DeSantis and Trump: Feud Update

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  The early stages of the 2024 race have begun.  The race between Trump and DeSantis is nasty. 

Zachary Basu at Axios:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is no longer veiling his presidential ambitions or his criticism of former President Trump, taking a new gloves-off approach in a wide-ranging — and rare — interview with British journalist Piers Morgan.

Why it matters: DeSantis and Trump have long been on a collision course as the two front-runners for the 2024 GOP nomination. Trump's escalating attacks on his former ally have become more personal in recent weeks — and now DeSantis is punching back.

Driving the news: Hours after igniting outrage in Trumpworld with a shot at Trump over the former president's alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels, DeSantis told Morgan that the "underlying conduct" in the Manhattan DA's investigation is "outside my wheelhouse.""

• At the end of the day as a leader, you really want to look to people like our Founding Fathers," DeSantis said when Morgan asked if personal conduct in a leader matters.
• "[I]t’s not saying that you don’t ever make a mistake in your personal life, but I think, what type of character are you bringing?"

"Truth is essential," DeSantis responded when asked if there’s been a departure from the truth being a key component of leadership. "We have to agree that there’s a certain reality to the world we live in."

This is one of the funniest tweets I have ever read. https://t.co/g6FVFVBwi7

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) March 21, 2023

DeSantis and Trump: Nasty Men

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  The early stages of the 2024 race have begun.  The race between Trump and DeSantis is nasty. 

Ron DeSantis is asked about a possible Trump indictment. He immediately blasts the Manhattan DA as a "Soros-funded prosecutor." But then he also says, "look, I don't know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair." pic.twitter.com/g63X2U3xlk

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 20, 2023

Ron DeSantis is asked about a possible Trump indictment. He immediately blasts the Manhattan DA as a "Soros-funded prosecutor." But then he also says, "look, I don't know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair." pic.twitter.com/g63X2U3xlk

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 20, 2023

Ron DeSantis is asked about a possible Trump indictment. He immediately blasts the Manhattan DA as a "Soros-funded prosecutor." But then he also says, "look, I don't know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair." pic.twitter.com/g63X2U3xlk

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 20, 2023

Trump: Wounded but Dangerous

 Our book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection.  Some Republican leaders -- and a measurable number of rank-and-file voters -- are open to violent rebellion, coups, and secession. 

Maggie Haberman at NYT:

To those who believed that the secret to banishing Mr. Trump was to deprive him of attention — that ignoring him would make him go away — he has shown that to be wishful thinking.

To fully understand that, one need look no further than the events of Saturday. The day began with a 7:26 a.m. post by Mr. Trump on his social media site, Truth Social, declaring that he would be arrested on Tuesday, even though the timing remains uncertain, and calling on people to “protest” and “take our nation back.”

The effect was like that of a starter’s gun: It prompted Republican leaders to rush to Mr. Trump’s side and to attack the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, a Democrat, who has indicated he is likely to bring charges against Mr. Trump in connection with 2016 hush money payments to a porn star who said she’d had an affair with him.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Trump ally, wrote on Twitter that Mr. Bragg’s investigation was an “abuse of power” and that he would direct congressional committees to investigate whether any federal money was involved — a thinly veiled threat at a key moment before Mr. Bragg makes his plans clear.

...

The authorities in New York City were already preparing for possible unrest in response to an indictment before Mr. Trump’s Saturday morning call to action. And while some Republicans did not echo his call for protests while defending him, relatively few publicly objected to them. Mr. McCarthy on Sunday seemed to split the difference, saying he did not believe people should protest an indictment and did not think Mr. Trump really believed they should, either, according to NBC News.

Trump Arrest: The Lights Are Blinking Red

 Our book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection.  Some Republican leaders -- and a measurable number of rank-and-file voters -- are open to violent rebellion, coups, and secession. 

