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Hawley: People Who Care About January 6 the Same Who Gave Us $6 a Gallon for Gas

by www.breitbart.com Leave a Comment

Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) appeared on FNC’s “Hannity” on Thursday and criticized Democrats’ strategy heading into this year’s midterm elections.

According to the Missouri Republican, betting on the January 6 hearings and the recent Supreme Court decisions was not going to work.

“Will their strategy of running on January 6, Roe v. Wade being overturned, the Second Amendment, is that — is that going to be successful in any way to gin up their base, motivate their base?” Hannity said.

“No, because they’re talking about issues that only they care about that nobody else cares about,” Hawley replied. “That doesn’t affect the lives of real people or that they’re wrong on. I mean, take abortion again. What are you going to say to people? No, you shouldn’t have a choice in what your laws are in your own state? That’s what they’re telling people. January 6, the only people who care about January 6 are the Democrats in Washington, D.C. These are the same people who have given us five and six dollars a gallon for gasoline.”

“These are the same people who have given us runaway inflation,” he continued. “I think, frankly, Americans are insulted. I know Missourians are, that all the D.C. Democrats want to talk about is themselves and how to maintain their own power. They don’t want to talk about issues that matter to real people and real families. I think voters are going to punish them for that in November.”

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor

Opinion: Democrats may be playing with fire this primary season

by edition.cnn.com Leave a Comment

David Axelrod, a senior CNN political commentator and host of “The Axe Files,” was a senior adviser to President Barack Obama and chief strategist for the 2008 and 2012 Obama presidential campaigns. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his. View more opinion on CNN.

(CNN) It had become the stuff of legend in Washington.

David Axelrod

David Axelrod

In 2012, first-term Sen. Claire McCaskill had become an endangered political species — a Democrat in the increasingly Republican state of Missouri. And she knew the odds of winning re-election that year were against her.

As McCaskill recalled in detail years later, she took the calculated risk of meddling in the Republican senate primary by engaging in a brazen bit of political jiu jitsu.

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McCaskill’s campaign unleashed a fusillade of negative ads against the most extreme, right-wing candidate, a state senator named Todd Akin, deliberately attacking him for the very positions and controversial comments they knew from polling would endear him to the Republican base.
McCaskill and her strategists deemed Akin her most beatable general election opponent and set out to get him there.
Investing $1.7 million of her own campaign funds, the Democratic senator helped lift Akin from a distant second place to Republican nominee — and then soundly trounced him by more than 15 points in the general election. It became a fabled Washington parlor trick.

McCaskill is a friend, and I was happy to see her return to the Senate. But 10 years later in the era of Donald Trump, as Democrats across the country re-run her primary intervention strategy, I fear the tactic. Shrewd as it may seem, it feeds the growing jaundice about politics. But more than that, a miscalculation could put extremists in positions of authority.
In the swing state of Pennsylvania, Democrats and Dem-allied groups spent millions during the primary season attacking Doug Mastriano, a Trump-loving, election-denying , abortion-banning candidate for governor as “too conservative” for the state.
The move helped strengthen Mastriano’s primary lead over potentially more electable Republicans, and that was further reinforced when Trump, sensing a winner, jumped on his bandwagon.
And with Mastriano’s primary victory, Democrats continued to invest to influence other Republican races.
In Illinois, Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who is a billionaire, and the Democratic Governors Association together spent $30 milllion boosting state Sen. Darren Bailey’s chances with attack ads that highlighted his Trumpian ties and right-wing bona fides . At the same time, they pummeled Mayor Richard Irvin, a more moderate, African American candidate from suburban Aurora, with negative ads that were actually meant to defeat him.
They got the desired result. Bailey won Tuesday’s primary in a landslide.
It was raw politics but in the case of Pennsylvania, a swing state, it comes at greater risk. Now that Mastriano carries the Republican banner, tribal loyalties have kicked in. A recent poll showed him trailing state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee for governor, by just four points . Trump lost Illinois twice by some 17 points, and Pritzker, relatively popular and willing to spend whatever is necessary, is now heavily favored to win re-election.
Full disclosure, when I was a Democratic campaign consultant, I once produced ads to meddle in a Republican primary by attacking the well-heeled Republican frontrunner. But the attacks, which were about the opponent’s questionable business practices and not his ideology, were meant to defeat, not elevate him in that primary.
This is a different kettle of fish.
Each Democratic campaign will argue that the candidates who ultimately won did so because they represented what Republican primary voters wanted. Indeed, in the Colorado primary Tuesday, the Akin play didn’t work . A right-winger boosted by Democratic attack ads lost the Republican nomination for the US Senate. The market decided.
But politics isn’t a game, as much as we often treat it as one. At a time when faith in our system and elections is so strained, I can’t help thinking that this only adds to growing cynicism about their legitimacy. And at a time when we need both parties to produce responsible choices, this cross-party manipulation works against it.
But setting that aside, I have a larger and more practical concern.
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As a longtime campaign practitioner, I’m no prig about hardball politics. In both Pennsylvania and Illinois, the Akin play may well wind up being remembered as winning politics in a tough year — unless the year proves so tough that the old parlor trick becomes a risky ploy gone terribly wrong.
After all, how many Democratic strategists cheered Donald Trump’s nomination in 2016, convinced that the reality show star would be a dead bang loser in the fall?

