Will Saletan: Gelded by the Nutcase Caucus

Happy Monday, and welcome to the Bulwark podcast. I am Charlie Sykes joined by my colleague Will Salitan. Happy Monday, Will. Thank you, Charlie, and it is a happy Monday. It has been so long.

I feel like it there’s so much that has happened since we’ve done this podcast. Certainly, it’s a lot to It’s happened since you and I did the podcast last Monday. So what was the most surprising thing that happened the last seven days? Okay. Go.

The election turned out better than I expected. Back again. So look, Charlie, I am I am a weird person. I am an optimist. As you know, I’m a Pollyanna.

I always think things will

change. I’m a pony better

than they actually will. And this is the first election I can remember where I way, way underestimated how things would go. So I am discovering what it is like to be, I guess, like you, to be a pessimist and to be pleasantly surprised. I I am just baffled by this universe we’re living in in which Democrats did much better than the in the election than I expect. So

what was this election about? I mean, I I’m I’m making a short list of of things that I think a pretty clear rejection of extremism, rejection of election denialism. It was also about abortion. It was also about Donald Trump. Ultimately, voters were pissed off about inflation.

They’re concerned about a lot of things, crime. But when it came right down to it, they decided they were more scared of Republicans, weren’t that?

Yeah. I I do not have a simple answer for you except I think that there were a cut some negative forces interacting here. And I think that if there was, like, one layer that the Republican party, that the Republican leadership understood, which was that voters were unhappy with the conditions of the economy, with the direction of the country was going in with some Biden policies. And so that was real. That actually happened.

And then there was this other layer of, we don’t like that stuff, but we don’t like these crazy people on the right either, and we’re not gonna vote for them. Or enough people decided they weren’t gonna vote for them. And I think that second layer is what’s baffling to the Republican party as is trying to sort out what happened in this election, but I think that accounts for the difference. They’re gonna be doing a lot of sorting out for some time because it’s

very clear that they haven’t really figured out what happened. And so They’re engaging in most political parties engage in after they’ve had a surprising loss, which is finger pointing, blamecasting, excuse making. I had some hot takes this morning. We can come back to them maybe a little bit later, but my hot takes to start off your week. I think whatever happens with the house and I think it looks like the Republicans are gonna, you know, hope will take control by, you know, one, two, three, four seats.

Whatever happens, last Tuesday destroyed Kevin McCarthy. I mean, it’s just a matter of playing it out. If they if they win, assuming that they win, it’s gonna be a narrow functional majority. So he’s either going to be defeated or humiliated. And whichever option he chooses, he’ll do it in the most dishonorable way possible.

It’s hard for me to see how Kevin McCarthy achieves his dream of being a speaker who actually still has his test intact. Maybe that wasn’t his dream, but I just I just don’t see how it happens.

I agree with you. I don’t think there is a scenario in which Kevin McCarthy controls the House of Representatives.

Right? Right.

Even numbers. Yeah. So so totally agree with you there. And it’s almost like I mean, I’m sorry for the rest of us. But for Kevin McCarthy, if God looked down on Kevin McCarthy and said, what is the worst thing I can do with this guy?

It is I’m gonna give him his wish that he’s always wanted of having the official power over the House of Representatives. He’ll get the calls pulled off speaker. And I’ll make it hell for him. I’ll make it absolute torture every day because, in fact, Marjorie Taylor Green and Matt Gates and those types will actually be running the house. Yeah.

I mean, he’s going to be gelled by the nutcase caucus. And and and until the point where he draws a line, if he ever does draw a line, in which case he’s going to be declared a cock and and and tossed out. At the same time, one of my other hot takes I’m kinda just throwing these up against the wall at the moment is that Donald Trump is once again destroying the Republican bench. It really strikes me looking at the results of last week, how strong suddenly the Democratic bench looks, whether you’re talking about, you know, Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan mayor, Pete, obviously, has been around, you know, the new governor of Maryland, Westmore, Josh Spiro from Pennsylvania, Jared Polis. From Colorado.

The Democrats have a kind of a robust next generation base. At the same time, one of the things that Trump is doing is he’s destroying his own party’s bench in two ways. One, by overtly going out, and I’m gonna destroy Rhonda Sanders. I’m gonna destroy Glenn Youngkin. And number two though, saying if I don’t destroy you, you’re going to have to, you know, bend over and, you know, kiss the ring and embrace these electorally fatal election lies and extremist policies as as the price of of his favor.

So he really is just hanging on this party and we can talk about, you know, whether he’s going anywhere. But in in terms of the benches, I think this was one of the problems the Democrats said they didn’t have a bench. I think they have a bench right now. And I’m having a hard time seeing the Republican bench out there at the moment. What do you think?

I agree with that, and there I think there’s some structural reason for

it. Let me say first of all, this whole thing where Trump goes after tries to destroy any Republican who could be a read to him who might emerge as a as a future star, i e, you know, the bench, the higher level of the bench. This just reminds me so much of a Greek myth. So is it chronos who eats his children. I can’t remember.

Yeah. I think so. But anyway, the the prototype, the myth, is the guy who, like, kills his children. Eat his children, whatever. And then the the the mother has to somehow save the children from him.

