2022 Midterm Elections

[WiseGirl]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

It's so painful to listen to him:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Trumpkin, who some said would be a "sane" republican, shows his true colors. He's full-on MAGA, trying to get Kari Lake elected in AZ.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

LOL, Marco is scrambling:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Um, really?

 

[fraurosena]

Well, apparently if we just think about it really hard, that’s all it’ll take to declassify them.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Why it’s important to vote:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Why we can't let the rethuglikans take the senate:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"How Kevin McCarthy’s political machine worked to sway the GOP field"

Quote

Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) made a name for himself as a firebrand social media phenomenon who delighted in trolling the left, famously boasting to colleagues that he had built his House office by focusing on communications not legislation.

But the strategy made him vulnerable to forces within his own party that helped end his time in office. Top allies of Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, worked this spring to deny Cawthorn a second term in office, after the Donald Trump-endorsed lawmaker made controversial comments about cocaine use and sex parties in Washington that led McCarthy to announce he had “lost my trust,” according to multiple Republicans briefed on the effort, which has not been previously reported.

GOP lobbyist Jeff Miller, one of McCarthy’s closest friends and biggest fundraisers, and Brian O. Walsh, a Republican strategist who works for multiple McCarthy-backed groups, were both involved in an independent effort to oppose Cawthorn as part of a broader project to create a more functioning GOP caucus next year, said the Republicans, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Targeting Cawthorn was part of a larger behind-the-scenes effort by top GOP donors and senior strategists to purge the influence of Republican factions that seek disruption and grandstanding, often at the expense of their GOP colleagues. The political machine around McCarthy has spent millions of dollars this year in a sometimes secretive effort to systematically weed out GOP candidates who could either cause McCarthy trouble if he becomes House speaker or jeopardize GOP victories in districts where a more moderate candidate might have a better chance at winning.

The allies close to McCarthy have sometimes taken steps to conceal their efforts, as they did in the Cawthorn case, with money passing from top GOP donors through organizations that do not disclose their donors or have limited public records, federal disclosures show.

In safe Republican districts, controversial Republicans like former New York state party chair Carl Paladino, Florida state Rep. Anthony Sabatini and Trump-endorsed congressional candidate Joe Kent have been targeted after distancing themselves from McCarthy’s leadership and echoing extreme claims. McCarthy’s team has also gone to work to protect several GOP incumbents from far-right challenges, campaign finance records show.

Miller, Walsh and McCarthy’s office declined requests for comment.

McCarthy’s own approach to enforcing unity within his sometimes fractious Republican caucus has been more aggressive than his two immediate predecessors, Reps. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), whose tenures in leadership were marred by dissent and dysfunction. McCarthy has spoken publicly about the need to not just win a majority in the House, but to make sure his party wins “a governing majority.”

“We’re coming out with solutions. If we’re unified in that, even if we have a small majority, we’d be very strong in being able to pass it,” McCarthy said at a March House Republican retreat. “So we want the idea to be so strong that you overcome all the politics that people bring.”

McCarthy has a reputation for caring about politics over policy, but ultimately his fate may lie in the hands of one person: Trump. If Republicans win a small majority in the House, Trump could likely influence enough votes to determine the speakership, GOP strategists say. It’s a major reason McCarthy allies say he has remained close to Trump even when he has grown frustrated with him.

Several Republican members of the House have applauded the efforts to bring more pragmatists into power who will prioritize passing conservative policies over the more disruptive tactics of the House Freedom Caucus. That group of far-right lawmakers has asked for rule changes in the next Congress that would increase their leverage over the rest of the caucus.

“One subset lives in reality, the other subset does not,” a Republican member of Congress concerned about the Freedom Caucus said.

‘Political animals’

Behind the scenes, some of the party’s top donors have worked with McCarthy’s allies to further the project, while taking steps to obscure their direct involvement in more controversial races.

“McCarthy is a political animal, and he has a lot of political animals working for him,” said a Republican operative close to several prominent donors who is familiar with the broader effort. “He is not a guy to be trifled with. It’s like they say in the Marine Corps, ‘No better friend, no worse enemy.’ And they mean it, and they act on it.”

McCarthy allies argue that their interventions in GOP primaries have little to do with political ideology, but rather focus on elevating politicians who will work with the rest of the Republican caucus or who have the best chance of winning their district. The Bakersfield, Calif., Republican has recently embraced some of the most far-right members of his caucus, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), whose committee assignments he plans to restore if Republicans win the House.

Much of the spending in Republican primaries by McCarthy’s political operation has been done out in the open by the House GOP’s largest super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, for which McCarthy has helped raise $165 million this cycle.

