“It is a cancerous growth.”
— Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC), quoted by Rolling Stone, on Donald Trump’s influence on the Republican party.
“It is a cancerous growth.”
— Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC), quoted by Rolling Stone, on Donald Trump’s influence on the Republican party.
Matt Lewis: “Yes, he has always had a huge ego and that machismo image that so many Trump fans exhibit, but he wasn’t always an alt-righter. I know this because, well, I used to know Corey… To be sure, he was always an immigration hawk and a hard-core Second Amendment activist, but this is all within the spectrum of mainstream conservative philosophy.”
“The fact that Stewart is now running (and winning) as a alt-righter shows that this isn’t a case of a few bad apples—this is a systemic problem. The incentives (for attention, for buzz, for winning elections) are all perverse now. What this means is that ambitious opportunists have realized that the way to win a Republican primary is to go to the dark side.”
Politico: “Put a blond combover on the elephant. Take down the pictures of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan. It’s over. It’s Donald Trump’s GOP. The anti-Trump candidates are fleeing, and the ones who stick around are getting trampled. The chill has gone out among whoever’s left: there’s no more speaking up, and if there is, it’s just for the sake of a speech, a protest quote that quickly disappears. They chalk it up to party loyalty, or staying unified for the midterms. They say they still believe in the principles, but they don’t tend to do more than say the words. Then, when the microphones are off, they confide. They complain.”
“They nurse fantasies that there’s a reckoning coming, that maybe this will all end with the Republican Party nominating someone like Eisenhower. Or at least like Paul Ryan. And each time they watch another of their own go down, they wince, try to move on.”
Washington Post: “As a result, the Republican Party appears united now not by fealty to ideas or policies but to a man, one who defied the odds to win the presidency and who has magnetically drawn the party’s power bases to himself.”
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“Complacency is our enemy. Anyone that does not embrace the Donald Trump agenda of making America great again will be making a mistake.”
— RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel, on Twitter.
“We are in a strange place. I mean, it’s almost, it’s becoming a cultish thing, isn’t it? And it’s not a good place for any party to end up with a cult-like situation as it relates to a president that happens to be of — purportedly, of the same party.”
— Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), quoted by The Hill.
“Charlotte and Las Vegas are the finalists to land the 2020 Republican convention, with Charlotte in the lead,” the BuzzFeed News reports.
“Republican National Committee officials have been meeting and exchanging numbers with potential hosts for months and could announce a site as soon as next month.”
BuzzFeed News: “How do Republicans who don’t seem to care much for Donald Trump gently rebuke him without provoking his wrath or alienating his supporters?”
“They register a complaint about the tweets — or his attacks on the press and the FBI, or his mollifying of white supremacists — before pivoting to how, by and large, they’re delighted with his policies.”
“Those words are emerging as an operative phrase for many conservatives trying to reconcile themselves with Trumpism. Nearly 18 months into the Trump presidency, it’s both a verbal crutch toward fragile Republican Party harmony and a rueful but not exactly complete explanation of why most won’t abandon Trump.”
“An affiliate of a ‘pro-white’ group who marched in Charlottesville last year was elected to a Republican Party post in Washington state last week, part of his campaign to take over the GOP for the alt-right,” the Daily Beast reports.
“James Allsup attended the ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white supremacists chanted anti-Semitic slogans and one allegedly drove a car into a crowd, killing a protester and injuring more…. Fallout over the rally led to Allsup stepping down as president of the Washington State University College Republicans, a group he once boasted of taking over. Now he claims he’s on the way to taking over the local GOP.”
Jonathan Swan: “In 500 days, Trump’s hijacking of the formerly conservative GOP is complete — an astonishing accomplishment. The majority party in America is fully defined by his policies, his popularity with the base, his facts-be-damned mentality, his ability to control and quiet virtually all Republican elected officials.”
“Trump has wiped out a large portion of Obama’s legacy. He’s exited the Paris climate deal; signed major tax cuts, especially for corporations; confirmed an ultra-conservative Supreme Court justice and record numbers of circuit court judges; deregulated like crazy; exited the Iran deal; exited the TPP trade deal; repealed the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate; and moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing it as Israel’s capital.”
“New hardline immigration enforcement is in place, including separating children from parents of illegal immigrants.”
Axios points out that Trump “commands the second highest ‘own party’ approval rating of any president at the 500 day mark since World War II, behind only President George W. Bush, after 9/11.”
