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Its been less than a month since rightwing insurrectionists stormed the Capitol building in a deadly riot incited by the former president and his false claims of mass voter fraud. In the riots wake, many prominent Republicans have tried to distance themselves from the attackers and those who spurred them on. The mob was fed lies, said the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people.

Those other powerful people were powerful members of the Republican party and leading voices in conservative media, who are now either claiming we simply need to move on for the sake of healing, or saying that actually, the riot was the lefts fault. But while some Republicans are positioning themselves as honest and reasonable by condemning the riot and recognizing that it was sparked by lies about voter fraud, their partys actions and policy priorities tell a very different story. Because as our nation remains rocked by an attack on the heart of our democracy, Republicans are using the same baseless lies that fueled it to push a staggering number of laws to scale back voting rights.

A new report from the Brennan Center for Justice shows just how effectively Republicans have been talking out of both sides of their mouths, at once decrying the violence over false allegations of election rigging, and at the same time using false allegations of voter fraud to make it harder for people to vote. In 2021 legislative sessions (which six states havent even yet begun), lawmakers in 28 states have pushed a whopping 106 bills that would restrict voting access and were not even a month into the year. According to the Brennan Center, thats three times the number of restrictive voting laws that were introduced by 3 February last year. These laws are clearly responsive to widespread conspiracy theories on the right conspiracy theories started by the Republican party and the former president.

Each one of these 106 bills aims to make voting harder, either by scaling back vote-by-mail, imposing stricter voter identification laws, limiting policies that successfully registered large numbers of voters, or allowing states to more easily and aggressively purge their voter rolls.

None of these laws actually correct an existing problem because, as we learned through a great many court cases brought by the Trump administration, there simply was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. And there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in elections before that one, either.

So why, then, would Republicans waste their time and taxpayer dollars so aggressively battling a problem that doesnt exist? Its because Republicans do have a voting problem or rather, a voter problem. Many of their policies arent actually that popular, and the more eligible voters turn out for elections, the less Republicans win. Their clearest path to staying in power is limiting the number of people who are able to cast a ballot and particularly limiting the number of Democrats: people of color (and Black people in particular), people in cities and college students. The sharper members of the Republican party rely on claims of election security and voter fraud to justify limiting what is perhaps the most sacred duty of any individual living in a democracy. The duller just flat-out admit that making it easier for people to vote would hurt the Republicans. Former president Donald Trump, for example, told Fox & Friends that Democratic appeals for wider use of absentee ballots and vote-by-mail would cause levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, youd never have a Republican elected in this country again.

Republicans trying to restrict voting rights is not new the conservative justices of the US supreme court even sided with them in overturning key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, which is why so many new anti-voting laws have flooded the nation in recent years.

But the context after the Capitol riot is different: Republicans now cannot deny the serious, deadly and democracy-threatening costs of exploiting lies about voting fraud to the advantage of Republican politicians. And yet, across the nation, theyre choosing to do it anyway. Until they drop this dangerous farce and quit using the big election fraud lie to strip Americans of our right to vote, no one should believe a word they say about defending democracy, admonishing those who physically attacked it, or aspiring to national healing.

Its not all bad news on the voting front, though. Appalled by conservative malfeasance, newly emboldened by the success of mail-in voting during Covid, and heartened by hard-won wins in Georgia, more Democrats are latching on to what leaders and organizers like Stacey Abrams have been doing for years: fighting for expanded voting rights. Legislators in 35 states have introduced a total of 406 bills that would make voting easier for more people. The most common new laws seek to expand mail-in and early voting, methods of casting a ballot that enable far more people to participate in the democratic process people who are ill, elderly or disabled and find it challenging to vote in person; people who work demanding jobs, or several jobs, or jobs without predictable schedules, and dont get the first Tuesday in November off of work; people who are caring for small children or the elderly or the infirm and cant easily sneak away to stand in line for what can turn into hours. Other proposed laws would make it easier for citizens to register to vote, allowing same-day, online, or automatic registration so no one shows up on election day only to learn that, despite being a US citizen, they cant cast a ballot. And still other laws would allow people who have served time and paid their debt to society to regain their right to vote.

Its easy for anyone to say all the right things about valuing democracy, especially in the aftermath of a stunning attack on it. But words are free. The real question is what both parties are actually doing to strengthen American democracy and ensure that all American citizens have a say in our governance. And while Democrats are pushing for expansion, Republicans are using the same dangerous lies that caused an anti-democratic insurrection on 6 January in the service of their own anti-democratic policies. The visuals arent as shocking. But the damage to the nation is just as severe.

