Daily Archives: January 5, 2022

The January 6 insurrection at the United States Capitol failed to overturn Donald Trumps election loss to Joe Biden, but it could ultimately prove successful as a galvanizing point for the radical right. In the year since the attack, the rioters have been embraced as martyrs by many in the GOP; Trump allies have made their cause a loyalty test for lawmakers; and insurrectionists methods have grown more sophisticated, with legislators using the Big Lie to enact voter suppression laws across the country and extremists taking their efforts local.

Its going to be a fight, but this is a fight that must be won, former Trump strategist Steve Bannon said on his podcast last spring. Were going to take this back village by village.

In its immediate aftermath, the Capitol attack put the radical right on its heels. According to an Atlantic Council report out Tuesday, domestic extremist movements faced increased scrutiny following the riot, with social media cracking down on dangerous users and content and an ongoing parade of arrests of those who stormed Congress as it sought to certify Bidens victory. But, as the report also found, the right-wing extremist movements didnt go away amid all that pressure. Theyve simply adapted, finding or creating new platforms to spread their message; focusing on the grassroots level; and insinuating themselves into the mainstream of Republican politics. The domestic extremist landscape was battered by January 6, the reports author, Jared Holt, told NBC News. But extremism is dynamic and fluid. It is always trying to adapt to fit the container that its in.

Such adaptations could make the January 6 extremist movement even more insidious; its easy to spot insurrectionists when theyre taking the Capitol by force, but harder, perhaps, when theyre entering with a lawmaker ID badge. Congress is already home to something of an insurrectionist caucus, with figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, and Lauren Boebertthree of the 139 House members who tried overturning the electionusing their national platform to spread conspiracy theories, erode faith in the democratic process, and threaten political opponents. The party has largely swallowed Trumps election lies, with 71% of Republicans telling pollsters that the ex-president was the rightful winner of the 2020 election. In the same Ipsos/ABC News poll, 52% of Republicans said the Capitol rioters were actually protecting democracy, a warped version of the events of January 6 that fits with what CNN's Donie O'Sullivan recently heard from Trump supporters.

As the Atlantic Council report makes clear, extremist groups involved in the January 6 attack are not only working at the national level: Theyre getting involved in local politics, starting nonprofits and PACs, and hosting conferences featuring elected officials like Gosar. In some ways, this reflects the ways in which the outburst of violence last year scattered the coalition of far-right movements that came together to attack Congress. But it may also represent the maturation of those movements into a more effective political force.

We figured out that going to the Capitol and working that particular piece doesnt do anything, because these legislators have already made up their mind, Denise Aguilar, who spoke at a right-wing event in Washington D.C. on January 6, told NBC News last month outside a California school board meeting she was attending to protest vaccine mandates. Its all about local legislation, your school districts, your city council board of supervisorsThese people live in our community. They work here, and theyre going to have to face us every single day.

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The Republican Party Is Now the Party of January 6 - Vanity Fair

After Mitt Romney lost the 2012 presidential election, the Republican National Committee published what became known as the GOP autopsy report, an effort to identify and address the partys ongoing political weaknesses. But eight years later, after losing another close race, the GOP appears wholly uninterested in reviewing or reforming its agenda. In fact, despite capturing the presidency, the Democratic Party has been far more interested in developing an attractive issue agenda. There is only one political party that is terrified of losing an election because it looks too extreme, said Seth Masket, a FiveThirtyEight contributor and political scientist at the University of Denver. Theres a huge party asymmetry.

But despite the fact that the GOP is quite unpopular and that much of its current agenda such as overturning the Affordable Care Act or advancing restrictive immigration policies does not appeal to a majority of voters, the party is in an enviable position heading into the 2022 midterm elections and beyond. What is to make of this glaring disconnect?

On the one hand, the GOP is fundamentally opposed to the type of legislation that tends to garner widespread public support: generous social-welfare policies. Most Americans want a single-payer health care system, paid parental leave and a higher minimum wage. But most Republicans are ideologically opposed to these policies either because they do not believe they are the federal governments responsibility, or because they think that these policies will ultimately prove counterproductive. A Pew Research Center survey from May 2021 found, for instance, that more than three-quarters of Republicans said that the government was taking on too many roles that were better left to private citizens and businesses.

But the biggest reason why the GOP may not be pushing more popular policies is that recent history suggests its unnecessary. Former President Trumps startling 2016 election victory showed that an unpopular candidate with little interest in public policy can still win. For conservative activists disappointed in the outcomes of Romneys and the late Sen. John McCains campaigns, the lesson of 2016 was that political candidates with personal baggage or extreme political views are no longer a liability.

The current structure of the Electoral College and the U.S. Senate also allows Republican candidates wider discretion in eschewing popular legislation. For instance, former FiveThirtyEight reporter Perry Bacon Jr. argued last March that the GOPs structural advantages over the Democratic Party has allowed legislators to pursue more conservative policies than the average voter prefers. And as Laura Bronner and Nathaniel Rakich also wrote at FiveThirtyEight, Republicans have done this while often being in the minority: Republican senators have not represented a majority of the population since 1999 yet, from 2003 to 2007 and again from 2015 to 2021,Republicans had a majority of members of the Senate itself. That means that, for 10 years, Republican senators were passing bills and not passing others on behalf of a minority of Americans. Furthermore, gerrymandering, particularly in state-legislative races, insulates Republican members from popular sentiment.

