“Democrats,” whined the NRCC’s spokesman Mike Berg this morning, “are forcing people who didn’t go to college to pay off student loans for those who were fortunate enough to go to college. It’s just wrong.” The NRCC is also claiming that most Americans oppose Biden’s action to forgive a small amount of student debt ($10,000) for people making under $125,000. But the NRCC is lying again— unless by “Americans,” they meant “Republicans.” As you can see from this just-released Data For Progress survey below 60% of Americans would like the federal government to either eliminate all students debt for every borrower or some student debt for every borrower and only 34% oppose eliminating student debt. But those figures fro the general population are because Democrats and independents are heavily in favor and— big surprise— it’s only registered Republicans (52% of them) who go along with the official Republican Party position of opposing any student debt forgiveness for anyone.
Conservatives are not like normal Americans; never have been. Conservatives have opposed every single thing that has made America great— from the Revolutionary War, the Bill of Rights, universal suffrage, public education, the emancipation of the slaves to the breakup of monopolies, land grant colleges, rural electrification, the 8 hour workday, the abolition of child labor, Civil Rights, Social Security, voting rights for minorities. Environmental protection, consumer product safety and Medicare. Conservatives opposed them all— and in most cases still do and would like to roll them all back if they could.
Now that he’s running for governor of Maryland, state Rep Dan Cox has announced that he’s deleted his account on the racist, neo-Nazi Gab platform. Why did he wait so long… to take down over a thousand posts?
This morning the FBI started rounding up a domestic terrorist cell, the B-Squad, part of the Three Percent Movement, which took part in the J-6 storming of the Capitol. 5 have been charged and so far one, Brian Preller, is in custody. The leader is “B-Leader” Jeremy Liggett, a former policeman and former Republican Party candidate for a central Florida congressional seat. Ohio extremist— and potential House Judiciary Committee chair— Jim Jordan was one of his campaign contributors.
A new poll for The Economist by YouGov was released this morning shows that Trump is considerably more disliked by registered voters than Biden is. 52% have a negative. It also shows that 44% of registered voters would vote to send a Democrat to Congress today and 39% would vote to send a Republican.
Bulwark writer Tim Miller penned an essay that illustrates the problem the GOP is having currently. Ostensibly it’s about New Hampshire, but it’s really about the Republican Party and helps understand why the party is sinking, even in the context of a pretty shitty Democratic Party that can, at best, be said to be the lesser evil.
Mitch McConnell and the rest of “Team Normal” sensibly launched a “full court press” to try to get Chris Sununu into this year’s Senate race against incumbent Democrat Maggie Hassan. Such a courtship was logical given that Sununu is the 5th most popular governor in the country and has a winning pedigree. He was also attractive because he wouldn’t come off as scary or weird to flinty New Hampshire swing voters, having not dabbled in the conspiracies or extremism that have engulfed most of the GOP.
…Sununu took a pass on the race, not being particularly keen on jobs where rioters target his office if he doesn’t submit to a game show host’s autocratic delusions, leaving the Republican primary wide open.
The man who has filled that vacuum is emblematic of the “candidate quality” issues that sad turtle Mitch recently alluded to.
The frontrunner is Brigadier General Don Bolduc. He is not, like Sununu, a popular mainstream R with a track record of success; he’s an absolute loon who lost a Senate primary in 2020 and is a favorite in Bannon’s War Room where he is referred to only as “The General,” as if he were some kind of exiled Kazak communist who Bannon is demanding be released from prison.
Which happens to be exactly the profile Republican primary voters are looking for this year. As such, “The General” leads in a recent poll with 32 percent. Trailing with 16 percent is milquetoast State Senate President Chuck Morse, who endorsed Jeb Bush in the 2016 primary followed by a smattering of candidates in single digits— most notably a gentleman named Kevin Smith, a New England town manager whose campaign landing page features a video of him at the border (Mexico, not Canada).
Sununu… has recently mocked Bolduc as “not a serious candidate”— perhaps not realizing that unseriousness has been the coin of the realm in 2022 GOP primaries. Bolduc rejects Sununu’s dismissiveness and has stated on multiple occasions he believes the state’s Republican governor is a “Chinese Communist Party sympathizer.”
So what’s so terrible about General Bolduc... aside from wanting to send U.S. ground forces into Ukraine to fight Russians? He’s an election conspiracy nut. He’s a COVID vaccine denier, who says COVID was created by China to kill Americans. He says “his nemesis Bill Gates and George Soros also funded the ‘militant wing’ of Black Lives Matter, which he deems a domestic terrorist organization. By contrast Bolduc is of the opinion that Confederate statues should be preserved in America because they are ‘a symbol of hope, a symbol of inspiration, a symbol of moving forward.’ This is a strange position for a New Hampshire Yankee, but his gray shirt fans seem to concur!… [H]e says his main goal in office would be to repeal the 17th Amendment, a real kitchen table issue if there ever was one. Presumably ending the direct election of Senators is especially important to Bolduc either (a) as part of his multifaceted commitment to tearing down American democracy; or (b) as a CYA so the voters wouldn’t have the opportunity to run his ass out on a rail should he somehow manage to bumble his way to victory in November.”