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It may be the most widely debated and commented upon newspaper slogan since ... well, has there ever been a widely debated newspaper slogan?

The Washington Post added a new phrase beneath its online masthead this week Democracy Dies in Darkness and the commentary flowed immediately. The slogan quickly trended on Twitter, drawing tweets even from the Peoples Daily newspaper in China. It was fodder for a few late-night cracks from Stephen Colbert, who suggested some of the rejected phrases included No, You Shut Up, Come at Me, Bro and We Took Down Nixon Who Wants Next?

Others called it ominous, awesome, and heavy-handed. Slate offered an alternative list: 15 Metal Albums Whose Titles Are Less Dark Than The Washington Posts New Motto.

The addition of the dramatic and alliterative phrase was generally misinterpreted as an indirect reply to President Trumps phrasemaking about the news media (dishonest, the enemy of the American people, etc.). But thats not the case.

The Post decided to come up with a slogan nearly a year ago, long before Trump was the Republican presidential nominee, senior executives said. The paper hasnt had an official slogan in its 140-year existence, although it did get some mileage with a long-running advertising tagline, If you dont get it, you dont get it.

The papers owner, Amazon.com founder Jeffrey P. Bezos, used the phrase in an interview with The Posts executive editor, Martin Baron, at a tech forum at The Post last May. I think a lot of us believe this, that democracy dies in darkness, that certain institutions have a very important role in making sure that there is light, he said at the time, speaking of his reasons for buying the paper.

Bezos apparently heard the phrase from legendary investigative reporter Bob Woodward, a Post associate editor. Woodward said he referenced it during a presentation at a conference that Bezos attended in 2015 in which Woodward talked about The Last of the Presidents Men, his most recent book about the Watergate scandal.

But Woodward, who has used the phrase in reference to President Nixon for years, said he didnt coin it; he read it some years earlier in a judicial opinion in a First Amendment case. He couldnt recall the specifics of the case or the name of the judge who wrote the opinion.

It goes way back, he said. Its definitely not directed at Trump. Its about the dangers of secrecy in government, which is what I worry about most. The judge who said it got it right.

Woodwards source appears to be Judge Damon J. Keith, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, who ruled in a pre-Watergate era case that the government couldnt wiretap individuals without a warrant. In his decision, Keith apparently coined a variation on The Posts motto, writing that Democracy dies in the dark.

In any case, the phrase was at the center of discussions when a small group of Post employees, including Baron and Publisher Fred Ryan, began meeting last year to develop a slogan. One planning document for the group suggested finding a positive variation on the early contender Democracy Dies in Darkness.

The goal of the papers slogan, the document said, would be to communicate that The Post has a long-standing reputation for providing news and information with unparalleled analysis and insight. ... Our position must be conveyed disruptively so we can shake consumers out of their news-as-commodity mindset.

It added that any slogan must be memorable and may be slightly uncomfortable for us at first. It also had to be lofty, positive [and] not bossy and pithy enough to fit on a T-shirt.

The group brainstormed more than 500 would-be slogans. The choices ranged from the heroic (Dauntless Defenders of the Truth) to the clunky (American democracy lives down the street. No one keeps closer watch.) to the Zen-like (Yes. Know.).

The group ultimately ended up where it started with Democracy Dies in Darkness.

Which means that the slogan, which will be added to print copies of the paper next week, could be among the most famous four words that Woodward has ever contributed to The Post. In time, the phrase might even rival All the Presidents Men, the memorable title of the bestseller Woodward wrote with Carl Bernstein about Nixons fall.

Well, Woodward said, its better than Follow the money, the famous movie line that Woodwards character got from his anonymous Watergate source, Deep Throat.

Read the rest here:
The Washington Post's new slogan turns out to be an old saying - Washington Post

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD Mercedes Schlapp was delivering a warning about the dangers of young Americans support for socialism when she turned to face the thousands of conservatives in the crowd.

Parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles this is your responsibility, Schlapp, a columnist at the Washington Times, told a Conservative Political Action Conference event on Thursday. You have to take this message to your children and your nieces and nephews.

