Month: June 2022

However reluctantly, and with a healthy dose of caveats, I’m compelled to give Liz Cheney credit for the courage and principal she’s demonstrated in the defense of the American system of government. Interviewed by CBS News’s Robert Costa about her opinion of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, she did not mince words:

Costa asked, “What keeps Kevin McCarthy close to Trump? Fear? Or something else?”

“I think some of it is fear,” Cheney replied. “I think it’s also craven political calculation. I think that he has decided that, you know, the most important thing to him is to attempt to be Speaker of the House. And therefore he is embracing those in our party who are anti-Semitic; he is embracing those in our party who are white nationalists; he is lying about what happened on January 6; and he’s turned his back on the Constitution.”

The funny thing is that even Trump’s ardent supporters seem to agree that McCarthy is a weasel who lacks any principles.

Former President Donald Trump endorsed Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s reelection bid on Saturday despite pushback from his base…

…Trump supporters fumed over the endorsement on social media. It’s his latest endorsement to face scorn from his own supporters in a sign that while he continues to hold considerable influence in the Republican Party, his sway may have limits even among his most enthusiastic supporters.

“Trump endorsing Frank Luntz bunk buddy Kevin McCarthy, instead of using his political capital to undermine bad GOP leadership, is a sign that Trump has not learned much after all this time about who is and is not America First,” tweeted conservative journalist Pedro L. Gonzalez.

As I saw former Trump administration U.S. Trade Representative Peter Navarro get hauled off to jail last week, I began to wonder if Trump has developed any rituals for when a close ally is arrested on his behalf. It seems as if nothing can give him a greater sense of his own power than to witness a grown man with a family willingly succumb to the justice system rather than tell the truth about the disgraced ex-president’s crimes.

“They intercepted me gettin’ on the plane and then they put me in handcuffs, they bring me here,” the former Trump aide said. “They put me in leg irons. They stick me in a cell.”

I think Trump gets off on this stuff. I think nothing makes him happier than to see a powerful person like Lindsey Graham go from a vehement critic to a sycophantic lickspittle. That’s why he likes Kevin McCarthy. That’s what Trump’s MAGA fans are missing. He’s rewarding McCarthy as an example for others who might dare criticize him. If they back off and come kiss his ring, they’ll be rewarded, but if they continue their independence, he will destroy them.

He likes to dominate in this way, and that domination is actually at the root of his appeal for those for whom he’s actually appealing.

Liz Cheney knows this is a problem and she calls it a “cult of personality.”

As the Wyoming Republican sees it, defending democracy means holding former President Donald Trump, and his allies, to account for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

It also means standing apart from most of her fellow Congressional Republicans. “We have too many people now in the Republican Party who are not taking their responsibilities seriously, and who have pledged their allegiance and loyalty to Donald Trump,” Cheney said. “I mean, it is fundamentally antithetical, it is contrary to everything conservatives believe, to embrace a personality cult. And yet, that is what so many in my party are doing today.”

Costa asked, “Is the Republican Party a personality cult?”

“I think that large segments of it have certainly become that.”

“A cult?”

“Yeah. I mean, I think there is absolutely a cult of personality around Donald Trump. And I think that, you know, the majority of Republicans across the country don’t want to see our system unravel. They understand how important it is to protect and defend the Constitution.”

The only thing she’s wrong about is that last part. A majority of Republicans do seem to want our system to unravel. They don’t seem to understand how important it is to defend the Constitution. What they care about is seeing Trump dominate. Cheney sees the issue, but I’m not convinced she’s diagnosed it.

The way to defeat Trumpism is to become the dominator. He has to lose, and he has to lose in a way that he cannot deny or spin away. He needs handcuffs and leg irons and a cell. There is no other way to make the cult of personality disappear.

Cheney is doing her part, and she’d doing it admirably, but she’s not in a position to place Trump in shackles. That job is for state and federal law enforcement, and they need to show more alacrity about getting that job done, because that’s the way to really protect and defend the Constitution.

Back in January, I wrote that Democrat Cheri Beasley could be the next senator from North Carolina. That race isn’t getting the kind of attention we see going to other potentially “flippable” seats, but it does usually show up when pundits name the top ten senate races to watch.

Last month, Natalie Allison wrote that the National Republican Senatorial Committee (the one chaired by Sen. Rick Scott), had reserved $53 million in ads in top battleground states. It’s interesting to note where they took their opening shots – Arizona and North Carolina. We’re now learning how they plan to attack Beasley.

Television stations in North Carolina made the unusual decision on Friday to take down an attack ad against Cheri Beasley, a Democratic Senate candidate, after complaints that the ad falsely accused Ms. Beasley of freeing a man convicted on charges of possessing lewd images of children when she served as chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court.

