Mediaboss Marketing

Noted fiscal conservative Midna discusses the merits of a flat tax approach with Link (Screenshot: The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD/Nintendo)

In a bold attempt to speak to Americas youths, the Republican Party has apparently thrown itself into the world of video game criticism. For its first foray into this famously lucrative industry, the website of the House GOP published an incredibly insightful thinkpiece entitled What Do the The Legend of Zelda and the American Tax Code Have In Common? The thesis of this groundbreaking essay? The action-adventure game was released in 1986, only one year after Nintendos founding in 1985. And you know what else was released in 1986? Yeah, you do. The last major reform to the American tax code was signed into law in 1986.

After that, it immediately pivots into a GOP spiel about the current tax code strangling small businesses and Zelda is never mentioned again, so yes, thats pretty much the whole article. Now, setting aside the fact that Nintendo wasnt founded in 1985 (thats only approximately 100 years off the mark, but hey, the GOP isnt exactly known for its fact-checking prowess) the article is accurate: That is literally one thing these two completely disparate concepts have in common. 1986 is also the year Pixar was founded, Short Circuit was released, and Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capones infamously empty vault. Coincidence? We think not.

Playing devils advocate (emphasis on devil) for a second, the poor GOP staffer who got roped into writing this has more of a point than they realize. If they were serious about making this comparison and stumping for tax reform while dunking on Zelda, it should have read something like this: Just like our destructive, archaic tax code, The Legend Of Zelda hadnt changed since it was established in 1986. But you know what happened in 2017? The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild was released and completely changed the game. Its time for the GOP to lead the charge for tax reform and do the same!

Then again, if they couldnt even be bothered to Google, What year was Nintendo founded? we shouldnt exactly be surprised when they miss such low-hanging fruit.

Read this article:
Republicans try comparing Zelda to the American tax code, fail miserably - A.V. Club

Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster who helped elect President Trump in 2016 by targeting the Democrats blue wall for weaknesses, attempted to humble the White Houses critics today with a very early 2020 primary poll.

It didnt necessarily work as planned.

In a tweet, Fabrizio shared answers from a new national survey of Republican voters, one of them asking whether they would support the president for renomination. So much for the buyers remorse that DC insiders are convinced the GOP has, Fabrizio wrote.

But the poll itself found the president in a surprisingly weak position, with just 50 percent of all Republican voters 54 percent of those certain to vote in a primary supporting another Trump nomination. Twenty-four percent backed either Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) or Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio), the last rivals standing in the 2016 Republicans primaries. Two percent backed either Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) or Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), one a Trump critic, one a rising star; 24 percent were wholly undecided.

Trumps louder critics, however, focused on the high number of Republicans open to a Trump alternative. Theres little precedent for that much resistance to an incumbent president just eight months into his term. A November 2010 poll, taken after Democrats had lost President Barack Obamas first midterm by a landslide, found 64 percentof Democrats ready to renominate the president, 16 percent favoring 2008 rival Hillary Clinton and 14 percent undecided.

There was not then, as there is now, a punchy group of partisanstalking about oustingthe incumbent from inside his party. The first Twitter responses to Fabrizio came from #NeverTrump conservatives feeling good about the trendline.

But further down in the survey, Fabrizio revealed that even Republicans on the fence about 2020 were putting blame for inaction in Washington on the rest of the party.

See the rest here:
Trump pollster finds 50 percent of Republicans open to another nominee in 2020 - Washington Post

The Senate Republican campaign arm surprised Democratic Sen. Joe DonnellyJoe DonnellyTrump's Democratic tax dilemma FEC 'reform' a smokescreen to weaponize government against free speech It's time for McConnell to fight with Trump instead of against him MORE (Ind.) with a mariachi band at one of his recent campaign stops.

Republicans have taken to calling Donnelly "Mexico Joe" over a report last month that his family's arts and crafts company, Stewart Superior Corp., manufactures some of its products in Mexico. Donnelly announced shortly after the report that he was selling his stock in the company.

Donnelly is among the most vulnerable Senate Democrats up for reelection in 2018, running in a state that President Trump by nearly 20 percentage points.

"Joe Donnelly can try to make Hoosiers forget about his family business's outsourcing controversy," aNational Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC)spokesman said in a statement quoted byWashington Examiner, "but we'll make sure it's the first thing on voters' minds when they head to the polls in 2018."

Donnelly has long been a critic of free trade agreements and job outsourcing, and was among the most vocal critics of the air conditioning manufacturer Carrier's decision to move some of its production to Mexico. But Republicans are hoping to portray him as soft on outsourcing by highlighting his family's company.

The mariachi band was paid for by the NRSC and was accompanied by two men holding posters that said, "Outsource Donnelly out of D.C." and "Made in Mexico," with the letters "U.S.A." crossed out.

Mariachi bands are among Mexico's most cherished national symbols. They are traditionally hired for family-oriented festivities like baptisms and weddings.

