a challenge to McConnell.

“Well, we’re still continuing to talk, but they have not moved,” McCarthy told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. “And the difficulty here is that you know, we are the only Republican entity stopping the Biden administration. But we’re also going to be the only ones that can move forward. But it would delay everything, getting committees up and running, being able to do the things that you know we need to get done from the very beginning.”

“Basic political physics says you can’t appease the moderates and HFC all at the same time,” one senior Republican told CNN. “If you straddle that fence, you better hope it’s not barbed wire.”

Senate control is huge for more than one reason, including that Democrats solidified the most shocking showing for an incumbent president of their party in a first-term election since Bush in 2002 by pulling it off in deeply unpromising political conditions.

During the weekend, a moment of truth for Republicans who believed in Trump and a moment of defiance for President Joe Biden and his party, who refused to be deceived by the president.

And even with the GOP appearing to slowly march toward House control – promising to make Biden’s life deeply uncomfortable for the rest of his term with investigations into his administration and even his son, Hunter – the probable Republican majority will be smaller, and therefore more fractious, with the most radical lawmakers having more leverage.

Political parties are pointless if they don’t win power. The Democrats are celebrating their 50th seat and control of the Senate after the victory of Sen. Catherine Masto in Nevada Saturday night.

“I think one thing that pundits and prognosticators missed was that in all the incendiary ads that blanketed the airwaves for weeks, people knew the Democrats were getting things done for them,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters on Saturday night after CNN and other media outlets projected the Nevada race.

More importantly, the Democrats’ continued hold on power gives Biden two more years to remake the judiciary and to counter the influx of conservative judges confirmed during Trump’s presidency. If a Supreme Court seat were to become vacant, a Democratic-led Senate would have a chance of appointing a new justice to make up for the lost conservative votes.

Schumer can protect his senators from votes that could hurt their reelection campaigns when they are in tough states, like Montana, Ohio, Nevada and Arizona, because the GOP House wouldn’t give the president many legislative wins.

The 2024 presidential election is even more important because of the strong Democratic performance that left both chambers split down the middle. A popular candidate on either side could sweep the party into power in Washington and turn it into a monopoly.

The final numbers in the Senate will not be known until after the Georgia election on December 6. Democrats will have a 51- 49 majority if they have a Incumbent like Warnock standing for re-election.

The Democrats would benefit more from a two-seat margin than having to rely on a tie-breaking vote. It reduces the chance they will lose their majority in the upcoming Congress if one of their members dies, is sick or becomes unresponsive.

A Joe Manchinproof majority would allow the West Virginia Moderate Democratic senator to veto Schumer if he wanted to, since he has held the veto over his intentions the past two years. If Manchin decides to run for reelection in 2024 in a state where Trump won big twice, he’s likely to become an even tougher vote for Democratic leadership. The coal state senator criticized the president over his climate change policies.

And a clear majority for Democrats means that Schumer would not need a deal with McConnell on parceling out committee assignments and would have far more control over the process – a fact former veteran senator Biden noted in reacting to the Senate win in Phnom Penh over the weekend.

While a battle is emerging over the Republican House leadership, the current limbo means an expected Democratic tussle to succeed Nancy Pelosi is frozen. The speaker told CNN on Sunday that she was not making a decision because there was no certainty about the fate of the House. The speaker had to consider her future after the brutal attack on her husband. But she isn’t touching her hand.

“I’m not asking anybody for everything. people are campaigning And that’s a beautiful thing,” the California Democrat quixotically told CNN’s Dana Bash when asked whether she might feel motivated to stay on as leader. I am not asking anyone for anything. My members are asking me to consider doing that. But, again, let’s just get through the election.”

Donald Trump has cost us the race before. Maryland GOP Gov. Larry Hogan said on “State of the Union” that they are out after three strikes.

The problem with Hogan’s analogy is that Trump hasn’t been able to connect with the grassroots Republican base that made him the president in the first place.

Trump had expected to ride out of this weekend on a wave of Republican euphoria after a bumper election he’d hoped to claim as his doing and enlist it to power his campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nod.

Yet some of Trump’s favored candidates, including Pennsylvania’s Mehmet Oz in the Senate race and Doug Mastriano in the gubernatorial race, lost. One of the most high-profile election deniers, Kari Lake, is still locked in a close contest with Democrat Katie Hobbs in Arizona’s governor’s race, which CNN has not yet projected.

Voters might have been unhappy with the Democrats and Biden’s record on inflation. But they balked at handing power to Republican radicals in Trump’s election-denying and chaos-causing image.

