A Party of Cowards
I briefly thought Mitch McConnell would do the right thing. I will not make that mistake again. Also, a midterm update & thoughts on Russia's dangerous escalation in Ukraine and Trump's legal problems
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you received this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to subscribe: you can sign up below.
A quick housekeeping note: there won’t be a Zoom Chat this Friday, and this is likely the one big newsletter change because of my new think tank gig. I’m going to push the Friday Zoom Chat to a bimonthly schedule, i.e., every two weeks. Otherwise, it’s full speed ahead!
Midterm Update
We’re seven weeks from Election Day, and if you’re looking for evidence that Republicans are starting to show signs of political life … this may not be the update for you.
There’s a new poll in the New Hampshire Senate race showing Maggie Hassan up by 13 points over her Republican opponent, Don Bolduc. Perhaps, most important, it has Hassan above 50 percent. It comes on the heels of another poll that shows Hassan up by double digits (with her also above 50 percent). The near-term consequence is that I seriously doubt Republicans will heavily invest in Bolduc’s campaign, which likely dooms his already slim chances of winning.
Also, in New Hampshire’s two House races, incumbent Democrat Ann Kuster is up by 18 points. Incumbent Democrat Chris Pappas leads his MAGA Republican opponent Katherine Leavitt by 5 points — in a seat that is currently considered a toss-up.
Quite the nugget in today’s Politico Playbook:
“It’s no secret that DOUG MASTRIANO, the far-right state senator running for Pennsylvania governor, has had trouble uniting the GOP donor establishment behind him. It's a big reason why his campaign has yet to air a single general-election TV ad seven weeks before the election.”
Not a single general election ad! That’s insane and suggests Mastriano has little chance of winning this race. The fact that Mastriano’s opponent, Josh Shapiro, can dominate the airwaves could also have a significant down-ballot effect. It certainly won’t help Dr. Oz’s Senate campaign, but the real damage could come in individual House races and state legislature campaigns. If Shapiro can use his campaign funds to negatively define Mastriano and make him an anchor for other Republicans, things could get ugly fast for the GOP in the Keystone State.
How are things going for House Republicans?
NEW at @CookPolitical: three House rating changes, all in Democrats' direction. #AZ01 David Schweikert (R) - Lean R to Toss Up #AZ02 Tom O'Halleran (D) - Likely R to Lean R #TX28 Henry Cuellar (D) - Toss Up to Lean D Full analysis:
Arizona’s First Congressional District is an R+2 seat. The Second District is R+6, and Texas 28 is D+3. In a typical midterm environment, Republican candidates would likely be favored in all these races. This year they might end up losing all three.
One year ago, Glenn Youngkin was viewed as, potentially, the future of the Republican Party. Here was a fleece-wearing, moderate-sounding Republican governor with no strong connection to Trump, running on traditional GOP culture war issues, like schools, that resonated with suburban voters. And he won in Virginia, a state that has, in recent years, moved decidedly into the blue state column. So what’s Youngkin up to now — he’s doing a campaign event with 2020 election denier and all-around crazy person, Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake. It’s yet another reminder that there is no normal wing of the GOP and that the incentive structure for ambitious Republicans is to go full-MAGA if they hope to have a political future in the party.
What I Got Wrong!
At the end of (nearly) every year, I do an annual column called “What I Got Wrong,” … except this year. That means that my 2022 “What I Got Wrong” column will be an epic tale of failure … with one exception.
One of the pieces I have been most reluctant to revisit is one of my first posts for Truth and Consequences. In January 2021, I made the following argument about Trump’s second impeachment trial:
I’m starting to get the impression that soon-to-be Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has made up his mind about convicting Donald Trump.
… A move like this is not without risk, most specifically in alienating Trump’s core group of supporters. But it’s not as if McConnell has a great set of options here; either he can continue to enable Trump, vote not to convict, and allow the former president to continue playing a major role in the GOP or he can finally begin disentangling the party from Trump. Is there a better time to do that than when the memories of January 6 are still fresh in voter’s mind and Trump’s political standing could not be lower? If you’re going to jettison Trump, now is the moment to do it, when he is his weakest and lacks the megaphone of the presidency - or Twitter - to strike back. I suspect that with Trump out of office, out of the news, and unable to reach his millions of supporters their affection for him will wane. They will find new enemies and with the help of Mitch McConnell and his fellow Senate Republicans it will likely be Joe Biden and the “radical socialist” Democrats.
… While, I am generally loathe to make predictions, reading between the lines of McConnell’s statement yesterday seems to suggest which direction he is leaning: toward convicting Trump of high crimes and misdemeanors and ensuring that he never holds public office again. We can be sure that if McConnell does come down on the side of conviction more than enough of his Senate Republican colleagues will join him. In the words, again, of the “Godfather” it’s the “smart move” and McConnell was always smarter.
