A company run by a liberal billionaire dubbed by some as the “next George Soros” employs former senior Republican staffers on Capitol Hill in what a watchdog group warns is an effort to sway GOP lawmakers to move to the left.
Arnold Ventures LLC is a private company founded by left-leaning philanthropists John Arnold and his wife Laura, who have a net worth of $3.3 billion, according to Forbes.
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A few weeks ago, a “Morning Joe” panel concluded that if Donald Trump were to become the Republican nominee (spoiler alert: he will), Republicans will lose in the fall. This is by no means a unique sentiment – former House Speaker Paul Ryan expressing this idea here, journalist Bernard Goldberg wondering if Trump is trying to lose here, and so forth.
As I read these analyses, I wonder if I’ve somehow been transported back to 2016, when such takes were de rigueur. Here in 2024, we know that Donald Trump won in 2016 and came close to winning in 2020. He carried Republican senators across the finish line in both years, and the GOP gained House seats in 2020, much to the surprise of most election analysts. And, at a comparable time in the campaign cycle when he trailed Hillary Clinton by 4.5 points in the RCP Average and Joe Biden by 5.6 points, Trump actually leads Biden by 1.9 points in national polling.
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Readers are familiar with the moniker “third rail.” In political discourse, it refers to those preciously few issues that are so untouchable that the mere talk of change, alteration or revision carries with it what amounts to a political death penalty.
There is general agreement in Washington, D.C., that reform of federal entitlements leads the brief list. The most recent example being the 2011 temporary coalition of former Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan and Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon intended to secure a more sustainable Medicare program. Here, all was good and fine for a fast minute before the Democratic Party realized its number one nuclear weapon was in the process of being compromised. And that was that. Suffice to say that that now twelve-year-old effort was the last semi-serious, bipartisan attempt to control entitlement spending we will see for the foreseeable future.
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In her latest swing through Iowa, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley took aim at the nation’s financially troubled safety nets for seniors, telling Council Bluff Republicans it’s time to change the retirement age and check Social Security and Medicare benefits for wealthier Americans.
If the former South Carolina governor was sending out a trial balloon to see how reform ideas would fly in the first-in-the-nation caucus state, it seems said balloon may have hit the third rail.
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The 15th vote was the charm for U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). But Wisconsin’s Republican House members had the new Speaker’s back from the first vote.
As McCarthy finally claimed enough votes for his narrow victory early Saturday morning (on the 15th ballot), U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Janesville) tweeted a photo of himself holding the last tally with the celebratory message, “McCarthy Wins!”
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Kurt Winstead’s campaign for Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District seat is scheduled to hold an out-of-state fundraiser with D.C. lobbyists and disqualified TN-5 candidate Morgan Ortagus on June 15.
The event will be held at the home of Jeff Miller, founder and CEO of Miller Strategies, LLC.
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Having been in the D.C. area for over 20 years now, I’ve come to live by the maxim, “Always bank on the GOP snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.” I was proved right again this last week when 13 Republicans in the House helped pass the $1.2 trillion “Gateway to the Green New Deal” otherwise masquerading as an infrastructure bill.
As I wrote back in August, only 23 percent of this bill is really for infrastructure. The other 77 percent is for things like the $213 billion “allocated for retrofitting two million homes and buildings to make them more “sustainable,” whatever that means. Or the $20 billion for racial equity and environmental justice. Or the mileage tax, as in yes, they want to explore taxing you for every mile you drive in your car.
In the wake of an absolutely stunning clean sweep for Republicans in Virginia from governor to House of Delegates—in a state Republicans hadn’t won statewide in a dozen years and where they’ve lost the last four presidentials—Republicans in D.C. just couldn’t find the nerve to simply say “No.” They couldn’t “Just say no,” kids. It is one of the most beautiful and underused words in the English language, but Republicans appear simply incapable of using it.
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Much has been made of the idea that the GOP and the American conservative movement in general are currently in the midst of an ideological “civil war” which began the moment Donald Trump left office. Supposedly, the Paul Ryan fusionist ideology of the GOP establishment is battling a new Trumpian populism, both intellectually and electorally. If such a civil war was ever really under way, it was over by 2016. Trump is overwhelmingly popular with the GOP base, and would capture the 2024 nomination effortlessly. Outside of National Review columns and CNN panels, NeverTrumpers are basically nonexistent, and even House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) now feels the need to adopt the Trump brand to stay politically relevant. The civil war is over. The “populists” won.
