Category Archives: Republican

WASHINGTON Republicans who were the most vocal in urging their followers to come to Washington on Jan. 6 to try to reverse President Donald J. Trumps loss, pushing to overturn the election and stoking the grievances that prompted the deadly Capitol riot, have profited handsomely in its aftermath, according to new campaign data.

Senators Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texas, who led the challenges to President Bidens victory in their chamber, each brought in more than $3 million in campaign donations in the three months that followed the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia who called the rampage a 1776 moment and was later stripped of committee assignments for espousing bigoted conspiracy theories and endorsing political violence, raised $3.2 million more than the individual campaign of Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, and nearly every other member of House leadership.

A New York Times analysis of the latest Federal Election Commission disclosures illustrates how the leaders of the effort to overturn Mr. Bidens electoral victory have capitalized on the outrage of their supporters to collect huge sums of campaign cash. Far from being punished for encouraging the protest that turned lethal, they have thrived in a system that often rewards the loudest and most extreme voices, using the fury around the riot to build their political brands. The analysis examined the individual campaign accounts of lawmakers, not joint fund-raising committees or leadership political action committees.

The outrage machine is powerful at inducing political contributions, said Carlos Curbelo, a former Republican congressman from Florida.

Shortly after the storming of the Capitol, some prominent corporations and political action committees vowed to cut off support for the Republicans who had fanned the flames of anger and conspiracy that resulted in violence. But any financial blowback from corporate America appears to have been dwarfed by a flood of cash from other quarters.

Representative Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, a freshman who urged his supporters to lightly threaten Republican lawmakers to goad them into challenging the election results, pulled in more than $1 million. Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado who like Ms. Greene compared Jan. 6 to the American Revolution took in nearly $750,000.

The sums reflect an emerging incentive structure in Washington, where the biggest provocateurs can parlay their notoriety into small-donor successes that can help them amass an even higher profile. It also illustrates the appetites of a Republican base of voters who have bought into Mr. Trumps false claims of widespread election fraud and are eager to reward those who worked to undermine the outcome of a free and fair election.

Most of the dozens of corporations that pledged to cut off any Republican who supported overturning the election kept that promise, withholding political action committee donations during the most recent quarter. But for the loudest voices on Capitol Hill, that did not matter, as an energized base of pro-Trump donors rallied to their side and more than made up the shortfall.

Were really seeing the emergence of small donors in the Republican Party, said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist. In the past, Democrats have been the ones who have benefited most from small-dollar donations. Were seeing the Republicans rapidly catching up.

Lawmakers have long benefited richly from divisive news coverage, especially around prominent events that play to the emotions of an enraged or fearful voter base. But the new filings illustrate a growing chasm between those who raise money through a bombastic profile often bolstered by significant fund-raising expenditures and those who have focused their attentions on serious policy work.

As provocative freshmen like Ms. Greene, Ms. Boebert and Mr. Cawthorn took in high-dollar figures, other more conventional members of their class in competitive districts even those praised for their fund-raising prowess were substantially behind.

For instance, Ashley Hinson of Iowa and Young Kim of California, both of whom opposed the electoral challenges and have worked on bipartisan bills, each took in less than $600,000.

Ms. Greene, Ms. Boebert and Mr. Cawthorn raised more money than the top Republicans on the most powerful committees in Congress, such as appropriations, budget, education and labor, foreign affairs and homeland security.

In many cases, Republican lawmakers who fanned the flames of the Jan. 6 violence have since benefited by casting themselves as victims of a political backlash engineered by the Washington establishment, and appealed to their supporters.

Pennsylvania wasnt following their own states election law, but the establishment didnt want to hear it. But thats not who I work for, Mr. Hawley wrote in January in a fund-raising message. I objected because I wanted to make sure your voice was heard. Now, Biden and his woke mob are coming after me. I need your help.

Ms. Greene fund-raised off a successful effort to exile her from committees, led by furious Democrats incensed at her past talk in support of executing Speaker Nancy Pelosi and encouraging her followers to Stop the Steal on Jan. 6. Setting goals of raising $150,000 each day in the days before and after the unusual vote, she surpassed them every time.

The D.C. swamp and the fake news media are attacking me because I am not one of them, one such solicitation read. I am one of you. And they hate me for it.

But the polarizing nature of Mr. Trump also helped some Republicans who took him to task for his behavior surrounding the events of Jan. 6.

Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 House Republican who voted to impeach Mr. Trump, took in $1.5 million, and Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who has started an organization to lead the Republican Party away from fealty to Mr. Trump, raised more than $1.1 million.

Its obvious that theres a strong market for Trumpism in the Republican base, Mr. Curbelo said. There is also a strong market for truth-telling and supporting the Constitution.

Mr. Conant questioned how much of the fund-raising surge for some candidates was directly tied to the Capitol assault, which he said the conservative news media had generally moved on from covering.

Instead, he said that Republican voters were very nervous about the direction of the country under Democratic control and were eager to support Republicans they viewed as fighting a liberal agenda.

It pays to be high-profile, Mr. Conant said. Its more evidence that theres not a lot of grass-roots support for milquetoast middle of the road. It doesnt mean you have to be pro-Trump. It just means you need to take strong positions, and then connect with those supporters.

But if the Republican civil war has paid campaign dividends for fighters on both sides, individual Democrats involved in prosecuting Mr. Trump for the riot in his impeachment trial have not reaped a similar windfall.

With her $3.2 million raised this quarter, Ms. Greene brought in more money than the combined total raised by all nine impeachment managers even though they won widespread applause in liberal circles for their case against the former president. Three of the managers have raised less than $100,000 each over the past three months, according to the data.

As money pours into campaigns, the Jan. 6 assault has also resulted in much spending around security precautions.

