Month: November 2022

You’ll have to bear with me a bit before I get to why you should pay attention to what just happened in the Alaska state Senate. Let’s just say that it might serve as an interesting model for settling some chaos that might soon erupt in the U.S. House of Representatives.

One of the biggest mysteries in Washington DC right now is whether or not California Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy will be the next Speaker of the House. As the Minority Leader in the current 117th Congress, it stands to reason that he’d remain the top House Republican in the 118th Congress which begins on January 3, 2022. But there is a real question about whether he has enough support from within his own caucus to make it happen.

Becoming Speaker is a two-step process, at a minimum. First, the majority party (the Republicans in the next Congress) has an internal election. This occurred on November 15 and McCarthy got the most votes (188-31).  That means McCarthy will be his party’s first-ballot candidate for Speaker. But he has to be concerned that 31 members went with someone else. That’s because the Democrats will get to participate in the January election for Speaker when an absolute majority of 218 (out of 435) votes is required for victory.

The secret-ballot House Republican Conference vote is just the first step for McCarthy to take hold of the gavel. He must win a majority in a public vote on the House floor — at least 218 votes, assuming a fully sworn-in House — on the first day of the next Congress on Jan. 3.

It looks like (pending a couple recounts) the Republicans will have 222 or 223 votes and the Democrats 212 or 213, so McCarthy can’t afford many defections or he won’t secure a majority and the vote for Speaker will go to a second ballot, and maybe a third, fourth, and so on.

The biggest threat to McCarthy is coming from the far right, and Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Ralph Norman of South Carolina are already firm ‘no to McCarthy’ votes. That already puts the outcome of the contest on a razor’s edge. Yet, if McCarthy getting the gavel in in question, it’s doubtful that the House GOP caucus would rally around a far right alternative. They are some Republican moderates, believe it or not, and their majority is built on several seats they won in New York in districts that voted for Joe Biden. If McCarthy fails, it could signal a larger problem where the Republicans cannot coalesce around anyone at all.

The last time the election for Speaker wasn’t settled on the first ballot was in 1923, although it was a regular occurrence before the Civil War.

There have only been 14 instances in congressional history where it took more than two ballots for a nominee to get a majority. The first 13 happened before the Civil War.

We may see the fifteenth instance in January, and that’s where the recent news from Alaska comes in.

Seventeen of Alaska’s 20 state senators and senator-elects have banded together to form a bipartisan majority coalition that members promise will be moderate and consensus-focused.

Read that carefully. With only 20 members, the Alaska Senate is the smallest state legislative body in the country, and it’s now split between 17 majority and 3 minority members. The actual partisan split of the Senate is 13 Republicans, 6 Democrats, and one Democrat (Lyman Hoffman) who traditionally caucuses with Republicans. But the majority caucus is made up 10 Republicans, and all seven Democrats, with 3 hard right Republicans left in the minority. The leadership and committee chairs are also split between Republicans and Democrats.

Cathy Giessel, a Republican from South Anchorage, will be the majority leader; Sen. Bill Wielechowski, a Democrat from East Anchorage, will be chairman of the Rules Committee, which determines with the president which bills are voted upon…The powerful budget-writing Finance Committee will have three co-chairs, he said: Republican Sen. Bert Stedman of Sitka, overseeing the operating budget; Democratic Sen. Lyman Hoffman of Bethel, handling the capital budget; and Democratic Sen. Donny Olson of Golovin, managing other bills.

The situation with the Alaska Senate isn’t unprecedented, as it also was “led by a bipartisan caucus from 2007 to 2012.” The reason the majority of Republican senators are willing to cede power to Democrats is that it’s impossible to govern the state if they have to rely only on their own party’s votes.

In other ways, the new majority formalizes what had been a de facto coalition in recent years comprising Senate Democrats and the more moderate Republicans. That experience, [Kodiak Republican Sen. Gary] Stevens said, is evidence in favor of a bipartisan majority over an all-Republican majority. Over the past four years, these senators have opposed unplanned draws from the Alaska Permanent Fund, as well as the deep cuts to government services that Gov. Mike Dunleavy proposed in 2019.

