And Terror
Leaving Smirnov-Gate aside for a moment, what do House Republicans have to fear? Most of them are in impregnable gerrymandered seats filled with ignorant, Fox-watching, knee-jerk GOP voters— like these 10 clowns’ with these insane PVIs:
Robert Aderholt (AL)- R+33
Hal Rogers (KY)- R+32
Diana Harshbarger (TN)- R+30
Adrian Smith (NE)- R+29
Josh Brecheen (OK)- R+29
Jason Smith (MO)- R+28
Ronny Jackson (TX)- R+26
Joey Arrington (TX)- R+26
John Joyce (PA)- R+25
Brad Wenstrup (OH)- R+25
But Trump used blatant fear as a tactic and the air is filled with it now. Just yesterday he was scaring morons in Tennessee that the Democrats would take away their churches and tear down their crosses— you know, how Democrats always, I mean never— do. “Remember,” he told these brain-dead, cheering imbeciles at the National Religious Broadcasters International Christian Media Convention in Nashville, “every communist regime throughout history has tried to stamp out the churches, just like every fascist regime has tried to co-opt them and control them. And, in America, the radical left is trying to do both. They want to tear down crosses where they can, and cover them up with social justice flags. But no one will be touching the cross of Christ under the Trump administration, I swear to you... I’m a very proud Christian.”
But it’s the party’s electeds who are really fearful right now. They’re afraid of that QAnon Alabama judge who declared frozen embryos to be children— in effect, shutting down the state’s fertility treatment facilities. The NRSC sent an e-mail to Senate candidates telling them to strongly oppose the ruling, noting that “There are zero Republican Senate candidates who support efforts to restrict access to fertility treatments.” Republicans admit that they fear the ruling may turn into what they’re claiming will be “fodder for Democrats hoping to manipulate the abortion issue for electoral gain.” The Democrats don’t have to manipulate anything— not with all the crackpot right-wing judges they’ve stuffed the judiciary with.
And, like conservatives have been all through history, they’re afraid of voters. Making it easier and less restrictive for people to vote has always been something conservatives have fought again. In the early colonial period, voting rights were restricted to white male property owners— no women, no African Americans, no Native Americans, and no one without property. After the Revolutionary War, some states (Pennsylvania, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York and Georgia) did expand suffrage slightly by eliminating property ownership requirements for white males, but significant restrictions remained— even religious qualifications— and most states kept the property ownership requirement. The 19th century saw various movements advocating for expanded voting rights, including the abolitionist movement, the women's suffrage movement and the Civil Rights Movement. Conservatives were on the losing side of every single one of these efforts, fearing a loss of power. In The South, they enacted Jim Crow laws to disenfranchise freed slaves through poll taxes, literacy tests, and other discriminatory measures, laws that were supported by conservative politicians seeking to maintain white supremacy and control.
When I was starting college, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a landmark piece of legislation that aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote. Conservatives in both parties fought against it tooth and nail, claiming it was federal overreach into state sovereignty. More recently, there have been efforts by conservative lawmakers to enact voter ID laws, limit early voting and implement other measures that disproportionately affect minority and low-income voters. These efforts are usually framed as combating voter fraud but they are always tactics to suppress the votes of marginalized communities.
Yesterday, Zach Roth wrote that “Fearing that Democrats hold a crucial edge in ballots cast before Election Day, national Republicans are working to convince their voters to take advantage of mail and early voting this year… But the party’s army of lawyers is, more quietly, sending a very different message. The RNC is fighting in courtrooms and legal filings in key election battlegrounds across the country to make it harder to cast a mail ballot and to have it counted. On Feb. 20, attorneys for the RNC were in a federal courtroom in Philadelphia, in a bid to require that Pennsylvania throw out mail ballots with missing or incorrect dates. Eleven days earlier, they filed a lawsuit challenging several provisions of Arizona’s newly adopted election rules, including a rule allowing voters who have not shown proof of citizenship to cast a mail ballot. And that same day, they asked a court in Georgia to uphold a state law that imposes stricter rules on mail voting. Separately, in recent months the RNC has asked courts to let it join the defense of laws in Ohio, Wisconsin, and North Carolina that similarly impose tighter rules on mail voting (judges in the latter two states denied the requests, while the Ohio motion was approved). The party also has sued to block a New York law that lets people vote by mail without an excuse (the state’s Supreme Court this month dismissed the complaint). And it has formally weighed in against proposed changes to Nevada’s election rules, including one that makes it easier for election officials to prevent volunteer observers from disrupting the counting of mail ballots. In January, the RNC went further than ever, filing a lawsuit in Mississippi that it has said aims to obtain a nationwide ban on mail ballots that arrive after Election Day. RNC lawyers stated plainly in their complaint that Republicans’ interests are at stake because mail voting tends to favor Democrats.”