Recent work in political science offers another plausible explanation. In an increasingly polarized political system, individual issues may matter less than partisan identity. In other words, partisan loyalty to ones own team is paramount. So instead of voting on issues, Americans appear to more readily adopt the views of party leaders. In a 2019 interview with The New York Times, Stanford political scientist Shanto Iyengar suggests that this is diminishing the relevance of political issues: There is a growing body of work showing that policy preferences are driven more by partisans eagerness to support their party rather than considered analysis of the pros and cons of opposing positions on any given issue.

There is one crucial caveat to all of this. If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, the 1973 opinion that established a constitutional right to abortion, the issue of abortion may provide the most critical test to the GOPs ability to defy political gravity yet. Even if Americans have conflicting views on abortion, few believe it should be completely illegal. Which is why a ruling that overturned Roe would put tremendous pressure on Republican elected officials to fully embrace the most extreme position the complete illegality of abortion. It would almost certainly become a campaign issue in 2022, and Republican elected officials would be forced to defend a position that is broadly unpopular.

The first and overriding goal for national political parties is to win elections. So if Republican candidates keep winning elections without offering an agenda that garners widespread public support, there is no reason to expect the party to change. The party is already poised to make gains in 2022 without putting forward a governing agenda. What would force the GOP to reevaluate? It would take a sustained series of election losses, said Masket. They would need to lose elections they didnt expect to lose.

Even then, though, its not clear whether a course correction would be the end result. If the GOP is able to keep convincing itself that election losses are due to voter fraud and/or electoral malfeasance, there is no reason to expect the partys agenda will change anytime soon.

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Why The Republican Party Isnt Concerned With Popularity - FiveThirtyEight

Rep. Liz CheneyElizabeth (Liz) Lynn CheneyCheney: Republicans who stuck by Trump 'will not be judged well by history' Jan. 6 panel to seek Hannity's cooperation: report The Hill's Morning Report - Presented by Altria - Jan. 6 Capitol attack back in spotlight MORE (R-Wyo.) said in an interview on Tuesday that her fellow Republicans in Congress who have stuck by former President TrumpDonald TrumpMissouri state GOP lawmaker resigns for Florida consulting job Trump to attend fundraiser for midterm candidates Biden meatpacking reforms lack punch, say critics MORE following the Jan. 6 Capitol attack "will not be judged well by history."

Haley Byrd Wilt, associate editor ofThe Dispatch,asked Cheney how the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 plans on providing a clear picture of the Capitol attack that is widely accepted by people across the political spectrum whenthe panel appeared to have little support from or involvement with the GOP. Cheney is one of only two Republican lawmakers on the committee, along with outgoing Rep. Adam KinzingerAdam Daniel KinzingerCheney: Republicans who stuck by Trump 'will not be judged well by history' McCarthy says Democrats using Jan. 6 as 'partisan political weapon' Five takeaways from polls marking Jan. 6 anniversary MORE (R-Ill.).

Cheney pointed out that HouseMinority Leader Kevin McCarthyKevin McCarthyCheney: Republicans who stuck by Trump 'will not be judged well by history' Twitter's Marjorie Taylor Greene ban fuels GOP attackson 'Big Tech' Democrats' loose talk of 'disqualification' still dangerous MORE (R-Calif.) had ultimately made the decisionnot toappointpeople from his party to the committee. McCarthy withdrew his appointments after Speaker Nancy PelosiNancy PelosiHillicon Valley Twitter's Greene ban boosts GOP attacks Cheney: Republicans who stuck by Trump 'will not be judged well by history' Capitol Police chief says he doesn't expect security threats on Jan. 6 anniversary MORE (D-Calif.) rejected Republican Reps. Jim Banks (Ind.) and Jim JordanJames (Jim) Daniel JordanJan. 6 panel releases Hannity texts, asks for cooperation Cheney: Republicans who stuck by Trump 'will not be judged well by history' This week: Congress returns to anniversary of Jan. 6 attack MORE (Ohio), who he had named, as appointees.

Cheney told Wilt that the picture of Jan. 6 that the committee currently has is that Trump "summoned" the rioters to Washington, D.C., and "told them to marchon the Capitol."

"I think[Trump's] actions and the actions of those people who continue to defend president Trump will not be judged well by history," Cheney said. "And so part of our committee's responsibility is to get the facts for history, to make sure people have all of those on which to make judgements going forward."

Cheney recalled that immediately after the attack, Republicans were unified in their condemnation of what had occurred. However, she saidthat many of her GOP colleagues now seem to be "willing to minimize and whitewash what happened,"though she added that "they won't be successful."

Reflecting back on Jan. 6, 2020, Cheney told Wilt that she remembers being "very angry."

"In the chamber, I remember the disbelief that it could possibly be happening. I remember, certainly, Representative Raskin telling me that there was a Confederate flag flying inside the Capitol. And just the disbelief that we were there at the heart of our constitutional republic and that we had a violent mob attempting to break into the chamber," said Cheney.

Earlier this week, Cheney said that Trump was "at war with the rule of law" and warned that he may likely repeat the very same claims that incited rioters to break into the Capitol during the upcoming one-year anniversary of Jan. 6.

"I think that if what he has been saying since he left office is any indication, former President Trump is likely again this week to make the same false claims about the election that he knows to be false and the same false claims about the election that he knows caused violence on Jan. 6," said Cheney.

"If he makes those same claims, he's doing it with complete understanding and knowledge of what those claims have caused in the past," she said.

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Cheney: Republicans who stuck by Trump 'will not be judged well by history' | TheHill - The Hill

Media top headlines January 4

In media news today, comedian Patton Oswalt gets mocked for a lengthy apology after taking a picture with Dave Chappelle, Howard Stern slams Oprah Winfrey for hosting dinner parties amid COVID surge, and Governor DeSantis responds to media criticism that he was missing in December.

