Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, where your regular author has returned after a three-month sabbatical stuck in an apple tree. We’d like to thank Slate’s Ben Mathis-Lilley for filling in these past few months. Surge Enterprises has an exciting new assignment for Ben at a work camp, where he’ll be farming words for future newsletter editions. His mouth is covered with duct tape so he can’t respond, but say goodbye to Ben as we close the cargo hold!
Now where were we … [Googles “politics”] … what a week of politics it was. Donald Trump is set to cruise to a victory in the Iowa caucuses on Monday after a week of screaming at those prosecuting him in federal and state criminal and civil trials, once and for all sticking a toothpick in “Meatball Rob” DeSantis. Chris Christie returned home to New Jersey to 100 phone messages from No Labels trying to sell him a get-rich-quick presidency scheme. Has anyone checked between the couch cushions to see if they can find Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin?
But first, let’s start with the junior varsity speaker of the House.
By Jim Newell
When your Surge author last wrote, current Bakersfield highway-median rag salesman Kevin McCarthy was still speaker of the House. Now it’s … let’s see … huh. It’s four-eyes from Judiciary? Huh. Well, Speaker Mike Johnson is still trying to close the books on the same spending fight—where to set fiscal year 2024 funding levels—that got McCarthy turfed. Earlier this week, ahead of the Jan. 19 partial funding deadline, Johnson cut a deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on overall spending levels, if not spending specifics. Since those levels were greater than zero dollars, all hell broke loose with the far right. Rep. Warren Davidson told reporters that Johnson “should never have been hired.” Reps. Chip Roy and Tim Burchett began to dangle the idea of ousting Johnson. Some far-right members blocked Johnson from advancing other bills on the floor this week, while others were mean to him on social media, which hurt Johnson’s feelings. Johnson has to choose between scrapping his deal with Schumer—which would tick off a whole new set of members and senators and only delay the inevitable bipartisan deal—or absorbing the pain from his right and hoping that it doesn’t do him in before he can move to the next chapter. As of Friday, he was leaning toward the latter. Well, Louisiana needs highway-median rag salesmen, too.
The president’s typically low-profile defense secretary has transformed overnight into the Cabinet member on whom there’s the most pressure to resign. (Well, maybe not as much as the one who could get impeached. More on that later.) Lloyd Austin, we learned this week, was hospitalized for prostate cancer surgery just before Christmas and returned to the hospital on Jan. 1 to treat complications. Few people knew about any of this until, like, a few days ago. Austin’s deputy knew that she had to run the goddamn Pentagon from a beach in Puerto Rico for a few days, but she didn’t know why. No one told other Pentagon personnel. No one told Joe Biden. No one told the Pentagon press corps. Hell, no one even told the Surge. Even the administration isn’t trying to argue that this was all done perfectly, and it has ordered a governmentwide review of protocols for when department heads sneak out of the house to drink with their friends in the woods or have secret cancer surgery. The calls for Austin to resign, though, are beginning to cross the threshold into bipartisanship. Can Austin survive this one? Yeah, sure. Everyone will forget this in three seconds. Forget what? Exactly.
House Republicans ramped up efforts this week to impeach the homeland security secretary because (a) leaders want to distract the right with any given squirrel they can muster while working to fund the government, (b) Republicans want to emphasize the border ahead of the election, and (c) they want to impeach somebody, and Mayorkas might, might be the only guy for whom they can muster the votes. But their biggest hurdle, aside from locking down the rest of the votes, is determining the grounds on which to impeach him. Terms being thrown around include things like “negligence” or “dereliction of duty” or “incompetence.” All of these are stand-ins for the root of their dismay, which is that they don’t like the Biden administration’s border policies. But if policy disputes become grounds for impeachment, the Senate will never not be holding a trial again. Senate Republicans are rolling their eyes at the process for this very reason. And even typically friendly legal rubber stamps for House Republicans, like law professor Jonathan Turley, are warning them against going down this path. At this point, we’d bet against House Republicans finding the votes to adopt anything more than a resolution congratulating America for being No. 1—even on that, the specific legislative language would be crucial—but perhaps they’ll pull their act together enough to set a tiresome new precedent.
Barring a scenario in which Donald Trump supporters freeze in place walking to their caucus precincts—we’re serious—Trump will win the Iowa Republican caucuses on Monday by about a billion points. So let’s look at how the overwhelming, quasi-incumbent Republican presidential front-runner spent his week: mostly by warning of violence. At a rally last Friday in Iowa, Trump said of a pending Supreme Court case that “I just hope we get fair treatment,” because “if we don’t, our country’s in big, big trouble. Does everybody understand what I’m saying?” You picking up what our boy is laying down? And on Tuesday, following a court appearance in Washington, Trump warned that there would be “bedlam in this country” if things do not go his way at the polls because of criminal trials. The following night, appearing on Fox News as counterprogramming to the CNN presidential debate in which he didn’t participate, he—in a rare moment—downplayed the idea that he would seek “retribution” as president or encourage political violence. By Thursday he was back in court, this time in New York, ranting at the judge in his fraud trial. Exhausting, as ever. But in just a couple of days, he’ll be sipping corn Champagne from the corn trophy.
