Category Archives: Republican

As the House voted Wednesday to formally charge President Trump with inciting violence against the government of the United States, exactly one week after the Capitol was breached by an angry mob of Trump loyalists, 10 Republicans cast their votes in favor of impeachment.

It was the largest number of lawmakers to ever vote to impeach a president from their own party; just five Democrats voted to impeach President Bill Clinton, and not a single Republican voted in favor of impeaching Mr. Trump in 2019.

House Republican leaders said they would not formally lobby members of the party against voting to impeach the president this time.

Representative John Katko of New York was the first Republican to publicly announce that he would back impeachment. Not holding the president accountable for his actions would be a direct threat to the future of our democracy, he said.

Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 House Republican, said on Tuesday evening that she would vote to impeach, citing the presidents role in an insurrection that caused death and destruction in the most sacred space in our republic.

Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, a frequent critic of Mr. Trump, joined his Republican colleagues on Tuesday evening, saying the nation was in uncharted waters. He said that Mr. Trump encouraged an angry mob to storm the United States Capitol to stop the counting of electoral votes.

Representative Fred Upton of Michigan said he would vote to impeach after Mr. Trump expressed no regrets for what had happened at the Capitol.

Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington State said, The presidents offenses, in my reading of the Constitution, were impeachable based on the indisputable evidence we already have. (An earlier version of this item incorrectly stated which state Ms. Herrera Beutler represents.)

Representative Dan Newhouse of Washington State announced that he was backing impeachment, attacking his partys core argument, that the process was being rushed. I will not use process as an excuse, he said during the impeachment debate, to cheers and applause from Democrats. Mr. Newhouse also offered a mea culpa, chiding himself and other Republicans for not speaking out sooner against the president.

Representative Peter Meijer of Michigan said that Mr. Trump had betrayed his oath of office by seeking to undermine our constitutional process, and he bears responsibility for inciting the insurrection we suffered last week.

Representative Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio said Vice President Mike Pence and members of the House and Senate had their lives put in grave danger as a result of the presidents actions, adding, When I consider the full scope of events leading up to Jan. 6, including the presidents lack of response as the United States Capitol was under attack, I am compelled to support impeachment.

Representative David Valadao of California complained that the process had been rushed but said: Based on the facts before me, I have to go with my gut and vote my conscience. I voted to impeach President Trump. His inciting rhetoric was un-American, abhorrent and absolutely an impeachable offense. Its time to put country over politics.

Representative Tom Rice of South Carolina criticized Mr. Trumps response to the siege and concluded: I have backed this president through thick and thin for four years. I campaigned for him and voted for him twice. But this utter failure is inexcusable.

Four Republicans did not vote: Representatives Kay Granger of Texas, Andy Harris of Maryland, Greg Murphy of North Carolina and Daniel Webster of Florida.

Nicholas Fandos and Glenn Thrush contributed reporting.

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Which Republicans Voted to Impeach Trump? Here Are 10 - The New York Times

Heres how it could happen. First, the partys non-Trumpist faction embodied by senators like Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski, various purple- and blue-state governors and most of the remaining Acela corridor conservatives, from lawyers and judges to lobbyists and staffers pushes for a full repudiation of Trump and all his works, extending beyond impeachment to encompass support for social-media bans, F.B.I. surveillance of the MAGA universe and more.

At the same time, precisely those measures further radicalize portions of the partys base, offering apparent proof that Trump was right that the system isnt merely consolidating against but actively persecuting them. With this sense of persecution in the background and the Trump family posturing as party leaders, the voter-fraud mythology becomes a litmus test in many congressional elections, and baroque conspiracy theories pervade primary campaigns.

In this scenario, what remains of the center-right suburban vote and the G.O.P. establishment becomes at least as NeverTrump as Romney, if not the Lincoln Project; meanwhile, the core of Trumps support becomes as paranoid as Q devotees. Maybe this leads to more empty acts of violence, further radicalizing the center right against the right, or maybe it just leads to Republican primaries producing a lot more candidates like Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, to the point where a big chunk of the House G.O.P. occupies not just a different tactical reality from the partys elite but a completely different universe.

Either way, under these conditions that party could really collapse or really break. The collapse would happen if Trumpists with a dolchstoss narrative and a strong Q vibe start winning nominations for Senate seats and governorships in states that right now only lean Republican. A party made insane and radioactive by conspiracy theories could keep on winning deep-red districts, but if its corporate support bailed, its remaining technocrats jumped ship and suburban professionals regarded it as the party of insurrection, it could easily become a consistent loser in 30 states or more.

Alternatively, a party dominated by the Trump family at the grassroots level, with Greene-like figures as its foot soldiers, could become genuinely untenable as a home for centrist and non-Trumpist politicians. So after the renomination of Trump himself or the nomination of Don Jr. in 2024, a cluster of figures (senators like Romney and Susan Collins, blue-state governors like Marylands Larry Hogan) might simply jump ship to form an independent mini-party, leaving the G.O.P. as a 35 percent proposition, a heartland rump.

None of this is a prediction. In American politics, reversion to the gridlocked mean has been a safe bet for many years in which case youd expect the MAGA extremes to return to their fantasy world, the threat of violence to ebb, Trump to fade without his Twitter feed and the combination of Biden-administration liberalism and Big Tech overreach to bring the rights blocking coalition back together in time for 2022.