It's the January 6 playbook all over again. https://t.co/e6bOmIPmRT

— George Conway🌻 (@gtconway3d) March 18, 2023

 Adrienne LaFrance at The Atlantic:

What happened in Portland, like what happened in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, was a concentrated manifestation of the political violence that is all around us now. By political violence, I mean acts of violence intended to achieve political goals, whether driven by ideological vision or by delusions and hatred. More Americans are bringing weapons to political protests. Openly white-supremacist activity rose more than twelvefold from 2017 to 2021. Political aggression today is often expressed in the violent rhetoric of war. People build their political identities not around shared values but around a hatred for their foes, a phenomenon known as “negative partisanship.” A growing number of elected officials face harassment and death threats, causing many to leave politics. By nearly every measure, political violence is seen as more acceptable today than it was five years ago. A 2022 UC Davis poll found that one in five Americans believes political violence would be “at least sometimes” justified, and one in 10 believes it would be justified if it meant returning Trump to the presidency. Officials at the highest levels of the military and in the White House believe that the United States will see an increase in violent attacks as the 2024 presidential election draws nearer.

GOP Staff Boot Camp

Our recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses campaign finance.

The iron law of emulation is at work. Conservative groups have made extensive use of dark money.  Liberal groups copied their example, and conservatives are copying them back.

Heidi Przybyla at Politico:

A group closely aligned with former President Donald Trump helped organize a “bootcamp” for GOP congressional staff this past February, training them on how to conduct aggressive oversight of the Biden administration, according to new disclosure forms filed with the U.S. House clerk’s office.

The sponsor, the Conservative Partnership Institute, counts Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows among its leaders and has been described as the “nerve center” for the MAGA movement and MAGA-aligned lawmakers. It was one of three organizations to host the gathering.

...

Among those who briefed the congressional aides was a former Trump administration official, an energy lobbyist and a reporter from Epoch Times, a nonprofit media company tied to the Falun Gong Chinese spiritual community and known for its conspiratorial, pro-Trump views.

Founded in 2017 and chaired by former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), CPI is a relative newcomer in the Washington conservative advocacy ecosystem. Yet it is raising massive sums — $45 million in 2021 alone — and rapidly gaining influence, particularly with members of the Trump-friendly House Freedom Caucus. Among fellows it lists on its website are Cleta Mitchell, one of the key attorneys who tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 election.

The Feb. 15-17 gathering was, according to disclosures, among roughly a dozen congressional staff trainings hosted over the past year at “Camp Rydin,” a 2,200-acre compound recently purchased by CPI. Situated in Cambridge, Md., the compound is named after Mike Rydin, a recently retired software magnate and advisory council member to the conservative group, Turning Point USA.

...”

According to an itinerary for the mid-February gathering, staffers were transported to the compound from The Heritage Foundation, a long-standing conservative think tank that also sponsored the event. Once there, they were offered the opportunity to attend 10 different panel discussions.

Blame America First

  Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses foreign influence and Trump's attack on democracy.  Russia helped Trump through 2020.  As Russia began its latest invasion of Ukraine, Trump lavished praise on Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. 

And Trump continues to blame  America first.

Trump says Russia is not a threat, our greatest threat is our American representatives, we need to reevaluate the purpose of NATO, and most of the people in the State Dept, DOD and Intel Services need to be fired so he can put the right people in. pic.twitter.com/9PC6PrONM9

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) March 16, 2023

Jeane Kirkpatrick at the 1984 GOP convention:

The American people know that it's dangerous to blame ourselves for terrible problems that we did not cause.

They understand just as the distinguished French writer, Jean Francois Revel, understands the dangers of endless self- criticism and self-denigration.

He wrote: "Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself."

With the election of Ronald Reagan, the American people declared to the world that we have the necessary energy and conviction to defend ourselves, and that we have as well a deep commitment to peace.

 

Democrats and Palestinians

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses foreign policy's role in US elections.

Lydia Saad at Gallup:

After a decade in which Democrats have shown increasing affinity toward the Palestinians, their sympathies in the Middle East now lie more with the Palestinians than the Israelis, 49% versus 38%.

Today’s attitudes reflect an 11-percentage-point increase over the past year in Democrats’ sympathy with the Palestinians. At the same time, the percentages sympathizing more with the Israelis (38%) and those not favoring a side (13%) have dipped to new lows.

Sympathy toward the Palestinians is also at a new high among political independents, up six points to 32%. However, more independents still lean toward the Israelis (49%).

Republicans’ views are unchanged, with nearly eight in 10 (78%) continuing to sympathize more with the Israelis while 11% side with the Palestinians.

Liberal Dark Money and Election Funding

Our recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses campaign finance.

The iron law of emulation is at work. Conservative groups have made extensive use of dark money.  lLiberal groups copied their example, and conservatives are copying them back.

