Mediaboss Marketing

Former GOP Rep. John Katko (N.Y.) said that the polls showing a hypothetical match-up between President Biden and former President Trump should “send off alarm bells” to the Republican Party.

Katko said on ABC’s “This Week” that despite “how bad” Biden’s numbers are, Trump is still not beating him.

“Trump is not beating him. Trump’s even with him,” he said on the panel. “And so that should send off alarm bells in my opinion in the Republican Party. And if you look at it, you have a group of people that they put Biden against, and the only one that’s got a significant lead would be Nikki Haley.”

“And that just tells you something. Nikki Haley’s almost three decades younger than Biden. And that’s something that you want to think about. And I think the American people are looking at that,” he added.

A CNN poll released last week found that Haley is the only GOP contender who has an edge over Biden. Haley led Biden with 49 percent support to his 43 percent, while every other major Republican candidate remains neck and neck with him.

Katko’s comments come as Democratic voters also raise concerns about Biden’s age. The CNN poll found that more than half of Democrats are worried about the age of Biden, who is 80.

Katko noted that even though Biden’s accomplishments are “well known,” it’s not reflected in the poll numbers.

“So those numbers, if you look at the polling over the last several months, are getting worse,” Katko said. “They’re not getting better. So despite all his so-called achievements, he’s in real trouble. And again, you go back to how is it the Republican Party doesn’t look at this poll and realize there’s a real opportunity if it’s not Trump? And that’s something I think they’ve got to wrestle with over the next few months.”

See original here:
Former House Republican says Biden, Trump polls should send off alarm bells to GOP - The Hill

In no setting is bachelorhood more of a liability than the presidential campaign trail. Only two men, Grover Cleveland and James Buchanan, have ever clinched the White House without a wedding band. And given the concerns already swirling around 57-year-old Tim Scotts singlehood, the South Carolina senator is going to have a tough time becoming the third.

Much of these concerns, according to the Republican presidential hopeful, are being clandestinely fueled by his primary rivals. People plant stories that have conversations to distract from our rise in the polls, to distract from [the] size of our audience, Scott said during a visit to New Hampshire Thursday when confronted with a recent Axios report on GOP donors feeling skittish about his marital status. What weve seen is that poll after poll says that the voters dont care, but it seems like opponents do care, and so media coverage that opponents plantits okay. Good news is we just keep fighting the good fight.

While Scott did not specify which of his opponents he deems responsible for advancing the narrative, he may have been referring to a piece penned this week by Boston Globe columnist Rene Graham, titled, Tim Scott Has a Woman Problem. The column argued that Scotts bachelorhood is particularly damaging for a prospective Republican president, given the resilient homophobia on the right. Bachelor status is code for sexual identity, wrote Graham. And Republicans not keen on a candidate facing four criminal trials might be even more unlikely to support someone they might believe could be a closeted gay man.

Fellow South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham faced a similar predicament when he ran for president in 2016. A lifelong bachelor, Graham, 61 at the time of the 2016 election, was hounded by questions about his romantic life, and at least two late-night hosts made subtle jokes about his sexuality.

As for Scotts romantic life, he has been reluctant to reveal many details at all. But when he first launched his campaign in May, he did confess to actively dating. Theres always time for a great relationship with a wonderful woman, and I thank God that that is happening, he told NBC News.

A two-term senator, Scott has also tried to reframe the liability as a selling point for voters, telling Axios that, if elected, he would likely have more time, more energy, and more latitude to do the job than a married man. In the same interview, he suggested that more and more Americans can relate to a midlife bachelor. The fact that half of Americas adult population is single for the first time, he said, to suggest that somehow being married or not married is going to be the determining factor on whether or not youre a good president or notit sounds like were living in 1963, not 2023. (The actual number of single adults in the US is closer to 30%, according to Pew Research.)

Fair or not, Scott parried questions about his romantic life by proudly declaring himself a 30-year-old virgin early in his political career. He also advocated for sexual abstinence until marriage, a position he held as recently as 2012. At the end of the day, the Bible is very clear: abstinence until marriage. Not to do so is a sin, he told National Journal at the time; although in the same interview, he hinted that he may have failed to remain chaste. When the then 46-year-old was asked if he was still adhering to the same virtues that he had at 30, he said, Yeah, not as well as I did back then. Youre better off to wait. I just wish we all had more patience.