The RNC fears something else— the Trump takeover that’s about to make them irrelevant in electoral politics, since he and his pawns (including a daughter-in-law) plan to use RNC funds to pay his rapidly escalating fines and legal costs. NOTUS: “The Republican National Committee’s new leadership isn’t official yet— but Lara Trump’s vision for the party is already raising serious unease that the GOP’s coffers could be drained for Donald Trump’s legal fees. ‘There is a lot of concern— from donors, state parties and campaigns that important funding could be sucked away by Trump’s mounting legal bills and that there’s nothing they can do about it,’ former RNC Communications Director Doug Heye said. Since gaining Donald Trump’s endorsement for the job— alongside North Carolina state party Chair Michael Whatley— Lara Trump has said she believes paying her father-in-law’s legal bills is of ‘big interest’ to Republican voters. She’s also said that ‘every penny’ of the RNC would go toward securing Trump’s presidency and securing control of Congress.”
“He’s trying to hijack the RNC before he’s even the nominee. And it’s because he’s broke,” Katon Dawson, former chair of the South Carolina Republican Party, told NOTUS. “He has already spent millions worth of PAC money and he’s running out. So he needs another place to go raise money to pay his personal legal bills.”
The frustration extends to those supportive of Trump’s dominance in the party.
“As much as I want Trump to be reelected, I think the RNC’s job is to support not only our political candidates at the federal level, but also our state GOP,” Georgia GOP Treasurer Laurie McClain said.
Trump is estimated to run his own war chest dry over legal fees by July, Bloomberg reported, noting that the former president will then likely need to turn to donors or the RNC for help.
The bills keep piling up. Last week, the judge in his New York civil fraud trial ordered Trump to pay $355 million plus interest after finding that Trump fabricated his wealth on previous financial statements. He already owes $88 million after being found liable in writer E. Jean Carroll’s sexual misconduct and defamation suits.
…“The hijacking is not going to be as easy as everyone’s saying,” Dawson said. “People have to vote them in, and I promise you, I’ve been on that committee and those votes aren’t that easy to wrangle.”
And then there’s the government shutdown Trump is forcing MAGA Mike to precipitate. He adjourned Congress for 2 weeks and they now have just hours to head off the shutdown that Señor Trumpanzee and his sycophants have been loudly demanding for months.
“I’m worried. Of all the scares we’ve had since the last fiscal year, I think this is going to be the scariest. I think we could be in a world of hurt,” said a Senate GOP aide. “I don’t know if it’ll be a partial or a full, but I think the chances of a shutdown are the highest we’ve had this fiscal year.”
Party leaders in both chambers have sought to assure the public— and the markets— that the sides will come together to adopt their appropriations bills and avoid any disruptions to government operations.
But a number of disagreements remain between the parties. And Johnson is facing additional pressures from within his own Republican conference, where [MAGA fascists] are demanding right-wing policy riders that are a non-starter with Democrats in both Congress and the White House.
The mix of factors— political, tactical and temporal— is sparking plenty of concerns that Congress will be unable to reach the agreement to prevent the partial shutdown that’s looming at the end of next week.
“I think the odds are 50-50 at this point,” [soon to be lobbyist] Patrick McHenry (R-NC) told CBS’s Major Garrett on The Takeout podcast this week.
McHenry, chair of the Financial Services Committee, called the current shutdown threat “a preventable disaster”— one that might have been avoided if [Republican] party leaders had moved the spending bills late last year instead of kicking the process into an election year.