The Federal Election Commission expanded guidance allowing lawmakers to use campaign contributions to install residential security systems at their homes, and top Capitol Hill security told lawmakers to consider upgrading their home security systems to include panic buttons and key fobs.

Campaign filings show nearly a dozen lawmakers have made payments of $20,000 or more to security companies in the past three months, including Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, who voted to convict Mr. Trump; Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, who gave a harrowing account of the riot; and Representative Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California and one of the impeachment managers against Mr. Trump.

Mr. Cruz and Mr. Hawley were also among the biggest spenders on security.

Lauren Hirsch and Jeanna Smialek contributed reporting.

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Donations Surge for Republicans Who Challenged Election Results - The New York Times

American democracy faces many challenges: New limits on voting rights. The corrosive effect of misinformation. The rise of domestic terrorism. Foreign interference in elections. Efforts to subvert the peaceful transition of power. And making matters worse on all of these issues is a fundamental truth: The two political parties see the other as an enemy.

Its an outlook that makes compromise impossible and encourages elected officials to violate norms in pursuit of an agenda or an electoral victory. It turns debates over changing voting laws into existential showdowns. And it undermines the willingness of the loser to accept defeat an essential requirement of a democracy.

This threat to democracy has a name: sectarianism. Its not a term usually used in discussions about American politics. Its better known in the context of religious sectarianism like the hostility between Sunnis and Shia in Iraq. Yet a growing number of eminent political scientists contend that political sectarianism is on the rise in America.

That contention helps make sense of a lot of whats been going on in American politics in recent years, including Donald J. Trumps successful presidential bid, President Bidens tortured effort to reconcile his inaugural call for unity with his partisan legislative agenda, and the plan by far-right House members to create a congressional group that would push some views associated with white supremacy. Most of all, it re-centers the threat to American democracy on the dangers of a hostile and divided citizenry.

In recent years, many analysts and commentators have told a now-familiar story of how democracies die at the hands of authoritarianism: A demagogic populist exploits dissatisfaction with the prevailing liberal order, wins power through legitimate means, and usurps constitutional power to cement his or her own rule. Its the story of Putins Russia, Chavezs Venezuela and even Hitlers Germany.

Sectarianism, in turn, instantly evokes an additional set of very different cautionary tales: Ireland, the Middle East and South Asia, regions where religious sectarianism led to dysfunctional government, violence, insurgency, civil war and even disunion or partition.

These arent always stories of authoritarian takeover, though sectarianism can yield that outcome as well. As often, its the story of a minority that cant accept being ruled by its enemy.

In many ways, thats the story playing out in America today.

Whether religious or political, sectarianism is about two hostile identity groups who not only clash over policy and ideology, but see the other side as alien and immoral. Its the antagonistic feelings between the groups, more than differences over ideas, that drives sectarian conflict.

Any casual observer of American politics would agree that theres plenty of hostility between Democrats and Republicans. Many dont just disagree, they dislike each other. They hold discriminatory attitudes in job hiring as they do on the Implicit Association Test. They tell pollsters they wouldnt want their child to marry an opposing partisan. In a paper published in Science in October by 16 prominent political scientists, the authors argue that by some measures the hatred between the two parties exceeds longstanding antipathies around race and religion.

More than half of Republicans and more than 40 percent of Democrats tend to think of the other party as enemies, rather than political opponents, according to a CBS News poll conducted in January. A majority of Americans said that other Americans were the greatest threat to America.

On one level, partisan animosity just reflects the persistent differences between the two parties over policy issues. Over the past two decades, they have fought bruising battles over the Iraq war, gun rights, health care, taxes and more. Perhaps hard feelings wouldnt necessarily be sectarian in nature.

But the two parties have not only become more ideologically polarized they have simultaneously sorted along racial, religious, educational, generational and geographic lines. Partisanship has become a mega-identity, in the words of the political scientist Lilliana Mason, representing both a division over policy and a broader clash between white, Christian conservatives and a liberal, multiracial, secular elite.

And as mass sectarianism has grown in America, some of the loudest partisan voices in Congress or on Fox News, Twitter, MSNBC and other platforms have determined that its in their interest to lean into cultural warfare and inflammatory rhetoric to energize their side against the other.

The conservative outrage over the purported canceling of Dr. Seuss is a telling marker of how intergroup conflict has supplanted old-fashioned policy debate. Culture war politics used to be synonymous with a fight over social issues, like abortion or gun policy, where government played a central role. The Dr. Seuss controversy had no policy implications. What was at stake was the security of one sect, which saw itself as under attack by the other. Its the kind of issue that would arouse passions in an era of sectarianism.

A Morning Consult/Politico poll conducted in March found that Republicans had heard more about the Dr. Seuss issue than they had heard about the $1.9 trillion stimulus package. A decade earlier, a far smaller stimulus package helped launch the Tea Party movement.

The Dr. Seuss episode is hardly the only example of Republicans de-emphasizing policy goals in favor of stoking sectarianism. Last month, Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, penned an op-ed in support of unionization at Amazon as retribution for the Seattle companys cultural liberalism. At its 2020 national convention, the Republican Party didnt even update its policy platform.

And perhaps most significant, Republicans made the choice in 2016 to abandon laissez-faire economics and neoconservative foreign policy and embrace sectarianism all at once and in one package: Donald J. Trump. The G.O.P. primaries that year were a referendum on whether it was easier to appeal to conservatives with conservative policy or by stoking sectarian animosity. Sectarianism won.

Sectarianism has been so powerful among Republicans in part because they believe theyre at risk of being consigned to minority status. The party has lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections, and conservatives fear that demographic changes promise to further erode their support. And while defeat is part of the game in democracy, it is a lot harder to accept in a sectarian society.