But the I think I don’t I I need to get some Greek mythology lessons, but if you are one of the surviving offspring, if you don’t get eat, you need to kill this guy before he kills all of the other kids. Right? So desantis or somebody else somehow needs to emerge to stop Trump from doing this or somehow there has to be some gang attack. Because I thoroughly agree Trump is a narcissist who he will

try to extinguish any threat to him from within the Republican party. So he doesn’t carry who he hurts. He’s basically saying, look, it’s either me or I burned down the house. I mean, that’s the a, you know, asymmetric threat. The Republican party can’t destroy Donald Trump, but Donald Trump can very easily destroy the party.

Yeah.

He’s there. Care

to do it. He’s not I don’t care who I attack what career I destroy. I don’t care what damage I cause because it’s all about me. And he’s taken the measure of Republicans and known that they have caved into that threat for the last six years. And he’s thinking, why should we expect them not to cave in again?

And I’m not sure he’s wrong.

Well, Republican cowardice is actually a huge lesson from this election, and it will determine the future that I’m reminded of with it Winston Sears, the lieutenant governor of Virginia, who said who said, you know, Trump, you know, he knew sort of needs to step aside. She says the true leader understands when he’s become a liability. Duh. And the fact that this guy doesn’t understand when he’s become a liability. Actually, as you’re pointing out, doesn’t care that he’s become a liability.

It tells you that he is not a true leader. Right? He is he is not someone who is trying to build a party, trying to build a movement, he’s trying to consume it, and make it somehow fuel his own his own ambitions. But but we should talk about what you just said about the cowardice of the party because I think that’s where

this party is going. Again, it’s also that calculation that he’s got thirty percent of the Republican base. And if he decides to take his ball and go go home, they’re screwed. And so, they’re in this position where they they’re now realizing after last Tuesday, they cannot win with him, but they also are afraid that they can’t win without him. And I’m sorry, you know, gonna restrain the sympathy here because this is the political prison of their own making.

I mean, how many decisions led up to this fact that, in many ways, they’re they’re stuck with him. Mitch McConnell and the Republicans and the Senate had multiple opportunities to rid themselves of this guy. They had all of these off ramps. They didn’t take it. And they always rationalized each kind of, you know, humoring a rationalization.

And now they’re looking around going, this guy is a electoral freaking poison.

And yet we have made ourselves hostage to him. Yeah. They did make a calculation. So let’s go back to after January six. So they’re get they’re presented with this opportunity and the impeachment to to get rid of Trump.

To make at least make it impossible for him to be presidents again. But they he’s still controlled the base or as you’re pointing out, a section of the base. Right? And so they were essentially hostage to him. And the the logic that a lot of Republicans, Republican leaders elected Republicans, expressed at that time about standing by Trump was that they couldn’t win without him.

They could not win without him. And not enough attention was paid to the other side of the question, could they win with him? And so we’re beginning to send a message through subsequent cycles, subsequent elections, you can’t win with this guy. And honestly, Charlie, when you’re dealing with cowards, that is the only way to get it through to them. They’re only thinking about themselves So you have to make it a losing proposition for them to stand by the authoritarian.

Okay. So

let’s go through some of the audio from from the weekend. We are now getting the first glimpses of Mike Pence’s new book. He rolled it out in an exclusive interview on ABC. And I wanna play a clip and and just so people don’t think that their device is malfunctioning. I think the most extraordinary thing about this clip is the pause.

I I think it goes on for ten seconds after Mike Pence has asked a pretty good question by ABC’s David Mueller. Let’s play it. In

the middle of it all, you can see that the president has

tweeted. Two

twenty four PM, the president tweets Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been

done. And Pence just sits there. Pause.

It angered

me.

But I

turned to my daughter who was standing

nearby. And

I said, it doesn’t take courage to break the

law. Takes courage to uphold the law. I mean,

the president’s words were reckless.

It was

clear he decided to be part of the problem.

Okay. Well,

that was that’s quite a moment to do with the forward vice president just sits there ever. Ten seconds says nothing. Where he’s calculating, do I finally just say, yeah, I was angry about that? The guy, you know, put my my life at risk, my family’s life at risk. Okay.

He he is saying these things, I wish he would have said it earlier, wish he would have said it on the road to the

January sixth committee, but Pence is, like, working through some stuff, isn’t it? He is. I don’t know what kind of therapy that you’re supposed to go into when your boss tries to have you killed. But he’s clearly been in it. And I’m glad he’s working his way through it.

I do think that in addition to the pause, there are two really salient things that he said there. One is he used the phrase, break the law. Right? He says to us, he said, I he told his daughter, it doesn’t take courage to to break the law. Is he just talking about the crowd there?

Because the context was what Trump tweeted. Right? He was not asked about the crowd. He was asked about Trump, and he talked about breaking the law. So Let’s just pencil that first as a a a tenth that he understands that Trump broke the law.

The other thing is he used the word decided. He said that Trump decided to be part of the problem. Now the problem, as Mueller is pointing out, is a physical violent assault on the capital of the United States. And if there’s one thing that the January sixth committee established beyond any question, it is that during the attack, Trump was told what was going on. He was watching what was going on, and he refused to intervene.

