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A proposal by House Republicans to add term limits for committee chairs and ranking members to House rules if they win back control of the chamber is getting some enthusiastic support from GOP lawmakers with a side of hesitation.

Punchbowl News reported Monday that the House GOP is considering such a change, which would block several senior Democrats from keeping their top committee spots next year and force other Democrats out of coveted top slots.

The House Republican Conference already has a longtime internal rule that prohibits members from serving more than three consecutive terms as a ranking member or chair of a committee, but the House Democratic Caucus does not limit how long a lawmaker may serve in those roles on a panel.

The proposal won praise from Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), who backs legislation to amend the Constitution to impose term limits on all members of Congress.

Putting term limits on committee leadership ensures were putting the best players in these powerful positions every single term, Burchett said. Republicans have been doing this for years, but Democrats have been content to hand these roles to whichever members have been in Washington the longest.

A GOP lawmaker who did not want to be identified heard about the proposal for the first time on Monday morning and said that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has not discussed the idea with the conference yet.

My own view, and I suspect the view of many rank-and-file members, is that it would be a very good idea. As a general premise, we (conservatives) believe in merit-based leadership appointments, and not seniority, the lawmaker said.

If adopted, such a rule would prompt a wave of committee leadership turnover among Democrats, some of whom have served as their partys top leaders on powerful panels for decades.

Rep. Nydia Velzquez (N.Y) has led Democrats on the House Small Business Committee since 1998, while House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) has held his partys top spot on that panel since 2005. Rep. Adam Smith (Wash.) rose to being the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee in 2005.

But some are not convinced that such a move is in the best interest of the GOP conference.

Its a good way to get back at bad actors like Bennie Thompson, who definitely earned it. But I dont see why wed want less stale and overbearing Democrat leadership. The rule mismatch is one reason GOP leaders are younger and more responsive, one House GOP aide told The Hill.

Younger and newer House Democrats have long expressed discontent about a lack of term limits for the partys top officials on committees, arguing that the current system provides few opportunities for advancement and prevents new ideas from being injected into policymaking.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in 2018 that she was sympathetic to those concerns.

Its a good rule. We dont want Democrats to have better rules, the GOP aide said.

A rule change could also be a way for Republicans to play hardball with Democrats in response to stripping Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) of their committee assignments.

Greene was kicked off the House Budget and Education and Labor committees over her past incendiary remarks and social media activity that appeared to endorse violence against Democrats that included liking a comment calling for Pelosis assassination.

Gosar was removed after he posted an animated video that depicted him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).

When the Democrats voted to remove Republican members from committees, they pierced the veil and justified Republican members who want to make sure everybodys abiding by the same rules next year, Burchett said.

McCarthy has previously pledged to block some Democratic members from certain committee assignments as payback for Democrats removing the GOP members, including blocking Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) from the House Intelligence Committee over being targeted by an alleged Chinese spy. McCarthy also has his eye on stripping Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) of her spot on the House Foreign Affairs Committee over remarks that were seen as antisemitic.

Top Republicans have had doubts in the past about the conferences three-term rule for chairs and ranking members. In the last congressional cycle, the GOPs term limit rule was seen as a factor that contributed to a wave of House Republican retirements from top committee members who would have been blocked from another term.

House Republicans should allow Chairs of Committees to remain for longer than 6 years, former President Trump tweeted in September 2019. It forces great people, and real leaders, to leave after serving. The Dems have unlimited terms. While that has its own problems, it is a better way to go. Fewer people, in the end, will leave!

Shortly after that, McCarthy reportedly floated the idea of easing the conferences term limit requirement, which might have included not counting a term as ranking member to the three-term limit. The change was ultimately not made.

Making such a change to House rules could also directly impact Rep. Virginia Foxx (N.C.), who has reportedly been lobbying for a waiver to the term limit rule from House GOP leaders to stay the top Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee for a fourth term next year.

House Ways and Means Committee ranking member Kevin Brady (Texas), the only other Republican who would need a waiver to the rule to stay in his top committee slot next year, is retiring from Congress at the end of this year.

McCarthys office did not respond to a request for comment.