“There is no Republican Party. There’s a Trump party. The Republican party is taking nap somewhere.”
— Former Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), quoted by WDIV-TV.
“Independents have surpassed Republicans to become the second-largest voting bloc in California, according to a firm that analyzes county voter registration information for campaigns,” the Sacramento Bee reports.
“Political Data Inc. on Tuesday released its latest count showing that voters registered with no party preference now outnumber Republicans by about 73,000 in California. The company regularly collects raw voter files from county registrars to maintain an updated database of the state’s 19 million voters.”
Playbook: “California Republicans have been sliding into obscurity for some time. But this seems particularly ominous in the long term for House Republicans, who have 14 seats in California.”
“Since Donald Trump began dominating American politics more than two years ago, Democrats concerned about his policies and behavior have taken solace in a group of influential Republicans who have consistently assailed the president as anathema to the values of their party, and the country more broadly,” the New York Times reports.
“In the past year, however, influential liberal donors and operatives have gone from cheering these so-called Never Trump Republicans to quietly working with — and even funding — them. Through invitation-only emails and private, off-the-record meetings, they have formed a loose network of cross-partisan alliances aimed at helping neutralize President Trump, and preventing others from capitalizing on weaknesses in the political system that they say he has exploited.”
“The RNC paid nearly half a million dollars to a law firm that represents former White House communications director Hope Hicks and others in the Russia investigations,” the Washington Post reports.
“Last year, the RNC began tapping a pool of money stockpiled for election recounts and other legal matters to pay the ballooning legal fees of Trump and his associates drawn into the Russia investigations.”
New York Times: “While Mr. Trump remains an overpowering personality in Republican politics, he is mostly uninterested in the mechanics of managing a political party. His team of advisers is riven with personal divisions and the White House has not yet crafted a strategy for the midterms. So Mr. Trump’s supremely disciplined running mate has stepped into the void.”
“Republican officials now see Mr. Pence as seeking to exercise expansive control over a political party ostensibly helmed by Mr. Trump, tending to his own allies and interests even when the president’s instincts lean in another direction. Even as he laces his public remarks with praise for the president, Mr. Pence and his influential chief of staff, Nick Ayers, are unsettling a group of Mr. Trump’s fierce loyalists who fear they are forging a separate power base.”
Jim VandeHei: “Reversing one of the basic assumptions of politics, Trump has shown you can radically change a political party’s core beliefs and brand overnight. Only six years ago, the GOP’s Romney-Ryan ticket was preaching the evils of Russia, the virtue of free trade, the sin of deficits. With no debate and little resistance, Trump has flipped an entire party’s core beliefs. Turns out, voters are far more malleable than we thought — and candidates and presidents can change minds overnight.”
“We always assumed party affiliation was a prerequisite for leading a political party, and some political experience a must. Trump was a liberal Democrat and he hijacked conservatism. The hunger for something different is unmistakable, partly because a big chunk of voters have had it with conventional politics and politicians. No reason another exotic Republican — or third party, or even a surprise Democrat — couldn’t do the same.”
Reason: “In the Trump administration, it’s always infrastructure week. But it’s less of a legislative rollout and more of a state of mind. Despite promises dating back to the 2016, the White House admitted yesterday that there won’t be any infrastructure bill this year.”
“Whether you view Trump’s infrastructure plan as a smart way to leverage federal spending, another federal boondoggle, an on-brand political move with cross-partisan potential, or, like me, some mix of the above, the elimination of the bill from this year’s agenda is yet another reminder of how little Republicans have to offer in terms of substantive policy.”
” If anything, the party appears to be giving up on its long-held priorities, and replacing them with vacuous Trumpism. Loyalty to the president has become a substitute for a governing vision.”
Ron Brownstein: “The results of Tuesday’s primary elections simultaneously bolstered the Republican Party mainstream and demonstrated how much ground it has yielded to Donald Trump, particularly on the volatile issue of immigration.”
“In several key races, GOP primary voters rejected candidates who presented themselves as the most ardent acolytes of Trump, in terms of style, political agenda, or both. But the relatively more mainstream alternatives triumphed in those contests only after embracing much, or all, of Trump’s hostility toward immigration. That dynamic underscores Trump’s success at eroding resistance in the GOP toward his racially infused nationalism. And that could prove a defining gamble for the party in a nation inexorably growing more diverse.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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