That is a deliberate decision. And when Pence uses the word decided. He is affirming that this was not Trump, just not knowing what was going on, not Trump looking the other way. It was Trump making an affirmative decision to do something that as Pence himself says broke the law. Well,

it’s interesting, you know, in the last week, you know, watch reaching the number of conservatives and Republicans who’ve been willing to distance themselves from Trump. Of course, should we have the Murdoch newspapers? Or we have, you know, some of the folks on on Fox News beginning to push back this sense of, yes, time to, you know, turn the page. Look, none of this has anything to do with principal or conscience or revival of courage. It’s just the the way that an electoral defeat and the prospect of losing power can marvelously focus the mind.

Right? Well, So I guess I guess the question is whether this makes a difference. Let’s play a little bit more of the sound. This is outgoing Maryland republican governor Larry Hogan who has been pretty consistent Trump critic talking about three strikes in your mouth that maybe this is the one hundred and eighty sixth opportunity for Republicans to break away from Donald Trump. Let’s play that.

I think it’s it’s basically the third election in a row that Donald

Trump has cost us the rights. And it’s like, you know, three strikes you’re out.

Well, do you think that’s true? Because we’ve

heard that

after one strike and two strikes, to keep your analogy going. Well, you

know, that definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. And Donald Trump. Yeah. He kept saying, again, we’re gonna be winning so much. We’ll get tired of winning.

I’m tired of losing. I mean, that’s all he’s done. And, of

course, there’s a lot of that out And again, we’ve seen this over and over again, haven’t we? I mean, they didn’t break with him after Charlottesville. They didn’t break with him after the insurrection. They didn’t break with him after Helsinki. And yet Hope Springs eternal.

Can can I just waddle in one particular moment here? Waddle away. Go

ahead.

Look. It feels redundant to, you know, comment on how juvenile in Maine and offensive Donald Trump is. But, you know, during his catch up splattering on the wall tantrum at Mar a Lago after he, you know, ranted, you know, his eighty six part attack on Rhonda Sandeys. He took a break to a lash out at Virginia governor, Glenn Youngkin, who apparently has been insufficiently deferential to him. I don’t know what he said to trigger this.

But he puts out a statement in which he says, Jungkim, sounds Chinese, doesn’t it? He’s a young kin. He breaks into it. Now that’s an interesting take. Sounds Chinese doesn’t it.

And then he took basically claims credit for getting him elected. Who writes shit like this? I mean, seriously. Yeah. What blown ass man says something in that juvenile and a name?

Who thinks that’s funny or clever? And yet it’s become kind of routine. And Larry Hogan was asked about this. Now Larry Hogan’s wife is Korean. So Dana bash on CNN yesterday asked Larry Hogan about this particular, you know, brilliant job from the former president.

Well, it was definitely distasteful and inappropriate, not only because I don’t think my friend Glenn Youngkin deserved to be attacked like that, but it was also I mean, it’s Asian hate against a a white governor, you know, and and making fun of Asians and he didn’t even have his nationalities right, because Young Kim would be Korean as opposed to Chinese, but it’s just more of the same from Donald Trump insults and attacks, and that’s one of the reasons why the party’s in such bad shape. Is

it racist? It

is racist.

Well, you know why Hogan said it was racist, Will? Why? Because it was. It’s so ridiculous. I mean, you know, part of the premise, I’m you you you focus on the stupid or or the racist.

But You know, the fact that there he is sitting there in brooding exile in Mar a Lago, and he goes, you know, Glenn Youngkin. What do I say about him? Youngkin. Sounds Chinese. I mean, this is the kind of thing the writers of Bemis and But Head would have thrown on on the on the floor because they thought it was too stupid.

Yeah,

obviously, it’s plural. This is this is a juvenile thing that Trump does, but it’s not just that. Right? As you’re pointing out, this is this is just outright racism. This is just outright bigotry.

This isn’t critical race theory. This isn’t some, like, debate about quotas and which way they cut and all that stuff. This is just using the ethnicity of people against them. Trump has done it to Mexican Americans. He did it to Gonzalo Curio, a federal judge, He’s gone after Muslims.

He’s gone after black people. He’s gone after Obama with, you know, he’s really a Kenyan. And this is the second time in the last what? Or two months that he’s done it to Asian Americans. Right?

He did that he went after Michelle McConnell’s wife, Helane Chao. Who was Donald Trump’s transportation secretary? Never mind that. Calling her cocoa chao, a China loving life. So this is a this is a total pattern with Donald Trump.

And the fact that we hear crickets crickets from the republican elite crickets from so called Republican leaders about this overt racism tells you about the depth of their cowardice, the depth of their indifference, and the danger that the Republican Party poses to every minority in this country if they will not stand up for you when this man goes after you. Well,

this is an interesting point. And I’ve commented on this a couple times on television. I mean, I was really struck in the weeks running up to the election. The way in which Republicans had really internalized the idea, it really convinced themselves that nothing mattered, that there would be absolutely no consequences for any any of this stuff. There would be no consequences for making a punch line about the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband.

No consequences for pushing big lies about elections or election denialism. No pushback against CocoCao or Trump’s any Semitic brand. Because they figured the wind was at our back. We’re going to win. So it doesn’t matter.

We will never be held accountable for all of this. And now there is this you can see that looking at each other going, shit. You know, that kind of extremist rhetoric came back in bitterness. That kind of stuff, you know, maybe suddenly their understanding that maybe the rules of politics that they thought had been repealed are are reasserting themselves. That gravity’s a thing.