It is not easy to accept being ruled by a hostile, alien rival. It can make political losses feel like existential threats, as the authors of the study published in Science put it.

As a result, the minority often poses a challenge to democracy in a sectarian society. Its the minority who bares the costs, whether material or psychological, of accepting majority rule in a democracy. In the extreme, rule by a hostile, alien group might not feel much different than being subjugated by another nation.

Democracies in sectarian societies often create institutional arrangements to protect the minority, like minority or group rights, power-sharing agreements, devolution or home rule. Otherwise, the most alienated segments of the minority might resort to violence and insurgency in hopes of achieving independence.

Republicans are not consigned to permanent minority status like the typical sectarian minority, of course. The Irish had no chance to become the majority in the United Kingdom. Neither did the Muslims of the British Raj or the Sunnis in Iraq today. Democrats just went from the minority to the majority in all three branches of elected government in four years; Republicans could do the same.

But changes in the racial and cultural makeup of the country leave conservatives feeling far more vulnerable than Republican electoral competitiveness alone would suggest. Demographic projections suggest that non-Hispanic whites will become a minority sometime in the middle of the century. People with a four-year college degree could become a majority of voters even sooner. Religiosity is declining.

The sense that the country is changing heightens Republican concerns. In recent days, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson embraced the conspiracy theory that the Democratic Party was trying to trying to replace the current electorate with new voters from the third world. Far-right extremists in the House are looking to create an America First Caucus that calls for common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions and an infrastructure that befits the progeny of European architecture.

It is not easy to pin down where political sectarianism in America fits on a scale from zero to The Troubles. But nearly every protection that sectarian minorities pursue is either supported or under consideration by some element of the American right.

That includes the more ominous steps. In December, Rush Limbaugh said he thought conservatives were trending toward secession, as there cannot be a peaceful coexistence between liberals and conservatives. One-third of Republicans say they would support secession in a recent poll, along with one-fifth of Democrats.

One-third of Americans believe that violence could be justified to achieve political objectives. In a survey conducted in January, a majority of Republican voters agreed with the statement that the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it. The violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 suggests that the risks of sustained political violence or even insurgency cant be discounted.

Whatever risk of imminent and widespread violence might have existed in January appears to have passed for now.

Instead, Joe Biden was sworn in as president a person who did not attempt to arouse the passions of one sect against the other during his campaign. His nomination and election demonstrates that sectarianism, while on the rise, may still have limits in America: The median voter prefers bipartisanship and a de-escalation of political conflict, creating an incentive to run nonsectarian campaigns.

Yet whether Mr. Bidens presidency will de-escalate sectarian tensions is an open question.

Mr. Biden is pursuing an ambitious policy agenda, which may eventually refocus partisan debate on the issues or just further alienate one side on matters like immigration or the filibuster. Still, the authors of the Science paper write that emphasis on political ideas rather than political adversaries would quite likely to be a major step in the right direction.

And Mr. Biden himself does not seem to illicit much outrage from the conservative news media or rank-and-file perhaps because of his welcoming message or his identity as a 78-year-old white man from Scranton, Pa.

But sectarianism is not just about the conduct of the leader of a party its about the conflict between two groups. Nearly anyones conduct can worsen hostility between the two sides, even if it is not endorsed by the leadership of a national political party. Mr. Carlson and the congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene are only the latest examples.

It leaves America at an uncertain juncture. Mr. Biden may dampen sectarian tensions compared with Mr. Trump, but it is not clear whether festering grievances and resentments will fade into the background with so many others acting to stoke division.

Sectarianism, after all, can last for decades or even centuries after the initial cause for hostility has passed.

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How Democracy Faces a Rising Threat Splitting Republicans and Democrats - The New York Times

After the Republican Party suffered a surprising (well, to Republicans) defeat in the 2012 election, the Republican National Committee famously commissioned an autopsy that tried to analyze how the party had fallen short. It made a range of recommendations, but they were distilled by the headlines and the wishful thinking of certain party elites into a plan for the G.O.P. to win back the presidency mostly by shifting left on immigration.

Then, of course, Donald Trump came along and put that particular vision to the torch.

After Trump went down to his own defeat, it was clear that there wouldnt be a repeat of the autopsy. Not only because the last experience ended badly, but because Trumps narrative would not allow it: To publicly analyze what went wrong for Republicans in 2020 would be to concede that the incumbent president had somehow failed (impossible!), that Joe Bidens victory was totally legitimate (unlikely!) and that the party somehow might need to move on from Trump himself (unthinkable!).

But just because there hasnt been a formal reckoning, thick with focus groups and bullet points, doesnt mean that G.O.P. elites dont have a theory of how to fix their partys problems in time for the next presidential cycle. Its just that this time the theory is less a message than a man: Right now, the partys autopsy for 2020, and its not-Trump hopes for 2024, are made flesh in the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis.

The proximate cause of the enthusiasm for DeSantis is his handling of the pandemic, and the medias attempted manhandling of him. When the Florida governor began reopening Florida last May, faster than some experts advised, he was cast as a feckless mini-Trump, the mayor from Jaws (complete with open, crowded beaches), the ultimate case study in Florida Man stupidity.

A year later, DeSantis is claiming vindication: His states Covid deaths per capita are slightly lower than the nations despite an aged and vulnerable population, his strategy of sealing off nursing homes while reopening schools for the fall looks like social and scientific wisdom, and his gubernatorial foils, the liberal governors cast as heroes by the press, have stumbled and fallen in various ways.

Meanwhile many media attacks on his governance have fizzled or boomeranged, most notably a 60 Minutes hit piece that claimed to have uncovered corruption in the states use of the Publix supermarket for its vaccination efforts but produced no smoking gun, conspicuously edited out much of DeSantiss rebuttal, and fell afoul of fact checkers. The governors public outrage in response was justified, but he must have been privately delighted, since theres nothing that boosts the standing of a Republican politician quite like being attacked deceptively or unsuccessfully by the press.

