Republicans
July 20, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that the bipartisan infrastructure deal was in a “precarious state” because the Republicans who are a party to the negotiations were balking over details, particularly the idea of beefing up the IRS in order to raise revenue to help pay for the legislation. Today, Politico reports that the needed Republican votes probably aren’t there to agree to anything on Chuck Schumer’s timetable. Schumer has scheduled
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July 14, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Townhall’s Reagan McCarthy reports on a satisfying election result from Georgia. In a special election runoff race for a state House seat, Republican Devan Seabaugh defeated Democrat Priscilla Smith. Seabaugh collected 63 percent of the vote. The jurisdiction in question, District 34 in the Atlanta area, leans conservative. However, Seabaugh’s margin exceeded that of the GOP candidate in 2020, who received 56 percent of the vote, according to McCarthy’s report.
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July 9, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Michael Barone contends that both political parties are failing to respond to signals in the political marketplace. I think Barone is right and has stated the problem neatly. The market signals to the Republican Party are pretty clear. In 2020, the GOP couldn’t defeat an uninspiring Democrat presidential candidate whose mental capacity obviously is diminished, perhaps significantly. The signals to the Democratic Party aren’t faint, either. They couldn’t defeat an
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July 2, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Rich Lowry writes at some length urging Republicans abandon the infrastructure deal. He argues that Republicans “have nothing to gain by blessing a portion of President Joe Biden’s spending plans, when an ungodly amount of money is going to go out the door regardless of whether they vote for a chunk of it or not.” Yesterday I linked to and wrote about Marc Thiessen’s Washington Post column supporting the deal
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July 1, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Marc Thiessen has written a good column on the alleged infrastructure compromise bill in process. The column appears in the Washington Post under the headline “Biden’s fake infrastructure ‘compromise’ has thrown Democrats into disarray.” AEI has posted Thiessen’s column in accessible form here. Thiessen describes what sounds like an illusory deal for the GOP: President Biden’s big gaffe was not his threat to veto a $1.2 trillion infrastructure deal he
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June 28, 2021 — Scott Johnson
The editors of the Wall Street Journal seem to me to bring the necessary cynicism to explicating the infrastructure “compromise” that is to preface enactment of the related Dem wish list/prospective spending blowout: Mr. Biden’s statement Saturday changes nothing except the [White House counselor Steven] Ricchetti atmospherics. Mr. Biden spoke the real truth on Thursday. He knows, because Mr. Ricchetti tells him, that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader
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June 25, 2021 — Scott Johnson
How is the GOP wing of the bipartisan infra dig infrastructure contingent taking their exposure as chumps on the morning after? Let’s go to this afternoon’s Politico Playbook PM for an update: This morning, we reported that Sen. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-S.C.), one of the 11 Republicans who supported the bipartisan infrastructure framework, was backing out of the deal over President JOE BIDEN’S insistence that he would not sign the bipartisan
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June 25, 2021 — Scott Johnson
It’s hard to believe that a Senator as sophisticated as Rob Portman is a knowing participant in the double-cross system that has been presented to us under the rubric of a “bipartisan deal.” What’s the deal? The editors of the Wall Street Journal describe it bluntly as a “double cross” in their lead editorial (“Instant Bipartisan Double Cross”) this morning: Mr. Biden stood with five Democratic and five Republican Senators
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June 7, 2021 — Scott Johnson
CNN’s Jake Tapper recently bragged on a New York Times podcast that he has refused to book Republicans who harbor doubts that the 2020 election was entirely on the square. I read about it in Politico’s Playbook this past Friday and took the statement at face value. However, Byron York documents the pushback of Republicans invited to appear on Tapper’s show since the election who have declined the honor. These
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May 10, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Liz Cheney is about to be removed from her post in the GOP House leadership. Some conservatives are quite unhappy about this and some liberals pretend to be. Our friend Jim Dueholm, once a law partner of John and Scott, disagrees. He offers this opinion: I’ve long admired the Cheneys, father and daughter. Liz, like her father, is whip-smart, a reliable conservative, a sure Republican vote in the House, but
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May 6, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Rep. Liz Cheney seems destined to lose her position in the GOP House leadership. One could almost infer from her actions that she’s determined to lose it. The mainstream media is playing Cheney’s likely ouster for all its worth. Cheney is now portrayed as a hero who is too good for the current, Trump-dominated Republican Party. (These are some of the same lefty media stalwarts who portrayed Cheney’s father as
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April 29, 2021 — John Hinderaker
Historically, giving the out-party’s response to a president’s speech to a joint session of Congress has been a thankless task. That is, in part, because the out-party’s response, typically delivered to a camera in a more or less empty room, looks lame compared to the excitement in the House chamber. Last night may have been different, however. Joe Biden’s snoozefest generated no excitement in the near-empty House, and Senator Tim
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April 28, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
A new NBC poll finds (at page 19) that 50 percent of Republicans say they consider themselves mainly supporters of the GOP, while 44 percent say them consider themselves mainly supporters of Donald Trump. That’s an extraordinarily high number for Trump, to be sure. However, as Rich Lowry notes, it represents a decline. In January, respondents split evenly, 46-46. In October, it was 54 for Trump and only 38 for
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April 12, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
On Saturday, Donald Trump spoke to a Republican National Committee event at Mar-a-Lago. From reports by some in attendance, it looks like the former president, in true Trumpian fashion, aired grievances and bitterly attacked former allies. Most notably, Trump went after Mitch McConnell. Reportedly, he called the Minority Leader a “dumb son of a bitch” and claimed that Chuck Schumer would never have allowed the 2020 presidential results to be
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March 17, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
A dozen House Republicans voted against a resolution to award Congressional Gold Medals, one of the nation’s highest civilian honors, to the Capitol Police, the D.C. police, and the Smithsonian Institution in recognition of their defense of the U.S. Capitol on January 6. To understand the votes of these Republicans one needs to look at the loaded language the Democrats smuggled into the resolution being voted on. It states: On
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March 11, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Just for fun, I assume, the folks at FiveThirtyEight decided to hold a “Way-Too-Early 2024 Republican Presidential Primary Draft.” The format was that of a fantasy football or baseball draft, with five members taking turns selecting potential Republican candidates for president in 2024. It’s clear that the draft participants don’t like Republicans. However, they appear to have drafted objectively, at least until just before the end. Based on the draft
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February 26, 2021 — John Hinderaker
What is strange about our current political climate is not, in my opinion, polarization per se. It is not surprising that people with different interests and philosophies have different policy preferences and priorities. What is remarkable is that increasingly, liberals and conservatives don’t even seem to be living on the same planet. Their political concerns and agendas are largely ships that pass in the night. Thus, check out the results
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