Archive for the ‘Republicans’ Category

Here’s what Republicans will deliver when we take back the House

When you buy groceries or pay your electricity bill, you might wonder, Can I afford this? Millions of Americans are asking that question because Democrats reckless government spending has led to record inflation and driven us into a recession.

When you watch the local news, you may feel less safe in your community. You arent alone. Under the Biden administration, weve experienced the deadliest years for violent crime and drug overdoses.

Just as we see the rule of law breaking down in our cities, were seeing it break down on our border. This week, President Joe Biden broke the record for the most illegal border crossings in a fiscal year: more than 2 million encounters at the southern border in 11 months.

And the prospect of your kids falling further behind in school is heartbreaking. Government-mandated lockdowns and mask mandates wiped out 20 years of student gains in reading and math.

The White House and Democratic majority in Congress control Washington. This is their record. Yet they dont intend to fix it.

But Republicans have a plan for a new direction to get our country back on track. Its called the Commitment to America.

House Republicans are committed to delivering a strong economy, letting you feed your family and heat your home without breaking the bank. The Commitment to America stops wasteful Washington spending to lower the price of groceries, gas, cars and housing and stop the rising national debt.

It also prioritizes cutting the oil-and-gas-permitting process time in half, lowering energy costs and creating good-paying jobs by unleashing reliable, abundant American-made energy. And it modernizes outdated regulations to expand American manufacturing, strengthen our supply chain and end our dependence on China for critical goods.

Of course, we cant have lasting prosperity without public safety. To secure our southern border, well end catch-and-release loopholes, invest in effective border enforcement and deploy technology to stop the endless flow of illegal immigration and drugs under Biden thats turned every city into a border city.

To reduce crime, well support 200,000 new law-enforcement officers through hiring bonuses, permanently criminalize illicit fentanyl and crack down on soft-on-crime prosecutors. If woke district attorneys wont do their job, they dont deserve another dime of federal money.

As we work toward a safe country with a strong economy, we also want a future built on freedom, in which children come first and our constitutional rights are protected. Well advance the Parents Bill of Rights to deliver real transparency and accountability, recover learning loss from school closures, defend fairness in athletics by ensuring only biological females can compete in girls and womens sports and expand school choice so more than a million more children can attend the school their parents know is right for them. Americas future depends on excellence in education and respect for dedicated parents and teachers.

Finally, Republicans will give you a government thats accountable, without politicians playing by a different set of rules. The Commitment to America champions policies to restore voters confidence in Congress, starting with ending Speaker Nancy Pelosis proxy-voting abuse of power that allowed 90% of House Democrats to get paid without needing to show up for work.

It also restores the House as a check against the Biden administrations incompetence and abuses of power through vigorous oversight. Were committed to investigating issues that deserve real scrutiny, including the politicization of science that drove government-mandated lockdowns and school closures, the weaponization of the Department of Justice, the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan that created 13 new Gold Star families and potential conflicts of interests connected to the presidents familys business dealings.

By taking action every day to deliver an economy thats strong, a nation thats safe, a future thats built on freedom and a government thats accountable, House Republicans will put our nation back on track towards long-term success.

This is our Commitment to America. And in a Congress restored to the American people, we will do everything in our power to make it a reality.

Kevin McCarthy is the House Republican leader.

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Here's what Republicans will deliver when we take back the House

PolitiFact | What is a MAGA Republican?

The dispute over what it means to be a MAGA Republican has given the GOP an opening to accuse President Joe Biden of "smearing" half the voters in the country the roughly 47% of those who voted in 2020 for former President Donald Trump.

MAGA Trumps trademark Make America Great Again 2016 campaign slogan is subject to interpretation. Biden offered his take in a Sept. 1 speech in Philadelphia.

"There is no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country," Biden said. "MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people."

Bidens insistence during the address that "not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans," has hardly mollified his critics. Fox News commentator Kayleigh McEnany, a former Trump administration press secretary, echoed a common GOP theme, tweeting that Biden had delivered the "most divisive presidential speech" shed ever seen.

In a recent interview on CBS News "60 Minutes," Biden went further, citing two telltale markers that he believes distinguish MAGA Republicans.

"MAGA Republicans are the people who refuse to acknowledge that an election took place and there was a winner," Biden said Sept. 18. "The MAGA Republicans are those people who, in fact, say that the use of violence is a legitimate tool, like what happened to the Capitol."

We examined data to see where Republicans stand on election denialism and sympathy for the people who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. It shows that Republican voters are divided on those points, but the differences among them are rarely crisp and clean.

As political scientist Christopher Cooper at Western Carolina University put it, "People dont put on the MAGA label like a pair of pants its an identity that some people have more of and some people have less of."

A focus on Trump

MAGA is the Trump brand, from campaign slogan, to red hats emblazoned with the letters, to the closing line of his stump speeches.

"A MAGA Republican is first and foremost a Trump supporter, no matter what he seems to do or say," said American University political scientist James Thurber.