A CBS guest said Tuesday the 2022 midterm elections posed one of the top risks to the entire world and a landslide Republican victory would effectively delegitimize the 2024 presidential election.

Eurasia Group president Ian Bremmer said on "CBS Mornings" that the upcoming elections were the "most important" midterms in American history.

"We have January 6 coming up in just a day," he said. "As you know, since the profoundly challenged elections of 2020, no lessons have been learned at all in the United States. The country is much more divided The United States has an election process that is increasingly broken, increasingly delegitimized. In the midterm elections especially, if you have a significant win for a Trump-led Republican Party, means that 2024 is going to be seen as illegitimate and potentially a constitutional crisis. In the world's most powerful country, it's hard not to rank that high on your list."

DEMOCRAT FORMER MAYOR WARNS LEFT OF 2022 ELECTION WIPEOUT: DONT WANT TO GO THE WAY OF BLOCKBUSTER VIDEO'

"It's deeply worrying," CBS anchor Tony Dokoupil agreed.

With President Biden's approval rating languishing and the historic struggles the White House's party has in a president's first midterms, Republicans are hopeful in 2022 they'll take back the House and the Senate, where Democrats currently cling to small majorities.

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Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., recently became the 24th House Democrat to announce he wouldn't seek re-election in November, a troubling sign for his party. Republicans need to net five seats to take back the majority for the first time since they lost the House in the 2018 midterms, while they need to net one seat to take the majority in the 50-50 U.S. Senate.

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CBS guest: Republican sweep in 2022 midterms one of the greatest global threats - Fox News

Majorities of the people, not the Electoral College, should be able to pick the president and decide who controls the House and Senate. All who make their lives in the United States including the incarcerated, people convicted of felonies and noncitizens should be allowed to vote.

This might sound alarming to inland Republican voters who imagine themselves besieged by a permanent coastal majority. But in a working democracy, there are no permanent majorities or minorities. Forging partnerships in a truly democratic system, inland conservatives would soon find new allies just not ones determined to break democracy itself.

Some of these changes probably require amending the Constitution. Hard changes have come through constitutional amendment before: Shortly before World War I, activists successfully pressed state legislatures to ratify an amendment giving up their power to choose U.S. senators. Maybe we can revive mass movements for amendments, starting with one that would make the amendment process itself more democratic. If the public supports a constitutional amendment to limit money in politics, restrict gerrymandering or enshrine a core abortion right, a committed majority should be able to say what our fundamental law is by popular vote, rather than having to go through the current, complicated process of ratifying amendments through state legislatures or dozens of constitutional conventions.

This may sound wild-eyed. But it would not always have. James Wilson, one of the most learned and thoughtful of the Constitutions framers, believed that as a matter of principle, the people may change the Constitution whenever and however they please. This is a right of which no positive institution can ever deprive them. Even Madison conceded that if we thought of the Constitution as a national charter rather than a federal arrangement among sovereign states, the supreme and ultimate authority would reside with the majority, which had the power to alter or abolish its established government. It is hard to deny that, since 1789, the Constitution has become a national charter in the minds of most Americans.

Do we really think that establishing fundamental law is too much for us, something only revered (or reviled) ancestors could do? More likely we are afraid of one another and the decisions majorities would make. Thinkers like Madison associated democracy with majority tyranny, but history tells a different story. Even our terribly flawed legacy is rich in examples of majoritarian emancipation: New Deal programs, the Civil Rights Acts and the Voting Rights Act and Medicare. Majorities can change the world for the better, when they have the chance. Giving one another that chance, over and over, is how equals share a country.

But are we willing to give, and take, that chance? Maybe more than fearing majority tyranny, we suspect that the country is already too divided and mistrustful to make basic choices together at all. One thing Democrats and Republicans share is the belief that, to save the country, the other side must not be allowed to win. Every election is an existential crisis. In our current political climate, any proposal to democratize the system would immediately be coded as partisan, and half the country would reject it from the start. In such an anxious and suspicious country, the current system can be seen as a kind of peace treaty. Maybe that was what Mr. Biden meant when, just after taking his oath of office two weeks after the Capitol riot, in a Washington guarded by 26,000 troops, he praised the resilience of our Constitution.

But the Constitution is not keeping the peace; it is fostering crises. Far from being resilient, it is adding to our brittleness.

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Opinion | The Republican Party Is Succeeding Because We Are Not a True Democracy - The New York Times

Not long ago, Democrats were giddy with demographic trendlines projecting a massive growth in the Hispanic population nationwide.

The thinking: as the country becomes minority-majority, Democrats will firmly control all branches of government and Republicans will become extinct.

But a funny thing is happening to Democrats on the way to cash their political paycheck. More and more Hispanics are voting Republican.

And as the Latino community continues to grow in Tennessee, both political parties should take note of these trends and work hard to win over this growing voting bloc.

For Republicans, this means stepping out of their comfort zone and going into places with large Hispanic populations. In Middle Tennessee, there is a sizable and vibrant Latino community in Nashville and the surrounding areas.

Large Hispanic churches are not only providing Latinos a place to worship, but also a place to organize and make their voice heard in the civic process.

I recently had a chance to see this firsthand when I attended a service at Casa de Dios, a church in Middle Tennessee, where Gov. Bill Lee was their guest speaker. At the service, Lee talked about the work he is doing for all Tennesseans, and Latinos attending the service talked directly to the governor.

This is exactly the type of civic engagement that we need from Latinos and from elected officials in the state.