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Republicans are going all-out to limit voting rights. We know why - The Guardian

WASHINGTON Josh Holmes spent much of Wednesday in Washington watching the populist uprising over GameStop in the stock market with fascination and a growing sense of familiarity.

He has seen this movie before.

Holmes, president of the issue management firm Cavalry, is best known as the former chief of staff to former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. Holmes has spent his career among the Republican establishment, which has spent the past five years getting steamrolled by the populist force of Trumpism a grassroots movement that stormed the ramparts of the GOP, ousted the establishment and remade the party in its image.

Almost no one in the party saw it coming. When it did, few of the establishment players understood just how vast the force was that suddenly lined up against them.

On Wednesday morning, as GameStop shares continued to surge, Holmes took to Twitter and typed out a simple message: "Wall Street, welcome to our world."

I called him to ask what he meant by that. "This is an event," he explained. "This is a social and economic moment in our society. There are a few times when you can definitely point to a moment and say society has changed, and this is one of them."

There are a few times when you can definitely point to a moment and say society has changed, and this is one of them.

Josh Holmes

former chief of staff to Sen. Mitch McConnell

There are scores of similarities between former President Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" movement and the GameStop surge. There is a sense of fighting back against disrespect of the elites, belief that systemic rules have been written to benefit insiders at the expense of regular people, and new internet technologies that widely distribute power that was once held exclusively by a small group.

There's a healthy dose of skepticism of the media, and a belief in fake news. And both movements are inspired by viral memes funny, angry and engaging images depicting the movement as engaged in a heroic struggle.

Before the bell Thursday, GameStop shares briefly eclipsed a previously unthinkable $500, more than the share prices of Apple, Goldman Sachs and General Motors. After trading opened, the stock jumped more than 6% to about $370 a share. GameStop shares were worth about $40 a week ago.

The Reddit forum WallStreetBets on a smartphone arranged in Sydney, Australia, on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2021.

Brent Lewin | Bloomberg | Getty Images

But the most important similarity is the bravado of the members of the movement. On a Reddit forum Wednesday, users cheered each other on, urging "Hold the line, boys!" and "buy and hold!"

One user, named "ishabwa," wrote "THE OLD GUARD IS HORRIFIED. BACKS AGAINST THE WALL. PAINTED INTO A CORNER. ITS ALL BECAUSE OF YOU." Another described this moment as the GameStop "revolution" and wrote: "This is our chance to stick it to those who never took us seriously. Either we forge economic history or loose it all, I'm willing to take this risk."

Scouring those same Reddit message boards, entrepreneur William LeGate felt like he had seen this happen before, too.

But he uses a different touchstone: Occupy Wall Street, the left-leaning anti-establishment movement that blossomed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

"This is Occupy Wall Street Part 2, but this time it is on their turf, and there are real financial consequences," he said. LeGate, who received a $100,000 Thiel fellowship to drop out of college and start a company when he was 18 years old in 2013, has been watching the WallStreetBets Reddit discussion for several years.

He said he is seeing increasing frustration and anger, which is exploding in the Covid pandemic era and it is bringing together the traditional political left and right.

"People were willing to take a risk on Trump and now they're willing to take a risk in the markets," he said. "A lot of people just want to see the world burn right now, and they're enjoying watching it happen."

He said he's already seeing people on the WallStreetBets Reddit page looking for new targets and there are two themes. First, they're looking for highly shorted stocks where big hedge funds might have a lot of leverage. And second, they're looking for nostalgia plays to bring back the companies from their youth. That's why Nokia, Blackberry and Blockbuster are all getting attention.

Wall Street investors are going to have to factor in a new set of risks. "The risk assessment that they're going to have to make is this: is this a meme-able stock that a bunch of kids on Reddit could hit and blow up the price?" LeGate said.

But what explains that nostalgic impulse in the midst of a revolution? It is the same emotion that animated the MAGA movement which, after all, stood for make America great, again. It is a desire to return to an earlier time that the members of the movement remember as better than today.

"There's a feeling I sense across society that people want to go back to a simpler time," LeGate said. "No one likes Covid. People don't feel the economy is fair. Everything looks better in hindsight."

And he argues that efforts to regulate trading will feel to Reddit traders more like suppression, and could fuel more anger.