Indiana Democratic Party senior media strategist Will Baskin-Gerwitz responded to use of a mariachi band Wednesday evening, calling it a "cheap publicity stunt" in a statement.

"Washington Republicans are resorting to cheap publicity stunts to distract fromJoe's stellar record on the issues that matter to Indiana's economy. He's voted against every single bad trade deal, and he's consistently stood with Hoosier workers against the flow of jobs to other countries,"Baskin-Gerwitz said in the statement

"Congressmen Messer and Rokita, meanwhile, have consistently supported bad trade deals that tilt the playing field against Hoosier workers,"Baskin-Gerwitz continued. "Indiana's working families know where Indiana Republicans stand, and it's not with them."

Continue reading here:
Republicans hire mariachi band to welcome Dem senator - The Hill

The Trump dossier is one of the most important and least understood elements of the Trump-Russia affair. It is important not just because its allegations are, as former FBI director James Comey said, "salacious and unverified," but because it:

The story of the dossier, if it is ever learned, could greatly affect the way we think about the Trump-Russia matter.

One key talking point whenever the dossier is discussed is that it "started with Republicans," that is, it was originally commissioned in fall 2015 by a GOP donor who hired a dirt-digging firm called Fusion GPS to look into candidate Trump. The story, now widely told, appears to come from what a "person familiar" with the dossier told the New York Times in January of this year:

The story began in September 2015, when a wealthy Republican donor who strongly opposed Mr. Trump put up the money to hire a Washington research firm run by former journalists, Fusion GPS, to compile a dossier about the real estate magnate's past scandals and weaknesses, according to a person familiar with the effort. The person described the opposition research work on condition of anonymity, citing the volatile nature of the story and the likelihood of future legal disputes. The identity of the donor is unclear.

In this version of the story, the GOP-begun dossier originally was conventional opposition research involving Trump's business dealings it was not about Russia. The Republican donor, the story goes, lost interest as Trump wrapped up the GOP nomination. At that point, "Democratic supporters of Hillary Clinton," according to the Times, picked up the project. At about the same time, Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee was in the news, and Glenn Simpson, the former Wall Street Journal reporter who runs Fusion GPS, shifted the Trump dossier project to Russia, hiring former British spy Christopher Steele for the job. So the Democratic part of the dossier story was the attempt to dredge up information on Russia.

As far as the origin of the dossier is concerned, the idea that it all started with Republicans has become conventional wisdom.

But there are a lot of well-connected Republicans who are quite skeptical of the story. Specifically, the GOP strategists most involved in the competing campaigns that were trying to stop Trump Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, the campaigns that were closely linked to big Republican donors and were hungry for any negative information they could use against Trump say they knew nothing about the effort at the time and do not believe it was in fact begun by a Republican donor.

"I don't believe the mad Republican donor theory," said Mike Murphy, the veteran strategist who ran Jeb Bush's $118 million super PAC, noting he never used Fusion GPS and had no inkling that it was conducting oppo for a big GOP donor. "We had the biggest share of Republican major donors," Murphy continued. "They all gossip. One guy is for Christie, his partner is for Bush. They all talk to each other, and I think I would have heard about it. And I didn't."

Terry Sullivan, who ran Marco Rubio's campaign, told me he had never heard of Fusion GPS before the dossier became public in January of this year. And he doesn't buy the it-started-with-Republicans idea. "The reason it is not at all believable that a Republican was behind it is, nobody used [any information] from it," Sullivan said. "Everybody was pretty damn desperate at the end. If someone had a kitchen sink, they would have thrown it."

Jeff Roe, who ran the Ted Cruz campaign, also noted that Trump's opponents were increasingly desperate to stop him as the primary season wore on. If Fusion GPS were peddling sensational information about Trump, why wouldn't one of those campaigns have used it? Beyond that, the non-Trump Republican campaigns talked to each other; there was no wall of silence between them. "Nobody ever brought this up," Roe told me, saying he finds the idea that a Republican found dirt on Trump and never used it or offered it to the campaigns is "total BS."

John Weaver, the veteran Republican operative who ran the John Kasich campaign, told me he was not aware of Fusion GPS at the time. "No one ever approached us, no one offered to help us. No one associated with the Kasich campaign had anything to do with it," Weaver said. He learned about the dossier when it was reported in the press, Weaver added.

Another high-ranking campaign operative, who did not want to be identified, said, "I never heard anything about it. You'd occasionally hear whispers of another campaign looking at some particular [Trump] business deal, little nuggets here or there. But I never heard anything about this. Never."

Apart from the campaigns, there were Republican operatives who took part in an ad hoc anti-Trump effort that ramped up after the departures of Bush and Rubio left the race to Trump, Cruz and Kasich. One person deeply involved in the effort told me, "I don't believe the dossier had anything to do with the Republican world because I would have known about it. There's no way I would not have known. I just never heard boo about it."

