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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: A bad week for Trump among many more to come [1]
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Date: 2023-12-04
Joyce Vance/”Civil Discourse” on Substack:
Not a quiet Thursday A surprising number of things happened today for what should have been a quiet Thursday in October. That seems to be true more days than not with a former president, his party’s frontrunner presidential candidate, facing four criminal indictments and mid-trial in a civil fraud case that will end his ability to conduct a real estate business in the state of New York. But today was different—not only were there a lot of developments, they were highly significant. Trump has asked a federal judge in Washington, D.C. to dismiss the criminal prosecution against him there. He asked Judge Aileen Cannon to delay his criminal trial in Southern Florida until after the election. He moved to dismiss the New York state criminal case against him, the one that involves payments to Stormy Daniels, and indicated he would move to stay the ongoing civil fraud trial in New York while he takes an appeal. We’ll focus primarily on the motion to dismiss the District of Columbia case tonight, but today’s developments were, to put it mildly, significant.
x One GOP lawmaker tells me “there’s many of us after last Jan and Oct will vote to expel Gaetz too if Ethics Committee shows he’s guilty. We didn’t enjoy doing it to Santos, but it was necessary. With Gaetz, we want him out, and it can’t happen fast enough.” — Juliegrace Brufke (@juliegraceb) December 3, 2023
Ed Kilgore/New York magazine:
Trump Plans to Make Civil Service a MAGA Spoils System There have been many credible reports that a second Trump administration would feature an assault on the federal civil service system in order to reduce “deep state” resistance to his authoritarian ambitions — or to use his terms for it, to “drain the swamp” — while stuffing the higher levels of the federal bureaucracy with political appointees. Those of us who are history-minded have immediately thought of this as threatening a return to the “spoils system” of the 19th century, which was more or less ended by enactment of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883 (signed into law by Republican president and reformed spoilsman Chester Alan Arthur). But the more we know about Team Trump’s plans, this understanding of what they want to do in staffing the federal government is looking inadequate and anachronistic. The spoils system beneficiaries of the distant past were by and large party foot-soldiers rewarded for attending dreary local meetings, talking up the party’s candidates in newspapers and forums, and most of all getting out the vote on Election Day. No one much cared what they believed in their heart of hearts about issues of the day, or how they came to their convictions. It was enough that they put on the party yoke and helped pull the bandwagon to victory.
x One of the great things about South Carolina going first is that the Black voters of SC are serious voters. They're not frivolous voters throwing away their votes. They know the importance of their vote. Either they or folks they know personally have had to fight for that vote. — David Darmofal (@david_darmofal) December 3, 2023
Robert Kagan/Washington Post (free link):
A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending. For many months now, we have been living in a world of self-delusion, rich with imagined possibilities. Maybe it will be Ron DeSantis, or maybe Nikki Haley. Maybe the myriad indictments of Trump will doom him with Republican suburbanites. Such hopeful speculation has allowed us to drift along passively, conducting business as usual, taking no dramatic action to change course, in the hope and expectation that something will happen. Like people on a riverboat, we have long known there is a waterfall ahead but assume we will somehow find our way to shore before we go over the edge. But now the actions required to get us to shore are looking harder and harder, if not downright impossible. The magical-thinking phase is ending. Barring some miracle, Trump will soon be the presumptive Republican nominee for president. When that happens, there will be a swift and dramatic shift in the political power dynamic, in his favor. Until now, Republicans and conservatives have enjoyed relative freedom to express anti-Trump sentiments, to speak openly and positively about alternative candidates, to vent criticisms of Trump’s behavior past and present. Donors who find Trump distasteful have been free to spread their money around to help his competitors. Establishment Republicans have made no secret of their hope that Trump will be convicted and thus removed from the equation without their having to take a stand against him.
The way to stop Trump is through the Democrats but conservatives are still not ready to go there.
Harry Enten/CNN on Nikki Haley’s long-shot chances:
Here’s Nikki Haley’s path to the Republican nomination We’ve entered the home stretch in the lead-up to the 2024 Republican presidential primary. And while Donald Trump continues to lead every major survey of the race, Nikki Haley seems to have at least some momentum to be his chief primary rival. But does Haley have a real chance to win the nomination? History shows us she has a plausible road map. Let’s start with the bad news for the former South Carolina governor. She’s still polling at about 10% nationally, while Trump tops 60% in many surveys. Not only is she 50 points behind the former president, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is in between them, polling at about 15%.
