In the waning days of 2023, a banner year for Christian nationalism, Oklahoma State Representative...
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MAGA’s vision for America What sort of America do you want? That question will not appear on fall ballots but will be there nonetheless alongside whether we continue the American experiment in democracy. Gover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, famously hoped to return conditions in these United States to those of the late-Gilded Age McKinley administration (1897 – 1901). Upton Sinclair savaged conditions in the American meatpacking industry in “The Jungle” a few short years after McKinley. Today’s second Gilded Age MAGA Republicans are onboard. Indiana state Rep. Joanna King (R) this week introduced a bill that would exempt children at least 14 years of age and who have completed the eighth grade from attending school to work (with parental permission) on a farm during school hours. King is treading a wider path blazed last March by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas (BuzzFeed): Under the new law, children under 16 no longer have to get permission from the state’s Division of Labor to get a job, nor will they need to have their age verified or submit things like their work schedule for a permit.
The government can afford it, can’t it? And a tad more discipline, just maybe? Associated Press this morning from the West Bank: Video appears to show the Israeli army shot 3 Palestinians, killing 1, without provocation Washington Post this morning from the West Bank: Settlers killed a Palestinian teen. Israeli forces didn’t stop it. Associated Press Dec. 18: In Israel’s killing of 3 hostages, some see the same excessive force directed at Palestinians Associated Press Dec. 15: Israeli military opens probe after videos show Israeli forces killing 2 Palestinians at close range The response to the horrific Hamas terrorist murders is to turn Israel into a pariah state?
But it might work anyway… The idea that former President Donald Trump was performing his official duties when he told his supporters to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell” and then sat in his dining room watching them storm the building and refusing to do anything to quell the riot has always seemed to be a stretch. After he lost 60 of 61 court cases in which he tried to overturn the results of the election that he continued to exhort the top officials in the Justice Department to lie and say they had evidence of fraud hardly seems like a presidential duty either. And all the calls to local officials asking them “find” enough votes to change the outcome of their election wouldn’t normally be considered the job of a president. American elections, for better or worse, are processed by state and local authorities. Nonetheless, Donald Trump’s lawyers had filed an appeal in the US District court arguing that everything he did in the post election period were part of Donald Trump’s official duties as President and therefore he should be given immunity for all of it which is ridiculous.
Some college educated former Trump voters have had it I keep hearing anecdotal reports of Republicans who are saying they will not vote for Trump this time. I don’t know if they aren’t being represented in the polls or what, but there’s a lot of it and since it’s coming from the GOP primary reporting it’s worth mentioning. This one from Jonathan Martin at Politico who followed the Haley campaign for a while and had this impression: The most memorable feature of Haley’s otherwise forgettable gathering was not what she said but the nature of her audience — and how it explains why Trump is poised to win overwhelmingly in Iowa on Monday but will face the same general election challenges in 2024 he did in 2020. I would have liked to see more discussion of that but this piece was about the GOP voters who are rejecting Trump. But it’s important that someone mention this general election dynamic, even in passing. Maybe he’ll develop that in a later piece. I struggled to find a single attendee in the suburban strip mall tavern who was not a college graduate.
What in the world, you wonder? Well… There was a Biden impeachment hearing today at which Hunter himself turned up making himself available to testify publicly again. The Republicans were … upset. Here are the highlights: Then Marge took the mic and Hunter got up and walked out. The hearing is being run by circus clowns so why would anyone expect something other than a circus?
The spoilers are still at it Joe Lieberman and company really are determined to screw up this election: A political group intending to support a presidential candidate run by the group No Labels plans to file paperwork with the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday, with a handful of Republican and Democratic strategists as advisers. The group, New Leaders ’24 political action committee, expects a No Labels ticket to materialize this year. No Labels has said it would mount a campaign if President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump are their parties’ nominees, in a rematch of the 2020 campaign that is increasingly likely. The group will be advised by Rob Stutzman, a Republican and former deputy chief of staff to Arnold Schwarzenegger during his governorship as well as an adviser for Mitt Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign. Kathleen Shanahan, a Republican and former chief of staff to Jeb Bush during his governorship, will be the chief executive, and Andrew Fishman, whom the group identified as a Democrat and who has a business background, will serve as treasurer, Mr. Stutzman said.
National Review says that Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis “are far and away better on the merits, more likely to win in November, and, if elected, more likely to deliver — free from the wild drama of a second Trump term — conservative results.” I don’t know about Haley and DeSantis but we can certainly agree on the horror of another Trump term. But maybe they could have been consistently critical of the MAGA cult over the past 7 years? I dunno. But they were “Never Trump” in 2016 and they are again, so I guess that’s something. Mediaite reports: The editorial minced no words in prosecuting its case against Trump, bluntly stating that Trump “lost to Joe Biden in 2020″ and “did everything he could to overturn the result, including trying to bully his vice president into violating his oath and preventing and delaying the counting of the electoral vote.” “When a mob, fervently believing Trump’s lies, fought its way into the U.S. Capitol to try to end the count, Trump did little or nothing to try to stop it,” it added.
Chris Christie dropped out of the race today and gave quite a speech. He didn’t endorse anyone and I think we know why: Christie’s speech was the best one I’ve ever seen him give. He didn’t mince words about Trump and chastised those who are giving him a pass. He talked honestly about the stakes for the country in this election. A couple of highlights:
Sort of Lawyers are right this minute arguing that Donald “91 felony indictments” Trump should be immune from criminal prosecution for acts he took during his White House tenure. “Circuit judge Florence Pan is putting Trump lawyer John Sauer in a tough spot,” writes The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell. Sauer is still arguing that Trump is not an “officer” of the U.S. You can listen along to the arguments here. On the SEAL Team Six scenario above, Brian Beutler takes on the argument that Trump should be held to a special standard. We all know how special he is, don’t we? Beutler’s “We Can’t Afford Weak-Kneed Liberalism In The Trump Era” refers specifically to objections to disqualifying Trump from the ballot based on the 14th Amendment. Just to get you started: Boiled down, the argument is this: Donald Trump should be held to a special standard, not written into the Constitution, because applying the law to him faithfully is unfair to Republicans, and may allow them to engage in tit-for-tat retribution. Both of these objections are easily refuted.