"If someone on Main Street loses half their portfolio in a day, nothing's going to happen. But if a hedge fund does, they literally stop the trading," he said. "I myself question whether this is really about protecting the individual investor or protecting the hedge fund."

Holmes believes the key to understanding the power of this new movement is the gamification of investing melded with an anti-elite fervor. Sticking it to hedge funds and potentially making a lot of money is, simply, fun. And if you believe its also the right thing to do, and thrive on the engagement of a community of like-minded traders, so much the better.

Josh Holmes, chief of staff for presumptive Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., attends a rally at the airport in Bowling Green, Ky., November 3, 2014.

Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images

"When things really get going is when the fun meets the purpose," Holmes said. "This is the perfect storm of those two."

His warning to Wall Street is: understand this. Be willing to scrutinize yourself. This not going away, and it is probably bigger than you think.

"People need to take the time to understand the social dynamics of this. What are the problems that have created this class of retail investor who seek to completely destroy your industry, and how do you remedy that?" Holmes said.

Holmes said he has spent the past decade watching American politics turned inside out. An earlier generation of politicians spent their time raising money at country club ballrooms from hundreds of donors writing $500 or $1,000 checks.

But now they spend their time on the internet raising money from millions of donors making $5 and $20 contributions. In politics, the retail money turned out to be bigger much bigger -- than the institutional money. And that's driven massive political spending inflation: the big Senate campaigns that once cost $15 million now cost $100 million.

"The pool is unlimited," Holmes said. "And that's the problem. The volume of potential participants is a hell of a lot bigger than people think it is, and it is certainly a lot bigger than the number of people who participated in this."

Other establishment Republican veterans agree.

"Don't underestimate the very real anger and sense of grievance and the very justified sense of grievance among the American people," said Michael Steel, a partner at Hamilton Place Strategies who was a senior advisor to the Jeb Bush presidential campaign in 2016. Understanding that, he said, can help investors understand who the next targets of Reddit rage might be, and how extensive the new movement is.

Kevin Madden, a former advisor to Mitt Romney, said, "anger can oftentimes be a more potent force than ideas. Those who felt they belonged to a political party of ideas found that grassroots anger, which can be very intoxicating, took over the political marketplace. It can also take over a financial marketplace."

Madden recalled the way populism overtook the Republican presidential primary in 2016.

Kevin Madden, then senior advisor and spokesman for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, talks with reporters aboard the campaign plane on October 23, 2012 en route to Las Vegas, Nevada.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

"One of the mistakes an establishment can make at the beginning is thinking this is someone else's fight. Marco Rubio says this is a Jeb Bush problem, and Jeb Bush says this is a Rick Perry problem," he said. "They all believed this was someone else's fight, and they all paid a huge price. That force redefined the party in its image for potentially the next decade."

Together these Republican strategists see Melvin Capital's decision to close out its GameStop position and take an enormous loss this week as something akin to the victory of populist Republicans in driving the establishment Republican House leader Eric Cantor from office in Virginia in 2014. It was an early demonstration of power. And it was a precursor to the much more dramatic events to come in 2016 and in 2021.

LeGate, the WallStreetBets watcher, agrees.

"It's a really powerful message," he said. "I think this is the first wave of what's going to happen."

But LeGate said he didn't buy any GameStop stock himself, for fear of an SEC investigation into his viral tweets about the movement.

Instead, he said, he is 100% invested in cryptocurrencies.

Continue reading here:
Republicans in Washington warn Wall Street: The GameStop populists are more powerful than you think - CNBC

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy warned his members to stop the public bickering within the conference if they want to effectively push back on the Biden administration and win back the majority in 2022, a congressional aide tells CBS News.

His blunt message to his colleagues on Wednesday's phone call: "Cut this crap out."

The warning comes as several members within the conference are organizing aneffort to oust the number three House Republican, Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney, from her position as conference chairwoman. Cheney voted to impeach then-President Trump and angered many Republicans by releasing a statement the day before her vote outlining her position which was later quoted by several House Democrats during the floor debate.

McCarthy had previously warned his members about calling each other out in public after the January 6 riots in the Capitol because it could potentially put their colleagues in danger.

The aide said McCarthy's frustration was audible on the call and his message was even stronger. McCarthy also said that the intra-party warfare was getting in the way of the GOP focusing on policy initiatives and countering the new president.

Read the rest here:
McCarthy to House Republicans: "Cut this crap out" and stop infighting - CBS News

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For four years he commanded their unflinching loyalty. They protected him from impeachment, tacitly approved as children at the border were prised from their parents and placed in cages, and looked the other way as peacefully protesting Americans were gassed for a photo opportunity.