You know what I mean? Just, you know, that that that that this stuff, they will pay

a price for this kind of stuff. Yeah. And and the Paul Pelosi episode, which was, what, two weeks ago, I can’t even remember. It’s not not that long ago. Also, you know, that that sort of drove home the unseriousness.

I mean, I can’t tell you how many people who I thought were reasonable people on the right. We’re just joking about a hammer attack that this is some secret gay lover thing. And none of I don’t see any retractions. And they seem to just sort of brush this off. I think there’s a sickness going around where people, some of these folks just can no longer tell the difference between something that is curious and something that is a joke.

So,

Chris Christie, who I look, I hold him significantly responsible for the rise of Donald Trump. I I still have it seared in my mind when he was standing behind Donald Trump and he was the first reasonably normal Republican to endorse him. So I have a I have a hard time coming around, and the notion that Chris Christie can run for president seems more than a little fanciful, but he was he was on ABC yesterday talking about Trump and making the case for why. Perhaps it’s time to

move on. He said we were gonna do so much winning that we would have asked them to stop winning. Well, in twenty eighteen, we lost the house. In twenty twenty, we lost the senate. In twenty twenty one, we lost two senate seats in Georgia that we should have won.

And in twenty twenty two, we poor performed under historic norms for what was going on in this country and for being the party out of power. That’s a lot of losing. And I think what Republicans came to grips with Tuesday night was we’re tired of losing and we’re tired of Donald Trump dragging us to lose because of his personal vanity. Yeah. And

this is the one thing that Donald Trump hates more than anything in the world, right, is to be called a loser. And can you imagine the meltdown if Cary Lake loses. That by the way is the thing that blew me away the most because everybody had already anointed her as the maggot queen and that she was running this fantastic campaign and, you know, she was gonna be Donald Trump running May. If she actually goes down in Arizona and that’s still a a a big gap, you know, that loser tag really starts to stick to to manga. And in particular, it’s just gotta grind his gears.

That whatever you think of Rhonda Santos, Rhonda Santos was a huge winner last week. I mean, he just he just ran up to school. So this contrast between Ron DeSantis huge winner and Donald Trump huge loser on the eve of his own presidential restoration announcement has got to burn. Yeah.

And and the loser thing is actually really really important. And and this is a distinction I want. I mean, you and I, I think, would agree and a lot of folks would agree with us, that it’s not like, we shouldn’t expect people to change. We shouldn’t expect Donald Trump to change who he is. He is who he is.

We shouldn’t expect Kevin McCarthy to change who he is. He is who he is. But but but McKeven McCarthy is not a fanatic. Right? Republican leadership, they’re not fanatics.

They’re cowards. And that is important. That is actually a world saving distinction because a fanatic will do crazy stuff on his own. And there there could be, you know, future episodes of election denial driven by fanaticsism. I think Carrie Lake might be a fanatic.

But the cowards who run the republican party, the national republican party, are doing what they’re doing. They have moved over to Donald Trump’s insanity. They have echoed his lies. They have gone along with his authoritarianism, not because they are crazy, but because they’re cowards and they’re cynics. So if you can show them through elections that Donald Trump is a loser and that he hurts them, their cowardice, and their cynicism will turn the other way.

They will turn against because all they care about is their party, their self preservation, their power. And therefore, that that is a way that we can get them out of the craziness. And I think, Charlie, that this election was the beginning or at least another maybe another step. Toward bringing them out of out of that insanity. Appealing to their cynicism.

Appealing to their cowardice. You will lose if you stay with Trump and his insanity. I

think that’s the only way that they will change course is to appeal to their lust for power and their cynicism. Okay. So anytime there is something like this, you go through the various stages of grieving, including denialism, and forming circular firing squads and a variety of other cliches that I could use here. Right now, you’re seeing much of Margo world trying to change the focus of this defeat from Trump to Mitch McConnell. That Mitch McConnell is the bad guy.

And by the way, I think Mitch McConnell doesn’t have a lot of other people to blame other than himself, given the fact that he had a chance to rid himself. Of Donald Trump and chose not to do it. There’s there’s certain ironies here. I mean, I don’t wanna get too deep into this, but in terms of who’s the most valuable player, of the midterm elections. I’d nominate Samuel Alito.

And so Mitch McConnell’s great legacy of flipping the US supreme court is also the reason why he may never be majority leader. So that’s ironic. But here’s Donald Trump’s immigration homunculus, Stephen Miller, on one of the show’s blaming all of this on Mitch McConnell, if only Mitch McConnell had sent more money to the deplorable Blake Mass in Arizona as opposed to Lisa Markowski in Alaska. Let’s play that. The extraordinarily faithful decision on the

part of the Senate Leadership Fund, Mitch McConnell, to take the money that should have been spent in Arizona to get Blake up on TV early on and instead give it to Lisa Murkowski for a Republican battle against the Republican backed nominee in Alaska. And if you want to find one state, with that extra six to nine million dollars would have been the difference maker. That’s it, Arizona. The disparity at the top of the ticket was crushing for our kids. Yes.

Yeah. He sounds unhappy.

