The Trump Era: A Memorino about the Possible Successes of Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the House of Representative Kevin McCarthy

His aides later insisted that he was joking when he mused about wanting to hit her with the gavel.

The relationship between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the man who is most likely to succeed her should Republicans win control of the House in next month’s elections is barely civil. And as the moment of the possible succession draws closer, she has become less and less interested in masking her contempt for Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the top Republican.

At a news conference last week, when asked to respond to Mr. McCarthy’s claim that she was not allowing Democrats to speak out about what he described as a crisis at the border, Ms. Pelosi said of the minority leader, “I don’t even know what he’s talking about — and I don’t know if he does.”

It is questionable that the Republican Party embraces its most basic instincts due to the reality of the times. Most often, GOP leaders are enabling and embracing a twice impeached ex-President with clear autocratic tendencies who incited an insurrection to try to overturn a democratic election. Or they’re elevating Trump followers who built their careers by telling lies about the election and the president.

Youngkin won the governor’s mansion in Virginia last year. The former businessman spoke about the issue of gender in schools and the importance of making America great again in order to ensure turnout in pro-Trump rural counties. In the state’s more liberal Washington DC suburbs, he was careful not to make people feel bad about his education message.

Youngkin urged Republicans to get behind Lake, but also to think about their future in the party and how they can influence the outcome of the election.

A single-minded focus on winning power is good for a political party. Politics is the art of the possible. Victorious parties and leaders understand the importance of an election victory. Democratic presidents from Lyndon Johnson to Bill Clinton were known for doing what needed to be done to win, reshaping their own principles if necessary. Johnson, a former Senate majority leader, used his authority to his advantage at the ballot box. And more recently, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has not dominated the House for nearly two decades without being determined to use her power.

In the view of Stella Rouse, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, Trump and the Republican Party have become so reliant on a hard-right constituency that there is no turning back:

The most striking recent example of the naked pursuit of power could be seen when House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy rushed down to Mar-a-Lago to make up with Trump soon after criticizing him over the Capitol insurrection. The California lawmaker knew that his party’s hope of a House majority and his own dreams of being speaker hinged on a rapprochement with Trump and his base voters.

In the case of the Senate vote on Trump’s fate after the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, “Mitch McConnell flinched,” Herf wrote, because he “understood that he and the G.O.P. establishment had made a Faustian bargain with the far right, with Trump’s base, and that without that base the G.O.P. would probably be consigned to becoming a permanent minority party at the national level.” McCarthy, in turn, understands “exactly the same dynamic, that is, without Paul Gosar, Scott Perry, Andy Biggs, Lauren Boebert — and Marjorie Taylor Greene — the G.O.P.’s electoral prospects look dim.”

And McConnell has shrugged off Trump’s insults and racist social media posts against his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. He has done more than just keep quiet. The Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC affiliated with the minority leader, has poured tens of millions of dollars into key races – including in states like Ohio and Georgia in a bid to bail out misfiring candidates effectively crowned as party nominees by none other than Trump.

McConnell’s super group is in New Hampshire, where the GOP nominee has said he won’t vote for McConnell. There is another pickup opportunity that could bolster the GOP majority.

The impulse to win control of Congress at all costs – even if it appears to compromise values the GOP professes to stand for – was on display when several US senators flew into Georgia earlier this month to rescue controversy-swamped Senate nominee Hershel Walker.

Walker isn’t going to give up on the challenge of pregnancy bans: a candidacy that wouldn’t have happened without his friendship with Trump

The pro-Trump nominee has faced allegations that he paid for a woman to terminate her pregnancy despite having said during the campaign that he would support a national ban on the procedure with no exceptions. Walker has denied the allegations, which CNN has not independently confirmed, but the furor highlighted the risky nature of a candidacy that probably wouldn’t have happened but for his friendship with Trump.

The credentials of Walker are not very important to Cotton, Scott and McConnell. But he represents potentially the 51st Republican vote in the Senate if he can win the race – and therefore a return to power for the GOP. So there was never any idea that he would be abandoned.

He’s doing much the same now – appearing with Trump candidates like Lake and Michigan GOP gubernatorial nominee Tudor Dixon, but also stumping with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who fended off Trump’s efforts to oust him earlier this year.

The rising star power in the Trump world made him very attractive for his trip, even though his endorsement was important to Lake. And it explains the hug after his speech in which he embraced the kind of political personality who wouldn’t have been let anywhere near his events last year.

GOP leaders are trying to figure out how to keep their jobs and adjust to what the nation wants from them, even as they try to keep their leadership jobs.

There are several races that will affect control of the House. The election between Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker won’t be held until December 6th, which will not decide the Senate majority.

The Plan of Donald J.C. Trump: A View from a Closer Look at Mr. McCarthy’s Debate with Jeff Miller

The plan of Trump will not be changed despite pleas from some segments of the party. He feels he has waited long enough and is ready to get into the race. In this case, one week after the election.

Instead, the Republican Party will be thrown into the race thanks to Trump, who will demand endorsements from officials who are still trying to figure out what happened last week.

The point is that this is about Trump. He is the leader of the Republican Party but he doesn’t prioritize the good of his party over himself.

