“The GOP is increasingly defined not by its shared beliefs, but by its shared delusions… To be a loyal Republican, one must be either a sucker or a liar.”
— Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, writing in the Washington Post.
“The GOP is increasingly defined not by its shared beliefs, but by its shared delusions… To be a loyal Republican, one must be either a sucker or a liar.”
— Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, writing in the Washington Post.
New York Times: “Hispanic Republicans, especially women, have become something of political rock stars in South Texas after voters in the Rio Grande.”
“Valley shocked leaders in both parties in November by swinging sharply toward the G.O.P. Here in McAllen, one of the region’s largest cities, Mr. Trump received nearly double the number of votes he did four years earlier; in the Rio Grande Valley over all, President Biden won by just 15 percentage points, a steep slide from Hillary Clinton’s 39-point margin in 2016.”
“That conservative surge — and the liberal decline — has buoyed the Republican Party’s hopes about its ability to draw Hispanic voters into what has long been an overwhelmingly white political coalition and to challenge Democrats in heavily Latino regions across the country.”
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Washington Post: “Local officials, too, are facing censure and threats — in states from Iowa to Michigan to Missouri — for publicly accepting the election results.”
“The issue also could reverberate through the 2022 midterms and the 2024 election, with Trump already slamming Republicans who did not resist the election results. For Republicans, fealty to the falsehood could pull the party further to the right during the primaries, providing challenges during the general election when wooing more moderate voters is crucial. And for Democrats, the continued existence of the claim threatens to undermine Biden’s agenda.”
Said one Trump backer: “I speak for many people in that Trump has never actually been wrong, and so we’ve learned to trust when he says something, that he’s not just going to spew something out there that’s wrong and not verified.”
“If a prerequisite for leading our conference is continuing to lie to our voters, then Liz is not the best fit. Liz isn’t going to lie to people.”
— Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (R-OH), quoted by The Hill, on Rep. Liz Cheney’s (R-WY) future in the House GOP leadership.
Sen. Mitt Romney was lustily booed and called a traitor by the more than 2,100 Republican delegates for the party’s state convention, the Salt Lake Tribune reports.
The cacophony of disapproval only ended after outgoing party chair Derek Brown scolded delegates to “show respect” for Romney.
“Top Republicans are turning on Rep. Liz Cheney, the party’s highest-ranking woman in Congress, with one conservative leader suggesting she could be ousted from her GOP post within a month,” Axios reports.
“The comments by Reps. Steve Scalise, the minority whip, and Jim Banks, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, carry weight because of their close relationship with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy — who is openly feuding with Cheney.”
First Read: “That brings us to the GOP response from Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) who criticized Biden for not uniting America, for spending and taxing too much, and over the situation at the border.”
“But what his speech didn’t do was present an alternative, forward-looking political future — other than praise what happened during Trump’s presidency.”
A new CBS News/YouGov poll finds 58% of Americans say President Biden is trying to find common ground with Republicans in Congress.
In contrast, 61% said that Republicans were just opposing Biden as much as possible.
Virginia Mercury: “The Virginia GOP says 53,524 delegates have registered to vote in the party’s nominating convention next week, in which Republicans will select their candidates for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general.”
Virginia GOP Chairman Rich Anderson said it would be “the largest state party convention ever in American history.”
McClatchy: “Republican lawmakers are struggling to define him. The conservative base is more agitated about ‘cancel culture.’ And even former President Donald Trump is turning his attention elsewhere.”
“Right now, nobody inside the GOP knows quite what to do with President Joe Biden.”
“In the nearly 100 days since Biden took office, Republicans have not yet mounted a sustained, vigorous opposition to the new White House, slowed by a president who has avoided being villainized thanks — at least in part — to a low-key style that stands in stark contrast with his immediate predecessor.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was asked by Punchbowl News if Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) is still a good fit for his leadership team.
He responded that’s a “question for the conference” and added that if you’re at this retreat and talking about anything besides policy, “you’re not being productive.”
Jake Sherman: “This relationship — Cheney and the GOP leadership — is very near a breaking point. I’ve been focused on House leadership for a long time, and this is about as bad as it’s gotten.”
“House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said it’s imperative for Republicans to stay united if they want to take back the majority. But cracks are widening in his own relationship with one of his top deputies over former President Donald Trump,” Politico reports.
“At a retreat meant to craft a cohesive message for the party, McCarthy (R-CA) and GOP Conference Chair Liz Cheney (R-WY) illustrated the exact rift the GOP has fought to avoid. While the former president wasn’t even invited to the House GOP’s annual policy retreat here in the Sunshine State, his presence has loomed large over the three-day gathering.”
Peter Wehner: “The hope of many conservative critics of Donald Trump was that soon after his defeat, and especially in the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection, the Republican Party would snap back into its former shape. The Trump presidency would end up being no more than an ugly parenthesis. The GOP would distance itself from Trump and Trumpism, and become a normal party once again.”
“But that dream soon died. The Trump presidency might have been the first act in a longer and even darker political drama, in which the Republican Party is becoming more radicalized. How long this will last is an open question; whether it is happening is not.”
Will Saletan: “The Republican base is thoroughly infected with sympathies for the insurrection.”
“An anti-Trump conservative group is launching an effort to track and evaluate whether Republicans in Congress, in the group’s view, have acted to either undermine or uphold democracy and democratic values and what role, if any, they played in attempts to overturn the 2020 election,” CNN reports.
“The Republican Accountability Project has created what it’s calling a GOP Democracy Report Card, which assigns grades to Republican members of Congress ranging from an ‘A,’ which the group describes as excellent, to an ‘F,’ which it describes as very poor.”
David Brooks: “What’s happening can only be called a venomous panic attack. Since the election, large swathes of the Trumpian right have decided America is facing a crisis like never before and they are the small army of warriors fighting with Alamo-level desperation to ensure the survival of the country as they conceive it.”
“This level of catastrophism, nearly despair, has fed into an amped-up warrior mentality.”
“I can tell a story in which the Trumpians self-marginalize or exhaust themselves. Permanent catastrophism is hard. But apocalyptic pessimism has a tendency to deteriorate into nihilism, and people eventually turn to the strong man to salve the darkness and chaos inside themselves.”
Michael Strain: “Hawley, Cruz and other GOP politicians will likely find that their Trumpian style appeals to their party’s base, which remains enamored of the former president. But this style likely won’t appeal far outside it. These politicians seem to think they have the numbers on their side, representing ‘the people’ against a much smaller number of “elites.” They don’t. There is no silent majority.
“And the politics they are practicing is going to be less successful after years of rising wages than it was in 2016. The unemployment rate is currently 6%, and 2021 is going to see record-setting employment growth.”
“Populism peters out as incomes grow. The sooner Republicans realize this, the better.”
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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