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In March 2018, then-House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) took to the lectern to announce he had received “assurances” that President Trump was not considering firing special counsel Robert Mueller. “We have a system based upon the rule of law in this country.” A month later, Ryan announced his retirement from Congress.
In July 2018, Ryan refused to permit an effort to impeach then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein for obstructing congressional inquiries into the Russian collusion hoax. Ryan’s protection of Mueller and his untimely retirement helped tip the 2018 midterm elections against his party and Nancy Pelosi has held the speaker’s gavel ever since then.
Mueller should have been fired and Ryan should have urged Trump to do it. Mueller proved himself to be a fumbling and doddering fool unable to grasp the basics of the investigation he supposedly led. The real directors of the witch hunt, Trump haters led by Andrew Weissman, abused the powers of the special counsel to leak, smear, and harass the sitting president. It was, from the very start, a political operation intended to deny Trump the full freedom and powers an elected president normally would enjoy. It wasn’t quite a coup because power didn’t change hands. But it added to the continuing loss of confidence Americans have in achieving political change through elections.
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We aren’t actually governed by Paul Ryan, whose brief time as House Speaker ended in what can only be described as a surrender. Ryan bolted from the Speaker’s chair the minute the 2018 elections were over. He was happy to leave Congress to take a “cashing-in” job on the Fox Corporation board while his party took an electoral bath in those midterms he could blame on Donald Trump.
But as readers of The American Spectator know, in this space we’ve been exploring the premise that Americans are governed by people who suck. And Ryan put himself in that category even from outside the elective-office sphere this week when he offered up a tired and tiresome narrative about the future of the Republican Party.
What is it with these washed-up politicians, who are clearly the party’s past, demanding the GOP follow their instructions as to its future? Do we have to exhume the remains of Nelson Rockefeller and Thomas Dewey or conduct seances with them for guidance in how to defeat the 21st-century Left?
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by CHQ Staff Fiscal conservatives on Capitol Hill became a Class 6 species once Republicans regained the majority back in 2010 – they weren’t confirmed to be extinct – but somewhat like the Ivory Billed Woodpecker their continued existence could not be confirmed by means other than faint recordings of their presumed calls. And when one did blunder into the open, as Rep. David Schweikert (AZ-6) did back in 2012 he was quickly hunted down, stuff and mounted – or more correctly taken off the House Financial Services Committee in retaliation for voting against leadership, especially on spending. President Trump’s first budget proposals were informed by the long-out-of-style received wisdom of fiscal conservatives, but like President Reagan before him, he went along with the Capitol Hill GOP’s appetite for massive deficits to get what he wanted – money to rebuild the military and a promise of funds to build the border wall. And like Reagan, Trump got some of the money he wanted for some of what he wanted. This fiscal year President Trump has proposed a budget that Democrats have already pronounced as dead on arrival, but he is no longer saddled with the need to go along…
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by Jeffrey A. Rendall Predictions. It’s what New Year’s is all about. It goes without saying that 2018 was full of surprises. Heading into this year Republican majorities in both houses of Congress had just passed a massive reorganization of the federal tax code, including a sizeable tax cut for most Americans in the bill language. By January 1, Democrats were already griping about reduced rates for corporations and businesses, claiming, as they always do, that the benefits of the new law would rain down disproportionately on the wealthiest and most powerful taxpayers. Never mind that many, many companies had already announced sizeable end-of-the-year bonuses and raises for employees based on the improved future tax outlook. Nonetheless, Democrats were convinced the popularity of the new law would not improve (especially if they demagogued the matter) over the course of time. Democrats believed they could parlay President Donald Trump’s lukewarm favorability numbers into a “wave” in November. After all, they’d just been eminently successful in stealing a senate seat in deep red Alabama (with a huge assist from the Washington GOP establishment), so the sky was the limit, right? Last month’s election came and went, Democrats gained 40 seats in…
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by Molly Prince Democratic Rep. Bill Foster of Illinois introduced legislation that would prevent Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and other lawmakers from having access to the congressional fitness center during the government shutdown. “I introduced a bill to close the Congressional gym during a government shutdown,” Foster tweeted Sunday. “[Speaker Ryan] continues to use it during the #TrumpShowdown as federal workers face uncertainty over the holidays. The only task we have right now is ending the #TrumpShutdown.” I introduced a bill to close the Congressional gym during a government shutdown. @SpeakerRyan continues to use it during the #TrumpShutdown as federal workers face uncertainty over the holidays. The only task we have right now is ending the #TrumpShutdown. https://t.co/kB5k7SFCeD — Bill Foster (@RepBillFoster) December 23, 2018 While the fitness center is available to all members of Congress, the proposed legislation, known as the Shutdown Prioritization Act, takes aim at Ryan, banning him and other members from using any of the amenities including the gym, sauna and steam room. Ryan is a noted gym enthusiast. He was previously a fitness trainer and leads an intense P90X workout class when Congress is in session. “Republican leadership continues to deem the Congressional spa used by…
