Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, the politics newsletter that insiders are suggesting could be a dark horse to serve as the next leader of the Senate GOP. We’ll see.
There was so much hysteria in the United States Senate this week you’d think someone wore an open-toed shoe. Joe Biden is in trouble in Michigan, but on the other hand, he’s in trouble everywhere. Plus, we have some down-ballot primaries next week, with one involving a congressman who’s continually threatening to “drown” his opponents.
Let’s begin, though, with your best friend, Mitch McConnell.
By Jim Newell
The Surge can link to any number of left-of-center stories celebrating the downfall of Mitch McConnell, who announced this week that he wouldn’t run for another term as leader. They reference how he broke the Senate with the normalization of pure obstructionism. How he invented a precedent to block an Obama Supreme Court nominee, then inverted it to install a 6–3 right-wing majority. How he enabled Donald Trump’s rise, humored Trump’s post-2020 election denialism, then didn’t have the guts to convict Trump in his second impeachment. We won’t argue with any of it. But even if you agree with each point … you’re going to miss him. OK? Elizabeth Warren is going to miss him, and so are you. It’s just where things are. While he didn’t do as much as he could have to resist Trump’s worst impulses, he did at least understand that Trump’s worst impulses were bad impulses. He has always hated government shutdowns, and he prevented his caucus from adopting the procedural lunacy that has consumed the House GOP. And lastly, he’s resisted—and depleted serious political capital resisting—the inward shift of his party toward abandoning allies and foreign obligations. With McConnell gone, what everyone should be concerned about is control of the Senate GOP going to a hollow haircut who thinks Donald Trump can do no wrong. Let’s see if a name comes to mind …
Let’s cut to the chase: You should hope that McConnell’s replacement is John Thune or John Cornyn, OK? Because it’s grim out there otherwise. The other John in the “three Johns” trio of potential McConnell successors is Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the least fun of the Johns and the only one who could be said to have a relatively strong relationship with Trump. But Trump doesn’t want a Senate Republican leader who is only relatively amenable to him. He wants someone to be in his debt. And several outlets reported this week that Trump’s preferred pick to lead the Senate GOP is Montana Sen. Steve Daines, the current chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Much of this is simply good timing. He’s a rich guy who bumbled around the Senate for eight years until he secured the gig as campaign committee chair for a cycle in which Democrats are on the defensive. Daines has, to his credit, done a much better job in the role than his RNC predecessor, Florida Sen. Rick Scott, who could not prevent morons from winning primaries in critical states. That does not mean, however, that Daines suddenly possesses all the skills necessary to run the Senate. Trump can insist on him for as long as he wants. But Senate party leader elections are done by secret ballot.
President Biden won the Michigan primary this week with 81 percent of the vote. But it’s the second-place finisher, “uncommitted,” that has drawn most of the attention. A grassroots organizing effort led by Arab Americans, of whom Michigan has a substantial population, contributed to the roughly 100,000 votes for “uncommitted” in protest of Biden’s handling of the Israel–Gaza war. To what extent will Biden’s lackluster support among Arab Americans be a true problem for him in the general election? On the optimistic side for Biden, a great number of those 100,000 who took the free protest vote of “uncommitted” will still vote for him in November, when the other option on the ballot is Trump, who does not have great things in mind for the people of Gaza. And while bringing an end to the conflict is a must for Biden—for reasons that include, but certainly are not limited to, presidential politics—the focus on his problems in Dearborn tends to miss the forest for the trees. Biden is in trouble in November because most Americans think he’s an old, lousy president, and he is trailing Trump because of it. So, by all means, Biden should do what he can to repair relationships with Arab Americans, college-age voters, and other key constituencies within the Democratic coalition. The bigger picture, however, remains that he needs a tidal shift in the way the average voter perceives him.
