hoot.smawley
4 hours ago edited
Name one Freedom Caucus leader who has actually built a coalition of GOP votes capable of winning that position. Just one. I’ll wait.

I actually support the goals of the Freedom Caucus and share concerns about Stefanik (and loathed Cheney), but here’s a harsh truth…not one of the members of that caucus has built any kind of base of support that could elevate them to leadership. Not one. They preen for the cameras, they complain to the friendly press, and they do little to nothing to actually lead when it comes to doing the work in Congress, so nobody votes to make them leaders. They’re grandstanders who alienate people, and so the only people with sufficient support to get promoted to leadership are the squishes.

We spend a lot of time trashing Dems, RINOs, and weak-kneed conservatives (deservedly so)…but we also need to ask why the people saying things we want to hear to friendly journalists (cough Gaetz) can’t seem to impress their colleagues enough to get a leadership position. Because that’s actually on the person pursuing the leadership job when they fail to perform. We can’t clear the entire path for them…they actually have to do more than produce a bunch of pithy soundbites in order to get promoted. And until they d0 that, Stefanik is an improvement over Cheney, so she’ll do for now. //

hoot.smawley writeofcenter
2 hours ago edited
There was an observation from Elizabeth Warren (when she first got into office) that at some point politicians have to make a choice between being insiders or outsiders. If you’re an insider, you get to lead and make changes and have authority, but the one rule is that you can never criticize other insiders. If you’re an outsider, you can say and do anything you want, but nobody with the ability to change anything will care what you think and you probably won’t accomplish much. And if you’re not sure which you are, you’re an outsider.

I happen to think there’s a middle ground between those positions…you can have sway and criticize insiders, but only if you’ve actually accomplished something impressive first and demonstrated your value. Usually that means you kept your mouth shut, focused on building smart legislation, did a solid job in your committees, and built up a raft of allies. Then you can start taking the big guys down a few pegs…you put in the work, you earn the respect from enough people that you matter. That way, you shift what qualifies as “inside” and you build your army before going to war.

Problem is that too many of these guys in the Freedom Caucus (especially Gaetz) just came to D.C. to play the R vs. D game and get their faces on camera so they can maybe land a gig on Fox like Chaffetz or Gowdy (two guys who ran their mouths a lot while accomplishing very little that mattered) did. You’re not going to build a winning movement by building around the mouthy malcontents who mainly produce hot air,

I suspect that middle way is going to look an awful lot like Ron DeSantis…who takes a lot of shots at the press and prominent Dems, but doesn’t take shots at his own party even when he disagrees. He stays in his lane and doesn’t alienate potential allies while dismembering adversaries.

While Cheney needed to go for a host of reasons, I’m just not sure we are improving our lot by rushing to anoint Stefanik as GOP Conference chairwoman. //

I’m a big believer in redemption and I would happily kill the fatted calf to welcome a prodigal child home, but nothing about this leaves me feeling all that good about what we’re about to do in the House.

The best thing you can do with biased media outlets is to laugh in their face and let them go whine. It makes them look small and petty. Most of all, it ensures that you are driving the ship and not the other way around. If they are reacting, they are losing. Every Republican should take notes on how DeSantis is handling himself because it’s the way forward.

Steve Bousquet
@stevebousquet
NEW: News media is barred from entry at Gov. Ron DeSantis’ signing of controversial elections bill, SB 90. DeSantis spokeswoman Taryn Fenske says bill signing is a “Fox exclusive”

Even more hilarious? DeSantis conducted an interview with “Fox and Friends” hosts as he was signing the bill. I laughed so hard when I watched this that tears were coming out of my eyes. Watch the segment below, via MRC-TV:

Republicans should be beating this drum day and night. They are the party of school choice, opening schools, and putting children first. Democrats are the party of selfish teachers’ unions and forcing kids into awful schools. There’s probably no bigger contrast within the political sphere, and Biden is playing right into that. The GOP should shut up about tax cuts for a while and make this a cornerstone of debate.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has charted his own course based on the real science, not science according to the Left. This was seen in his decisions to re-open the state’s economy in September 2020, keep schools open, how he protected residents in long-term care facilities, and prioritized Florida’s elderly (and most at-risk group) in the state’s vaccine rollout.