So DeSantis has a good narrative for the Covid era but his appeal as a post-Trump figure goes deeper than just the pandemic and its battles. The state he governs isnt just a test case for Covid policy. Its also been an object lesson in the adaptability of the Republican Party in the face of demographic trends that were supposed to spell its doom.

When the 2000 election famously came down to a statistical tie in Florida, many Democrats reasonably assumed that by 2020 they would be winning the state handily, thanks to its growing Hispanic population and generational turnover among Cuban-Americans, with an anti-Castro and right-wing older generation giving way to a more liberal younger one. But instead Floridas Democrats keep falling short of power, and the Republicans keep finding new ways to win, culminating in 2020, when the Trump-led G.O.P. made dramatic inroads with Hispanics in Miami-Dade County and took the state with relative ease.

DeSantiss career has been a distillation of this Florida-Republican adaptability. Born in Jacksonville, he went from being a double-Ivy Leaguer (Yale and Harvard Law) to a Tea Party congressman to a zealous Trump defender who won the presidents endorsement for his gubernatorial campaign. A steady march rightward, it would seem except that after winning an extremely narrow victory over Andrew Gillum in 2018, DeSantis then swung back to the center, with educational and environmental initiatives and African-American outreach that earned him 60 percent approval ratings in his first year in office.

Combine that moderate swing with the combative persona DeSantis has developed during the pandemic, and you can see a model for post-Trump Republicanism that might might be able to hold the partys base while broadening the G.O.P.s appeal. You can think of it as a series of careful two-steps. Raise teachers salaries while denouncing critical race theory and left-wing indoctrination. Spend money on conservation and climate change mitigation through a program that carefully doesnt mention climate change itself. Choose a Latina running mate while backing E-Verify laws. Welcome conflict with the press, but try to make sure youre on favorable ground.

This is not exactly the kind of Republicanism that the partys donor class wanted back in 2012: DeSantis is to their right on immigration and social issues, and arguably to their left on spending. But the trauma of Trumpism has taught the G.O.P. elite that some compromise with base politics is inevitable, and right now DeSantis seems like the safest version of that compromise Trump-y when necessary, but not Trump-y all the time.

Of course all of this means that he may soon attract the ire of a certain former president, who has zero interest in someone besides himself being the party front-runner for 2024. And the idea that a non-Trump front-runner could be anointed early and actually win seems at odds with everything weve seen from the G.O.P. recently.

Then, too, having the press as your constant foil and enemy isnt necessarily a plus if they manage to come up with something genuinely damaging. There is a resemblance between DeSantis and Chris Christie, who looked like a 2016 front-runner before certain difficulties involving a bridge intervened.

Still, if you were betting on someone who could theoretically run against Trump, mano a mano, and not simply get squashed, I would put DeSantis ahead of both the defeated Trump rivals (meaning Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz) and the loyal Trump subordinates (meaning Mike Pence or Nikki Haley). Not least because in a party that values performative masculinity, the Florida governors odd jock-nerd energy and prickly aggression are qualities Trump hasnt faced before.

The donor-class hope that Trump will simply fade away still seems nave. But the donors circling DeSantis at least seem to have learned one important lesson from 2016: If you want voters to say no to Donald Trump, you need to figure out, in a clear and early way, the candidate to whom you want them to say yes.

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Opinion | Ron DeSantis Is the Republican Autopsy - The New York Times

Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your wrap-up of the week in national politics. Im Lisa Lerer, your host.

In 2005, two senators went on a global tour.

They visited dilapidated factories in eastern Ukraine where workers were taking apart artillery shells. They drank vodka toasts with foreign leaders and local dignitaries in Saratov, Russia. And on the way home, they met Tony Blair, then the British prime minister, at 10 Downing Street in London.

From Russia to Ukraine and Azerbaijan to Britain, one of the men was greeted like a superstar. And it wasnt Barack Obama.

I very much feel like the novice and pupil, Mr. Obama said during the trip, looking out the window as he flew over the Russian countryside.

His teacher? Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, one of a caste of Republican foreign policy mandarins who prided themselves on bipartisan deal-making on matters of global importance. Mr. Lugar was a smart choice for a mentor: Nearly a decade before the Sept. 11 attacks, he worked with Sam Nunn, the Democratic senator from Georgia, to pass legislation that helped destroy surplus stocks of nuclear weapons, keeping dangerous materials from reaching terrorists.

Yet Mr. Lugar would serve only one more term after that trip. Seven years later, Mr. Lugar lost by more than 20 percentage points in a primary battle against Richard E. Mourdock, a conservative Tea Party candidate who attacked his moderate opponent for his willingness to work with Mr. Obama, by then the president. And today, the story of that trip one where an older senator spent weeks tutoring a younger member of the opposing party in the ways of foreign policy feels distinctly sepia-toned.

I was thinking a lot about that history this week, as I watched President Biden announce his decision to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11. It was a humbling moment for the country, a painful admission that the staggering costs in money and lives of the forever war would never accomplish the mission of ushering in a stable democracy.

But for Republicans, the withdrawal offered another reminder of the partys own unresolved conflict. As I detailed in the paper on Friday, the usual suspects gave the usual responses to the decision. The statements largely mirrored the reception to a pledge last year by former President Donald J. Trump to withdraw by May 1, 2021 though with a bit of added vitriol.

Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, called it a retreat in the face of an enemy. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said it was dumber than dirt and devilishly dangerous and warned that the withdrawal could lead to another terrorist attack. Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming called the decision a huge propaganda victory for the Taliban, for Al Qaeda.