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 about the speakership race in what some regard as a display of paranoia. Instead, he has been spotted in recent days around the Capitol and the Republican National Committee headquarters nearby with Jeff Miller, a Republican lobbyist who is among his closest confidants.

Mr. Norman, who dislikes Mr. McCarthy, declined to talk about his conversation with Mr. Trump. He said he wasn’t sure who he would support for speaker. Mr. Crane did not respond to requests for comment.

When Nancy Pelosi didn’t have enough votes for the gavel in the House, she picked off defectors and cut deals to get enough support. Ms. Pelosi, renowned for her ability to arm-twist and coax, won seven votes by agreeing to limit her tenure, picked up another eight by promising to implement rules aimed at fostering more bipartisan legislating, and won over her sole would-be challenger by creating a subcommittee chairmanship for her.

The California Republican handed hard-right House members with plum committee assignments, dumped several high-profile Democrats from key panels to please the conservative media universe, launched investigations into the “weaponization” of government against Republicans like former President Donald Trump and gave a pass to Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene when she heckled President Joe Biden during the State of the Union address or suggested “national divorce” between red and blue states. He’s refused to demand the resignation of New York Rep. George Santos, a serial fabulist, who might be an embarrassment but whose seat remains critical to the GOP’s tiny majority.

McCarthy also pledged an aggressive investigative agenda against the Biden administration that will highlight conservative priorities such as Hunter Biden’s business activities, and the treatment of the January 6, 2021, rioters. The Wall Street Journal reported that McCarthy has also acceded to conservative demands for a panel that will launch far-reaching probes on alleged politicization of the Justice Department and FBI. (The panel, the Journal reported, will be established under the Judiciary Committee as the “Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.”) McCarthy likewise has left open the door to pursuing impeachment against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

A protest candidate in the speaker race, Andy Biggs, wrote about the comments made by Mr. McCarthy about not impeaching any Biden administration officials. Mr. McCarthy had a threat against the homeland security secretary.

Republicans won control of the House through democratic means in a free and fair election. Their smaller-than expected majority is giving extra leverage to the type of extremists many voters seemed to reject in the last election.

From a broader political perspective, it might be in McCarthy’s interest to stand up to the most extreme members of his conference. The path to the GOP majority went through comparatively moderate seats in places like New York that will be most at risk in the 2024 election. And pro-Trump election-denying extremists, like those who are tormenting him now, were mostly rejected by swing-state voters in the midterm elections. In the last two election cycles, the anti-Trump vote was decisive when Republicans lost both houses of congress and the presidency.

The Californian, who has lost a stunning 11 consecutive House roll call votes in his bid to become speaker, was the first major GOP leader to embrace ex-President Donald Trump after the January 6, 2021, insurrection.

Once an avuncular and smooth-talking GOP rising star, McCarthy has adopted some of the confrontational defiance of the “Make America Great Again” movement, seeming to seek out soundbite clashes with the press as badges of honor.

Trump’s decision to fund the government is critical: Why Democrats can’t do without spending a year at a time like this one

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.

The economy will be important in showing voters that GOP governance addressed key problems like inflation. The selection committee McCarthy is planning to form to examine China’s growing threat, which could potentially unite the two parties, was a focus of most of McCarthy’s recent rhetoric.

McCarthy won the GOP leader election when the majority of caucus voted for him after Election Day. That put him in line to be the next speaker of the House for the Congress that was supposed to start on January 3. But the hardliners would not go along with the herd in Tuesday’s vote.

McCarthy shrugged them off as she said she was sure that she was being facetious. 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 was at play when McCarthy declined to directly criticize the ex-president for meeting with white supremacist Nick Fuentes at a dinner also featuring Kanye West, the rapper now known as Ye, who has recently made a string of antisemitic remarks. In a histrionic performance at the White House after meeting Biden and other congressional leaders last month, the House Republican leader falsely claimed that Trump had condemned Fuentes four times, when he hadn’t done so once.

Still, given that Democrats should be able to pass a broader funding deal in the final days of their majority, McCarthy’s opposition could win him points with no long-term consequence – a potentially useful political situation. This became more likely on Tuesday when Senate Republicans and Democrats and House Democrats announced the framework agreement on an omnibus appropriations bill.

The split raises the possibility of future tensions between Republicans in the House and McConnell, potentially making it more difficult for Republicans in the Senate to vote for a spending deal now.

One thing the California Republican does have going for his dreams of the top job is the fact that there so far is not a strong alternative to his candidacy. GOP Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, the former head of the Freedom Caucus, has launched a long-shot bid.

One of the seven Republican senators who voted to convict the ex-president at his second impeachment trial was, according to his farewell speech on Thursday, “our party cannot be about or beholden to any one man.” We are much larger than that. Our party is much larger than that.

The Dead on the Next Two Years: Why he can’t tell us what we didn’t say during the 2016 midterms? How Democrats will feel about the House

“So yes, I think that process is underway. It doesn’t happen immediately, it requires time. He still has a significant following, that’s for sure. I think his influence is waning.

The Republican soul-searching comes at a critical moment for Trump and the party. Senate GOP leaders want to move on from the Trump years, so they are looking for candidates who appeal to more moderate voters who voted for the president over their disdain for him.

When the Republicans criticized Trump, that wasn’t okay with some people who thought he was carrying the fight to the other side. He said that some of that tribalism is built into public political systems.

