Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, your weekly politics newsletter where we THE RAVENS GAME WAS RIGGED!!
Dear reader, the reading is a little acidic this week. We look at the latest on the collapsing border/Ukraine deal in Congress: It’s still collapsing. We won’t spoil it, but Nikki Haley has employed a new rhetorical tool (OK, it’s alliteration) to stop Donald Trump. There’s a crazy man doing pullups from high in the air under the Capitol Dome, and, folks, this man represents hundreds of thousands of people with a vote in Congress.
Let us begin, though, with the latest sucker in the Senate who foolishly attempted to make law.
By Jim Newell
Last fall, Republicans insisted that action be taken to shore up the southern border in exchange for additional aid to Ukraine. Democrats agreed to negotiate. Republican leader Mitch McConnell tapped Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, a God-fearing Christian conservative from Oklahoma, to negotiate the deal. A deal was reached. Now conservatives are walking away from the deal for political reasons, and dragging the good name of Lankford through the mud as they go. He’s facing charges of heresy from the right back home and in Washington, and he lost support for his deal with each hour that passed before its text could be released. There is a recurring lesson here for Republican legislators who want to solve problems: Do not try. This is especially potent on immigration, arguably the problem that Republicans believe is most in need of fixing. Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham twice lent their efforts to comprehensive immigration reform, in 2007 and 2013, and spent years working to repair their relationship with the right. Sen. Marco Rubio, then a presidential hopeful, put his neck on the line during the 2013 effort, and spent his entire unsuccessful 2016 presidential campaign apologizing for it. Do NOT try to solve a problem if you are a Republican senator. The bigger the problem, and the more your constituents say they want it fixed, the further away you should get from it. Shoo, now. Go on, git!
Mike Johnson is no James Lankford. No, the speaker of the House worked his tail off this week to ensure that he will not have to do any work to solve a problem. Over the course of the past seven days, Johnson has moved from skeptical of the emerging Senate compromise to outright hostile. He’s called the proposal “dead on arrival” and a “nonstarter” in the House and questioned why he’s even asked about it anymore. He spoke at length about both the broken immigration system and the Senate’s subpar solution for it in his first major floor speech as speaker on Wednesday afternoon. Johnson, the occupant of a constitutional office and the highest-ranking official in Congress, believes that the executive branch can fix the problem on its own—so keep him out of it. He has been so vocal against the Senate product because he’d prefer it to die in that chamber. He does not want to be the one deciding whether to bring it up for a vote. Can you imagine the heat he’d take by choosing to address both domestic and international problems? Nope! Nope, nope, nope.
We’re only three weeks from the South Carolina Republican primary, and Nikki Haley is making moves to capture her home state. Apparently “themes” are something that a campaign can “launch,” because that’s what she did this week. The launched theme is “a great day in South Carolina,” echoing the smarmy line she forced into government employees’ mouths during her tenure as governor. While she seeks to remind South Carolinians of her accomplishments as governor, she’s also theme-launched a new attack on Donald Trump and Joe Biden as “grumpy old men.” This is a series of attacks, truly, featuring “online videos, digital ads and voter emails,” according to the New York Times. If you’re not already impressed with this callback to a 1993 comedy, allow us to blow your mind with alliteration: “The episodes, with titles like ‘Stumbling Seniors,’ ‘Basement Buddies’ and ‘Profligate Pols,’ take shots at, among other things, her rivals’ signs of mental confusion, their light presence on the campaign trail and their economic policies leading to high inflation.” Nailed him. Stumbling Profligate Basement Donald is leading Haley by an average of 30 points in South Carolina primary polls.
This is going to sound wild, but the Surge is beginning to question whether our elected officials belong in polite society. Just the way they’re acting these days. Members of Congress and senators used to have honor, and honorable legislating entails lying about opposing or supporting something on policy grounds when, really, it’s all politics. We’ve seen an epidemic of shady truth-telling about election-year politics of late. We’ve seen senators discuss how working to fix an overwhelmed border would take away the overwhelmed border as a political talking point for Trump. We’ve heard Texas Rep. Troy Nehls say it explicitly. “I’m not willing to do too damn much right now to help a Democrat and to help Joe Biden’s approval rating,” Nehls told CNN in January. “I will not help the Democrats try to improve this man’s dismal approval ratings. I’m not going to do it. Why would I?” This week, we heard the same rationale from Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley regarding a small tax deal the House passed this week that would, among other things, modestly enhance the child tax credit. “Passing a tax bill that makes the president look good—mailing out checks before the election—means he could be re-elected, and then we won’t extend the 2017 tax cuts,” Grassley told reporters this week. This sort of loose talk is nothing short of ungentlemanly. Let us please restore order and resume lying about policy as the root of disagreement.