The ad, made by the Republican Senate campaign arm, highlighted the case of “a child porn offender,” and it accused Ms. Beasley of having “voted to set him free.” A female narrator spoke ominously over images of a young girl and jail bars sliding open.

Here’s the fact-check:

The case that led to removal of the North Carolina ad involved a man named James Howard Terrell Jr., who was convicted in 2016 of possessing lewd images of minors on a computer thumb drive.

An appeals court ruled that a detective had conducted an illegal search of the thumb drive, in violation of Mr. Terrell’s Fourth Amendment rights, and it sent the case back down to the trial court.

In 2019, the State Supreme Court, with Ms. Beasley in the majority, upheld that ruling. As of May 2020, Mr. Terrell was still in prison, according to court records.

Sound familiar? They’re telling the same lies about Beasley that they told about Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson during her confirmation hearings – with a touch of “Willie Horton” thrown in for good measure. Kudos to the television stations in North Carolina for refusing to air the lies.

But it’s also interesting to note that the NRSC is going after Beasley with this kind of attack right out of the gate. I doubt they’d be wasting their money if they didn’t think she had a chance of flipping this seat. I previously noted that North Carolina is one of those southern states that is beginning to swing.

In 2008, Barack Obama won North Carolina. He went on to lose to Mitt Romney by a narrow margin in 2012. Donald Trump won the state in both 2016 and 2020, just as the same voters chose a Democrat, Roy Cooper, to be their governor. Democrat Cal Cunningham lost the 2020 Senate election to Republican incumbent Thom Tillis by less than 2% after news broke that Cunningham had an extramarital affair.

According to the 2020 census, North Carolina is the fourth fastest growing state in the country, behind only Texas, Arizona, and Florida. While more than half of the state’s (mostly rural) counties lost population, 78% of the growth occurred in the two largest metro areas (Raleigh and Wilmington). Virtually all of that growth was in the adult (voting age) population.

Pundits usually dismiss Beasley’s chances by simply noting that North Carolina went for Trump in both 2016 and 2020. But take a look at the recent history of presidential races in the state:

2000 – Bush won by 12.8%

2004 – Bush won by 12.4%

2008 – Obama won by 0.3%

2012 – Romney won by 2.04%

2016 – Trump won by 3.7%

2020 – Trump won by 1.3%

By comparison, Trump won Ohio (where the senate race is between J.D. Vance and Tim Ryan) by about 8 points in both 2016 and 2020.

So a state where the Republican advantage was previously in double digits is now down to a 1-2 point margin. That makes the North Carolina senate race competitive, and Republicans know it – which is why they’re wallowing in the gutter with their lies about Beasley.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be starting a new painting. It is a scene from the Navajo reservation, between Cameron and Page, Arizona. The photo that I’m using (My own from a recent visit.) is seen directly below.

I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on 6×6 inch canvas panel.

When last seen the painting appeared as it does in the photo seen directly below.

Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

I have now painted the various elements of the scene. This preliminary layer will be completely overpainted before I am done.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have more progress to show you next week. See you then.

I’m astonished that the top editors at Politico made the decision the publish these ruminations about the stupidity of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.  The author, senior editor Michael Shaffer, provides good evidence that at least a dozen Capitol Hill beat reporters consider McCarthy a complete simpleton. So, why, Shaffer wants to know, won’t they ever come out and plainly report their low opinion of his mental capabilities? Why do they speak only in euphemisms like “lacks…political and tactical gravitas” and “would far rather talk about personalities than the tax code”?

Amazingly, Shaffer quickly provides plentiful answers to his question, not limited to the fact that there are many different kinds of intelligence and calling people “stupid” isn’t as elucidating or explanatory as it might seem. What McCarthy lacks in intellectual substance, he makes up for in emotional intelligence (remembering names, birthdays, making people feel valued and important). He has a talent for making friends and raising money (these two things are closely related), and he knows how to lead by following.

If you want to know how McCarthy got to where is now, on the cusp of becoming Speaker of the House, the answer is most definitely not that he did so by being a moron. That doesn’t mean he isn’t a moron, but calling him a moron is probably not a political reporter’s job. It’s not even a very fruitful avenue of attack for his political opponents, as Shaffer realizes:

The politics of stupid, in fact, tend to punish the sneering antagonist that calls someone dumb, rather than the figure who gets maligned in the first place. Democrats ridiculed the intelligence of GOP presidents like Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Donald Trump, to little effect. It’s a bad look. Most voters may not think of themselves as stupid, but nearly everyone can relate to some moment in their life when some smartypants looked down on them.

Intellectuals are never going to stop calling people stupid because they highly value book-learning and the delights of a gifted mind, but that doesn’t mean it’s good politics and it wouldn’t be good reporting either. It’s good reporting to tell people that a politician is wrong or mistaken or simply ignorant about important facts. Sneering about it is best left to columnists who write more for the titillation of partisan audiences than in the hope of changing minds.