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Besides having a seat at the table of policymaking, Tennessee Republicans also must do a better job identifying, training and recruiting conservative Latinos to run for office. Latinos are opening up businesses, running nonprofits and serving in churches and local communities from Knoxville to Memphis and everywhere in between.

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A Latina voter at a voter registration event held by the North Carolina Congress of Latino Organizations.

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These are folks that Republicans should be talking to and sharing their vision for the state and country with.

Recent polling and electoral results confirm that Latinos are a not a monolithic voting bloc, but instead open to hearing a pitch from both political parties. Ruy Teixeria, a Democratic analyst specializing in the Hispanic vote, recently sounded the alarm for Democrats, writing: They [Latinos] are instead a patriotic, upwardly mobile, working-class group with quite practical and down-to-earth concerns. Democrats will either learn to focus on that or they will continue to lose ground among this vital group of voters.

Sign up for our newsletter.: Read compelling stories for and with the Latino community in Tennessee.

Teixeria is right. In fact, a recent Wall Street Journal poll found that Hispanic voters are now evenly split between the two parties. The article went on to note that Republicans have made rapid gains among a crucial voting demographic that has long favored Democrats.

For Republicans, these trendlines are encouraging, but they dont necessarily mean that its automatic. They will still need to campaign in Latino communities and invest in sustained and long-term Hispanic engagement to secure their votes.

Nationally, Democrats need to understand that there is a large swath of voters who are not interested in defunding the police and value the sanctity of life. Instead of casting off these voters because they are clinging to guns and religion, Democrats should welcome them into their party.

A lot can happen between now and November, but both political parties have been put on notice. Republicans need to double down on reaching out to Latino voters, and Democrats should reject the radical progressive wing of the party so that they dont turn off moderates, independents and, yes, Latinos.

Raul Lopez is the executive director of Latinos for Tennessee, an organization committed to promoting and defending faith, freedom and family to the Latino community in Tennessee.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Latinos can help the Republican Party grow in Tennessee

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Latinos can help the Republican Party grow in Tennessee | Opinion - Yahoo News

And unless they can get their act together in a hurry, Republicans are at risk of their weakest showing in a race for governor since 1992, the year Bill Clinton won the presidency and Democratic Governor Bruce Sundlun rolled to reelection over Elizabeth Leonard.

It doesnt have to be this way at least not when it comes to this years governors race. GOP party chair Cienki could pick up the phone today and recruit a popular, battle-tested candidate with enough name recognition and support to vault the party from being an afterthought to a serious contender.

His name is Allan Fung.

The former Cranston mayor just completed his first full year out of politics in almost two decades hes a law partner at Pannone Lopes Devereaux & OGara LLC but he clearly misses the game. Hes been talking to friends and supporters behind the scenes about running for state treasurer, which might be easier to win, but would undoubtedly be less fulfilling.

Fung was term-limited in 2020, and he left office as popular as ever.

He built the citys rainy day fund above $20 million, which sounds boring but proved that it doesnt take steep tax increases to balance budgets. He led the effort to make Garden City the premier shopping center in Rhode Island and that includes Providence Place. Cranstons population even increased under Fung, helping the city pass Warwick for second-largest in the state.

Even the Democrats running to replace him had hardly anything critical to say about his tenure in City Hall. Then his handpicked candidate, Ken Hopkins, easily won a Republican primary and the general election to become mayor.

That wasnt even Fungs biggest win of the year. His helped his wife, Barbara Ann Fenton-Fung, unseat House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello in one of the most significant Republican victories in all of New England (US Senator Susan Collins reelection in Maine might be the only exception).

Its easy to sleep on Fung because he lost two races for governor to Gina Raimondo, but she wasnt exactly a pushover. Shes the best fund-raiser the state has ever known, and she ended up getting an interview for vice president with Joe Biden. She settled for US commerce secretary, and shes still getting her name mentioned in stories about running for president in 2024.

This time around, Raimondo wont be walking through that door.

The Democrats have a crowded field that includes incumbent Governor Dan McKee, Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea, state Treasurer Seth Magaziner, former CVS executive Helena Foulkes, and former secretary of state Matt Brown. Theyre all impressive in their own way, but none of them have a track record in politics that can match Fungs.

Theres a potential for a moderate-to-conservative Republican or independent to win this race, said John Loughlin, a former Republican candidate for Congress who now hosts a talk show on WPRO-AM. Youve such a huge primary on the Democratic side, and theyre all going to damage each other. By September, well hate all of them.

Patrick Sweeney, an attorney and Republican operative who ran Fungs campaign against Raimondo in 2014, said voters might struggle with a third Fung candidacy, although he noted that it took Sundlun three tries before he became governor.

But Sweeney said the race could be attractive for Fung because he has still has nearly universal name recognition in Rhode Island and a substantial donor base. Add in the idea that Republicans are expected to have a good year nationally, and theres a case to be made for the party winning back the governors office.

Republicans will not have a better political environment than this for another 20 or 30 years, Sweeney said.

Thats not to say Fung would be a shoo-in.

One significant challenge is that he and Cienki have never seen eye to eye. Fungs wife resigned from a spot on the Republican State Central Committee in 2019 when Cienki became chair. When I asked Cienki about the idea of Fung running for governor, all she said was that she doesnt think hes interested in that job.

There are conservative members of the party who think Fung is too moderate, a challenge similar to the one Governor Charlie Baker has always faced with his own party in Massachusetts. Interestingly, Fungs biggest liability against any Democrat would be the photo of him wearing a Donald Trump winter cap at Trumps inauguration in 2017.