But the pushback was hardly overwhelming. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky heralded the move, tweeting, Enough endless wars. And Senators Josh Hawley of Missouri, Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah offered various degrees of praise.

Its clear from that divergent response that there is little agreement within the party on a fairly basic question: How do Republicans view Americas place in the world?

The post-9/11, Bush-era, hawkish consensus that guided the party for years is under siege, weakened by Mr. Trumps more transactional, America First foreign policy that rejected the internationalist order that was party orthodoxy for decades.

To the extent that Republican voters care about foreign policy, they are now largely driven by Mr. Trumps interests and isolationist tendencies.

Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster, said he saw three foreign policy issues resonating with G.O.P. voters: restricting immigration, taking a tougher stance against China (which many blame for the spread of the coronavirus) and ending foreign entanglements.

Just because Donald Trump is no longer president, that doesnt mean that Republicans arent taking their lead from him on the issue of foreign policy, Mr. Newhouse said.

But those views arent shared by some of the partys leaders and a foreign policy establishment that was effectively exiled from policymaking posts during Mr. Trumps administration.

A small minority believe that we need to make our peace with the populist impulses that have driven President Trumps choices, said Kori Schake, who directs foreign and military policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and served on the National Security Council under President George W. Bush. But my sense is that an inchoate larger plurality is converging around the notion that we havent done our jobs well enough of explaining to Americans, who dont spend all their times thinking about foreign and defense policy, why the positions that we advocate make the country safer and more prosperous.

This is hardly the only area where Mr. Trump has scrambled Republican orthodoxy by shifting his party in a more populist direction. As I wrote last week, the cracks that he has created between Republicans and their traditional allies in the business community have become a chasm. The huge amount of new spending during his time in office has made it difficult for the party to revert to its traditional position of fiscal responsibility and argue against the huge price tags of Mr. Bidens coronavirus relief and spending bills. On Friday, Mr. Bush published an op-ed article striking a gentler tone on immigration, quite a contrast from Mr. Trump and his calls to build the wall.

There is very little unity in the G.O.P. right now when it comes to setting a policy agenda. And there doesnt appear to be overwhelming interest in confronting these divides.

During the first months of the Biden administration, Republicans have been consumed with issues like so-called cancel culture, re-litigating the election and corporate wokeness. Those culture-war topics fire up the conservative base, leading to interview requests and campaign cash for Republican candidates and politicians.

But in all of this discussion of conspiracy theories and culture wars, theres little room or apparent desire to sort out what the post-Trump Republican Party stands for on the biggest issues of the day.

Mr. Lugar died in 2019. Just two years later, the bipartisan comity that he championed certainly feels like a relic from a bygone era. Whats far harder to see is whether his partys leaders, activists and voters can find their way to a future where they agree even with themselves.

We want to hear from our readers. Have a question? Well try to answer it. Have a comment? Were all ears. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com or message me on Twitter at @llerer.

Thats the number of mass shootings so far in 2021, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Heres a small glimpse of the gun violence that the country has already suffered this year.

A perk of the princehood: Designing your own hearse.

Thanks for reading. On Politics is your guide to the political news cycle, delivering clarity from the chaos.

Is there anything you think were missing? Anything you want to see more of? Wed love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.

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The Republican Retreat on World Affairs - The New York Times

Two members of Congress, two former gubernatorial candidates and former Mayor Rudy Giulianis son will address a gathering of Republican leaders in Albany Monday, as the state party starts to settle its ticket for Novemberof 2022.

NYGOP Chairman Nick Langworthy said in an interview that his singular focus is defeating Gov. Andrew Cuomo in next years statewide elections, adding he hopes for a consensus about his partys candidates before years end.

It is imperative that we get the ball rolling, said Mr. Langworthy.

There are now more than twice as many Democrats in the state as Republicans, and the GOP hasnt won a statewide office since Gov. George Pataki was elected to a third term in 2002. Republicans also lost control of the state Senate majority in 2018, hampering the state partys efforts to raise campaign money.

U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin, who represents a district in eastern Long Island, on April 8 became the first major GOP candidate to declare a gubernatorial bid. His campaign said he raised $1 million on its first day of operations. In January, Mr. Cuomo reported he had $16.8 million in his war chest.

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New York Republicans Make Their Case to Take on Gov. Andrew Cuomo - The Wall Street Journal

File image: An effigy of Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg (C), dressed as a 6 January, 2021, insurrectionist is placed near the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on25 March, 2021. Protester set up effigies of Big Tech CEO's as the US Congress holds hearings March 25 about the spread of disinformation and misinformation on their platforms

Republican lawmakers are ready with a proposal to reform a key section of US communications law aimed at reining in technology giants, a move which critics have said is tantamount to burning down the internet.

The law in question and facing scrutiny from both Republicans and Democrats, albeit for different reasons, is Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act that protects internet companies from liability for the material that the users post on their networks.

The proposal to reform Section 230 was unveiled by the Republican members of the US House Energy and Commerce Committee last week.

Eric Goldman, a professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law, said: To me its a chilling memo, because it shows that both the Democrats and Republicans are ready to burn down the internet.

They can find plenty of reason to agree on that. Whoever drafted that memo, does not care about making good policy, he told Yahoo Finance.

Section 230 was consistently under attack from former president Donald Trump, who like many of his followers claimed that it allows conservative voices to be censored.

Democrats, meanwhile, believe that technology giants like Google, Twitter and Facebook have abused that protection and they should either lose their immunity or earn it by satisfying requirements set by the government.

Republicans are reportedly now seeking a modification of Section 230 to take away protections from internet companies in cases where their moderation practices discriminate against political affiliations or viewpoints.

