May 19, 2021

"Grifters and Con Artists."

          In an act of unparalleled cowardice, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy announced that he would oppose a bipartisan congressional commission to investigate the assault on the Capitol on January 6th. McCarthy did so because he is afraid of Donald Trump and because he wants more than anything in the world to become Speaker of the House—even if that means betraying his country. See The Hill, “McCarthy says that he will not support bipartisan deal for Jan. 6 commission.” McCarthy’s opposition to the commission is odious for three reasons. First, he directed negotiations with Democrats that resulted in concessions regarding the structure and powers of the commission that effectively gave McCarthy everything he demanded. Second, in opposing the commission, he attempted to create a false equivalence between the sporadic and opportunistic violence that marred protests over the murder of George Floyd and the assault on the Capitol that was intended to prevent Congress from fulfilling its role in the peaceful transfer of power. Third, McCarthy is a material witness against Donald Trump in the events of January 6th; by opposing the commission, McCarthy is trying to insulate himself from his duty to testify truthfully under oath. Coward.

          Above all, McCarthy is further eroding the trust of the American people in the truth. Something bad happened on January 6th that resulted in Congress fleeing the Capitol and suspending the count of the Electoral ballots. Understanding why that happened and who was behind the assault is essential to fortifying the rule of law. The facts will be disclosed even if Congress does not hold a bipartisan hearing. Having the facts emerge in a bipartisan manner could dispel some of the distrust and misinformation that currently animates many Americans. But McCarthy knows that learning the truth will enrage Trump and cause him to turn on McCarthy, just as Trump has turned on Mitch McConnell. Coward.

          McCarthy’s gambit may be self-defeating. In trying to protect his prospects, he is exasperating some members of his caucus who are tired of McCarthy’s missteps that constantly force them to support ridiculous positions—like refusing to punish Marjorie Taylor Green, punishing Liz Cheney, and voting against a bipartisan commission to learn the truth about the most serious attack on our Capitol in a century. See CNN, “Hear what Republicans are saying about Kevin McCarthy's move.” CNN Reporter Jamie Gangel says behind-the-scenes feedback from House Republicans is that McCarthy is “putting his personal self-interest above that of the country.” McCarthy is also putting Senate Republicans on the spot. Many GOP Senators were lined up to support a bipartisan commission; now they are waffling. See MSN/Marketwatch, “As top House Republican McCarthy opposes formation of Jan. 6 commission, Senate GOP leader McConnell presses ‘pause’.”

          McCarthy’s cowardice has earned him a place of dishonor and disrepute in the annals of American history. He may prevent Congress from conducting a bipartisan investigation of the Capitol Insurrection; he will not prevent the truth from emerging. That truth is unflattering for McCarthy and ugly for Trump. Each should prepare for the harsh glare of history and advise Merrick Garland, “I am ready for my close-up”— whether they like it or not.

The Arizona Senate “audit” of the Maricopa County presidential ballots finally crosses a line.

          In an encouraging sign that there is a limit to the insanity that some Republicans will tolerate, Republicans in Maricopa County have finally said that the “audit” of presidential ballots by the Arizona GOP Senate caucus is a baseless conspiracy theory and national embarrassment. See WaPo, “Arizona Senate president says 2020 recount will proceed, despite angry objections from Maricopa County officials.” As the Post notes, the Senate’s auditing firm erroneously claimed that elected officials had “delet[ed] a directory full of databases from the 2020 election cycle.” When a county election official told the audit firm where to look for the allegedly deleted files, the audit firm miraculously “recovered” the files. Oops! Don’t you hate it when that happens?

          The Maricopa Board of Supervisors sent a letter to the President of the Arizona Senate that refutes the outlandish allegations and basic lack of comprehension by the audit firm hired by GOP Senators. I urge you to spend a few minutes perusing the letter, which is tour-de-force that obliterates the nonsense being peddled by the Arizona Senate’s auditors. See “Maricopa County Officials Letter to Senate President.” In a powerful passage, the Board writes:

          You have rented out the once good name of the Arizona State Senate to grifters and con-artists, who are fundraising hard-earned money from our fellow citizens even as your contractors parade around the Coliseum, hunting for bamboo and something they call “kinematic artifacts” while shining purple lights for effect. None of these things are done in a serious audit. The result is that the Arizona Senate is held up to ridicule in every corner of the globe and our democracy is imperiled.