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by Robert Romano There won’t be any vote on wall funding this year or any year at the rate we’re going — because nobody in Congressional leadership is apparently willing to stick it in a bill and simply vote on it. Even to defeat it. Until the end of the year, Republicans are in complete control of the House of Representatives. Under the leadership of House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), however, the only vote on any wall funding that occurred did not happen until the March 2018 omnibus spending bill. And then, it was just the measly $1.6 billion supplement that President Donald Trump had requested — in Feb. 2017 — that was intended to be attached to the FY 2017 spending bill that was still being resolved in the early days of the Trump administration. Instead, it took more than a year to get done. Even now, to date, House Republicans have not even had a show-vote on a messaging bill that McCarthy promised to fully fund the wall — even though such a vote would be practically meaningless. The House has not even sent a spending bill with the wall…
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According to our friend Rep. Jim Jordan (OH-4), Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and his leadership team, including Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and GOP Whip Steve Scalise, refused to lobby for the Trump-supported Goodlatte immigration bill, which would have built a border wall, enacted E-Verify procedures, and offered DREAMERS a path to citizenship. It failed to pass the House after nearly 20 Ryan loyalists voted against it. Now, many of the 20 Republicans who voted “NO” on Goodlatte are gone, defeated or retired in the 2018 midterm election, and Rep. Goodlatte has been clear on why his bill did not pass, when Republicans had the majority in the House. Our friend Neil Munro reports Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the retiring Chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary, says the GOP leadership let the House immigration reform die in June by allowing a critical bloc of GOP legislators to split their votes between two rival reform bills. “The strategy of having two options really let people have an off-ramp — they could vote for the more conservative bill and against the other, or vote for the second bill and not the first,” Goodlatte said, adding according to Munro’s reporting: That…
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by CHQ Staff Back in May a virtual Who’s Who of conservative movement leaders, led by CHQ Chairman Richard A. Viguerie, came together to urge Rep. Jim Jordan (OH-4), the former Chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, to run for Speaker of the House. Yesterday, Rep. Jordan made it official; he’s running for Speaker of the House. And Mr. Viguerie is not the only conservative leader to believe Jim Jordan is the last best hope for Republicans to retain the House majority and fulfill the Trump agenda: Jenny Beth Martin, Chairman of the Tea Party Patriots, L. Brent Bozell III, former Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese, Ken Cucinnelli of the Senate Conservatives Fund, Frank Gaffney, President, Center for Security Policy and Tim Wildmon, President, American Family Association were also among the more than 40 conservative leaders who signed on to the initial letter urging Jordan to run for Speaker. Our friend Daniel Horowitz of Conservative Review summed up the situation thusly: Amid all the griping about the House leadership, the biggest problem reformers have faced is the old adage, “You can’t beat somebody with nobody.” For years, nobody was willing to step forward and launch a serious and sustained…
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by George Rasley Let us help you understand what’s going on with the phony scandal being ginned up against Rep. Jim Jordan, the consensus conservative choice to succeed RINO Paul Ryan as Speaker of the House. NBC News published an article on Tuesday, quoting Mike DiSabato and Dunyasha Yetts, two former Ohio State University wrestlers, claiming that when Jim Jordan worked as assistant wrestling coach at OSU, he ignored sexual abuse carried out by a university physician named Richard Strauss. Our friend Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller has documented that the two former wrestlers accusing Rep. Jordan of ignoring the sexual misconduct by a university physician more than two decades ago have a history of failed business dealings, lawsuits, harassment allegations, and in the case of one accuser, an 18-month prison sentence for fraud. Ross reports one of the former wrestlers, Mike DiSabato, is also being accused by the widow of a Marine who was killed in combat in Iraq of intimidating and bullying her over a memorial fund set up in her husband’s name. “I question the intent, the authenticity, the verity, that Mike DiSabato shares in any of his words or actions,” Karen Mendoza, the wife of…
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House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said Thursday that Democrats are the reason the spending bill does not include DACA protections. “We said let’s do multiyear funding for the wall for multiyear relief for the DACA kids, and they walked away from that. They wouldn’t take that,” Mr. Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, said on Fox News.