Steve Miller at RealClearInvestigations:

Democrats and their progressive allies are vastly expanding their unprecedented efforts, begun in 2020, to use private money to influence and run public elections.

Supported by groups with more than $1 billion at their disposal, according to public records, these partisan groups are working with state and local boards to influence functions that have long been the domain of government or political parties.

Registering and turning out voters - once handled primarily by political parties – and design of election office websites and mail-in ballots are being handed over to those same nonprofits, which are staffed by progressive activists that include former Democratic Party advocates, organized labor adherents and community organizers.

Republicans have opposed such efforts, passing legislation in 24 states since 2020 curbing the private financing of elections. But the GOP does not have a comparable, boots-on-the-ground effort to influence election boards and workers, and the private-funding bans haven’t proved absolute in some states.

...

 Many of the progressive groups seeking to influence elections are connected to Arabella Advisors, a Washington-based, for-profit consulting company founded and led by Eric Kessler, a White House appointee during the Clinton administration.

Arabella’s projects, which include the New Venture Fund, the Hopewell Fund, the Sixteen Thirty Fund and Secure Democracy USA, had combined revenues of $1.3 billion between 2020 and 2021, tax filings show. Nonprofits supported by Arabella in 2020 gave out $529 million to “defend democracy.”

That coincided with the rise of private-public election partnerships as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated an estimated $350 million to the progressive Center for Tech and Civil Life (CTCL) to support local efforts in the pandemic-challenged 2020 election.

DeSantis: "A Territorial Dispute Between Ukraine and Russia"

 Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses foreign influence and Trump's attack on democracy.  Russia helped Trump through 2020.  As Russia began its latest invasion of Ukraine, Trump lavished praise on Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. 

Now DeSantis has joined J.D. Vance in the "Don't Care" camp.

Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman at NYT:

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has sharply broken with Republicans who are determined to defend Ukraine against Russia’s invasion, saying in a statement made public on Monday night that protecting the European nation’s borders is not a vital U.S. interest and that policymakers should instead focus attention at home.

The statement from Mr. DeSantis, who is seen as an all but declared presidential candidate for the 2024 campaign, puts him in line with the front-runner for the G.O.P. nomination, former President Donald J. Trump.

The venue Mr. DeSantis chose for his statement on a major foreign policy question revealed almost as much as the substance of the statement itself. The statement was broadcast on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” on Fox News. It was in response to a questionnaire that the host, Mr. Carlson, sent last week to all major prospective Republican presidential candidates, and is tantamount to an acknowledgment by Mr. DeSantis that a candidacy is in the offing.

On Mr. Carlson’s show, Mr. DeSantis separated himself from Republicans who say the problem with Mr. Biden’s Ukraine policy is that he’s not doing enough. Mr. DeSantis made clear he thinks Mr. Biden is doing too much, without a clearly defined objective, and taking actions that risk provoking war between the U.S. and Russia.

Mr. Carlson is one of the most ardent opponents of U.S. involvement in Ukraine. He has called President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine a corrupt “antihero” and mocked him for dressing “like the manager of a strip club.”

“While the U.S. has many vital national interests — securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness with our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural and military power of the Chinese Communist Party — becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them,” Mr. DeSantis said in a statement that Mr. Carlson read aloud on his show.

On September 27, 1938 Neville Chamberlain spoke in similar tones about Czechoslovakia and Nazi Germany: "How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing. It seems still more impossible that a quarrel which has already been settled in principle should be the subject of war."  

CA GOP: Sad Trombone

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. 

Seema Mehta reports on the CA GOP convention:

No presidential candidates attended despite the state’s primary taking place less than a year from now, and California offering the largest cache of delegates of any state in the nation. Orange County GOP Chairman Fred Whitaker referred to the 2024 presidential race as a “crusade” during an invocation Saturday.

Laurel Rosenhall's Friday report at LAT:

Will a prominent Republican jump into next year’s race to replace California Sen. Dianne Feinstein?

It’s a question that’s top of mind as more than 1,000 members of the California Republican Party and their guests gather in Sacramento this weekend for a convention that kicks off today.

The fact that no prominent Republican has so far announced plans to seek California’s open Senate seat is another sign of the decline of a onetime GOP powerhouse that produced two presidents and four governors in the span of just over a half century, reports my colleague Seema Mehta.