          Well said! It may surprise you to learn that the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors is composed of four Republicans and one Democrat. Let’s hope that other Republicans begin to tire of the endless and ever-shifting conspiracy theories used to support the lie that Trump won the 2020 election.

More worrisome signs from the Supreme Court

          Yesterday’s news from the Supreme Court was dominated by the grant of review of a case from Mississippi that seems to set the stage for overruling or severely limiting Roe v. Wade. See Today's Edition (May 17, 2021). The grant of review portends a willingness by the Court to overrule long-settled precedent simply because five justices with a different political or religious ethic have succeeded the jurists who established the precedents.

          On the same day that review was granted in the Mississippi abortion rights case (Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization), Justice Kavanaugh delivered an opinion that was shocking for two reasons. As background, the Court ruled a year ago in Ramos v. Louisiana that the use of non-unanimous jury verdicts in criminal cases violated the Constitutional right to a trial by jury. Yesterday, Justice Kavanaugh authored an opinion that denied retroactive application of the ruling in Ramos. As a result, defendants who were convicted by non-unanimous jury verdicts in violation of the constitutional right to trial cannot have their convictions overturned. Got that? Their convictions were unconstitutional, but the conservative majority says that they cannot overturn their convictions to obtain a new trial. That ruling is Kafkaesque and offensive to the rule of law.

          But it gets worse. For Kavanaugh to deny the retroactive application of the ruling in Ramos, Kavanaugh reached back to overrule a 32-year-old precedent—even though none of the parties asked the Court to do so. See the explanation in Vox by Ian Millhiser, “Brett Kavanaugh’s latest Supreme Court decision should alarm liberals.”  Per Millhiser,

          As Justice Elena Kagan points out in dissent, no one asked the Court to overrule anything in Edwards, and the Court “usually confines itself to the issues raised and briefed by the parties.”

          Moreover, this is the second time in a month that Kavanaugh has overruled precedent without being asked to do so. None of this bodes well for the Court’s view of Roe v. Wade. It also calls into question Kavanaugh’s sincerity when he convinced Senator Susan Collins to vote for his confirmation by telling her that he respected precedent, which he claimed was “rooted in Article III of the Constitution.” Kavanaugh also told Collins that a case should not be overturned merely because five justices disagree with a prior ruling. See American Independent, “Susan Collins said Kavanaugh would respect abortion precedent. She was wrong.”    

          We must be realistic. The conservative majority doesn’t care about precedent and will rule in whatever way advances its conservative religious agenda. But we must also recognize that this current iteration of the Court is badly out-of-step with the American public. A majority of the Court may want to overrule Roe v. Wade, but a majority of Americans do not want it to do so. Recent polling shows that between 61% (Fox News) and 69% (Kaiser Family Foundation) oppose overruling Roe v. Wade. See MSN, “Most Americans want to see the Supreme Court uphold Roe v. Wade, polling shows.” If the Court begins to dismantle voting rights, reproductive rights, and civil liberties in pursuit of MAGA nostalgia, it will seriously damage the prospects of Republicans in 2022 and 2024. Democracy may be messy, but it is self-correcting over time. Our fight is about the long-term. It always is.

Concluding Thoughts.

          I shook my head in disbelief when I heard that Kevin McCarthy would oppose a bipartisan commission to investigate the Capitol Insurrection. McCarthy is fooling no one—not his caucus, not the Republican base, and (most importantly) not Independents who are the swing voters in American politics. Americans may disagree over the root causes of the insurrection, but it makes no sense to refuse to investigate those causes. McCarthy comes off as weak, obsequious, and duplicitous. In the end, the absolute refusal of Republicans in Congress to deviate an iota from Trump’s insistent lies will be their undoing. The backlash in Maricopa County is evidence of the unraveling of the lie. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution just mocked the Republican Party for its “after-action report” of the Republican debacle in Georgia—a report that served as a hagiography of Trump (“He never gave up!”) while barely mentioning that Republicans lost in Georgia up and down the ballot. See AJC, “The Georgia GOP tries to rewrite the 2020 election history. Oh, and it blamed Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for the GOP’s troubles in Georgia. Such Soviet-style purges will surely drive reasonable people out of the GOP and into the ranks of Independents and Democrats. The behavior is self-defeating. That dynamic is not enough to ensure victory for Democrats in 2022 and 2024, but we should remember that Republicans are damaging their prospects by mindlessly pursuing risible conspiracy theories. That fact provides some consolation as we shake our heads in disbelief at the grifters and con artists who have taken over the Republican Party.

          Talk to you tomorrow!