The Price Stefanik Paid

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. It also discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good.  Case in point: the infamous Elise Stefanik.

Nicholas Confessore at NYT:

When Congress reconvenes, many of the younger, more Trump-critical Republicans who joined the House alongside Ms. Stefanik eight years ago will be gone. So will all but two of the Republicans who voted to impeach him. Some in Congress believe that if Mr. McCarthy cannot corral the votes to make himself speaker, Ms. Stefanik could offer herself up as a compromise candidate.

Yet her position may be more precarious than it appears. Unwilling to acknowledge that her politics have changed, she has never offered MAGA die-hards a persuasive conversion story, leaving behind lingering suspicion. “One thing I’ve heard consistently from pro-Trump members is that the 180 that she pulled was just so jarring,” said one veteran Republican lobbyist who is in touch with a wide array of Republican lawmakers.

Among her fellow Republicans, according to Republican lawmakers, Hill staff and lobbyists, Ms. Stefanik has a reputation for being both diligent in advancing the party’s message and unabashedly transactional in amassing chits of support for her own climb up the ladder. But her campaign donations and endorsements have given her support that may be more broad than deep. For much of the spring and summer, while serving as conference chair, she quietly tested the waters for promotion to the next highest-ranking House job, that of Republican whip. As the race grew more crowded, however, Ms. Stefanik found herself without a clear constituency for the position. The party’s remaining moderates no longer saw her as one of them, and its right wing preferred a more consistent conservative. Only when another House member announced his interest in succeeding her as conference chair did Ms. Stefanik finally commit to running for another term in her old job.

News stories about the upcoming presidential campaign still mention Ms. Stefanik as a rising star who might join a Trump ticket in 2024 — a political pole vault that would carry her, finally, to the very top of the Republican Party. But within the president’s inner circle, according to two people close to Mr. Trump, stories casting Ms. Stefanik as a potential running mate are regarded as clumsy plants by her own team, and inspire bemusement and mockery. Mr. Trump liked her, they said, and liked watching her defend him. But even he didn’t trust her.

 

“Santos had fundraised off an endorsement from fellow New York House Republican Conference Caucus Chair Elise Stefanik( #NY21 ), who has been mum on the revelations.” pic.twitter.com/5wgIYQNlEz

— GARY HARTMAN (@GARYHARTMAN) December 29, 2022

"Frothy Polls" Distrorted Campaign Decisions in 2022

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

 Jim Rutenberg, Ken Bensinger and Steve Eder at NYT:

Traditional nonpartisan pollsters, after years of trial and error and tweaking of their methodologies, produced polls that largely reflected reality. But they also conducted fewer polls than in the past.

That paucity allowed their accurate findings to be overwhelmed by an onrush of partisan polls in key states that more readily suited the needs of the sprawling and voracious political content machine — one sustained by ratings and clicks, and famished for fresh data and compelling narratives.

The skewed red-wave surveys polluted polling averages, which are relied upon by campaigns, donors, voters and the news media. It fed the home-team boosterism of an expanding array of right-wing media outlets — from Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast and “The Charlie Kirk Show” to Fox News and its top-rated prime-time lineup. And it spilled over into coverage by mainstream news organizations, including The Times, that amplified the alarms being sounded about potential Democratic doom.

The virtual “bazaar of polls,” as a top Republican strategist called it, was largely kept humming by right-leaning pollsters using opaque methodology, in some cases relying on financial support from hyperpartisan groups and benefiting from vociferous cheerleading by Mr. Trump.
...

“These frothy polls had a substantial, distorting impact on how people spent money — on campaign strategy, and on people’s expectations going into the election,” said Steven J. Law, the chief executive of the Republicans’ Senate Leadership Fund, which poured $280 million into the midterms. Its own private polling showed no red wave at all.

The Year Is Ending Badly for Trump

 In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's record of disregarding the rule of law.  Our next book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection.   Trump and his minions falsely claimed that he won the election, and have kept repeating the Big Lie.  And we now know how close he came to subverting the Constitution.  

CNN reports on release of his tax returns:

Trump reported having foreign bank accounts between 2015 and 2020, including a bank account in China between 2015 and 2017, his tax returns show.