The GOP is now so marginalized in California that a Republican has not won a statewide election since 2006. California hasn’t elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate since Pete Wilson in 1988.

Republicans who ran in two of the last three Senate races in California did not make it past the nonpartisan primary, allowing two Democrats to advance to the general election in 2016, when then-Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris won over Rep. Loretta Sanchez, and in 2018 when Feinstein won reelection over Kevin de León, who serves on the Los Angeles City Council.

In 2022, appointed incumbent Alex Padilla easily dispatched GOP challenger Mark Meuser 61-39% 

GOP registration in California dropped from 35.21% in 2002 to 23.85% in 2022.

Turnout 2022

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. 

Drew DeSilver at Pew:

After soaring in 2018 compared with the previous midterm, voter turnout in the 2022 midterm elections for the U.S. House of Representatives fell back to, if not Earth, then at least the lower atmosphere.

Nationwide, nearly 107.7 million valid votes were cast in the 2022 House elections, representing about 45.1% of the estimated voting-eligible population, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of official returns from all 50 states. That was down from 48.1% turnout in 2018 – when midterm voting reached levels not seen in more than a century – but still higher than the 34.4% turnout rate for House elections in the 2014 midterms.

...

In 2022, 35 House seats, or 8% of the total, were noncompetitive or, at best, lightly competitive between parties, meaning that only one major party was represented on the ballot. (Republicans won 23 of those seats and Democrats won 12.) In 16 of these districts only one candidate was listed on the ballot, with opposition – if any – limited to write-in candidates. In 13 additional districts, a single major-party candidate faced only minor-party or independent opposition. And in six California districts, the November election was between two Democrats, due to that state’s “top two” primary system.

Republicans and Asian Americans

In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020.

 Ruy Teixeira at AEI:

Even in 2020, there were signs of defection in congressional races in California and in other local races. Like Hispanics, Asian voters were concerned about public safety and rejected demands to defund the police. Asian voters in California, New York and Virginia were also upset by the Democrats’ support for aggressive affirmative action policies that would be at their expense, since in gifted and talented high schools and in top-tier colleges, they were enrolled at percentages well above their percentage in the population and would be harmed by the imposition of the kind of quota systems Democrats were supporting. Partly in reaction to this, Asian neighborhoods in New York City swung by double digits toward Trump in 2020. In California, Asians, as well as Hispanics, played a large hand in the defeat of the affirmative action referendum, which lost by 57 to 43 percent.

In 2021 and 2022, Democrats also suffered from defections among Asian-American voters. In Virginia’s 2021 gubernatorial contest, victorious Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin got 44 percent of Asian votes. In that year’s New York mayoral contest, Republicans also improved over their 2017 performance by 14 points in heavily Asian precincts.

In 2022, Asian voter defection from the Democrats was more broad-based than in 2020. Nationwide the Democratic advantage among Asian voters declined 12 points relative to 2020. And there were abundant signs that Asian voters in many urban neighborhoods were slipping away from the Democrats. In New York City, the only precinct in Manhattan to vote for Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin was in Chinatown. In Brooklyn and Queens, Zeldin outpaced Democrat Kathy Hochul in the heavily Chinese 47th and 49th Assembly Districts and 17th State Senate District in Brooklyn. Zeldin also won the 40th Assembly District based in Flushing, which is dominated by Chinese and Korean immigrants.

More detail on these defections has just been provided by a very detailed New York Times analysis of Asian voter shifts in the Zeldin-Hochul gubernatorial election

Reagan, Trump, and Moral Equivalence

Forty years ago today, President Reagan gave the famous "Evil Empire" speech, in which he addressed the fallacy of "moral equivalence."

... I urge you to beware the temptation of pride—the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.

And on February 7 2017, Trump had this exchange with Bill O'Reilly:

O'REILLY: He is a killer though. Putin is a killer.
TRUMP: There are a lot of killers. Do you think our country is so innocent? Do you think our country is so innocent?
O'REILLY: I don't know of any government leaders that are killers in America.
TRUMP: Take a look at what we have done too. We've made a lot of mistakes. I've been against the war in Iraq from the beginning.
O'REILLY: Yes. Mistakes are different then --

A year ago, Gustaf Kilander wrote at The Independent:

Footage from 2019 has resurfaced of Volodymyr Zelensky looking less than optimistic as former President Donald Trump said he hoped the Ukrainian president would be able to work things out with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

On 25 September 2019, the then-US President Trump told Mr Zelensky at UN headquarters in New York City that “I really hope that you and President Putin can get together and solve your problem”.