CLF, which is run by Dan Conston, has spent more than $7 million in Republican primaries this cycle, much of it focused on nominating more moderate, and therefore electable, candidates in swing districts. The group also spent millions in attempts to protect incumbents like Michael Guest (R-Miss.), Mark Amodei (R-Nev.), and Jamie Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.), who hail from safer Republican districts, when they faced challenges from more far-right figures.

The group spent nearly $40,000 on turnout calls to help Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.) in a safe Republican seat when he was challenged in the primary by online agitator Laura Loomer, who has described herself as being “pro-white nationalism” and a “proud Islamophobe,” campaign finance records show. In an overwhelmingly Republican Texas district north of Houston, CLF and another group founded by McCarthy allies, American Patriots PAC, spent nearly $1 million to help McCarthy favorite Morgan Luttrell beat Christian Collins. Both Collins and Loomer were endorsed by members of the Freedom Caucus, including Greene.

CLF used a different McCarthy-aligned group this summer to intervene on behalf of Herrera Beutler, who earned Trump’s ire by voting for his impeachment in 2021. Kent, her Trump-endorsed challenger, opposed McCarthy as speaker, denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election and denounced the legal treatment of Jan. 6 rioters as “banana republic stuff.”

But in the weeks before the Aug. 2 primary, two groups, WFW Action Fund and a previously unknown group called Conservatives for a Stronger America, began attacking Kent as a closeted leftist, with television ads misleadingly suggesting he wanted to “defund the police” or showing old photos of the former Army Special Forces officer sporting long hair alongside false claims that he supported Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

After Kent defeated Herrera Beutler in the primary, both PACs opposing him publicly reported contributions that tied their efforts to McCarthy’s allies. WFW Action Fund received transfers of nearly $1 million from CLF in the months before the ads.

Conservatives for a Stronger America reported after the primary that it received all its money from a group called the Eighteen Fifty-Four Fund, apparently named after the year in which the Republican Party was founded. That group, in turn, which has spent money on a number of races this cycle, has received funding from three sources, according to federal records: WFW Action Fund, American Patriots PAC and a nonprofit called Common Sense Leadership Fund, which is not required by law to report its donors. Federal records do not connect any of the specific donors to the transfers to Conservatives for a Stronger America.

Annie Dickerson, the founder of WFW Action Fund, attended McCarthy’s Jackson Hole, Wyo., donor retreat this summer, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. She was joined there by the personal advisers of financial manager Charles R. Schwab, Elliott Management’s Paul Singer and Citadel’s Kenneth C. Griffin, who are all billionaire donors to CLF, WFW Action Fund and other parts of McCarthy’s political operation. They are also all donors to American Patriots PAC, a group founded in 2018 by Conston, which has paid Walsh for strategy consulting this cycle.

At the same time, the anti-Kent effort reached outside McCarthy’s immediate orbit for support. After the primary, WFW Action Fund disclosed a July 27 donation of $100,000 from Fix Congress Now!, a PAC that has been otherwise dormant this election cycle. Fix Congress Now!, in turn, had received a $102,450 donation from an affiliated group called Unite America PAC on July 2.

Unite America PAC is affiliated with a nonprofit of the same name that seeks changes to the U.S. election system that would give the nation’s political extremes less power, such as through the use of nonpartisan primaries or redistricting. Though it has Republican donors, the group is mostly funded by Riot Games executive Marc Merrill and Cathryn Murdoch, the wife of former Fox News executive James Murdoch, who are both major donors to the Democratic National Committee.

A spokesman for Unite America said the donation was made to support Herrera Beutler. “We affirmatively supported pro-democracy Republicans this primary cycle,” said Chris Deaton, a spokesman for the group.

Olivia Perez-Cubas, a spokesperson for WFW Action, said the group raised money from CLF and other partners to support Herrera Beutler because the group is “dedicated to building and expanding the ranks of GOP women in Congress.”

‘Legislative terrorists’

The complex shuffling of funds through other groups became a pattern in multiple Republican House primaries, where Freedom Caucus-aligned candidates found themselves targeted. A person involved said some of the efforts were coordinated by McCarthy allies. At other times, as in a recent race in Florida’s 8th District, where $1.6 million was spent against Anna Paulina Luna, individual donors decide to intervene on their own.

A group that only came into existence in August, American Liberty Action PAC, spent more than $2.5 million in recent weeks to defeat candidates who questioned the 2020 election and expressed affinity for the Freedom Caucus in their recent campaigns, including Paladino and Sabatini.

Both candidates set off alarm bells for Republican strategists close to McCarthy. Paladino had recently circulated a conspiratorial Facebook post about the cause of the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Tex., and suggested in 2021 that the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler is “the kind of leader we need today.” Sabatini, a friend of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), had been an outspoken critic of McCarthy.

