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WASHINGTON Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the second-ranking Senate Republican, announced on Saturday that he would seek re-election, after an aggressive lobbying campaign by colleagues prompted him to put aside concerns about the future of his party and pursue a fourth term.

Im asking South Dakotans for the opportunity to continue serving them in the U.S. Senate, Mr. Thune, the minority whip, said in a statement, adding that he could deliver for his state.

I am uniquely positioned to get that job done, he said.

The South Dakotan, who turned 61 on Friday, had recently told associates that he was considering retirement, complaining about the strain of congressional service and privately expressing concern about former President Donald J. Trumps continuing grip on the Republican Party.

But by seeking re-election in a heavily conservative state, Mr. Thune is well positioned to win again and potentially succeed Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, as the Senates top Republican.

A host of Senate Republicans leaned on Mr. Thune in recent weeks to run again, but Mr. McConnell was especially aggressive and met privately with him this past week. The Kentucky Republican turns 80 next month and has made clear that he wants to remain his partys Senate leader into 2023, when he would become the longest-serving party leader in the chambers history.

It is unclear how long Mr. McConnell will serve beyond then, though, an open question that helped lure Mr. Thune to seek another term. Mr. Thune has told associates he is confident he would have the support to succeed Mr. McConnell when the leader exits.

The South Dakotan would face competition for the post, however. Senator John Cornyn of Texas preceded Mr. Thune as the party whip and has indicated his interest in succeeding Mr. McConnell, as has Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, currently the No. 3 Republican.

For now, Mr. Thune will have to navigate re-election in South Dakota, which rejected its two most famous senators, George S. McGovern and Tom Daschle, both Democrats, in their bids for fourth terms.

Mr. Thunes only real obstacle, though, would be a primary. He put off a decision on running until the new year because he wanted to minimize the time a potential Republican rival would have to mount a primary challenge and to limit Mr. Trumps window for mischief-making.

The former president lashed out at Mr. Thune at the end of 2020 after the senator said Mr. Trumps unfounded election objections would go down like a shot dog in the Senate.

That prompted the former president, who maintains an iron grip on the Republican Party and has already intervened in a series of 2022 primaries to consolidate his power even further, to deride Mr. Thune as Mitchs boy and a RINO, or a Republican in name only.

He will be primaried in 2022, political career over!!! Mr. Trump warned at the time.

But no major primary challenger has emerged. And Mr. Trumps allies in the Senate said last month that the former president would be unlikely to oppose Mr. Thune if the senator appeared likely to win renomination.

Once a hub of prairie populism, South Dakota has turned deeply red in the last two decades, a transition that began with Mr. Thunes defeat of Mr. Daschle in 2004.

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John Thune, No. 2 Senate Republican, Will Seek Re-election - The New York Times

A group of North Carolina voters told state officials on Monday that they want Republican congressman Madison Cawthorn to be disqualified as a congressional candidate, citing his involvement in the 6 January attack on the Capitol.

Cawthorn questioned the outcome of the presidential election during the Save America Rally before the Capitol riot later that day that resulted in five deaths.

At the rally, Cawthorn made baseless claims that the election had been stolen from Donald Trump, and has been accused of firing up the crowd, many of whom went on to storm the Capitol.

Lawyers filed the candidacy challenge on behalf of 11 voters with North Carolinas board of elections, which oversees a process by which candidate qualifications are scrutinized.

The voters say Cawthorn, who formally filed as a candidate last month, cannot run because he fails to comply with an amendment in the constitution ratified shortly after the civil war.

The 1868 amendment says no one can serve in Congress who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress to support the constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same.

The written challenge says the events on 6 January amounted to an insurrection, and that Cawthorns speech at the rally supporting Trump, his other comments, and information in published reports, provide a reasonable suspicion or belief that he helped facilitate the insurrection and is thus disqualified.

Challengers have reasonable suspicion that Representative Cawthorn was involved in efforts to intimidate Congress and the Vice-President into rejecting valid electoral votes and subvert the essential constitutional function of an orderly and peaceful transition of power, the complaint read.

The complaint went on to detail the ways Cawthorn allegedly promoted the demonstration ahead of time, including him tweeting: The future of this republic hinges on the actions of a solitary few Its time to fight. The complaint also details reports of Cawthorn meeting with planners of the 6 January demonstration and possibly the Capitol assault.

Cawthorn, 26, became the youngest member of Congress after his November 2020 election, and has become a social media favorite of Trump supporters. He plans to run in a new district that appears friendlier to Republicans. He formally filed candidacy papers just before filing was suspended while redistricting lawsuits are pending.