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Evangelist Franklin Graham told Rosie O’Donnell to “clean up your mouth” and “put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ,” after the comedian told Speaker of the House Paul Ryan he’s going “straight to hell.” “Rosie, you don’t have the keys to hell, but I know the One who does,” Mr. Graham said in a Facebook post on Tuesday. “And I can tell you who will be there. Hell is going to be filled with people who reject God’s offer of salvation and turned their backs on His laws and standards, refusing to repent.”
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House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said on “Fox News Sunday” that it’s “no wonder the Democrats are ticked off” after last week’s revelations of a funding agreement between 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee that may have tipped the scales in Clinton’s favor. Former interim DNC chairwoman Donna Brazile reignited…
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by George Rasley, ConservativeHQ.com Editor Wednesday, one of the most remarkable political events of the 21st Century played out in an obscure Capitol Hill hearing room, and no one in the establishment media paid the least bit of attention to it. Two months have passed since the August 17 indictment of Pakistani national Imran Awan and his wife Hina Alvi, who were technology staffers for Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (FL-23), former Chair of the Democratic National Committee. House IT ScandalBrothers Abid, Imran, and Jamal Awan were barred from computer networks at the House of Representatives, The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group reported on Tuesday, February 7, 2016. The brothers and Hina R. Alvi (Imran Awan’s wife) are suspected of serious violations, including accessing members’ computer networks without their knowledge and stealing equipment from Congress reported our friend Luke Rosiak of the Daily Caller News Foundation. Alvi was a House IT employee who works for many of the same members as the three brothers, as well as the House Democratic Caucus. Also implicated in the investigation are Natalia Sova, a Ukrainian national who is married to Abid Awan and Rao Abbas, also a Pakistani national often described as Imran Awan’s…
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House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said Thursday that Congress will blow past the Sept. 30 deadline for approving new funding for 2018, saying the government will need to operate off stop-gap spending for several months. Mr. Ryan also insisted Congress will meet its deadline to raise the federal government’s borrowing limit, saying he was “really not…
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by ConservativeHQ.com Staff Our friends at the Virginia Citizens Defense League recently put out an alert letting gun owners know exactly where the problem is with the national concealed carry reciprocity bill – with Democratic Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.* The VCDL alert says “It appears to be a bad case of weakness of the knees. The Republicans were put into power to move forward an agenda that was sold to the American public. That includes national reciprocity and the hearing protection act, to name but a few. That was the deal, and the President said, and repeated, that he would sign such bills. We need to demand leadership from Ryan, not capitulation to the enemies of freedom.” The alert goes on to quote an article by Breitbart’s AWR Hawkins saying, “National Reciprocity was introduced by Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC) on January 3, 2017 and Gun Owners of America reported that it had 199 co-sponsors by June 21, 2017. Yet Second Amendment supporters have seen no action on the bill from Ryan or Congressional leadership.” The New York Times’ Emily Cochrane reported that three bills have been introduced in the Republican-held House during the past two weeks would…
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by George Rasley, ConservativeHQ.com Editor Donald Trump’s historic election handed Republicans control of Congress and the White House for the first time in a decade, and after six years of divided government it was assumed a united Republican Party would be able to pass the largely conservative agenda campaigned on by Donald Trump and Republican congressional candidates. However, despite their firm control of the legislative and executive branches of government Republicans have produced almost zero in terms of legislation that fulfills their campaign promises, leaving it to President Trump to do his best to advance the conservative agenda via Executive Order and Cabinet action. The predictable result is that while President Trump stands around 47 percent in the polls, with his base still strongly approving of his performance – not bad for a President under daily attack by the establishment media. In contrast to President Trump’s approval, Congressional approval stands at 20 percent, less than half of the President’s approval rating, with some 74 percent of Americans disapproving of the job it is doing. A different poll, this one by Pew, found that 54 percent of Americans disapprove of the job the Speaker Ryan is doing. Twenty-nine percent approve while…