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Republicans hail proposal to impose committee term limits on both parties - The Hill

On Thursday, in a dim conference room in the bowels of a Washington, D.C., hotel, about 150 conservatives gathered for a day of group therapy. They had all been traumatized by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which had left them questioning their assumptions about the world. But Vladimir Putins war of aggression wasnt what confounded them most; for these conservatives, a mix of D.C. professionals and college students leavened with a handful of older cranks, the hawkish response to Russian aggression by most elected Republicans was the real problem.

The conference, Up From Chaos, was a summit of all the wings of the right that would prefer a more hands-off American response to Russias invasion of Ukraine. The organizers were The American Conservative, the paleoconservative publication founded by Pat Buchanan; and American Moment, a newer organization that tries to sell the next generation of the right on its version of national conservatism. We were acutely worried that the seven years of foreign-policy gains that we made [since Donald Trump launched his campaign] were going to go away, Saurabh Sharma, one of the conferences organizers, told me.

Anne Applebaum: Ukraine must win

The event wasnt a Putin apologia like those found in some corners of the right. Instead, the phrase of the day seemed to be Putin is bad, but The attendees, who included paleocons, libertarians, and hard-core MAGA acolytes, offered variations on that tune according to their policy preferences: Putin is bad, but we dont want a nuclear war. Putin is bad, but why should we trust the American foreign-policy establishment? Putin is bad, but the media is in thrall to the U.S. intelligence apparatus. The broad consensus: Putin is bad, but why is that our problem?

This is not an ism-based movement. There is a specific policy outcome motivating the type of factions we brought here today, which is that we dont want another war, Sharma said. And people have their own isms that they bring to the table. The result was a conference of the right where Tulsi Gabbard was invited but figures such as Ted Cruz were absent.

In fact, Cruz was the target of a jab onstage from a fellow Republican senator, Rand Paul, who suggested that the Texans advocacy for sanctions on Russian energy was simply intended to boost the bottom line of the energy industry in his home state. President Joe Biden, though, received some praise for his comparatively restrained response to the crisis. Saagar Enjeti, a conservative pundit and podcaster, went so far as to say that Bidens 79-year-old ailing heart may be the only thing standing in between us and World War III.

The most common object of the attendees ire was not the Democrats, but instead the traditional enemy of the isolationist right, neoconservatives. Time and time again, speakers mocked foreign-policy hawks and criticized Republicans who had supported the Iraq War. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was the target of repeated scorn. Perhaps the biggest applause line of the entire conference was delivered by the Ohio Senate candidate J. D. Vance, who mocked the intelligence of Bill Kristol, the neoconservative pundit and Never Trumper. Donald Trumps greatest foreign-policy triumph was not so much any of his decisions, but rather that he broke the neocon Republican orthodoxy, Dan Bishop, a second-term representative from North Carolina, told the crowd.

Still, a sense that neocons and foreign-policy elites were winning seemed to permeate the room. For a D.C. conclave, the gathering featured few boldface names. Of the four elected officials who spoke, Rand Paul and Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky are best known for being libertarian gadflies, while Bishop and Representative Matt Rosendale of Montana are backbenchers who are relatively new to Washington. Vance, who hasnt even been elected to any office and may never be, gave what might have been the most high-profile speech. (Unusually for a speaker at a Washington conference, Vance hung around as an attendee after his speech, sitting quietly in the back as the fellow Peter Thiel ally David Sacks, a wealthy Silicon Valley entrepreneur, addressed the crowd).

Tom Nichols: The moral collapse of J. D. Vance

The first time that Ive ever actually had donors push back against all the crazy things that I say over the course of my Senate campaign is on this Russia-Ukraine thing, Vance said. The craziest idea Ive had in the last year and a half is that we should not be involved in a nuclear war with Russia.

Sharma framed skepticism of the U.S. response as a test of political courage for the few on the right who were still willing to stand up for a more sober foreign policy where the rubber meets the road. It is a test that few on the right are passing so far. Even Trump has expressed openness toward more aggressive action against Russia in some public statements about the conflict. (He has also praised Putin as a genius.)

The challenge for the isolationist wing of the right is finding more allies. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is one of the most popular political figures in the United States, and the Russian army is falling back from the outskirts of Kiev. It seems, at least for the time being, that the hawkish response to the invasion of Ukraine has succeeded. The war in Europe, and the fight over the future of the Republican Partys foreign policy, are likely to be long. But for now, the rights isolationists are on their own.