Last September, Cawthorn warned North Carolinians of potential bloodshed over future elections he claims could continue to be stolen, and questioned whether Biden was dutifully elected. He advised them to begin amassing ammunition for what he said is likely American-v-American bloodshed over unfavorable election results.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes your duty, he said, in addition to describing the rioters who were arrested during the 6 January insurrection as political prisoners. He said we are actively working on plans for a similar protest in Washington.

Ron Fein, legal director of Free Speech for People, a national election and campaign finance reform group backing the challenge to Cawthorn, told the Guardian the complaint was the first legal challenge to a candidates eligibility under the disqualification clause filed since post-civil war Reconstruction in the 19th century.

He said: It sets a line that says that just as the framers of the 14th amendment wrote and intended, you cant take an oath to support the constitution and then facilitate an insurrection against the United States while expecting to pursue public office.

Fein said the challenge will be the first of many against members of Congress associated with the insurrection. Free Speech for People and the group Our Revolution announced last week they would urge state administrators to bar Trump and members of Congress from future ballots.

He said: This isnt just about the voters of that district. The insurrection threatened our countrys entire democratic system and putting insurrectionists from any state into the halls of Congress threatens the entire country.

The challenge asks the board to create a five-member panel from counties within the proposed 13th district to hear the challenge. The panels decision can be appealed to the state board and later to court.

The challengers also asked the board to let them question Cawthorn under oath in a deposition before the regional panel convenes, and to subpoena him and others to obtain documents.

John Wallace, a longtime lawyer for Democratic causes in North Carolina, who also filed the challenge, told the Guardian: The disqualification of Representative Cawthorn certainly should provide a deterrent to others who might try and obstruct or defeat our democratic processes.

A Cawthorn spokesperson, Luke Ball, said over 245,000 patriots from western North Carolina elected Congressman Cawthorn to serve them in Washington a reference to his November 2020 victory in the current 11th district.

Now a dozen activists who are comically misinterpreting and twisting the 14th amendment for political gain will not distract him from that service, Ball wrote.

Read the rest here:
Voters move to block Trump ally Madison Cawthorn from re-election - The Guardian

Media top headlines January 6

In media news today, an MSNBC reporter warns that Republicans in state legislature are passing voting laws that make 'January 6 every day, a CNN medical guest says that companies should not treat the unvaccinated and vaccinated as equal, and a White House reporter asks Jen Psaki why Biden hasnt focused more on scolding the unvaccinated.

MSNBC anchor Chuck Todd grew heated with a Republican guest Thursday for speaking out against President Trump's 2020 election rhetoric but saying he would support him again as the 2024 nominee.

Amid his network's wall-to-wall coverage of the one-year anniversary of the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, Todd noted Rep. Tom Reed, R-N.Y., was one of only 60 House Republicans who weren't on the Jan. 6 commission who had accepted his invitation to speak on "MTP Daily."

Reed, who is retiring at the end of the year, said it was incumbent on both sides of the aisle to lead and "rightfully condemn" the sort of extremism on display when pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol building and disrupted the official certification of Joe Biden's 2020 victory. Biden blasted Trump in a speech Thursday commemorating the anniversary of the riot for spreading a "web of lies," while Trump reiterated his rigged election claims and said Biden was further dividing the country.

Chuck Todd interviews Rep. Tom Reed, R-N.Y., on Jan. 6, 2022.

ARI FLEISCHER: KAMALA HARRIS' 9/11 COMPARISON ABSURD BUT ALL SHOULD DENOUNCE WHAT HAPPENED ON JAN. 6

As Todd pointed to efforts by Trump to overturn the election results, Reed responded that the "74 million people" who voted for Trump were not the ones who stormed the building.

"What happened was a vocal minority of extremists took it into their own thought process and power to do what they did, and to me that is what has to be objected to," he said. "And what has to happen is we have to stand up to it on the right, and you have to have leaders that will stand up to it on the left."

Todd, who has been criticized by progressives at times for being insufficiently partisan on the left-leaning network, asked Reed if he regretted co-chairing Trump's presidential campaign. When Reed said he didn't, Todd quickly said, "Why?"

"I dont, because he brought the disruption to Washington, D.C., that needs to be brought. Washington, D.C., the establishment, and the status quo needs to be disrupted," Reed said, adding he disagreed with some of Trump's rhetoric and actions.

