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Republican-dominated state legislatures around the country have responded to the cynical calls from Donald Trump for election reform with an array of proposals to restrict voting rights. They include limiting early-voting opportunities, constraining access to vote-by-mail and imposing more voter identification and other requirements to protect against what Mr. Trump falsely claimed to be a level of dishonesty that is not to be believed.

In Washington, congressional Democrats have rallied around H.R. 1, which has already passed in the House and would establish specific voting rules that states would be required to follow for federal elections, empowered by Congresss clear constitutional authority to make or alter state regulations governing the Times, Places and manner of holding such elections.

But as this legislation is pending, the Republican state legislative movement to burden the exercise of voting rights proceeds apace. Iowa has already done so, Georgia is poised to act shortly, and others may follow suit.

Congress should consider a targeted federal law to counter this march of these draconian state laws. And it could be designed in such a way that some Republicans would support it or find it uncomfortable to explain why they wouldnt.

This law would make clear that a state may not revise its rules to restrict voting access in federal elections in specified areas including the withdrawal of existing vote-by-mail opportunities and reductions in early voting unless it is done on a bipartisan basis.

A core objective of this legislation to protect the right to vote from partisan manipulation of the rules would be to enhance public perceptions of the fairness of the political process. With one political party unleashing a national movement to sharply limit access to the franchise, claiming contrary to fact that the presidential election it lost was corrupted by fraud, Congress is well justified in asserting its constitutional authority in federal elections and bringing a halt to it.

Nothing in this approach, targeted at the current wave of partisan state lawmaking initiatives, is inconsistent with passage of H.R. 1, which includes substantive reforms that, in addition to campaign finance and other reform measures, would strengthen voting rights and bolster election infrastructure security. And absent bipartisan support, the states should not be able to enact new restrictions on voting while Congress takes uniform federal rules in a more comprehensive package.

Critics may object that Congress cannot constitutionally commandeer the states to enact, or refrain from enacting, legislation of any kind. But the congressional power to make or alter state voting rules for federal elections is exactly what the Election Clause expressly authorizes. This power encompasses, as the Supreme Court has noted, registration, supervision of voting, protection of voters, prevention of fraud and corrupt practices, counting of votes, duties of inspectors and canvassers, and making and publication of election returns.

The states must follow the federal governments requirements for their conduct of elections for federal office, regardless of the choices they make for state and local contests, and they also bear the administrative responsibility and expense of doing so. Where the Supreme Court has applied the anti-commandeering doctrine, it has done so to stop Congress from conscripting the states into the enforcement of federal regulatory programs, as it has done in cases involving the Commerce Clause.

A bipartisanship requirement is a legitimate test of the validity of a state law affecting voting in federal elections. This is the rationale behind the requirements for politically balanced memberships that states have adopted for independent redistricting commissions. In applying a bipartisanship requirement to this proposed measure for restrictive state voting rules, Congress could, for example, provide that a state legislative rule change would have to have the support of at least a third to one-half of the second-largest party of the state legislature.

Why might or should such a law attract some Republican support? For one, after all the charges and countercharges of partisan machinations in the states in the 2020 elections, Republicans would have the opportunity to register support for bipartisan state action or to defend their opposition. Republicans may also be influenced by Republican state officials in charge of elections. For example, the Florida State Senate recently heard testimony about a proposed bill limiting the use of drop boxes and adding other limits on mail voting. Democratic and Republican supervisors of elections testified against the bill. State election law administrators among them many Republicans are very wary of these harshly restrictive measures, which complicate the voting process and, in creating the likelihood of, as one supervisor of elections said, long lines, chaos and confusion, are unpopular with Republican as well as Democratic voters.

Legislation along these lines is certain to be resisted by many Republicans and challenged in court. But Congress must defend its authority in federal elections and call out in clear terms the power play pursued by Republican state legislators. There is no reason to doubt that after the experience of 2020 and the events of Jan. 6, most Americans will respond well to a call for bipartisanship in how the states establish voting rights rules.

Bob Bauer, a former senior adviser to the Biden campaign, is a professor at New York University School of Law and a co-author of After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency.