Trump was required to report the accounts to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). The filings show that the former president maintained foreign bank accounts in countries such as the United Kingdom, Ireland and China.

The China bank account, which was reported by The New York Times in 2020, was tied to Trump International Hotels Management’s business push in the country, Trump Organization lawyer Alan Garten said at the time.

The 2020 disclosure of business dealings in China came as the Trump campaign sought to portray opponent Joe Biden as a “puppet” of China. Biden’s income tax returns and financial disclosures showed no business dealings or income from China.

The returns also show that Trump paid more in foreign taxes than in US federal income taxes in 2017, the first year of his presidency.

In 2017, Trump paid just $750 in US federal income taxes because of large carry-forward losses that he claimed in prior years, negating virtually all of his American tax liability. Yet Trump paid nearly $1 million in taxes to foreign countries that year.

The fact that Trump paid foreign taxes isn’t in itself surprising, but it shows how Trump’s companies and businesses interests span the globe, and how those businesses are subject to local tax laws and regulations.

On his tax return, Trump listed business income, taxes, expenses or other notable financial items in Azerbaijan, Panama, Canada, India, Qatar, South Korea, the United Kingdom, China, the Dominican Republic, United Arab Emirates, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Grenada, US territory Puerto Rico, Georgia, Israel, Brazil, St. Maarten, Mexico, Indonesia, Ireland, Turkey, and St. Vincent.

 

Trump was asked about the Chinese bank account during the debates. He said he closed it before he ran for president pic.twitter.com/6uhTzmN1D8

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 30, 2022

Proud Boys as Wannabe Communists

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's record of disregarding the rule of law.  Our next book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection.   Trump and his minions falsely claimed that he won the election, and have kept repeating the Big Lie.  And we now know how close he came to subverting the Constitution.  

 From the final report of the January 6 committee (p. 511):

On December 30, 2020, [Proud Boys chairman Enrique] Tarrio received an intriguing document titled, “1776 Returns.”136 The document was apparently sent to him by cryptocurrency investors in South Florida.137 The file’s author(s) divided their plan into five parts, “Infiltrate, Execution, Distract, Occupy and Sit-In,” with the goal of overrunning several Federal buildings around the U.S. Capitol. The plan specifically mentioned House and Senate office buildings, setting forth steps for occupying them. The author(s) called for “the masses to rush the building[s],” distract law enforcement in the area by pulling fire alarms around the city, target specific Senators’ offices, and disguise participants’ identities with COVID masks.138

One proposal mentioned in the document is titled, “Storm the Winter Palace.”139 This is a reference to a dramatic reenactment of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, during which Vladimir Lenin ordered his forces to take over the Romanovs’ residence in Petrograd. The “Winter Palace” was the seat of the provisional government, which had held out against the Bolshevik revolutionaries. The Proud Boys would frame their actions on January 6th as part of the American Revolution. But the “1776 Returns” document shows their inspiration came at least in part from the Communist Revolution, which led to 70-plus years of totalitarian rule. No historical event has been less American.

There is an odd connection between the right and left.  Ex-communists such as Whittaker Chambers played an important part in the early days of the modern conservative movement.  And the modern hard right envies and imitates the hard left.

How Santos Won

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

Rep.-elect George Santos (R-NY) falsified most of his biography.

Steve Israel at The Atlantic:

When he ran against Tom Suozzi, my successor, in 2020, Santos was a complete unknown. I asked Suozzi if he’d found anything of note in his opposition research, but Suozzi said he hadn’t bothered to do much. “It was the middle of COVID,” he said. Santos “had only $40,000 in his campaign account, and he was a nut. We ignored him and won by 12 points.”

Santos ran again in 2022, maybe because he understood that being ignored was a strategic advantage. This time around, the DCCC prepared an initial research document that raised plenty of red flags. The committee turned that document over to the Democratic candidate, Robert Zimmerman, who says his campaign “was unrelenting in getting people’s attention.” But, according to Zimmerman, the prevailing response was along the lines of This guy isn’t going to win, so he’s not a story.

Only after Santos defied expectations did that dynamic change. And by that time, it was too late for voters to react to Santos’s long con. Here’s where media decline enters the story.