It’s not that DeSantis has been given good advice from advisers. According to Jayanta Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford University, the Florida governor does the research himself and actually understands the literature.

During an interview with "The Tom Woods Show," the professor said he’s "never met a politician like him" and called DeSantis "extraordinary."

"We had a two-hour conversation, about COVID policies, this is in September of last year … and he had read all the papers I referenced and not just my just my articles, lots and lots of other papers," said the doctor, who also has a Ph.D. in economics. "He knew all the details, it was a remarkable conversation. And then we had this like roundtable on September 25th ... and with DeSantis leading it, and the next day he lifted most of the restrictions all across Florida."

Bhattacharya explained the governor has "intellectual bravery" and is willing "to take a stand." Moreover, if DeSantis wanted to go up against any other governor—or epidemiologist, for that matter, he could, the doctor argued.

"I mean, most, most epidemiologists don’t know the literature as well as he does," Bhattacharya said. "I mean, I just, I don’t have the words… I’ve just been, I’m still stunned by it, I didn’t know anything about him actually, before, you know, basically before September really. I’ve just been very impressed."

If a GOP politician can’t stand up to prevent physical abuse of children, then that person doesn’t have any business being a Republican at all. //

I believe Hutchinson is term-limited for governor in Arkansas, but if he had any aspirations of jumping to the Senate, those are over. His career was effectively ended during this interview. //

Rachel Bovard
@rachelbovard
Hutchinson making a totally straight faced appeal to the "limited government principles" of Reagan and Buckley as a justification for allowing children to chemically castrate themselves show you how just how intellectually hollow the the GOP has become. //

What’s so nuts about Hutchinson’s reasoning is that he’s effectively making a pro-abortion argument. If he believes that he can’t involve his state in certain “medical” procedures, he’s endorsing the excuse given by the left to justify killing children in the womb. Further, what he’s saying is nonsense anyway. The state absolutely has a duty to protect kids in society and already does so on a variety of levels. By Hutchinson’s logic, why have child labor laws? Why have child abuse laws at all? Preventing children from being shot up with hormone blockers and chemically castrated is not government overreach. It’s common sense, and it’s completely consistent with being a conservative.

But Hutchinson thinks you’re an idiot, which is why he tries to hide behind the ghost of Ronald Reagan.

60 Minutes
@60Minutes
Campaign finance reports obtained by 60 Minutes show that weeks before Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced a partnership with Publix grocery stores to distribute the vaccine in its pharmacies, Publix donated $100,000 to his PAC. https://cbsn.ws/3rYmnHj //

The Partyman
@PartymanRandy
·
Apr 4, 2021
I don’t understand what the scandal is supposed to be. Publix wasn’t the only store distributing vaccines. No one is alleging that they pocketed the money or even that they did a bad job. The program was very successful.

It’s 100% trying to manufacture a scandal by implication. //

The Partyman
@PartymanRandy
It should also be pointed out that @60minutes got caught deceptively editing the exchange between DeSantis and their reporter.

They cut out a big part of his answer where he explained the process and made the reporter look like an idiot. //

Jared MASKowitz 😷
@JaredEMoskowitz
@60Minutes I said this before and I’ll say it again. @Publix was recommended by @FLSERT and @HealthyFla as the other pharmacies were not ready to start. Period! Full Stop! No one from the Governors office suggested Publix. It’s just absolute malarkey. https://twitter.com/jaredemoskowit //

Charles C. W. Cooke
@charlescwcooke
This is Jared Moskowitz, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management. He’s a Democrat, served as one in the state legislature until 2019, and campaigned for Gore and Obama. He’s not falling for this absolute garbage, and neither should you.

Of course!

They’ve obstructed Democrats hell bent on building a foundation of chattel slavery.