Schlapp was moderating a panel titled FREE-stuff vs. FREE-dom: Millennials' love affair with Bernie Sanders. It was both an exploration of young peoples skepticism toward capitalism and a brainstorming session for what should be done about it.

The old story used to be, Wait until they have a mortgage, and then theyll become conservative, said Timothy F. Mooney, an attendee who is a partner at the Republican political consulting firm Silver Bullet. I honestly dont think thats true anymore.

This week marks a celebratory moment for attendees of CPAC the first such conference since Republicans captured both branches of Congress and the White House this November. But beneath much of the enthusiasm, some conservatives here acknowledge theyre also worried that their recent victories could be undone by a generational shift toward the left.

After all, democratic socialist Bernie Sanders won more votes from those under 30 than any other presidential candidate in primary history. Donald Trump is wildly unpopular with people under 30 (they disapprove of his job performance by a 67-25 margin, according to Pew), and millennials will soon be the countrys biggest voting bloc. And polls show that, for the first time ever, young people are more supportive of socialism than capitalism.

Conservatives and free market adherents are well aware of the trend-lines and wrestling with their response.

On Thursday, 23-year-old Jonathan Stack was at CPAC with a group of young conservatives called Turning Point USA. Dozens of Turning Point students milled around the convention hall, wearing matching T-shirts with Socialism Sucks written on the front in Sanderss iconic font and style. The Bernie-themed shirts serve as a way of drawing young people into a conversation that can become an explanation of conservative and free market principles, Stack said.

When I go out to campuses, people immediately see this and they walk right up. Then they see what were talking about and we can have a good discussion, says Stack, a student at Penn State.

Of course, not every Sanders supporter is a willing convert. But Stack says many are persuadable, and he is convinced more will become so during the Trump years: Right now, its just a Bernie Sanders fad I really believe in what Trump and the Republicans can do with full control when people see those changes in two or three years, theyll change on capitalism.

Similarly, other Turning Point students agreed they had close friends who supported Sanders but that those friends didnt understand the implications of his socialism. I dont know if they know what the true form of socialism really means, said Isaac Michaud, of the University of Maine.

Once Sanderss fans did understand, many of the students believed, theyd change course. Added Alli McGough, 21, of the University of Iowa: I have a lot of friends who like Bernie. But they dont understand it they just hear, Free stuff; thats what I want. They dont understand how taxes work. Its just whats cool right now.

Joe Field, 17, a high school senior from Davenport, Iowa, said he has gone to activist training summits to learn about conservative principles. Davis is frequently debating friends of his who support Sanders in his government classes, on weekends, in school because he thinks theres no guarantee theyll eventually come back into the fold.

You cant just ignore them and say theyll come around, Field said. You have to go out every day and argue about lower taxes, and no tariffs, and stuff like that.

Older conservatives also cited a range of tools they hope will snap the Sanders spell. Some said young Americans would fall out of love with socialism as they grew older. Others expressed hope that an accelerating economy would improve millennials faith in capitalism.

Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) said in a panel discussion that if millennials saw that national monuments that pay homage to Americas heroes, theyd be more likely to adopt American values.

"Come to Washington, go to the National Mall and see the memorials to Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln all of these great people who stood for all of these great ideas, DeSantis said. Its all about articulating what it means to be an American. That sense of history and understanding, I think, will make a big difference."

Overwhelmingly, most argued the biggest difference would come from changing American education. Chris Astriab, 64, of Fairfax, Virginia, said students had forgotten Economics 101 because they failed to teach it school.

They need basic economics about how the free market works, Astriab said. These kids are so spoiled today that they don't even realize that the free market made them a possibility. Thats the biggest problem.

Other attendees cited the need to use government resources to reform American universities because the indoctrination just starts younger and younger these days, said Brandon Johnson, 43.

I dont know if its through cutting of use of funding or civil rights lawsuits, since a lot of these universities do engage in organized conspiracies to suppress assembly by conservative groups, said Johnson, a lawyer who volunteered on the Trump campaign.

If professors are saying Trump is Hitler in class, if they want to use their teaching pulpit to bully their students, they should be willing to deal with the consequences. Change the tenure system.