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The 'Putin Is Bad, But' Republicans - The Atlantic

Republican activists seek drivers attention as they work to register voters to their party at a gas station in Garden Grove. REUTERS/Mike Blake

A half-dozen mostly young Republican activists stood gamely outside of a Chevron station at a busy Orange Countyintersection, jumping up and down and holding a big sign reading, Gastoo high? Register Republican.

The demonstration in Garden Grove this week drew beeps of support, and was successful in getting a few motorists to pull over to talk aboutgasprices.

The Republican Party says the SouthernCaliforniavoter registration effort is one of many it is holding outsidegasstations across the country to woo frustrated independents and voters who supported President Joe Biden, a Democrat, in the 2020 elections.

Republicans are widely expected to gain a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and perhaps even in the Senate in midterm congressional elections in November. Voter displeasure at highgasprices might help get them there.

In addition to turning out its deeply conservative base, the party wants to win back moderates who fled the dramatic turns and right-wing nationalism of former President Donald Trump, as well as gain new supporters.

But the response at the busy intersection in Garden Grove, which is in a highly competitive Republican-leaning congressional district, shows it is not an easy trick to pull off.

Four people stopped to fill out forms at the groups table. One said he was homeless but could use his parents address. Three were already registered as Republicans, while one was an independent.

Thegasis so high because of Biden and the Biden administration, said Ernie Nueva, 69, who pulled over when he saw the group.

Nueva says it now costs $100 to fill the tank on his Nissan Titan V8 truck up from $60 before the latest spike drove fuel prices to nearly $7 per gallon in parts ofCalifornia. A lifelong Democrat, he voted twice for Trump and last year changed his voter registration to Republican.

David Wakefield also blames Biden for high gas prices, saying that the United States needs to become more self-sufficient, producing more fuel. He is considering canceling a planned driving vacation later this month to see friends and family in NorthernCalifornia, Idaho and Utah.

But he also is already a reliable Republican voter.

Its a great issue in the short run, but its not clear how its going to hold up in November, said Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at theCal State Los Angeles.

In recent years, U.S. voters have been driven to the polls more by cultural and social division, rather than other public policy issues, Sonenshein said. While the highgasprices are certainly not good for Democrats, they may not prove powerful enough to drive turnout or lead voters to switch parties.

The cost of fuel might also come back down before the election, weakening Republicans argument, he said.

Economists say prices started to rise as travel and economic activity picked up after pandemic lockdowns eased, both in the United States and worldwide leading to fears of tighter global oil supply.

Those trends worsened when Russias invasion of Ukraine shook world petroleum markets. But the party in power generally is blamed for economic woes, and Biden and the Democrats are already becoming the focus of anger by some consumers.

The Republican National Committee has conducted similar registration drives at service stations inCaliforniaand other states, including Arizona, North Carolina and Florida.

RNC spokesperson Mike Joyce said the registration drives atgasstations had been successful, drawing in voters of all political stripes who are angry aboutgasoline prices.

The RNC did not give data showing how many new voters had signed up during these events, except to say that the number was in the thousands.Majorities are won in the margins and with every new voter registered, we are one step closer to finally retiring Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer for good, said RNC Spokesperson Emma Vaughn, referring to the Democratic U.S. House speaker and Senate majority leader.

At the Chevron in Orange County, scores of motorists loudly honked their support for the tiny group during the nearly four-hour demonstration.

David Duprat, 38, a passenger in a car that wasgassing up, feels every penny of the increase ingasprices. He drives to the construction sites where he works and lives on a tight budget while also trying to help his mother.

He doesnt blame Biden for highgasprices, but overall, he feels that Democratic policies have contributed to the high cost of living inCalifornia. He has never voted before, but plans to do so in November as a Republican.

I really, really want to make sure my voice is heard, he said.

Motorist Benjamin Kohn, a liberal Democrat, is also feeling the rise ingasprices. But he thinks both parties are pushing black-and-white interpretations of events that are more nuanced.

He has no intention of switching sides over gas prices, and on his way out of the Chevron he honked his horn like many of the other passing motorists. Then he stuck his head out the window of his minivan.

Its complicated, he yelled, and drove away.

Originally posted here:
At OC Gas Station Republicans Woo Voters Angry Over High Gas Price - Times of San Diego

With Ketanji Brown Jackson, the most experienced Supreme Court nominee in decades, about to be confirmed on a largely party line vote, Republicans are blaming Democrats for politicizing the High Court. They need to look in the mirror.