They obstructed the KKK becoming a mega-organization and reduced its numbers, taking away their political clout.

They kept the Democrats from keeping blacks secondhand citizens.

They kept women from being relegated to the kitchen and got them into the political arena.

They wanted to block creating a welfare state.

They kept trying to keep illegal aliens out of the country.

They kept fighting for a strong military to obstruct our enemies from invading us.

They obstructed people from barring minorities going to school with whites.

They’ve obstructed bills that hurt women and minorities.

They’ve obstructed bills that absolved people of their personal responsibility.

They’ve blocked people from trying to profit off a victim mentality.

That kind of obstruction is far better than the obstructing Democrats have done simply because of the hatred they feel…whether it be slavery, women’s rights, creating the Klan, segregating schools, Jim Crow laws, and these days, because they loathed a guy who they didn’t want as president.

And I am obstructing any comments to this answer…because deep down, you know I’m right. I’m just going to watch people’s heads pop off now.

McConnell then began to lay out how Republicans will respond if the filibuster is eliminated. Via Daily Wire:

“They are arguing for a radically less stable and less consensus-driven system of government. Forget about enduring laws with broad support. Nothing in federal law would ever be settled.

“Does anyone really believe the American people were voting for an entirely new system of government by electing Joe Biden to the White House and a 50-50 Senate?

“This is 50-50 Senate. There was no mandate to completely transform America by the American people on November 3.” //

McConnell said the notion that the filibuster is the only thing that stands in the way of Democrats ramming through their entire agenda is false.

“So, let me say this very clearly for all 99 of my colleagues: Nobody serving in this chamber can even begin to imagine what a completely scorched-earth Senate would look like.

“None of us have served one minute in a Senate that was completely drained of comity and consent. This is an institution that requires unanimous consent to turn the lights on before noon.”

Given the 50-50 split, McConnell reminded Democrats that the vice president does not break ties in determining a quorum.

“I want our colleagues to imagine a world where every single task, every one of them, requires a physical quorum. […] Everything that Democratic Senates did to Presidents Bush and Trump… everything the Republican Senate did to President Obama… would be child’s play compared to the disaster that Democrats would create for their own priorities if they break the Senate.” //

McConnell listed the following, as noted by The Daily Wire:

Nationwide right-to-work for working Americans.
Defunding Planned Parenthood and sanctuary cities on day one.
A whole new era of domestic energy production.
Sweeping new protections for conscience and the right to life of the unborn.
Concealed-carry reciprocity in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Massive hardening of security on our southern border.
Tough talk. Would he follow through?

Trump and his new campaign team are also cracking down on the use of the president’s name for fundraising — a huge draw attracting small-dollar donors. Three sources told us that Trump, who made his fortune licensing his name, has felt burned and “abused” by the GOP bandying about his name to haul in money.

His team has conveyed that any Republican or GOP committee seeking to use it needs explicit approval, according to five sources familiar with the situation. One Trump adviser said they’ve been sending out cease-and-desists to faux PACs using Trump’s name to fundraise, among other demands to knock it off.

In his 2018 book, Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends, Schweizer exposed an alarmingly large number of other tight connections the McConnell family has to the Chinese Communist Party. //

The Inspector general’s report that Elaine Chao used U.S. government resources to handle purely private matters relating to China—including putting federal employees at the disposal of her father James—ought to give new life to Schweizer’s shocking allegations.

As Breitbart reported way back in 2018, every single one has been confirmed by at least one major mainstream media outlet.

However, the media could have ended Mitch McConnell’s political career years ago had they chosen to give his troubling family and financial ties to China the same kind of blanket coverage they routinely devoted to unsubstantiated rumors and other, by comparison, less than trivial matters concerning Donald Trump.

Heck, McConnell probably would have been finished had CNN and the rest given any of this stuff the same level of attention they gave to Trump’s eating a second scoop of ice cream for dessert.

I wonder why they didn’t bother?