But what if they are all wrong? What if a Republican was in fact involved in the start of the dossier but kept the information away from the GOP campaigns that might have stopped Trump? I found one GOP NeverTrump operative, who also did not want to be named, to whom Glenn Simpson offered a story in late March 2016. The story, the operative told me, was an entirely conventional bit of oppo about Trump's business dealings nothing at all about Russia or anything related to that. The GOP operative had, and has today, no idea of who might have commissioned the research Simpson offered. But he's not aware of any Republicans who were involved, and he was quite familiar with rich, anti-Trump Republicans.

The whole episode was unremarkable, the person said, because the remaining campaigns and the anti-Trump movement received over-the-transom tips all the time. Trump did this, Trump did that. Very little of it ever panned out, and they had no sense of a big-money GOP effort behind it.

And even after the primary campaign ended with the withdrawal of Cruz and Kasich after the May 3 Indiana primary, the NeverTrump movement marched on in hopes of somehow denying Trump the nomination at the Republican National Convention. And yet the alleged Republican-sponsored Trump oppo did not surface in the days before the GOP met in Cleveland. "They would have wanted to drop it before that to mess with the convention," the operative said. But that did not happen.

Talking to the campaign operatives who were trying to defeat Trump in the primaries, there is a lingering sense of frustration at their inability to stop the front-runner. But that frustration turns to disbelief at the notion that some Republican, somewhere, was running an expensive, high-end opposition research operation on Trump and never told the opposing candidates about it.

"I just can't fathom that I wouldn't have heard beforehand," Terry Sullivan told me. "Go back to where we were all at in March, April, May, as a party the one unifying factor of everybody I knew was, 'Dear God, how are we going to stop this guy?' It would have come out."

"Jeff Roe called me frequently between when Marco dropped out and Cruz dropped out," Sullivan continued. "If somebody had it, why wouldn't they have used it? Somebody had that information, but didn't want to give it to the last two people who had a chance to stop Trump? It would blow my mind that they had anything that they didn't use."

So what is the bottom line? It's possible the it-started-with-Republicans conventional wisdom is just wrong. Or it's possible there was a rogue Republican zillionaire who wanted to commission an extensive opposition research operation on Trump but not actually use the results of that research in the effort to stop Trump. Or it's possible there was a zillionaire who characterized himself as a Republican but had never been a part of any GOP circles that the veteran political operatives who ran the Cruz, Rubio, Bush, and other Republican campaigns would recognize. Whatever the case, the conventional wisdom about the origin of the Trump dossier does not tell the whole story.

See more here:
Byron York: Republicans skeptical about origin of Trump dossier - Washington Examiner

Kevin DrumAug. 23, 2017 6:46 PM

Republicans are in a bind. They want to pass a tax bill, but (a) they dont want to pay for it and (b) they want it to be permanent. Sadly, a combination of PAYGO and reconciliation rules prevent this. What to do? One option is to design a bill that would get some Democratic support, and then pass a deficit-busting bill with 60 votes in the Senate. However, Republicans have no interest in working with Democrats, especially since Democrats would insist on a bill that doesnt benefit the rich. Thats a nonstarter.

So theyre back to square one. Bloomberg reports on their latest brainstorm for sidestepping the rules:

Under the proposal, the GOP would not account for things like expiring tax breaks when gauging the budgetary impact of tax legislation giving tax writers more room for cuts. Senate budget and tax panels are discussing the move to a current policy baseline instead of the standard current law baseline said the people who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. The chief House tax writer, Kevin Brady, also signaled openness to the approach last month, saying it would lead to deeper tax cuts.

If youre even close to normal, youre thinking, WTF does that mean? Thats what Im thinking anyway. But a couple of charts will help us work our way through this. Lets suppose we have a tax break of five quatloos that expires halfway through the next decade. Starting in 2023, instead of saving five quatloos, you have to pay five quatloos. It looks like this:

If Republicans decide to extend the tax break, it will increase the deficit by 50 quatloos (5 years x 10 quatloos) compared to current law. This is, quite sensibly, how CBO scores things.

But wait! Suppose Republicans declare that their intention has always been to extend the tax break. In other words, current policy is that the tax break goes on forever. Then it looks like this:

The cost of extending the tax break is zero! Republicans are basically saying that since they planned to do this all along, it shouldnt count against the baseline.

But heres what I dont get. This is obviously a fantasy, and its one that CBO will never go along with. In the real world, extending a tax break thats scheduled to expire does indeed increase the deficit. So to do this, Republicans would have to overrule the CBOs score of their bill.

But if theyre this determined to do what they want to do, why not cut the crap and simply instruct the Budget Committee to declare that their bill has no effect on the deficit? It doesnt really matter how. Just assume enormous economic growth or something. The Budget Committee has final say over the score, so they can ignore CBO if they want. Whats the point of all this absurd rigamarole?

More here from CBPP if youre interested.

Or, as Donald Trump put it last night, Its a trick.

Mother Jones is a nonprofit, and stories like this are made possible by readers like you. Donate or subscribe to help fund independent journalism.

Continued here:
Republicans Mulling Plan to Hide the Quatloos - Mother Jones