The sort of conventional understanding of what words mean gets restored over time as his influence fades. I’m not worried about that,” Toomey said.

The Republicans are going to double down on the hard-edged politics that most voters in swing states rejected during the election, regardless of how they resolve Tuesday’s vote choosing the next speaker of the House.

Two of them, Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Matt Gaetz of Florida, are ringleaders of the fight to block McCarthy. The speakership stalemate is not just a fresh indication of the turmoil still racking the GOP after the far-right forced out two previous GOP speakers. It suggests the new GOP House majority will be perennially dysfunctional and – given the capacity of a few lawmakers to grind the chamber to a halt at any moment – chaotic political crises are likely to dominate the next two years.

How does this end? House precedent dictates that members continue to take successive votes until someone secures the majority to prevail. Until a speaker is chosen, the House is essentially a useless entity. It can’t even swear in its members.

Tom Davis was the former chair of the National Republican Party and said that he thinks the candidate with the most experience is going to win. The majority of the Conference is loyal to him.

The Congressional Integrity Project, which is a Democratic-aligned group that responds to the coming House investigations of the Biden administration, says that it does not matter if McCarthy wins or loses. “I think the die on the next two years has been cast by giving these people the power and the podium.”

By ensuring that hardline Trump allies such as Jordan and Greene will be highly visible – and authorizing them to pursue conservative grievances like the charge that the FBI has become “weaponized” against the right – Dach and other Democrats believe the House majority will reinforce the GOP’s image as the party of Trump precisely as more party strategists, donors and elected officials are insisting Republicans must move beyond him.

Dach says that the real show is going to be these extreme MAGA types. They are on TV every day, and it’s a bad day for the Republican Party.

Many House Republicans spent years appeasing Trump while they refused to certify the election of President Joe Biden. The GOP controls just a fraction of Capitol Hill, if it ever gets its act together and picks a speaker.

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.

Podhorzer said that there were only one Democratic governor in five states when he made his inauguration speech. Democrats are in charge of four of the five states, and nine of the 10 senators are Democrats. Democrats have done nothing but win in those places because they won’t get to vote for Republicans.

If you were in a place where new Democratic voters thought they had to come out to beat Donald Trump again, then the two Midterms were happening at the same time.

The Rise and Fall of the Quintessential Rebell: A Story from Kevin McCarthy’s Second Senate-Controlled Regression to Rep. Charlie Dent

That’s unlikely to create many problems for Republicans in the places where they are already strong. Republicans consolidated their control over the country in the last two years, and held governorships in many of the states that pursued the most conservative agendas over the past two years.

Nobody knows how this will end. Catch up with CNN’s live updates from the day. Lawmakers, needing to regroup after a third round of voting for a speaker, adjourned until noon Wednesday.

It’s a story of how 20 Republican lawmakers, despite obtaining most of their demands from Rep. Kevin McCarthy, simply will not support the man. The first two votes started with 19 holdouts, but grew to 20 in the third vote.

Some cracks in McCarthy’s support were showing in the third vote, when Rep. Donalds of Florida jumped out of his camp to support Jim Jordan.

By backing Jordan, Donalds joined the original 19, including people like Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas and Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, who are equally committed.

McCarthy’s opponents coalesced in a second round of voting behind Jordan, who used to coordinate these types of rebellions but who is now a McCarthy-backer with his eye on the chairmanship of the House Judiciary Committee.

According to CNN analyst, moderate Republican and former congressman Charlie Dent, Jim Jordan was the ring leader of these types of rebellions and he has trained them well.

“Now he ostensibly is trying to get these guys to back off and they won’t. He was the quintessential rebel and he cannot control them, which is why this is the most amazing thing I have ever seen on the House floor.

A Photo Op in Kentucky on Tuesday: The Bipartisan Robertson-Sundrum Senate Needs a Whistler to Save a Nation from Inflation

Republicans will find a solution and unite behind someone else. A floor fight in 1923 took nine votes. Before the Civil War, the votes could drag on for months.

Gaetz stood in front of McCarthy and accused him of selling himself out to get the speaker post.

If you look at it that way, this will be a very difficult year for the speaker who will have to raise the debt ceiling to avoid an economic meltdown.

The Republicans have to figure out what to do about it, said John King of CNN. We can’t come to a consensus on who should lead the House because we are supposed to be the governing party. We should not be concerned about immigration, what we are going to do about inflation, and America’s place in the world.

That’s all on hold until they find a leader. There will be a highly choreographed photo op in Kentucky on Wednesday about bipartisanship as House Republicans wrestle with how to convince their members who have no interest in the system that it’s working.

The Senate Republican leader, who just became the longest-serving senator in history, will appear with Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky, and the president of the United States, Joe Biden, to make an announcement regarding new funding to upgrade theBrent Spence Bridge. There will be an Ohio Republican, Gov. Mike DeWine, and an Ohio Democrat, Sen. Sherrod Brown, also on hand.

Beshear told CNN’s Kate Bolduan on Tuesday that the bridge project will help the region’s economy and update a key piece of infrastructure with $1.6 billion passed through Capitol Hill in 2021 in the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

Beshear said that there is nothing partisan about the bridge. He later added the bipartisan quintet would “announce that we’ve done the right thing for our people. It is pretty refreshing.”