There are some figureheads emerging that could be a test of the ex-president’s bond with his conservative base. Even as he fends off multiple investigations, Trump must urgently show he’s still the GOP top dog as more and more Republicans consider him a national liability.

McCarthy’s capacity to hold the job in the long term is at risk because of the compromises he is making in his campaign for the speakership.

“Our initial plan is vote for Kevin and let him fight this out repeatedly. … But if they think they’re going to use this to infinity to drive him out, well, we’re not going to bend to their will,” said Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican.

“If at some point, if Kevin did take his name out, then you would have good people (running). Scalise would probably be the guy,” one GOP lawmaker said.

If McCarthy doesn’t get the votes, he would jump into the race, but he was unwilling to speculate on whether he would or wouldn’t.

“No, I’m not going to get into speculation,” Scalise told CNN. It is our focus to get it resolved by January 3. Kevin said that there has been a lot of discussions with the members who have voiced concerns.

Even though Gaetz and others have urged him to run for speaker, Rep. Jim Jordan will not jump into the race despite being set to become chair of the House Judiciary Committee.

The South Carolina Republican left the office of McCarthy on Wednesday and said he would vote for Andy for speaker. He said that all this was positive. We’re having good change, regardless of what happens. And you’ll see more of it.”

McCarthy needs to do a lot of work to get to 218, and they have put out a list of demands which shows the work he needs to do.

McCarthy has more levers that he could pull. Conservative hardliners are pushing for more representation on the powerful House Rules Committee, a leadership-aligned panel that decides how and when bills come to the floor. In one private meeting with a member of the House Freedom Caucus, McCarthy was urged to take a harder public stance on the coming policy issues for next year, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The majority of the House Republicans voted against restoring the chair’s removal in a closed-door meeting last month. McCarthy chuckled and said not to answer when asked if he would visit the issue.

A Republican congressman said of the impact of January, that it was because people are sick and tired of noise and fighting. I know that when I travel in my district, I would think, “Why can’t you just get things done?”

Tuesday’s vote may create a kind of drama that was common in the House during the 19th century but has virtually disappeared since. Before the Civil War, when party allegiances were more fluid, the House failed to elect a speaker on the first ballot 13 times, according to the House historian’s office. The most arduous struggles occurred in roughly the decade before the Civil War, as the existing party system crumbled under the pressure of the escalating conflict between the North and South, and the newly formed Republican Party supplanted the Whigs as the major competitor to the Democrats, then the dominant party. The speakership election took 133 ballots and two months of balloting, but the final selection took 44 ballots before the Civil War began.

Whether McCarthy wins the speakership, or conservatives (in a less likely scenario) succeed in installing an alternative to his right, Democrats believe all these early markers guarantee that the House GOP’s most militant members will be front and center in defining the party over the next two years.

The New Republican Speaker: Rep. Bruce Westerman and the Future of the Democrat House Republican (Delta/CFT)

Some Democrats have said they would entertain the idea, including Rep. Henry Cuellar, a moderate Democrat from Texas who told CNN some of his GOP colleagues have approached him “informally” about it.

Joyce said that some people had reached out to him about possibly running, but he dismissed it. Kevin is going to be the new speaker.

New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the next House Democratic leader, said, “there are no behind-the-scenes conversations” that he has had with Republicans to put up an alternative candidate. But he refused to rule out a scenario where his caucus would help elect the next speaker if McCarthy couldn’t get the votes.

“Democrats are in the process of organizing the Democratic Conference,” Jeffries told CNN on Thursday. “Republicans are in the process of organizing the Republican Conference. Let’s see what happens on January 3.”

Some of the potential consensus picks that have been floated included retiring Reps. Fred Upton of Michigan and John Katko of New York, who both voted to impeach Donald Trump for inciting the Capitol insurrection; Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus; and Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, a veteran lawmaker and incoming head of the House Rules Committee.

It would require agreement from all of the Democrats and some of the Republicans. Talking to CNN, the man said that he wouldn’t be in Washington that day.

A decade ago, Bruce Westerman’s state had a minority of Democrats and a few Republicans voting in favor of a GOP speaker. Westerman made his case in a closed-door meeting.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/09/politics/mccarthy-speaker-house-republicans-218/index.html

What did Westerman say about the 2018 midterm election? An apology to Mr. McCarthy and the leadership team of the California Democratic Congressman

“I’m concerned about January 3 getting here and us not being able to form a Congress and organize committees and getting delayed in pushing the policy objectives that we want to push,” Westerman said.

Westerman added that the discussion over changing House rules is good for the party. He said he wasn’t really excited about any destructive movement.

