Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, your local bookmaker for odds on who will be the House speaker any given Sunday.
It was a week of momentous decisions. This week, the Surge, like many other wealthy entities, decided not to cover Donald Trump’s hundreds of millions of dollars in legal penalties. Mike Pence decided not to endorse the guy whose election lies brought him perilously close to a makeshift guillotine. Marco Rubio may have to decide whether to move to a new state. Peter Navarro, however, didn’t have much of a decision to make about whether to show up for his jail sentence.
First: Your favorite congresswoman decided to get mad!
By Jim Newell
The House successfully passed the second and final tranche of government funding for the remainder of the fiscal year on Friday—and this was the bigger, more challenging tranche, covering everything from border security to health programs to defense spending. And since it was a compromise that didn’t do everything they wanted, the far-right was characteristically furious. Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, in particular, went so far as to file a resolution to oust Speaker Mike Johnson, raising the prospect of a third speaker’s race in this Congress. But don’t take this too seriously yet. First, she didn’t privilege—i.e., force a vote on—her resolution. “It’s more of a warning than a pink slip,” Greene told reporters after House votes Friday. “I’m not saying that it won’t happen in two weeks or it won’t happen in a month or who knows when, but I am saying the clock has started. It’s time for our conference to choose a new speaker.” Yeah. So … we’re skeptical Greene will force that vote anytime soon. Democrats don’t have the same toxic history with Johnson that they had with McCarthy, and there’s reason to believe they’d backstop a Johnson speakership. In fact, it could even be an opportunity for Democrats to secure a commitment from Johnson to call a vote on Ukraine aid, of which Greene is the most ardent opponent. The vast, vast majority of Greene’s GOP conference, including the guy who led the last speaker’s ouster, have no interest in going through another speaker’s race. This is plain-old attention-seeking for now. And hey, the Surge had a last-minute switcheroo to make her No. 1 this week, so congratulations to her.
It’s not just the liberal deep-state prosecutors that are being very unfair, very rude to Mr. Trump in his ongoing legal war to preserve America and its freedoms. The bond companies, too, are being very rude—frankly, disgusting. Not one of 30 bond companies, Trump’s lawyers revealed this week, would put up the $454 million bond that Trump needs to secure by this Monday in the New York civil fraud case against his Legitimate Business Dealings. If he can’t secure the bond, that means that New York Attorney General Letitia James could move to seize Trump assets to collect. Maybe a New York City property? Maybe a golf course or a named estate in Westchester County? It’s a matter of James’ tastes. As you might imagine, Trump is displeased with this, and when he’s displeased, he posts. He’s been on a torrent this week going after James and the judge in the case. The stray references in these spiels are still hot, such as the one to “John Lovitz” and “SNL when it was good.” How’s ol’ Donny Trump going to wriggle his way out of this jam? Oh, he’ll figure it out. Hey look—money!
NBC News reported this week that Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is on Trump’s shortlist for running as his vice president, an honor given to a mere several hundred people. “Rubio is young and telegenic,” NBC News wrote, “he has spent more time in federal office than Vice President Kamala Harris, and, at a time when Trump is bullish on his chances of winning over Latino voters, [Rubio] would be the first Latino person on a major-party presidential ticket.” If you’ve completely forgotten the 2016 Republican presidential primaries and the Rubio hype leading into it, then sure—this Rubio gent would sound like a real up-and-comer. One issue for Rubio, however, is our buzzkill of a Constitution, which prohibits electors from voting for both a president and a vice president who are from their own state. The idea being batted around, then, would be that “Rubio could resign his Senate seat to move to another state and join the ticket.” This would be an interesting decision for Rubio. Ditching your Senate career and the seniority that’s given you a meaningful committee chairmanship for a toss-up election is a big risk. Plus, you’d have to serve as Trump’s chief deputy doormat for four years if it worked out. On the other hand, serving as Trump’s running mate is probably the last best chance Rubio will have to revive his dormant presidential hopes. Where should he move, anyway? The simplest thing would be to transfer his residence to Washington D.C., but we’d bet on … Arizona, the dry Florida.