But legal experts such as India McKinney, director of federal affairs at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that theres a First Amendment problem here with some of this stuff, and thats sort of the big issue looking at a lot of these concepts.

Another part of the proposal looks at treating the big technology firms as state actors which would mean that limiting the liability protections forcing them to publish all other user-generated speech.

Story continues

Mr Goldman said that type of requirement by the government for a private entity to speak amounts to censorship.

The only way you get there is if you ignore editorial privileges that internet services have. Theres an entire First Amendment provision about the freedom of the press, he said.

The Republican committee members propose to scale back the big technology firms First Amendment protections by categorising their services as places of public accommodation, which means that these companies could be offered only liability protection for content moderation processes that can be challenged by the users in court.

The entire notion of saying, Were going to treat a publisher like a restaurant is so incoherent. It doesnt make any sense. Theyre not serving customers, theyre not kicking people out, Mr Goldman pointed out.

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Secret Republican memo that would burn down the internet revealed - Yahoo News

Do Republicans really want to be against the sport that made him famous?

Photographer: Hulton Archive/Hulton Archive

Photographer: Hulton Archive/Hulton Archive

As the author of a book-length love letter to big business, I have long viewed the Republican Party as more aligned with corporate America than are Democrats. Thats certainly the case from a rhetorical standpoint, and on policy as well: It was former President Donald Trumps administration, after all, that pushed through a significant cut in the corporate income tax rate.

Yes, the real picture is much more complicated. Big business typically wants more high-skilled immigration, which Democrats tend to favor, and the Democratic Party at times has done more for free trade than have Republicans.

In any case, all that has changed. Many U.S. big businesses have sided with Democrats on some aspects of the culture wars, and leading members of the Republican Party have responded with vitriol. In the span of just a few years, they have gone from making apologies for big business to making threats against it.

The final straw may have been Major League Baseballs decision last week to relocate the All-Star game to Denver from Atlanta over concerns about a new voting-rights law in Georgia. Many Republicans in the state favored the changes, and the response from some Republicans in Congress was to start talking about revoking baseballs antitrust exemption.

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This is what it has come to in 21st-century America: Left-wing activists bully corporations through social media, while right-wing critics threaten them with the law.

Baseballs relocation of the All-Star game was very likely a business rather than a political decision. If the game had proceed in Atlanta, some of the players undoubtedly would have spoken out against the new voting law or boycotted the game. The event might have been dominated by politics. So baseball followed a common crisis-management strategy, deciding to take one public-relations hit now instead of having to confront a slow drip of unpleasant revelations over the next several months.

There is a simple solution for the Republican Party, if it is interested: Give up its opposition to such voting laws. Even if it opposes some parts of the laws, or if the negative aspects of the laws have been exaggerated, it hardly seems worth the price to be pushed into these ideological corners. Practically speaking, the best evidence suggests that such laws may not be a big deal anyway.

There is also something about baseball itself. This is the institution that so helped race relations in America by clearing the path for Jackie Robinson. You dont have to agree with MLBs every decision to see its overall social influence as strongly positive. It is hardly a historical villain in need of restraint.

Beyond sports, there is more evidence of a falling-out between Republicans and big business. When more than 100 major corporate leaders had a conference call last week to discuss what to do about the voting laws in Georgia and elsewhere, J.D. Vances response was the social-media equivalent of pounding the table with his shoe. Raise their taxes and do whatever else is necessary to fight these goons, tweeted the best-selling author and likely Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Ohio. We can have an American Republic or a global oligarchy, and its time for choosing.

Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, meanwhile, has put forward a trust busting plan to rein in big business. The plan seeks to beef up antitrust prosecution and eliminate mergers and acquisitions for firms of $100 billion or more in value. It is something you might expect from the far left wing of the Democratic Party, not a leading Republican senator.

Of course this isnt a serious proposal. Do Republicans really want to see Democratic administrations have the dominant hand in antitrust decisions for four or maybe more years? Does the U.S. want to stop major pharmaceutical firms from acquiring smaller, more innovative companies with drugs of potential importance? Hawleys bill is meant to send a message: Nice business youve got here. Be a shame if anything happened to it. It is both a plea and a threat about big businesss leftward slide.

I am not seeking to debate Georgias voting rights bill, nor those of any other state. But I do know a little about sports. Baseball has long been the least political and most traditional of Americas pastimes, and it has a relatively old fan base. So the question Republicans might want to ask themselves is not how to punish Major League Baseball. Its how to get it back. Right now, Republicans are moving in exactly the wrong direction.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:Tyler Cowen at tcowen2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:Michael Newman at mnewman43@bloomberg.net

Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal.

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Republicans Will Regret Their Breakup With Big Business - Bloomberg

Rep. Karen BassKaren Ruth BassBass 'hopeful' on passing police reform: 'Republicans that I am working with are operating in good faith' Sunday shows preview: Russia, US exchange sanctions; tensions over policing rise; vaccination campaign continues Lawmakers demand justice for Adam Toledo: 'His hands were up. He was unarmed' MORE (D-Calif.) on Sunday said she is hopeful that Congress will come together to pass police reform in the wake of tworecent fatal police shootings of people of color.

When asked where things stand on negotiations for a bipartisan deal on police reform, Bass told host Dana BashDana BashBass 'hopeful' on passing police reform: 'Republicans that I am working with are operating in good faith' Waters: Fauci 'was being bullied' by Jordan during hearing Sullivan: 'There will be consequences' if Navalny dies MORE on CNNs State of the Union that she is hopeful because the group of people where we have been having just informal discussions are very sincere, and it's a bipartisan group.

She continued, saying I believe that we want to make something happen.