Sure, little more than a handful of bad-faith, self-serving House Republicans joined Democrats to oust ex-Rep. Kevin McCarthy from the speakership. But that was a long time ago, and he’s cool with it now. It was what it was! Oh, what’s this, Politico? “A top McCarthy ally, Brian O. Walsh, is overseeing an attempt to recruit primary challengers to take on members of the infamous ‘Gaetz Eight’—the Capitol’s nickname for Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and seven Republicans who supported his fire-McCarthy push.” It’s a challenging mission because, for most of these members—including Gaetz—shoving out McCarthy improved their standing among Republican primary voters in deep-red districts. They have to be taken out for unrelated idiosyncrasies. The three members whom McCarthy people are targeting, per Politico, are South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, Virginia Rep. Bob Good, and Arizona Rep. Eli Crane. Mace is a baffling person and the least reliably conservative of the Gaetz Eight; she already has a couple of primary challengers, including her ex–chief of staff. Good is conservative as the dickens but made enemies with the Trump campaign over his endorsement of Ron DeSantis. And Eli Crane … well, he said “colored people” on the House floor, but we’re not sure what damage that does him in a Republican primary. Hmm! Politics, interesting.
The Surge has long suspected that within the House Republican conference, there must be at least one “Rich McCormick,” an A.I.–y sounding composite name for any given House Republican. This week, we learned that there is a specific Rich McCormick. He’s a freshman Republican from Georgia, and he’s out of his mind. During a Tuesday tour of the Capitol Dome—which is very high in the air—McCormick was photographed “straddling the railing and pretending to fall or slide over,” per Politico. Then. Then! He “reached up … to grab a crossbar and do multiple pull ups while his staff filmed.” We know this because he was reported to the sergeant-at-arms for being nuts. “McCormick has a reputation around Capitol Hill for being adventurous,” Politico added, “including skateboarding through the Cannon tunnel, a path that connects the Capitol to House office buildings, and playing football against Capitol Police.” We Wikipedia’d this guy (did journalism research), and what would you guess is also true of him? Correct! He was the runner-up on the seventh season of American Gladiators. This guy’s potential for becoming a recurring Surge character … frankly, we’re not sure we’ve ever seen fundamentals like these.
The Celebrity, who is dating the Football Player, became a part of our politics this week. There were many stories about how elements of the right believe that the Celebrity and the Football Player are a “psy-op” to get Biden reelected; this led to pushback from liberals about how the Celebrity and the Football Player are not a “psy-op.” Meanwhile, Trump is reportedly angry at the Celebrity for being more famous than him; Biden is courting the Celebrity’s endorsement. To the Surge, the headline of the decade may have been in the New York Times: “Inside Biden’s Anti-Trump Battle Plan (and Where [the Celebrity] Fits In).” That jarringly extraneous parenthetical is all you need to know about what’s going on here! The journalism industry is dying quicker than usual these days, amid an otherwise roaring economy. So the industry ropes the name of the Celebrity, the only subject people want to read or hear about, into things that have nothing to do with her. People don’t actually believe that the Celebrity is a “psy-op” to sway the presidential election; they just want to put her name in their podcast promo. The Celebrity isn’t a factor in the race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, but it’s useful to find a way to squeeze her name into headlines of politics stories. Trump doesn’t really care abou—OK, Trump definitely cares about the Celebrity being more famous than him. Lastly, THE RAVENS GAME WAS RIGGED!!!
Do NOT Try to Solve a Problem if You Are a Republican Legislator
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03.02.2024
Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, your weekly politics newsletter where we THE RAVENS GAME WAS RIGGED!!
Dear reader, the reading is a little acidic this week. We look at the latest on the collapsing border/Ukraine deal in Congress: It’s still collapsing. We won’t spoil it, but Nikki Haley has employed a new rhetorical tool (OK, it’s alliteration) to stop Donald Trump. There’s a crazy man doing pullups from high in the air under the Capitol Dome, and, folks, this man represents hundreds of thousands of people with a vote in Congress.
Let us begin, though, with the latest sucker in the Senate who foolishly attempted to make law.
By Jim Newell
Last fall, Republicans insisted that action be taken to shore up the southern border in exchange for additional aid to Ukraine. Democrats agreed to negotiate. Republican leader Mitch McConnell tapped Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, a God-fearing Christian conservative from Oklahoma, to negotiate the deal. A deal was reached. Now conservatives are walking away from the deal for political reasons, and dragging the good name of Lankford through the mud as they go. He’s facing charges of heresy from the right back home and in Washington, and he lost support for his deal with each hour that passed before its text could be released. There is a recurring lesson here for Republican legislators who want to solve problems: Do not try. This is especially potent on immigration, arguably the problem that Republicans believe is most in need of fixing. Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham twice lent their efforts to comprehensive immigration reform, in 2007 and 2013, and spent years working to repair their relationship with the right. Sen. Marco Rubio, then a presidential hopeful, put his neck on the line during the 2013 effort, and spent his entire unsuccessful 2016 presidential campaign apologizing for it. Do NOT try to solve a problem if you are a Republican senator. The bigger the problem, and the more your constituents say they want it fixed, the further away you should get from it. Shoo, now. Go on, git!
Mike Johnson is no James Lankford. No, the speaker of the House worked his tail off this week to ensure that he will not have to do any work to solve a problem. Over the course of the past seven days, Johnson has moved from skeptical of the emerging Senate compromise to outright hostile. He’s called the proposal “dead on arrival” and a “nonstarter” in the House and questioned why........
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