While Trump was flying from courtroom to courtroom, TV set to TV set, portending violence, the race for second place continued Wednesday night with a debate between Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley. It was two hours of low-stakes hostility, with each candidate cherry-picking and spinning little nothings from each other’s records to prove that the other hated drilling for gas, loved taxes, secretly wanted to mandate gender reassignment surgery for babies, and so on. Why were they doing this? Well, it’s worth considering that this may be the last edition of the Surge in which DeSantis is a presidential candidate. He’s put all of his time and resources into finishing a strong second place to Trump in Iowa. Now, with Haley’s ascent, he’s at risk of finishing a distant third place in the state—in fact, Haley finally crossed him in the polling average this week. If DeSantis finishes third in Iowa, there’s not much reason to go on to New Hampshire, where he’s poised to finish just a couple of points better than Asa Hutchinson. It would be curtains for him. So he yapped at Nikki Haley for two hours to arrest her rise, and she yapped back to keep it going. America is No. 1.
Chris Christie did not go quietly. He went quite loudly, in fact, protesting the very candidate—Nikki Haley—he was dropping out of the presidential race to benefit. But with Christie out, the only path toward Republicans nominating someone other than Donald Trump for the presidency became faintly more visible. First, Haley would try to spin a second-place finish in Iowa as the greatest political performance in memory. She could then use that momentum, and the votes of ex-Christie supporters, to leapfrog Trump in New Hampshire before heading into the monthlong siege ahead of the South Carolina primary. Christie has made quite clear, even in getting out of her way, that he thinks Haley would get “smoked” in a one-on-one race with Trump, an assertion with which it’s hard to disagree. But he made sure that if (or when) Trump does take the nomination, no blame can be cast on him for enabling it.
Them No Labels boys were at it again this week. As the centrist political group still determines whether it will run a third-party candidate and risk handing the presidency back to Donald Trump, a few potential No Labels candidates made some moves. First, No Labels has “actively engaged with allies of Chris Christie about his potential interest in joining the group’s ticket,” per NBC News. Sheesh, let the guy take a hot bath first; he’s been sleeping in a bear’s den under Mount Washington for six months to prove he was a “real” New Hampshirite. Second: Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan is so hardcore No Labels that he stepped down from No Labels to become, potentially, even more No Labels–y. Hogan has quit as co-chair of the group, which could allow him to seek the group’s third-party bid. Lastly, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin is not running for president. Why do you keep asking him that? Is it because he’s visiting the beating heart of presidential politics—the Politics and Eggs series at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics—in January of a presidential year? Silly speculation. “Everyone says, ‘Are you running for this or running for that?’ ” Manchin said in the one specific room in America where people go if they are running for president. “I said, no. I’m running the race to bring the country together.” He wasn’t there campaigning! “I’m not here campaigning,” he said. “I’m here, basically, concerned about my country.” Pal, we’re concerned about our country too, but we’ve got to, like, go to the grocery store before we can go to New Hampshire.
Maybe Picking a Junior Varsity House Speaker Was a Mistake
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13.01.2024
Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, where your regular author has returned after a three-month sabbatical stuck in an apple tree. We’d like to thank Slate’s Ben Mathis-Lilley for filling in these past few months. Surge Enterprises has an exciting new assignment for Ben at a work camp, where he’ll be farming words for future newsletter editions. His mouth is covered with duct tape so he can’t respond, but say goodbye to Ben as we close the cargo hold!
Now where were we … [Googles “politics”] … what a week of politics it was. Donald Trump is set to cruise to a victory in the Iowa caucuses on Monday after a week of screaming at those prosecuting him in federal and state criminal and civil trials, once and for all sticking a toothpick in “Meatball Rob” DeSantis. Chris Christie returned home to New Jersey to 100 phone messages from No Labels trying to sell him a get-rich-quick presidency scheme. Has anyone checked between the couch cushions to see if they can find Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin?
But first, let’s start with the junior varsity speaker of the House.
By Jim Newell
When your Surge author last wrote, current Bakersfield highway-median rag salesman Kevin McCarthy was still speaker of the House. Now it’s … let’s see … huh. It’s four-eyes from Judiciary? Huh. Well, Speaker Mike Johnson is still trying to close the books on the same spending fight—where to set fiscal year 2024 funding levels—that got McCarthy turfed. Earlier this week, ahead of the Jan. 19 partial funding deadline, Johnson cut a deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on overall spending levels, if not spending specifics. Since those levels were greater than zero dollars, all hell broke loose with the far right. Rep. Warren Davidson told reporters that Johnson “should never have been hired.” Reps. Chip Roy and Tim Burchett began to dangle the idea of ousting Johnson. Some far-right members blocked Johnson from advancing other bills on the floor this week, while others were mean to him on social media, which hurt Johnson’s feelings. Johnson has to choose between scrapping his deal with Schumer—which would tick off a whole new set of members and senators and only delay the inevitable bipartisan deal—or absorbing the pain from his right and hoping that it doesn’t do him in before he can move to the next chapter. As of Friday, he was leaning toward the latter. Well, Louisiana needs highway-median rag salesmen,........
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