EX-NEW YORK TIMES COLUMNIST NICHOLAS KRISTOF DECLARED INELIGIBLE TO RUN FOR GOVERNOR OF OREGON

"Are you willing to hand the keys to the democracy to this man again?" Todd asked.

Todd said if Trump was the Republican nominee again in 2024, he would support him, leading an incredulous Todd to quote Trump's statement Thursday following Biden's blistering address.

President Biden speaks from Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol to mark one year since the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol by supporters loyal to then-President Donald Trump, Thursday, Jan. 6, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

"Hes calling the 2020 election a crime. Do you believe it was a crime?" Todd asked.

"Chuck, that will be part of the process. If hes elected hes going to have to go through the primary process, and the Republican Party will put its standard-bearer onto the line. I believe at the end of the day were going to have enough voices in that conversation, that that type of rhetoric will be held to account, and I think that will discount the ability for an individual to be the standard-bearer for the Republican Party," Reed said.

An increasingly exasperated Todd said Reed sounded like Republicans who are "afraid" of telling their supporters Trump was lying about the 2020 election.

LINDSEY GRAHAM SAYS IT WOULD HAVE BEEN EASY FOR TERRORISTS TO INFILTRATE JAN. 6 CAPITOL RIOT

"I will be very clear with you, Chuck," he said. "I believe the election in 2020 was a duly held election, the results were duly certified and the challenges of fraud were given an opportunity to be vetted, and I will tell you that this big lie type of representation I disagree with, and Im saying that right now, but that doesnt mean you go forward and not look at the next election in a way that says we need to learn from 2020. And so in 2024, Republicans are just as good at getting their vote to the ballot box as the Democrats are, so we have a fair shake in 2024 on an even playing field."

Pressed by Todd on what he meant by "fair," Reed reiterated 2020 was a fair election, but claimed the rule changes implementedamid the coronavirus pandemic played into Democrats' hands, and they were more effective in getting out their voters.

"It sounds like youre trying to put an asterisk on the 2020 election which only feeds this conspiracy nonsense that is wrecking this country," Todd said heatedly. "Why did we have what we had here a year ago was this conspiratorial nonsense that leads people to the idea that there was something to this. There was nothing to this."

President Donald Trump waves as he boards Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House, on Jan. 20. 2021. (AP)

"Its not conspiracy. They control the state legislatures, they changed the rules legally," Reed said. "So it was a legal, fair election. However, that doesnt mean the rules weren't maximized by one party over the other party. Thats what Im saying going into 2024. We need to make sure that we understand the rules as a Republican Party, and we use them fully to our advantage going forward in 2024, so that we're deploying the same assets in an election equally on each side of the aisle."

"Does it bother you at all that the Republican Party is no longer a conservative party but a cult of personality right now?" Todd asked.

"I mean, I disagree with that assessment I still believe in the Republican Party. The ideology of the Republican Party is still strong," Reed said. "Its a Republican Party that I believe in, and that philosophy is whats going to see America through, through the future, and I still believe America is a center-right country."

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Coverage of the Jan. 6 anniversary has been marked by Democrats pushing to pass federal election overhaul bills, as they and some media outlets continue to characterize state voting bills passed in Republican-led states as voter suppression efforts.

See the rest here:
MSNBC's Chuck Todd grows heated with Republican guest on 1/6 anniversary for still supporting Trump - Fox News

For most of my adult years, I have been registered Republican.

There were pragmatic reasons for that to a professional reporter. A GOP registration allowed me to get mailings from the Republican Party and Republican candidates that I would not otherwise have received. And the registration gave me some access to things like Republican meetings, in the event my reporters job didnt do that.

Also, it allowed me to say Well, Im a registered Republican when someone would say, All you reporters are Democrats.

As Republicans came more and more to dominate state elections, getting a glimpse inside the party operation was useful. And beyond journalism, being able to vote in GOP primaries which are closed to all but registered Republicans often meant being able to help choose the eventual winner in the general election, if the Democrats even had a challenger in the general, which they dont always have in all races.

And there are a couple of issues, one that my Catholic faith promotes (perhaps too) relentlessly that makes the Republican registration a bit more comfortable for me.

Or at least it has at some times.

But mostly, I am and have been a Republican In Name Only, or RINO, and dont argue much when Im referred to as such by another Republican with, perhaps, more traditional credentials.

I am more than anything a believer in a healthy two-party system with a significant body of independent voters. I think thats a good mix, and one we havent had in South Dakota for some time.

Im a centrist by nature who probably leans left on all but a few issues, including the big one mentioned above.

