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Obnoxious. Annoying. Disrespectful. Inexperienced. Conspiratorial.

Those are just a few of the adjectives one could use to describe Republican upstart Vivek Ramaswamy at the first GOP debate of the 2024 presidential election.

It didnt take long for the relatively unknown businessman-turned-candidate to make his presence known, earning applause and cheers early on, but hardly ingratiating himself to his fellow opponents.

He sparred with many, and seemed to revel in the spotlight, but, to what end? Was this a real star turn that could position Ramaswamy to actually vie for the nomination? Or was it just another attention-seeking performance meant to make him Fox-famous, the likes of which seem to define the new American right?

While all of the descriptors I used above annoying, obnoxious, conspiratorial, etc. are hugely off-putting for moderate, issues-based conservatives like me who are desperate to move past Trumpism, tribalism, denialism and demagoguery, we are clearly not the audience. If Ramaswamys audience was MAGA world, it seems he put on the perfect show.

He adopted Donald Trumps pugnacity he was cocky, aggressive, and dismissive of his competitors, baselessly calling them all bought and paid for, suggesting former Gov. Chris Christie was just there to become an MSNBC contributor, and that former Gov. Nikki Haley was destined to be on the board of defense contractors Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. He frequently feigned confusion over whatever former Vice President Pence whom he called Mike more than once had just said.

Their obvious exasperation over Ramaswamys insults, interruptions, and gaslighting recalled the 2016 Republican primary, where seasoned politicians like former Gov. Jeb Bush, Sen. Marco Rubio, Sen. Rand Paul and others had to dodge and endure Trumps petulant wrench-throwing while hoping to run serious campaigns.

They managed to land some good one-liners against him, though. Pence said now wasnt the time to elect a rookie, Christie joked that Ramaswamy sounded like ChatGPT, while Haley declared definitively, You have no foreign policy experience and it shows.

Like Trump, Ramaswamy also courted quackery. Fresh off some controversial comments he made about Jan. 6 and Sept. 11 maybe being inside jobs, he sprinkled in some other conspiracies about climate change, and also went where crank voices like Alex Jones and Lara Logan have gone in rooting for Putin in Ukraine.

And he did the most important part of the job to please MAGA, which was to go to cartoonish lengths to suck up to Trump, at one point calling him the best president of the 21st century and demanding his opponents join him in pledging to pardon Trump if hes convicted on any of the 90-plus charges hes facing.

Which begs the question, of course, if Trump is so great and must be protected at all costs, why are you running against him, then?

Thats what leads to the assumption that, as Christie said on stage, Vivek just wants to be famous. Afterwards he went on ABC News and called the debate an unambiguous success for him.

Trump agreed, posting his appreciation for Ramaswamys obsequious words:

This answer gave Vivek Ramaswamy a big WIN in the debate because of a thing called TRUTH. Thank you Vivek!

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By these metrics getting attention and especially Trumps Ramaswamy certainly won. What he won, though, was unclear.

Most headlines focused on his ability to take center stage, grab the spotlight, and break through, admittedly important things for a newcomer to do.

And in a political environment like the new Republican Party, where attention, celebrity, and sucking up to Trump are much more valuable currency than things like experience, seriousness, and competence, the rapping, topless tennis-playing, conspiracy-theorizing Ramaswamy is well-positioned to go far in this primary.

But how far does he want to go? Does he want to beat his idol? Trump wont allow that, presumably. Or is he secretly hoping Trump goes to prison so he can step into his shoes and become the nominee? Does he then truly believe his extremist positions and unserious campaign antics could win in a general election? (Hey, its been done before.)

Or, more likely, is he just using the American democratic process to line his own pockets, sell books and merch, see his name splashed across a media he insists is corrupt, and ultimately land a cushy job alongside Jesse Watters and Jeanine Pirro on Fox, where hell get paid to professionally push lies and conspiracy theories to an unwitting audience?

In this Republican Party, few things still surprise. While he wont have my vote, based on his performance Wednesday night Vivek Ramaswamy makes a terrific MAGA candidate unqualified, unserious, unlikableand therefore utterly electable.

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Vivek was unbearable, so his future in GOP is bright - New York Daily News

A few weeks ago, Politicos Florida Playbook ran a story revealing what hundreds of people, groups, and journalists in the state were asking for: texts, emails, calendars, letters, and receipts to or from Floridas governor, presidential candidate Ron DeSantis.