He’s urging Johnson to resist the ultimatums from his [fascist] wing and move forward with whatever agreements emerge from the talks between appropriators, who have been working furiously through the holiday recess to finalize their bills in time for the first deadline next Friday.
A deal is expected to be released as early as Sunday.
“All the Speaker has to do is allow the Appropriations Committee to go get a deal,” McHenry said. “If the Speaker wishes to stop it, for whatever reason, we’ll probably have a government shutdown.”
…Hard-liners are already turning up the heat on Johnson.
Twenty-eight members of the House Freedom Caucus penned a letter to the Speaker on Wednesday requesting an update on their conservative policy demands, which touch on a host of explosive topics that include abortion, immigration and eliminating the salaries of certain federal officials.
Without those provisions, the hard-liners said, the House will have a difficult time wrangling GOP support for government funding.
“There are MANY other policies and personnel that Congress should not be funding, and a failure to eliminate them will reduce the probability that the appropriations bills will be supported by even a majority of Republicans,” the [MAGA] lawmakers wrote.
…If [MAGAts] do not secure their policy riders, as expected, the hard-liners are already eyeing a Plan B to fund the government: a one-year continuing resolution that would trigger a 1 percent cut across the board beginning in April, as per the mechanism lawmakers included in the debt limit deal last year to encourage completion of the appropriations process.
Democrats— and even some GOP defense hawks— are adamantly opposed to that cut, while conservatives are embracing it.
“If we are not going to secure significant policy changes or even keep spending below the caps adopted by the bipartisan majorities less than one year ago, why would we proceed when we could instead pass a year-long funding resolution that would save Americans $100 billion in year one?” the Freedom Caucus members wrote to Johnson.
The stakes in the spending debate also extend to the campaign trail, where Republicans are trying to demonstrate to voters that they can govern capably and deserve to remain in the House majority next year. With that in mind, some of the more vulnerable GOP lawmakers are already pressing Johnson to move quickly next week to prevent a shutdown.
“When we get back, we need to move expeditiously to pass the appropriations bills. The time for haggling over it is over,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) said. “I will leave it to leadership on how they plan to proceed. But at the end of the day, we need to fund the government. We’re not dealing with a government shutdown.”
Lawler, who represents a district Biden won by 10 points in 2020, also had some choice words for the conservatives who say they’d prefer a shutdown to new funding bills that will increase deficit spending.
“For my colleagues that have a problem with it,” he said, “they should have thought long and hard about that before they removed Kevin McCarthy as Speaker.”
Another potential landmine in the debate is the question of sending additional aid to Ukraine, which has bedeviled lawmakers— especially Johnson— for months.
Johnson had opposed the Senate negotiated foreign-aid-plus-border-security bill, arguing that the border provisions did not go far enough. But [MAGAts, neo-Nazis and the Putin wing of the GOP] are still balking at sending aid overseas without border security, demanding policies similar to those in H.R. 2, the sweeping border package they passed last year.
McHenry said there’s “a pretty high chance” lawmakers will seek to attach the stalled foreign aid onto spending bills, especially if the government does shut down and Congress finds itself looking for a way out.
“It could be post-government shutdown if that happens. The point of leverage becomes mighty then,” McHenry told CBS. “It could be in the week leading up, to the week leading after … There are a couple different legislative avenues that can be taken.”
Combining spending with foreign aid, however, would only expose Johnson to more attacks from conservatives, many of whom are opposed to any overseas assistance without first addressing the border. Some said they trust Johnson not to bring such a bill to the floor.
“Our members are not interested in funding the Ukraine effort going forward if the southern border is unsecured, and the Speaker has been crystal clear on that,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) said. “The White House and the Senate just simply don’t care.”
As lawmakers barrel toward their fourth shutdown showdown this Congress— which has been billed the most unproductive in years— some members are openly airing their frustration with being unable to complete the “key” part of their job.
“Appropriations bills being the key issue of just basic job performance … It’s like showing up to work on time and passing your drug test. It’s like that basic level. It’s not saying you’re competent or good or anything else,” McHenry told CBS. “But we’ve done a terrible job with that.”