The media’s failure to dig into Santos shows the predicament that local newsrooms face in 2022. Newsday dominates the media landscape on Long Island. And its reporters do quality work—they turned out an important investigation just a few years ago that exposed racism in the local real-estate industry. But they don’t have the resources to cover everything—not even everything in their political backyard—and they appear to have written off NY-3 as low priority given the district’s Democratic tilt. So did all the other once-mighty New York–area media operations.

Some observers have also criticized Zimmerman’s campaign for not fully investing in opposition research based on the initial DCCC project. Perhaps that criticism is justified, but we shouldn’t let the Republican Party off the hook. Republicans accepted Santos’s narrative without due diligence because they prioritized extreme ideology over actual qualifications. Santos was at the Ellipse on January 6, 2021, and has even claimed that he helped arrested insurrectionists with their legal fees.

The Republican Jewish Coalition said New York Congressman-elect George Santos "will not be welcome at any future RJC event" after he misrepresented his Jewish heritagehttps://t.co/zrt0quFmpf

— Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) December 27, 2022

Trifectas Up, Divided Government Down

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

 NCSL:

Adding in the governors, state control is more unified in either the blue or the red column than ever, and the number of divided state governments is lower than ever.

As expected, when incumbent governors were on the ballot, they (almost always) won. Political control shifted in three open races, in Arizona, Maryland and Massachusetts. In all cases, Republican governors were replaced by Democrats. Only one incumbent governor lost reelection, Democrat Steve Sisolak of Nevada.

Before the election, Republicans had full control in 23 states, Democrats had full control in 14 states, and 13 had divided control—where one of the power positions (governor, House, Senate) is controlled by one party and the other two by the other party. The Maryland and Massachusetts results, along with Minnesota and Minnesota shifting to Democrats and Nevada shifting to divided control, put the party at 17. Republicans continue to hold 22 states, and the number of divided states is down to 10. That’s the lowest since 1952, when eight states had divided state control. Between 2000 and 2010, there were always 20 or more divided states.

Lumps of Coal for Kevin

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. It also discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. Kevin McCarthy faces intraparty opposition for the speakership.

the big problem for House Republicans right now is that if Kevin McCarthy is elected speaker, it will be a trainwreck. And if he's not elected speaker, it will be a trainwreck.

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 23, 2022

 Politico Playbook quotes Rep. Bob Good (R-VA):

— IDEOLOGY: “Kevin McCarthy is not a conservative; he doesn’t have an ideological core,” Good told us, echoing a criticism that’s been made many times over. “He kind of just floats with whatever’s politically expedient.” Worse, he said, is that “even those who are supporting him will privately tell you they know he’s untrustworthy,” Good said, citing conversations with colleagues who include a committee ranking member. He posited that McCarthy delayed key organizing decisions until after the Jan. 3 vote because “I suspect he’s promised … multiple people the same thing.”

Steve Benen at MSMBC:

In April and May of last year, the House GOP leader dispatched a trusted ally, New York Rep. John Katko, to negotiate the terms of an independent commission to examine the Jan. 6 attack. As regular readers may recall, McCarthy made sure to include unreasonable demands he expected Democrats to reject.

When Democrats agreed to Republicans’ terms anyway, McCarthy refused to take “yes” for an answer and rejected the compromise he’d asked for.

At that point, lawmakers moved on to Plan B: They’d create a bipartisan, special select committee to uncover the facts that McCarthy said he was eager to learn. As part of the process, GOP leaders were invited to recommend a slate of House Republicans to participate in the investigation, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had the final call on whether or not they qualified.

McCarthy picked five members, two of whom were rejected for being anti-election radicals, though Pelosi was willing to accept the other three Republicans chosen for the panel. Outraged, McCarthy quickly announced a boycott of the committee.

In other words, Pelosi offered him an opportunity to have three conservative Republicans participate in this investigation. He instead chose to have zero.

A year later, it became clear to much of the GOP that McCarthy failed to think this through. A senior House GOP aide told NBC News in the spring, for example, “I would say it’s absolutely a strategic mistake.”

 

The unsung hero of the Jan 6 committee, is @GOPLeader Kevin McCarthy, who pulled his choices to obstruct the investigation allowing for a smooth bipartisan investigation and presentation to America. Thanks Kevin!

— Adam Kinzinger #fella (@AdamKinzinger) December 23, 2022