Despite the protests of a number of justices, liberals as well as conservatives, many Americans believe the Supreme Court is increasingly political.

While both sides have contributed to this sentiment, the burden of blame over the past two decades rests with Republicans.

The latest example is Justice Clarence Thomas wife Ginnis private text messages to President Trumps chief of staff after the 2020 election, spinning the loony conspiracy theory that the election was stolen. Calling it the greatest heist in our history, Ginni Thomas told Mark Meadows it was time to release the Kraken.

An unhinged spouse of a Supreme Court Justice isnt a public matter, except that she referred in the texts to her best friend, a term the Thomases apparently use to describe their relationship. Justice Thomas was the sole vote on the Court siding with Trump in his attempt to keep his records on efforts to overturn the election from the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 mob assault on the Capitol.

With the lack of Supreme Court ethics or legal rules for its members, Thomas wont be forced to recuse himself from these political matters, much less be forced to resign.

This only reinforces the politicization of the Court.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) rationalized his predictable vote against Judge Jackson because she refused to take a position on changing the size of the Court, or packing it, as McConnell says.

The prospect of court packing is bogus. President Biden, merely for show, tapped a bipartisan study commission chaired by his campaign lawyer. It did not call for expanding the court.

It actually was McConnell who changed the size of the Court for almost a year from nine to eight when, as then majority leader, he refused to even allow a vote on President Obamas nominee, Merrick Garland, to fill a vacancy. Republicans insisted it was protocol not to approve a Supreme Court nominee in a presidential election year. In 1988 a Democratic-controlled Senate approved a Republican nominee, Anthony Kennedy, for the High Court.

Then, in 2020 McConnell rushed through Donald Trumps nomination of Amy Comey Barrett, approved on a partisan vote eight days before the presidential election.

The following year, showing her appreciation, Justice Barrett went to a McConnell event to insist justices arent partisan hacks.

This distinctly different treatment of nominees based on party doesnt pass any non-political smell test.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) blamed the poisonous environment on the Democrats treatment of Trumps nominee Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 and promised there would be no personal attacks on Brown Jackson then he asked about Jacksons faith, and with other GOP Judiciary Committee members, proceeded to depict this moderately liberal and respected jurist as a criminal-coddling, pedophile-pampering, racial radical. She even was asked to define whats a woman.

On a higher note, Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) said the politicization of the Court all began in 1987 when Democrats attacked Republican nominee Robert Bork.

Hes off on his history.

In 1970 Republican congressmen, led by then Rep. Gerald Ford, sought to impeach Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. At the same time Democrats rejected a Richard Nixon nominee, Clement Haynsworth, and the president then tapped an abominable choice, J. Harrold Carswell. He too was rejected.

Moreover Bork, highly intelligent and highly right-wing, was defeated decisively with opposition from southern conservative Democrats like Alabamas Howell Heflin and Louisianas John Breaux, who worried the nominees racial views threatened to rekindle old wounds. Borks nomination also was opposed by a half dozen Republicans, including Virginias John Warner, one of the most respected and nonpartisan members in the Senate.

More than Bork or any other episode the politicization of the Court flows to 2000 when the Republican justices stopped a recount of Floridas vote in the presidential election, handing the presidency to George W. Bush, who had lost the popular vote. Later one of the five-member majority, Justice Sandra Day OConnor, expressed regret over that political decision.

The Bush v. Gore outcome paved the way for two more 5-to-4 partisan decisions with political ramifications: the 2010 Citizens United case, which opened the special interest money spigots in federal campaigns, and three years later, the Shelby County decision, which facilitated some Southern states enacting voting restrictions, especially aimed at minorities, with little federal oversight.

McConnell, Graham and company are right: the Supreme Court has become a political football and they have been among the leading quarterbacks.

Al Hunt is the former executive editor of Bloomberg News. He previously served as reporter, bureau chief and Washington editor for The Wall Street Journal. For almost a quarter century he wrote a column on politics for The Wall Street Journal, then The International New York Times and Bloomberg View. He hostsPolitics War Roomwith James Carville. Follow him on Twitter@AlHuntDC.

The Hill has removed its comment section, as there are many other forums for readers to participate in the conversation. We invite you to join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter.