The topic came up again shortly after Scott announced his 2024 presidential bid, when Washington Post journalist Ben Terriswho wrote the National Journal pieceasked the candidate whether he was still a virgin. Im not talking about my sex life with Ben Terris, Scott demurred, before using a timeless excuse to escape any awkward question. I have to go potty.

Here is the original post:
Tim Scott Claims That Republican Hopefuls Are Feasting on His ... - Vanity Fair

The semi-loyalty of leading conservative politicians fatally weakened the immune system of French democracy. The Nazis, of course, finished it off.

A half-century later, Spanish politicians responded very differently to a violent assault on Parliament. After four decades of dictatorship, Spains democracy was restored in the late 1970s, but its early years were marked by economic crisis and separatist terrorism. And on Feb. 23, 1981, as the Parliament was electing a new prime minister, 200 civil guardsmen entered the building and seized control at gunpoint, holding the 350 members of Parliament hostage. The coup leaders hoped to install a conservative general a kind of Spanish Charles de Gaulle as prime minister.

The coup attempt failed, thanks to the quick and decisive intervention of the king, Juan Carlos I. Nearly as important, though, was the reaction of Spanish politicians. Leaders across the ideological spectrum from communists to conservatives who had long embraced the Franco dictatorship forcefully denounced the coup. Four days later, more than a million people marched in the streets of Madrid to defend democracy. At the head of the rally, Communist, Socialist, centrist and conservative franquista politicians marched side by side, setting aside their partisan rivalries to jointly defend democracy. The coup leaders were arrested, tried and sentenced to long prison terms. Coups became virtually unthinkable in Spain, and democracy took root.

That is how democracy is defended. Loyal democrats join forces to condemn attacks on democracy, isolate those responsible for such attacks and hold them accountable.

Unfortunately, todays Republican Party more closely resembles the French right of the 1930s than the Spanish right of the early 1980s. Since the 2020 election, Republican leaders have enabled authoritarianism at four decisive moments. First, rather than adhere to the cardinal rule of accepting election results after Joe Biden won that November, many Republican leaders questioned the results or remained silent, refusing to publicly recognize Mr. Bidens victory. Vice President Mike Pence did not congratulate his successor, Kamala Harris, until the middle of January 2021. The Republican Accountability Project, a Republican pro-democracy watchdog group, evaluated the public statements of 261 Republican members of the 117th Congress after the election. They found that 221 of them had publicly expressed doubt about its legitimacy or did not publicly recognize that Mr. Biden won. Thats 85 percent. And in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot, nearly two-thirds of House Republicans voted against certification of the results. Had Republican leaders not encouraged election denialism, the stop the steal movement might have stalled, and thousands of Trump supporters might not have violently stormed the Capitol in an effort to overturn the election.

See the rest here:
Opinion | Trump Is Nothing Without Republican Accomplices - The New York Times

The phrase “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” often mistakenly attributed to Thomas Jefferson, has been used by countless Americans since 1800. Calls to protect the principles of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution remain urgently relevant in 2023, when extremists have taken control of the Republican Party — via attempts to overthrow the results of a free and fair election, suppress the votes of qualified American citizens, incite violence against political opponents and spread conspiracy theories and lies.

More than a few Republican politicians, judges and voters, however, continue to oppose departures from democratic values. Along with the Republicans who denounced claims of election fraud and the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, they deserve a shout-out.

In May, the Republican-controlled Georgia legislature created a Prosecuting Attorneys Statewide Qualifications Commission (PASQC). The bill authorized a five-member panel to remove district attorneys who committed misconduct, failed to carry out their duties, or were convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude. When he signed the legislation, Gov. Brian Kemp predicted it would hold prosecutors accountable for giving “dangerous criminals a get-out-of-jail free card.”

In testimony before Georgia’s Senate Judiciary Committee, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis maintained that “it is dangerous to undo the voters, because you don’t like someone, and you don’t like their policies.” Willis emphasized that prosecutors always consider resources and community standards, among other factors, before deciding to indict. Adultery, she pointed out, remained illegal in Georgia, but adulterers were virtually never prosecuted.

Willis also confronted the elephant in the room. “I take my oath seriously,” Willis emphasized. “I look at each and every case.”

“Well, that’s not what we’re reading in the papers that you’re prosecuting,” State Sen. Bill Cowsert exclaimed.

State Sen. Clint Dixon subsequently acknowledged that the pending indictment of former President Trump was “one of the reasons” Republicans established the PASQC. State Sen. Colton Moore called on the governor to call a special session of the legislature to defund Willis’s office and impeach her.