“I think this is a recognition of the reality of the last four years. We have not been able to get several of our senators to support the budget. We’ve had to go around them and bring the Democrats in in order to pass the budget,” he said.

The corollary on the national scale is the problem mainstream House Republican leadership has had getting their own caucuses to authorize increases in the debt ceiling or the necessary appropriations bills that prevent government shutdowns. Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan both came to grief over these divides within their party, and the next Republican Speaker will have the same problem on steroids because of a smaller majority with more radical members.

One solution is for a small bloc of Republican moderates to band together with the Democrats to form a power-sharing bipartisan governing majority. But is this possible and how might it happen?

I’ll admit that such an arrangement is hard to picture, but it’s not impossible. The starting point is McCarthy failing to secure the Speaker’s gavel on the first ballot. This happened in 1855-56 and it ultimately took 133 ballots for the House to settle on a leader. This is what can happen when there are irreconcilable differences within a party, and that could be the case here between vulnerable GOP members serving in blue districts and hard right GOP members who insist on a Speaker who will commit to their unreasonable demands, including to hold the country’s credit hostage risking a global economic depression.

Freedom Caucus members are making demands that could ultimately be fatal to any hope of Republican success in the House. They want rules changes that, among other things, would weaken the speakership by making bipartisan coalitions harder to build, allowing only bills supported by a majority of the G.O.P. to come to the floor. Such a rule would constrain the speaker’s agenda-setting power and make it extremely hard to pass much-needed legislation unpopular with Republicans, like raising the debt ceiling.

If enough Freedom Caucus members stick to these demands, we really could see ballot after ballot that produces no majority winner. Of course, this type of scenario can be anticipated and planned for, and if the Democrats are willing to enter into a power-sharing agreement they might eventually find enough Republican moderates to strike a deal.

What might the deal look like?

I think it would look a lot like the Alaska Senate. There would be a Republican Speaker and Republicans would chair key committees. A Republican could run the Rules Committee to keep the Democratic majority from running roughshod over the more numerous Republicans. A Republican could run the Budget Committee for the same reason. The Appropriations subcommittees could be divided up, giving the moderate Republicans still more say over how money is spent. Perhaps some powerful committees, like Ways & Means, would have co-chairs from each party. Yet, the Democrats would make up the vast majority of the majority coalition and this would be reflected in their overall dominance of committee seats and chairs, and also necessitate that they hold the bulk of leadership positions below the Speaker. The agenda would be limited by prior agreement, and possibly focus on a just a few critical issues, like raising the debt ceiling, avoiding government shutdowns, and maintaining support for Ukraine.

My advice is that people start working on this kind of deal now rather than trying to put it together on the fly during endless failed votes for Speaker in January.

Ironically, the credible possibility of such a coalition might help McCarthy secure victory on the first ballot. The Freedom Caucus doesn’t want to lose its chance chair committees and conduct hundreds of bogus investigations. Are they willing to risk all that just to deny McCarthy his gavel?

Yet, if they’re obstinate enough, there is an alternative that will allow the country to pay its bills, keep the government operating and maintain its leadership of the coalition against Russian aggression and fascism. Alaska is a very conservative state, but they’ve learned it’s better not to let the far right hijack everything because it just leads to ruin. The whole country can follow their example.

Greetings, everyone. I’ve got some music for you. There’s just something about Bob Dylan. What can I say.

I hope you enjoy it. Feel free to add your own videos or just stop by and say hey. There used to be quite a few regulars here back in the day. I still think of you all.

Anyway, the jukebox is on and the bar is open.

Cheers.

I admit that I was stunned that Donald Trump won an Electoral College victory in 2016, but I was not surprised that he won the Republican Party nomination that year. By the late fall of 2015, polls consistently indicated he was the clear frontrunner, and I was skeptical that his support would vanish as the heat of the early contests heated up and he faced greater scrutiny. But I’ve always had a dim view of the Republican base and their so-called “values.”

So, I don’t believe that Trump can really commit a transgression that would seriously damage his prospects of being a frontrunner for the nomination in 2024. He might become stale and boring. The base might get excited by someone else. His circumstances could become so dire that few could be convinced of his electability in a general election. But if the base chooses not to support him, it won’t be because he’s credibly accused or even convicted of a crime. It won’t be because he associated with criminals or racists. His base is willing to forgive Trump of virtually anything, and his transgressions are his main selling point.