The first thing I noticed upon arrival and all the way through until I handed the valet his gratuity, hopped in my truck and headed home, was that everyone there was happy. They were glad to be there, to be part of what candidate Trump had first discovered into and what President Trump had tapped into and grown to vibrant vitality. They were excited and joyful. You could tell by the ambient noise level throughout the 3 day event. The excitement was palpable. //

want to focus on this unity thing. There was a lot of talk, especially by the pundits about unity. “Can the Republican Party unify?” was the question intoned by oh-so-serious pundits and political prognosticators of every political persuasion. Just what does that mean?

Thinking of that reminded me of the movie The Princess Bride. Throughout the movie, the “bad guy,” named Vizzini is continually saying words to the effect of, that’s inconceivable! Finally, the hero, Inigo Montoya responds You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. See video clip below. //

Unify the Republican Party? I’m all for it. But I don’t think that means what the establishment thinks it means.

Stay tuned

Added Bonus: Inigo Montoya was also known as a personal networking expert. Here is a sample his simple process for meeting other professionals in his line of work.

Polite Greeting: Hello.
Name: My name is Inigo Montoya.
Relevant Personal Link: You killed my father.
Manage Expectations: Prepare to die.

Simple. Effective.

See the video below

Establishment Republicans like Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, and John Thune are focused like laser beams not on stopping the Biden agenda or anything else beneficial to average Americans, but rather on purging the Republican Party of Trump supporters whom they despise. Where is their outrage about the job-destroying executive orders? The assault on constitutionally-guaranteed liberties? The insanity of permitting biological men to compete in women’s sports? The overwhelming belief of their own constituents who are certain the 2020 election was stolen? The opening of the border to a flood of potentially diseased illegal aliens? The soaring gasoline prices at the pump directly attributable to Biden’s actions? The House Republican leadership’s orchestration of the caucus vote that kept Liz Cheney in her position despite her vote to impeach? The purported RINO congressional leaders are AWOL and only concerned about consigning President Trump and his supporters to the dustbin of history. //

The gold standard of Republican candidates is receiving a Trump endorsement, as was clearly shown during the 2020 election, during which 120 of 122 or his endorsed candidates won election. //

President Trump’s clarion call at CPAC to restore the Republican Party to its core principles and boot Establishment Republicans and RINOs is the correct way-ahead. Do not be fooled by third parties or PACs not endorsed by President Trump, as those are diversions that serve the Uniparty, not regular Americans.

Data from the NBC News poll shows that the composition of the two major parties is changing, and one massive shift is coming in employment: the kinds of jobs Democrats and Republicans hold. There are signs across racial and ethnic demographic groups that Republicans are becoming the party of blue-collar Americans and the change is happening quickly.

If the movement continues it could have a large impact on the future of the GOP. //

NBC admits that the GOP had better economic messaging than Democrats, but warns that the majority of this growth took place during the Trump era and if the GOP continues to use the same tactics Trump did to attract blue-collar workers, then it would further tie the party to him. //

Economic policies can be practiced without belonging to a specific man. If it works, it works. For the blue-collar voters in America, it definitely worked.

According to the poll from Suffolk University-USA Today, a huge number of Republicans, 46 percent, would be willing to join a party created by Trump, 27 percent said they’d stay GOP and the rest were undecided, apparently leaving open the possibility they could flee too. //

According to the poll, half of those polled said the Party should become “more loyal to Trump,” even if it meant losing establishment Republicans. Only one in five said the party should become less loyal to Trump and more like establishment Republicans. //

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) counseled McConnell and Trump to bury their differences and come together for the good of the party. He impressed upon McConnell that “President Trump is the most consequential Republican in the party. If Mitch McConnell doesn’t understand that, he’s missing a lot” and he said that made him very worried about 2022. Graham also praised the job that Trump did as president and told him ,“[Y]ou own the Republican Party, my friend… You are the hope of the future of conservatism.” But that they needed to get back into power in 2022 and 2024. “I believe the Democrats are doing all they can to help us. We just need to help ourselves.”