Noting that he had rejected a special session to overturn the results of the 2020 election “because such an action would have been unconstitutional,” Kemp then asserted, “I have not seen any evidence that DA Willis’ actions or lack thereof warrant action by the prosecuting attorney oversight commission. As long as I’m governor, we are going to follow the law and the Constitution — regardless of who it helps politically.”

“Over the years,” Kemp added, “some inside and outside this building may have forgotten that. But I assure you I have not.”

A special session is not going to happen. But when the PASQC opens for business on Oct. 1, the commissioners may or may not heed Kemp’s admonitions.

In GOP-controlled Ohio, the legislature’s ban on virtually all special elections held in August took effect in April 2023. On May 10, however, Republican lawmakers scheduled a vote in August raising the threshold to amend the state constitution from a simple majority to 60 percent, and requiring petitions of support from at least 5 percent of voters in all 88 counties, instead of 44 of them. The referendum, Secretary of State Frank LaRosa initially claimed, was designed to diminish the influence of out-of-state special interests. The real reason, LaRosa subsequently acknowledged, was “100 percent about” defeating what he deemed a “radical pro-abortion” constitutional amendment in November.

In August, citizens of Ohio, which supported Donald Trump by an 8 percent margin in 2020, turned out in huge numbers to defeat the measure, 57-43. “No” votes came from Republican strongholds as well as from Democrats and Independents.

An attempt to subvert the will of the majority was thwarted. At least for now.

In January 2022, three federal district court judges, two of whom were appointed by President Trump, threw out congressional redistricting maps drawn by Alabama’s Republican-controlled legislature. The plan, they declared, violated the Voting Rights Act by giving Blacks less opportunity than other Alabamians to elect candidates of their choice.

After postponing a decision until after the 2022 election was held, the Supreme Court agreed that Blacks, who comprise about 27 percent of the state’s population, should have more than one congressional district in which they constitute a majority. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the court’s three liberals in a 5-4 vote.

When the Alabama lawmakers submitted a “new” plan, Judge Terry Moore, one of the Trump appointees, wondered if they had “deliberately disregarded” the court’s instructions. On September 5, the three district court judges declared they were “deeply troubled” that the legislature “did not even nurture the ambition to provide the required remedy” and threw out the map.

The case, which may well return to the Supreme Court, is likely to set a precedent imperiling the GOP’s slim majority in the House of Representatives. As one Republican National Committee member put it, Louisiana is “next in line” and likely to be hit “right between the eyes.”

Racial gerrymandering has been declared unconstitutional. At least for now.

And in August, the Maricopa County, Arizona GOP proposed opting out of the state’s 2024 government-run presidential primary, and paying for, staffing and conducting a one-day contest, limited to paper ballots, counted by hand, “in solidarity with President Donald J. Trump, who was persecuted, arrested and indicted for taking the same position.”

The chair of the state’s Republican Party rejected the proposal as too expensive, too difficult to administer and likely to disenfranchise some of the 1.4 million eligible voters.

As he left the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin was asked what kind of government the delegates had created. Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” These days, keeping it requires, at least as much as it did in 1787, eternal vigilance; civic and civil engagement from Democrats, Independents, and Republicans; and a respect for democratic ideas, ideals and institutions that, alas, seems to be in short supply.

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. He is the co-author (with Stuart Blumin) of “Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century.”

Go here to read the rest:
In praise of Republican guardians of liberty - The Hill

In another case, United States v. Beauchamp, Colemans deal was even weaker. Steven Beauchamp was arrested in August 2017 for sending sexually explicit images to someone he thought was a 14-year-old girl but was actually an undercover police officer. Beauchamp also admitted to officers that he had asked the girl for nude selfies.

Beauchamp was charged in December that year with knowingly attempting to employ, use, persuade, induce, entice, and coerce any minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing any visual depiction; knowingly attempting to persuade, induce, and entice an individual who had not attained the age of 18 years to engage in sexual activity for which a person may be charged with a criminal offense; and distribution of child pornography.

Coleman offered Beauchamp a plea agreement for between 15 and 17.5 years in prison and no supervised release. A judge sentenced Beauchamp in July 2018 to 17.5 years in prison and 20 years of supervised release.

See more here:
Tough on Crime Republican Attorney General Candidate Is Soft on ... - The New Republic