Republicans [sic] Are in Disarray

"Democrats are in disarray" is a staple of political writing. Whenever a pundit has nothing else to say, he or she can write a piece about "Democrats are in disarray" and everyone nods "yes, of course." "Republicans are in disarray" is like "man bites dog." Politico's cartoonist, Matt Wuerker expressed the current situation in—as you might expect—a cartoon:

So what happens now? One thing Republicans DO NOT WANT is another 15-round vote-a-thon that drags on for days, like the one that began on Jan. 3 of this year. So they recessed the House for a week to see if they could find a candidate who can get 218 votes. This time they want to do the wheeling and dealing privately and not make fools of themselves in front of the whole country. Who said Republicans can't learn from experience?

Specifically, next Tuesday the Republicans will be holding a closed-door candidate forum, in which all the potential candidates can address the conference and make their pitches. Once they have all made their case, there is likely to be a straw poll of some kind to see if anyone can get to 218.

Rep. Mike Garcia (R-CA) and other battleground Republicans have said that the ousting of McCarthy "weakens our position." Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK) said: "It's one thing to burn the building down. It's another to put it back together." All the speaker wannabes (speakers wannabe?) know that they will have to pass a budget in about 6 weeks—or kick the can down the road again. They also know that any budget the Freedom Caucus finds acceptable will never get the votes of the Biden 18 and has no chance of passing the Senate. The only way for a speaker to succeed is to be bipartisan and get 30 or more Democrats to go along. Part of any deal with the Democrats would have to be an agreement that they will support the new speaker on future motions to vacate the chair. With enough concessions, that would be doable. We don't see any other viable alternative, really.

Despite the fact that the job is really unattractive (except for the pay: the speaker gets $223,500 and regular members get $174,000), there appear to be folks who want to try. The obvious candidate is the #2 House Republican, Steve Scalise (R-LA). He might be able to get to 218. He officially jumped in yesterday. But he is close to McCarthy and people who don't like McCarthy generally don't like Scalise either. Also, Scalise has health issues that could be a problem. On June 14, 2017, a left-wing madman shot him in the hip at a practice session for the annual Congressional Baseball Game. Scalise suffered severe internal organ damage and almost died. He had multiple surgeries and was in the ICU for weeks. On Aug. 29, 2023, he announced that he has been diagnosed with multiple myeloma and is undergoing treatment with chemotherapy. Scalise has spoken warmly of Donald Trump but has not endorsed him. This might not be the right time for him to take on a very difficult and thankless job.

Next in line after Scalise is Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN). In Dutch, "emmer" means "pail" or "bucket." Useful when you have to mop up a mess. Alternatively, these days, the speakership might be another job that is not worth an emmer of warme pis. Emmer is in the MN-06 seat of Michelle Bachman, who was Marjorie Taylor Greene before Marjorie Taylor Greene was Marjorie Taylor Greene. Before being elected to the U.S. House in 2014, he served three terms in the Minnesota House and ran for governor in 2010 and barely lost to Mark Dayton. Emmer is a conservative Republican. He opposes abortion, laws banning bullying of LGBTQ+ people, laws dealing with climate change, the Affordable Care Act, same-sex marriage, and the minimum wage. He supports mining in the national forests, cryptocurrencies, banning immigration from Muslim countries, and allowing pharmacists to refuse to dispense contraceptives they don't approve of. He has written things that some people have interpreted as antisemitic. Emmer has said that the federal indictments of Donald Trump are "the ultimate abuse of power." Emmer is chairman of the NRCC. Think of him as Kevin McCarthy but with less charisma. The Freedom Caucusers aren't likely to go for him. He's more of the same. Although Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) likes him, so maybe he could get to 218.

Next in the pecking order is Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY). She might take the job if it were handed to her, but we don't expect her to actively pursue it. On the other hand, Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) is definitely interested. His mother is a Chickasaw Native American. He has an M.A. from Yale and a Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma, both in British History. After his Ph.D. he was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of London and later a professor of history. He's clearly quite smart, as that is a requirement to be a professor of history. He has been in the House since Jan. 2003 and has since risen to a position of great power. He is now chairman of the House Rules Committee. He opposes abortion and supported Donald Trump's attempt to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. He voted against creating the Jan. 6 Committee.