But if Biden governs carefully, if Trump doesnt go quietly, if MAGA fantasies become right-wing orthodoxies, then the stresses on the Republican Party and conservatism could become too great to bear.

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Opinion | How the Republican Party Could Break - The New York Times

After the US Capitol was stormed by insurrectionists last week, American democracy is teetering on the precipice.

Democratic politics, at its core, has always been about navigating the tension between stability and progress. If a society resists change for too long, it becomes inert; if it changes too quickly, it becomes unstable. Traditionally, conservative parties have privileged stability and left-leaning parties have privileged change. Thats an oversimplification, but you get the point.

But what happens to democratic societies when conservative parties become radical in their defense of the status quo?

Its a question we have to ask given the current state of the Republican Party. Even after the events of last week, even after at least five people were killed at the seat of American democracy, nearly 150 Republican lawmakers formally objected to the results of the 2020 election anyway. And even if that vote was performative, that so many GOP officials are still willing to play chicken with American democracy in this way speaks volumes about the state of the party.

Harvard political scientist Daniel Ziblatt (most recently co-author of How Democracies Die) argued in a 2017 book that the importance of conservative parties in democratic systems has been largely underappreciated. Democracies tend to evolve in the direction of more equality, and how a society responds to those changes determines how healthy and stable it is over time. Since its often the conservative parties that dictate this response, how theyre organized and what they do (or dont do) is hugely consequential.

I reached out to Ziblatt to talk about his level of concern and how he views the GOP in historical terms. We discussed why democracies have buckled when conservative parties were too weak to control their more radical elements, why the Republican Party has become such an outlier, and why major constitutional reforms might be the only way to fix the problem.

Much of this conversation occurred before the US Capitol was besieged, so I contacted Ziblatt again after January 6 to get his thoughts on what transpired and what it means for the future of the country. After processing the attack, Ziblatt says its become clear that were facing a regime-threatening moment and a real tipping point for American democracy.

You can read a lightly edited transcript of our entire conversation below.

Well, here we are, just a few days after the riot at the US Capitol. What were you thinking when you watched this unfold? Do any historical analogues spring to mind?

I think what was so striking for everyone watching this is just how unfamiliar it all felt and looked to American eyes. There is a record of these sorts of uprising across US states in recent years and in the past, but having this happen at the seat of power was so disorienting. Hence the proliferation of names to describe it: coup, putsch, riot, insurrection, and so on. We just dont know how to make sense of it.

But in the days since, it has become clear this was a regime-threatening moment. Not only because of the violence but also because the aim was to disrupt the constitutional transfer of power. This is serious business, and most worrying is that it has, at the very least, the tacit support of some leading figures in the Republican establishment.

As I saw the video of Sen. Lindsey Graham being harassed at the Washington, DC, airport for having failed to sufficiently support President Trump, I was reminded of Churchills definition of an appeaser as one who feeds a crocodile, hoping he will be the last one eaten. We have a rotten sore in the midst of our political system, infecting the whole system, that isnt going anywhere anytime soon.

Why are properly functioning conservative parties so essential to the health of democratic systems?

Im not sure if theyre more important than liberal or progressive parties, but their importance is definitely underappreciated by most liberals and progressives.

If you look at the history of democracy in Western Europe, and the US, to a degree, a pattern emerges: When economically powerful groups arent well-organized into parties that can compete and win in a democratic process, then those groups tend to go outside of the political process and undermine democracy. In places where youve had strong center-right parties, like Britain in the 19th century, there was a much more stable constitutional order, and in places where conservative parties were weaker, like Weimar Germany, democracy was much less stable.

Can you clarify what you mean by well-organized conservative parties? Because in the case of the Republican Party, theyre still winning elections but theyre not strong or organized by your standard.

The key thing is that conservative parties are governed by professional politicians who have a stake in the continuation of the political system. Thats more important than whether conservatives win elections or not. So you can imagine a situation like late 19th-century Spain or late 19th-century Germany where conservatives do really well in elections, but its because the elections are rigged, and you have state officials tampering with the election and repressing the vote so that conservatives win. Thats a strong conservative party but not in the sense that I mean it.

Its critical that conservatives discover the power of political organization within the democratic context. Sometimes people will say, Well, what about the Nazi Party? This was a strong party. This wasnt good for democracy. And thats certainly the case, but thats sort of the end of a long process under which conservatives hadnt been particularly well-organized. And what happens when conservatives arent well-organized is they cant control their most radical base and that might be the clearest parallel to our current period.

If you look across the democratic world today, how much of an outlier is the GOP?

I dont really have to guess at this. Theres an organization called Varieties of Democracy that we used in our book to categorize parties as abiding by democratic rules or not. And theyve taken that and applied it to every major political party in almost every democracy since 1970. And what you see, based on the expert evaluations, is that in the mid-1970s, the Republican Party is basically in the same grouping as other major center-right parties throughout Europe.

Beginning in the 2000s, however, it goes dramatically off course in terms of its commitment to democratic norms. The American Republican Party now looks like a European far-right party. But the big difference between the US and a lot of these European countries is that the US only has two parties and one of them is like a European far-right party. If the GOP only controlled 20 percent of the legislature, like you see in a lot of European countries, this would be far less problematic but they basically control half of it.

