Friday Talking Points -- Just Not A Good Bad Guy

[ChrisWeigant]

Republicans, these days, just seem rather lost. They used to be so good at coming up with semi-cohesive talking points to use against Democrats, and they have always admirably been able to all sing from this same songbook every Sunday morning (for the political chatfest shows on television). But these days, all the issues they choose to highlight are all so incredibly short-term that the problem usually disappears before their politicization of the issue really even has a chance to take hold.

Case in point: Republicans' heavy lean on school reopenings. They've been so convinced this is going to be a big winning issue for them, they rode it all the way to getting a recall election called for California's governor (Gavin Newsom). But by the time Californians vote on it (later October or early November of this year), everyone will already be back in school again.

Pretty much all the Republicans' complaints about COVID restrictions fall into the same category. All the pushback (most notably from churches who had in-person services locked down for a time) on social distancing, all the weeping and wailing over the non-existent "vaccine passports," even all the outrage over mask-wearing and Dr. Anthony Fauci -- how much of this is really going to be a current issue in November of 2022, do they think? My guess would realistically be: "None of it -- everyone will have gratefully moved on by that point, and just prefer not to remember the entire pandemic and all the hardships it caused."

This crops up time and time again, of late. Last week, Republicans decided to try to spin Joe Biden's presidency as "utter chaos," pointing to two entirely transitory events: the Israel/Palestine war and the temporary gasoline shortages in the South and on the East Coast. For most American voters, both of these will be a faint memory, at best, within a few months -- never mind next year. And yet Republicans seemed to think they had this brilliant political spin against Biden that was somehow going to take him down several pegs with the public, so they began hammering him.

That was then, this is now. A cease-fire has been achieved in Israel, due in large part to Biden's team doing "quiet but strenuous diplomacy," behind the scenes. Gas stations now have plenty of gas, once again. The crises are not just over, but they were actually handled pretty well by Team Biden. The Republicans' complaints are what turned into a pumpkin, not Biden's standing with the public.

Now consider what would have happened if (shudder) Donald Trump had still been in charge. The gas shortages were solved because: (1) they were always going to be temporary, once the hacked pipeline company got back up and running, and (2) the Biden administration quietly did what it could to help, including waiving regulations and red tape that was getting in the way during an emergency situation. What would Trump have done? Tweeted about it a lot, one assumes. Blamed it on everything and everyone under the sun, in a desperate attempt to dodge any possible blame -- which would have just drawn attention to the fact that Trump just had no idea how to handle such a crisis. And I really shudder to think what he would have done about Israel, since Netanyahu is such good buddies with Trump. Trump probably would have sat back and given Bibi a total green light to continue bombing as long as he felt like it. Which doubtlessly would have been a lot longer than it actually was.

Hypotheticals aside, however, Biden handled the crises that popped up fairly well and fairly quickly. The media, of course, went into a breathless frenzy, which (in the case of the gas shortages) just increased and fed the public's panic, but Biden notably did not take this bait. The crises were instead solved quickly, quietly, and effectively. Which is precisely what the voters actually wanted from Joe Biden in the first place: calm competence. The Republicans' insistence on trying to make political hay from these sudden crises largely backfired. Biden's job approval ratings haven't slipped; they remain far higher than any number Donald Trump ever saw in the polls. Because people like such competence in their leaders.

Maybe this is why all the Republicans seem to have to complain about these days are short-term problems. They know that any crises will take at least some time to deal with, so they try to strike while the iron's hot and tarnish Biden just a little bit with each of them, in the hopes of generating some sort of cumulative effect. But there's a problem with this, too -- Biden's a pretty likeable guy. Which the GOP strategists are already admitting:

It's a phenomenon that's becoming increasingly pronounced as the outline of the 2022 midterm election comes into focus. Midterms are typically a referendum on the party in power, so the standard opposition-party playbook is to make every down-ballot race about the sitting president. But [President Joe] Biden's elusiveness as a target is forcing Republicans to rethink the traditional strategy.

Interviews with more than 25 GOP strategists and party officials depict a president whose avuncular style and genial bearing make him a less-than-ideal foil. He doesn't induce anger or rage, and at the moment, his White House is relatively drama-free.

In response, Republicans are preparing to break with time-honored custom and cast the president less as the central character in the midterm elections than as an accessory to the broader excesses of the left.

"Biden is not a good bad guy," said Ed Rogers, the veteran Republican lobbyist and strategist. "Obama was a haughty professor.... The Uncle Joe life story that he has -- the tragedy, the losses, the obvious empathy the man has, I think that's all legit. So, it's hard to demonize him."

. . .