If fixing higher education didnt work, conservative attendees stressed that young Americans needed to be reminded of life under the Soviet Union, arguing that they were insufficiently aware of the dangers of authoritarian states under communism.

They need to take a one-week ticket to Cuba, spend some time there, and then come back and tell me about socialism, said Ana Quintana, of the Heritage Foundation, at the CPAC panel about Sanders.

This was a common refrain: The panel repeatedly mentioned lessons from countries like Cuba, Venezuela, and the former Soviet Union, saying that millennials had to understand that socialism is inseparable from dictatorship. Dr. Greg Dolin, a senior fellow at the American Conservative Union and another panelist, agreed with Quintana: Part of the problem is millennials are in thrall with socialism because they havent experienced it; theyve only seen flowery eulogies to Fidel Castro.

The panelists also argued that young people simply hadnt realized that many of the products that they know and like are created by capitalism. They saw an unrecognized contradiction between millennial consumption habits and their political ideology.

Guess who is using Uber? Dolin said. [Millennials] like the freedom and the ability to pick up the phone and order food from any of the 20 restaurants in town. But you cannot have Uber and a socialist-run health care system its both or neither."

But despite the panels discussions and campus drives, at least one attendee remained convinced there was essentially nothing conservatives could do to cure young peoples love of socialism. The only people Bernie appeals to are those in college with no direction, who are like welfare students and welfare people whose money is paid for by their parents, said Geraldine Davie, 76, of Virginia.

Theres nothing conservatives can do to change those mush for brains. Theyre just going to have to wait When they have a job and a baby, they can talk to me about socialism. Because then theyll say, no thanks and become rugged individualists.

See more here:
How conservatives want to break Bernie Sanders's spell over young ... - Vox

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, from that, lets turn to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. Thats syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

So, gentlemen, Mark, lets just talk about this right now.

What do you see this energy or this emotion and anger, what does it mean coming at these Republican town halls?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, first of all, a shout-out for Congressman Lance for doing it, and for a thoughtful interview with Lisa, for having another town meeting, because several of his colleagues have tucked tail and run and ducked it.

And so the energy, Judy, is real. Theres no doubt about it. But I think Ross Baker put the point well, the political philosopher and teacher, when he said, it isnt as focused. Its quite diffuse. There are those who want to impeach Donald Trump.

Donald Trump, I hate to tell people who are concerned about it, is not going to be impeached. The American people believe in giving somebody a fair chance. Hes a new president. There have been troubles, there have been problems.

And the stock market just set 10 days in a row of new records, whether because of him or in spite of him. So thats but the energy is real. And the question is, can it be focused, can it be disciplined, can it be sustained?

JUDY WOODRUFF: How do you answer all those questions?

DAVID BROOKS: First, I think Donald Trump is not going to be impeached this month. Lets not close out possibilities.

I would say a couple of things. I do think that whats happening is great and that people are active and people are just involved in the democratic process.

The Tea Party thing is only apt in some ways. The activism in the town halls, that looks superficially like it. But what the Tea Party did was, they went after the party, the Republican Party, as their vehicle. And parties is how you change history.

So, its fine to be an activist, but youre not if youre not putting up candidates, if youre not getting political, if youre not in your party, then youre probably not going to have long-term change. You will probably dissipate.

And then its tempting to remember that the Tea Party had a peak and then the Republican Party establishment sort of beat it back down. And so these things are won in a day.

And then the final thing the Tea Party had was, they fed into the philosophy that Donald Trump now embodies. So they had a different view of how the world should be governed. And so they had a lot of things that we didnt appreciate going for them as time went by.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, it did lead to something, Mark.

MARK SHIELDS: Oh, it certainly did. It led to the Republican takeover in 2010.

And Kevin McCarthy, who is now the House majority leader, was pretty open. He went out and recruited candidates who had emerged from that movement. And the Republicans in the House have paid a price for it ever since, because they cannot pass anything comprehensive or real because of the Freedom Caucus, which is the child, the product, the progeny of the Tea Party.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But to both of you just quickly, youre hearing some Republicans, youre hearing the White House saying, well, a lot of this is orchestrated, its been somebody sitting there sort of pulling the strings.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes.