The 18-minute media availability took place on the same day as the phone call between the two men from earlier that year was released, in which Mr Trump asked Mr Zelensky for a “favour” – to investigate then-Democratic presidential primary candidate Joe Biden and his family, specifically his son Hunter Biden.

 

Tucker's Bad Day

 Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. Trump and his minions falsely claimed that he won the election, and have kept repeating the Big Lie. 

Lots of big revelations coming out tonight in the exhibits to Dominion's lawsuit against Fox News.

Days before Jan. 6, Tucker Carlson wrote in a text message exchange about Trump: "I hate him passionately" and "I truly can't wait" to ignore him. pic.twitter.com/ykk5s4jvLo

— Will Sommer (@willsommer) March 8, 2023

"Tucker Carlson’s effort to rewrite history isn’t just laughably incompetent; it’s already falling flat," @RadioFreeTom writes: https://t.co/jPfD59EbT7

— Jim Swift (@JimSwiftDC) March 8, 2023

Trump and Echoes of European Rhetoric

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. 

This year's CPAC was illuminating.

Trump: "In 2016, I declared, 'I am your voice.' Today I add: I am your warrior, I am your justice, and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution!" Eerily an echo of rhetoric from Europe in 1920s-30s.

— Gary J. Schmitt (@GaryJSchmitt1) March 6, 2023

Ben Jacobs at Vox:

The speech felt like yet another milestone for the Republican Party, not just as the conference embraced Trumpism, but as the American right embraced a more continental conservatism. Trump spoke only hours after former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s speech, and Brazilian flags could be spotted throughout the crowd, alternating in patches with the Stars and Stripes and, above all, red MAGA hats. CPAC has increasingly embraced the global right—holding a pro-Viktor Orban event in Hungary last year, and partnering with those who minimized and denied war crimes in World War II in Japan. Not all of this is foreign to American politics—after all, the America First slogan was first used by the isolationists who railed against the United States supporting the Allies in World War II before Pearl Harbor. But this strain of politics had remained submerged on the right, popping up in Pat Buchanan’s speeches and Ron Paul’s newsletters. That’s not the case anymore. The question is just how dominant it will be in 2024 and moving forward.

Trump's Crazy Weekend

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. 

The universal tariffs and flying cars were the least of it.

Trump: "We will support baby bonuses, for a new baby boom! Oh, you men out there are so lucky. You are so lucky, men." pic.twitter.com/kNWIjBoTcI

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 5, 2023

Trump: I am your retribution pic.twitter.com/tA8MvKvcHF

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 4, 2023

Pompeo and Haley Bomb at CPAC

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  The early stages of the 2024 race have begun.

Tal Axelrod at ABC:

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dished red meat to the GOP grassroots at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) but faced a tepid response in front of a largely pro-Donald Trump crowd.

Haley, who launched her presidential bid last month, and Pompeo, who has said he's considering a run of his own, laid into Democrats during their speeches as they tried to gin up support for their challenges to former President Trump, hitting on topics that typically rile up the crowd at the annual gathering.

...

But in a sign of how tough of a climb the two have at winning over a grassroots still largely in line behind Trump, both were met with largely lukewarm responses during pauses seemingly intended for applause.

Haley was also confronted by supporters of the former president who yelled "Trump 2024" at her shortly after leaving the ballroom where she gave her speech.

Several Trump supporters at CPAC shouted “Trump, 2024!” at Nikki Haley in the hallways after her speech.

“Conservatives lose when we fight each other,” another man chimed in. pic.twitter.com/ZlW5THhOvF

— Libby Cathey (@libbycathey) March 3, 2023

CPAC Keeps Getting Nuttier

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. 

Charlie Sykes at MSNBC:

For years, CPAC has been known as the “Star Wars bar scene” of the conservative movement. But in the Trump era, the event increasingly felt like a cult gathering. A few years ago, the conference featured a golden statue of Trump, prompting widespread ridicule. And current CPAC leader Matt Schlapp seems to be relying more and more on fringe figures for its featured speakers.