"Because [Biden] is so boring, he's not as scandalous," said John Thomas, a Republican strategist who works on House campaigns across the country.

. . .

"Biden gives a fireside chat, and the fire goes out," said former Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican who served as National Republican Congressional Committee chair. "I mean, he does not evoke the strong emotion that Trump did."

We wrote further about this phenomenon at the start of the week, pointing out how tough a time Republicans have been having demonizing Biden.

What's truly notable about all this is that it is such a break from the GOP's past performance. For the past 20 or 30 years (at the very least, some would trace this back to Richard Nixon), Republicans have been masters at demonizing not only Democratic presidents but also the entire Democratic agenda. Republicans used to be the (rather sanctimonious) party of "family values" and "law and order" and "personal responsibility" -- a posture they contrasted with the likes of Bill Clinton and gay-friendly Democrats and flag burning.

Now? Now the Republicans have sworn fealty to a man who wouldn't know a family value if one came up and bit him on the hindquarters, while excusing within their ranks an accused sex trafficker of underage women. New this week: one of the people who will be challenging Liz Cheney in the Republican primary next year is a man who, when he was 18 years old, impregnated a 14-year-old girl, married her and then divorced her three years later. Two years after that, she committed suicide. In revealing this story, the candidate described it thusly: "She was a little younger than me, so it's like the Romeo and Juliet story." So far, the rest of the Republican Party hasn't even blinked an eye over this revelation. By way of contrast: "Well, maybe it would have been if he had committed suicide, too" is the response that popped into our head. Such moral excesses have become downright commonplace among their ranks (see: Roy Moore, for example), and certainly no cause for any other Republicans to chastise them in any way.

As for "law and order," 175 Republicans in the House just voted against a commission to investigate the worst insurrection attempt since the Civil War, for purely political reasons (because it might tend to shed negative light on their Dear Leader, right before the midterm congressional elections). The Capitol Police begged Republicans to vote for it, but in the end only 35 did, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is now actively trying to kill the bill's chances in the Senate. So much for the "law and order" party, eh?

Personal responsibility went right out the window with the advent of Trump as well. Now one of the GOP's biggest reasons to whine is what they call "cancel culture," which is essentially making people pay a tangible price for their sexism, misogyny, racism, homophobia, or other bigoted behavior. Because, according to the Republicans of today, all such actions and words should have absolutely no consequences whatsoever. Way to take "personal responsibility" to heart, Republicans!

Perhaps it is all due to the fact that Republicans have no positive agenda left to run on. They just don't. Their ideological cupboard is bare and full of spiderwebs. All they have left is cultural resentment and hatred of liberals. That's it. Donald Trump showed them all how just these two things could be effectively made into the entire Republican platform, and that is precisely what they have now done.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden just keeps calmly getting things done. By mid-July, checks will be in the mail for the parents of 90 percent of the children in this country (all but the wealthiest, in other words). They'll all be getting up to $300 a month (each) from the government. Or, more precisely "from Democrats," since not a single Republican voted for the program.

Biden signed an anti-Asian-American hate crimes bill this week as well. This actually was a truly bipartisan bill, since every Republican in the Senate voted for it (except one, who is now being called "Hate Crimes Hawley" online, as a result). But we didn't notice a whole lot of praise or congratulations from the Republicans for this overwhelmingly bipartisan achievement.

Biden's efforts to strike a bipartisan deal on infrastructure didn't advance much this week, however, and you can count us among the group who thinks this is all some rather elaborate Kabuki theater put on to convince Joe Manchin to vote for it under reconciliation rules.

Other than all that, it was another fairly quiet week, politically. At least, by the yardstick of the previous four years. Just calm competence wherever you look -- which is indeed becoming the new normal in Washington. Thankfully.





Before we get to the main award, we have to at least give a nod to a group that is just not eligible for our awards, due to the fact that they are Republicans. The Republican Accountability Project released an ad this week that brilliantly contrasts Kevin McCarthy's claim that everyone had now moved on and nobody was talking about the 2020 election being fraudulent any more with Donald Trump's continuing insistence that the entire party get behind his Big Lie complaints. Example after example of Trump's own words put the lie to McCarthy, so we strongly encourage everyone to check the ad out.

We also encourage everyone to check out the extraordinary floor speech by Representative Tim Ryan that earned him this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week. It lasts less than a minute, so we encourage everyone to take the time to watch it (you won't regret it).

McCarthy had designated a Republican House member to negotiate with the Democrats on the bill to form the independent 1/6 commission to examine the insurrection attempt in full detail. A deal was struck, and McCarthy then immediately threw both the deal and his own designated negotiator under the bus. Mitch McConnell soon joined in the fun, by announcing his own opposition. Please remember, this is not a partisan bill, it was negotiated and agreed to by a Republican, who not only co-wrote it but also co-sponsored it in the House. But both McCarthy and McConnell brushed that aside and tried to spin it as some sort of nefarious partisan Democratic plot.