Cruz isn’t out there telling Americans to stay home while he jets off to warmer shores. Cruz isn’t demanding businesses close while secretly patronizing his own wineries or barbers. Cruz hasn’t been pretending to care about getting stimulus checks out to Americans while flaunting his comfort and hypocrisy on live tv.

In fact, Cruz was just doing what he has been saying all along that every American has the right to do. He was taking care of his family. He has done nothing but encourage Americans to be cautious but still live their lives. He wants businesses open. He wants schools open. He wants Americans to be free even as they exercise extra safety measures for the time-being. He has been consistent in that message, so it isn’t strange that he’d be living it out himself. //

Commenter: His answer should have been "It is entirely within protocol in an emergency that if you can safely remove yourself and family from the impacted area, do so. This way first responders will be able to focus on those who do need help and you do not get into dire straights yourself."

David Harsanyi
@davidharsanyi
You can be pro or anti Trump, but the notion that he suddenly changed is silly. //

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it many more times between now and the next presidential election. Haley is way, way too focus-grouped to be the 2024 nominee in my opinion. She’s just so quintessentially beltway, even though her major experience is as a governor. That doesn’t mean I’d wholly reject her if she made it through the primary (though a lot of Trump voters would), but it does mean the GOP should be aiming higher than someone who mirrors Jeb Bush more than Ron DeSantis.

Over and over, throughout my adult life, the GOP has treasured appearances over action and principle. The last four years were the only hiatus in this behavior since the last half of the Reagan administration. Time and again, the old-guard GOP figures throw some red-meat and platitudes but, when push comes to shove, they vote the way most likely to get them a favorable mention on the op-ed pages (and news pages in this time of a partisan and fact-free press) of the New York Times and Washington Post. The right thing to do, even the easy thing to do, in this case, was to vote to not turn American politics into Third World blood sport politics by hunting down and punishing people who lost an election…and make no mistake, that is exactly where we are headed (see Donald Trump Is Now Under Criminal Investigation in Georgia) and with predictable results.

Now that President Trump is off center stage, the porkers are free to head back to the trough. They will give lip service to the plight of working-class America, they will cluck sympathetically at the horrendous spectacle of one in every four US pregnancies ending in abortion, they will talk about securing the border, and they will do absolutely nothing about those issues. They didn’t before President Trump. They did so reluctantly while he was in office. And now that President Trump is gone, we’re back to what Cassidy’s constituents would say “laissez les bon temps rouler.”

Raru
11 hours ago
Takes me back to the 80s. The Reagan haters then (George Bush, Sen. Jacob Javits, Gerald Ford, Rep. John Anderson, who ran against Reagan as an independent) eventually had to shut up because Reagan was so popular. He threw the haters a bone by picking GHWB as his VP. And then Bush won what was essentially Reagan's third term.

Now imagine if Reagan had lost in 1984. That would have emboldened the haters and they would have acted the same way today's Trump-haters are. But because Reagan won, they had to keep their mouths shut lest they be drummed out of the party. Do you think any Rs would have voted for impeachment if Trump had won?

What Reagan did not know in 1980 was that he would have won even without the Rockefeller republicans. Imagine if he would have gone with a young Jack Kemp as VP who could have honestly advocated for his economic policies. Maybe we would not have had a Bill Clinton. Maybe a Liz Cheney would have never been in a place of power.

There's always been these scoundrels in the party, and the only thing that shuts them up is the good guys winning.

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deornwulf Raru
11 hours ago
President Reagan did not choose Bush. The Establish required Mr. Reagan to choose Bush. I have read that Mr. Reagan never met without others present during the entire 8 years he was in office.

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Raru deornwulf
9 hours ago
True. Reagan was badgered into choosing Bush by the "moderates". Little did anyone know at the time, the moderates turned out to be the fringe group of the Reagan coalition. They just happened to be the leaders of the Happy Losers in the House and Senate at the time, therefore they had Reagan's ear, moreso than the grass roots.