Fung wont wow you with a grand vision for the next generation of Rhode Island, but hes a steady leader who gives the Republicans a fighting chance. Hed make a reliable manager of the $1.1 billion in federal COVID funding the state still has to spend, and Rhode Island voters have proved in the past that they like the idea of having a Republican leading the state to balance a Democratic-dominated General Assembly.

But if its going to happen, Cienki needs to get those wheels moving now. She needs to make nice with Fung, do her best to clear the field of any primary opponents, and convince him that being treasurer just isnt very sexy.

For his part, Fung has been sending my calls to voicemail as though Im a debt collector. But Sweeney, his former campaign manager, said Fung will have to decide if this is right moment to take one last shot at running for the states top job.

One thing is for sure, you only get three bites at the apple, Sweeney said. There is no fourth try.

Dan McGowan can be reached at dan.mcgowan@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter at @danmcgowan.

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This Republican can be Rhode Islands next governor. But he might run for the wrong office - The Boston Globe

The following is an excerpt from The Steal: The Attempt to Overturn the 2020 Election and the People Who Stopped It by Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague which will be published by Atlantic Monthly Press on January 4. The book records the story of what happened in the six swing statesArizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsinbetween November 3 and January 6 through the eyes of participants on both sides, those who believed there was widespread voter fraud and those who, after investigating and finding no evidence of it, defended the election results. It is based on original interviews conducted by the authors and the team of researchers and reporters who worked on the book, as well as public records, court testimony, and open legislative hearings.

In Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, a small city that wraps around the lower edge of Lake Winnebago, Rohn Bishop hosted a celebration on Election Night at Republican Party headquarters.

Inside a big, low, square building just two blocks south of the lakefront, about 60 people watched as Fox News reported the election results. The windowless, fluorescent-lit room was decked with Trump banners, small American flags, and movable wall panels studded with campaign buttons. The mood was festive. All the local Republican candidates were winning, and so was Trump at first. Then when Fox called Arizona for Biden, a chorus of boos went up, and Bishop could see trouble ahead; he knew the Arizona result suggested danger for the president everywhere. Mail ballots, which would take longer to count, were going to swing heavily to BidenTrump had helped ensure it.

Bishop wasnt happy about it. Few had invested more in Trumps reelection or cared more.

Bishop was GOP chairman in Fond du Lac County, flat farm country that unrolls green and lake pocked to the west and south of Green Bay. He was leery of Trumps chances statewide and nationally, but he had done his job. Trump was going to carry his patch of Wisconsin handilyby about 26 percent, with about 62 percent of the vote.

Upbeat, popular, and garrulous, Bishop had a high-pitched nasal voice that was surprising from a man of his bulk. He was broad shouldered, big bellied, with a wide, florid face, big dark-rimmed glasses, a cleanly shaved dome, and a thick red-brown beard. He managed the detailing department of a GM dealership in his day job, but everybody in Fond du Lac knew his passion was politics. He was the face of the Republican Party here.

In at least one respect, Bishop may have been the most authentic Republican in America. Because it was in Fond du Lac County, according to local lore, that the party got its start. In 1854, a group of antislavery former Whigs and members of other parties had met in Ripon, inside a little white schoolhouse. They had formed a new political organization, adopting the name Republican. Other meetings in other states made similar claims, but the Ripon schoolhouse had been preserved as a historical shrine, and the county laid claim to being the GOPs taproot.

Bishop lived in nearby Waupun, a biggish town of clapboard houses on neatly manicured lots, where no one had ever questioned his party bona fides. His whole life was wrapped up in his Republican identity. One of his grandfathers volunteered for Robert Taft at the partys convention in 1952 because Dwight Eisenhower wasnt conservative enough. His other grandfather worked for the party in nearby DuPage County, Illinois. He proudly notes that the river that runs near his corner lot is the south branch of the Rock River, which, downstream in Illinois, Ronald Reagan once patrolled as a lifeguard. He named his two daughters after 80s conservative iconsReagan and Maggie, for Britains Maggie Thatcher. Beneath the stars and stripes that fly over his driveway is a red 2006 Pontiac with the license plate GOP 4ME. His family calls his favorite pastime, simply, Republican-ing, which includes riding on the party float in as many as nine annual county parades while waving, as his daughters put it, like a princess.

Bishop also holds baked-in Republican views. He watches Fox News and sees Democratic priorities as creeping socialism. But he has the personality to transcend differences of opinion, even in the darkest dens of Democratic orthodoxy. Invited in 2019 by a Columbia University professor to a series of interview sessions in New York via Skype, he likely failed to alter a single opinion on the liberal campus about abortion or gun rights, but according to the professor, they loved him.

Bishop had made his house Trump campaign central. On a patch of lawn between his house and his neighbors garage, hed set out Trump signs 100 at a time, inviting supporters to drive up and take as many as they liked. He registered new voters and trained campaign workers at the picnic table in his backyard, where volunteers downloaded the Trump campaigns canvassing app and used it to find fellow Republicans. As they learned how to address potential voters, Bishop served coffee and juice.

Despite the presidents popularity in Waupun, Bishop had seen signs that it was slipping in Wisconsin overall. The presidents victory over Hillary Clinton in the state had been narrow, less than 1 percent. More and more, Wisconsins people were concentrated in Green Bay, Milwaukee, and the state capital of Madison. When Bishop had driven an hour southwest to do door-to-door work in the reliably Republican suburb of Mequon, just north of Milwaukee, hed seen Biden and Black Lives Matter signs on front lawns, which shocked him. This was not his grandfathers Wisconsin anymore.