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Opinion | How to Counter the Republican Assault on Voting Rights - The New York Times

During the 2016 primaries, Senator Marco Rubio positioned himself as a candidate for president who would represent a new approach for the GOP. (Drew Angerer / AP)

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As Republican state legislatures launch a new campaign to suppress Democratic votes (cutting back on early voting in Iowa, restricting absentee voting in Georgia), its worth recalling that it was only eight years ago that the GOP had a completely different response to defeat. Republicans had been working to restrict voting for decades, but after Mitt Romney lost in 2012, the RNC concluded that the party had to come to terms with broadening access to voting: Early, absentee, and online voting is here to stay, their election postmortem declared. Republicans needed to alter their strategy and acknowledge the trend as future reality, utilizing new tactics to gain victory on Election Day.

Mitt Romney had gotten 47 percent of the popular votenotably, the same percentage Donald Trump got this time. But the response in 2012 to defeat was not to double down on the Big Lie about Democratic voter fraud. Party leaders instead launched a three-month-long study of how they could become a majority party again. They called it an autopsy. Released in March 2013, the report was bold and uncompromising: The party had reached an ideological cul-de-sac by focusing on older white people. In order to win back a majority of voters, Republican candidates needed to embrace a new brand of conservatism and reach out to young people, women, and ethnic minorities, especially Latinos.

In the aftermath of defeat this time around, the GOP response was completely different. A Republican Party attorney was surprisingly honest when he told the Supreme Court at the beginning of March that Arizona needed to enact new restrictions on voting, because making it easier to vote puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats.

The Republicans share of the presidential vote, the 2012 autopsy pointed out, had been declining ever since Reagan, even when they won. Reagan got 59 percent in 1984; George H.W. Bush got 53 in 1988; George W. Bush got 51 in 2004. After that, they never won a majority.Related Article

At its root, the problem was both demographic and ideological. The Reagan base was declining as a proportion of the population; the Democratic majority recruited by Obama was made up of younger people, people of color, and women. The report, issued by RNC chair Reince Priebus, argued that Republicans could win enough of them to regain a majority, while at the same time holding fast to their pro-business, low-tax ideology.

The autopsy proposed reaching out to Latinos by endorsing comprehensive immigration reform. That was what made headlines. It argued also for appealing to Latino small-business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs, promoting opportunity for all, and running Latino candidates.

To appeal to young people, the autopsy argued, the party needed a new openness to gay people and gay marriage, noting that there was a generational difference within the conservative movement about the treatment and the rights of gays. It reported that, for many younger voters, these issues are a gateway into whether the Party is a place they want to be.Current Issue

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The report concluded that if our Party is not welcoming and inclusive, young people and increasingly other voters will continue to tune us out. Throughout, it proposed encouraging a variety of views rather than requiring 100 percent fidelity to the prevailing Republican positions, especially on social issues. Party leaders from Paul Ryan to Newt Gingrich welcomed it with fanfare, Politico reported.

And the party had a candidate who represented the new breed of younger Latino Republican: Marco Rubio. Forty-one years old in 2012, he personified Latino upward mobility; he endorsed bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform; and he condemned discrimination against gays and lesbians. Rubio entered the 2016 primaries with high hopes, coming in first among Republican candidates in eight consecutive early national polls.

But meanwhile, the autopsy aroused a storm of protest from the Republican right, led by Rush Limbaugh. Donald Trump, not yet a candidate when the report appeared, posted a tweet ridiculing comprehensive immigration reform.

Could it have worked? Could Marco Rubio have gotten more votes than Trump did, by running as a moderate against Hillary Clinton? Polls had him slightly ahead of her in January 2016. Nate Silvers Five Thirty-Eight declared, Its Rubio Or Bust For Republicans Who Want To Win, predicting, If Republicans nominate Rubio, they would have an excellent chance to beat Clinton by broadening their partys appeal with moderates, millennials and Latinos.