JUDY WOODRUFF: How genuine is this?

MARK SHIELDS: Its genuine.

Judy, the argument of those who are being criticized at any time, the civil rights movement forward, the anti-war movement forward, is, its always outside agitators doing it.

The Wall Street Journal had a pretty good piece yesterday that this is organic. Its not organized. Its real.

These are are there people nationally working on it? Sure. But people who are emerging are from those districts. When Tom Cotton hears a woman stand up in Arkansas and said three members of my family would be dead but for ACA, including me, and where do you get your insurance, Senator, theyre all going to be asked that. So, its genuine.

DAVID BROOKS: And theres nothing wrong with being organized.

(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS: Things that change history tend to be organized.

And so I do think what the Tea Party also had was Obamacare and the unpopularity of that, at least at the time. And so whether there is something that is equally unpopular and equally galvanizing that is almost self-destructive from the administration, thats another factor that we will wait and see.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, we will wait and see about that.

But, meantime, right now and we talked about it a few minutes ago on the show, Mark the Democrats are about to choose a new party chair. We were talking about the message of the party.

Do you hear a clear message coming from the Democrats? Do you think it matters whether they come together around any message right now?

MARK SHIELDS: Sure. It will, Judy.

But, no, I dont hear any clear, coherent message. I mean, when youre a party out of power, its the time to be a national party chair. When the party holds the White House, all the political decisions are made in the White House. And being a party chair, youre just an artifact.

But, being a party chair, you really have a chance to make a difference. but what the Democrats have to do is recognize and accept the fact that theyre at their lowest point since 1928 in the United States House of Representatives and their lowest point since 1925 in states.

So, they have got to start winning elections. That involves not some great idea, but it also involves recruiting candidates. And Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago, who has given obnoxiousness a new definition in his personal behavior, oftentimes in his dealings with the press, had a very good point.

And that is, the Democrats have to do what he did when he was chairman of the Democratic House Campaign Committee, recruit veterans, recruit football players, recruit businesspeople. And I think thats what the job of the new party chair has to be.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

I guess, to me, the fundamental thing well, I guess I see a lot of people debating this in the wrong way. A lot of the debate is, should we go to the coasts, should we go to the center, should we go to the left, should we go to the right?

But Trump is instructive here, actually. You figure out, what is the crucial issue facing the country right now? And for Trump, it was that the global economy and the international world order were failing regular people.

And so he said, thats the crucial issue. Im going to take a clear stand on that issue.

And he did. And its very internally consistent. And he won with it.

For the Democrats, theyre trying to avoid having the Sanders-Clinton debate over and over again. But, to some degree, theyre sentenced to that debate. Clinton is much more embracing of the global economy and the international world order. Sanders and Warren are much less so.

And they have got to figure out which side the party is on, if theyre going to have a clear message. I think this is probably one you probably cant straddle.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, when you hear, as we heard earlier, when they say, well, opportunity for all, youre saying its got to be more specific?

DAVID BROOKS: You have got to have Franklin Roosevelt had a pretty clear line. Ronald Reagan had a pretty clear line, people who rescue parties.

And it doesnt have to be the same line that we have had for the last 40 years, because that clearly isnt working on any level. But you have got to have a pretty clear line on this crucial issue.

Basically, global capitalism, basically to support it, or is it to be opposed? Is international order to be supported, or is it to be opposed? Republicans have taken a very clear line. Democrats can have a different version of the line, or they can just say, no, we are the party of international peace and activism, and were the party thats going to have a civilized capitalism.

MARK SHIELDS: Two points.

First of all, thats way above the job description and job definition of a party chair. That is. That will be fought out in the primaries in 1920 in 2020.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: Before that, in 2018 as well.

But Franklin Roosevelt also ran on a balanced budget in 1932, and the greatest president, certainly, of the 20th century. And, you know, so the idea that you lay out a predicate right now, Donald Trump has recreated the Republican Party in his image.

We saw that at the CPAC convention, Judy. That was a total surrender of the Reagan era. Ronald Reagan is gone.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Wow.

MARK SHIELDS: He is nothing but a distant memory.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Gone?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, seeing that party today, I mean, he stood up and he said, you finally have a president, you finally have a president. I am the future.