Now, the The Guardian reports from “two people familiar with the situation” that Trump cannot be persuaded to criticize Nick Fuentes because he’s worried that doing so “might alienate a section of his base.” If you’ve been under a rock, Fuentes joined Kanye West (now called “Ye”) on a visit to Mar-a-Lago the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. This caused a giant uproar both because Ye has been making vile anti-semitic remarks of late, and because Fuentes is a notorious racist, anti-Semite, Christian nationalist, and white supremacist.

Trump’s weak explanation is that Ye brought Fuentes as an uninvited guest and that he was unfamiliar with Fuentes or his views. That’s obviously unsatisfactory as an answer, even if you’re generously willing to grant it an iota of plausibility. The first question is why he invited Ye to spend Thanksgiving week with him at his Florida resort. I mean, his son-in-law is an orthodox Jew, his daughter is a converted Jew, and they’re raising their children as Jews, so Ye seems like someone who should be extremely unwelcome as a holiday guest. This obviously goes quadruple for Fuentes, and if Trump’s story is true he should be angry with Ye for bringing him along. Even cynically, he should be angry that Ye caused all this negative publicity and controversy.

But Trump isn’t expressing anger at either of them. The best he could do is say he was trying to provide business advice to Ye, “a seriously troubled man, who just happens to be black,” because he “had always been good to me.”

Meanwhile, with few exceptions, like outgoing Arkansas governor Asa Hutchison, almost no elected Republican officials are willing to openly criticize Trump over this–not even those seeking to challenge him for the nomination in 2024. It seems that they’re making a similar calculation to Trump, namely that they will need the support of virulent racists if they want to continue in office or have any hope of winning the 2024 presidential election.

One can agree or disagree with this political calculation, but the longer it persists the more it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. When you embrace or tolerate fascism, you obviously lose support from non-fascists, and it’s harder to win them back than it is to keep the fascists on your side. Pretty soon, the only near-term realistic chance of electoral success is to actually be a fascist party, not just one that gives them a wink and a nod. This is essentially what happened to Trump himself, and when he ran for reelection his fate became largely synonymous with the Republican Party’s fate. More than anything else, this explains why Republican elected officials so quickly got over being attacked by a MAGA mob on January 6, 2021.

And it explains why they can’t bring themselves to criticize Trump now for meeting with Fuentes.

Meanwhile, Fuentes went on to explain to his followers that the MAGA movement has been hijacked by Jared Kushner,  while “Trump and MTG [Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene] are being used as bait to lure the base back into supporting people like Kevin McCarthy, [RNC chairwoman] Ronna McDaniel, and [former Ambassador to Germany and acting Director of National Intelligence] Rick Grenell.”

He also said reports that he supports Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are “borderline defamatory” because he considers him a moderate who will have a moderating influence on Trump’s 2024 campaign: “We need Trump and a NEW candidate who will outflank him on his Right.”

Nonetheless, as Jonathan Chait notes, DeSantis refuses to attack Fuentes and seems rather to be courting his base of nativist religious bigots.

The truth is that Fuentes spent Thanksgiving week at Mar-a-Lago because Trump wants his support, and that’s not some idiosyncratic moral failing on Trump’s part but the reality of how the greater Republican Party currently perceives their electoral circumstances. Because they think they need fascist support, they won’t criticize fascists. Instead, they increasingly cater their policies and messaging to attracting the fascists.

Fuentes might not be satisfied, but the GOP is more his party now than McCarthy and McConnell’s, or even Trump’s. If it were otherwise, you’d see a different response.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the painting of my neighborhood scene. The photo I am using is seen directly below.

I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 5×7 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 far shore and highlights on the pond. Much more next week.

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.

New York State has decided to treat rape more seriously. On Thanksgiving, a new law went into effect which eliminates the statute of limitations for civil litigation against alleged rapists. Immediately, a case was filed related to an incident in the winter of 1995-96.

The lawsuit was among the first filed under the Adult Survivors Act, which went into effect at 12 a.m. on Thanksgiving.

