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In July, entrepreneur Bhavna Jasra threw an over-the-top tea party at the opulent Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai. It combined two milestones: her 50th birthday and two decades of her successful venture First Impressions that creates keepsakes by casting hands and feet in metal finishes using gold, silver and bronze. I am a tea enthusiast and I love my cuppa, be it our desi masala chai or a supreme Imperial Earl Grey. I savour each sip and snacks that accompany my tea. So what better way to celebrate than to throw a posh British-inspired tea party. It was a lavish affair of two-dozen tea selections, magnums of wine and champagne and tea time classics like cucumber and salmon sandwiches and a range of cakes and pastries, says Jasra.

For centuries, the French, British and Chinese have cherished tea traditions. Theres a century-old story of how Anna, the duchess of Bedford, would feel peckish late afternoons. With dinner still a while away, she started what has since become the English afternoon tea tradition, writes Lounges tea columnist Aravinda Anantharaman.

Many cafes and homegrown brands in India are now offering quintessential tea party experiences. Take for instance, The Ritz-Carlton Tea Lounge in Pune. It is an ode to the tea rooms of England. The fine dcor reflects an English design sensibility and the afternoon tea menu is a show-stopper. The signature afternoon tea ceremony includes delicacies like creamy rock lobster with herbs and mustard on a traditional choux bun, raspberry financier, grilled zucchini and camembert cheese with pecan nut served in corn shell. The tea selection is meant for a connoisseur with options like Sencha Fukujyu Cha, Thunderbolt Darjeeling, Pu-erh Toucha, Golden Assam and Tencha Matcha.

Until Bridgerton premiered in India in December 2020, the demand for afternoon tea or high tea was very less. However, now sophisticated high tea parties are finding favour, says Hanan Sait of FlourPowerHS, a cloud kitchen bakery in Bengaluru. According to Sait, tea parties are picking up as they are held at a convenient time, such as afternoon, and the menu blends savoury and sweet bites. Their mix of snacks include fig and honey crostini, schoko-bons and eclairs, while the tea selection has herbal blends, Kashmiri kahwa and pure chamomile tea.

Since I spent many years in France, I miss the Parisian Salon de Th. These are charming tea rooms in and around Paris offering food and drinks, especially a variety of tea and homemade cakes and pies for afternoon tea or lazy brunches. I began offering tea parties at my sustainable homestay in Kamshet, Maharashtra. I am amazed to see my guests not only enjoy the usual tea time snacks, but also relish hand-picked leafy salads from our very own backyard farm with their afternoon tea, says Suchita Bhat, owner of Eco-Hamlet.

Bhat began offering high tea experiences in June. Instead of having a set tea party menu, they believe in customizing the food choices as per their clients demands. The menu features make-your-own-salad (mix of greens, crunchy nuts and seeds and a couple of salad dressings), muffins, Bombay sandwich, chutney and cheese sandwiches and crispy bhajiya along with all-time favourites masala chai, lemon tea with honey and ginger tea. The menu was introduced when she realised many of her clients cherish their afternoon tea time and they crave for a special tea party experience at the farm. Although they want the look and feel of an English tea party, the food and tea selections must have familiar desi flavours.

But for some, the experience goes beyond the food and tea. Many of my patrons prefer classy, high tea-inspired get-togethers to enjoy seasons like monsoons and winters, and get a feel of this age-old British tradition in the comfort of their homes. So, we bring our luxurious dcor with tiered cake stands, the finest tableware and a variety of food including tarts, quiches and desserts like red-velvet cake to make their moments memorable," shares Shelly Sahay of Elmas Bakery and kitchen in New Delhi. Only top five-star hotels were offering high tea when Elmas opened its doors in 2011. So, we started with a high tea experience as a standalone cafe. Our traditional afternoon tea consists of a selection of dainty finger sandwiches, freshly baked scones with clotted cream and homemade preserves, cakes and pastries along with tea grown in India and Ceylon. There is a good demand for high tea parties now as its a perfect indulgent occasion and an apt time to catch up with friends," adds Sahay.