Now, in the death throes of Donald Trumps presidency, as the president refuses to concede the election to Joe Biden, Republicans who once stood shoulder to shoulder with the man who reshaped their political party to his will are scrambling to distance themselves from his unfounded claims that the election is being stolen from him.

Outrageous, uncalled for and a terrible mistake, the Maryland governor, Larry Hogan, said of Trumps erratic pursuit of his false allegations; very disturbing, according to the Pennsylvania senator Pat Toomey; and reckless in the words of the former presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

This breaking of ranks by growing numbers of senators, congressmen, governors and other elected officials coming only after Trumps cause appeared lost heralds a looming battle for the future direction of the Republican party with its figurehead gone from the stage.

Those now openly critical after years of silence must weigh up the consequences of speaking out while there remain loyalists inside the party determined to carry the banner of Trumpism into the 2024 election and beyond. That faction includes Republican senators such as Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton, and the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, a staunch Trump ally who has urged the president to fight on, exhaust all options in his futile effort to prove widespread election fraud.

Trumpism will remain because he is such a wildly popular figure among their base. But, you know, its always been pragmatic for many Republicans, said Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at Yale University and author of the bestseller How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.

Theres some portion of the Republican party supporting him mainly because hes Trump, and hes owning the libs and saying racist things. And then another group is supporting him because hes pushing through the hardest-right policies.

I expect the Republican party will prioritise whatever mechanism they need to dominate the courts, to keep suppressing the vote, to make sure that they can, as a minority party, remain in control of the levers of government.

Stanley questioned the timing of those who appear to be breaking free from Trump by speaking out now.

The Republican party has been doing this anti-democratic thing since well before Trump, he said.

Theyve been acting like the Democrats are not legitimate, and they have no responsibility to co-govern with the Democrats and their sole purpose is to get the Democrats out and rule as a minority party.

I mean, weve had four years of this. When people do what is minimally expected that doesnt mean you should be filled with praise for them Norms have been so broken that were asking whether we should praise people when the president is obviously trying to rig and steal the election.

It remains to be seen if more moderate senior Republicans who have been critical of Trump, such as Mitt Romney, senator for Utah, will hold sway when the party plots its course for the Biden presidency.

Romney released a sternly worded statement on Friday that said Trumps assertions the election was rigged, corrupt and stolen were wrong. [It] damages the cause of freedom here and around the world, weakens the institutions that lie at the foundation of the Republic, and recklessly inflames destructive and dangerous passions, he wrote.

Other Republican figures are still on board the Trump train, even as it jumps the rails, including the fiercely loyal DeSantis, Cruz, Cotton, the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham and apologists such as Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, and Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and Trumps personal lawyer widely ridiculed for his appearance in the recent Borat movie.

All have backed the presidents false claims of malfeasance publicly, overlooking the fact they were made without evidence.

Those are the most dangerous politicians we have. They have placed zero value on democracy, Stanley, the Yale professor, said.

Some of them, like Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz, you know, might be more dangerous in various respects than Trump.

Go here to read the rest:
After Trump: first shots fired in battle for Republican party's future - The Guardian

"There is no abandoning Trump and his imprint on the party. There are ways to adapt it and make our message more tenable to folks. But I don't think it is realistic to pretend he wasn't President for four years," one GOP House aide told CNN.

"I'm here tonight to stand with President Trump," Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Thursday night on Fox News.

"The election results are out of control. It's like the whistle has blown, the game is over, and the players have gone home, but the referees are suddenly adding touchdowns to the other team's side of the scoreboard," tweeted Tommy Tuberville, who won a US Senate seat in Alabama on Tuesday.

Trump's narrow loss makes it harder for Republicans to completely walk away from a President whose unpredictability tormented them at times but whose loyal following boosted them in races across the country this week.

"I think what Trump's primary message was, the forgotten men and women, America first, in coal country or manufacturing, that is something that every elected official ought to take a look at," Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, told CNN. "He ran and said this is who I am. He is the same person today as he was when he came down that escalator," in making his announcement in June 2015 that he would run for president.

Trump's popularity may not have saved him in the end, but it did deliver wins for Republicans across the country. Democrats won a razor-thin presidential contest, but Republicans managed to win back a handful of seats in the House, and looked poised to maintain the Senate and make some inroads with minority communities that could make it much harder for the GOP moderates and Trump critics to dismiss the President's message, strategy and legacy outright. Instead of abandoning Trump's unorthodox policies on trade, tough line on immigration or direct focus on working-class voters, Republicans are already grappling with the reality that Trump has forever changed the party.