The law gives sexual assault victims one year to sue their alleged assailant regardless of when the attack occurred, and waives laws setting statutes of limitations for such cases.

It involves a certain twice-impeached, disgraced ex-president.

The writer E. Jean Carroll sued Donald Trump for allegedly raping her in the 1990s just after midnight Thursday as a New York law took effect opening a window for sex assault victims to sue their alleged assailants.

Carroll’s battery and defamation lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan accuses Trump of pinning her against a wall and then raping her inside a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman’s on Fifth Ave. near E. 58th St. between the fall of 1995 and spring of 1996.

Carroll has made this allegation before and is suing Trump in federal court for defamation because he insulted her while denying the charge. That case is separate for this one, and controversial because the Biden administration’s Department of Justice is defending Trump, concerned future presidents may be deluged with defamation allegations whether they have merit or not.

There are a lot of other complications with this case, and I guess it’s important to step back a little from the personalities involved. I find Carroll credible and Trump is one of least trustworthy people I’ve ever encountered in public life. But obviously there are principles involved here, and we know that false allegations can be made for political purposes. Remember that Bill Clinton was subjected to the civil lawsuit from Paula Jones which led to l’affaire Lewinsky, and also to charges of rape from Juanita Broaddrick. I suppose the idea behind a statute of limitations is also controversial and worthy of discussion. There has always been an exception for murder but wide agreement that lesser crimes should have an expiration date. But then there’s still a distinction between civil and criminal liability.

Carroll has been seeking a DNA sample for Trump, in an effort to match it to a sample from the dress she says she was wearing during the alleged attack. She also has two contemporaneous who will testify that she told them of the incident at the time. So, there’s a possibility that she can build a compelling case against Trump. If there’s a DNA match, that would be very hard for Trump to explain given his complete dismissal of her description of what happened that day.

It seems to me that she must have a high degree of confidence that there will be a match or she wouldn’t persist with such determination. I certainly believe Trump is capable of such a crime, and now maybe we will have a chance to find out if there is proof.

I think it’s worth considering what it means that Americans without college degrees are increasingly supportive of the Republican Party. For a moment, I want you to attempt to think about this development without trying to consider why it’s happening. Instead, just focus on the fact that the left is not attracting votes from the underclasses.

And, I know many of you will instinctively protest that the Democrats still dominate with racial minorities and among women, but they’re losing support at the same rate among non college-educated members of these groups, too.

• White voters without degrees moved seven points toward Republicans this year, while college-educated ones moved three points
• Black voters without degrees moved eight points toward Republicans this year, while college-educated ones moved four points
• Latino voters without degrees moved 10 points toward Republicans this year, while college-educated ones moved five points
• Men without degrees moved seven points toward Republicans this year, while college-educated men moved one point
• Women without degrees moved eight points toward Republicans this year, while college-educated women moved seven points

My understanding of the left is that it represents the broad masses, basically employees, as well as the unemployed and unemployable. People with hardships and difficulties who are at an inherent disadvantage when matched up against the ownership classes who set the rules, control the media, and have the most influence in politics.

Obviously, class and education aren’t the only considerations. The left also represents people who suffer violence, discrimination and political oppression due to their physical or mental disability, race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation. The common thread is that people and groups who are weak and vulnerable need to band together and use their numbers to even the playing field and create a fairer and safer society. This includes children and the elderly.

The right is supposed to act as a counterbalance that keeps the left from getting out of control. The ownership classes have legitimate interests, too, and they provide structure, jobs, economic growth and needed investment and innovation.

In the middle are the entrepreneurial classes. They need the left to protect them against barriers to entry and the monopoly power of top capitalists which left unchecked will destroy all opportunity, but they need the right to look out for onerous regulation and rules which leave them less profitable.

Really, the left is supposed to move regular people into the entrepreneurial class. That’s basically what the American Revolution was about, making it possible for people who weren’t born into the aristocracy to become successful and influential. This is such a fundamental American principle, that even the American right has traditionally understood it.

But the right has never been primarily a party for the underclass until now.

My thesis is that irrespective of why this has happened, the left can’t allow it to stand. Of course, finding solutions requires to actually look at the causes, but sometimes you have to leave that aside until you can agree on the need for action. If you can’t identify the problem, you won’t be serious about fixing it.