Another potential candidate is Rep. Kevin Hern (R-OK). Oops. Another Kevin. He's pretty Trumpy, so Trump could just keep calling the speaker "My Kevin," rather than having to learn a new name. He's got a Ph.D. in aeronautical engineering from Georgia Tech, so he is no dummy. But he didn't work as an engineer. He worked as an operations manager for McDonalds. Before too long, he owned 18 McDonalds franchises and became rich. He now owns a hog farm, a bank, and a number of other companies. On his federal form, he listed his assets as worth between $39 million and $93 million. He was elected to the House in 2018. He is against immigration, even for skilled immigrants on H-1B visas. He also opposed admitting Afghans who helped the U.S. military in Afghanistan (e.g., as translators), even though this means most of them are likely to be imprisoned, in the best case. He is chairman of the Republican Study Committee, the largest conservative caucus.

One member whose chance is as close to zero as you can get without being zero (mathematicians would say: "less than epsilon for all epsilon") is Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). He is a fire-breathing radical who makes Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) look positively tame. Getting 30 votes from the Freedom Caucus would be easy. The next 188 votes would be quite a bit tougher. The "moderates" in the 18 districts Joe Biden won would be "no" votes from ballot 1 to ballot infinity. Nevertheless, yesterday, he announced a run for the job. Centrist members may remember how he forced out former Speaker John Boehner, a fellow Ohioan. With him, everything he does is performative. From a political point of view, he would be the Democrats' ideal speaker. He will shut down the government, ruin the credit of the United States, and do whatever it takes to make every independent in the country vote a straight Democratic ticket.

As the horse trading goes on, dark horse candidates could emerge this week. A couple of members have suggested that Donald Trump be elected speaker. Problem is that it is actually a day job. You have to show up and do the work. That's not for him. He has to be in court too much. Another problem is that House rules forbid someone who is under indictment from serving as a committee chair, or in leadership. He just might be disqualified by this rule. Darn! Missed it by that much.

What is important, but hard to characterize, is a candidate's "likeability." A candidate with extreme views but who is a nice person and has many friends in the Republican caucus could do better than a candidate with moderate views who is considered a real jerk. That said, "real jerk" and "extreme views" tend to go hand-in-hand (see: Gaetz, Matt; Cruz, Ted; Paul, Rand).

Another thing to keep in mind is that the rules could play a role in the speaker election. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) doesn't get to vote for speaker, but he is nevertheless calling for a rule change to get rid of the whole "motion to vacate" business so this doesn't happen again. Good thing the Kentuckian is not running for speaker, because he would get no votes at all from the Freedom Caucus with that platform. What will be interesting to see is how Scalise, Emmer, and the others respond when House Republicans ask them about the rule. If anyone says he is for keeping the rule, he might get the job, but would then become a wholly owned subsidiary of Matt Gaetz. Other interesting questions relate to working with the Democrats, the budget, etc. (V)

Matt Gaetz Is Out of Luck

While Matt Gaetz knows how to file a motion to vacate the chair, that only works when there is a chair. There isn't one now, only a speaker pro tem (Patrick McHenry, R-NC). Gaetz doesn't like him and is already criticizing him. On Newsmax Tuesday evening, Gaetz said: "I do have to offer some pretty sharp criticism of the new pro tem of the House, Patrick McHenry. We met tonight, and he sent us home until Tuesday of next week." Gaetz wants to start the voting for a new speaker right now. No need to wait a week and see if anyone can cobble together 218 votes. Better to do it all in public and humiliate the Republican Party some more.

Then Gaetz went on and said: "They've got to go do a week of hand-wringing and bedwetting over the fact that Kevin McCarthy isn't Speaker anymore. This institution is about more than one man." Actually, Gaetz seems to think it is about one man: Matt Gaetz.