And I have friends I respect across the political spectrum.

From the party of Lincoln and Reagan to the party of Trump

Thats a roundabout way of getting to my increasing concern over the state of our dominant party my party, if we go by registration in South Dakota.

Over the years, in my case meaning more than half a century, that I have covered and followed South Dakota politics, most of the Republicans I have known have been rational, fact-based people, generally committed to lower taxes, smaller government and more personal freedoms, except in some instances of apparent contradiction, such as abortion.

They have been science-based people with a general respect for educational systems and educators and healthy but not angry or demeaning or threatening suspicion of government. They believed in the Second Amendment but didnt wear that belief, literally, on their hips, nor want to wear it in public places to show, well, I dont know what such actions are intended to show.

They were generally respectful of others even others of different beliefs in the way they conducted themselves. Most of them were pretty well informed. Some were very well informed.

Names like Joe Barnett and George Mickelson, Debra Andersen and Mary McClure, Steve Cutler and Larry Gabriel and Mike Rounds and Dennis Daugaard all come to mind among elected officials. And I could name many, many others.

And, yes, Bill Janklow. Oh sure, he could seem irrational. He could be unreasonable on some things, with some people. But he was a fact seeker who believed in science and studied it, along with studying just about anything else that crossed his desk.

Those Republicans and so many others like them believed in their party. But they always seemed to believe first in their state and their nation.

They also believed in facts, and in essential truths based on facts.

So none of them would have believed or do now believe the Big Lie that the majority of Republicans across this state and nation say they believe. That is that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump and given to Joe Biden.

It was not, of course. Competent, experienced elections officials Republican, Democrat and independent across the nation have verified that.

Stating the simple truth instead of the Big Lie

Trump lost, Biden won. Just like in 2016 when Clinton lost and Trump won.

There was no widespread fraud in either election. The results were legitimate as certified by Congress, including our three-member delegation Congressman Dusty Johnson and Sens. John Thune and Mike Rounds.

Although it offended some in their party and enraged others, they voted to certify the 2020 election because they dont believe the Big Lie. Thats because they are rational, fact-based people.

Some Republicans are not, including some in Congress. They even join national Republicans in promoting another big lie about the attack on the Capitol by a mob of Trump-inspired lunatics a year ago on Jan. 6 as being an FBI operation or an ANTIFA operation or, what, Klingons maybe?

That dangerous Jan. 6, 2021, act of insurrection and disrespect for the center of our nations government is distorted and minimized by some in the GOP, including some here in South Dakota.

When I first saw the insurrection being covered on cable news last Jan. 6, I texted Dusty Johnson: Are you safe?

I thought hed respond with: Sure. Capitol Police have us protected.

Instead, I got: Honestly, I dont know. Police have been overrun. They cant hold them.

Now, the deranged mob that attacked the Capitol and attacked Capitol Police that day, threatening to hang Mike Pence and do harm to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, didnt represent the average Republican or the average Trump supporter.

But they were Trump supporters, those thugs. They said so. And they were there to fight the Big Lie and the legal transfer of power because Trump wanted them there. They said so.

Devotion to Trump means accepting the crazy

Crazy stuff. Dangerous stuff. And these days, Republican stuff. And while the average Republican might not have approved of the attack on the Capitol, a majority of Republicans in this nation believe the Big Lie.

Which is more than just disappointing. Its scary.

Because Donald Trump is the leader of the Republican Party, across the nation and here in South Dakota.

And that means Trump-like behavior.

So how do we get from a rational, fact-based party to a majority of Republicans and what seems to be an increasing number of Republican office holders and candidates in South Dakota who believe the Big Lie, or at least promote it?

Well, a lot of its Donald Trump. Nobody in my lifetime or probably in the history of this democracy or democratic Republic, if you prefer has promoted as many lies and successfully with a large segment of the population, particularly his own party, as Donald Trump has.

He is a master at manipulating his people into believing or pretending to believe whatever lie he decides to present.

He is also pretty good at dumbing down the language and demeaning political rhetoric to a childish, petulant and often profane level.

Which is, I guess, how you get a governor our current governor showing up on social media grinning at a slogan that, while it doesnt say it in so many words, means in code: F Biden.

Its how a businessman from a long-respected family in Winner ends up using that childish, thinly hidden vulgarity about the president of the United States in a newspaper advertisement. And its how a newspaper publisher decided it was appropriate to run.

I assume the same paper and same publisher would not have run that ad if it had been directed at Donald Trump. And I believe there was a time when no credible publication in South Dakota would have run that ad at all. Period.