Welcome again! It’s midweek for what I hope is a short work week for most of us. I’ve got everything ready for Thanksgiving meal prep. It’s just a matter of spending a good part of Thursday in the kitchen. That’s okay. My wife used to do this particular meal on her own, but that’s no longer doable. She’ll help – mostly by directing me as I learn to handle a meal that she could put together like a pro. The things we do for love.

In the meantime, what would this space be without music? I’m not sure if any of you are familiar with Cannons. They’re fairly new to the pop scene, and they’ve locked into something that’s both retro and very much of the moment. This was the video that randomly popped into my suggested list on YouTube. I’ve been exploring their work since.

Enjoy the tunes. I’ll try to check in as I can. As one of the Twitter diaspora, I’ve been exploring the Fediverse (of which Mastodon is a very prominent part). Cheers!

Here’s an important point from Greg Sargent:

Among Democrats, the conventional reading of the incoming GOP House majority goes like this: Republicans will commence investigations with the care and judiciousness of a toddler throwing spaghetti against the wall. Most won’t stick. But if Republicans turn up something to damage Joe Biden’s presidency, they will have accomplished their mission.

That is no doubt one GOP goal. But there’s a less obvious way that Republicans can wield House probes to political advantage. If they can confuse voters — and seduce the news media — into treating any and all congressional oversight as inevitably politically motivated, they will succeed in a whole different fashion.

Obviously, all congressional investigations have a political component. The investigation into the use of performing enhancing drugs in baseball was a chance for politicians to grandstand a bit and gain some national recognition, even though there was no clear partisan agenda involved. In cases where the investigation is in response to overwhelming public demand, there’s almost always one party that is on the defensive, which usually means their committee participants will spend their time diminishing the probe rather than working to advance it.

But this doesn’t mean all congressional investigations are partisan food fights that produce unreliable results. The most important factor is the motivation of the party that launched the investigation in the first place, which is the party in control. The second most important factor is how the investigation is conducted. Is it designed to get to the truth, hold people accountable and lead to legislative solutions, or simply to embarrass the administration or demonize witnesses? The last consideration is the behavior of the minority party. Are they on board with the goals or are they, rightly or wrongly, treating the whole process as a joke? In some sense, the quality of the investigation doesn’t depend on the minority, but they can sometimes diminish its utility (again, rightly or wrongly).

For the media, it shouldn’t be hard to make these kinds of distinctions. Even before Kevin McCarthy publicly admitted that the endless Benghazi probes were designed to soften up Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate, it was obvious that the effort wasn’t aimed at improving embassy security or assigning a fair or reasonable degree of responsibility for the tragedy. The Democrats were correct to treat it the whole thing as a partisan force, even if there were was initially a valid reason for an investigation.

In theory, there could be a valid reason to investigate Hunter Biden if it might show that Joe Biden committed some crime or betrayed the public trust while serving as vice-president. For the same reason, the Democrats who control the Senate could investigate Eric, Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Jared Kushner. If the goal were to protect against nepotism then these investigations would also explore possible legislation to address the issue in future administrations. In that case, the hearings would look at both sides and not seek partisan advantage.

Nothing like this is being contemplated by the House Republicans. And I’m pretty sure that this will be the pattern with all their investigations. The media should ask the Republicans what they’re trying to accomplish, what laws they want to change, what investments they want to make…and if they don’t have a plausible answer to those questions, they should treat the spectacle as a partisan sham. By the same token, if the Democrats can’t answers those questions about any inquiry they launch, they should also not expect to get breathless coverage.

All congressional investigations are not equal and they aren’t that hard to judge.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be starting a new painting. It is a scene from my neighborhood. 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 a 5×7 inch canvas panel.

I started my pencil sketch over which I added some preliminary paint.

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.
5

It’s a minor story relative to all the sturm und drang of the 2022 midterm elections, congressional leadership battles, Donald Trump’s third presidential campaign, and the implosion of Twitter, but the conviction of Jesse Benton is still worth discussing.