So I was clearly wrong about affection for Trump waning among Republican voters — and apparently wrong about McConnell’s intentions regarding impeachment. But today brought some vindication! An excerpt from Rachel Bade and Karoun Demirjian’s new book on how congressional Republicans handled Trump’s two impeachment trials suggests this was a much closer thing than anyone realized.
On a conference call with the GOP senators … McConnell listened as a group of Trump allies pressed him to find a way to avoid a second impeachment trial — and to do more to defend the ex-president. Couldn’t he get the Supreme Court to throw out the charges, they asked. After all, Trump was not president anymore. Why go through this at all?
A year before, McConnell had used his position to secure the most advantageous conditions possible for the president at trial, assuring his acquittal almost single-handedly. But this time, he refused to intervene. Even when Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) warned McConnell on the call that some of the GOP’s biggest-name donors wanted to see a more robust effort to exonerate the ex-president, McConnell remained unmoved. He had defended Trump for too long. Others could do as they wanted, but as far as he was concerned, this time the former president was on his own.
… Over the next few days, as an increasing number of GOP senators coalesced around the argument that a post-presidential impeachment was unconstitutional, McConnell made one last attempt to change their minds. He asked his leadership team to invite well-respected Republican legal experts to advocate both for and against the constitutionality argument so his members could hear both sides.
But the night before … (KY Senator Rand) Paul cornered McConnell’s staff in the cloakroom and demanded an immediate vote on the constitutionality of the looming trial. If McConnell didn’t schedule such a vote himself, Paul insisted he would force the issue. And he would do it the next day, right after the luncheon.
McConnell knew the vote was sure to fail, but that wasn’t the problem. The issue was that it would compel every senator to preemptively declare on the record whether they thought convicting Trump was constitutional — including McConnell, who was still at war with himself over that very question.
As lawmakers left … lunch the next day and headed to the chamber for the snap vote Paul had demanded, McConnell retreated to his office for a private moment. On the floor, several GOP senators who had just sat through arguments about why they must acquit Trump still weren’t sure if they agreed and started buttonholing McConnell’s staff.
“How’s he voting?” they asked over and over, eager for guidance — and to know if they’d have political cover to vote that the trial was constitutional. “How’s he voting?” McConnell’s aides confessed to the senators that they had no idea what their boss would do.
Of course, we know how this story ends — McConnell voted with his Republican colleagues and ultimately against conviction. He took the coward’s way out. Even though I got right where McConnell was leaning on impeachment, I can’t put this one in the win column. I made a fundamental error regarding congressional Republicans: they will always tread the path of least resistance. It’s true that McConnell was strongly leaning toward doing the right thing, but I had forgotten that when it comes to Trump, they will always err on the side of moral cowardice. Indeed, the fact that McConnell was so conflicted — and so clearly wanted to convict Trump but didn’t — makes his ultimate decision so much worse. He knew what he should do and still couldn’t muster up the courage. I should have expected precisely that outcome.
McConnell, however, looks like a paragon of virtue compared to his colleague Lindsey Graham:
The way Graham had rationalized Trump’s actions since Jan. 6 had been particularly craven — and a perfect example of how McConnell was quickly losing his members to Trump. The night of the riot, Graham had declared in an emotional speech that he and the president were through.
“Trump and I, we had a hell of a journey,” he had said on the Senate floor, his voice catching. “I hate it being this way. Oh my God I hate it … but today all I can say is count me out. Enough is enough.”
Two days later, Trump supporters had harassed Graham as he walked through Reagan National Airport, calling him a “traitor.” Graham’s resolve crumbled almost immediately. By the time the House was voting to impeach the following week, he had resumed his position as captain of the president’s cheering squad. He even found Trump an impeachment trial lawyer when no one else would step forward to defend him.
These sad, pathetic men care more about their narrow political ambitions than the Constitution they have repeatedly sworn an oath to uphold. A pox on every last one of them.
Putin Dangerous Escalation Gambit?
This development seems bad … for the world:
President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday ordered Russia's first mobilisation since World War Two and backed a plan to annex swathes of Ukraine, warning the West he was not bluffing when he said he'd be ready to use nuclear weapons to defend Russia.
In the biggest escalation of the Ukraine war since Moscow's Feb. 24 invasion, Putin explicitly raised the spectre of a nuclear conflict, approved a plan to annex a chunk of Ukraine the size of Hungary, and called up 300,000 reservists.
I strongly suspect that Putin is bluffing. But there are three possible explanations for what’s happening here a) he wants to scare Ukraine into slowing down their (so far) successful military offensive b) he is looking for an exit ramp from the war and hopes that a threat of nuclear war will get the US and others to begin seeking a diplomatic arrangement that will allow him to extricate himself from Ukraine c) he’s going all in on the war.
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