Rep. Karen Bass on police reform: "All communities deserve to be protected and served by law enforcement and you shouldn't have law enforcement that protects and serves one community and acts as though they're in a war zone in another community ... that's what we have." #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/KTsmzXLdkz

Thecomments come after the fatal shootings of 20-year-old Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center, Minn., and 13-year-old Adam Toledo in Chicago, both by police officers.

The House last month passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act in a 220-212 vote, with no Republicans supporting the measure.

Two Democrats also voted against the measure.

Bass, who previously chaired the Congressional Black Caucus, said she a bipartisan group of senators led by Tim ScottTimothy (Tim) Eugene ScottBass 'hopeful' on passing police reform: 'Republicans that I am working with are operating in good faith' The Hill's Morning Report - Presented by Tax March - CDC in limbo on J&J vax verdict; Rep. Brady retiring Tim Scott to participate in GOP event in Iowa MORE (R-S.C.) and Cory BookerCory BookerBass 'hopeful' on passing police reform: 'Republicans that I am working with are operating in good faith' Progressive lawmakers press DHS chief on immigration detention Democrats battle over best path for Puerto Rico MORE (D-N.J.) are continuing to work together to find a solution that will garner the supermajority that is needed to pass legislation in the Senate.

When pressed by Bash on if Republicans are operating in good faith on the issue of police reform, Bass said she believes her colleagues across the aisle she is working with are doing so.

I believe that the Republicans that I am working with are operating in good faith. And I do think there's other examples. I'm fortunate to work on a couple of other issues that I work fine with my Republican colleagues, Bass said.

Bass did, however, recognized the challenge her Democratic colleagues now face in passing police reform in the Senate, calling it a super hurdle.

It's one thing to pass legislation in the House. It's a super hurdle to get it passed in the Senate. But we are working, Bass said.

Bass specifically said Congress needs to ban chokeholds and no-knock warrants, and create a registry of problem officers.

You know, all communities deserve to be protected and served by law enforcement. And you shouldn't have law enforcement that protects and serves one community and acts as though they're in a war zone in another community, and treating everybody in that community as though they're criminals, she added.

On Thursday, the defense rested their case in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who was charged with the murder of Floyd.

Chauvin was captured on video footage last May kneeling on Floyds neck for more than nine minutes. Floyd was later pronounced dead at a local hospital.

The Hennepin County medical examiner later ruled Floyds death a homicide.

View original post here:

Bass 'hopeful' on passing police reform: 'Republicans that I am working with are operating in good faith' | TheHill - The Hill

Van Duyne went after the people her constituency already didnt likethe media, Muslimsand it paid off with growing exposure, more media attention, and ultimately bigger jobs. In 2017, Trump appointed her as a regional administrator within the Department of Housing and Urban Development, responsible for overseeing issues such as disaster recovery and economic development across Texas and four other states.

Van Duyne wasnt one of those reluctant career bureaucrats who held their nose as they did Trumps bidding. She had been one of the few mayors of a large city to back his presidential campaign. After leaving HUD, she ran for Congress as a supporter of Trumps policies, won his endorsementand, last November, won the seat.

A newly elected member of Congress who prevailed in a close race in a swing district like Van Duynes might be expected to try to acquire a moderate reputation in D.C. Unlike many freshman members of Congress, though, Van Duyne knows she wont be facing the same voters next year. Because Democrats failed to win control of the Texas House, Republicans will have unilateral control over drawing district lines in the state, and are nearly certain to make Van Duynes district even more Republican ahead of the 2022 election. Her Trumpy, conservative reputation means she probably wont be vulnerable in the next GOP primary, and with a more Republican-leaning district, shell be even less likely to be defeated by a Democrat, says Jones, the political scientist.

She has acted accordingly, voting against certifying Pennsylvanias election results, then criticizing President Biden for undoing Trumps legacy. Shes even sparred with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter about who used to be the tougher waitress.

Van Duynes gender makes her especially valuable to the Texas congressional delegation. Texas Republicans have always had trouble recruiting female candidates, and shes only the third Republican woman from Texas to be elected to the Houseand one of only two serving now. In Texas, its difficult for anybody to defeat a sitting U.S. House member, Jones says. And Van Duyne, as only one of two women Republicans, is likely to be especially protected, in the sense that the GOP realizes it has a serious image problem.

I asked Barnes, the GOP chair, about the most common criticism of Van Duyne: that the way she made a name for herself, pretending to crack down on Sharia law, was not what a growing, diverseand partly Muslimarea really wanted from its leader. It may be that we are finding that it was more in line with what the citizens of the area wanted and desired out of their mayor than may have become public at the time, he said. Indeed, among Republicans in Texas, Trumpisms appeal endures. Trump remains the most popular Republican politician in Texas among GOP votersmore popular than Governor Greg Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, Senator Ted Cruz, or Senator John Cornyn. Van Duyne is just reflecting what the Republican base thinks about Donald Trump, and that is that theyre very supportive of him, Jones says.

Ahead of last years election, Democrats had imagined that Trumpist candidates like Van Duyne would seem out of step with a changing Texas. But an ambitious single mother who has become a city-council member, a mayor, a regional housing administrator, and finally a U.S. representative is clearly not out of step. She is walking in precisely the right direction.

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How Beth Van Duyne's Trumpism Carried Her to Congress - The Atlantic

On eve of audit, Senate GOP still doesn't have Maricopa County election materials it wants to examine. Audit is led and funded by people who reject Biden victory.

PHOENIX Almost six months after the presidential election, a Republican-commissioned audit of Maricopa Countys presidential vote will begin Monday.

The audit, which grew out of Arizona Republican lawmakers effort late last year to toss out Joe Bidens victory in the state, is being led, funded and cheered on by people who believe the Arizona vote was stolen from former President Donald Trump.

Arizona Senate President Karen Fann told a radio interviewer last week that the audit team would show up on Monday and the audit work would begin Thursday.