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Republicans should know about politicizing the Supreme Court they did it - The Hill

To bring you these under-the-radar political notes from the US

The extraordinarily tragic war in Ukraine has side-lined political news out of Washington and the US.

Here are a few items worth paying attention to in these very confronting times:

The text messages were included in Meadows provision of his phone records to the House Select Committee on the January 6 insurrection.

Meadows cooperated for a time with the Select Committee, and then ceased providing materials of record. Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, who co-wrote PERIL on Trumps last year in office, broke the story for the Washington Post:

Virginia Thomas, a conservative activist married to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, repeatedly pressed White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in a series of urgent text exchanges in the critical weeks after the vote, according to copies of the messages obtained by The Washington Post and CBS News.

Between Virginia Thomas, who goes by Ginni, and President Donald Trumps top aide during a period when Trump and his allies were vowing to go to the Supreme Court in an effort to negate the election results.

On Nov. 10, after news organizations had projected Joe Biden the winner based on state vote totals, Thomas wrote to Meadows: Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!You are the leader, with him, who is standing for Americas constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.

Ms Thomas has every right to speak her mind on any issue. But these texts reveal she was a player in advising Meadows on Trumps strategy to stop the steal.

Those machinations would find their way to the Supreme Court, where her husband would and did rule on Trump lawsuits to throw out the election. Justice Thomas did not recuse himself from those cases.

Will the House Committee subpoena Ms Thomas to testify on what she did and whether she worked with her husband? Will Justice Thomas take unilateral steps to recuse himself from any further participation in Trump-related cases before the Supreme Court? Public hearings on all the Select Committees work will occur in the next few weeks. They will be explosive.

If Trump-backed candidates win, and if Republicans take control of the House or Senate or both, Trump will claim credit for the Republican wave and further boost his prospects for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

Rep. Mel Brooks of Alabama was a huge Trump backer. He appeared onstage at the rally January 6 that helped incite the Trump mob to attack the Capitol. Trump endorsed Brooks for his run at the open Senate seat in Alabama. But Brooks has been polling badly, and Trump pulled his endorsement last week. Brooks is angry, and went public on what Trump expected him to do in return for the endorsement:

This is shocking stuff. First, the only way Biden can be removed as president is by impeachment, and that will not happen.

Second, there is no way that Brooks or anyone else can put Trump back into the White House only the American people can do that. Third, there are no special elections in the United States for the presidency. What this episode shows is how Trump is increasingly fixated on 2020, more than he is in looking beyond the 2024 election and this obsession of Trumps is becoming a bigger issue for many rank-and-file Republicans.

Politico is reporting:

Republicans lead the generic ballot by 4 points.Biden won these battleground seats by an average of 5.5 points. In these districts, 75% of swing voters say Democrats are out of touchor condescending. About two-thirds say Democrats are spending too much money in Washington. Bidens net approval rating in these districts is -15.About 40% of voters in these seats approve of the job Biden is doing as president, while 55% disapprove.Among independent voters, his net approval is -32 a 34-point swing since February 2021 from a group that often dictates which party holds the House majority.And among Hispanic voters, his net approval is -10,a drop of 31 points in the same time frame. Economic concerns substantially advantage the GOP.Voters who identified jobs/the economy as their No. 1 concern favor Republicans by 20 points on the generic ballot. Among those who put cost of living at the top, Republicans are at a 24-point advantage.

Continuing Republican pressure on what they believe are the killer issues for them in November: inflation, gasoline prices, crime in the cities, immigration at the southern border, what woke progressives are teaching children in schools, especially on racial issues, transgender sports, new laws to restrict abortion. Republicans firmly believe these hot button issues will drive their voters to the polls and President Bidens approval remains well under 50%.

It looks like Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor who was John McCains incendiary vice-presidential running mate in 2008, and who famously said she could see Russia from her backyard, is positioning to run. Heres what she told Sean Hannity on Fox last week:

Im going to throw my hat in the ring because we need people that have cajones. We need people like Donald Trump who has nothing to lose like me. We got nothing to lose and no more of this vanilla milquetoast namby-pamby wussy pussy stuff

Whether her pre-formal-entry stunting is enough to scare off other challengers and whether she still has strong appeal in the state. The special election is likely to be held well before November.

Which is a good note on which to bring this special edition to a close.

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Palin proves how powerful Trumpism is in the Republican Party | ticker VIEWS - ticker NEWS