He will have to find a way to work with whoever Republicans choose to be their speaker and to also find a way to deal with the lawmakers who are able to grind the government to a halt.

The “Never Kevin” caucus: the desperate man is going to vote all night, every week for a better congressman

The GOP had to make major concessions after right-wing radicals sabotaged his bid for power in six humiliating votes.

It is no longer believed that a fresh majority is going to come and do the American people’s business. The mess in the new House on Tuesday and Wednesday suggested that every tough vote, and even easy ones, in the new House could be gummed up by the reality of a dysfunctional majority when small groups of members could shut the chamber down.

The proposals popped up after the House narrowly voted to continue the search for a speaker until Thursday, despite the fact that they had just agreed on something.

The cheers from Republican benches in the chamber when the vote was over reflected the state of GOP management, which is unable to perform the only task it has- choosing a leader- and is preventing the functioning of the chamber.

“The country or Kevin McCarthy. A former GOP Rep., who is now a CNN political analyst, said that the latter should have more weight.

On the other side are a group of extremists, who are holding their party, the House and the country hostage in order to destroy the idea of governance itself. For them, chaos is the point.

Gaetz, who is the leader of the “Never Kevin” caucus, said he would vote all night, every week and month, for the desperate man.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/05/politics/mccarthy-desperation-speaker-analysis/index.html

A Groundhog Day in the House of Representatives: The Case for a New Speaker in the Context of Democracy or Desperation, or Should Congress Work?

There was a hint of a salve as humiliation piled on for the California lawmaker, but adivide in the anti-McCarthy block began to open.

Legislators who want big changes to the House’s structure reported progress in talks with McCarthy. If the talks succeed, Roy said he could bring over 10 votes.

If another day of pointless voting on Thursday prompt members to begin to consider whether he should step aside for a more universally trusted colleague, it would be a good sign. Republicans are upset that the hopes of quickly wielding power and blocking the administration have been dashed.

While another Groundhog Day in the House didn’t produce a new speaker, it did offer hints on how an endgame in the battle for the speaker’s gavel may develop. It also provided insight into the new balance of power in Washington and how Congress will work (or won’t) in the months ahead.

“If it’s the latter, it’s not as constructive because it shouldn’t be about the personality, it should be about the process, but I don’t know. I have no sense of how many are in either camp,” he told CNN.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/05/politics/mccarthy-desperation-speaker-analysis/index.html

The Right Side of the Democratic Dilemma: Enduring the Great TriUMPH into a Giant & Embarracing Demonstration

In impassioned floor speeches and interviews, Roy has argued that the House is finally having consequential debates. In recent years, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Speaker of the Senate John Cornyn have been involved in a fight that has reduced normal order and caused leaders to enforce party line discipline.

A huge omnibus bill like the one Congress passed in December has a lot of funding bills on top of it. GOP members on CNN made reasoned arguments for mending a broken institution, for opening the House’s business to the public and for conducting proper appropriations through committees with time for full debates, budget assessments and amendments.

Dan Bishop, a Republican from North Carolina, said he thought the democracy was working. You can only be satisfied with doing the same thing if you are not happy with Washington.

What do they want? The right-wing rebellion against Mr. McCarthy is rooted not just in personal animosity, but also an ideological drive. The holdouts want to drastically limit the size, scope and reach of the federal government, and overhaul the way Congress works to make it easier to do so.

This politics of destruction was sent into overdrive by ex-President Donald Trump, with his vows to drain the Washington “swamp.” SteveBannon described the deconstruction of the administrative state as his first priority when he became the chief strategist of the Trump administration. The problem for McCarthy – who has cozied up to Trump and often appeased the zealots – is how to negotiate with someone whose main aspiration is chaos.

Early on Wednesday, Trump delivered the kind of full-throated endorsement of McCarthy that the Californian must believe he was owed after his obsequious support of the ex-president following the January 6, 2021, insurrection.

Trump urged Kevin to close the deal and take the victory. “REPUBLICANS, DO NOT TURN A GREAT TRIUMPH INTO A GIANT & EMBARRASSING DEFEAT.”

It was a social media blast and Republican members would have jumped in line. But no longer. It did not appear to change a single vote.

“I disagree with Trump. This is our fight. I support Trump. I disagree with it. Kevin is the one who’s going to censor him,” Norman said. Boebert says that her favourite president called rebels opposing McCarthy and ordered them to knock it off.

Her rebuke was the latest sign that after two years in political exile, a disastrous intervention in the midterms and a low energy 2024 campaign launch, Trump’s juice isn’t what it once was in GOP ranks in the House. It is unlikely that this kind of insubordination would have gone down well at Mar-a-Lago, where the ex-president has strong ties with the Republican base.

Two Years of Defaming the President of the Kentucky House of Representatives: The January 6 Capitol Reaction and the Rise of Political Hate

The spectacle in the House on Wednesday had more in common with the chaos and recrimination that unfolds in parliaments in Europe or Israel, where it can sometimes take weeks or months to arrive at a leader or governing majority, than in the US House, where the vote for speaker is normally a formality.

In Kentucky on Wednesday, President Joe Biden appeared with Senate Republican leaderMitch McConnell to highlight bipartisan leadership over his infrastructure package.