What is really going on is that Republicans don't want this commission to happen because (1) it would reveal the truth in full, and (2) that truth would make Donald Trump look really bad. Since most Republicans are all but allergic to both of those things these days, the bill had to be stopped.

McCarthy tried to convince his caucus not to vote for it, but in the end a whopping 35 of them did. McConnell may have more luck twisting GOP arms in the Senate. There is no guarantee Democrats can get 10 GOP senators to vote for it, at this point.

Which got under Tim Ryan's skin, to put it mildly. Here is the full transcript of his floor speech, for which he was allotted only 30 seconds of time. In that short interval, Ryan showed exactly how Democrats really should react to Republican fear and dereliction of duty on this issue:

I want to thank the gentlemen from New York and the other Republicans who are supporting this and thank them for their bipartisanship.

To the other ninety percent of our friends on the other side of the aisle: Holy cow! Incoherence -- no idea what you're talking about!

Benghazi -- you guys chased the former secretary of State all over the country, spent millions of dollars. We have people scaling the Capitol, hitting the Capitol Police with lead pipes across the head, and we can't get bipartisanship? What else has to happen in this country?

Cops. This is a slap in the face to every rank and file cop in the United States.

If we're going to take on China, if we're going to rebuild the country, if we're going to reverse climate change, we need two political parties in this country that are both living in reality, and you ain't one of them!

I yield back the balance of my time.

Impressively succinct, impressively to the point, impressively accurate, and impressively and emotionally delivered (seriously, if you haven't seen this video yet, take the short amount of time to watch it, it is well worth it).

Which is why Tim Ryan is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week.

[Congratulate Representative Tim Ryan on his House contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





The mayor of Chicago got some heat this week for a symbolic one-day policy she announced, but we really feel the heat was undeserved, so that's all we're going to say about it, sorry.

The White House just indicated that Joe Biden's first presidential budget request to Congress won't contain two rather large campaign promises Biden made: the public option for health insurance and lowering prescription drug prices. This is admittedly pretty disappointing, but we'll hold off on handing him an award until we actually see what's in it (this could be a trial balloon, we're giving him the benefit of the doubt for now).

Which leaves us, really, with nobody. We have no truly valid contender for the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week, so we're going to put the award back on the shelf until next week. Unless someone nominates a worthwhile candidate down in the comments, as always.




Volume 619 (5/21/21)

A truly mixed bag, this week. There's not that much more to say about them, so we'll just get right to it.



Criminal behavior

Hopefully this is making more than a few people sweat.

"The New York state attorney general just announced this week that their investigation into the Trump Organization is 'no longer purely civil in nature.' They are now 'actively investigating the Trump Organization in a criminal capacity.' Legal experts tell us that what this means is that they've almost certainly uncovered a real smoking gun -- something that not only proves fraud but also proves that the people at the top knew about and actively condoned such fraud. No charges have been filed yet, but it could be just a matter of time before they are. Orange might not just be Donald Trump's skin color in the future, it may also be the color of his entire wardrobe."



Moo!

Bill Barr's legacy continues to sink slowly in the slime.

"It was revealed this week that the Trump Department of Justice covertly obtained telephone records for a CNN reporter Trump didn't like and also actively tried to covertly obtain the identity of the spoof Twitter account 'Devin Nunes' Cow,' for no other reason than personal pique and abuse of power by those making such prosecutorial decisions. Thank all that's holy that we have some competent adults running things again instead of party hacks and Trump-worshipping toadies."



We have met the enemy and he is us

That video we mentioned in the MIDOTW section makes this point better, but we thought we'd take a crack at it too, since more Democrats really need to be saying stuff like this.

"Republicans are trying to gaslight the media and the rest of America into somehow believing it is the Democrats who can't let go of the 2020 election and are obsessed with it. But all Democrats want to do is to get to the truth -- a concept which obviously frightens Republicans in Congress. Instead, one man and one man alone is responsible for the ongoing obsession with the Big Lie. Donald Trump is the one who cannot let go, folks. He brings up his Big Lie on almost a daily basis, now. Far from 'moving on,' he is quite content to petulantly live in the past. Maybe some journalists should ask all these Republicans insisting on 'moving on' now why they haven't told Donald Trump the same thing?"



A laughingstock

We realize this is much longer than a normal talking point, but it is actually the abbreviated version (we wrote about this earlier this week, with longer excerpts, for those who may be interested). This is from an extraordinary letter from the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to the leader of the state Senate. The Senate, of course is run by Republicans. Four of the five supervisors are also Republicans. This is in no way a partisan letter, in other words.