“They would have been legislative terrorists whose goal was fame,” said a person familiar with the effort to stop them.

After Paladino and Sabatini both lost their primaries, American Liberty Action disclosed that it was entirely funded by the Eighteen Fifty-Four Fund and a nonprofit, American Prosperity Alliance, which does not disclose its donors.

Paladino blamed McCarthy and his allies for the spending, which he said only arose because his opponent, Nick Langworthy, made it clear he would be more friendly with GOP leadership.

“Nick sold his soul,” Paladino said. “If I was going to go to Washington, I was going to go as an independent Republican. I just didn’t want to be owned by anybody.”

Sabatini also believed during his campaign that he was being attacked by the Washington establishment.

“Everything is happening behind the scenes, but obviously that is what the money shows,” Sabatini said of the involvement of McCarthy allies. “They don’t want a conservative to win. They want a brainless, spineless robot.”

Trump has so far declined to criticize McCarthy for the primary interventions. People close to both men say they continue to have a close working relationship around House races, despite other tensions, as Trump has prioritized growing the size of the House majority.

The former president notably declined to make an endorsement against Rep. David G. Valadao (R-Calif.), even though he was one of the ten Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in 2021. CLF spent about $800,000 in the primary to help Valadao defeat his GOP rival, Chris Mathys, who ran on a platform of supporting Trump more.

“When your own party spends $300,000 a week before the election attacking you, then you really have to wonder which side are they on,” Mathys said after his defeat, noting that he could not get his calls returned by Trump. “We called 50 times but never got a call back from anyone.”

As in the case of Herrera Beutler, the efforts by McCarthy and his partners have not always been successful. CLF was unable to defeat Sandy Smith, a pro-Trump candidate in North Carolina’s 1st District who faced past allegations of domestic violence. In Arizona, CLF and WFW Action spent about $1 million to support Republican Tanya Wheeless, only to watch her lose the primary to Kelly Cooper, who has challenged the legitimacy of the 2020 election and promised to seek the release of those arrested for storming the U.S. Capitol.

The Cawthorn race became a concern for McCarthy earlier this year, when the freshman member told a podcast about seeing cocaine use in Washington and being invited to sex parties. After meeting with McCarthy over the statements, Cawthorn blamed “the left and the media” for trying to use his comments to divide the GOP. His office did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

In the weeks before his primary, a group called Results for N.C. spent $1.7 million to defeat him and support his opponent. The National Association of Realtors, which gave $600,000 to CLF, gave $300,000 to the cause. A nonprofit that does not disclose its donors, Americans for a Balanced Budget, gave $830,000.

Most of the rest of the money, $700,000, came from Ryan Salame, an executive at crypto currency exchange FTX U.S., a major donor both to McCarthy’s own operation and to other groups backing McCarthy’s favored candidates. West Realm Shires Services, the corporate name used by FTX U.S., gave $750,000 to CLF in August. Advisers to Salame and FTX declined to comment.

But Mark Wetjen, the head of public policy and regulatory strategy at FTX, was invited with his family to McCarthy’s August donor retreat in Wyoming.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

What a class act. /s

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I don't think this is a wise idea. Gosar really is an idiot.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Reason #984,573,223,874 why we can't let the rethugs take over congress:

 

[Audrey2]

Can we please just build them a capital that is identical to the US Capitol and have them send representatives there so they can have their own play government while the grown ups are elected to the real US Capitol and actually get stuff done? Donald Trump can even be there forever pretend president! We will give them all sharpies and pads of paper.

[GreyhoundFan]

Gee, no surprise that the rethuglikan lies:

[thoughtful]

20 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

What a class act. /s

 

Forte, indeed.

In fact, pretty much fortissimo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamics_(music)

 

[fraurosena]

On 9/28/2022 at 8:03 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

"How Kevin McCarthy’s political machine worked to sway the GOP field"

 

Reading this article I understand the sneaky Dem tactics to push MAGAt candidates in the primaries even better. They’re using it as a double edged sword: if the extremist candidate wins, they’re quite possibly less palatable to voters, increasing the chances of the Dem candidate in the midterms. But if the extremist should happen to win in the midterms, it will undermine McCarthy’s ability to rule his own faction in the House— this last being especially important if (Rufus forbid) the R’s were to gain a majority.

[47of74]

He seems nice

Quote

Despite disavowing White nationalism last spring when one of its adherents endorsed him, a US House candidate in Washington subsequently gave a previously unreported interview in June to a Nazi sympathizer and White nationalist.