A Republican-led Senate and Democratic White House would provide Republicans an opportunity to work with Biden. But it also would give them a stopgap, a firewall and a way to dramatically contrast themselves with the Democrats' agenda. Leadership jockeying on Capitol Hill will consume the lame duck session, but Republicans will also have to decide how to confront Biden's presidency -- whether to embrace areas of bipartisanship or firmly hold the line against Biden implementing his vision for the country.

Left in Trump's wake are a handful of governors, congressional leaders and GOP senators who will spend the next weeks and months dissecting where the party and, depending on their aspirations, they themselves go next.

For Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida who ran against Trump in the primary in 2016, the lessons of 2020 came early as he watched returns pouring in from his home in Miami-Dade County. A son of Cuban immigrants who once saw comprehensive immigration revisions as the path to expanding the GOP's reach, he watched as President-elect Biden significantly underperformed where Hillary Clinton had been just four years ago. Clinton had beat Trump by roughly 30 points in the heavily Latino county in 2016. In 2020, Biden was on a path to win by just 7 points. Trump, a President whose language about immigrants, obsession with a border wall and policies had been seen by pundits as setting the GOP back with Latino voters for decades, made inroads -- at least in some places. Two Democratic congresswomen in South Florida -- Donna Shalala and Debbie Muscarsel-Powell -- were also defeated by Republicans.

"We have spent many years in this country thinking ethnicity is the leading political identity of many Americans, and what we are learning is that their status as working-class Americas becomes their identity. That doesn't mean the other issues are irrelevant, but they go side by side," Rubio said.

If Republicans are to win the White House again, Rubio argues, the party should build on what Trump created with a multi-ethnic coalition and a focus on the economy that can appeal to the working class. Rubio says Republicans should also try to win back some of the suburban voters "who may be repelled by some of the harder edges of the messaging."

"That hunger and thirst for political leaders who focus on those issues is not going to change," Rubio said. "The question is whether someone not named Donald Trump is able to do what he has done."

Pushed on if he would run in 2024 for president, Rubio demurred: "I think I have learned over the years that sometimes you cannot decide whether you want to cross a bridge until you know how many bridges there are as your options. Obviously I have run for president before. I wouldn't rule it out in the future."

For some Republicans who have watched as the party has been overtaken by Trump over the last several years, Trump's loss comes with an opportunity -- a chance to turn the page and return to expanding the coalition of voters Republicans can get in an election.

"Dust off the old autopsy," former Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, a Republican who retired from the Senate during Trump's presidency, told CNN in a extensive interview, referring to the Republican National Committee's 2013 report on what went wrong in the 2012 election and how to appeal to a broader swath of voters, especially minorities and women. "Anger and resentment are not a governing philosophy. Globalism is here to stay and we have to deal with it."

But even Flake acknowledges that Republicans have months and years of soul searching ahead.

"There is going to be a big segment that does think President Trump had the right message and he was flawed. You will have some like Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz try to pick up that mantle," Flake said, referring to senators from Arkansas and Texas. "But I just hope that Republicans as a whole realize that Trump is a dead end. There is no there there. You can only own the libs and get a certain percentage of the voters."

Some conservatives on Capitol Hill disagree.

"I am not that nuts about the tweets because you are always asking me to defend them, and I don't want to, but we needed someone like him because what most conservatives do share is a revulsion to the deep state, the swamp, and if anything resonated with people it was his message of draining the swamp," Johnson said.

For Republicans, the immediate work of defining their party without the Twitter-obsessed, plain-speaking commander in chief will be carried out by their congressional leaders.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell retained his Senate seat handily Tuesday night in Kentucky and is widely expected to remain at the helm of the GOP conference in the US Senate. In his acceptance speech, McConnell didn't mention Trump specifically, but did forecast the importance of the working-class vote to Republicans.

"I look out for middle America," McConnell noted.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, meanwhile, used his news conference on Capitol Hill Wednesday to boast about Trump's successes for the party.

"President Trump had a very strong night last night. His vision for our country expanded our party," McCarthy touted. "His efforts in reaching out to every demographic has positively changed the future of the GOP."

Exactly what that future looks like, however, remains to be seen.

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Trump might have lost but his legacy lives on with congressional Republicans - CNN