So I think the central weakness of our political system right now is the Republican Party. We had what was basically a center-right party and over time its become more ideologically extreme while still doing well electorally, and that opens the system to further extremism and risks a kind of spiral in which both parties become more radicalized in response to the other.

There arent any perfect historical parallels, but what are the most instructive examples in your mind?

Its a tough question, but Ill go back to the German example. When I wrote the book on German conservatives, I was writing between 2010 and 2015 and I saw the Republican Party losing control in ways that reminded me of 19th-century Germany. It kind of freaked me out.

I remember Romney running for the GOP nomination, and so many people assumed he would win the primary because the party has all the control and he was the establishment incumbent guy. But I kept thinking, Yeah, thats true right now, but historically there are lots of cases where the grassroots gets control of the party, and when they do, its bad news for democracy. Fast-forward to 2016 and Trump and you can see how that played out.

I do want to be cautious about this comparison, because there are a couple major differences. One is that Germany had a proportional system, so it was much harder to hold the conservative base together in a highly fragmented system. Also, the conservative party in Germany was very young, didnt have deep roots or a deep history. Were not talking about the party of Lincoln going back 150 years or whatever. The Republican Party is more substantial as an organization than the German conservative party ever was.

So there are real differences, and Im always careful when making these Weimar comparisons. But as dangerous as it is to go wild with the Weimar comparisons, its just as dangerous to foreclose that comparison because it ended so badly.

There do seem to be problems today that are unique to our time, or maybe it just seems that way. Im thinking of the media landscape and the fact that so much of the GOP base has been captured by misinformation and false narratives.

Are there any examples of parties being subsumed by alternative realities in this way, or is this something that wasnt really possible until the digital age?

One of the most uncanny parallels to the Weimar era is that the leading figure in the German nationalist scene in the mid-1920s was this guy named Alfred Hugenberg, who had no political career. He was an adviser and a businessman. But slowly, he built up a media empire. He owned movie theaters and newspapers and even the official German wire service, which provided news to local newspapers.

As this new media infrastructure was developing, he was pushing a total nationalist agenda, infusing nationalist themes into newspaper stories. And he then got himself selected as the head of the German Conservative Party in 1928. He was uncharismatic and a failure as a politician, but he helped turn the political debate in a more nationalist direction.

Today, its more complicated because the media infrastructure is so all-encompassing. But Ive seen people draw parallels to the end of World War I where you had this narrative emerge in Germany that basically said that Germans were stabbed in the back by liberals and Jews and communists, that they didnt really lose the war. This myth was perpetuated after 1918, and it slowly spread throughout the political system. You could say that as people retreated more into mythology, they started to believe what today wed call alternative facts.

But I do think our situation is much better because in the case of Germany, the entire national political system had experienced this humiliating defeat. The country was decimated by a major war. Were not there. So whatever were dealing with here, its on a much smaller scale.

Given everything youve said here, how alarmed are you not just about the Republican Party but the overall trajectory of American democracy?

The need for major institutional reforms has become much clearer in my mind. The Republican Party is supposed to moderate in order to win votes. Youre not supposed to be able to go too far to the extremes and keep winning votes in a two-party system. Thats the puzzle in front of us. Two-party systems are supposed to be self-correcting. When it goes too far away from an average voter, you get punished and you moderate and go back to the middle.

This isnt happening because our constitutional system is filled with all of these counter-majoritarian crutches (like the Electoral College) for any party that does well in rural areas, and that allows Republicans to win office without winning a majority of the electorate. So we have to reform our institutions to compel the GOP to compete in more urban, more diverse areas thats the path to moderation.

Sometimes people will say to me, Well, we cant engineer our way out of this problem. There needs to be deep societal change. They say its naive to think we can reform our institutions. I say its naive to think we can get out of this without reforming our institutions. We simply have to change the basic incentives governing our political system.

Its hard to imagine a realignment like the one that eliminated the Whigs in the 1850s. And that didnt end well. The big dilemma is whether it makes more sense to keep the white nationalist anti-system elements within our system outside of the party. But that only works if their isolation can be accompanied by their weakening. My concern is that the electoral base for Trumpism is, at this point, real, broad, and deep.

More broadly, we should begin to think about the idea that Germans in the postwar period called wehrhafte Demokratie this is a defensive democracy one that embraces the inclusion, competition, and civil liberties of liberal democracy but one that doesnt take democracy for granted.

In Germany, the theory of defensive democracy had two main thrusts one is the attempt to bolster a democratic political culture through education, and the other is an aggressive willingness to isolate and exclude from political debate those views that endorse violence and that actively engage in violence. This doctrine was invented in the 1930s in response to Nazism. We may, ultimately, need a wehrhafte Demokratie for the social media age.

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The Republican Party is the problem - Vox.com

Watching history unfold in Washington DC from her home in London, Jan Halper-Hayes admitted to being slightly incredulous about the images of Donald Trump supporters storming the US Capitol.

It was kind of in some ways unbelievable, says the long-term activist in the Republican party and former vice-president of its UK branch. She claims she has received good information to indicate that Antifa people were present at the riot.