Whatever happened to the place I knew?

We dont live in that time anymore. I wrote in a Twitter comment about the advertisement that my state is becoming a place I no longer recognize. And not a better place.

I suppose we all have to take some responsibility for that. Democrats do dumb things too. They say dumb things. Sometimes inappropriate things. But most of the responsibility for the mess of rhetoric and the attack of facts in our nation today goes to the Republican Party, its members and leaders.

In a runaway.

The Republican Party is a different party than it was. So is the Democratic Party, perhaps. But in South Dakota, its not very significant. And whatever differences todays Democratic Party demonstrates from the party of the past might be, they pale compared to the abandonment of fact and truth and reason that a majority of the Republican Party are demonstrating these days.

And far too many office-holding Republicans are either supporting it or tolerating it.

A newspaper editor I worked for years back liked to say about himself, other editors and other people in positions of authority: You either made it happen or you let it happen.

Either way, its on you.

The Big Lie is on Donald Trump and his immediate circle of minions, of course. But its also on any Republican and especially those in positions of authority and prominence who either make the Big Lie live on in the Republican Party or by their silent tolerance let it live on.

Either way, its on them, too.

Thats something Republicans should ponder any day, but especially on Jan. 6.

Read more from the original source:
Considering Jan. 6 and what the Republican Party wants to be - SDPB Radio

This might sound alarming to inland Republican voters who imagine themselves besieged by a permanent coastal majority. But in a working democracy, there are no permanent majorities or minorities. Forging partnerships in a truly democratic system, inland conservatives would soon find new allies just not ones determined to break democracy itself.

Some of these changes probably require amending the Constitution. Hard changes have come through constitutional amendment before: Shortly before World War I, activists successfully pressed state legislatures to ratify an amendment giving up their power to choose U.S. senators. Maybe we can revive mass movements for amendments, starting with one that would make the amendment process itself more democratic. If the public supports a constitutional amendment to limit money in politics, restrict gerrymandering or enshrine a core abortion right, a committed majority should be able to say what our fundamental law is by popular vote, rather than having to go through the current, complicated process of ratifying amendments through state legislatures or dozens of constitutional conventions.

This may sound wild-eyed. But it would not always have. James Wilson, one of the most learned and thoughtful of the Constitutions framers, believed that as a matter of principle, the people may change the Constitution whenever and however they please. This is a right of which no positive institution can ever deprive them. Even Madison conceded that if we thought of the Constitution as a national charter rather than a federal arrangement among sovereign states, the supreme and ultimate authority would reside with the majority, which had the power to alter or abolish its established government. It is hard to deny that, since 1789, the Constitution has become a national charter in the minds of most Americans.

Do we really think that establishing fundamental law is too much for us, something only revered (or reviled) ancestors could do? More likely we are afraid of one another and the decisions majorities would make. Thinkers like Madison associated democracy with majority tyranny, but history tells a different story. Even our terribly flawed legacy is rich in examples of majoritarian emancipation: New Deal programs, the Civil Rights Acts and the Voting Rights Act and Medicare. Majorities can change the world for the better, when they have the chance. Giving one another that chance, over and over, is how equals share a country.

But are we willing to give, and take, that chance? Maybe more than fearing majority tyranny, we suspect that the country is already too divided and mistrustful to make basic choices together at all. One thing Democrats and Republicans share is the belief that, to save the country, the other side must not be allowed to win. Every election is an existential crisis. In our current political climate, any proposal to democratize the system would immediately be coded as partisan, and half the country would reject it from the start. In such an anxious and suspicious country, the current system can be seen as a kind of peace treaty. Maybe that was what Mr. Biden meant when, just after taking his oath of office two weeks after the Capitol riot, in a Washington guarded by 26,000 troops, he praised the resilience of our Constitution.

But the Constitution is not keeping the peace; it is fostering crises. Far from being resilient, it is adding to our brittleness.

Resilience would come from a shift to more constructive politics. Majorities should be able to choose parties and leaders to improve their everyday lives, starting with child care, family leave, health care and the dignified work that still evades many even at a time when employers are complaining of difficulty hiring workers and there is upward pressure on wages after decades of stagnation. Democracy matters not because there is something magical about 50-percent-plus-one in any given vote but because it gives people the power to decide how they will live together. If we dont claim that power, the market, a court or a minority government will always be pleased to take it off our hands.

Continued here:
Opinion | The Republican Party Is Succeeding Because We Are Not a True Democracy - The New York Times