And what did he get? Hosannas and huzzahs and genuflection. It was a total takeover of the conservative movement. Like, thats what the conservative movement has become, is basically an annex of the Trump campaign.

DAVID BROOKS: I wish I could disagree.

(LAUGHTER)

JUDY WOODRUFF: Do you think the two are now one, that its the Trump and the conservative

DAVID BROOKS: I dont know if it will be forever, but, for this moment, yes, for sure.

Steve Bannon went to the CPAC this week and he said that there was a very important historical turning point, getting rid of the TPP. And the Republican Party has stood for that for as long as I have been alive.

And then Trump today, he you know, buy American, buy American, anti-free trade, and got big cheers. Theyre waving Russian flags, probably partly as a joke. But, still, the party has become an ethnic nationalist party.

And I dont think its just because they, oh, that we agree with Trump on some things and not on others. I do think, over the last 10 years, a lot of Republicans have decided its not working, what the party believed in, free trade, global capitalism, open borders.

They looked at basically the failed wars and they said, oh, this, us being the policeman of the world, that is not working.

And so something really serious has shifted in the minds of Republicans and certainly others.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But arent there still Republicans who say, CPAC doesnt represent me, that Im not part of the conservative movement, Im a Republican, but Im not there?

MARK SHIELDS: Sure. Absolutely.

I mean, this is a group, dont forget, that gave its presidential straw ballot to Ron Paul, Ron Paul, and Rand Paul and Rand Paul. So, they have abandoned what their libertarian values and instincts to embrace Trump.

Judy, gone is any mention of American exceptionalism. I happen to believe that twice, three times in the 20th century, the United States saved Western democracy, both World War both World Wars and the Cold War.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, youre hearing about America first.

MARK SHIELDS: But Americas exceptionalism, American leadership, the American model, the American values are not theyre something that end at the border. Theyre something that are just for us. And American responsibility is there is no mention of it.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

We had the clip earlier in the program of Trump saying: Im not president of the globe. Im president of the United States.

Reagan would have never said that. Eisenhower would have never said that, because he would have said, yes, Im president of the United States, but its in our interests to be securing a world order.

MARK SHIELDS: A citizen of the world.

DAVID BROOKS: And that is the two are so intricately linked. But Trump sees an opposition between the two. Its a very different mind-set.

The other thing that has changed and this is more detailed to CPAC than the general Republican Party is they have always been an outsider, Ann Coulter, sort of protest style, a little ruder than most Republicans. And this goes back all the way to Reagan.

Lee Atwater, Reagans strategist, had no patience for CPAC, because he thought they were sort of wild and immature, basically. And so thats always been a strain. So, its interesting how identity politics and Ann Coulter-style tactics have now blossomed. But they were always there in CPAC.

JUDY WOODRUFF: OK, just about a minute, a minute-and-a-half left.

I want to quickly ask you. We are careful about how we talk about President Trump and the news media, because we think you can quickly get into a situation, Mark, where you are looking at yourself and being a little too self-referential, any of us in the news media.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But what I want to ask both of you, quickly, is, is this something that the press thats going to begin to define the press, the presidents constant, daily saying fake news, the press is dishonest, the press makes things up?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, Judy, hes moved from the enemy being Barack Obama, now gone, fading is Hillary Clinton, and there is no question hes chosen the enemy.

I thought what Steve Bannon said yesterday was probably more chilling or more threatening than anything the president says, I mean, because he said, its a constant day. We have to defeat the press.

And President Kennedy, after the Bay of Pigs, said to Turner Catledge of The New York Times: I wish you had written more, I wish you had investigated more, because it might have saved the country of the cataclysm of the Bay of Pigs.

And, you know, thats the job of a free press is to hold the lamp up, to investigate, to hold accountable. And denying access, as Sean Spicer did today, is the first step toward a dictatorship.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

Its both strategic, to get peoples minds off other things, and to pick an internal enemy. Its part of his psychodynamics to always care about his press coverage intensely. Hes more interested in that than anything else.