I didn’t

even I

picked that up. It was just a little ho ho ho ho. He seemed a little stressed. So Rick Scott, Senator from Florida, real man of political genius, comes on after him and gives his critique of why he managed to crap the bed as the chairman of the Republican senate campaign committee. Listen to Rick Scott’s theory of the case.

The

public leadership caved in on the dead ceiling caved in on a gun bill, caved in on a fake infrastructure bill, and then did we make it difficult for our candidates We can’t we can’t do that. And we gotta tell and we gotta do exactly what Steven Miller said, give people something more hell bent on getting done and then fight for it. That’s what we do in Florida, by the way. I did what I was governor. That’s what’s been happened since I left.

That’s why we have big wins

in Florida because we stand for something. Okay. So I’m gonna give you this high log, Rick, as got saying, we weren’t extreme enough. Where do I begin with this guy?

I First of all, it’s comical. His job, as you’re pointing out, Rick Scott was the chairman of the NRS. It was his job to elect these people. The idea that he comes out and blames Mitch McConnell. Is is just a masterpiece of of lack of self awareness.

But in addition to this, it’s kind of a clever thing they’ve come up with where they nominated terrible candidates. That’s why they lost. You lose senate races. House races, you can sort of go with sort of a national flow. People are unhappy with the Democrats.

You can get a lot of your people elected anyway. And the senate race people actually look. They look, do I really want this guy? Do I really want Hershel Walker? Do I really want doctor Oz?

Do I really want Blake Masters? And a lot of people just decided, no, we don’t want that guy. That guy’s crazy. That guy’s extreme. And so Mitch McConnell was the guy who had to say, this candidate is losing because he’s too extreme.

So we’re gonna move the money somewhere where we can actually win. And then it’s genius, of course, for Steven Miller to come along later and say, the fact that you move the money is the reason why this guy lost. No, no, Blake Masters lost on his own because he was nuts, because he was an election denier, etcetera. So yeah, it’s it’s ridiculous. And there are Charlie, we could go into this.

There are a hundred reasons I’m sorry. There are a hundred reasons why Rick Scott. Is completely wrong in his new Jehad against Mitch McConnell. Okay. We won’t

go through all hundred of them. Okay? So because that would that would take some time. But, you know, I use the phrase. I I refer to the the right wing id.

You know, and and sometimes I’ll throw in the the entertainment wing of the Republican Party. But by focusing on the id, it’s where is the energy? Where is the center of gravity of the right? And the reason why it’s always important to identify that is because that is the direction that the party almost always goes. If you you find out what’s going on in the fever swamps, wait a couple of weeks or months, and that will be what Donald Trump will push, that will be what the conservative fire brands will grab onto.

And right now, as of Monday morning, the aid of the right wing is all about delaying the leadership vote in the senate to reelect Mitch McConnell. I kid you not. This is the This is where all of the passion and the outrage and the energy is going right now. And, of course, for people to understand, the perpetual outrage machine has to constantly be fed. It has to constantly, you know, feel under threat, constantly feeling betrayed.

That’s how you raise money that’s how you you generate energy. And so with the combination of Donald Trump’s attacks on Mitch McConnell and these other attacks on Mitch McConnell. This is where the right is, you know, pushing a red wedding in the Republican senate. So not only have the Republicans failed, in their bid to take over the senate, not only are they consigned to the minority again, they’re about to have a real blood letting and this is not gonna end anytime soon. I’m assuming, I don’t know whether you agree with me.

I’m assuming that Mitch McConnell survives, but a tremendous amount of Republican energy over the next year is gonna go into Republican on Republican attacks. Who is who is more extreme? Who’s more

loyal to Donald Trump? Who’s a cock? Zorhino, it’s gonna be ugly. Yeah, it is. And and for people who are looking at this, what’s gonna be a fight, but probably between McConnell and Rick Scott?

I mean, that’s been going on for a while, but now will be in the form of a Senate leadership election. Here’s here’s what how I understand it. Basically Mitch McConnell is right, and Rick Scott is wrong. Rick Scott’s diagnosis of the election, setting aside the fact that he screwed up as chairman of the NRSC, is he’s he’s claiming that Republicans needed more of an affirmative plan. Mitch McConnell played a cynical game.

He said, look, we’re the out party. We’re just not gonna talk about what we would do, let voters be expressed their unhappiness with Biden and the democrats, get our people elected, and then we’ll go to work. But don’t give them a target to shoot at. Don’t give the other side of target. Rick Scott’s idea was no, let’s give them a target.

Rick Scott put out a plan and part of his plan was we’re gonna sunset We’re gonna sunset Social Security in Medicare. We’re gonna make the congress vote on it all the time and whether and which Democrats proceeded to attack. Rick Scott during the election provided a target for democrats. So he was wrong about that. And now in his post election diagnosis, Rick Scott is saying is you’re pointing out, we should be hell bent on, you know, just declare a bunch of stuff we’re gonna do and, you know, what is the base one?

We’re gonna fight them on the debt ceiling. We’re gonna fight them everywhere. And Rick Scott’s thinking here is representative of this disease in the Republican Party. They don’t pay attention to the negative side of the ledger. They don’t pay attention to who they’re alienating.