Gaetz hasn't said who he will vote for come next week when the voting starts, but he is already rubbing a lot of his House colleagues the wrong way. Some of them may vote against his preferred candidate, just to take Gaetz down a peg or two. It's bad enough when the Republicans are split on policy, but when who hates whom is also a factor, it might be pretty hard for anyone to get to 218. (V)

Big Republican Donors Are Desperate

While all the news now is about the House or Donald Trump's trial, there is still a presidential election going on. The big Republican donors are getting more frantic by the day. They do not want Donald Trump to be the Republican nominee and are plotting and conspiring to try to do something to stop him. One line of attack is to reduce the primary field to just Trump, Nikki Haley, and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL). Good luck with getting the others out of the race. Candidates normally drop out only when the money dries up. That holds double for delusional candidates like Mike Pence. Chris Christie isn't in to win, just to annoy Trump. If Christie loses New Hampshire, he will probably drop out the next day.

The billionaires are very frustrated because they are used to the business scenario of billionaires getting whatever they want by financially overpowering everyone else. That doesn't work in politics all the time. We had an item Monday about a well-funded group tied to the Club for Growth that ran carefully designed experiments and learned that policy ads against Trump don't work. Only playing dirty works, and the billionaires tend to think more in terms of policy (taxes, regulation, etc.).

Still, in order to have any chance to get rid of Trump, they need to focus on a single candidate. In mid-October, the American Opportunity Alliance will talk to Haley and DeSantis in an attempt to pick the winner, whose PAC will then have more money than Scrooge McDuck. The meeting will be hosted by billionaires Harlan Crow (yeah, that one), Paul Singer, and Ken Griffin. Smoke-filled rooms full of machine politicians picking candidates have gone out of style. Now it is smokeless rooms of billionaires picking candidates. If the billionaires pick Haley, does anyone seriously think DeSantis will drop out just because the billionaires are carpet-bombing him in Iowa?

A few days later, on Oct. 17, megadonors from all over the country will have a two-day meeting in Virginia Beach for the "Red Vest Retreat" with Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA). The purpose of the meeting will be for the billionaires to lobby Youngkin to jump in and be the red team's white knight. Which, according to our math, would make him a pinko. A lot depends on the Virginia elections this year. Youngkin has spent most of the summer and fall campaigning for Republican candidates for the state legislature. If Republicans capture the trifecta, Youngkin will be seen as a giant-killer and the billionaires will offer him the sun, the moon, and the stars to enter. However, if the Democrats win both chambers, Youngkin will be damaged goods. It is said that Youngkin fears what Trump would do if he (Youngkin) entered the race. Trump and his supporters would tear him to bits, maybe literally. It would be safer to wait until 2026 to run against Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) and then in 2028 to go for the big chair. Also important is that by the 2023 election, the filing deadline for New Hampshire, Nevada, and possibly other states will have passed. (V & Z)

Poll: Haley Is #2 in New Hampshire

Speaking of Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, how is that going? Or rather, "How the (once) mighty have fallen." According to the conventional wisdom, DeSantis was going to be the alternative to Donald Trump—and he was for a couple of months. Now his campaign has collapsed. He was still in second place, but now even that is in danger after Haley turned in good performances in the first two debates. A new Suffolk University poll of New Hampshire now has Haley in second place. Donald Trump is at 49%, Haley is at 19%, DeSantis is at 10%, Chris Christie is at 6%, and no one else is even at 5%. 48% of likely Republican voters in the Granite State think Trump is inevitable but 44% think someone else could win the nomination. For New Hampshire Republicans, only two issues matter: immigration and crime. That's it. For example, 58% want to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants. In contrast, only 16% of the voters see climate change as very serious.