In Politicos telling, many of the requesters were affiliated with the Democratic Party, making demands under the states open-records law to get damning material against political enemies. And, in DeSantis case, Floridas public records certainly marked the best starting point to look for muck. The list that Politico received of requesters targeting DeSantis in his home state was 222 pages long.

Unsurprisingly, mostly Democratic-aligned groups asked for dirt on DeSantis and his inner circle, Politico wrote. Oddly, no one tied to Trump or other 2024 candidates asked for such records, though its possible that GOP campaigns used an untraceable proxy to avoid angering a future Republican president.

Why didnt the Trump campaign file such requests? Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, bluntly told Politico: We have information that no opposition researcher can ever find.

Opposition research oppo in the vernacular of politicians is a basic building block in every political campaign. Oppo is the ammunition behind every negative campaign ad; every gut punch in a debate. The higher the stakes, the deeper the research. And many more players are in the opposition-research game now, following the Supreme Courts 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC.

The Courts 5-to-4 decision in Citizens United opened the door to unlimited election spending by so-called independent political action committees, aka Super PACs. Super PACs spend big on negative ads, and oppo is their ammo. According to OpenSecrets.org, which tracks the flow of money in politics, spending in the 2020 presidential and congressional races totaled $14.4 billion, more than double the total cost of the record-breaking 2016 presidential election cycle. That huge influx of money led to more negative campaign advertisements across all media, which in turn juiced the need for more opposition research. (Full disclosure: I am a longtime board member of OpenSecrets).

Not surprisingly, those conducting opposition research turn early and often to the Freedom of Information Act. So we decided to dig into PoliScio Analytics competitive-intelligence database FOIAengine, which tracks FOIA requests in as close to real-time as their availability allows, to see what the players are up to.

With so many candidates vying for the Republican nomination, the Republican National Committee is staying on the sidelines, leaving opposition research to the affiliated PACs and super PACs of the various candidates. Next week, well take a closer look at some of the thousands of FOIA requests from Republican proxies acting on behalf of, or in synch with, the Republican candidates.

With the Democrats, its the GOP story in reverse. The Democrats know who their probable standard bearers will be. But, with more than a dozen declared Republican candidates and an even greater number of undeclared long shots, Democratic oppo researchers must throw a dragnet, systematically spreading an array of FOIA requests across a broad swath of agencies and departments.

President Bidens main super PAC, Future Forward, which spent more than $130 million in 2020, doesnt show up as a requester in FOIAengine at all. Instead, the Democratic National Committee appears to be taking the oppo-research lead. According to FOIAengine, the DNC has filed more than 300 recent FOIA requests with federal agencies, covering the wide range of candidates who could end up as the eventual presidential or vice presidential nominee on the Republican presidential ticket.

FOIA requests to the federal government can be an important early warning of bad publicity, litigation to come, or uncertainties that must be hedged or gamed out. In this case, the DNCs FOIA requests appear to reflect a calculus that even if the race for the top of the ticket is settled early, the vice-presidential spot will end up being a wild card. Hence, the DNC must place a lot of early bets on the table.

Over the past year or so, the Democrats have filed extensive FOIA requests with various federal agencies seeking detailed information on at least 19 present or former Republican officeholders. The list includes some who have stated flatly that theyre not running for president, but who could end up as a running mate. There are some dark horses: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Mike Pompeo, Ben Carson, and Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-Va.) are among the DNCs targets. And a few surprises: Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) are on the DNCs list; Vivek Ramaswamy isnt yet.

Following are highlights from the DNCs opposition-research FOIA requests thus far:

To see all the DNC opposition-research requests, log in or sign up to become a FOIAengine beta user.

Next: Thousands of opposition-research requests from Republican-affiliated PACs.

John A. Jenkins, co-creator of FOIAengine, is a Washington journalist and publisher whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, GQ, and elsewhere. He is a four-time recipient of the American Bar Associations Gavel Award Certificate of Merit for his legal reporting and analysis. His most recent book is The Partisan: The Life of William Rehnquist. Jenkins founded Law Street Media in 2013. Prior to that, he was President of CQ Press, the textbook and reference publishing enterprise of Congressional Quarterly. FOIAengine is a product of PoliScio Analytics (PoliScio.com), a new venture specializing in U.S. political and governmental research, co-founded by Jenkins and Washington lawyer Randy Miller. Learn more about FOIAengine here. To review FOIA requests mentioned in this article, subscribe to FOIAengine.