This year, Schlapp has assembled a roster of B-list Trump loyalists, including former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, Donald Trump Jr, his fiancée Kimberly Guilfoyle, and GOP Reps. Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ronny Jackson, Jim Jordan, Scott Perry and Elise Stefanik. Election denier and failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and My Pillow Guy Mike Lindell will also get (arguably) coveted speaking slots.

Another featured speaker: recently defeated Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who will be filling the slot apparently reserved for authoritarian strong figures like Hungary’s Viktor Orban, who spoke at a CPAC event last year, and fascist-adjacent wannabes like France’s Marion Le Pen, who spoke to the group in 2018.

Of course, Donald Trump himself will headline the event.

DeSantis Uses Police Against Trumpists

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  The early stages of the 2024 race have begun.

Zachary Petrizzo at The Daily Beast:

A group of Trump supporters were asked to leave a Ron DeSantis book signing event, in a sign of growing tensions between the two former pals. In a video shared by far-right personality Laura Loomer, a group clad in Trump regalia waves Trump flags and signs outside Books-a-Million in Leesburg, Florida—before being confronted by a security guard. “They told me to say anyone wearing Trump has to go right now,” the guard explains, as the supporters react with shock. “Free speech,” one yells. Speaking to The Daily Beast, Loomer said that some of the people in the group had tickets to the event to meet the potential 2024 candidate, but were not let inside due to their pro-Trump attire. “Police showed up and they told us that we were going to be cited and arrested for trespassing if we didn’t leave because DeSantis didn’t want us inside. It shows that he’s a tyrant.” The group eventually left after police showed up. The Leesburg Police Department didn’t immediately return The Daily Beast’s request for comment.

Trump v. Murdoch

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. Trump and his minions falsely claimed that he won the election, and have kept repeating the Big Lie. 

Dan Ladden-Hall at The Daily Beast:

Donald Trump is furious with his former ally Rupert Murdoch after the media mogul made astonishing admissions that some of his Fox News hosts “endorsed” lies that the 2020 election had been “stolen.” Murdoch, 91, also said in a deposition unsealed on Monday that he wished his organization had been “stronger in denouncing” the false narrative that the election was rigged by corrupt voting machines. Dominion Voting Systems is suing Fox News for $1.6 billion over the issue—but the network denies defamation. “Why is Rupert Murdoch throwing his anchors under the table, which also happens to be killing his case and infuriating his viewers, who will again be leaving in droves—they already are,” Trump fumed on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday. “There is MASSIVE evidence of voter fraud & irregularities in the 2020 Presidential Election,” Trump continued, pointing to Dinesh D’Souza’s conspiracy film 2000 Mules as evidence.

Decline of Competition in House Races

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.

From FairVote:

Out of the 435 U.S. House elections in 2022, five out of every six races were decided by more than 10 percentage points. The average margin of victory for winners in contested elections was 27 percentage points. And that’s not counting the 32 seats (one out of every 13) that went uncontested by one of the major parties, compared to 27 uncontested seats in 2020.

Competition has been steadily decreasing since 2018 – in 2022, only 36 races were true toss-ups (a final margin within 5%), compared to 44 in 2018. The number of "competitive" races (final margin between 5% and 10%) has fallen from 45 to 35. Even the number of races where the final margin was between 10% and 20% fell significantly, from 81 to 73. Meanwhile, the number of landslides and completely uncontested races has jumped from 265 to 291.

While this lack of competition is a national problem, individual states’ performance on these and other key measures of democracy and accountability vary greatly.

Working the Refs for 2024

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  The early stages of the 2024 race have begun.

Michael Scherer, Josh Dawsey and  Maeve Reston at WP:

Donald Trump’s team has launched a nationwide campaign to buttress his chances of getting sympathetic delegates at next year’s nominating convention and identify opportunities to shape party rules that could help his campaign, according to people familiar with the plans.

The behind-the-scenes effort comes at a time when most Trump rivals have not even launched campaigns and focuses on the most esoteric part of the Republican nominating process — the state rules and party leaders that actually select presidential nominating delegates.

His team has invited state party officials to Mar-a-Lago, arranged private meet-and-greets between state leaders and Trump as he travels, endorsed state officials they believe will be supportive of him and met with senior Republican Party officials in Washington to discuss how the delegate selection process will unfold, according to the people directly familiar with the efforts, who like many for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Trump advisers say the outreach is less about demanding changes now and more about cultivating relationships for the upcoming months — when they could call for some rule changes in states and try to shape who the delegates are for the convention. It also shows that while they are projecting political strength, there is a realization that they will likely face a long and difficult nomination fight and potentially a messy convention, some Trump advisers say.