Will it to stick? Of course, I tend to think not, the fake media. But Im sure little Marco didnt think it would stick. Im sure crooked Hillary didnt think it would stick. These labels do have a certain power to them. And so we will see how it plays out.

JUDY WOODRUFF: We will see.

David Brooks, Mark Shields, thank you both.

MARK SHIELDS: Thank you, Judy.

See the original post here:
Shields and Brooks on tea party lessons for Democrats, remaking ... - PBS NewsHour

LEFT-OF-CENTER pundits and activists across the nation are upset about Novembers election results. As they continue grasping for answers, they are mistakenly trying to draw parallels between todays anti-Trump protests and the Tea Party movement in the false hope that political salvation is just around the corner.

When people think of the Tea Party, they often remember the national protests. However, the movements legacy was not cemented by rallies. Instead, it is being realized through continuous waves of victories at the ballot box.

Most importantly for the conservative activists, those election victories are likely to continue because there is a strong Tea Party presence in the very essence of the conservative, Republican political infrastructure.

The Tea Partys coming-of-age can be traced back to January 2010 in a special election to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy in dark blue Massachusetts.

It was no surprise that the media reported we had no chance, as the state had not elected a Republican senator to that seat in more than 50 yearsnot to mention the fact that 62 percent of the states voters had just cast ballots in support of Barack Obama. However, the Tea Party shocked both the media and the world by winning handily and sending Scott Brown to Washington.

Through this victory, in which the Tea Party Express played the most significant role in helping to nationalize the election, we were able to prove that support for the Tea Party message was as broad as it was deep.

That victory in Massachusetts proved that conservatives could win anywhere, and that electoral message was carried on to purple states such as Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin, where each of those senate candidates who won in November of 2010 won again in 2016.

At the gubernatorial level, weve seen the number of conservative chief executives swell to 33, complemented by conservative majorities in 69 of the 99 state legislative bodies. And, except for Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania, every governor elected through the 2010 Tea Party wave was re-elected in 2014.

The key to the Tea Party support was the inclusiveness of the movement. The only litmus test was a commitment to opposing the increasing size, cost and intrusive of the federal government and supporting fewer taxes and regulatory burdens so the economy could grow and expand opportunities for all Americans.

But unlike the Tea Party, that broad support is not evident in todays anti-Trump protests. Many of these rallies were busy excluding people they disagreed with instead of trying to broaden their base.

An honest look at whats happening today also reveals a significant lack of geographic diversity, which is exactly what propelled the Tea Party.

Statistician Nate Silver, editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight and a special correspondent for ABC News, published an in-depth analysis of the anti-Trump Womans March. In his report, Silver finds that 80 percent of march attendance came in states that Clinton won. By comparison, 58 percent of the Tea Party protests were in states that Obama won in 2008.

RealClearPolitics analyst Sean Trende also explored the Democrats base problems in a series of articles titled How Trump Won, by pointing to the partys heavy, yet limited representation in mega-cities, like San Francisco and Los Angeles. Moreover, Trendes piece explored the Democrats inability to succeed in small towns. Trump won big victories throughout rural and small town America.

The result of those two realities is that even though states like California, New York and Illinois may turn out a lot of anti-Trump protests, those protesters voices are already being heard and represented by their democratically elected presidential electors, senators and congress-people.

So, unlike the Tea Party, which proved able to win competitive races, where can this anti-Trump movement go?

Five members of Congress have been chosen to serve in Trumps cabinet, and their offices will have to be filled in upcoming elections. There will be openings in Montana, Alabama, Kansas, Georgia and South Carolina. Does anyone think an anti-Trump candidate will be viable, like Scott Brown was in blue Massachusetts?

Will these protesters dare test just how populist their message is by seriously supporting candidates in any of these races? Or will they take a page from Occupy Wall Street and the recent University of California protests and allow their movement to be pre-empted by those seeking violence and destruction instead of rational debate?

My bet is these anti-Trump protesters will go the way of Bernie Sanders and seek political purity rather than political victory. Thus, the Tea Party will continue serving as the most consequential political movement in modern American politics.

Taylor Budowich is the executive director of the Tea Party Express political action committee.