A good writer is always thinking about what they’re trying to accomplish. Shaffer cites numerous examples of reporters saying explicitly that McCarthy does not know anything about policy and that he’s a tactical blunderer. The key information is being transmitted, and if you think a congressional leader should know about policy then you might actually care. If you’re a Republican, McCarthy’s lack of tactical skill, especially compared to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, might lead you to prefer a different Speaker of the House.

But snottily disparaging his intelligence actually helps him. First of all, most people aren’t all that knowledgable about policy and they sense that they’re being insulted too. Second, it’s just wrong in a general sense to be mean to people because they’re not as smart as you are, and that’s why it’s “not a good look.”

This column is really just a back-handed way of raising awareness that McCarthy is dumb and all the smart people know it. It’s a bad look for a publication like Politico. I can say McCarthy is a colossal idiot because I’m a blogger talking to a partisan audience. But I’m not dumb enough to think this will advance the political causes I care about or hurt McCarthy in any meaningful way.

As for Politico, this doesn’t advance any high-minded mission they might have, and it really calls into question if they have any mission at all beside getting clicks.

Back in February, I wrote that John Durham – who was appointed by William Barr to investigate the origins of the Trump-Russia probe – wasn’t conducting a legal investigation, but had mounted a propaganda campaign.

[Durham] is in the business of mounting a propaganda campaign in an attempt to not only discredit the Mueller investigation, but to shift the focus from Trump and Putin to a nefarious conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton.

This week a jury acquitted the one person Durham has charged – Michael Sussmann – in a case that no legal experts thought should have been brought in the first place. If his goal was to uncover criminal activity, the three-year investigation has been a complete and abject failure. So perhaps it would be helpful to go back to the beginning when Barr issued the memo making Durham a special prosecutor. Here’s how Charlie Savage summarized it:

Mr. Barr’s memo was broadly written and vague. It did not identify any suspected crime that could serve as a predicate for a continuing criminal investigation, or any particular person whom Mr. Durham was to focus on. Nor did it claim a foreign threat that would constitute any separate counterintelligence basis for an inquiry, as with the Trump-Russia investigation.

Mr. Barr also directed Mr. Durham to write a report detailing his findings that would be intended for public consumption…The special counsel regulations do not envision such a report.

Just before he resigned as attorney general, Barr indicated that the investigation he had tagged as “criminal,” shouldn’t be judged based on crimes that were uncovered. Here is how Kimberly Stassel summarized what he told her:

The attorney general also hopes people remember that orange jumpsuits aren’t the only measure of misconduct. It frustrates him that the political class these days frequently plays “the criminal card,” obsessively focused on “who is going to jail, who is getting indicted.”…One danger of the focus on criminal charges is that it ends up excusing a vast range of contemptible or abusive behavior that doesn’t reach the bar.

Now that Durham’s case against Sussmann has been tossed out by a jury, Barr insists that he’s proud of the work the special prosecutor is doing.

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1532143445984153601?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1532143445984153601%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fimmasmartypants.blogspot.com%2F2022%2F06%2Fbarr-got-exactly-what-he-wanted-from.html

Barr says that Durham accomplished something far more important than a conviction in that “he crystalized the central role played by the Hillary campaign in launching, as a dirty trick, the whole Russiagate collusion narrative.” Just as he blatantly lied about the Mueller report, Barr is now lying about what Durham has actually uncovered.

Similarly, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal proclaimed in a headline that “Hillary Clinton Did It.” The opening statement mirrors Barr’s lie: “The Russia-Trump collusion narrative of 2016 and beyond was a dirty trick for the ages, and now we know it came from the top—candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.” At The Federalist, Margot Cleveland wrote that Durham has provided “proof that the Clinton campaign held near-total responsibility for launching the Russia-collusion hoax.”

So Barr – and by extension, Donald Trump – have already gotten exactly what they were looking for from Durham.

One thing I can say for Barr is that he definitely knows how to play the media. By lying about the Mueller report and Durham’s investigation, he has convinced the MAGA crowd that the whole Trump-Russia investigation was a hoax perpetrated by the Clinton campaign. And now writers like Charlie Savage at the New York Times can “both sides” the whole story about how a presidential campaign colluded with Russia to influence the election and then obstructed justice when their activities were investigated..

Some liberal commentators once seemed to routinely suggest that developments in Mr. Mueller’s investigation meant the walls were closing in on Mr. Trump. But while Mr. Mueller’s March 2019 reportdetailed “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign,” he charged no Trump associate with conspiring with Russia.

Similarly, pro-Trump commentators have repeatedly stoked expectations that Mr. Durham would soon charge some of Mr. Trump’s perceived enemies with a conspiracy to do him wrong. But after more than three years, he has offered only insinuations.

