He blamed the anti-abortion zealots for the mid-term loss That’s a very big mistake and it makes me think that he really has lost a step. By this time he should know that this is a very important part of his base and fundamental to the Trump Cult. He’s right, of course. But that doesn’t make it smart in his political position to say it, especially so crudely. He used to understand that. Sure, he’s made mistakes on this issue before, by saying that he thought people who have abortions should be punished, but that was a mistake in favor of extremism. That’s always forgivable to the wingnuts. (They approve of killing doctors, after all.) But to blame the extremists for losing and saying they didn’t bother to vote once they got their way is a major error. He’s never been good at nuance but you’d think he would remember that this is a third rail in GOP politics. He’s losing it.
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Kevin McCarthy capitulated to the crazies yesterday and agreed to reinstate the “vacate the chair” rule with a compromise that would allow five Representatives to challenge the Speaker and call for a vote (a sort of “no confidence” move.) This rule was in place for decades allowing only on Rep to call for the vote but was withdrawn after wingnuts decided to abuse it. Now they want it back and McCarthy, for obvious reasons, has not been receptive. But finally he came up with this compromise which … didn’t help. There are still a whole bunch of nos (the last I saw was it was 14) against his for speaker. And they all have different demands. Meanwhile, the so-called “moderates” (which simply means they’re only 50% batshit crazy) are starting to get restive as well. It’s a mess. Harry Enten at CNN has an analysis of poor Kev’s current troubles. The problem is that nobody likes him: House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy is hoping all’s well that ends well when it comes to becoming speaker of the chamber.
Imagine that Politico provides us with some data about mail in and early voting that proves Donald Trump is a total fool: If there was any doubt Donald Trump’s vilification of early voting is only hurting the GOP, new receipts from the midterm elections show it. Election data from a trio of states that dramatically expanded the ability to cast ballots before Election Day, either early or by mail, demonstrate that the voting methods that were decidedly uncontroversial before Trump do not clearly help either party. Lawmakers of both parties made it easier to vote by expanding availability of mail and early voting in a politically mixed group of states: Vermont, Kentucky and Nevada. The states had divergent results but shared a few key things in common. Making it easier to vote early or by mail did not lead to voter fraud, nor did it seem to advantage Republicans or Democrats. In Kentucky, Republicans held on to five of the state’s six congressional districts and a Senate seat. Both Vermont and Nevada saw split-ticket voters decide statewide races, by a gaping margin in Vermont and a narrow one in Nevada.
Only the best people … After a mob stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a top aide to Ivanka Trump and presidential adviser Hope Hicks fumed about tweets posted by supermodel Karlie Kloss, the wife of Jared Kushner’s brother. That’s according to text messages released by the House’s Jan. 6 committee—which also reveal the aide, Julie Radford, and Hicks were worried that the insurrection would destroy their reputations. After the riot, Kloss took to Twitter to write: “Accepting the results of a legitimate democratic election is patriotic. Refusing to do so and inciting violence is anti-American.” She also responded to a Twitter user who encouraged her to “tell your sister-in-law and brother-[in]-law” by replying, “I’ve tried.” The newly released texts show that Hicks flagged the Kloss tweets for Radford, who responded, “Unreal. She just called me about it.” Hicks then texted back: “I am so done” and added, “Does she get how royally fucked they all are now?” Hicks and Radford also fretted that they would face fallout from the deadly Capitol riots.