Former Trump White House aide Peter Navarro refused to comply with a House Jan. 6 Committee subpoena a couple of years ago—and made a big show of his noncompliance!—and was convicted of contempt of Congress last year. In January, he was sentenced to four months in federal prison, with the judge telling him, “You are not a victim. You are not the object of a political prosecution. These are the circumstances of your own making.” Navarro did not leave it there. After the D.C. district court and federal appeals court refused to delay the start of his prison sentence, the Supreme Court—Chief Justice John Roberts—also refused to save Navarro on Monday. His sentence began Tuesday. Navarro spoke one last time to reporters outside federal prison in Miami that morning—“for 30 minutes at a gas station”—where he said, “I am pissed—that’s what I am feeling right now.” Well! Next time work out a deal to chat with ye olde congressional committee rather than just shouting “executive privilege” to the sky. Better yet, don’t work for Donald Trump. In any event, it’ll be a quick spell in the pokey, and his prison consultant (yes, really) hooked him up with an “air-conditioned dormitory reserved for ‘elderly’ male inmates” where you can hear the lions from the next-door zoo. Neat! Jail is fun.
It’s only March, but the winner of this year’s Rick Scott Award for Unnecessarily Releasing a Go-Nowhere Election-Year Plan That Would Cut Social Security Benefits goes to Rep. Kevin Hern, chairman of the Republican Study Committee. The RSC—a conservative caucus to which the vast majority of the House GOP are members—released their annual budget proposal, “Fiscal Sanity to Save America,” on Wednesday. Among the hits in this dandy, which the RSC could have not released at all, would be an increase in the eligibility age for Social Security benefits; a conversion of Medicare to a “premium support” model (Paul Ryan, control yourself!); and an endorsement of the Life at Conception Act, the federal legislation that could put to risk the legality of in vitro fertilization nationally. Not all of these ideas are new to the RSC’s latest proposal; many of the plans go back years in RSC literature. But perhaps Hern could’ve taken a bye this year. President Joe Biden is already seeking to tag the entire GOP with this proposal; GOP leadership is already running away from it, and so is Trump. Eyes on the prize, Hern: You win the election on “populism” (saying whatever gets the folks a-gruntin’) and then use a reconciliation bill to cut taxes and benefit programs.
Last Friday, just minutes after we had sent the previous edition of the Surge to the printers, Mike Pence announced that he would not support Trump for president. The Surge did, on net, believe that Pence would find a McConnellesque way to get back on the Trump Train this year. Too much of a party man; too much muscle memory in his salivatory glands from when he served as Trump’s deputy. It’s a credit to him that he was able to resist. And yet, his explanation was risible. “During my presidential campaign, I made it clear that there were profound differences between me and President Trump on a range of issues, and not just our difference on my constitutional duties that I exercised on January 6.” He listed Trump’s soft positions on the national debt, on abortion rights, and his recent opposition to the House bill that would force a sale of TikTok. Seriously? Trump hasn’t cared, at all, about the national debt or abortion, ever, in the entire time that Pence has known him. Trump’s position on TikTok—whatever. Pence knows that Trump has never cared about anything beyond his own prestige and comfort. The former VP will run in zero future elections. He is free to say that he’s not endorsing Trump after the 2020 election lies nearly got him killed, and Trump didn’t lift a finger to stop it. Really! It’s an exceptional reason to withhold an endorsement.
Senate Republicans held the first of what could be many confabs to discuss the post-McConnell leadership picture. So far, just Sens. John Thune and John Cornyn are running to replace McConnell when he steps down in November, though others, like Sens. Rick Scott or Steve Daines, could enter the picture later. Cornyn has already said that he would support a new requirement of term limits for the Senate Republican leader going forward. McConnell, as you might expect from the record-holder of longest-serving Senate party leader, is strongly opposed to the idea. “Well, we have term limits now,” McConnell has said publicly. “They’re called elections, and I had a contest myself during my last election as leader.” In private, at this week’s Senate GOP meeting, McConnell warned senators against the idea again, arguing that term limits would “weaken the leader's power to do their job and potentially hurt fundraising.” Much as senators, or members of Congress, like to say that they want to “democratize” the place and empower individuals, they really don’t. In crunch time, they both want and need a strong hand in charge to execute strategy. Immediately lame-ducking a leader wouldn’t help with that. But the Senate GOP can make whatever ill-advised decisions it wants! Go nuts! Have a nice weekend.
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