Since leaving policing two years ago, I have drawn conclusions that have had to with the former president who set the January 6 riot in motion. The emotional and physical trauma that I and my brother and sister officers were in that day forced me to have a lot of negative opinions about him. Values I’d always lived by as an officer – like “back the blue” – were literally hurled back at me by the same mob that was viciously trying to cut us down.

Two years ago this week, I nearly died defending the US Capitol from an armed insurrectionists who attempted to overthrow our government, and they will be getting no sympathy from me. The violent insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol two years ago, almost taking my life, ignored my pleas that I have kids.

And that’s just to name a few examples. Without long term intervention by Republican top brass, the frightening trend towards violent rhetoric seems certain to continue.

And the conspiracists have a sizable swath of the public on their side: Politically-motivated attacks are on the rise across the nation and millions of Americans now believe that the use of force would be justified to restore Trump to the presidency. It’s important to reverse this dangerous trend.

The incoming GOP House leadership must find the backbone to condemn political violence and hateful rhetoric incited by members of their own party. It starts with defaming Trump, the de facto leader of the Republican Party. The incoming Speaker and the House leadership must demand that members of their party never again amplify language or take actions that put the lives of their peers or law enforcement at risk.

Republicans in the House have said the January 6 assault was a normal tourist visit. Some called for Nancy Pelosi to be executed for treason, while others posted antisemitic messages on Holocaust remembrance day.

Our leaders’ statements and actions have consequences. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has said that the insurrection on January 6 “would’ve been armed” if she had planned it – the same kind of heated rhetoric Trump used to rile up his supporters before they stormed the Capitol. (She later claimed that she was being sarcastic, and that the comment had been made in jest.)

The conspiracy theory around “grooming” has been promoted by many of her rightwing allies in the House. Illustrating this, irate protesters are over running story hour at local libraries and calling for the banning of books from neighborhood schools in the wake of such crazy statements.

The examples of recent acts of violence that appear to have been instigated by right-wing rhetoric are almost too numerous to name. The homes of three New York City council members were damaged last month by anti-gay activists because of their opposition to a drag queen story hour at libraries.

Gaetz encouraged voters to arm themselves at the polls, and there was intimidation of voters at the polls. Research has even shown that MAGA Republicans are more likely than others – including GOP moderates – to endorse violence as usually or always justified to advance their political objectives. There was a spike in the number of threats against the FBI after agents searched Mar-a-Lago.

Over-the-top rhetoric by GOP lawmakers is troubling enough. Unfortunately their extremist views also have been all-too-evident in their voting records. There are 146 members of Congress who voted against the results of the 2020 election and 35 who voted against the creation of the January 6th Commission.

And – what was for me a personal affront – there were 21 Republican members who, in an unconscionable action, voted against DC and Capitol Police officers like me receiving the presidential medal of freedom for our role defending the Capitol during the insurrection.

It might surprise some people who didn’t know me before January 6, but I’ve never considered myself to be a political person. Yes, I voted for Trump in 2016, after being turned off by the anti-police rhetoric on the left.

And sure, I dipped my toe into the last election, to oppose a few Trump-inspired candidates who I thought posed a danger to democracy. But I’ve never believed in politicians; I believe in people. I support two new groups demanding sanity and accountability from our politicians.

This week, at an event calling on lawmakers to ramp up the fight against political violence, I’ll join veterans, members of Congress, and the group Courage for America, (which I’ve helped to found and have a leadership role in). Courage for America is joining forces with another, new group Common Defense to call for a renewed effort to combat the kind of right-wing violence that almost ended my life. The planned venue for the event is the Capitol reflecting pool, where just two years ago, MAGA supporters erected a noose which they threatened they’d use to hang the nation’s Vice President, amid chants by the rioters of ”

            hang Mike Pence.”

A CNN Viewpoint on Political Violence and the Failures of Donald J. Boehner, the Founding Father of the House of Representatives Matt Gaetz,

Law enforcement was the perfect landing spot for a rambunctious kid without a clear sense of direction, and I was a troublemaker as a kid. Becoming a cop taught me to stand up for what’s right, and being an investigator taught me to keep revising and refining the conclusions I drew, as I gathered additional information.

Even though I was surrounded byviolent, shouting protesters, I was able to see my four daughters faces.

I want them to be able to live in a country where elected officials are accountable to the people they serve. Condemning political violence isn’t a partisan issue. It’s a moral one.

The CNN political analyst is also a professor at the university. He is the author and editor of 24 books, including his forthcoming co-edited work, “Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest Lies and Legends About Our Past” (Basic Books). He can be followed on twitter at #julianzelizer. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. More opinions on CNN are provided here.

Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, one of the holdouts against McCarthy, responded to the former President’s endorsement on Wednesday with a statement that seemed to mock Trump’s own rhetoric. It’s sad! Gaetz spoke. This doesn’t change my view of McCarthy or Trump.

The Republican obstructionists were still not budged after more than 10 votes. And while Gaetz cast a vote for Trump in the seventh and eighth round (and nominated him on the 11th), the prolonged deadlock was yet another sign that the former president’s power has diminished at a time when the 2024 presidential campaign is expected to ramp up.