Meanwhile, in Republican Land: Trump won two more primaries in the past week, in South Carolina and Michigan. By the time we next write this fair newsletter, he will have won, oh, 18 or 19 more contests. (The only real mystery is the D.C. Republican primary, where the 80 or 90 lobbyists participating in it could hand Haley her first victory.) After Super Tuesday, will Haley drop out? For the first time, she’s signaling that this could be the end. “We’re going to keep going all the way through Super Tuesday,” Haley told reporters after casting her vote in the South Carolina primary. “That’s as far as I’ve thought in terms of going forward.” If this is the end, she certainly hasn’t been easing up on Trump as she nears the finish line. She said, in an interview this week with NBC News, that “all” of Trump’s criminal cases “should be dealt with before November.” She added, “We need to know what's going to happen before it, before the presidency happens, because after that, should he become president, I don't think any of it's going to get heard.” Speaking of Trump criminal cases being heard …
The reason Haley spoke about the timing of Trump’s trials is that the Supreme Court has effectively delayed the mother of them all, United States v. Trump—i.e., the Jan. 6 case. Despite a district court decision rejecting Trump’s claim of immunity and a circuit court decision affirming that, SCOTUS this week announced that it would take up the presidential immunity case—at a pretty lackadaisical pace. The court granted cert to the case on Wednesday, after twiddling its thumbs for 16 days, and it scheduled oral arguments for April 22. That means there may not be a decision until the court’s term ends in late June. Even if the court doesn’t accept Trump’s meritless claim of presidential immunity, there would be precious little time afterward to get a (lengthy) trial on the books and allow for the necessary preparation before the election. In other words, the court is doing its part to fulfill Trump’s efforts to delay, delay, delay proceedings until after the election, when he intends to either pardon himself or have a lackey attorney general dismiss the charges. This smells.
Another week of Ukraine running out of ammunition has passed—how many more to go? While Congress was focused this week on keeping the government funded (it did, for another week, blah blah blah), it remains the case that Speaker Mike Johnson is sitting on a Senate bill to send sorely needed military aid to Ukraine and doesn’t know what to do about it. After a White House meeting with the president and other congressional leaders, all of whom berated Johnson to take up Ukraine assistance, all Johnson would tell the press was that “the House is actively considering options on a path forward.” Uh-huh. The dude needs to cut it with the chin-stroking and signal how, precisely, he needs his hand held on this. Does he need House Democratic votes to backstop his speakership in case Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tries to oust him for letting the Senate bill on the floor? Hakeem Jeffries can provide that. Does he need some number of Republicans to join a discharge petition with Democrats to force a vote on the bill so Johnson’s fingerprints wouldn’t be on it? Pro-Ukraine Republicans can provide that. Would he like a pony? A pony farm can provide that. Figure it out!
The exciting news about this coming week’s primaries is that we’ll get some interesting down-ballot races to go along with the decidedly uninteresting presidential results. Among them is a primary in Texas’ 23rd District, a vast border district stretching from San Antonio to El Paso. GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales faces several primary challengers after a series of heretical votes in recent years on matters including same-sex marriage rights and gun safety. Where Gonzales most transgressed, however, was in speaking out at first against House Republicans’ signature border bill, H.R. 2, as being too harsh. (He fell in line with the immigration hard-liners after primary season kicked into gear.) Both the incumbent and his challengers are compelling characters in this case. Gonzales—and this could be related to why he draws so many challengers—talks a lot of shit and has a special fondness for drowning-related metaphors. After being censured by the Texas Republican Party, Gonzales warned those who thought about challenging him, “I’ll run you into the deep end of the pool every single time and drown you.” After challengers took him on anyway, he said, “I’m going to kick their ass, no doubt, but it’s going to cost me time, money, energy, effort. Instead of fending off against the Democrats here, I have to go drown crazy Republicans.” (Anyone know if Gonzales’ house has a pool, and if so, has anyone inspected the bottom of it recently?) Gonzales now has four primary opponents, but who’s to call them “crazy”? Sure, one of them is Brandon Herrera, a “firearms manufacturer and a YouTube personality who calls himself ‘The AK Guy,’ ” and, sure, the AK Guy left behind an “explosive device” at an event last year in Uvalde, Texas, of all places. But the “explosive device” was inactive, so he’s perfectly fine.
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