It’s been a while (2013 and 2014) since I wrote about Benton. He first got in trouble during the 2012 presidential campaign when he paid Michele Bachmann’s Iowa campaign chairman to switch his allegiance to Ron Paul. That earned him his first conviction, for filing false records with the Federal Elections Commission. Donald Trump gave him a clean slate during his pre-Christmas pardons of 2020.

That was a favor to Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky. You see, Benton is married to Valerie Pyeatt who is Ron Paul’s granddaughter, which makes her Rand’s niece. Prior to that, in 2010, Benton was the successful campaign manager of Rand’s campaign for U.S. Senate in Kentucky. They had to overcome Mitch McConnell’s preference for Trey Grayson in the primaries, so there was initially some bad blood between the two Kentucky senators.

When McConnell sought reelection in 2014, he had the bright idea of hiring Benton as his campaign manager. It was his way of making peace with the Paul camp and their supporters. But, as I explained in 2014, it didn’t go well for a couple of reasons. First, Benton’s illegal scheme to steal Bachmann’s Iowa campaign chairman came to light. Second, a former aide to Ron Paul named Dennis Fusaro released a recorded phone conversation in which Benton said he was “sort of holding my nose for two years” while he worked for McConnell “because what we’re doing here is going to be a big benefit for Rand in 2016.” The idea being that Rand would run for president in 2016, which he did without much success.

After a surprising bit of hesitation, McConnell sacked Benton, and not much was heard from him until it was revealed, as the Washington Post details, that he’d bought a $25,000 ticket to “a September 2016 Republican National Committee (RNC) event on behalf of Roman Vasilenko, a Russian naval officer turned multilevel marketer.” This is what Benton was convicted for on Thursday.

Vasilenko connected with Benton through Doug Wead, an evangelical ally of the Bush family who was also involved in multilevel marketing. Vasilenko sent $100,000 to Benton, who was working for a pro-Trump super PAC at the time, supposedly for consulting services. Benton subsequently donated $25,000 to the RNC by credit card to cover the ticket.

It’s rare to see a nexus between the establishment Bush family, the libertarian Pauls and MAGA Trump, let alone one also tangentially involving McConnell, but Benton had all these bases covered. Of course, proponents of #RussiaGate are gleefully pointing at headlines reading “GOP operative found guilty of funneling Russian money to Donald Trump,” but while this is technically true it’s not really evidence in support of the theory that Trump knowingly accepted help from Vladimir Putin.

It appears, rather, that Vasilenko was initially interested in making contact with any celebrity who might help him promote himself and his company. Oprah Winfrey was high on his list, but so was Trump because of his television fame from The Apprentice. For Benton’s part, he was looking for both personal enrichment and to show some success at raising money for a political action committee helping the Trump campaign. The fact that Vasilenko was Russian was probably irrelevant to Benton, and the entire arrangement was unknown to Trump or his staff.

Of course, once Valilenko succeeded in getting a picture with the soon-to-be Republican Party nominee for president, he knew how to leverage it for other purposes.

But prosecutors said that once it was offered, Vasilenko saw the value of an introduction to Trump. He was running for parliament in Russia at the time, according to the Justice Department, and after Trump’s election was invited on Russian television.

“He’s sophisticated,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Wasserman told jurors. “He got access to someone he helped elect.”

So, a Russian politician gave $25,000 to Trump and then used his access as both a political and business asset. It’s not some huge scandal and it adds basically nothing to overall question of Russia/Trump collaboration during the 2016 campaign. But it does showcase the ugly and cynical underbelly of how Republicans operate. If you think people like Benton are considered aberrations and embarrassments, consider that Trump made sure to pardon him right before he, unwillingly, left office.

There’s so much cynicism involved here, from how bribes were paid in the Iowa Caucuses, to how Benton used McConnell even as McConnell was using Benton, to a religious right figure teaming up with a Russian naval officer and politician to promote their multilayer marketing schemes, to Benton’s greedy scam with the Russian, to Benton’s corrupt last-second pardon which Sen. Paul pulled out of Trump. It might seem that the Bushes, Pauls, McConnells and Trumps stand for distinct things within America’s conservative movement, but underneath it all is a through line of corruption and criminality. That’s why Benton’s conviction is worth discussion.