Many other presidents have faced similar problems and Trump is no different. These leaders shift the political playing field and inspire a younger generation of politicians to do what they did. Former Speaker John Boehner, himself part of the Gingrich generation of Republicans that rocked Washington by abandoning old norms of governance and promoting a much more aggressive version of partisanship, repeatedly clashed with the Tea Party legislators he opened the doors of power to.

Over time, the acolytes demand more and become more extreme than the leader who originally welcomed them into the fold. This is what led Boehner to later blast Republicans like Jim Jordan as “legislative terrorists.” They were rebels and he had become the establishment.

The rebels did not heed the instructions of Trump, and relied on his approach to political combat. He helped to spur a younger, more extreme cohort to step up and demand power. It seems like the burn-down-the-house conservatives will do almost anything in their quest for victory to get their attention and they believe that chaos, instability, and divisiveness have great political value. It’s possible that some Trump loyalists are about to conclude that they don’t need him anymore, or at least that they no longer need to follow his every move.

Trump’s influence could be a factor in his defeat. Although he is unable to sway votes on Capitol Hill, he is likely to confront a number of politicians, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or former UN Ambassador to the UNNikki Haley, who are capable of presenting a more polished version of Trumpism. If the GOP is now full of Trumpian Republicans who have taken his playbook and run with it, then voters might want to choose someone other than Donald Trump to lead them into the next political era.

Earlier in the week, even an appeal from former President Donald Trump on Truth Social (DO “NOT TURN A GREAT TRIUMPH INTO A GIANT & EMBARRASSING DEFEAT … Kevin McCarthy will do a good job, and maybe even a GREAT JOB—JUST WATCH!”) failed to move opponents into McCarthy’s column.

But on Friday’s two-year anniversary of the worst attack on American democracy in the modern era, he’s finding out that even that supposedly career-enhancing bet is insufficient to unlock the votes of Trump’s heirs in the chaos wing of the GOP.

In another surreal scene on the Hill this week, one of those Republicans, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene – who has downplayed the insurrection and said rioters would have “won” if she was in charge – is complaining about the extremism of some of her colleagues who oppose McCarthy.

But even in the wake of the attack on the US Capitol, the right-wing media machine and a still-angry base of voters mean there are strong political incentives for disruptor politicians in the ex-president’s image.

Trump may no longer be in the White House but the circus-style politics that he built on a foundation of rebellion in the GOP is back and has tied Washington in knots again. As a mark of how bad things are, the impasse over the speaker has prevented the GOP from even properly taking power given that lawmakers cannot be sworn in before a leader has been selected.

But that narrow margin – which will also put the majority in a precarious position on must-pass legislation like funding the government and raising the debt ceiling later on – is the direct result of voters being alienated by the ex-president’s incessant, false claims of 2020 voter fraud and the party failing to deliver the “red wave” many Republicans had predicted.

McCarthy deserves a big share of the blame for the spectacle of a legislative majority spending days trying to organize itself, wrote Jill Filipovic. “McCarthy, who in the early days after the January 6 attack said (President Donald) Trump bore responsibility for it but didnt support his impeachment and who aided conservative extremists into office and then protected them, is experiencing the all-too-predictable result of handing power to the crazy, as I wrote before McCarthy was elected.

According to Boebert, the country was watching democracy in action, even as McCarthy repeatedly racked up around 200 votes from his conference while his various radical opponents could only attract around 20. Since Democrats supported Hakeem Jeffries, who got more votes than McCarthy yet was short of the 218 votes needed in the House, it was impossible to get a majority of the House’s support.

“This is not chaos. This is a constitutional republic at work. This is actually a really beautiful thing,” Boebert said. Rules and procedures were the most basic elements of governing that Trump wanted to disrupt with his efforts to overturn the certification of the 2020 Electoral College votes.

Kevin McCarthy, the reality of the rebels, and the election of he became the first speaker in the 2022 re-election

The reality of the rebels behavior was the main point of her arguments. Many other Republicans have complained that it is not clear exactly what concessions the group around Gaetz, who have vowed to never support McCarthy, actually want.

The most extreme conservatives will only accept a candidate that shares their no compromise, Nihilistic form of politics that makes governing impossible.

The demands are the culmination of anti-government forces first unleashed decades ago by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. They were also the genesis of the anti-Washington Tea Party movement in the 2000s. Much of the governing wing of the GOP was driven out by Trump, who brought down accountability in the government from within as president.

Still, a McCarthy ally, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, told CNN that he was confident that a deal could clear the way soon for a solution to the impasse.

After a humiliating three-day stretch of 11 consecutive defeats in an election that is now the most protracted such contest since 1859, Mr. McCarthy dispatched his emissaries Thursday night to finalize terms with the ultraconservative rebels, including agreeing to conditions he had previously refused to countenance in an effort to sway a critical mass of defectors.

They included allowing a single lawmaker to force a snap vote at any time to oust the speaker, a rule that would effectively codify a standing threat that Mr. McCarthy would be at the mercy of hard-right lawmakers at all times, and could be removed instantly if he crossed them.

Is there a better way to deal with McCarthy? A big factor in Mr. McCarthy’s favor is that no viable candidate has emerged to challenge him, but Republicans could coalesce around someone else. Steve Scalise, the No. 2 Republican in the House, is seen by many as the most obvious backup.