The unsubstantiated claim that Antifa a catch-all term used by the president and others to describe anti-Trump protest movements had infiltrated the mob is one that some of his most die-hard supporters have clung to.

That the idea has made the leap across the Atlantic underlines how the Republican diaspora have not been immune to some of the bitter controversies splitting the party in its homeland.

In the UK, the Trump presidency has taken something of a toll on the local branch of Republicans Overseas, which largely operates as a social circle for expatriate supporters who organise a 4th July party each year and carry out voter registration.

Some members, and particularly young women, previously involved with the group have stepped away since the presidents 2016 election and, in some cases, even voted for Joe Biden.

Halper-Hayes, a former member of Trumps White House transition team and visitor to his Mar-a-Lago resort, remains loyal nevertheless, insisting that it has never been hard to square support for Trump with traditional Republican values.

I knew him when I lived in New York, so I have known him through all his iterations. I was on his transition team, and from encounters and observations I can tell you that he is so friendly and funny. Its a shame that he used Twitter for a nasty side because thats not who he really is.

Whether I am in an Uber car or in a supermarket, people love Trump here in the UK. Its the BBC and the Guardian that take on a different mainstream media narrative.

Molly Kiniry has a very different take on Trump. She watched his rise both within the party and in national US politics with what she says was increasing amounts of horror. She views his most recent conduct as a manifestation of the mental instability that has been there all along.

Not that being a Republican supporter in an often left-leaning city like London was ever without complexities. What I normally say when people express surprise that Im a Republican is something to the effect of I am, I just hide the horns very well.

Casting her US presidential vote for Joe Biden this time came easily, says Kiniry, a former spokesperson for Republicans Overseas UK and now a graduate student at Cambridge who acknowledges that the president and his loyalists would likely regard her as a Rino [Republican in name only].

Like others, she says she is looking forward to her party regaining its traditional identity. She remains optimistic. I dont think I would still be a registered Republican after the last five or six years if that was not the case.

She is withering about those who have stood by the president in the US seat of power and, as a native Washingtonian, admits that the destructive events in DC had cut deep. I think the members who did not vote to impeach the president will have to answer to voters, and to history as well, quite frankly.

A third view of sorts is espoused by Greg Swenson, a spokesperson for Republicans Overseas, who insists that Trump managed to win over him and others who had originally wanted someone else to be the partys 2016 candidate. It was notable today that the majority of the UK branchs board were women, he says. I criticised him, but I can say that I have been very happy with what he did.

As an investment banker, he was attracted in particular to Trumps stewardship of the US economy. I became more of a supporter as we saw the results, for example, of tax deregulation, but it was also the massive pushback against him from Democrats and the left. As they became more unhinged, the more dug in Trump supporters have become.

That said, Swenson confesses that he is relishing a spell in opposition after four years defending a president who, he concedes, finally overdid it. He adds: Trump fatigue is exhausting for every one, whether they are supporters or opponents so Im kind of looking forward to it.

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'Kind of unbelievable': US Republicans in Britain mull over Trump impact - The Guardian

The appalling siege of the U.S. Capitol by pro-Trump insurrectionists, on the heels of their upset defeat in two Georgia Senate races the previous night, will require soul searching among Republicans about the direction of their party. Republicans will certainly seek to pivot from the riot, but the nativism, extreme polarization, truth-bashing, white nationalism and anti-democratic policies that we tend to identify with President Trump are likely to remain a hallmark of the Republican playbook into the future. These qualities will outlive Mr. Trumps presidency because they predate it: Republicans have been fueling the conditions that enabled Mr. Trumps rise since the 1980s.

A growing Southern and Western evangelical base pushed the party to replace its big-tent, bipartisan and moderate Republicanism of the mid-20th century with a more conservative version. Under President Dwight Eisenhower, the party had made peace with New Deal social provisioning and backed large-scale federal spending on infrastructure and education. Even as late as the 1970s, President Richard Nixon passed legislation expanding federal regulatory agencies. Yet when Ronald Reagan moved into the White House in 1981, the Republicans sharply slashed government regulations. They cut taxes for the wealthy and oversaw a hollowing out of the American welfare state. At the same time, the party shored up its heavily evangelical base with tough-on-crime policies, anti-abortion rhetoric and coded racist attacks on welfare queens.

But the past 40 years of Republican-led (but bipartisan) neoliberalism left large segments of the partys social base, like many other Americans, with declining standards of living Economic crisis and the browning of America opened new avenues for calculating politicians to exploit white cultural resentments for political gain: Isolationism, nativism, racism, even anti-Semitism roared back. Long part of the mix of American conservatism, these ideas had been increasingly sidelined during Americas midcentury golden age of the 1950s and 1960s.

But by the 1990s, greater numbers of the Republican Partys grass-roots activists blamed declining standards of living not on the free market individualism they believed in almost religiously, but on job-taking immigrants and the shadowy machinations of the global elite. Such scapegoating is strikingly reminiscent of the radio priest Charles Coughlins attacks on the Rothschilds and money-changers during the Great Depression.