And as far as Bishop was concerned, Trump had hurt himself badly by discouraging people from voting by mail. When the president had suddenly inveighed against the practice, it came as a surprise to the states Republican leaders. Not long before, they had mailed pamphlets to every GOP voter in the state encouraging it, with a picture of Donald Trump on the front giving two thumbs up. Now he was telling Fox News, I think mail-in voting is going to rig the election, I really do, later tweeting that it would produce the most CORRUPT ELECTION in our Nations History!

Bishop countered by urging that the presidents comments be ignored. Its such a bad idea to scare our own voters away from a legit way to cast their ballot, he tweeted.

That discordant note from the presidents own party in Americas heartland drew some national press attention, which Bishop found both startling and troubling. A hail of criticism followed. Here he was, the nations most authentic Republican, a man who considered himself more pro-Trump than Trump, accused of being a Never Trumperall for trying to help get the guy reelected!

As local party chairman, your job is to help get our candidates elected, one critic wrote. I am not saying that you are wrong about some of Trumps tweets, but Joe Biden is a greater threat to our future. Focus.

Which, as far as Bishop was concerned, entirely missed the point. If the idea was to win, it was Trump who had lost focus.

A local Wisconsin news program invited Bishop on to explain himself.

I think the mail-in absentee voting can actually help Republicans in a state like Wisconsin, he said. We have early voting [by mail] for two weeks. So why give big metropolitan areas where the Democrats are more concentrated 14 days to vote while only giving the Republicans one day to vote? I think urging Republican voters who live in those more rural areas to get their ballot in the mail is a good way for us to reach voters. And any vote we can bring in, in what I thinks gonna be a high-turnout elections a good thing for us.

He defended the voting system in Wisconsin, which he had witnessed up close for years. As a young man, hed tended to believe stories of widespread voter fraud, but his familiarity with the process had taught him that it would actually be very hard to fix an election. Instances of fraud were rare, almost always insignificant, and committed by both sides. Whipping up fears among conservatives would just discourage them from voting.

Like the audiences at Columbia University, his listeners were unpersuaded. More criticism followed from his own people. Some passed word that the White House was not happy with him. Bishop was used to being criticized. Democrats were after him all the time. But here he was, trying to help Trump, lending his considerable local expertise, and getting vilified for it!

And there was no doubt that he was right. He didnt have to wait for the election results in Wisconsin to prove it, as they would. Bishop knew what he was talking about. People who knew and respected him, after hearing him out, would say, Okay, I get where you are coming from; that makes sense. But he couldnt have that kind of talk with all his new critics. And increasingly, he found, even those who would hear him out simply responded, But Trump says.

He had contradicted the Oracle. It didnt matter that he made sense. Heresy was heresy.

In early September, Bishop noticed his heart racing strangely. It worried him. Hed had an ear issue earlier in the summer, and when he went back for a checkup, the doctor noted that his blood pressure had shot up.

Hey, its the middle of an election year, Bishop said and laughed it off. But his mom told him that high blood pressure ran in the family. He started worrying about it.

Not that he didnt already have enough worries: the election stress, the criticism, planning for his wifes birthday and their anniversary in the same week. The final straw was a call from the state GOP chairman, who complained that internal polling showed weak numbers for Trump in Fond du Lac County. This made no sense to Bishop. His county was full of farmers, people who wouldnt vote for a Democrat if the GOP put up a dead man. But now the party questioned his performance as county chairman.

Thats when his heart started to flutter. Normally, he didnt notice his heart beating in his chest, but now it went so fast that he could hardly focus on anything else. It would stop and then start up again. The more he worried about it, the more it happened. Finally, sitting behind his desk at the dealership, there came an attack so strong that he drove to the emergency room on his lunch hour. Doctors hooked him up to an IV, gave him a calming drug, and ran some tests. Only when the results came back normal could he breathe easily again. He went home with anxiety medication, took a few days off, and resolved not to let things get to him so much.

So the clean sweep of local candidates on election night felt like vindication. But Trumps numbers continued to fall, just as he had feared.

Bishop had remained at campaign headquarters in Fond du Lac on Election Night long enough to watch Trump appear on TV to give a rambling, disconsolate victory speech. It was just before 2:30 in the morning in Washington, 1:30 in Wisconsin. Only a few of the Fond du Lac crowd remained. The president spoke from the White House with his wife, Melania, and Vice President Mike Pence at his side. He didnt look like a winner. He looked bewildered and disgusted. Before a wall of American flags, he saluted the millions who had voted for him and said, A very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people, and we wont stand for it. We will not stand for it.

He meandered rhetorically through the various states where he said he had either won already or would soon win, soon transitioning to talk of voter fraud. Ive been saying this from the day I heard they were going to send out tens of millions of ballots. This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election. We did win this election. So our goal now is to ensure the integrity for the good of this nation. This is a very big moment. This is a major fraud on our nation. We want the law to be used in a proper manner.

This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. This is a very big moment. This is a major fraud on our nation. Rohn Bishop looked over at one of his colleagues and they rolled their eyes at each other. This was nonsense.

Wisconsins election had been run by Republicans. In fact, the election laws in that state had been overhauled just a few years earlier during the tenure of Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican. Bishop had been around for that, had cheered it, and ever since, he had felt especially good about the integrity of the vote in his state.

This election stolen? It wasnt just false; it was dangerous. Bishop thought, This could get ugly.

Whatever hopes he had that his election travails would ease after Election Day were quickly dashed. He slept for only about two hours after the party, then woke up bright and early Wednesday, running on coffee, playing teacher for his daughters pandemic in-home virtual schooling. He also did two radio interviews.

He sympathized with Trumps outburst at the White House early that morning but did not agree. He told one interviewer that they had to give the president a few days to accept his loss.