Good news; those days are back. The failure of the “red wave” in the 2022 midterms and Trump’s subsequent diminishment have had a reverse-wave effect: It’s like watching a wall of water roll backward, exposing the old coastline, the political topography that the water covered up. Kevin McCarthy did not belong to the Trump era because of his embarrassing struggle to claim the speakership. It’s the old world come again, the G.O.P. ancien regime with all its dysfunctions, stalemates and futility.

Not that the flood didn’t change the landscape. Some of the House Republicans who are at war with McCarthy are Tea Party members, but others are more right wing celebrities and brands. The Senate could play a different role in battles of Republican populism, since figures like J.D., Josh, and Tom Cotton are not libertarians. The national party and its ambitious governors are now more likely to be fighting over cultural issues than fiscal ones. Trump is not done.

The tumultuous tale of Frederick Huntington Gillett during his 1923 runaway victory in the U.S. House of Representatives

The weekly column can be sign up to be a newsletter. We are examining the best, smartest opinions from CNN and other outlets.

The model of a New England gentleman was Frederick Huntington Gillett. He graduated from Harvard law School and went onto serve in the US House. Gillett was so calm and laid back that a reporter joked that he would refuse coffee in the morning for fear it would keep him awake.

His offensiveness helped him win the support of his Republican colleagues for House Speaker in 1919 and 1921. But in 1923, a small group of progressive Republicans blocked Gillett, denying him victory until the ninth ballot, which came after party leaders agreed to rule changes giving rank-and-file members more influence.

“Even if McCarthy manages to squeak out the leadership, a powerful and vocal contingent of his party has publicly humiliated him and expressed their lack of confidence in his control,” she observed.

Will the House Republicans hold America’s credit rating hostage if they don’t raise the debt ceiling? What kind of oversight will they exercise over the Biden administration? Will they deny aid to the Ukranians? And will McCarthy be able to effectively lead?

The speakership drama extended through the second anniversary of January 6, 2021, when rioters stormed the Capitol to try to block the certification of Joe Biden’s election as president. Police drew their guns at the door of the House chamber to protect it from members who were later evacuated.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/08/opinions/kevin-mccarthy-chaotic-victory-opinion-column-galant/index.html

Timing the Life of a Buffalo Lions Wide Receiver: Chuck Hughes Jr. and his 50-Two Years After the Hughes Trage

Americans were holding their breath when Hamlin collapsed after tackling a rival player. Hamlin was resuscitated on the field and by the end of the week, he was able to talk and move his limbs.

Coy Wire, who played for the Bills and the Atlanta Falcons before becoming a journalist, wrote, “I’m reminded of the brutal nature of the sport I love, feeling the physical pains from my nine seasons in the NFL. I have a titanium plate and four screws in my neck. I had a concussion in Buffalo and had no recollection of it until I watched the game the next day. I remember how frightening injuries can be.

Mental wounds were reopened when the scene unfolded on Monday and players felt tears pouring down on them.

A former high school and college football player is watching his two sons play a game of playground football just hours before Hamlin’s collapse. “I was talking to another dad who, like me, played college football and has an 8-year-old son (one year older than my oldest). We chatted about his son’s first experience playing full tackle football in pads this fall. I don’t think my son should hit that early. Or maybe ever. I just can’t.”

The story of Chuck Hughes, the Detroit Lions wide receiver who died of a heart attack on the field in 1971 at Tiger Stadium, was told by Jeff Pearlman. Less than 10 minutes after Hughes’ body was taken off the field, the game was back on, Pearlman noted. But times haven’t been the same for a while. “Fifty-two years after the Hughes tragedy, the Bills-Bengals game was rightly suspended after Hamlin’s collapse…”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/08/opinions/kevin-mccarthy-chaotic-victory-opinion-column-galant/index.html

The Prince Harry-Mumford-Drexler Conjecture: A Tale of Two Princes, One Family, and One Baby: The Way of Water

“If the Russian account is accurate, it was the cell phones that the novice troops were using in violation of regulations that allowed Ukrainian forces to target them most accurately,” Andelman wrote. The mistakes by the Russian military are getting more and more blatant as the Makiivka attack shows. Putin’s most ardent apologists have now begun turning on the military establishment.”

“Avatar: The Way of Water” may be on its way to earning as much as $2 billion at the box office, but Jeff Yang was wary of going to see director James Cameron’s sequel until his 14-year-old son persuaded him. “Though I’d recalled feeling like the 2009 original was more of a weirdly off-putting immersive experience than an actual motion picture,” Yang wrote, “Cameron’s masterful narrative instincts and intricate worldbuilding overwhelmed my reflexive cynicism…for the first half hour of ‘Way of Water”s epic three-hour running length, anyway.”

The fans will laud the creativity and attention to detail, but they won’t know how much of the franchise’s incredible worldbuilding isjust an act of elaborate Collage, snapping together elements from scores of our world.

Prince Harry chose to call his new book “Spare”, because he believes that people in the line of succession need an heir and a spare.

The book’s revelations are already being called “jaw-dropping,” but there’s a basic contradiction in the continuing saga of Harry, Meghan and the royal family, wrote Peggy Drexler.

Harry and Meghan quit the family “amid complaints that they preferred a private life as ‘regular people,’ no longer wanting the media attention that came with being royals, including being tabloid fodder. Harry said in an interview that he wants a family. Not an institution.