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But then Trump destroyed him in the debates, dubbing him Little Marco. He responded by saying Trump had small handsand you know what they say about guys with small hands. It didnt work. He failed in the primaries, winning only Minnesota, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia. He endorsed Trump and stuck with him even after the Access Hollywood tapes surfaced.

Party officials who proposed after 2012 that Republicans could become a majority party again set up a website: futuremajority.com. It is now defunct. Futuremajority.org is a new site, established in the 2020 election to help win swing states in the Midwest. It funds Democrats.

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The Republicans Road Not Taken - The Nation

Former president Donald Trump will address the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, in Florida next week, about the future of the Republican party and the conservative movement, a source familiar with the plan told Reuters on Saturday.

The CPAC meeting will be held in Orlando, Florida from 25 to 28 February, with Trump speaking on the final day, Reuters reported.

Hell be talking about the future of the Republican party and the conservative movement, the source reportedly said. Also look for the 45th president to take on President [Joe] Bidens disastrous amnesty and border policies.

Trump lost the presidency to Biden, who beat him by 306-232 in the electoral college and more than 7m ballots in the popular vote. The former president has refused to accept that result but now lives at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

Last week he survived a second impeachment, for inciting the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January, as part of his attempt to overturn his defeat.

Seven Republican senators voted to convict, 10 short of the figure needed but indicative of a party split between supporters of Trump and an establishment seeking to move on.

Ten House Republicans voted to impeach and Trump has expressed anger their way. On Tuesday he aimed fire at Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, the most senior elected Republican.

The loss of the White House to Biden and control of the Senate, which Democrats picked up in a pair of upset Georgia election runoff victories last month, coupled with the rise of extreme rightwing figures who vocally support Trump, has left Republican leaders on edge as they plot how to win Congress back in 2022.

Trump and McConnell parted ways in the weeks after the November election, with Trump angered that the Kentucky Republican recognised Biden as the winner in mid-December. They have not spoken since, a former White House official said this week.

The gap widened when McConnell declared after the Senate acquittal that Trump was practically and morally responsible for the Capitol attack and open to criminal prosecution. In return, Trump called McConnell a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack and said that if Republicans stay with him they will not win again.

Polling shows that though thousands have left the party since the Capitol attack, a clear majority of those left support Trump and would vote for him if he entered the primary for the presidential nomination in 2024.

It was also reported this week that the former White House strategist Steve Bannon thought Trump was suffering from early onset dementia while in office.

A number of top Republicans who are considered possible candidates for the 2024 presidential nomination are also due to speak at CPAC, including former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota.

Two notable figures not on the CPAC speaker list are former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley and former Vice-President Mike Pence.

Another anonymous source told Reuters Trump had rebuffed a request by Haley to meet with him recently after she was critical of him in a Politico article.

Pences life was threatened by the Capitol mob, when he refused to go along with Trumps attempts to overturn the election.

Conservatives and CPAC attendees were slow to accept Trump when he first ran for office, leading him to withdraw from the event during the 2016 primaries. But he has come to dominate the event, offering red meat to a party base apparently entirely in his thrall.

Do you remember I started running and people would say, Are you sure hes a conservative? he asked its audience in 2018. I think now weve proved that Im a conservative, right?

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Donald Trump to address CPAC on future of Republican party - The Guardian

On the second front, how a convention would work, Republicans are grappling with a state prohibition on most gatherings of more than 10 people. As a result, the party cannot conduct an in-person convention of several thousand people. Party leaders are trying to change their rules to allow for a convention held across dozens of sites in Virginia.

Doing so requires approval of three-fourths of the State Central Committees members a threshold so far impossible to meet because 31 of the committees 72 members are holding out for a primary. These Republicans are, in other words, trying to block the ability to have a convention in hopes that a primary will ultimately have to be held.

The fact that theres a minority faction who lost that are standing in the way of a safe convention to try to get the primary that they couldnt win fairly that says a lot about them, said Patti Lyman, the Republican national committeewoman for Virginia. All their arguments can be boiled down to: We lost, and we dont like it.