If Mr. McCarthy does have a plan, he has not shared it with members of his leadership team, whom he has cut out of his deliberations regarding the speakership race. He has not been seen in recent days but instead has been spotted with a Republican lobbyist, Jeff Miller.

It was not clear whether Mr. McCarthy enlisted Mr. Trump to help his campaign, or if Mr. Trump was simply working on his own. The former president talked to Eli Crane, an incoming Republican congressman from Arizona, among other people. Mr. Crane and Mr. Norman were part of a group of 7 Republican politicians who signed a letter in which they demanded concessions from their leaders in the next congress, among them being easier to remove the speaker.

In the wake of the 2018 midterms, the young congresswoman was sick of commuting to Washington from upstate New York and weary of dialing for campaign dollars. She was demoralized that Republican primary voters had spurned so many of the women she had helped persuade to run for Congress. She was annoyed that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the democratic socialist who displaced her that fall as a young woman, had not shown her respect.

The California Republican has already made a series of pledges in an effort to appease the right flank of his party. He went to the southern border and asked Alejandro N. Mayorkas to resign as homeland security secretary. He promised Ms. Greene, who was stripped of her committee assignments for making a series of violent and conspiratorial social media posts before she was elected, a plum spot on the Oversight Committee.

He promised to hold hearings on the security failures that led to the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol. He has been in contact with ultraconservative lawmakers to try and get them to change their minds. And on Monday night, he publicly encouraged his members to vote against the lame-duck spending bill to fund the government.

Kevin McCarty, the Georgia Republican, and the Speakership-Battle Analysis: How a Reply to the White House can be used to suppress the insurrection and protect the fundamental values of the US

Republicans’ take over of the House this week will usher in a two-year political era that threatens to bring governing showdowns and shutdowns as a GOP speaker and Democratic president try to wield power from opposite ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

It also reflected the personal power of her after she lined up to back McCarthy in the speakership. After coming to Congress as a fringe figure, and quickly losing her committee assignments over her past retweets of violent rhetoric against Democrats, Greene now promises to be one of the most prominent faces of the new GOP majority. That she has the latitude to make what to many people are offensive and insurrectionist comments without any fear of rebuke from her party’s leader says a lot about her position. It shows that while Trump’s power may be waning elsewhere, his influence over his followers in the House is still strong.

The next step in McCarthy’s attempt to gain the speakership was apparent on Tuesday when he gave Greene, the Georgia Republican, a pass for her latest effort to mock the Capitol insurrection. The congresswoman had said over the weekend that had she been in charge on January 6, 2021, the riot would have succeeded and the mob would have been armed. She later insisted she was being sarcastic after the White House complained her comments were a “slap in the face” to law enforcement and against fundamental US values.

This is one reason why the current year-end tussle over whether to fund the government for a full year – a bipartisan framework agreement for which was announced Tuesday night – or for just a few months is so critical since it could dump a fiscal crisis on the lap of a weak and easily manipulated new speaker next month.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/14/politics/kevin-mccarthy-speakership-battle-analysis/index.html

The Misleading Behavior of Kevin McCarthy: A Presidential Warning to the Future of the Repubcratic Party and to the Campaign for a New Voting Deal

McCarthy responded by saying she thinks she was being facetious when she said she was being inflammatory. His attitude was not a surprise; it was consistent with his attempts to rewrite the history of the worst attack on US democracy in modern times, for which he briefly said Trump bore responsibility.

The same dynamic occurred when McCarthy refused to criticize the ex-president for meeting with a white supremacist despite the fact that he was having dinner with Ye, who has made a series of antisemitic remarks. The House Republican leader lied about Trump condemning Fuentes four different times, when he hadn’t done so once before.

CNN reported that McCarthy had indicated at the White House meeting that he would be willing to accept a large bill. But while Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell worked on such a measure Tuesday and declared it “broadly appealing,” McCarthy told his members that he was a “Hell no” on the measure.

There is a chance that the Republicans in the House and McConnell could become at odds in the future, as the split makes it harder for some of them to support a spending deal now.

Kevin McCarthy, the leader of the House GOP, said Friday that five conservative hardliners had refused to budge in their opposition to the speaker, and warned that their party could be ruined if they didn’t bend.

McCarthy said that this is a presidential year and you only have a few months to govern. “And you want to hit the ground running. Every day you lose, if you lose a quarter, you don’t start strong. So you don’t get new, stronger candidates. You don’t get more resources to be able to supply those candidates to get the message out.”

McCarthy’s dire warning comes as the five GOP members – Gaetz, Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Bob Good of Virginia and Matt Rosendale of Montana – have warned they may vote as a bloc on January 3, meaning they’ll all vote the same way.

