The Week Ahead and Some Thoughts

Good morning and happy Sunday! Here are some of the stories I am following as we look to the week ahead:

A weakened Trump still dominates the GOP. Trump isn’t a strong general election candidate, despite some national polls showing he leads Joe Biden in a two-way match up. As the recent midterms demonstrated, MAGA extremism isn’t popular in the critical swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona. Yet the would-be challengers to Trump within the GOP remain afraid to take him on. His greatest potential challenger, Ron DeSantis, has not answered any of the jabs Trump has taken at him, even after insinuating publicly that DeSantis is a pedophile. It’s sounding a lot like 2015, when Trump dominated the GOP primaries and no one knew how to respond to him. (Trump’s bullying, it should be noted, is intended to show who is the real boss among the bullies, who is the Top Dog. Unanswered bullying sends a clear message to all of MAGA America.)

Moderate GOP leaders continue to be pushed out. Two-time Republican governor of Montana, Marc Racicot, has been booted from his own GOP state party. He used to be the chairman of the National Republican Committee, too. This follows a pattern of pushing traditional conservative voices out of power while elevating radical ones, as represented by the Freedom Caucus. The party of George W. Bush, John McCain, Mit Romney and Liz Cheney is now the party of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan and Lauren Boebert. Voters might not like that very much come 2024, as recent special elections have already hinted. Also, Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) recently announced he is running for reelection. That is a key senate seat Democrats must hold in 2024 (along with, sigh, Sen. Joe Manchin’s in West Virginia) so a sharp shift to the right by the local party there has got to give more moderate Republicans pause and cause Mitch McConnell some extra turtle neck tucks.

Jared and Ivanka got subpoenaed. Special Counsel Jack Smith’s rather muscular investigation is pulling few punches lately with subpoenas now out to Trump’s inner family members to appear before his federal grand jury. Both Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump were key witnesses to the machinations inside the White House leading up to and including January 6. Kushner is also the subject of calls for investigations into what exactly he promised or traded to get $2 billion (with a b) dollars from the Saudis to fund his private equity firm. The swamp runneth amok.

Blame Buttigieg. Attacking Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and blaming him for not fixing the problems that led to the East Palestine, Ohio disaster may score points with Fox News viewers while landing a few hits on a rising star in the Democratic Party. But actually bringing him in to testify before the House Oversight Committee seems like a gamble Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) hasn’t really thought through. Buttigieg has proved himself one of the most nimble and able communicators in the Biden Administration, and his appearance will give him a national platform to highlight all the things the Trump administration did to cozy up with the railroad executives while educating viewers about what the newly passed infrastructure bill will do to help fix things. The smart money is on Pete to own the typically ill-prepared GOP members of the Committee. He already burned them badly by pointing out that the NTSB, from which they very publicly demanded he produce relevant documents, isn’t even part of his department.

SCOTUS looks at debt relief. While we shouldn’t hold our breath hoping this conservative SCOTUS will lift a finger to help the Biden White House, even on something as popular as its student debt relief program, this may not be the hill the 6-3 majority wants to die on. The justices are hearing arguments this week over the debt relief plan, and I’ll be listening for any clues that they might not believe the states that are suing have sufficient standing before the Court. To have such standing, the plaintiff states would need to show that they are going to be injured by the debt relief program, and their arguments are quite thinly stretched. On the other hand, it’s a chance for SCOTUS to poke another finger in the eye of the Biden administration, so again, not holding my breath.

When I was reviewing these stories, it struck me how nearly all of them reflect, in some way, how politics and power have taken the stage, front and center, with the GOP, while principles and values are nearly nowhere to be seen. The raw pursuit of that power, even at the cost of democratic principles, has become a defining characteristic of the modern GOP. Indeed, the two leading contenders for the nomination are both would-be authoritarians, something that would have been unthinkable even ten years ago.

It’s taken some time, but more moderate Republican voters have now demonstrated that they are willing to cross party lines and vote for pro-democracy Democrats over the extremists within their own party, or to at least lodge a protest vote by not voting at all. What should have been a crushing defeat for the party in power in the 2022 midterms turned out to be an embarrassing collapse of the “Red Wave” for Republicans. This was in part due to enthusiasm by Democrats in the battleground states, but the data also show that big numbers of GOP voters defected or sat it out when it came to the most extreme MAGA candidates like Kari Lake, Doug Mastriano, Tudor Dixon and Herschel Walker—all endorsed by Trump.

2024 will provide an unprecedented opportunity to continue to bring those voters in the middle over to the Democratic side, which now also should be messaged as the side of democracy and true American values. President Biden’s instincts were absolutely correct in calling out the Ultra MAGA extremists and driving a wedge in the GOP, and we must now drive it deeper and frankly without mercy. Nothing less than the future of our Republic will depend on it.

Watch this space for the many ways in the coming year for we can and must do that. Have a great Sunday, and I’ll see you back here tomorrow.

Jay