Ms. Chase, who was still arguing with less than a week left in Mr. Trumps presidency that he could yet be inaugurated for a second term, said Thursday that she doesnt trust conventions, which she said unfairly limit voting access for members of the military and others who cant make it to an in-person site.

If were going to win as Republicans, we need to include more of the electorate who vote Republican instead of less, she said. Stop creating so many obstacles for people who would normally vote.

Some proponents of a convention are arguing in favor of ranked-choice voting, a system that has been pushed elsewhere by progressives. The dispute threatens to undercut Republicans already-uphill fight in this years elections and prolong Democratic control of the state.

The partys squabble centers on a crowded group of Republican contenders for governor that includes one candidate each from the G.O.P.s Trump and establishment wings, along with two wealthy wild cards. The major candidates include Ms. Chase; Kirk Cox, a former State House speaker, who is the favorite of the partys elected state legislators; Pete Snyder, a millionaire technology executive who lost a bid for the lieutenant governor nomination at a party convention in 2013; and Glenn Youngkin, an even wealthier former chief executive in private equity who is a newcomer to politics.

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The Virginia G.O.P. Voted on Its Future. The Losers Reject the Results. - The New York Times

Unmentioned by Perry: He was governor in 2011, when experts recommended winterizing the power grid. Perry went on to run for president in 2012, then was reelected governor two years later, ran unsuccessfully for president again in 2016 and served as then-President Donald Trumps secretary of Energy from 2017 to 2019.

George Seay, who served as finance chair for Perrys 2012 presidential bid, said that he opposes the finger-pointing over the storm response and believes Abbott is unfairly being attacked, but that the current governor needs to take some responsibility for the situation.

Leaders have to say, not only is this unacceptable, not only is it a dereliction of duty to Texas citizens and their public safety and the common good, but we have to fess up for that, Seay said. The governor is not a power generation expert, but he needs to raise his hand and say, Im responsible for this. Its not fair to him, to be clear, but thats the job.

Seay said Cruzs decision to slip off to Mexico only to announce his return when word leaked out and he drew harsh criticism wont harm him nearly as much as his role in opposing the Electoral College certification in Congress on Jan. 6, when pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol.

Is he focused on issues that center on the good of Texas? Not really. Hes focused on running for president in 2024 and political machinations, Seay said. The blame-seeking and circular firing squads were seeing is not helpful.

Democrats, meanwhile, seized the opportunity to contrast Republican leadership in Texas with President Joe Bidens administration, which quickly offered full federal help and earlier pitched plans to upgrade infrastructure, counter climate change and expand the use of renewable energy.

Whether its Abbotts failed response or Cruzs abandoning of our state, we shouldnt put people in charge of government who dont believe in government. They fail us every time, said former federal Housing Secretary Julin Castro, a Democrat whos considering a bid against Abbott or Cruz.

Cruzs short-circuited Cancun trip made him the biggest target of all. His habit of attacking politicians for taking time off during a disaster, his mocking of California for its power woes and his letter to Biden last week to keep the U.S.-Mexico border as closed as possible due to Covid have all come back to haunt him.

Democrats sought to heighten the contrast between Cruz and his 2018 Senate opponent, former Rep. Beto ORourke, by pointing out that the senator went to Cancun and tweeted about the death of radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh while his former rival stayed in El Paso and tried to marshal his social media followers to help fellow Texans.

Its extremely important in governing and politics to be seen doing things, said Brendan Steinhauser, a Texas Republican strategist. Its important to be seen leading.

Steinhauser said Abbott established himself as a leader in previous crises but took longer after the storm because he had to find his footing. At first, he probably didnt think the blackouts would last as long as they did.

Chris Perkins, a Republican data analyst and pollster in the state, said theres lots of anger and frustration to go around.

Theres no playbook because the state has never seen a winter like this in its history, Perkins said. The cities are saying to boil the water, but theres no water coming out of the faucet. Use gas to boil the water, but wells are freezing, so conserve gas. The state leaders are attempting to give the public the most updated information, but its difficult since there isnt a historical manual on what to do.

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Top Texas Republicans on the ropes after tone-deaf storm response - POLITICO