Write to John A. Jenkins at JAJ@PoliScio.com.

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The DNC Goes Fishing What Will it Catch? - Law Street Media

But in the wake of Ohio voters swatting away a recent Republican effort to make it much harder to amend the state constitution and build a roadblock in front of an effort to enshrine abortion rights protections into the state constitution this November theres been a bit of buzz about the reemergence of Ohio as a key presidential battleground.

Dont bet on it.

For starters, ballot issues are not partisan elections, and keep in mind Democratic issue positions can be more popular than Democratic candidates. That was very likely the case in the Aug. 8 Issue 1 vote in Ohio, as a broad coalition of Democrats, independents, and even some Republican voters gave a big thumbs down to a Republican effort to neuter voters power to amend the states constitution.

In 2018, we saw a similar phenomenon when Missouri voters approved a minimum wage ballot issue by 25 points in the same election that they backed now-Republican Sen. Josh Hawley over then-Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill by 6 points. Just last year, Kentuckians voted with the pro-abortion rights side, declining by about 5 points to specify that the Kentucky Constitution does not contain abortion rights protections. In the same election, they reelected Republican Sen. Rand Paul by 24 points. Be careful about extrapolating trends from an off-year ballot issue vote in Ohio to next years general election.

The unpopularity of Issue 1 was seen in almost every corner of the state. Some of the counties that stood out were the 15 collar counties that touch the states three major urban counties: Cuyahoga (Cleveland), Franklin (Columbus), and Hamilton (Cincinnati). The Issue 1 vote, which saw No (the Democratic position) beat Yes (the Republican position) by 14 points, was 20 points bluer than the 6-point margin enjoyed by Republican Sen. J.D. Vance in his victory over former Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan last year. In almost all of these collar counties, the No side ran ahead of that 20-point difference. One could argue that this is a leading indicator of a blue trend in these places.

But the actual partisan trends in the collar counties have been different and much less encouraging for Democrats.

Broadly speaking, the story of the Trump era in the Industrial North has been one of eroding Democratic presidential performance. Relative to the nation, only Illinois and Minnesota were roughly as Democratic in 2020 as they were in 2012. All of the other states in the region that Barack Obama carried at least once (Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) have gotten more Republican.

The regional movement toward the GOP at the presidential level is the upside of the Trumpian realignment, as he has pulled more white voters who generally do not have a four-year college degree into the GOP coalition a vital and large bloc in many of these states.

Amid the larger, pro-Republican trends in the Industrial North, there has been some pro-Democratic movement in the regions collar counties movement that was vital in Joe Bidens efforts to reclaim some of these states in 2020. For instance, some of the still-red Milwaukee collar counties Waukesha and Ozaukee, two of the states three so-called WOW counties both saw their GOP presidential margins drop double-digits from 2012 to 2020. In Michigan, the Detroit satellites of Oakland and Washtenaw counties got bluer, and in southeast Pennsylvania, the Democratic margin in Philadelphias northwest neighbor, Montgomery County, nearly doubled. Overall, the trade-offs were still good for Trump in this region, but his erosion from Mitt Romneys performance in some key suburban places contributed to his narrow losses in the old Blue Wall in 2020.

In Ohio, however, its much harder to find examples of Democratic growth in these kinds of suburban/exurban collar counties: 12 of the 15 that touch Cuyahoga, Franklin or Hamilton got redder from 2012 to 2020. The sole exceptions were Delaware, north of Columbus, and Warren and Butler, north of Cincinnati. Delaware has by far the highest four-year college attainment of any county in Ohio but it is still Republican, voting for Trump by 7 points, down from Romneys 23. Meanwhile, in the vast swaths of small town and rural Ohio, the Democrats have collapsed: The Republican presidential nominee went from winning just six of Ohios 88 counties with 70 percent or more of the vote in 2012 to exactly half of them in 2020.

The basic statewide story that helps explain both the sticky Republicanism of the collar counties as well as the big GOP movement in much of the rest of the state is that prior to the Trump realignment, Democrats stayed afloat in Ohio in large part because non-college whites there were less Republican than they were nationally.

