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What was previously merely obvious has now become downright undeniable: the right to have an abortion is the most potent political issue around right now. When women's reproductive rights are on the ballot, it is a winning issue. Every time. This is going to help Democrats and continue to hurt Republicans for as long as women's rights are not universally protected in every state in the Union.
And then there were six... or five, really. The Republicans just announced who will be allowed on their debate stage tomorrow night, and they have once again winnowed their field. This time around, only six presidential candidates made the cut: Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Chris Christie, and Tim Scott. However, Trump has already said he's not going to show up, which will leave only five on the debate stage. Asa Hutchinson did not qualify for his second straight debate (making me wonder why he's still in the race), and this time around Doug Burgum also got shut out (which he is not happy about). Mike Pence completely took himself out of the running last week, so the debate field has shrunk down to manageable proportions. Each candidate should get a decent amount of speaking time with only five of them on the stage, to put this slightly differently. And the moderators won't have to waste time on the longest-of-the-longshots.
This week is going to be chock full of big political stories, including Donald Trump testifying in his fraud trial in New York today and the third Republican debate on Wednesday. But today I thought it was worth taking a look at the other big political story of the week, since tomorrow's elections have several interesting possibilities that could reverberate beyond the borders of the states where they are held. Three states in particular are going to be impactful, no matter what the outcomes may be: Mississippi, Virginia, and Ohio.
Republicans are in disarray. Let's start with that this week, shall we?
This week in the Senate, Republicans spent five whole hours ripping into one of their own. A group of GOP senators tried to force the hand of Senator Tommy Tuberville over his petulant hold on fast-tracking all military promotions, but to no avail.
The House, meanwhile, voted for an Israel military aid bill that is going nowhere in the Senate because (among other reasons) Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is diametrically opposed to the strategy.
The House also took the time to vote down a censure of a Democrat that drew Marjorie Taylor Greene's wrath, but also voted to let George Santos keep his seat. On both votes, there were significant numbers of Republicans crossing the aisle to vote with the Democrats.
Mike Pence surprised everyone this weekend, when he abruptly announced he was ending his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination during a speech Pence gave in Las Vegas. The surprise wasn't that Pence's presidential ambitions were doomed -- anyone with half a brain could see that from the get-go -- but that Pence had actually realized it himself, this early in the process. Personally, I knew from the day he announced that Mike Pence was never going to win the Republican nomination -- not even if Donald Trump had suddenly decided not to run. Even without Trump in the race, Pence would still have been doomed. His flavor of Republicanism is a thing of the past, he has an incredibly bland and smarmy personality (he really deserves to have Trump hit him for being "sanctimonious," much more than Ron DeSantis), and he enraged the MAGA crowd by not following the Dear Leader's order to somehow wave a magic wand and overturn the results of the 2020 election on January 6th. Add all of that up and it equals a big defeat from the Republican voting base, plain and simple. So watching the coverage of the development on yesterday's morning political-chatfest shows wasn't any real surprise (other than the early timing of it). What was a surprise (for me, at least) this Sunday morning was to see Arnold Schwarzenegger being interviewed (for some unfathomable reason) on NBC's Meet The Press.
After three weeks of junior-high-school levels of adolescent slap-fighting, Republicans in the House of Representatives finally (!) chose a speaker. Was this largely due to fatigue at how tawdry the whole clown show was, or was it the fear that some moderate members were actually considering working with Democrats to come up with a solution? We'll never know, but we certainly are glad it's over. For now, that is. The rule on the "motion to vacate" hasn't changed, so while Speaker Mike Johnson seems to be enjoying something of a honeymoon period with even the furthest-right of his caucus, things could always go south for him, since all it would take would be five disgruntled Republicans to kick him out too. And disgruntled is what MAGA extremists do best, so we'll have to see whether this comes to pass or not in the weeks ahead.
There are plenty of metaphors to choose from when describing what newly-anointed Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is now going to have to face: a Gordian knot, threading a needle, walking a tightrope, squaring a circle, and the ever-popular herding of cats. Whatever image you choose, it all boils down to a near-impossible task -- perhaps with one very narrow solution, perhaps not. That's what Johnson now faces, with his boisterous House Republicans. The past three weeks of clown show hasn't changed the basic dynamic of this situation.
Today, Republicans crossed the Jordan. That would be Jim Jordan, and enough of them crossed him in a third House speaker vote that the party as a whole has now completely crossed him off the list. Jordan is no longer the Republican "speaker-designee," instead he's just "Representative Jordan" again. And yet the Republicans are still nowhere near their Promised Land (to complete that metaphor) -- they're still out there somewhere, wandering in the wilderness.
Where do House Republicans go next? They don't have a clue. They'll think about it over the weekend and then get back together Monday night to hold another closed-door meeting to nominate another poor sap to try to become speaker. Maybe it'll be one of the previous selections? Kevin McCarthy or Steve Scalise certainly don't seem far-fetched, at least at this point. But it could be someone new as well. Lots of people could run, who knows?
Once again, Jim Jordan's hopes of becoming speaker of the House of Representatives went down in flames today. In the final tally, Jordan flipped two Republicans from opposing him to supporting him and he also picked up a third vote from someone who was absent yesterday... but Jordan also lost four Republicans who flipped from supporting him to voting for someone else. Instead of 200 votes for Jordan and 20 Republican votes against, that adds up to 199 votes for Jordan and 22 GOP votes against. Or to put it more simply: Jordan is going backwards.
Since today is kind of a waiting game in Washington, as pundits ponder whether Representative Jim Jordan can strongarm enough of his fellow House Republicans into voting for him for speaker or not (the vote will be held tomorrow), I thought it was a good day to check in with the state of the Republican presidential nomination race.
Or, to be strictly accurate, the race for second place on the Republican side. Donald Trump continues to absolutely dominate the field, as even his daily rolling average in national polling is approaching 60 percent. His closest competitor trails him by a whopping 45 points. That is not a race, that is a coronation. But operating on the principle of "Who knows what could happen?" it is still worth taking a look at how the others are doing, because there have been a few developments in the race for second.