Mr. Trump championed ideas that had been bubbling up among the Republican grass roots since the late 20th century. His great political talent has been to see the extent of these resentments and rhetorically, and to some extent politically, speak to those concerns. His hold on his supporters is not just a cult of personality but grounded in a set of deeply rooted and increasingly widespread ideas within the Republican Party: ending birthright citizenship for immigrants, militarizing the border, disenfranchising Americans under the guise of protecting the integrity of the ballot, favoring an isolationist nationalism.

To put the full power of the nations chief executive behind such proposals was uniquely Trumpian, but the animating ideas have precedent in Republican politics. In Orange County, Calif., Republicans had already in 1988 stationed uniformed guards outside polling stations when rumors circulated that Democrats were planning to bus aliens to the voting precincts. They carried signs in English and Spanish warning Non-Citizens Cant Vote. Some intimidated immigrant voters by writing down their license plate numbers. Republican nativists warned of the takeover of America. Their greatest fear, according to one prominent Republican activist, was that illegal aliens will stuff the ballot boxes. Mr. Trumps genius was to recognize the opportunity to mobilize such anti-democratic resentments around himself. By articulating a right-wing America First populism already deeply rooted in many circles of the Republican Party, Mr. Trump turned himself into the messiah for MAGA-land. He was an innovator.

Yet party elites struck a Faustian bargain to secure tax cuts for wealthy Americans, business-friendly deregulation and conservative court picks. They understood that in a world of economic anxiety, disempowerment of the middle class and colossal income inequality, such policies would deliver majorities. The successful combination is most likely to encourage many Republicans to continue to embrace it. It lets them mobilize, at least in some places and at least for now, a majority of voters. With the partys elite disinclined to grapple with extreme wealth inequalities and the increasing immiseration and insecurity of the American middle and working classes, the only way to win votes may be to pander to cultural resentment.

Mr. Trumps style of personalistic authoritarian populism is his alone. It is unfamiliar to most American politicians, and the messianic loyalty he commands among his most martial followers is unlikely to be replicated by those within the party who seek to pick up his mantle. But Mr. Trumps Republicanism, despite his belief that everything is about him, has always been about more than that. He has forged what is likely to be the Republican blueprint for the future, absent his most unhinged behavior. Without major party reset, the heirs apparent to Trumpism, probably with the party elites blessing, will continue to pander to visceral cultural resentments, champion outsider status, war against the very government they are part of and in the process continue to weaken our already fragile democracy.

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Opinion | Trump Is the Republican Partys Past and Its Future - The New York Times

Lou Zickar, Opinion contributor Published 6:00 a.m. ET Jan. 15, 2021

Within a few minutes rioters outnumbered police and rushed to the front of the Capitol. USA TODAY

If you are a principled centrist or principled conservative, now is not the time to remain silent.

As someone who has spent more thana decade working for the oldest centrist Republican organization in the United States, I admit that we have foughta losing battle for most of this time.

From the rise of the Tea Party in 2010 to the election of Donald Trump in 2016, centrists have largely been relegated to the margins of the Republican political scene content with promoting bromides about the importance of working together while those on the political right win elections and muscle through their priorities on Capitol Hill.

Yet, if you are a centrist, now isnotthe time to concede defeat.Far from it.

For as the tragic events on Jan.6at the U.S. Capitol made clear, the divide in the Republican Party is no longer between the center and the right wing.The divide in todays GOP is between the insurrectionist wing and everyone else.

Many Republicans will no doubt not want to hear this message.Ive workedfor GOP candidates and causes since the late 1980s, and whenever there was a sign or possibility of inner-party strife, the message from party leadership was always the same dont rock the boat. Well, we are long past those kinds of admonishments.

The question facing Republicans is not whether to rock the boat.The question is which boat do you want to be on.Do you want to be with the insurrectionists, who ignored facts, distorted realityand encouraged the storming of the Capitol last week?Or do you want to stand with principle-based centrists and conservatives who believe in and are driven by the ideas thatmade our party and our country great?

In this June 23, 2020, file photo Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, listens during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing to examine COVID-19 on Capitol Hill in Washington.(Photo: Michael Reynolds, AP)

If you are a principled centrist or principled conservative, now is not the time to remain silent.To do so will lead to more of the same a party devoid of principles and dominated by personalities.

It also will lead to centrists and conservatives being challenged by those who stand with and cheered on the insurrectionist wing.

Take Alaska, which Lisa Murkowski has represented in the U.S.Senate since 2003.Murkowski is conservative on some issues, and more centrist on others.The Ripon Forumrecently featured the senator on its cover because of the bipartisan energy reform proposal she has authored that not only acknowledges the threat posed by climate change, but also strikes a balance betweenmeeting our current energy needs while pursuing clean energy for the future.

Last fall, when some questioned whether Murkowski would support the Trump administrations nominee to replace Ruth Bader Ginsberg on the Supreme Court, former Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin posted a video on Twitter warning Murkowski to do the right thing by supporting the yet-to-be named nominee.Implying that she might challenge Murkowski in the next election if she did not, Palin then added: I see 2022 from my window.

Recently, when Palin campaigned in Georgia in the run-up to the runoff election, sheclaimedthat the Nov.3general election had been rigged.Around that same time, her website published aninterviewwith Melissa Carone, the Rudy Guiliani-backed witness in Michigan who reminded people of a drunk Cecily Strong.