DeSantis is surely aware that he is slipping in Iowa and New Hampshire, so yesterday he campaigned in South Carolina for the first time in 3 months. If he is wiped out in Iowa and New Hampshire, South Carolina may be too late to save him, but if he does tolerably well—say, comes in a strong second in both—then South Carolina could be important. However, he has a huge built-in disadvantage in South Carolina that he can't fix: Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) are the favorite daughter and favorite son, respectively. It is very unlikely that DeSantis can come in higher than third, which won't help much with a flagging campaign. For him, Iowa is really do-or-die.

DeSantis can't spend too much time in South Carolina or Nevada because voters in Iowa and New Hampshire won't tolerate that. They expect candidates to spend all their time in the two states. If a candidate loses both of those states, recovery is tough except in special circumstances. Joe Biden pulled it off because the demographic composition of the Democratic electorate is so different in Iowa and New Hampshire (nearly all white) from South Carolina (about 60% Black). That doesn't hold for the Republican electorate. (V)

Will She or Won't She?

Back when it was clear that there was a real possibility that he might get to appoint another senator, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) said that he wanted to appoint a placeholder so as not to interfere in the race for the open Senate seat in 2024. He could have made a deal with his choice, Laphonza Butler, in which she promised not to run in 2024 as the price for the appointment. He didn't. As soon as he announced her name, Black groups began immediately demanding that she be free to run in 2024 if she wants to—even though there is an established Black candidate, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), already in the race. Newsom didn't want to get into a fight with them, so he said she was free to run in 2024 if she wanted to. That got them off his back. Could she run?

She was sworn in on Tuesday by President of the Senate Kamala Harris, so she is up and running in her new job already. She is the third Black woman to serve in the Senate and the first Black lesbian. Some members will greet her with great warmth, especially Democratic senators Catherine Cortez Masto (NV) and Maggie Hassan (NH), who received lots of financial help from EMILY's List, where Butler used to be president. But is Butler ready to start campaigning the day she takes office?

The filing deadline is Dec. 8, 2023, so she can certainly file if she wants to. There is no legal problem with Butler running. Only a massive political one. The problem is that Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who is from populous Southern California, has over $30 million cash on hand and is a really good fundraiser. He managed the first impeachment of Donald Trump, and many Democrats see him as a hero. Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) is also from Southern California. She has $10 million in the bank and is leftier than Schiff, which gives her an edge with the leftiest Democrats. Lee has only $1 million, is from Northern California, and is Black. How is Butler going to beat all three? Incumbency is worth something, but generally only when it is earned, not when it is a gift, especially not against strong primary opponents. Since 1990, there have been 34 appointees to the Senate who have faced reelection. Only 14 ran for reelection and won. That is 41%. Some saw that they didn't have much of chance and didn't run. Some lost their primaries. And making it into the top two against these three would be tough.

Yes, Butler is strongly pro-choice, but so are the other three. Black groups are unlikely to support her because most have already endorsed Lee and it would look very opportunistic to suddenly drop Lee, even though Butler is 33 years younger than Lee. Also working against Butler even trying is that her life has not been in politics. She could go back to EMILY's List or some other nonprofit easily. In addition, how could she be a functioning senator in D.C. if she has to spend the next 6 months in California campaigning? Sure, she could earn a lot of frequent flyer miles flying across the country every week to campaign, but then the other candidates would accuse her of putting her personal interest above that of Californians by not doing her job as a senator. That holds to some extent for the other three, but they are all well-established names because all have been in California politics for years. The one thing Butler has going for her is that she is a lesbian, which none of the others are, but the number of voters for whom that is the deciding factor is probably not big enough to make a dent.