But it was bigger than that. She had crafted her brand as a model moderate, as she was described by her mentor, Paul Ryan in Time magazine. Her third term was becoming painfully clear to friends and advisers that she was not the future of the Republican Party. She described Trump as a “whack job” in a message obtained by The New York Times. She was attacked for not supporting Mr. Trump enough. Her friends were unhappy with her for not opposing him more forcefully. You don’t understand, she would tell them. You don’t get how hard this is. Democrats were back in charge in the House. Mr. Ryan was driven into retirement at a young age. She mentioned to friends that she was thinking of joining him.

Biden has his hands full elsewhere. A close call between a Chinese jet and a US military jet over the South China Sea on the holiday shows how dangerous tensions in the region could be. Biden also faces burgeoning nuclear crises with Iran and North Korea, which, along with Russia’s nuclear saber rattling, suggests the beginning of a dangerous new era of global conflict and risk.

The Democrats are happy with the growth of their majority in the Senate. The chamber was split at 50 percent over the last two years. Wasting no time in seeking to carve out a reputation among voters as a force for bipartisanship and effective governance, the president will travel to Kentucky this week. He will join Republicans at an event to show off the infrastructure package that was passed with bipartisan support.

The Challenge of Trump’s 2020 Election: Can he Do Anything? The Case for a New American Attorney General, and How to Reinvent the Inflaton Crisis

Attorney General Merrick Garland could shortly face one of the most fateful decisions in modern politics: whether to indict Trump over his attempt to steal the 2020 election and over his hoarding of classified documents.

If Trump is indicted, it’s worth asking if the action would be in the national interests, as the uproar could be so corrosive that it’s hard to tell.

If Trump did break the law, and the evidence of insurrection against him presented in the HouseJanuary 6 committee’s criminal referrals, his case also creates an even more profound dilemma. Ex-presidents will be above the law if a failure to prosecute him sets a precedent.

The outgoing Illinois GOP congressman thinks that the president can do anything he wants if he is not held accountable.

If he is found not guilty, I fear for the future of his country since every president can say that he was not guilty of a crime. Do everything you can to stay in power.

If Western economies dip into a recession this year, US and European voters will be willing to fork out billions of taxpayer dollars to armUkraine.

It’s hard to judge an economy. In 2022, 40-year-high inflation and tumbling stock markets coincided with historically low unemployment rates, which created an odd simultaneous sensation of economic anxiety and wellbeing. It will be the key question of the year 2023, if the Federal Reserve can bring down the cost of living without triggering a recession.

Washington spending battles and government shutdowns could pose new growth threats. The economy will be outside any political leader’s capacity to control, but its state at the end of the year will play a vital role in an election that will define America, domestically and globally after 2024.

Kevin McCarthy’s House Speaker Struggle: The Challenge for the Reconciliation of Republicans and Opponents of the Speakership Bid

Four days before the House speaker vote, when his critics were still noncommittal about their support for his speakership bid, even after the California Republican had offered a number of key concessions – including making it easier to oust the sitting speaker – he attempted to give them the hard sell.

With just one day left in the negotiation, a group of at least nine Republicans have made it clear they are still not sold, even after McCarthy gave in to some of their most ardent demands.

“To be honest, we are preparing for a fight. It is not the way we want to start out, but you can’t really negotiate against the stance of ” give us everything we ask for and we will not guarantee anything in return.” Rep. Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota, a member of the centrist-leaning Republican Governance Group, told CNN.

“I give Kevin a ton of credit. He’s brought everyone in and worked really hard to figure out a way forward. This place needs a way to run better. But I get the feeling that not everyone is negotiating in good faith.”

McCarthy worked the phone with critics and supporters to find a compromise on rules changes that were meant to win over holdouts.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/02/politics/kevin-mccarthy-house-speaker-struggle/index.html

The House Rules Package for Speakership: Comments on McCarthy’s Promises and Failure to Vote for a Reionization Speaker

He can only afford to lose four votes on the House floor, and so far, at least five Republicans have vowed to oppose him, with nearly a dozen other GOP lawmakers publicly saying they’re still not there yet.

Lawmakers worked over the weekend to finalize the rules package. Ultimately, McCarthy informed Republicans on the conference-wide call Sunday evening that he agreed to the five-person threshold on the motion to vacate – which he billed as a “compromise.”

McCarthy released the final rules package later that evening and also put out a “Dear Colleague” letter making one last pitch for the job, which included additional promises about how he’d govern as speaker – including ensuring that the GOP’s ideological groups are better represented on committees.