Newtie’s spawn take the wheel and he doesn’t like it Did he think that when he enabled the extreme right wing, playing to their basest instincts, that it would never blow back on him? Has he ever read the Bible? Shakespeare? History? Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich attacked Republicans who are opposing Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s, R-Calif., bid for speaker Monday. Gingrich launched the salvo against McCarthy’s opponents during a Monday appearance on Fox & Friends, saying the vote threatens to throw the GOP into “chaos.” He argued that the small group of hard line lawmakers don’t have the “moral right” to oppose the will of the overwhelming majority of Republicans who do support McCarthy for speaker. “I don’t understand what they’re doing. They’re not voting against Kevin McCarthy, they’re voting against over 215 members of their own conference. Their conference voted overwhelmingly, 85%, for McCarthy to be speaker, so this is a fight between a handful of people and the entire rest of the conference,” Gingrich said.
from Lars Syll • Mind the assumptions — assess uncertainty and sensitivity. • Mind the hubris — complexity can be the enemy of relevance. • Mind the framing — match purpose and context. • Mind the consequences — quantification may backfire. • Mind the unknowns — acknowledge ignorance. Andrea Saltelli, John Kay, Deborah Mayo, Philip […]
Something is seriously broken Two items this morning should be clues to how around the bend and down the rabbit hole this country has traveled in recent years. Brian Klaas (subscription req’d) posts about the lack of basic standards for elected officials. Looking at you, George Santos: Much of the modern world has created what I call the broken pyramid of scrutiny. In principle, levels of scrutiny and accountability should increase as the potential to do catastrophic harm increases. The higher up the hierarchy you go, the more that you should be monitored to make sure that you’re not going to destroy the company, or bring down the government, from your perch at the top. The least powerful should face the least scrutiny; the most powerful the most oversight. Instead, as I wrote in “Corruptible,” we do the opposite. Santos would have been exposed as a fraud before being offered “any run-of-the-mill government job.” But not in Congress. Klass contrasts the training he had to go to volunteer as a tour guide at an English historical site: In my spare time, I volunteer as a tour guide at a historic site in England.
Brace for new GOP efforts to stop younger Americans from voting The Financial Times offers data showing how the Great Recession reset how Millennials view the world. Something odd appears to be overturning an old paradigm about political views and aging. Unlike the generational cohorts before them, they are not getting more conservative with age. “The shift has striking implications for the UK’s Conservatives and US Republicans, who can no longer simply rely on their base being replenished as the years pass,” writes John Burn-Murdoch. “[C]oncepts from public health analytics” suggest the old predictions do not apply to Millennials: Let’s start with age effects, and the oldest rule in politics: people become more conservative with age. If millennials’ liberal inclinations are merely a result of this age effect, then at age 35 they too should be around five points less conservative than the national average, and can be relied upon to gradually become more conservative. In fact, they’re more like 15 points less conservative, and in both Britain and the US are by far the least conservative 35-year-olds in recorded history.
Once again, thank you so, so much for your support this year. I am genuinely overwhelmed. The readers of this blog are the nicest people in the world and I could not be more grateful. Here’s hoping that this next year brings us some peace and stability. I always wish that every year. But even if it doesn’t, we’ll be here documenting, analyzing and synthesizing the news as we see it. Tom, Dennis, tristero, spocko, Batocchio and I look forward to delivering it to you every day of the week as we’ve been doing for the past 20 years. To all that we lost and all that we gained in the past year, and to all that’s to come in the days ahead…cheers! — digby
Apparently, he’s staying at Mar-a-Lago. How perfect. What’s a MAGA man to do after losing an election? Emulating President Trump, Brazil’s outgoing president, Jair Bolsonaro, plans to skip his successor’s inauguration ceremony and travel instead to — where else — Mar-a-Lago. Mr. Bolsonaro will avoid handing over the official presidential sash to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva at an inauguration ceremony at Brasilia on Sunday. Instead, the October election loser will fly this weekend to Florida for a visit with Mr. Trump at the famed Palm Beach resort, several Brazilian press outlets report. On Tuesday, the official Brazilian government website published a statement saying that the Office of Institutional Security has confirmed that the security team for Mr. Bolsonaro’s family will be “on a trip to Miami, Florida,” next week. “Bolsonaro will not be in Brazil for the inauguration ceremony,” a professor of international relations at the Federal University of Sao Paulo, Regiane Nitsch Bressan, told the Sun.