In the interview on Palins website, Carone repeated unsubstantiated claims that Dominion Voting Machines in Michigan had been tampered withand that the state had been delivered to Joe Biden as a result.

Does any rational Republican believe that Palin would be a more effective and responsible member of the Senate Republican Caucus than Murkowski?And yet in states and congressional districts across the country, like-minded candidates are no doubt considering similar campaigns.

In 2022, each would-be Republican candidate must be held to account for their actions in the days and weeks leading up to Jan.6.

Fortunately, members of the business community are beginning to do just that.Over the weekend, Forbesreportedthat Marriott International, Blue Cross/Blue Shield and Commerce Bank were indefinitely suspending contributions to any official who voted against certifying the election of Joe Biden afterthe attack on the Capitol.

According to this same report,Bank of America, Ford Motor Co. and AT&T planto take recent events into consideration before making future donations, while CVS Health Corp., Exxon Mobil, FedEx and Target also planto review their political giving.

If the business community has the courage to step up, centrist Republicans should, too.Ten years ago, centrists stood by aghast as a member of their own ranks, then-Congressman and former Delaware Governor Mike Castle, was upset by Christine ODonnell in the states GOP primary.

ODonnells rise was rapid.She was embraced by the Tea Party, and then soundly defeated by centrist Democrat Chris Coons in the general election because of her extreme views.

That seat was Castles to lose.If it hadnt been for ODonnells challenge, it would be in Republican hands today.More significantly, the Senate would still be under GOP control.

ODonnell was a relative unknown and did not have a record to defend.The members of todays insurrection wing are known to all and do have a record.Which is why if you are a principled centrist or a principled conservative who would like to be in the majority and cares about the future of the GOP now is not the time to stay silent.

Rather, it is time to stand up to the insurrectionists who would like to carry the GOP banner in 2022 and have them answer one question: After fomenting a rebellion that claimed five lives and desecrated our nations Capitol, why are you still fit to serve?

Lou Zickar is editor of The Ripon Forum, a centrist journal of political thought and opinion published by the Ripon Society.The views presented here are his own.

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Centrist Republicans, speak up! We must take a stand against the insurrectionists - USA TODAY

Joe Biden could get bipartisan support for a $2,000 check, with at least one Republican pushing for large direct payments.

President-elect Joe Biden is expected to introduce a stimulus proposal today that will put more money into the bank accounts of struggling families. Biden's proposal will likely call for adding another $1,400 to the $600 payments authorized by a $900 bill relief bill President Donald Trump signed into law at the end of December. The IRS is now distributing the $600 payments.

The incoming administration indicated recently that it would prefer to get bipartisan support for the next coronavirus relief bill rather than passing the legislation along party lines through reconciliation, which enables passing some bills with a slim 51-vote majority. And the new president may actually get his wish on a bipartisan bill, because one Republican senator has made known his preference for $2,000 checks.

Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, recently voiced his support for $2,000 direct payments to American families. In fact, Rubio sent a letter to the Biden administration and urged the new president to take action to provide these payments on his first day in office.

"It would send a powerful message to the American people if, on the first day of your presidency, you called on the House and Senate to send you legislation to increase the direct economic impact payments to Americans struggling due to the pandemic from $600 to $2,000," Rubio's letter stated.

Democrats made $2,000 checks a campaign issue after the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation authorizing these payments in December and the Republican-controlled Senate declined to take further action. However, with Rubio's letter, it's clear that providing these large direct payments is not just a priority for those on the left.

It's important to note that while President-elect Biden, Sen. Rubio, and other lawmakers use the phrase "$2,000 checks," this does not mean Americans will see an additional $2,000. The $900 billion coronavirus relief bill signed by Trump in December authorized the delivery of payments of $600 per adult and eligible dependent child, and the IRS has begun to deliver those. Lawmakers, including Rubio, want to boost these existing payments by $1,400, for a total payment of $2,000 that includes money that may have already been deposited into Americans' bank accounts.

In arguing for swift distribution of the extra $1,400, Rubio also wrote in his letter to Biden: "You have the ability to help break the paralysis in Washington by delivering desperately needed relief." He went on to say, "I implore you to rise above the rhetoric and deliver an increase in assistance for American families." His words suggest the senator hopes to avoid another protracted fight over stimulus payments, as it took around nine months for lawmakers to come to a deal on the last relief bill.

Rubio's clear support for another direct payment could be critical to the Biden administration's ability to pass legislation authorizing another $1,400 payment, because the Democrats have just 50 of 100 votes in the Senate (with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as a tiebreaker). West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin expressed his reservations about such a large payment, and if Biden loses any Democratic votes, he will need at least one Republican in order to pass a relief bill, even through reconciliation.

Rubio may not be the only Republican supporting $2,000 checks, though. Trump initially argued for these payments, and others on the right, including Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, spoke in favor of them.

Ultimately, the details of any relief bill will determine how much, if any Republican support it receives. If the bill carries too high a price tag or includes Democratic priorities that are anathema to those on the right (such as large distributions of funds to state and local governments), even Republicans in favor of $2,000 checks may be unwilling to sign on.