The supervisors are pushing back against all sorts of wild accusations made against them in the midst of the seemingly-endless fake "audit" of the 2020 election ballots by a fake "auditor" who believes in conspiracy theories. The entire thing is nothing more than a three-ring circus, which the supervisors point out in scathing language. Here are just a few key highlights:

That the Senate would launch such a grave accusation via Twitter not only before waiting for an answer to your questions, but also before your so called "audit" demonstrates to the world that the Arizona Senate is not acting in good faith, has no intention of learning anything about the November 2020 General Election, but is only interested in feeding the various festering conspiracy theories that fuel the fundraising schemes of those pulling your strings. You have rented out the once good name of the Arizona State Senate to grifters and con-artists, who are fundraising hard-earned money from our fellow citizens even as your contractors parade around the Coliseum, hunting for bamboo and something they call "kinematic artifacts" while shining purple lights for effect. None of these things are done in a serious audit. The result is that the Arizona Senate is held up to ridicule in every corner of the globe and our democracy is imperiled.

. . .

Your chosen "auditors," the Cyber Ninjas, are certainly many things. But "accredited by the [U.S. Elections Assistance Commission as voting system testing laboratories]" is not one of them. Regardless, we cannot give you a password that we do not possess any more than we can give you the formula for Coca-Cola. We do not have it; we have no legal right to acquire it; and so, we cannot give it to you.

. . .

Finally, we express our united view that your "audit", no matter what your intentions were in the beginning, has become a spectacle that is harming all of us. Our state has become a laughingstock. Worse, this "audit" is encouraging our citizens to distrust elections, which weakens our democratic republic.

. . .

None of this is inspiring confidence. None of this will cause our citizens to trust elections. In fact, it is having the opposite result. You certainly must recognize that things are not going well at the Coliseum. You also must know that the County's election was free and fair, and that our Elections Department did an outstanding job conducting it.

Unfortunately, this has become a partisan issue, and it should not be one. It is time to make a choice to defend the Constitution and the Republic. As County elected officials, we come from different political parties, but we stand united together to defend the Constitution and the Republic in our opposition to the Big Lie. We ask everyone to join us in standing for the truth. The November 3, 2020 general election was free and fair and conducted by the Elections Department with integrity and honor.

Going to cost millions

This entire circus is going to wind up costing the county millions of dollars, too.

"The Arizona secretary of state, who is responsible for running the state's elections, just advised Maricopa County that none of the voting machines that were turned over during the fake 'audit' by the Cyber Ninjas can ever be trusted again. They did not properly provide security and proper chain of custody, so just about anything could have been done to those machines by just about anybody at this point. It's merely one more instance of the Keystone Kops nature of this entire circus. Now Maricopa County is going to have to replace all those voting machines, to the tune of untold millions of dollars. All to make Donald Trump somehow feel better. You know, I remember when Republicans were against government wasting money on pointless projects. Boy, those were the days, eh?"



I normally do this

This deserves all the ridicule Democrats can heap on him.

"Representative Andrew Clyde was in the news recently, for calling the armed and violent attempt to take the U.S. Capitol by force to prevent Congress from certifying the Electoral College election results a, quote, normal tourist visit, unquote. I mean, who are you going to believe, Andrew Clyde or your lying eyes? And now a photo has surfaced showing Clyde himself joining in the effort to barricade the House door with heavy furniture, in an attempt to stop the murderous crowd from entering the chamber. So the obvious question someone now needs to ask Clyde: 'Do you barricade the House doors for every normal tourist visit that passes through the U.S. Capitol, or perhaps was January sixth actually just a wee bit different, Congressman?'"



Finally! A fraudulent voter!

Well, they've been looking so long for one, you'd think they'd be happy....

"Finally, a clear-cut case of voter fraud was revealed this week. Unfortunately for the Republicans, it was not 'hundreds of thousands' of illegal votes, it wasn't even the tens of thousands it would have taken to flip any one state. Instead, it was one guy. Who voted -- twice -- for Donald Trump. In Chaffee County, Colorado, a man tried to vote as both himself and his wife. The case is notable because the woman has actually been missing since May of last year. Her husband was just charged with murdering her, as a matter of fact. And after he allegedly did her in, he decided to just go ahead and vote as her to help Donald Trump. As he himself put it: 'I just thought, give him another vote.' So of course this brand-new instance of voter fraud will be denounced loudly by all the Republicans who have been searching for such fraud for so long, right? Well, I'm not exactly holding my breath, if you know what I mean."




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
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