They’re only talking about who they’re motivating on the right. But what happened in the election was Republicans had alienated a lot of people in the middle. Mitch McConnell understands this. It’s why if Republicans are saying they’ll keep McConnell as the majority leader. But Rick Scott is determined to sort of go down fighting over it.

Yeah. And again, it’s it’s going to be it’s going to be ugly and divided and And yet, waiting in the wings, of course, is the former president. I think that there was some vague hope for about five minutes that that Donald Trump would not actually announce his candidacy tomorrow that he might wait until after the runoffs in Georgia. There seems to be Well, what do you think? I mean, does Trump go ahead and announce tomorrow?

Well, Trump will do, of course, what is good

for Trump? I I think that Trump will wait a little bit. I think Trump will wait as late as he can and he will go right before he thinks somebody else might be about to announce Well, you don’t think he’s gonna announce tomorrow night. I don’t think so. Don’t think so.

I think it’s a bad environment for him to do it, but I he’s, you know, we’ll see. Tim O’Brien, who knows Trump as well as anybody agrees with you, doesn’t think he’s gonna go ahead with it?

I am inclined to think that he will. Because right now he desperately desperately needs to change the narrative. That’s number one. He does really needs to reassert his dominance of the Republican Party. And at this point, not announcing tomorrow night looks like weakness.

So he is going to lean into all of this. He’s going to lean into this because he knows that every day that he doesn’t, the chances are that he’s going to be tagged with loser and we know the extent the links to which this man is prepared to go not to be considered a loser. So I think he’s going to do it. I think he’s going to jump in. And I think it’s going to be a mess.

It’s gonna be a mess for all of the Republicans. Because right now that we’re in one of those strange windows where Republicans wanna move on with them. I don’t know how long that’s gonna last. But you’re right about the environment. I mean, objectively speaking, this is a terrible time for him to jump in.

And yet, he needs to join this chorus that says, You see, I wasn’t on the ballot. You lost. You need me to be on the ballot, and it’s these other Rhino ducks the establishment and we need to replace them. So I think what he’s gonna do is he’s going to try to, you know, reproduce that two thousand fifteen, two thousand sixteen I’m the insurgent. I’m the outsider.

I’m the guy who’s gonna burn it all down and hope to be able to capture that again and hope that the same people who came last time will cave again this time. I think he’s in tomorrow. You

make a good argument. Any theory based on Trump’s ego is a good theory. And the idea the idea that he already said he would do it. And if he waits, it looks bad. That’s a good point.

However, from Trump’s point of view, it’s not crucial that he announced that he’s running for president. What’s crucial, if you understand Trump, is that he belittle attack, tear down any potential rivals. So I think that — Yeah. — when Trump goes after DeSantis, goes after Yonkin and these other folks, that is in effect the Trump campaign. Trump is determined to so, I mean, what you have to understand about Trump is he’s remember, he’s not interested in building anything, and he doesn’t actually have to win the general election, although that’s the goal.

What he really needs to do is to control the people around him, to control a political party or a faction. So if he can maintain his dominance of the Republican Party, and he can perhaps do so just by tearing down the littling, you know, DeSantis and the others, That’s what he will do rather than particularly announce a presidential campaign. But, Charlie, as we’re discussing from the results of the election, Ron DeSantis has a better case than Donald Trump, and I’m just not convinced that Trump anymore has the ammo to fight off a DeSantis.

Well, you know, something did happen over the weekend. And again, ticket for what it’s worth, you had the UGov survey finding that desantis is now in the lead among Republican or Republican leaning voters. I mean, there had to be another catch up on the wall a moment down in Mar a Lago. Where DeSantis is now leading Trump by seven points. I think the last survey he was behind by seven points.

Look, I still think that you know, Trump is a dominant figure. But Rhonda Sanders has something that none of Trump’s rivals in twenty fifteen had. He has real cred with the Republican Magdebase. So it becomes more difficult. For Trump to attack him.

You know, Trump has figured I can destroy anybody. I just come up with a nickname or something. I go after him and and and they’re gone. It is interesting that I think that the DeSantis is gonna have a little bit more stickiness, and I’m just this is I’m I’m not praising anyone. I’m just, you know, walking you through.

And the fact that he won by such a big margin in the midst of all of these other failures makes that case pretty hard not to consider if you’re in the donor class, the professional class, the

consultant class, the lobbyist class of the Republican Party. Yeah, I think that’s true. And and can we talk here on this point about the difference between Youngkin and DeSantis? Because I think that’s kind of relevant. Youngkin is was more of a sunny guy.

I mean, he’s he’s he’s got he’s playing to some of the culture war issues, but he’s doing it in a suburban kind of way. Desantis has something that Trump does, which is the anti woke liberal tears. Thing. He really likes sticks it to the lips. He really revels in it.

And he makes a lot of right wing people feel like DeSantis standing up for them in their war to to, you know, celebrate the pain of the left. And so I feel like when what what the scientists is doing captures that thing, which is crucial to a lot of Trump supporters in a way that Youngkin doesn’t. And it may be enough to get enough of the party to go with the Sandoz against Trump. Okay.

Can I share

with you some wonky numbers? Because I know you’re kind of a wonky guy. Go for it. I actually mentioned this on morning, Joe, this morning. I was gonna write it up, but then I figured, you know, time we we’ve we’ve we’ve moved we’ve moved on.