And by the way, Pretend-Arizona-governor Kari Lake is in. Not in California, of course, but Arizona. She has filed the paperwork to run for the Senate this week. She's in now, so that probably means she won't be Donald Trump's running mate. If she thought she had that in the bag, she wouldn't have filed to run for the Senate. If she were to get the Republican nomination for the Senate and then drop out to run for vice president, that would anger a lot of Republicans, and not only in Arizona. We think she is now really gunning for the Senate. So far, her only opponent for the GOP Senate nomination is Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb. She will dispatch him with ease. Her only fear is that immigrant-hating immigrant Peter Thiel will decide to give Blake Masters $15 million to run for the Senate (again). That would be a serious contest. (V)

Supreme Court Might Not End the Administrative State after All

On Monday, we had an item about the Supreme Court's new term, which began this week. On Tuesday, the Court heard a case that could have upended many federal agencies. A group of payday lenders was trying to get the Court to declare the funding method Congress specified for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to be unconstitutional. While you can't draw firm conclusions from the oral hearings, even Justice Clarence Thomas was skeptical about the payday lenders' case. When conservatives have lost Thomas, they are not in good shape.

The DoJ argued that ruling for the payday lenders would upset decades of precedent where Congress has decided to fund federal agencies by some mechanism other than an annual appropriation, often specifically to have them not be subject to politics. Surely if Congress wants to insulate some agency from which party currently has control of Congress, it has the power to do that? To suddenly say that every agency has to be specifically in the budget every year would have sweeping consequences for the country. About half of the government is funded by mechanisms other than a direct annual appropriation. For example, Social Security gets its money from the FICA tax; it doesn't get an annual appropriation from Congress. If that is required, Social Security would be in dire straits. The same is true for Medicare and many other programs.

Several justices asked the lawyers for the payday lenders exactly how the funding mechanism violates the Constitution. After all, the funding mechanism was created by a specific act of Congress. In the case about the New York state gun laws, all of a sudden, how old a law is became critical. But funding by a means other than an annual appropriation has been around for 250 years. The Customs Service has always gotten money from tariffs that Congress levied, going back to the founding of the Republic.

The case is very hot. All 50 state attorneys general have filed amicus briefs. The 23 Democratic AGs support the DoJ. The 27 Republican AGs support the payday lenders. (V)

Idaho and Missouri Cancel GOP Primaries and Institute Caucuses Instead

Idaho used to have caucuses to determine who gets the delegates to the national conventions. Starting in 2016, Republicans dropped the caucuses and switched to primaries. Democrats made the switch to primaries in 2020. Caucuses require voters to show up at specific location at a specific time to vote to pick delegates to the national conventions. In some cases, they go on for hours, with supporters for the various candidates giving speeches and in some cases, multiple rounds of voting, often in public. The most recent caucuses in Idaho drew fewer than 45,000 voters. The 2020 primaries, in contrast, brought out 220,000 Republicans and over 100,000 Democrats.

Nevertheless, Idaho is going back to the caucus system in 2024. To some extent, the decision was simply a mistake due to sloppy legislation. A bill to eliminate the March presidential primary was supposed to move it to May, but they left that out and now there is no primary. The legislature is part time in Idaho, and there wasn't enough interest in a special session, so the fallback is to go back to the caucus system. Caucuses are run by the parties, not the state, and now the Idaho parties are trying to figure out how to organize them. It appears that the Idaho caucuses may be held March 2, but that is not certain. If they are held on March 2, that is just before Super Tuesday and they would get a huge amount of attention.

In Missouri, the presidential primaries were also canceled, but that was intentional. It was part of a bill requiring photo ID to vote. Both of the state parties testified against canceling the primaries, but the legislature did it anyway. In Missouri, primary polling places were always open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Now primary voters have to show up at 10 a.m. and be prepared to stay for a while. It is far less convenient and attendance is expected to plummet. Some people have jobs that make it impossible to go to the voting place at 10 a.m. and stay for hours, even if the caucus is held on a Saturday. For example, nurses and first responders who are on duty can't just call in and say they are busy voting.

While Idaho and Missouri are moving from primaries to caucuses, Kansas is going the other way. A new law sets March 19 for a new presidential primary, moving away from the old caucus system.