Theres enough states outstanding that were not going to concede anything yet, he said. But if I was running for president of the United States Id rather be Joe Biden than Donald Trump at this moment.

Bishop regarded these interviews as a standard wrap-up, but he discovered as the week progressed that the contest remained far from settled for many of those he knew. Saying otherwise riled them up.

And he had become the local focus for election outrage. A truck driver called him and screamed at him for helping Democrats steal the election. Bishop wanted to know what had given him that idea. The driver was moving through northern Wisconsin and seeing Trump sign after Trump sign. He hadnt seen any Biden signs. So how could Trump lose Wisconsin?

Well, do you ever drive your semi in Dane County? Bishop asked. This encompassed Madison, the state capital, a city of about 270,000 and the second largest population center in Wisconsin, behind Milwaukee. It was also a Democratic stronghold.

No, said the driver.

Bishop suggested that his sample was flawed.

Strangers were one thing. What really got under his skin were his friends, even his coworkers. He engaged with his colleague Jeff Respalje on Facebook. A mechanic at the GM dealership who had been increasingly vocal about Trumps claims, Respalje had reposted a news report that generals would refuse to take orders from Biden as commander in chief. The first mutinous general quoted was Joe Barron, who had died in 1977.

Bishop pointed out this and other clear signs of the articles falsity, to which Respalje made the curious reply, Theres too many fact-checkers already, dont need another one.

Taking a stand on the principle that facts mattered, Bishop had tried to speak to Respalje about it in person at the back end of the workshop where vehicles were hoisted on lifts so mechanics could work underneath. He considered Respalje one of the best workers in the shop. Beneath a Chevy Silverado, Bishop told his friend, Im just trying to help because the stuff youre sharing is completely wrong.

Again, Respalje responded, I dont need a fact-checker. Then they got into it: Respalje, tall and lean with a long, thin beard and a baseball cap; Bishop, bald, burly, and thickly bearded.

Dude, I voted for the same guy you did, Bishop said. Im just telling you it wasnt stolen; these ballots werent illegally cast. Theyre not going to be thrown out. Theres nothing there.

You really think Joe Biden got 84 million votes? Respalje asked.

Yeah.

No f---ing way. He never left his basement.

Yeah, thats right, Bishop said. Trump was unpopular enough to drive Democrats to vote for a doormat. Yeah, I dont deny that; but he won and its legit.

Then another colleague joined inon Respaljes side. This was a man who had never evinced an interest in politics, but suddenly he was asking whether the state legislature could overturn Bidens win, or whether the states representatives to the Electoral College might ignore the popular vote, which he had seen reported, and simply cast their ballots for Trump.

Bishop answered the questions, but he could see that nothing he said connected. The fact that he had toiled for a year trying to get Trump electedhe hadnt seen these guys at his training sessions or door-to-door outingssimply didnt matter.

He felt increasingly troubled by the tactics of Trumps ardent followers. When state legislators called for partial recounts in Dane County and Milwaukee, seeking to throw out the votes of those who had voted early and in person, it offended him. The effort went nowhere. Its rationale was that election clerks, following procedures adopted informally years earlier, had used a single form instead of a two-form procedure that was still technically mandated. Bishop saw it as fundamentally unfair, a bald effort to toss out black ballots since both recounts were aimed where most of Wisconsins black voters lived. As it happened, he had used the single form, too. By this standard, his own early, in-person vote also deserved to be tossed.

Bishop took down the Trump sign in his front yard on the Thursday after the election. When some of his neighbors complained, he told them simply, We lost.

In February, months after the state elections commission struggled over whether to certify the election results over the protests of Republican electors, Bishop was reelected to his party chairmanship. His neighbors came out in a blizzard to support him. After all the abuse he had taken for telling the truth, Bishop was touched.

Bishop had wavered about seeking the job again. He feared that Trump loyalists would challenge him. But the vote was unanimous. He would remain the most authentic Republican in America, at least as things are seen in Wisconsin. When he stood to accept and to offer thanks, one of his friends thought he might be about to cry.

He didnt, and proud as he was, he didnt plan to keep the position for long. He decided to run for mayor of Waupun. He had T-shirts that read, Rohn for Waupun.

His affection for the town gushed forth in one breath: Its a part-time mayor and its a nonpartisan position, but I like Waupun, and we have a lot of history in Waupun, and I was raised here, and I love the town, and the history of the town, and the people who live here and Im a good advocate for Waupun, and the best part about being the mayor is basically youre the cheerleader for the city, and Im kind of like, Well, who better than me? And plus, we have a cute little slogan, Rohn for Waupun.

In Wisconsin, Rohn (Raahn) is pronounced the same as the Waah in Waupun. He says, It helps people finally learn how to pronounce Waupun correctly.

Excerpted from The Steal. 2022 Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Atlantic Monthly Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic Inc. All rights reserved.

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The Most Authentic Republican in America - The Dispatch

As 2021 crashed to a close amid alarming new numbers of omicron cases in the US, we wanted to take a step back and ask, how healthy is Americas democracy? Now that the anniversary of the January 6 storming of the Capitol is close at hand, we wanted to take a look at the year in terms of how the Republican Party is living up to its own boastful moniker as the party of family values. This was, after all, the year when a Republican president urged his followers to march to the Capitol and fight like hell.

The oft-repeated phrase is that Republicans are pro-life only until birth. That accusation seemed justified when Republicans failed to vote in favour of the child tax credit and the child and dependent care tax credit in the stimulus package introduced by President Biden. This at a time when the United States ranks as one of the worst for child poverty among the worlds rich nations. American child poverty rates are worse than in Mexico and six times times those of Finland. Alas, Republicans seem more eager to act like children than to actually help them.