It’s fodder. The gossipy allegations that Harry makes about William in the movie, include that William knocked Harry to the floor and left him scratched and bruised, and that William and his wife, Kate, were responsible for encouraging Harry.

“Competition between children is common, and sibling rivalry between brothers even more so, especially when there are just two of them,” noted Drexler, a psychologist. “Certainly, most aren’t born into families with set hierarchies that serve to remind them of their exact place. But brotherly discord has existed throughout time, inspiring countless works of art in all spheres (most of them tragedies). Harry is one of the commonest dramas in human nature.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson and the FY2021 Capitol Insurrection: Where are we heading? What are we going to do? How will the California Republican fight for border security?

This week, in his most stunning move yet, McCarthy is giving Fox News host Tucker Carlson exclusive access to security footage of the January 6, 2021, US Capitol insurrection. The move may fuel Carlson’s false claims and conspiracies about a heinous attack on American democracy. In the past, the Fox prime time star has claimed that people working for the FBI helped in the invasion of Congress.

He isn’t giving them to the American people for them to see or to be published in all media at this time. The host of a conservative TV show is being offered access by the speaker. Had he wanted to create that ray of sunshine, McCarthy could have posted them online, tasked congressional committees to examine them or invited other media outlets to also view them.

“The voters of his district have elected him,” McCarthy said of the freshman in January, suggesting that to demand the resignation of the New York Republican would be an affront to democracy – even though it appears voters had no idea of the truth about Santos when they sent him to Washington. McCarthy has said that he could change his position if the House Ethics Committee found evidence against the district’s winner, which would be a blow for the GOP.

In a sign of growing trouble, a border security bill that McCarthy had hoped to pass early in the new Congress is still in limbo after moderates voiced fierce opposition to a three-page draft drawn up by conservative Rep. Chip Roy from Texas. The dispute underscores the fatal flaw in the GOP majority between right-wingers keen to appeal to the base and moderates who won seats in states like New York and California, where they could face difficult reelection bids in 2024.

CNN reported this week on bitter splits between groups of the GOP over the question of more aid for Ukraine. McCarthy supports support for the Kyiv government, but is against a ‘blank check’ for Zelensky in a nod to legislators like Gaetz and Guatz who oppose multi-billion dollar US aid packages. The speaker’s position is allowing him to avoid alienating either faction so far, but it will come under fierce pressure when massive requests for arms and ammunition for Ukraine arrive on Capitol Hill.

The California Republican may end up with a fateful choice between backing the lawmakers who elected him speaker and crashing the economy, since, if he tried to grant Biden such authority by using some Democratic votes, it’s possible he’d be toppled.

Emails and other documents made public in the suit show, for example, that Tucker Carlson believed that the claims that Dominion corrupted its software to allow voter fraud were false: “The software shit is absurd,” he wrote. When, however, Jacqui Heinrich, a Fox reporter, tweeted “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” Carlson texted his Fox colleagues Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham: “Please get her fired,” adding that “It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. It was not a joke.

The return of the repressed and the genie in the bottle: Trump without conspiracy theorizing is a nonentity: a response to My. J. C. Herf

“The inclination to conspiracy and paranoia is the bond that links Trump to the far right,” Jeffrey C. Herf, a historian at the University of Maryland, wrote in an emailed response to my inquiry. “Trump without conspiracy theorizing is a nonentity,” he added, in a comment with wider applicability to the contemporary conservative movement.

Trump’s core voters, Herf continued, “love him for expressing their resentments, and for pointing to tangible targets for their anger. The neo-Nazi riots in Virginia indicated to Trump that his people were both racist and antisemitic.

was one of national liberation for constituencies whose anger had been growing since the 1960s. He smashed taboos. His rallies were very freeing and a huge rush of joy for his supporters. It was the return of the repressed, a cultural counterrevolution, a genie that was now out of the bottle. It takes time to put the genie in the bottle after unleashing those hatreds.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/01/opinion/trump-desantis-2024-campaign.html

What Donald Trump (Dallas) Has Learned About His Gout and His Implications for the Establishment Wing of the Party

This is not so much a dilemma for Trump, who has always catered assiduously to his followers with only the feeblest attempts to expand his appeal beyond them. It is a dilemma for the Republican Party, which is unable to win without the support of the MAGA group, but also has a hard time winning when they dominate the party’s image with the wider public. McCarthy and other party leaders seem more concerned about keeping the right happy than they are about long-term damage to the party’s image, which is hard to see how they could possibly move toward any more moderate tendencies.

It is obvious that Trump’s support depends on continuing to meet expectations he has created; doing otherwise might turn his audience elsewhere.

Trump has built his political brand and the loyal and fervent following of his base on both implicit and explicit expressions of grievance and fear of the “other.” He is dependent on projecting the right messages and ones that target groups but can be justified if there is enough blowback. He does not say anything antisemitic in his comments and does not claim to have known he was dining with an antisemite.

The same is true of contemporary G.O.P. Rouse argued in an email. The party fell in line behind Trump because they were tired of his politics of grievance, not only for Trump, but for those who embraced and promulgated it. And the ‘establishment’ wing of the party gets enough ambiguity to justify continued support of Trump and these members without much or enough political backlash.”