You can stop there, but if you want to know the theoretical basis for a win, keep reading.
x No matter how many people die or how many mass shootings our nation claims to mourn, the worship of guns demands ever more human sacrifice. @SenAngusKing & @SenatorHeinrich have a creative idea that could end our deadly gun impasse.
My column-free link
https://t.co/0lP2odjqOz — EJ Dionne (@EJDionne) December 3, 2023
Washington Post (free link):
Trump pardoned them. Now they’re helping him return to power. Never before had a president used his constitutional clemency powers to free or forgive so many people who could be useful to his future political efforts. A Washington Post review of Trump’s 238 clemency orders found that dozens of recipients, including [Arizona’s Joe] Arpaio, have gone on to plug his 2024 candidacy through social media and national interviews, contribute money to his front-running bid for the Republican nomination or disseminate his false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election.
Rick Wilson/Substack:
Florida's GOP Sex Scandal Gets Ugly Threesomes, hypocrisy, sexual violence, and Moms for Liberty. Florida is the Mos Eisley of American States. If you’re looking for a wretched hive of scum and villainy, just take I-75 South from Atlanta. I should know. I’m a fifth-generation Florida Man. The only way I’d be more Florida is if you saw helicopter news footage of me buck naked, except for a pair of Crocs running down the center of a highway median carrying my pet alligator over one shoulder as I fled the explosion that wrecked the meth lab where I lived with my common-law 5th wife, who is both a first cousin, a Santeria priestess and my parole officer.
x Political pundit James Carville lived in Louisiana for decades & knows Mike Johnson & other Christian Nationalists of his ilk. Pay close attention, these ppl are extremely dangerous. They want a Handmaid’s Tale lifestyle ON STEROIDS. ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/nahO3NMjPP — Beep🇺🇦🇮🇱🇺🇸 (@fiercefreckled) November 18, 2023
Chris Geidner/”Law Dork” on Substack:
SCOTUS case to be argued Tuesday could "fundamentally change the income tax" "[I]t’s just very difficult to pull off [the Moores’] argument and maintain a stable tax system," law professor Donald Tobin says. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in Moore v. United States, a case that is primarily known for two things right now: Justice Sam Alito has rejected calls for him to recuse himself from the case, and The Wall Street Journal is worked up over the “wealth tax” implications of the case. But, that’s, of course, a hypothetical. “I think the idea that we may totally upend the entire Internal Revenue Code based on the fact that someone is afraid that sometime in the future there might be a wealth tax is a huge mistake,” law professor Donald Tobin told Law Dork this past week.
Interesting X thread from Tom Nichols via Threadreader:
I know it's obvious that Trump changes positions on a dime and how it's mystifying that his cult doesn't care, but picking all this apart is a fool's errand. They stick with him because he channels their diffuse anger about their lives at other Americans. But it's worse now: After 2016, Trump voters thought they'd really made their point, pushed back change in America, and gained respect by electing a POTUS. All that blew up in their faces: They found out they're not a majority, and worse, the disdain of their fellow citizens only intensified. 2020 and J6 compounded their sense of humiliation and grievance. The know Trump is making fools of them, but they will never admit it. And Biden winning was like a national slap in the face. So now they're with him no matter what. They don't care about policy or positions. And this time, they'll support him as he does even more desperate and hideous things. He could call for open borders and free abortions and most of them wouldn't care. All they care about is that he's promising to go after people they hate even more now than in 2016.
x BOOM. The Biden campaign just hit back hard at Trump’s threats to gut Obamacare by releasing a brand new ad featuring a single pediatric nurse who gets personal about healthcare & says, “We can’t go back.” This is a great & powerful ad. Watch & share👇
pic.twitter.com/p9EUEmTHVQ — Victor Shi (@Victorshi2020) November 30, 2023
Jesse Dollemore and Cliff Schecter discuss Henry Kissinger’s legacy:
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