Family values, of course, have no real party affiliation and the majority of Americans believe that being good people, and treating people with dignity and kindness, still matters. Our children learn from our actions. So it has been particularly distressing to witness the many unseemly antics of many senior Republicans this year.

Representative Lauren Boebert, of Colorado, is a gun rights activist and adherent of Donald Trump. She has riffed on fellow Representative Ilhan Omars ethnicity she was born in Mogadishu and joked about a bomb in a backpack. For her part, Omar commented that Boebert thinks bigotry gets her clout.Boebert also refers to Covid vaccines as Fauci Ouchies, in a year where hundreds of thousands of Americans have died from Covid. Of course, the comment led to a whole line of Fauci Ouchie merchandise.

And can we ever forget Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia (pictured above), and the video of her shouting harassing comments through the letter box of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs Congressional office? Greene challenged her to a debate, shouting that Cortez should put her big girl diapers on.This was almost as dignified as Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona, who posted a cartoon video of himself wielding a sword at President Joe Biden, and killing Ocasio-Cortez.

Then theres the blowhard Kevin McCarthy of California, who told a fundraising crowd that should he become Speaker of the House and be handed the gavel by Nancy Pelosi, itll be hard not to hit her with it.

In a year that started with Trumps fight like hell command, its become commonplace for Republican leaders to post-and-boast of their gun savvy at the shooting range. So its no surprise that The Vilest Award of the Year has got to be shared by the members of Congress (including, our multi-category winner Boebert) who posted holiday photos depicting themselves and their families bearing assault weapons in front of a Christmas tree. This came within a month of the latest school shooting that killed four and wounded many more.

Sometimes it feels like the leaders of the Republican party are in competition with each other to be the most outrageous and the result is the sort of behaviour you would expect to see in a school playground. If these were just private citizens, that would be one thing. But as the anniversary of the storming of the Capitol approaches, these are the elected officials who represent our nation and on whom we all depend and our children are watching.

We are the only publication thats committed to covering every angle. We have an important contribution to make, one thats needed now more than ever, and we need your help to continue publishing throughout the pandemic. So please, make a donation.

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The decline of the Republican Party - TheArticle

Rep. Mark Finchem, of Arizona, gestures as he speaks during an election rally in Richmond, Va., in October. Steve Helber/AP hide caption

Rep. Mark Finchem, of Arizona, gestures as he speaks during an election rally in Richmond, Va., in October.

Mark Finchem was at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

He says he didn't go inside, but he snapped some photos of people who did.

"What happens when the People feel they have been ignored, and Congress refuses to acknowledge rampant fraud. #stopthesteal," he tweeted.

The Arizona state representative was there to share what he called "evidence" of an "irredeemably compromised" 2020 election with Republican lawmakers from his home state of Arizona. To be clear, Republican election officials in the state deemed the results "free, fair, and accurate" and even a discredited GOP-led "audit" run in the state's largest county agreed Biden won.

More recently, Finchem also appeared at a QAnon conference, and in speaking with NPR declined to describe what happened at the Capitol as a riot or an insurrection, instead making allusions to a sort of conspiracy involving law enforcement.

Now, he is running to oversee voting in Arizona in 2022.

And he's not alone.

An NPR analysis of 2022 secretary of state races across the country found at least 15 Republican candidates running who question the legitimacy of President Biden's 2020 win, even though no evidence of widespread fraud has been uncovered about the race over the last 14 months. In fact, claims of any sort of fraud that swung the election have been explicitly refuted in state after state, including those run by Republicans.

The duties of a state secretary of state vary, but in most cases, they are the state's top voting official and have a role in carrying out election laws.

Current and former election officials, as well as election experts worry what could become of democracy should some or many of them win.

"The reasons why Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election failed is because there were state officials who refused to substantiate his claims of fraud," said Franita Tolson, an election law expert at the University of Southern California. "These folks really are gatekeepers."

In many cases, the races are setting up a deciding moment for Republican voters just how far down the election denial rabbit hole are they willing to follow former President Donald Trump?

In Georgia for instance, the Republican primary will pit incumbent Brad Raffensperger against two candidates, Rep. Jody Hice and former Alpharetta Mayor David Belle Isle, both of whom allege that Trump was the rightful winner of the state.

Raffensperger, however, became one of the leading Republican voices in 2020 cutting against Trump's misinformation about the election, culminating in a phone call where he told the then-president directly that he was wrong.

"I think [Trump] knows in his heart that he lost this election," Raffensperger told NPR recently.

The 2022 secretary of state race in Kansas is shaping up similarly.

Incumbent Scott Schwab corrected Trump's false claims about mail voting security in 2020, and at least one Republican challenger, Mike Brown, is seizing on those comments to call for audits and defend Trump.

Trump has endorsed three secretary of state candidates so far Finchem in Arizona, Hice in Georgia and Kristina Karamo, a community college professor in Michigan who has pushed conspiracy theories about the election and the attack on the Capitol.

Trey Grayson, a Republican former secretary of state from Kentucky, said the trend is worrisome but that it also makes sense since polling shows a majority of Republican voters feel similarly. A recent NPR/Ipsos poll, for example, found that two-thirds of Republicans nationally feel like fraud helped Biden win.

"There's a lot of crazy going around," Grayson said. "You have people running for these offices where the most important duty is counting the votes and accepting the results even if you don't like the outcome, and these folks don't appear to be well-positioned to do that."

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Here's where election-denying candidates are running to control voting - NPR