Although the menus have Enid Blyton-inspired food items, from scones with clotted cream to jam and frilly raspberry tarts, Indians love a desi twist. Verandah Caf at Rambagh Palace, Jaipur offers khaman, methi mathri, imarti with mascarpone cheese and gulab jamun tart for their afternoon tea service.

British tea time snacks are being replaced by modern Indian bites like avacado sev puri, pav bhaji croquette and Thai style paani puris, shares Bhakti Mehta who runs the bespoke gourmet catering The Little Food Co. in Mumbai. Bhakti's menu includes tikkis, gun powder corn, mini rolls and gulab jamun nests which go well with a contemporary Indian menu. Although tea parties have earned more fans recently, Bhakti points out they have always been popular among women-centric events like bridal and baby showers.

In May, a group of mountaineers led by Andrew Hughes made the world record of hosting the worlds highest tea party at Mount Everest Camp 2, Nepal. Inspired to join the tea party bandwagon, I am contemplating my very own high tea get-together. The fanciest bone china tea sets, the chicest table runner and aesthetically arranged tea time classics with homemade Indian titbits like some chicken puffs, sliced paneer kathi rolls and mini bowls full of angoori malai on tiered cake stands will be on the menu.

Also read | A tea that embodies the golden feel of home

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The rise of modern Indian tea parties - Mint Lounge

Nicki Minaj has made a major comeback in 2022, and while she's had plenty of legendary moments to celebrate (such astaking home the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at this year's MTV VMAs), the mother of one has also been faced with her share of drama.

Over the weekend, the 39-year-old revealed during "Nicki's Tea Party" that she's been working on three lawsuits against people in the industry who have been "tearing down her name" recently, leaving her fanbase, the Barbz, to speculate who she could possibly be talking about.

While names like Jason Lee ofHollywood Unlocked, KenBarbie, Armon, and Gossipofthecity were thrown around, early on Monday (September 12), Minaj took to Twitter to spill more tea for her loyal followers.

"Chileee I'm still tipsy from #NickisTeaParty bitch," one user wrote, earning a quote tweet from Onika herself. "[She] really gave up the whole damn kettle @NICKIMINAJ."

The "Super Freaky Girl" rapper's response began with, "AND DID!!!! But that was just a SIP!!!!!!! Today I've been collecting more info for the defamation suit while I think about all the iconic shit I said. Bwahahahahahah."

"Oppianas was camped out listening to the show chi," she continued. "Blew they whole cover, they can't even HELP the obsession."

It seems Minaj is keeping quiet on her nemesis' names until the lawsuits are ready to be served, but in the meantime, she's been keeping her fans pleased with a steady stream of new releases.

Up next, we'll hear the Trinidadian artist alongside BLEU on their "Love In The Way" collaboration, dropping this Friday (September 16) read more about that here, and tap back in withHNHH later for more pop culture news updates.

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Nicki Minaj Spills Tea On Alleged Three Defamation Lawsuits She's Been Working On - HotNewHipHop

Her special day!Little People, Big WorldstarsAudrey Roloffand husbandJeremy Roloffthrew a unicorn tea party-themed fifth birthday party for their daughter, Ember Roloff.

Tea time, the TLC personality, 31, wrote across a video that she shared via her Instagram Stories on Saturday, September 10. In the clip, the five-year-old birthday girl was seen at the end of a large table with some guests, some of whom were wearing adorable unicorn headbands. The pink table cloth also featured unicorn designs, while Audrey also set the table with pastel-colored plates, teacups and a floral centerpiece.

Audrey and Jeremy, 31, also snapped a group photo with Ember and their two sons, Bode and Radley.

This stage of family photos, the mom of three cheekily captioned the photo, which she also shared via her Instagram Stories along with countless other fun moments from the fiesta. Audrey and Jeremy also apparently gifted their toddler with a brand-new purple bike, which was decorated with streamers in one picture.