While Republican Joe Kent touted his support for prominent far-right figures like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Green and Paul Gosar and supported MAGA policies, he was speaking with Greyson Arnold, a Nazi sympathizer.

Kent’s exchange with Arnold is all the more notable because just weeks later Kent’s campaign worked to distance him from Arnold after photos surfaced of the pair together. A Kent campaign strategist told the Associated Press in July that the campaign did not do background checks on those who took selfies with the candidate.

Arnold has a well-documented history of making White nationalist, racist, antisemitic and pro-Nazi statements, including once calling Adolf Hitler “a complicated historical figure which many people misunderstand.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Gee, I went to school in PA until third grade. I feel cheated that I didn’t get to take pole dancing or study porn. 
 

 

Edited October 2, 2022 by GreyhoundFan
Damned autocorrect

[GreyhoundFan]

"Herschel Walker denies in ‘strongest possible terms’ report he paid for abortion"

Quote

Herschel Walker, the Republican nominee in Georgia’s Senate race, on Monday said a report that he paid for an abortion more than a decade ago was a “flat-out lie” and a “repugnant hatchet job.”

Walker’s denial came shortly after the Daily Beast reported he had paid for a woman’s abortion after the two conceived a child while they were dating in 2009. The Daily Beast reported the woman, who the outlet said asked to remain anonymous due to privacy concerns, had supported those claims with a $575 receipt from the abortion clinic, a bank deposit receipt that showed an image of a signed personal check for $700 from Walker, and a “get well” card she claimed was from Walker, who was not married at the time. The Daily Beast published a photo of the card, bearing what the outlet said was Walker’s signature.

CNN has not independently verified the allegations reported by the Daily Beast.

“This is a flat-out lie – and I deny this in the strongest possible terms,” Walker said in a statement posted on his verified Twitter account in which he called the report a “repugnant hatchet job” and criticized what he described as the Daily Beast’s reporting tactics.

“Now, they’re using an anonymous source to further slander me,” Walker said. “They will do anything to hold onto power. It’s disgusting, gutter politics.”

Walker is facing Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in one of the nation’s most competitive Senate races.

A first-time candidate for office, Walker, a Republican endorsed by former President Donald Trump, has opposed abortion rights. He said last month he would support a national ban on abortions after 15 weeks. He said in May that he supports a ban on abortion rights and that there are “no exceptions in my mind.”

In a statement on Twitter, Walker claimed he plans to sue the Daily Beast for what he said is a “defamatory lie” on Tuesday morning.

In an interview Monday night, Walker told Fox’s Sean Hannity that he didn’t know the woman making the accusation and that he hadn’t seen the card. “I send out to so many, get well, send out so much of anything, but I can tell you right now I never asked anyone to get an abortion, I never paid for an abortion, and it’s a lie.”

When asked if he remembered sending anyone a $700 check Walker said, “I send money to a lot of people. … I give money to people all the time cause I’m always helping people.”

CNN has reached out to Walker’s campaign for additional comment on the matter.

Warnock on Monday night said he had not read the Daily Beast’s report yet, and sidestepped questions about how it might affect the race.

“I’ll let the pundits decide how they think it will impact the race,” Warnock said. “But I have been consistent in my view that a patient’s room is too narrow and cramped a space for a woman, her doctor, and the government. … And my opponent, on the other hand, is talking about a nationwide ban with no exceptions.”

Christian Walker, one of Herschel Walker’s sons, took to Twitter Monday night just hours after Herschel Walker denied the Daily Beast report to attack his father and level a series of accusations against him. “I don’t care about someone who has a bad past and takes accountability. But how DARE YOU LIE and act as though you’re some ‘moral, Christian, upright man,’” Christian Walker said in one tweet.

“You’re not a ‘family man,’” Christian Walker said in another post.

Herschel Walker has spoken frequently on the campaign trail about Christian Walker, the son he and his ex-wife had together and raised along with Walker’s current wife. Christian is an outspoken conservative on social media.

When asked for a statement, Herschel Walker’s campaign pointed to a tweet the Senate candidate sent Monday night reading, “I LOVE my son no matter what.”

Christian Walker ended his series of tweets by writing, “I’m done.”

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

It's sad when a "family values" candidate's family has to speak out:

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

[GreyhoundFan]

Wow. Just wow

 

 

This  is actually sad:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I’m originally from PA. Most people I know from there are beer people. 

[Audrey2]

18 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I’m originally from PA. Most people I know from there are beer people. 

I'm not from Pennsylvania but from one of the next door states. If I were trying to look like I fit in at a tailgate party I'd probably have a Rolling Rock although it may be too stereotypical.

[WiseGirl]