I’m looking at the Trump effect in Wisconsin, which was is so dramatic, especially with the reelection of our very boring, very non charismatic, Democratic incumbent. By the way, that’s not a criticism. That’s a sign of how remarkable it is. Tony Evers one reelection over a Trump backed election denier by more than ninety thousand votes, which in recent political history is a landslide. And he did so despite very disappointing turnout from the Democratic stronghold of Milwaukee.

What he did was he turned the Madison area, Dane County, into this massive dynamo of of voting. And he really has cut into Republican margins in the suburbs. So this ongoing erosion in Milwaukee’s suburbs of Republican’s port to begin with Donald Trump is continuing. So it it is it is remarkable. So for example, I I promised it was gonna be wonky.

Right? So, Dane County is Madison, Wisconsin. It’s it’s probably the most liberal county in the state. Tony Evers, the Democrat. Comes out

of this

one county with a one hundred and seventy four thousand vote margin. Okay? Mhmm. That is his margin is greater than the total vote cast in the two thousand two gubernatorial campaign. Wow.

The entire vote for governor was a hundred and seventy two thousand votes back in two thousand two. Now Democrats are coming out with a margin of over a hundred and seventy four thousand in one county. Okay. One more set of numbers. So Tony Evers wins my ninety thousand votes by turning out a massive Democratic vote, except in Milwaukee County, cutting into Republican margins in the suburbs.

And he actually got twenty four thousand more votes than Ron Johnson who was reelected — Mhmm. — which means that if Mandela Barnes or any other Democratic senate candidate had gotten the same amount of votes that Tony Evers got. They would have won. They would have all been elected to the senate. So the Democrats did their job at the top of the ticket.

In fact, however, Mandela Barnes got fifty one thousand votes fewer than Tony Evers. I’m just throwing that out there. Mhmm. Because a lot depends on hey. So in terms of number crunching, you did a really great deep dive for the bulwark over the weekend.

On the question of what was the Dobbs effect in this election? And what was your conclusion? How important was abortion? In the outcome of the twenty twenty two midterms? Well, it was decisive.

It was decisive in a lot of elections. And, you know, it wasn’t just one. It wasn’t just the network exit poll. It was the AP vote cast. These are massive, massive surveys of the electorate, enough that you have a sample in every state, plus, you know, you pull it all nationally.

And it drove up the intensity. So it did two things, Charlie. It persuaded some people, a lot of people who would might ordinarily vote Republican, people in sort of in the middle of the political spectrum to to vote Democrat they voted for you know, John Federman instead of Maimonides, for example, they voted for Kelly instead of Masters. And they so it changed some votes on the margins, but it also, Charlie, it brought out people to the polls. So the big problem Democrats had, the big problem you have in the midterms, you’re the in party, your president’s in power, people are unhappy with your president.

You’re just not gonna turn out. The other side’s angry they’re gonna show up. And what Dobbs did was the polling showed that a lot of people who voted in the election said that they did rather than not vote at all rather than not show up because of this issue. Now let me just back up and say, if you are pro life and you believe that every abortion is the taking of human life and this has to be stopped. You’re you’re willing to say, okay, that is the political consequence of overturning Roe v Wade.

We did the right thing morally, you know, and every baby we can save as Alright. I respect that as a that’s a moral point of view, but I’m just saying it’s a political fact. It is incontrovertible from the evidence in this election. That Dobbs provoked a big backlash and it cost Republicans a lot of seats seats in the house, seats in the senate, governorships.

Well, I agree with you on that analysis. So here’s the next big question is, where does that go? What does that mean for twenty twenty four? How can Republicans scrape

that off the bottom of their shoes? I don’t think they have a great answer to this. They’ve got to figure out how to keep their base motivated the people who are pro life and, you know, want them to sort of, you know, look at Lindsey Graham, who had a used to have a twenty week ban on abortion federally. It was his bill. Any the the pro lifers come to him and say, hey, can we move it up?

So now it’s at fifteen. Over the next decade, if they get a fifteen week national ban. Anybody think they’re gonna stop at fifteen? Okay. But, yeah, here’s the most interesting question because Lindsey Graham felt that he was bailing out

Republicans with this. Right? Because the fifteen week ban is more reasonable than other bands than the, you know, absolute bands, the six week bands, etcetera. Right? He figured fifteen week week band pulls much better, it will make us look much extreme.

My sense is that backfired very bad. Because it put this national ban on the agenda. Right? So for for Republicans who are internally saying you know, the magic bullet is gonna be fifteen weeks with exception. That’s how we get ourselves out of this corner.

Well, the Lindsay Graham

Gambit didn’t work. No. It it didn’t. It it did a couple of things. Yeah.

Grand thought it was reasonable. And all my pro life friends were angry when I wrote about this because they said, hey, fifth. He’s not banning abortion. He’s just setting a reasonable national limit, and then states can debate beyond that. Right.

But when when you nationalize this issue, it pisses people off. And it pisses people off in part because the whole, you know, spin around the Dobbs decision was we’re sending this back to the people. States can make their own laws. And then for the pro lifers to come along after dogs and say, you know what? In addition to that, we’re going to pass a federal law that tells your state what its abortion limit has to be.