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Indonesia’s foreign minister expressed satisfaction after a meeting Thursday with the leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, saying that Speaker Paul Ryan had affirmed he does not see the Muslim faith as the source of Islamist radicalism. “There is a strong message that Paul Ryan delivered at the meeting, that overcoming radicalism and terrorism is…
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ConservativeHQ.com Staff April 1, 2017 Make no mistake about what went on Thursday with the shocking tweet in which President Trump appeared to attack members of the Freedom Caucus, some of his earliest and staunchest supporters in Congress. It is not about a policy difference over getting rid of Obamacare – it is about White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and his home state buddy House Speaker Paul Ryan saving their jobs. Priebus is clearly out of his depth as White House Chief of Staff. His only real qualification for the job is his relationship with Speaker Ryan and after the Ryancare debacle in which the President was drawn into supporting a bill something like 100 members of the House Republican Conference were prepared to vote against Priebus’ job was on the line. And it still is. Same with Ryan. When the Ryancare – or RINOcare bill as we prefer to call it – blew up Washington was abuzz with the rumor that Ryan was on his way out as Speaker. Republican officials in Congress and the White House were openly discussing finding a GOP replacement to Paul Ryan as Speaker of the House, after Ryan failed to pass…
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George Rasley, CHQ Editor Those of us who have been around conservative politics for a while will remember the smirk on Democratic Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell’s face when he got President George HW Bush to destroy his presidency by abandoning his “no new taxes” pledge. That same smirk is flitting across establishment Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s face as he rams his Obamacare 2.0, RINOcare or Ryancare health care bill through the House while claiming support from Kamikaze pilotPresident Trump. There are two main reasons for why Ryancare is such a disaster for President Trump; the first is that Ryancare is merely Obamacare with a big government establishment Republican spin on it, and the second is that it continues to be most financially burdensome to the small businesses and independent workers who were a key component of Trump’s electoral coalition. It’s a twofer for Ryan: He and his big government DC pals continue to control people’s lives by controlling the health care and health insurance market and they screw Trump in the process. For those innocent souls who are inclined to take serial liar Paul Ryan at his word about his bill, the Texas Public Policy Foundation…
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by ConservativeHQ Staff It was inevitable that this would happen, but we figured it would take a little longer. Speaker Paul Ryan’s so-called Obamacare “repeal and replace” bill is a complete sellout of President Trump’s campaign promise to rid the country and the economy of the disaster of Obamacare, but the President is Paul Ryanalready being suckered into endorsing it. Indeed, President Trump’s White House spokesman, Sean Spicer, falsely stated yesterday that the healthcare bill from House Speaker Paul Ryan represents what will eventually be a full repeal of Obamacare. As our friend Matthew Boyle writing for Breitbart pointed-out, the bill is more like Obamacare 2.0 because the bill keeps in place the Obamacare requirements that insurers allow for coverage of pre-existing conditions and allows children to stay on their parents’ health care until they’re 26-years-old. It shifts the individual mandate from being a tax paid to the government to a penalty paid to insurance companies, does not even address the Medicaid issue in states effectively, helps illegal aliens access healthcare in the system, and it does not allow for purchasing of insurance across state lines as Republicans have promised for years—among many, many other problems. And among those among many, many problems…
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