A survey of self-identified MAGA voters conducted just after the Capitol assault found they strongly believe the election was stolen and that the riot was the work of antifa, a loose collection of activists who rally against fascism and far-right groups.

Since January 2021, pollsters have been asking Republican voters which they identify more with Trump, or the Republican Party. In a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, support for Trump has been waning.

In January 2021, an equal number of Republican voters, 46%, said they supported Trump and the Republican Party. By September 2022, Trump supporters had dropped to 33%, and party supporters had risen to 58%.

A recent Politico/Morning Consult tracking poll asked Republicans to pick their preferred 2024 presidential candidate. Trump came in first with 52%, but that also meant about half of Republicans wanted another candidate. In a July New York Times survey, about a fifth of Republicans said Trumps actions on Jan. 6 "went so far that he threatened American democracy."

Others are eager to define what it means to be a MAGA follower, but Republican voters appear to apply the label to themselves flexibly.

Cooper at Western Carolina University was part of a study of Southern state Republicans people in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. The studys poll gave self-identified Republicans the option to choose among the labels Traditional Republican, America First Republican and MAGA.

Respondents were asked to rate how well the labels fit them on a scale of 1= "not at all" to 10= "completely describes me." Nearly three-quarters of respondents picked a 6 or higher for more than one label.

"There are not bright lines between the three categories," said Western Carolina Universitys Cooper. "But there is something distinct about MAGA Republican identifiers. They are less likely to believe that Donald Trump should be prosecuted for January 6, less likely to believe that our elections are free and fair, more likely to approve of Donald Trump."

Trumps influence was evident in the primaries.

An analysis from senior fellow Elaine Kamarck at the Brookings Institution, a research and policy center in Washington, D.C., found that 96% of Trump-endorsed candidates won their recent primary elections. Those candidates were a select group only about 12% of all Republican candidates got Trumps nod.

Kamarck noted that many contests included Trump "wannabes."

"Candidates attacked each other for not being loyal enough to Trump or they tried to paint themselves as the best example of Trumpism, even when they did not get the formal endorsement," Kamarck wrote.

Thirty-six percent of primary candidates identified themselves as Trump or MAGA Republicans; 47% called themselves mainstream conservatives.

A majority of Republicans challenge the 2020 election

Biden defined MAGA Republicans as those who refuse to accept that he won the 2020 election. And poll results suggest that is true.

In the survey of Southern state Republicans, about 80% of those who identified strongly as MAGA said they did not believe the 2020 election was fair or accurate, compared with 66% of those who identified as Traditional Republicans.

But the percentages of election deniers are high for all Republicans. In survey after survey, between 60% and 70% of Republicans say Biden was not the legitimate winner.

The violence on Jan. 6

Biden said MAGA Republicans believe the violence that took place at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was justified.

Surveys show that Republican attitudes on the Capitol breach and the battle with law enforcement are divided. But a Monmouth University poll also found that in the past year, Republicans became a little more accepting of the violence that day.

In June 2021, 62% of Republican respondents said it was appropriate to call the event a riot. In August 2022, 45% said so.

In June 2021, 47% of Republicans said it was a legitimate protest, In August 2022, the fraction rose to 53%.

That roughly equal division among Republicans showed up again in a December 2021 CBS News poll. Then, 47% of Republicans said the people who stormed the Capitol were patriots; 53% said they were not.

But when asked in the CBS poll whether they approved of what took place, 76% of Republicans said they disapproved.

Original post:
PolitiFact | What is a MAGA Republican?

These Republicans who disputed Trump’s loss just got handed their own defeats – POLITICO

  1. These Republicans who disputed Trump's loss just got handed their own defeats  POLITICO
  2. Election Denial Didnt Play as Well as Republicans Hoped  The New York Times
  3. Republican candidates who denied or questioned 2020 election results: results  NBC News
  4. Trump and other Republicans are already casting doubt on midterm results  CNN
  5. These Republicans Are Casting Doubt on Election Results and Refusing to Concede  Yahoo News
  6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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These Republicans who disputed Trump's loss just got handed their own defeats - POLITICO

How a divided America, including the 15% who are ‘MAGA Republicans,’ splits on QAnon, racism and armed patrols at polling places – The Conversation…

How a divided America, including the 15% who are 'MAGA Republicans,' splits on QAnon, racism and armed patrols at polling places  The Conversation Indonesia

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How a divided America, including the 15% who are 'MAGA Republicans,' splits on QAnon, racism and armed patrols at polling places - The Conversation...

Why Republicans are gaining with less than a week to go – CNN

  1. Why Republicans are gaining with less than a week to go  CNN
  2. Republicans hold edge over Democrats in congressional races among definite voters: poll  Fox News
  3. Coming: Totally predictable, utterly normal Republican midterm sweep  The Hill
  4. Midterm elections 2022: The tide is turning for Republicans  Axios
  5. White Suburban Women Swing Toward Backing Republicans for Congress - WSJ  The Wall Street Journal
  6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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Why Republicans are gaining with less than a week to go - CNN