Read more here:
Column: Anti-Trump movement is nothing like Tea Party - Fredericksburg.com

KIEV and WASHINGTON A lot of Ukrainian is being heard around Washington these days.

Since the U.S. election in November, Ukrainian officials have descended on the District, but the pace has picked up noticeably since Congress returned to session in January: One recent trip brought more than 70 Ukrainian politicians to Congress at once. And a congressional staffer who works on Ukraine and Russia policy told Foreign Policy that not a day goes by where he doesnt see Ukrainian lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

One reason for this sudden influx is the outsized role played by the United States in Ukrainian domestic politics: Recognition and support from influential Americans can make or break a politicians career. There is the perception of the U.S. as a kingmaker in Ukraine, said Vasyl Filipchuk, a former diplomat and the current chairman of the International Centre for Policy Studies in Kiev. So when [Donald] Trump was elected, all groups of influence the elite decided that they must establish or re-establish links with the new administration.

But another reason is the lack of clarity about the Trump administrations policy toward Ukraine and about who is responsible for communications between the two countries. And so, lawmakers from across Ukraine are flooding into Washington, in the hopes that they will be able to take advantage of this policy vacuum and make an impact or at least get in on the action.

There has been so much uncertainty and anxiety in Kiev surrounding Trump and what he will change with Russia and Ukraine, said Balazs Jarabik, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. This is creating an opportunity for other politicians to shop their own initiatives.

The transition from Barack Obamas White House to the Trump administration has been tumultuous for countries around the world, thanks to both mixed messages in public and White House staffing issues that have made it impossible to get clarification in private. But nowhere have the messages been more confusing than in Ukraine, where a more than two-year conflict that has killed nearly 10,000 people shows no signs of stopping. The outbreak of intense fighting in late January threatened to break the fragile Minsk II peace agreements, and recent Russian provocations, including recognition of passports from Ukraines breakaway regions, are deepening tensions.

The Trump administrations contradictory statements on Russia have only increased anxiety in Kiev. Trump has said he wants to pursue more cooperation, particularly on Syria and counterterrorism but his administration has also said new cooperation isnt currently possible, and key members of his team, including Vice President Mike Pence and Defense Secretary James Mattis, have emphasized the threat posed by the Kremlin. In the absence of a clear line from the White House, Kiev has looked elsewhere to shore up support. Senate Republicans, under pressure from Russia hawks John McCain and Lindsey Graham, have sounded the alarm about the Kremlin in recent days and called for supporting Kiev. But the Ukrainian government is also scrambling to establish a reliable line of communication with the White House, both to ensure it can plead its case and to avoid being undermined by any one of the lawmakers currently looking to capitalize off the uncertainty.

We want to understand who is responsible for the foreign policy of the United States in the European region, Valeriy Chaly, Ukraines ambassador to Washington, told FP last week. Currently, it is not obvious who this person will be.

Meanwhile, the hollowing-out of the upper echelons of U.S. diplomatic institutions has opened the door to amateur and, in some cases, rogue diplomacy.

One example of such informal Ukrainian liaising was described last weekend by the New York Times. It reported that Andrey Artemenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker representing Oleh Lyashkos Radical Party, took relations with the Trump administration into his own hands, working with Trumps personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, and a longtime Trump business associate, Felix Slater, to deliver a secret peace plan to former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Artemenko, a marginal butambitiouspolitician with an affinity for Trump who has ties to the far-right military-political group Right Sector, seems to have acted without authorization from the Ukrainian government. Ukrainian officials were livid with Artemenko, who has since been kicked out of his political faction in parliament and is being investigated for treason by Ukraines General Prosecutor. Since the revelation was first reported, Artemenko has denied passing a peace plan to Trump officials and has since threatened to sue the New York Times for libel.

In the days that followed, other proposed peace plans for eastern Ukraine have come out of the woodwork. Former President Viktor Yanukovych, who lives in exile in Russia after fleeing Ukraine following the Maidan protests in 2014, spoke with Western journalists on Tuesday and announced a nine-page proposal for ending the war. According to Der Spiegel and the Wall Street Journal, which interviewed Yanukovych, the former president had sent the plan to Trump and the leaders of Russia, Germany, France, and Poland. On Wednesday, Radio Free Europe reported that Konstantin Kilimnik, a former associate of Paul Manafort, Trumps erstwhile campaign chairman who worked for Yanukovych, has also drawn up a peace plan. Whats more, Kilimnik said he briefed Manafort on the plan during the 2016 U.S. election.