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This Republican Senator Is on Board With $2,000 Stimulus Checks - Motley Fool

Rep. Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio is facing immediate pressure at home for being one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach President Donald Trump this week and is moving quickly to defend a decision that could hurt him politically.

Under tough questioning Thursday morning from local conservative radio host Bob Frantz, Gonzalez said Trumps behavior before and during the deadly riot on the Capitol tipped [him] over the scale.

It was a series of events that transpired that you can just read on Twitter. You can listen to the speeches. You can think back, OK, what was the purpose of the Stop the Steal rally? said Gonzalez, who represents a suburban district outside Cleveland. And we may disagree on this, but in my opinion, what this was was an attempt by the president of the United States to circumvent the Constitution to overturn an election.

The radio interview with Frantz, a longtime right-wing commentator on the station WHK who affects a Rush Limbaugh tone and cadence, was mostly civil. But Frantz often interrupted and made his displeasure known. He repeatedly likened impeachment proceedings in the House to a regular criminal trial a step that comes later in the impeachment process and happens in the Senate and parsing what Trump said at the rally.

Fiery speech alone? Not impeachable, Gonzalez said, explaining that his vote was not only about the words Trump used at the rally that egged on the rioters.

So, me and my colleagues under attack, he added. The United States Capitol under attack. Most people were there peacefully. I've talked to some people from the district who were there, and ... they were praying I think you mentioned this earlier they were praying. They were chanting. ... They were doing things that are perfectly appropriate. But the people who stormed the Capitol killed a police officer. Five people dead. The Capitol under siege. We are imploring the president to help, to stand up, to help defend the United States Capitol and the United States Congress, which was under attack. We are begging, essentially, and he was nowhere to be found. OK? And so, in that instance, if this were a foreign country, Bob, if this were a foreign adversary, if this were an Islamic terror group, if this were Iran, if this were China, we would be sending missiles over right now. Immediately.

Gonzalez, 36, is a former NFL wide receiver and standout athlete at Ohio State University. He won Ohios 16th Congressional District seat in 2018 after emerging from a primary where he was pitted against a pro-Trump conservative who campaigned with the president's allies. At the time, Gonzalezs advisers bristled at the contrasts that made him out to be a comparatively lesser Trump supporter, though the representative also cited Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse one of the president's loudest critics in the Republican Party as a role model.

Ohio's 16th District, as it is drawn now, is safely Republican, though the next round of redistricting could drastically change things. On Frantzs show Thursday, Gonzalez reminded listeners that he had campaigned for Trumps reelection and was an honorary cochair of the campaign in Ohio. He also called the impeachment process terrible and said he wished there had been more time for it before Trump leaves office next week, but he held firm in his conviction that the president deserved to be impeached.

Jim Renacci, a Trump loyalist who held the seat before an unsuccessful Senate bid, now chairs the Medina County Republican Party. He told BuzzFeed News hes been slammed with residents calling for Anthony Gonzalez to step down, be recalled, and/or primaried. Renacci cited a recent survey by a Trump pollster that found 76% of Republicans were less likely to vote for a member of Congress who votes for impeachment.

That should be troubling for Gonzalez if the election was in 30 days, Renacci, who is interested in primarying Ohios sitting Republican governor next year, wrote in an email. That being said, 30 days in politics is a long time and 22 months is an eternity. So there will be many more votes taken and constituents are always less likely to remember something 22 months ago. But only time will tell.

Gonzalez told Frantz he knows listeners are furious with me and I know you are, too.

But let me tell you this, he added. Every single person listening, every conservative listening right now, we have got to come together at some point. We have to, and I know we're divided right now, but we have Joe Biden coming into office in a couple days. We have a Democratic Senate. We have a Democratic-controlled House. We are going to have to be unified and pushing back on the agenda that we know is so bad for this country.

Frantz praised Gonzalez for taking his questions.

You got guts for coming on the day after the vote," Frantz said, "because you know that a lot of people are angry. You knew you're going to get challenged here, so I do appreciate you coming on. But I will say this: I'm going to question that commitment to liberty that you just made on all those other issues because to me the ultimate testimony to liberty is the Constitution, and yesterday you voted to deny Donald Trump his constitutional right to due process.

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One Of The Republicans Who Voted To Impeach Trump Is Already Under Pressure Back Home - BuzzFeed News

PHOENIX (AP) Several Arizona lawmakers figure prominently in the controversy over the Republican effort to overturn President Donald Trumps election loss and the ensuing chaos after a mob stormed the Capitol.

From raising objections to the states election results to attending or potentially helping to organize the violent rally, Arizonans are playing an outsized role in the recriminations that have marked the final weeks of Trumps presidency. Some of their actions have brought formal complaints and demands for an investigation from Democrats.

Arizona was a hotbed for GOP election denialism long before Trump supporters broke into the Capitol and halted the formal certification of Bidens victory. Several state lawmakers began questioning the result almost immediately after it became clear that Biden had narrowly become the first Democrat to win Arizona since 1996.

There is no evidence for the allegations of fraud. But they were aired during a meeting at a Phoenix hotel with Trumps lawyers, Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis.