Both parties allow people in U.S. territories to elect delegates to their national conventions. The Democrats actually have 57 "states" represented at their convention. These are the 50 states you learned about in fourth grade (unless you were in fourth grade before 1959), plus D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and Democrats Abroad. The number of Americans from the 50 states living abroad is estimated to be about the same as the population of Virginia and those who are Democrats can take part in the Democrats Abroad primary. Republicans include the territories, but not Republicans Abroad, which exists but is a private organization and not part of the Republican Party. This means it can take unlimited foreign donations, which Democrats Abroad, which is part of the Democratic Party, cannot. This has the strange consequence that when Democrats Abroad holds an event and charges admission to raise money, someone at the door asks every person if they are an American citizen. If so, the money they pay for a ticket goes to the Democratic Party. If they are not, it goes into a separate pot and is donated to a local charity.

That said, you now know that people in the U.S. Virgin Islands, who by law are American citizens, get to have a voice in the national parties' conventions. Specifically, Republicans on the U.S. Virgin Islands are holding a caucus on Feb. 8, 2024, the same day as Nevada and before South Carolina. This puts the Virgin Islands in a tie for going third, after Iowa and New Hampshire. As such it will get a lot of attention.

What is slightly unusual about the V.I. caucus is that it will use ranked-choice voting. That means that even if Donald Trump gets more votes than anyone else on round 1, if that number is under 40%, there will be a round two, and maybe more. If all the non-Trump voters pick other non-Trump candidates for their second, third, and later choices, Trump could end up losing the vote. If that happens, headlines the next day are likely to be "[X] beats Trump in the U.S. Virgin Islands."

However, a Trump loss there is far from a sure thing. Trump's opponents do best with college-educated voters. In the U.S.V.I., only 22% of adults over 25 have a college degree. Even West Virginia, the least college-educated state at 24%, beats that. (V)

Giuliani Says He Is Not a Drunk

A report in The New York Times says that for over a decade, Rudy Giuliani would hang out at the Grand Havana Room, a cigar club in midtown Manhattan, and drink. A lot. Too much. He was often intoxicated. And also in other settings, where that was highly inappropriate, like a 9/11 memorial gathering. Also at dinners in his own apartment, which he is now trying desperately to sell. Andrew Stein, a former New York City Council president who has known Giuliani for decades, said: "It's no secret, nor do I do him any favors if I don't mention that problem, because he has it. It's actually one of the saddest things I can think about in politics." Other people who know Giuliani well have now started to admit there is a problem. In other words, with Giuliani these days, every sentence has three parts: a noun, a verb and blearrggghh.

Federal prosecutors investigating Giuliani's role in trying to overturn the 2020 election are aware of his drinking problem. It could matter if Donald Trump's defense of his actions on Jan. 6 is "my lawyer told me it was all right." Of course, if the lawyer in question was Giuliani, and he was drunk all the time, and Trump, a teetotaler, knew this, it does tend to weaken the defense. Several people have told prosecutors that Giuliani was drunk on Election Night in 2020. Jason Miller, a top Trump aide, told the Jan. 6 committee: "The mayor was definitely intoxicated." Trump himself is well aware of Giuliani's bad habit and has spoken derisively about it.

The fallout from the story has gotten to Giuliani. In his own defense, he said: "If I have an alcohol problem, I should be in the Guinness Book of World Records." He didn't say why. Most shots of scotch consumed in a four-hour stretch or what? He also noted that he put 800 mafiosi in jail and prosecuted Nazis. He noted he was praised for using the RICO law against Wall Street. Of course, all of that was decades ago; now he has been accused of violating Georgia's RICO law.

Giuliani could go with the flow and admit that he is a habitual drunk. Then, in his various defamation suits, he could try to defend himself by saying he was drunk when he made the defamatory comments. It probably wouldn't work, but it might be worth a shot. He doesn't have much else.

Maybe this new tidbit is related to Giuliani's drinking habit, maybe not, but now the last of Giuliani's Georgia lawyers is dropping him as a client. This means Giuliani has to go find a new Georgia lawyer. It is also possible, of course, that his lawyers have deserted him because, like his buddy Donald Trump, he doesn't pay them. Lawyers like to get paid. Drunken, broke clients who don't pay up are not popular. (V)

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