That pissed a lot of people off and it signaled that a bigger threat was coming. And in addition to that, Charlie, it’s just Anytime you come out with an affirmative push on an issue that’s hot button that pisses people off, you are courting trouble. And There were a lot Mitch McConnell did not wanna touch this issue. Again, Mitch McConnell was like, we’re gonna win this election, sit back, don’t give the enemy a target. Along came Lindsay Graham, and he provided in this fifteen week national limit an enormous target for the other side to shoot at.

And it hurt

Republicans. And I

think it’s gonna continue to hurt Republicans unless they can figure out what to do because obviously this will be a crucial issue in the presidential election in twenty twenty four and we have no idea really what Donald Trump is is going to say. We we just I mean, we don’t. I mean, he’ll you know, he can make it up on the spot. I certainly remember when he was here in Milwaukee back in twenty sixteen. And Chris Matthews asked him as well.

So should, you know, women in abortion, should they go to jail? And in the answer, well, yes, there has to be consequences. And the thing was you could tell looking at his face that he hadn’t given five seconds thought to it at all. He just sort of was going through what he thought a pro lifer would say. And I’m not sure that he’s given that much thought even since then.

What are you keeping an eye on this week? Will, this is a rather extraordinary week. A lot is gonna be going on. We have a summit in in Asia. President Biden talking to president Xi.

We haven’t, you know, apparently the cold war is has not been cold off. Calda. We have these leadership elections. We’ll find out exactly who controls the House of Representatives. Mhmm.

If the NBC projection is correct. And I don’t

know that it is. And the

Democrats have two sixteen, and the Republicans have two nineteen. Leaving aside all the would have could have should is, all the things, you know, the races that were closed that could have gone a different way. How do you even come close to running a house of representatives with two hundred and nineteen votes. When two hundred and eighteen is the majority, how do you even do that? Votes, you

know, among the it’s gonna be crazy. First of all, Charlie, you know, there are special elections that are gonna come up, and they’re gonna potentially flip the house during

the cycle. I was thinking about that. Yeah. Somebody gets COVID. Somebody gets hit by a car.

Think about it. I mean, things happen. People get indicted. They they resign, they get jobs, they die. And if it’s a one vote margin, it could be like

Yeah. So can I throw out an optimistic scenario here? I am willing to entertain that today. Because I feel like I have not produced my pony today. And so here here’s my my proposed pony.

There is gonna have to be hopefully, there will be some kind of coalition on certain issues. Between the same Republicans and the same Democrats. I’m thinking of Ukraine at the moment. Right? Yes.

So there is there’s clearly a two hundred if if Republicans have two hundred nineteen or two hundred and twenty seats in the house, there is a hardcore pro Russia anti Ukraine anti NATO sub sub caucasus on the Republican side that in effect could throw the house and they’ll have power over McCarthy. I think McCarthy is a coward, but he is not crazy on Ukraine. And and it is possible that a coalition of Republicans who are serious about standing up to Putin and Democrats who are obviously more serious about standing up to Putin can put together a majority. It is not obviously a partisan majority, and it’s very tricky to see how this works, but it’s going to be very important over the next year for those two factions to work together. They are a majority of the house, but

they’re not in the same party. That’s gonna be really difficult. Well, especially if McCarthy keeps the Hastur rule, the Hastur rule basically is that nothing comes up for a vote unless a majority of the Republican caucus favors it. So it means that you can have really strong minority leadership. You have basically, you know, one quarter of the house having a veto power over the entire house.

I think that would be unwise of him to do, but I don’t know that he has any choice. I mean, look,

if if

you have one or two majority, then think about it. Paul Gossar, Lauren Bobbert, and Marjorie Taylor greenhouse, who made Lauren Bobbert actually survived. They walk into his office, and they say, you have to do x y and z. And And he has to do x, y, and z, doesn’t he? I agree with you.

I

think what you just said about the hashtag rule is exactly on point. Yet, we cannot they will not be able to govern this way. If they try it will be a disaster and all they will be the only issues they’ll be able to focus on are basically messaging issues, sticking it to the lips, any kind of government will be impossible. So In order to get anything done, the Republicans will have to work with some Democrats. Now there’s no guarantee they go down that road.

Maybe they say we’re not gonna get anything done. But if they’re gonna get anything done, this is the way they’re gonna have to do it. I guess I’ll take that. I mean, I will take that scenario, that possibility. I think that is a hopeful way to look at the results of this

election. Okay. I think we should stop on that hopeful note. I actually agree with you. I think that the the fate of Ukraine was one of the key issues in this campaign.

I don’t know how many people voted on it. It was really top of my mind what it would mean to the future of cranen of of democracy if the Republicans took control of congress. And I think that the as Kathy Young wrote in the bulwark, I think the prospects of a cut off have been, you know, stanceually reduced as a result of that. So next week, we’ll talk about the United States Senate, what it means for Democrats to control the Senate whether or not having fifty one votes is a really really big deal. Fifty one votes as opposed to fifty votes in the Georgia runoff of We’ll save that for next week.

Okay? Well, alright, Charlie. See you then. The Bowler podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio production by Jonathan Siri. I’m Charlie Sykes.

Thank you for listening to today’s co work podcast. We’ll be back tomorrow and do this all over again.

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