Fann has booked Veterans Memorial Coliseum at the State Fairgrounds from Monday through May 14 for the audit.

Fann has said the audit is needed to answer the thousands of questions about the election that she and fellow lawmakers have received from constituents. She has said the work will be independent, bipartisan and true.

More than a dozen lawsuits and two independent audits paid for by the Maricopa County Elections Department have revealed no wrongdoing in the 2020 vote.

The focus is on the Maricopa County results, which account for six of every 10 votes in the swing state. Biden was the first Democratic presidential nominee to win Maricopa County in 72 years.

Heres what we know about the audit:

What happens Monday?

The question right now is whether the auditors will have any election materials to work with.

Late last week, the Maricopa County Board, which oversees county elections, sent a letter to Fanns liaison, former Secretary of State Ken Bennett, asking where he wanted to take delivery of the countys 2.1 million boxed ballots and the ballot-counting machines subpoenaed by Senate Republicans.

The subpoena said the materials were to be delivered to the Senate building, at the state Capitol.

Theres another wrinkle: County officials and former County Recorder Adrian Fontes says that moving the sophisticated election equipment isnt as simple as putting it in a cardboard box and forklifting it onto a truck. Its time consuming, they say, and expenses - costing in the ten of thousands of dollars.

Bennett did not respond Sunday to a question Sunday about whether the issue has been resolved.

Whos paying for this?

The state Senate has agreed to pay a company called Cyber Ninjas $150,000 from its taxpayer-funded budget to lead the audit.

Bennett told me last week that the $150,000 wouldnt be enough. He expected private donations to make up the balance of the costs and perhaps pay for the Senates piece, as well.

The lead fund-raiser is Christina Bobb, a personality on One America News Network, a far-right cable channel that continues to question Bidens victory.

Bobb fronted a report on the Arizona Heist, raising baseless questions about the vote here.

Bobb, a former Trump Administration employee, tweeted last week that she was on to a second round of fund-raising after the first round yielded $150,000.

There is no way to know who is donating money.

A Talking Points Memo report late last week said the cash would be funneled to the lead auditor, Florida-based Cyber Ninjas.

Who is Cyber Ninjas?

Cyber Ninjas is owned by Doug Logan. The company does computer security assessments. It has never done an election audit, let alone one of this scope.

Logan has promoted false claimsthat the 2020 election was rigged. He has been praised by Lin Wood, one of the leaders of the effort to overturn the vote and a $50,000 donor to the Maricopa County audit.

Logans response: "The big question should not be, Am I biased," he said in an emailed statement, "but Will this audit be transparent, truthful and accurate? The answer to the latter question is a resounding Yes.

Will audit reveal how you voted?

Auditors plan to hand count all 2.1 million election ballots. Ballots do not identify voters (though some voters do sign their ballots).

One of the more controversial parts of the audit plan involves going door to door in some areas to ask people questions about their ballot, and when and where they voted.

A former East Valley legislative candidate has been leading a voter canvassing campaign. Its not clear whether that will be connected to the Cyber Ninjas work.

Lawyers have sent a cease-and-desist letter to the four companies that are part of the audit team, warning them that they might be violating state and federal law with these door knocks for voter information.

What's Dominion doing?

Maricopa County leases its ballot-counting equipment from Dominion Voting Systems.

Dominion has filed billion-dollar defamation lawsuits against Fox News, My Pillows Mike Lindell (whos cheering on the Maricopa audit) and Rudy Guiliani.

Cyber Ninjas Doug Logan has promoted the falsehood of a ballot undercount in Arizona. He will be examining the Dominion equipment.

Will Dominion step in to prevent that from happening? We dont know.

This was Dominions statement after Logans hiring:

"The firms selected to conduct this audit are beyond biased. Publicly available information shows they are led by conspiracy theorists and QAnon supporters who have helped spread the Big Lie. Dominion supports all forensic audits conducted by independent, federally-accredited Voting System Test Labs but this is not that. Over a thousand independent audits and recounts have taken place across the country since Election Day, and they all demonstrated the accuracy and reliability of our voting systems."

Whos guarding equipment, ballots?

Fann has said the Coliseum will have 24-hour security and the work inside will be livestreamed.

The chain of custody of the ballots still isnt clear.

On social media, Trump supporters are stoking fears of an alleged Antifa attack on the audit site.

Will Democrats participate?

Maricopa County elections are run with the participation of the three major parties - Democratic, Republican and Libertarian. All provide observers for pre-election equipment tests, ballot-counting, and post-election tests.

Democratic Party officials are declining to take part in the audit. The fear is that participating would lend credence to a bad-faith effort.

Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, the states top elections official, has said shes exploring her legal options, but hoped the Maricopa County Board would shut down the audit.

Whats the point?

This is the most important question of all.

Initial claims by Fann and other Senate Republicans that a Senate audit would help them write new election bills are now moot. The Legislature isnt hearing any more bills this session.

The goal of answering voters questions appears dubious. Many of the questions arose because Trump made unfounded claims for months - and continues to make them - that the election was rigged.

Trump die-hards on social media believe the audit will produce results revealing the Maricopa County vote was stolen. Trump lost the county by 11,000 votes.

The larger concern is that this audit will normalize a partisan, post-election review in Arizona that has no basis in state elections law.

It was instigated by a slim Republican majority in the state Senate, with a subpoena for all election materials that was approved by a lower-court judge.

In an editorial last week, the Arizona Republic said of the Senate Republicans: Their conduct post-election has been so nakedly partisan that whatever their audit finds, its results will not be believed.

See the article here:

In Arizona, the 2020 presidential election still isnt over. Republicans start an audit this week. Heres what we know. - 12news.com KPNX