Other interventions have been motivated more by electoral considerations than anything: Ukraine has presidential elections slated for 2019, and jostling among top political players is well underway. On Feb. 2, Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister and a vocal opponent of President Petro Poroshenko, met in Washington with both Vice President Pence and Trump, who reportedly assured her that his administration would not abandon Ukraine and that it would not lift sanctions on Russia until it withdraws its troops from the country. Politico reported that Poroshenkos team was apoplectic about the off-the-cuff meeting. Chaly, the Ukrainian ambassador, however, denied having a visceral reaction to the informal meeting and said Tymoshenko and Poroshenko were working toward the same goal together. They can compete for political influence and ratings in Kiev, but they do not compete when it comes to the defense and security of Ukraine, Chaly said.

But even as it disapproves of these unofficial exchanges, the Ukrainian government itself has also sought to create its own back channels to reach Trump. Kiev is making use of informal contacts, said Taras Berezovets, a political consultant and director of the Fund for National Strategies, a Ukrainian think tank.

One rumored interlocutor in this relationship is Oleksandra Nikolayenko, a Ukrainian model and former Miss Universe contestant who is married to Phil Ruffin, a close friend of the president. Trump was best man at Ruffins wedding to Nikolayenko in 2008, and Ruffin has been a faithful supporter of Trumps campaign from the beginning, donating $1 million to Trumps Make America Great Again PAC just two weeks after it was launched. According to one source close to the Ukrainian presidential administration, Nikolayenko told Chaly that she could put him in touch with anyone in the administration and that she had already started setting up meetings for him. Chaly told FP that he had met Nikolayenko at an informal event with the new American leadership and that she was later invited to the Ukrainian Embassy but denied that she had helped establish any new contacts.

Other unlikely conduits to Trump that have emerged in recent months include the billionaire businessman Victor Pinchuk, who published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in December calling on Ukraine to make painful compromises in order to resolve the conflict in the east. When it was published, the Poroshenko administration shot back, saying it wouldnt back down from Russian aggression. Less than a month later, however, despite intentionally ignoring an invitation to attend a breakfast hosted by Pinchuk at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Poroshenko took a meeting with former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates that Pinchuk had personally organized reportedly through his connections to officials in the Trump administration in the hope that Gates, though not a part of the Trump White House, might be able to facilitate a relationship with the presidents entourage.

Whether through traditional channels of communication, informal ones, or a combination of both, Ukraine has had some successes reaching Trump and his inner circle. Chaly has played a central role in this effort, establishing contact with Trump staffers following his victory and meeting with Trump and other members of his team in person in the days leading up to the presidents inauguration. In early February, Poroshenko became one of the first foreign leaders to speak with Trump, shortly after an escalation of fighting along the front lines in Ukraines eastern regions, which marked an impressive achievement for Ukrainian diplomacy. Filipchuk, the former diplomat and think tank chairman, who has written in favor of making compromises to achieve peace that many in Ukraine have found provocative, said he was surprised and impressed by the extent to which Chaly has been able to establish relationships with the Trump administration.

After a confusing first few weeks, the Poroshenko administration seems to have fallen back on more formal methods of communication. The Ukrainians are in the process of trying to arrange a visit from a delegation led by Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin to rekindle working ties with the new administration. Poroshenko and Pence met at the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 18, and the Ukrainians are hoping to arrange a visit to Washington for Poroshenko in March. But the Trump administrations disorganization has already taken a toll, by fueling domestic political rivalries that could threaten the countrys stability.

There is a gathering domestic political storm in Kiev, said Jarabik, the Carnegie political analyst. And soon it will hit.

FPs Dan De Luce contributed to this report.

Photo Credit:Getty Images/Foreign Policy illustration

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The Road to Power in Ukraine Runs Through Donald Trump - Foreign Policy (blog)