While Ember seemed to be having the time of her life, the family had to manage the smoky air surrounding them from wildfires.

The smoke has been bad on Embers birthday almost every year, Audrey wrote across a video on her Instagram Stories, which featured the gray sky and the hazy sun covered by smoke. The year she was born was when The Gorge was on fire, and I remember one of the nurses asking me if I named her Ember after the fires.

The reality TV star added, On her third birthday, there was a massive windstorm, and the fire smoke got so bad, we were stuck inside for weeks after!

Since it was a windy day during Embers fifth birthday, Audrey, Jeremy and other guests had to find a way to keep the impressive array of pink balloons intact.

Trying to protect the balloons from the wind, theLPBWstar captioned a separate Instagram Story video, which revealed they had set up the balloons in the shape of the number 5 with a unicorn inflatable on the top.

Despite the gloomy outdoor weather, the whole group seemingly had a fun time celebrating the birthday girl.

Scroll through the gallery to see photos of Embers big day!

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LPBWs Audrey Roloff Throws Daughter Ember Unicorn Tea-Themed 5th B-Day Party! See Photos - inTouch Weekly

September 08, 2022|Judicial Watch

(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch announced today that it received previously sealed court documents, including depositions of IRS officials Lois Lerner, the former director of the Exempt Organizations Unit of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and Holly Paz, her top aide and former IRS director of Office of Rulings and Agreements, which show that they knew most Tea Party organizations were legally entitled to tax-exempt status in the run up to the Obama reelection in 2012.

The release comes in the December 2017 amicus curiae brief (friend of the court) filed by Judicial Watch in NorCal Tea Party Patriots, et al. v. The Internal Revenue Service, et al.(No. 1:13-cv-00341). Judicial Watch argued that the documents sought may shed light on government misconduct, and the shielding of internal government deliberations does not serve the publics interest.

Lerners and Pazs depositions were sealed by Judge Barrett in April 2017, after Lerners and Pazs lawyers claimed the two officials were receiving threats. The court finally ordered the unsealing of the depositions four years after plaintiffs requested the depositions be unsealed and only after plaintiffs filed for awrit of mandamusto force action in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. (In December 2017, Judicial Watch submitted anamicus curiae(friend of the court) brief in support of plaintiffs request that the depositions should be unsealed.)

The sworn depositions were given in 2017 by Lerner and Paz. In the newly unsealed deposition transcripts, the two IRS officials repeatedly have memory lapses and regularly plead ignorance of the fundamental matters in question.

The unsealed Lerner and Paz deposition transcripts reveal through sworn testimony the bureaucratic tangle created by the Obama IRS to single out, delay and deny the processing of conservative, especially Tea Party non-profit groups applications for tax-exempt status and to disclose their donors names. At the same time, Paz admits under questioning that she knew from the beginning there was not sufficient legal basis to deny most of the targeted groups tax exempt status:

Q: [T]he organizations had filed applications representing what they were organized for and what they have done and also their intended activities, and you thought that for the majority of those applications that that would warrant the recognition of exemption?

***

The Witness [Paz]: My recollection is that at the time, my thinking was that the majority of the (c)(4) applications, while they may have indicated some amount of political activity, that we would not have enough basis to make a determination that that would be their primary activity and deny them exempt status.

Q: And, therefore, they would receive an approval or recognition of exemption?

A: Correct.

The records also include an unsealed court filing by NorCal Tea Party Patriots that provides a detailed description of the ordinary process by which the IRS determines whether to grant an organization tax exempt status and how the process under Lerner deviated from that norm after the IRS brought Tea Party groups under special scrutiny following the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. (The Citizens United decision held that the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent expenditures for political campaigns by corporations, including nonprofit corporations, labor unions, and other associations.)