Wisconsin Supreme Court Rules Political Appointees Don’t Have To Leave Post In Blow To Democrats In State

by dailycaller.com Leave a Comment

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled against Democrat Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, allowing the state Congress to further limit the Democratic Party’s power in state government.

Kaul lost while trying to kick Republican appointee to the Wisconsin Board of Natural Resources (DNR board), Frederick Prehn, out of his position to clear the path for Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’s new pick, according to the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling.

The Wisconsin Attorney General argued that Prehn unlawfully held the position after his term expired on May 1, 2021, court records show. Kaul also argued the governor had the authority to remove Prehn without cause because the position is not entitled to that protection.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court disagreed and rejected Kaul’s motion to allow Prehn to be removed by the governor without cause. The expiration date of Prehn’s position does not create an automatic vacancy, the Court’s opinion stated. (RELATED: Hillary Clinton Flogs Conspiracy Theories About 2016 Election, Says We’ll Never ‘Find Out The Truth’)

The Court’s ruling blocked the Democratic governor from being able to make a provisional appointment to Prehn’s position and ordered that Prehn may only be removed for cause or when the state Senate approves the governor’s appointment.

Evers rejected the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling, chalking it up to another example of Republican control in the state.

“Today, I remind the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the Republican Party of this state that we do still live in a democracy, a very basic function of which is the peaceful and respectful transfer of power, even – and most especially – when you lose,” Evers said, reported The AP. “[His appointees] should be considered on their merit, and should have the opportunity to serve the people of our state, regardless of whether or not they were appointed by a Democrat or share the same ideas as Republicans in the Legislature.”

The Republican-controlled Congress has successfully limited Evers’s executive powers since he was elected in 2018, including allowing the legislature to obstruct executive branch agencies’ rules and policies and passing laws that blocked him from appointing members to the state’s economic development agency, reported The AP.

University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Barry Burden said the Court’s ruling flies in the face of “commonsense understanding,” reported The AP.

“Most people on the street would say when a term … expired, there’s an opening. The Supreme Court has said that commonsense understanding is not right,” Burden told The AP.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling “raises the question of why is there a term at all?” Burden quipped, according to The AP. “Maybe we just say a person serves for life the way a U.S. Supreme Court justice does.”

The state’s AG said the Wisconsin Supreme Court was not only stripping power away from Evers but also the state’s voters.

AG Kaul today issued a statement regarding the Wisconsin Supreme Court decision in Kaul v. Prehn. https://t.co/qm4GocGZkO pic.twitter.com/QJcDkXTiMU

— Attorney General Josh Kaul (@WisDOJ) June 29, 2022

“The people of Wisconsin selected Tony Evers to serve as governor, yet almost 3 1/2 years into his term, the Natural Resources Board remains controlled by Walker appointees. Today’s decision allows that antidemocratic situation to continue indefinitely—taking power away from Wisconsin voters, and instead leaving it to the whims of appointees of an administration that was voted out of office,” Kaul said in a statement .

“Our system of government is premised on consent of the governed. This decision departs from that fundamental principle and further erodes democracy in Wisconsin.”