Off-off Year Elections in 2023

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.

Aaron Blake at WP:

Four states held special elections or primaries on Tuesday, and all four were encouraging for Democrats:

• A much-watched primary for a crucial Wisconsin Supreme Court seat was technically nonpartisan, but featured two candidates clearly more aligned with the left and two competing to be the conservative candidate. The left-leaning candidates combined for 54 percent, while the right-leaning ones combined for 46 percent; the field is now narrowed to two candidates, one left-leaning and one right-leaning. (This is in a state that has been decided by less than a percentage point in the last two presidential elections, and where the first round in a 2020 state Supreme Court race was very close.) Also, the de facto Democratic nominee, Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz, is currently taking slightly more of the vote than the two GOP-aligned candidates together.
• In the special election for Virginia’s 4th Congressional District, Democrat Jennifer McClellan is currently winning by 49 points in a district President Biden won by 36 points in 2020. Compare that margin to those of the late Democratic incumbent Rep. Donald McEachin in 2022 (30 points) and the party’s 2021 gubernatorial nominee (who carried the district by 13 points).
• In a Kentucky race, Democratic state Senate candidate Cassie Chambers Armstrong won by 54 points in a district Biden carried by 30, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.
• And in New Hampshire, Democrats held on to a key state House seat in the closely divided chamber, winning by 11 points in a race that was literally tied on Election Day 2022. (The state reran the election after each candidate emerged with the same number of votes.)

The results come on top of a trio of Pennsylvania state House special elections earlier this month in which Democrats significantly over-performed in the 2020 presidential election results. That Democrats won the seats wasn’t surprising — the closest district favored Biden by 16 points in 2020 — but Democrats exceeded those 2020 margins by 14, 24, and 33 points with control of the chamber at stake.

Updated: U.S. House Special Elections, 1957-Presenthttps://t.co/q5mmq1eQyO

— Greg Giroux (@greggiroux) January 12, 2022

The GOP and Ideas

Our recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. 

Among other things, it has failed at developing and articulating policy ideas.

Gladden Pappin at American Affairs:

[With] voters not motivated by the top-line branding, the ability of realignment policy to mature into a governing approach is thwarted. On this score, much of the Republican Party has been plagued by well-intentioned half steps that are difficult to translate into a com­pelling national message. The Republican Study Committee is one such example. After several years of heightened discussion around the need for fiscally generous policies to support the American family, the RSC released its “Family Policy Agenda” in September of 2022. Any move­ments in the direction of robust family policy are praiseworthy. But as the political scientist Darel Paul has observed, the RSC’s agenda “is largely another collection of more savings accounts, more tax cuts, more privatization, more work incentives and less regulation.”7 With abortion now a motivating left-wing issue, the Republican Party knows on some level that it must become a pro-family party. Filtered through the GOP’s typical policy levers, though, the result is often halting and insufficient.

For the inside track of policy change to harness the outside track of voter interest, policies have to be translated into simple and compelling messages. At the overall level of voter messaging, however, the Republican Party has made few shifts. Seeking a message for addressing persis­tent inflation in the country, the GOP settled on blaming Biden and the Democrats’ “reckless spending”—a phrase it hammered in advertisements throughout 2022. Among voters concerned about inflation, 47 percent cited the cost of groceries as their chief concern. These voters tilted Republican by a twelve-point margin. Yet 25 percent of the electorate despaired above all of price increases in health care, prescription drugs, housing, childcare, and miscellaneous other purchases. These voters voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic Party—by twenty-four to forty-one points, depending on the issue. A message of decreased government spending makes working-class voters more rather than less afraid of the increasing costs of goods. Among voters overall, 53 percent hold the view that “government should do more to solve problems,” whereas only 46 percent judge that government does “too many things better left to businesses and individuals.” Here again, getting to 51 percent in states that count will require Republicans to modulate its messaging—not losing government-skeptical voters but governing in a tangibly conservative way. Yet two months before the election, the Heritage Foundation’s new president was once again out promoting the message, “Government is not the solution, but the obstacle, to our flourishing.”8