Moderates expressed a lack of joy on the call and only agreed to swallow the concession if McCarthy would vote for it. They worried that some of the hardliners were not in good faith and feared they will not come through in the end.

That group is still pushing for a single member to be allowed to demand a vote to topple the speaker, which was what it used to be before Speaker Nancy Pelosi changed the rules.

“Thus far, there continue to be missing specific commitments with respect to virtually every component of our entreaties, and thus, no means to measure whether promises are kept or broken,” the letter, obtained by CNN, states.

In another strategic move, McCarthy postponed races for any contested committee chairs until after the speaker vote. He said it was to allow freshman members to have input in the process, but other members believe it was a way to insulate himself from potential criticism from members who end up losing their races.

An aide to Republican Rep. Ralph Norman said the South Carolinian’s district offices have been inundated with calls from constituents who have received robocalls and “been read a script” by someone warning what could happen if McCarthy isn’t elected speaker because of conservatives like Norman. Those campaigns, Norman’s aide told CNN, have done nothing to influence the congressman’s position, but it does reveal the lengths some McCarthy backers have gone to exert maximum pressure on detractors.

McCarthy was promised by his defenders that they wouldn’t let a few of them control their conference during the holidays.

McCarthy’s opposition, however, has also been working in tandem – and they are far more practiced in playing hardball, though the Freedom Caucus has been openly divided over McCarthy.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/02/politics/kevin-mccarthy-house-speaker-struggle/index.html

Do you care about the next speaker? The chicken game of the House is going to be a victory or a loss for Tom Davis, former Republican Rep. Tom Davis

The committee in charge of administrative matter sent a letter last week detailing practical implications and pitfalls of a drawn out speaker’s fight. The memo said that the committees wouldn’t be able to pay their staff without an approved Rules package.

Student loan payments would not be disbursed if a rules package isn’t adopted by mid-January, according to a memo obtained by CNN.

It’s just one of the many ways a battle over the next speaker could paralyze the House and the Republican majority from operating efficiently in their opening days with some of the harshest penalties falling on rank-and-file staffers.

CNN was the only news outlet that saw the boxes from McCarthy’s office being moved into the speaker’s suite last week – a sign that he is still interested in the job.

“It is a bizarre game of chicken where both sides have ripped the steering wheel off the dashboard and are just going pedal to the metal,” one member said of the ongoing standoff between pro- and anti-McCarthy factions.

No matter how they resolve Tuesday’s vote choosing the next speaker of the House, Republicans appear poised to double down on the hard-edged politics that most swing state voters rejected in last November’s midterm election.

Whoever Republicans ultimately select as speaker “will be subject to the whims and the never-ending leveraging of a small group of members who want to wield power,” said former GOP Rep. Charlie Dent, a CNN political commentator. There will be a group that is going to push the leadership to go further right on issues.

Since then, the only selection that has required more than a single ballot came in 1923, when Republicans holding only a narrow majority comparable to their advantage this year took nine ballots to select their speaker. The Democrats were initially resistant to the conservative incumbent Speaker, Frederick Gillett.

“I think he prevails because there is no other candidate with his experience and fundraising ability and at the end of the day the party base will close ranks because nothing happens until you have a Speaker: No investigations… nothing,” former GOP Rep. Tom Davis, who served as chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, wrote me in an email. The majority of Conference members are loyal to him.

“In some ways, win or lose [for McCarthy] it doesn’t matter,” says Leslie Dach, a senior adviser to the Congressional Integrity Project, a Democratic-aligned group established to respond to the coming House investigations of the Biden administration. The death of the next two years might be cast by giving these people the power and the podium.

Dach thinks that by showing how hardline the Trump allies will be, they will be able to pursue conservative grievances such as the charge that the FBI has become weaponized against the right.

Dach says the real show is going to be these powers-that-be. “Every day that they are on a committee, every day they are on television, is a bad day for the entire Republican Party.”

Michael Podhorzer, the former political director of the AFL-CIO, notes that the GOP has cumulatively lost enormous ground in those states since Trump took office.

In his inaugural speech in 2017, there was one Democratic governor, four Democratic senators and no speaker of the state legislature in those states, according to Podhorzer. “In a month, four of the five states will have Democratic governors, 9 of the 10 Senators are Democrats, and three of the state legislative chambers are led by Democrats.” Democrats have not done a thing since 2016 because those states won’t vote for the right-wingers, he says.

“It was two midterms happening at the same time – depending on whether you were in a place where that new bubble of Democratic voters believed they had to come out to beat MAGA again,” Podhorzer argued.