Tag: George W. Bush

Rove: Penn Biden Docs No Mar-a-Lagogate

Karl Rove, the Republican political consultant and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, pushed back against Fox News butwhataboutism in an interview Tuesday about classified documents returned to the National Archives by the Biden administration. 

“Well, there are differences,” Rove said in comparing the Biden documents with ex-President Trump’s apparent hoarding of classified and top-secret documents at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, (per Mediaite) “but you can’t make this stuff up.

“For example, how many documents in Biden’s case, there appear to be about 10. In the case of President Trump, hundreds.

“How did they get there? We didn’t yet know how the documents got to the Biden office connected with his activities on behalf of the University of Pennsylvania. We know that President Trump ordered the removal of documents to Mar-a-Lago.”

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House GOP Votes to Rescind IRS Funds

Tuesday 1/10/23

In the 118th Congress’ first bill, the House with its new Republican majority voted along party lines, 221-210, to rescind about $71 billion of $80 billion in additional funding for the Internal Revenue Service included in the Inflation Reduction Act signed late last year by President Biden. If not for the Senate’s Democratic majority that will assure the bill will go nowhere, it would reduce an estimated $186 billion in federal tax revenues, and add $114 billion to the federal deficit over the next decade, according to The Hill.

New Rules – The House also passed Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) rules package, Roll Call reports, which includes concessions made to far-right members of his caucus in order to secure the speaker’s gavel in an historic 15th ballot early last Saturday. The rules package vote was 220-213, with Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas the only Republican voting with Democrats, and includes:

•Return of a controversial rule to allow a single House member to introduce a motion to vacate the speaker. 

•Limitation of bills to a single subject, preventing the attachment of amendments that are not germane to the bill.

•A rule to prevent McCarthy from waiving an existing rule to release bill language at least 72 hours before a floor vote.

•A rule setting up a separate vote on a resolution that would create a select Judiciary Committee to centralize investigations into the executive branch (let’s call this the “Hunter Biden” rule). 

•Term limits for the Office of Congressional Ethics board members and requiring the office to make hiring decisions within 30 days. These provisions would effectively gut the office, Roll Call says.

--TL

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Alas, Midterm Mania Continues

By Ken Zino

Well, the first talking-head assumption that voter turnout was expected to be high for the midterm elections was right. However, the widespread narrative that the Republicans were going to get a Red Wave was wrong. A sufficient number of the Americans who voted -- not all, but enough -- choose to keep a constitutional democracy in place that eschews violence and insurrection.

Yes, inflation is a concern, but enough Americans realize more tax cuts for the wealthy is not a way to address it. I had once thought that the election was going to be the French Revolution played in reverse with tyrants and despots taking control of ordinary working people. There was no Red Wave, but there was no Blue Wave, either. Franklin Roosevelt in 1934, Bill Clinton in 1998, George W. Bush in 2002 had their parties pickup seats in the midterm elections – a very select group. 

As of Wednesday we have a divided, but not a lop-sided two-party system stumbling forward at local, state, and federal levels. There are still undetermined and far-reaching consequences about our struggling democracy’s future, though it could have been worse. The full picture will take days or weeks or longer to emerge. We are in the midst of economic and ecological crisis that will be difficult to address. There is no clear narrative outlining the complicated days ahead. 

Once again, this election was about Trump. His over-exposure in the media combined with the January 6 panel hearings allowed enough Americans to see him for what he is. Launching a political insurrection to retain power over an election he lost remains a bad idea. Republican election deniers were thumped in the Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin gubernatorial races. The AP called the Pennsylvania race for John Fetterman, the Democrat in a contested Senate race with television personality and snake oil salesman Mehmet Oz, early Wednesday morning. 

In his victory speech, Fetterman referenced the stroke he suffered just four days before his Democratic primary victory last May: “Health care is a fundamental right and it saved my life.” The Republicans tried for years to abolish the Affordable Care Act, but had no plan when voters continually supported it. Sound familiar? 

Facing a recession, international threats to the U.S. from hostile totalitarian states and people and planet destroying global warming, enough Americans realize that what Trumpism really means is the ex-president is only in it for himself. Trump rejects global warming and military alliances in favor of the autocratic Russian and North Korean governments, and this does nothing for solving problems that require thoughtful, progressive and collective action. Biden, with his experience and broader approaches to problems helped the Democrats in the midterms, after all. 

Now we need to tend to our knitting. We need to have an economy that works for all; one with equitable taxation. We need to ensure our planet’s future. We need to set an example of a working democracy for all the world to view. Not all of us, but as of last Tuesday, enough of us, are holding these truths to be self-evident.

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It’s Trump’s GOP, but is it Still the Conservative Party?

By Todd Lassa

The Lincoln Project and its followers have been agonizing over the future of the heart and mind of the GOP since the Democrats first had comparative moderates running for the nomination such as Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg and of course, Joe Biden.

What if Republican stalwarts, they wondered, helped propel one of those people to victory? 

After such a victory, what happens to the Republican Party? Does it revert to its Mitt Romney-esque roots, thus rejecting such erstwhile party leaders as Sens. Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham, who quickly turned from profoundly anti-Trump to enthusiastic supporter-enablers by November 2016? Or does it continue to be the Trump Party?

Anti-Trump Republicans now find themselves at a fork in the road with especially sharp tines. When (or if) President Trump vacates the White House, the Grand Old Party could revert to its pre-populist ways and welcome back the “never-Trumpers.” Or the party, such as it is, could shun those who have been associated with people from John McCain to George W. Bush.

The struggle has been playing itself out among Republicans inside its Washington power structure, where potential candidates for its 2024 presidential nomination have been lining up. 

That struggle hinges at first on whether Donald J. Trump himself chooses to run again in ’24 (the 22nd Amendment limits presidencies to two terms, but they do not need to be consecutive), or whether his son, Donald Jr. or daughter Ivanka gains more traction within the party. If not, the first Trump loyalists already on the short-list include former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Ted Cruz (Texas), Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and even Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

Alternatively, never-Trumpers who espouse traditional conservative values, have been getting behind Govs. Larry Hogan (Md.), Charlie Baker (Mass.) and Phil Scott (Vt.), all from Democratic-leaning states, former Ohio Gov. John Kasich or Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who gained notoriety before the Nov. 3 election for the leaked (wink, wink) recording of a call to his supporters in which he said Trump “kisses dictators’ butts” and spends like a “drunken sailor.” 

Sasse had warned of a “Republican bloodbath” in that recording, predicting a Nov. 3 “Blue Wave” would give Democrats a big Senate majority. That didn’t happen, but questions of Trump’s authenticity as a conservative and whether he and his family can maintain control of the GOP remain.

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