In case you need a little grounding in the truth after all of that lying and prevaricating, I’ll simply offer this:

Hi everyone!

It’s still midweek somewhere. So every once in a while I run into some obscure electronic pop from the early 1980s. Poem Electronique is one of them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODOGAEEXs9E

Here is a link to a blog post about the LP they released with the above song as the title track.

Cheers.

With the public January 6 congressional hearings set to begin on June 6, there is something I want you to remember about the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon. But before I get to that, here’s a bare-bones timeline.

June 17, 1972: During the second break-in of the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in Washington, DC, five people (Virgilio Gonzalez, Bernard Barker, James McCord, Eugenio Martínez, and Frank Sturgis) were arrested. McCord had provided security for former Attorney General John Mitchell and served on the staff of the Republican Committee to Re-Elect the President, which Mitchell was heading. Some of the burglars also had documents tying them to E. Howard Hunt, a former CIA officer who was working in the White House.

November 7, 1972: Nixon defeated Democratic senator George McGovern in an enormous landslide.

May 17, 1973: The Senate Watergate Committee begins its nationally televised hearings.

August 9, 1974: Nixon resigns from office and Vice-President Gerald R. Ford assumes the office of the presidency.

As you can see, more that two years elapsed between the discovery of the break-in and Nixon’s fall from grace. It has now been almost a year and a half since the failed coup attempt of January 6, 2021. We’re a bit behind schedule because the televised Watergate hearings began a mere 11 months after the initial arrests were made.

Another thing that’s different from Watergate is that, eighteen months after the precipitating incident, we still have not had national elections, but the people went to the polls in November 1972, less than five months after the burglars were discovered.

Finally, in our case, the hearings will precede the election whereas the voters in November 1972 didn’t have the benefit of seeing all the information tying Republicans, at the highest level, to the crime.

So, there are parallels between today and the Watergate scandal but also important differences.

I want to focus on the public actually did know when they voted in 1972. They knew that people from the Republican Committee to Re-Elect the President (specifically, James McCord and G. Gordon Liddy) had directed and carried out an operation to place bugs in the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters. These people worked for John Mitchell, the former Attorney General and a close personal friend of President Nixon. They also knew that the operation was overseen by E. Howard Hunt, a former CIA officer who had an office in the White House.

Despite this, Nixon won more than 60 percent of the popular vote, carrying 49 states and 520 Electoral College votes.

Obviously, the people didn’t immediately understand the scope of Nixon’s criminality even though the signs were available. When they went back the polls in November 1974, after Nixon had been fully exposed and run out of office, the Democrats netted four U.S. Senate seats and 49 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

In a way, this parallel has already played out. In 2016, the Russians broke into the Democratic National Headquarters. Their burglary was strictly digital, but it was clearly done to help Donald Trump win the presidential election. Despite knowing this, as well as Trump’s many curious ties to the Russians, the people elected Trump over Hillary Clinton. Four years later, however, the scope of Trump’s criminality was much clearer and he was unsuccessful in his reelection bid.

What’s different from Watergate is that the January 6 coup attempt was a second crime after Trump’s fall from grace. Also, critically, Nixon has constitutionally prohibited from seeking the presidency again. Trump still has that option.

So, what you should conclude is that evidence of severe criminality is not enough, by itself, to turn the public decisively against a president or presidential contender. The criminality must be proven and demonstrated in a high-profile way before it can overcome the more general and common political considerations of the electorate. Nixon’s lies were eventually exposed and he and his party paid a hefty price, but this only came after the public Watergate hearings.

This puts a lot of pressure on the January 6 committee. And their job will be harder this time because we no longer have just three channels to watch on television. A smaller percentage of the people will tune in to watch the hearings, although potentially a higher percentage will see the more interesting parts in viral clips. The country is also more divided and more inclined to receive political information through self-selected partisan filters. On the other hand, Trump was defeated at the ballot box in the last election while Nixon had just been reelected in the biggest landslide (to that time) in history. In this sense, Nixon started off with a much bigger cushion.

Finally, while congressional Republicans defended Nixon for a long time during the Watergate saga, they basically accepted the legitimacy of the investigatory committee. This time, the Republicans intend to attack the committee as partisan. That will make it harder for the evidence to be broadly accepted. But, remember, a time came when Nixon could no longer be defended. If the committee does its job well, accusations that it is partisan will fall flat as people focus much more on the disturbing revelations.

The January 6 crimes are more serious than the Watergate crimes, both because an effort to overturn an election is more serious than an effort to cheat in an election and because Trump, unlike Nixon, might run for president again. The stakes couldn’t be higher, but there’s reason to hope that public opinion will move decisively against Trump after the hearings begin next week.