But in 2016, according to a detailed and respected report from the liberal Center for American Progress comparing the 2012 election with 2016, non-college whites in Ohio actually became slightly more Republican than they were nationally, while the states college whites also remained more Republican than they were nationally. The AP/Fox News VoteCast exit poll found this same basic alignment in 2020. This combination a Republican stampede among non-college whites, paired with a college white group that retains a GOP lean is electorally deadly for Democrats in Ohio, particularly because the state is whiter than the nation as a whole.

If theres a silver lining for Democrats in these otherwise troubling trendlines, Issue 1 did provide a template for what a future Democratic victory in Ohio might look like, with the suburban/exurban collar counties either voting Democratic or at least not giving the GOP the landslide margins to which they have become accustomed.

That could matter a great deal in the 2024 battle for control of the Senate. Democratic incumbent Sherrod Browns reelection bid likely depends on finding some new votes in these places, as it seems reasonable to expect that he will continue to lose ground in rapidly reddening eastern Ohio in a presidential year. One telling sign is that even though No won by 14 points in 2023, and Brown won by 7 in his 2018 reelection, Browns margin was better than Nos in much of the region, including in Mahoning and Trumbull counties, home to the post-industrial cities of Youngstown and Warren, respectively, and poster children for the Trump realignment. This perhaps suggests that the continued erosion for Democrats in these one-time cobalt blue counties will only continue.

If Ohio did in fact vote Democratic for president in 2024, it would likely be as part of much wider improvement for the party across the region, such that Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin would be voting Democratic by several points apiece and the Democrats would likely be winning the presidency easily. Thats possible, of course, but the odds are against it.

Ohio is, rightly, going to remain a focus in 2023, with a looming vote coming on abortion rights in November. But regardless of what happens in that ballot measure, the Trump realignment ended at least for now the states defining role as a presidential bellwether.

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No, Ohio Is Not in Play - POLITICO - POLITICO

On Thursday, July 27, I reintroduced legislation that would clarify that the authorities of the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention (CDC), which were unlawfully expanded and abused during the COVID-19 pandemic, are limited to those expressly authorized by Congress.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, government lockdowns triggered widespread layoffs and caused many businesses to close for good. But rather than simply allowing Americans to go back to work, the CDC issued a federal rent control order.

This experience illustrates one of the most important lessons of the COVID-19 public health emergency: power-hungry bureaucrats will use any excuse they can find to expand their powers. Congress shouldnt let that happen, and my bill will prevent future overreach like we saw far too often during the pandemic.

The legislation is co-sponsored by Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Mike Braun (R-IN).

Specifically, the Limiting CDC to Disease Control Act would clarify that Section 361(a) of the Public Health Service Act only authorizes the agency to issue and enforce regulations addressing isolation and quarantine of infected individuals (subject to certain restrictions) and inspection, fumigation, disinfection, sanitation, pest extermination and destruction of infected animals or articles.

From the Rand Paul Newsletter

Excerpt from:
Dr. Rand Paul reintroduces legislation to prevent CDC overreach - Pmg-ky1.com

The narrative following Bronny James cardiac arrest during a USC basketball practice in late July was as predictable as it was mind-numbing. Anti-vaxxers came out in full throat, quick to blame the seemingly healthy young adults misfortune on the vaccine. Its easy to find a COVID conspiracy for all of societys ills, and its gotten so lazy that one can readily identify, and then avoid, wading into conversation with Dr. Mantis Stockton.

However, there are performance artists among us who just see things so idiotically, so completely wrong that engaging with them is unavoidable. Out of the most morbid bit of curiosity, you have to look, knowing full well that it will not only leave you speechless, but also severely dumber.

I dont believe LeBron or his family took the vaccine, wrote a silly man with a funny haton X. I believe most elite athletes faked taking the vaxx. No way men in prime physical health injected a rushed vaccine into their bodies. I refuse to believe that. Thats my conspiracy. I dont know what happened to Bronny.

So, to paraphrase, the silly man doesnt know what happened to Bronny because he believes elite athletes faked the vaccine. Look at the big galaxy brain on this guy. Not only are anti-vaxxers wrong, but so is everybody else.

Yes, all of us, the royal us, are the dumbasses, and not the guy who wears fedoras. Perhaps this silly mans signature hat is the same one used by Matt Damon in the time-traveling epic The Adjustment Bureau, and hes 17 million steps ahead of the rest of the world because hes seen every timeline.

That, or hes just a fucking moron.

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Britney Spears, Tommy Tuberville, Rand Paul, and more: IDIOT OF ... - Deadspin