Down Niagara Falls Without a Barrel

Political Notes

by Jon Fuhrman

Thursday, February 12. From Karl Rove on down, Republican pundits are starting to warn that the GOP is heading towards Niagara Falls, without the traditional barrel. Gee, I wonder why! The latest harbingers of public dissatisfaction come from Washington, DC. President Trump was greatly annoyed when six Democratic members of Congress, all veterans of the military or intelligence services, put together a public service video reminding members of the military that they have, not merely the right, but a constitutional obligation, to refuse illegal orders (like, for instance, blowing up civilian boats in the Pacific).

One of the Administration’s less stellar appointees, Jeanine Pirro (of Fox News fame), is the current U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. Since the video was made in Washington, it fell to her office to seek indictments against all six of those members of Congress. There is an old legal witticism that any decent prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. Well, ham sandwiches must be resting easy, because the grand jury refused to indict. Even more embarrassing, apparently not a single grand juror voted to indict – not one of the 20 or so jurors bought the government’s argument. Regular jurors tend to be older, retired, more conservative; grand jurors, who often serve for up to a year, are even more tilted toward the older, retired, conservative demographic. So failing to convince even just one of these grand jurors is pretty astounding.

Other news from DC is equally bleak for the Administration. The House, by a vote of 214 – 217, voted down a rule that would have protected the Administration from motions challenging the Trump tariffs. Three Republicans jumped ship and joined every Democrat to preserve Congressional power in this arena. The next day, Democrats introduced a Joint Resolution to terminate the “national emergency” declared by the President under which he could unilaterally impose tariffs against Canada. That Resolution passed, again by a narrow margin with the help of 6 Republicans. Now the Resolution goes to the Senate which must vote on it within three weeks; the Resolution is exempt from the 60-vote requirement to end debate, so all the GOP Senators will have to go on record for or against the tariffs.

However, even if the Senate approves the Resolution, it still goes to the President who can veto it and thereby save his tariffs. Even with the tides turning against the GOP, there’s no way Dems can get a 2/3 vote in each House to override a veto. But there will be similar bills every week, to terminate each one of the spurious “national emergencies” that the President declared to authorize his various tariffs. And, the clock is still ticking as the Supreme Court creeps toward a decision on the case challenging all the President’s unilaterally imposed tariffs. It’s always dangerous to read between the lines on Supreme Court decisions, but I would guess that if the Court were going to uphold the President’s authority, the decision would already have come out, albeit with some tart dissents. I’m guessing the Court is going against the President, and one or a few of his partisans are delaying the decision as they ever so slowly craft their dissents, and perhaps keep harping at Justice Barrett (who might well be the swing vote).

The GOP’s problems aren’t limited to Washington, DC. Their unbroken string of poor performances in special elections continues unabated. In Texas, outside of Fort Worth, there was a special election for a State Senate seat; the GOP incumbent had been appointed to a state-wide office, so the traditionally Republican seat was up. The prior incumbent had won by a margin of about 20%; President Trump had carried the district by 17%. Yet the Democratic challenger, a relatively unknown who had never run for office before, carried by district by 57% - 44%. That amounts to a 33% swing in the heart of Texas. In Louisiana, there was a special election for a vacant State House seat, previously held by a Democrat, but in a district that President Trump carried by 13%. The Reps were hoping they might finally flip one seat and break their record of dismal losses, but no, the Democrat won by 24%.

Pundits always caution that special elections are poor predictors of what might happen in a regular November election. Turnout is lower, voters’ attention is not particularly focused, and so on. All of that is true. On the other hand, a string of over 25 consistent losses, from blue states to deep red, just can’t be waved away as oddities or quirks. Clearly, and not very surprisingly, there seems to be a broad-based change in voters’ attitudes, with recent polling showing the same change, and it spells bad tidings for the GOP.

This might be put to the acid test in the next few months. Speaker Mike Johnson already has the unenviable task of holding together a fracturing GOP caucus in the House, but his margin might get even tighter. Cong. Neal Dunn (R), from Florida’s panhandle, had already announced he would not be running for re-election; now the rumors are that he will simply resign from Congress in the next week or two (possibly due to health reasons). The GOP majority is already down to 218, with two vacancies: Marjorie Taylor Green has resigned her seat, and Cong. Doug LaMalfa, from northern California, unexpectedly died last month. Democrats have 214 seats, with one vacancy due to Mikie Sherrill leaving to become Governor of New Jersey. If Cong. Dunn does resign, it means any two GOP members could desert the caucus and not merely torpedo GOP legislation, they could actually help pass Democratic legislation (like the Resolutions terminating “national emergencies” and eliminating various Trump tariffs).

Special elections have already been set for the vacant seats, with the first on March 10, in Georgia, where 16 Reps and three Dems are vying for Green’s seat. It should be a solid R district. It has an R+19 rating, and Trump carried the district by a 37% margin. But the leading Dem candidate, Shawn Harris, is a retired Army Brigadier General, and with 16 Republicans splitting the vote, who knows what might happen. The run-off would be held on April 7.

The New Jersey seat will be filled with a Democrat on 4/16, but Speaker Johnson will have to wait until August 4 for a run-off election to fill Cong. LaMalfa’s seat. A May or June target is likely for a Florida special election if Cong. Dunn resigns in the next week or two.

To wrap up, though, I thought we ought to look ahead. Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia is generally considered one of the most endangered Democrats up for election in November. But perhaps not! He was at a campaign rally in Atlanta last weekend, and he gave one of the best stump speeches I’ve heard in a long time. You should watch it; it’s only about 25 minutees long, and you can use this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzQY53_hpWw. He had some great lines: “The President posting about the Obamas like a Klansman at 1 am”; “Never in the history of corruption has so little effort gone into hiding so much graft”; he accused the President of focusing, not on the working class, but on the Epstein class. His delivery and style were not quite at the JFK level, but almost. Talk about our Party’s search for a new generation of leaders,well look no further. It may be a little early, but Ossoff could be a VP candidate for 2028.

To be fair, I should also mention Pete Buttigieg. We saw him at Pasadena’s Distinguished Speaker series last night. He was excellent, and he might well give Sen. Ossoff a run for his money competing for the VP slot. I’m rooting for Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear as our 2028 Presidential candidate, but who knows how things will shake out over the next three years.