Two Arizona congressmen, Reps. Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar, carried the allegations to the Capitol on Jan. 6 when lawmakers met to count the electoral college votes. Biggs and Gosar were among the lawmakers who objected to counting Arizonas 11 votes in Bidens column, touching off two hours of debate that was interrupted when the mob broke in to the Capitol. They ultimately voted to reject Arizonas votes, along with Rep. Debbie Lesko.

Biggs and Gosar have received national scrutiny after a pro-Trump activist named Ali Alexander said they were among four lawmakers who helped him plan the Jan. 6 rally that led to the siege on the Capitol.

We four schemed up of putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting, Alexander said in a video posted to social media in late December, which has since been deleted. He said he the group hoped to change the hearts and minds of Republicans voting on election challenges that day.

A spokeswoman for Gosar declined to comment.

A spokesman for Biggs has rejected the suggestion that the congressman was involved. Biggs is not aware of ever meeting Alexander, the spokesman, Daniel Stefanski, told the Arizona Republic.

He did not have any contact with protestors or rioters, nor did he ever encourage or foster the rally or protests, Stefanksi said, adding that those who were violent are solely responsible for their crimes.

Alexander played a recorded message from Biggs at a rally in Phoenix in December. Stefanski said Biggs recorded at the request of Gosar aides.

Three of Gosars siblings told the Arizona Republic that they believe he should be expelled from Congress. His siblings in 2018 filmed an ad urging Gosars constituents to vote against him, saying he has become extreme. A brother, in an MSNBC interview late Wednesday, suggested his brother was delusional and pathological and unfit to serve in Congress.

From the archives (September 2018): Arizona Rep. Gosars 6 siblings rewrite the script for negative ads (spoiler: theyre for the other guy)

Democrats have taken aim at Biggs, Gosar and Republican state lawmakers who were in Washington on the day of the riot.

Democratic lawmakers sent a letter Wednesday to FBI Director Christopher Wray and acting U.S. Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen demanding an investigation of the role that elected officials played in the uprising. It singled out Biggs, Gosar, state Rep. Mark Finchem and former Rep. Anthony Kern, who lost his re-election bid.

It is vital to any current or future federal investigations, and ultimately to the Arizona public they represent, that we learn what these elected officials knew about this planned insurrection and when they knew it, the Democrats wrote.

Democratic state Rep. Cesar Chavez of Phoenix on Thursday filed an ethics complaint alleging that Finchem violated his oath of office by attending the rally.

Finchem has said he went to Washington in an attempt to show Vice President Mike Pence alleged evidence of fraud. He said he was also scheduled to speak at a permitted event on the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, the day the Capitol was breached. A photo he posted to Twitter shows the crowd in front of the Capitol.

In a statement released earlier this week, Finchem said he remained about 500 yards from the Capitol and didnt learn it was breached until 5 p.m., hours after the mob broke in. He blamed the mayhem on antifa, a loose alliance of anti-fascist groups that have engaged in violent clashes with right-wing demonstrators a claim that has been disproven.

To connect my presence to speak in the company of other elected officials at a properly permitted public event at the Capitol event with leading an insurrection, or that walking with the crowd to the Capitol can be construed as anything other than an exercise of my First Amendment right to free speech it is utterly absurd, Finchem said.

MarketWatch contributed.

Read on: Wray says FBI is monitoring extensive chatter concerning threats to the Biden inauguration

More:

Arizona Republicans positioned at center of post-election chaos with two claimed to have aided Capitol siege planner - MarketWatch

A closer look at images circulating on social media of one member hosting a group reveals the photos are more than a year old and were not taken in Washington.

WASHINGTON More than 30 Democratic members of Congress are demanding an investigation into their suspicions that some Republican members assisted in what amounted to reconnaissance tours that may have helped insurrectionists plan their attacks on the Capitol.

A letter written to investigators does not single out any alleged collaborators, but social media has erupted with allegations against a number of Republican members, including Rep. Lauren Boebert (R- CO). She has been targeted on social media platforms for allegedly hosting tours of the Capitol prior to Wednesdays violent insurrection. But she denies doing anything of the sort.

A Verify investigation by KUSA9 in Denver found that photos circulating online depicting Boebert with guests apparently on a tour were actually taken at Colorados Capitol in December of 2019.

Boebert, a staunch Trump ally and gun rights advocate, says she has not hosted any guests in the U.S. Capitol beside her family members.

"Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, I have not given any Capitol tours except to show my children around where I'll be working while I'm away from home," she said in a statement.

The concerned Democrats, many of whom are veterans with security training, say they witnessed unusual groups of people "milling" around the Capitol complex corridors in the days before the attack despite a prohibition on tours due to the COVID19 pandemic.

Virginia Democrat Abigail Spanberger is among the witnesses.

"In the lead up to Jan. 6, what I witnessed was members of the public,people who had no business being in the Capitol during the shutdowns, milling about in the office buildings," Spanberger said. "The way that these individuals would have entered the Capitol in the first place would have been with a member of Congress making that possible.

New Jersey Democrat Mikie Sherrill called the tours a reconnaissance for the next day and said members who hosted them abetted the attack.

The 30 Democrats are demanding that Capitol Police review visitor logs and security video to see if any of the visitors can be linked to the attack and determine which Member of Congress may have let them in for tours and why.

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Republican lawmaker responds to allegations of hosting 'recon' tours of the Capitol - WUSA9.com