The NorCal Tea Party Patriots filing details:

Lerner expressed strong feelings about the Supreme Courts 2010 Citizens United v. FECdecision. In a June 1, 2012, email exchange with [redacted], Lerner wrote that Citizens Unitedis by far the worst thing that has ever happened to this country. Later in the same email exchange, Lerner expanded on her views of Citizens United:

We are witnessing the end of America. There has always been the struggle between the capitalistic ideals and the humanistic ideals. Religion has usually tempered the selfishness of capitalism, but the rabid, hellfire piece of religion has hijacked the game and in the end, we will all lose out. Its all tied together money can buy the Congress and the Presidency, so in turn, money packs the SCt. and the court backs the moneythe old boys still win.

Lerner sought to reverse the impact of Citizens United. In a June 11, 2012, email exchange with Robert Stern [former chair of the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws] about Sterns report discussing states responses to Citizens United, Lerner wrote:

I like it! Very easy to find specific information, as well as get the big picture you done good! Now, if you can only fix the darn law!

***

In a February 13, 2012, email exchange among Lerner and various of her subordinates about [proposed] federal legislation that would require tax-exempt organizations to disclose their donors, Lerner wrote: Wouldnt that be great? And I wont hold my breath.

The NorCal Tea Party Patriots filing also describes Lerners targeting Tea Party groups after Citizens United:

Lerner began to worry that applicants for exemption would rely on Citizens United to challenge the IRSs regulations on political activities by (c)(3) and (c)(4) organizations.

Lerner particularly worried that Tea Party groups would seek to challenge IRS regulations. In an email exchange concerning the February 1, 2011, SCR [Sensitive Case Report], Lerner told Paz and others: Tea Party Matter very dangerousThis could be the vehicle to go to court on the issue of whether Citizens United [sic] overturning the ban on corporate spending applies to tax exempt rules. Counsel and Judy Kindell need to be in on this one please needs to be in this. Cincy should probably NOT have these casesHolly please see what exactly they have please.

Later in that exchange, Lerner directed her subordinates to find a reason other than political activity to deny the Tea Party applicants exemption under 501(c)(3) to prevent them from challenging the exemption rules based on Citizens United:

Thankseven if we go with a 4 on the Tea Party cases, they may want to argue they should be 3s, so it would be great if we can get there without saying the only reason they dont get a 3 is political activity.

These new transcripts expose new details and the cover-up of how the Obama IRS intentionally suppressed the Tea Party movement during the 2012 presidential campaign, said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. These documents show how the Obama administration easily used the IRS to suppress an entire political movement threatening his reelection. The Obama IRS abuse is the epitome of election interference. Given this largely unchecked abuse by the IRS, the Biden administrations massive new expansion of the IRS should concern all Americans.

Lois Lerner retired with full federal benefits in September 2013.

The original NorCal Tea Party Patriotslawsuitin which Lerner and Paz gave depositions was a class-action lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of the Treasury and named individual officials claiming that:

Elements within the Executive Branch of the federal government, including Defendants, brought the vast powers, incomprehensible complexity, and crushing bureaucracy of the IRS to bear on groups of citizens whose only wrongdoing was their presumed dissent from the policies or ideology of the Administration. In other words, these citizens were targeted based upon their political viewpoints.

The lawsuit wassettledin 2017 when the Justice Department awarded the plaintiffs over $3.5 million for attorneys fees, costs and expenses, and incentive awards. In settling the case, the DOJ admitted the IRS abused its power and the criteria it used to screen applications for 501(c) status was inappropriate. Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessionsstated:

The IRS use of these criteria as a basis for heightened scrutiny was wrong and should never have occurred. It is improper for the IRS to single out groups for different treatment based on their names or ideological positions. Any entitlement to tax exemption should be based on the activities of the organization and whether they fulfill requirements of the law, not the policy positions adopted by members or the name chosen to reflect those views.

Despite theseadmissions of wrongdoing, the Obama IRS scandal resulted inno criminal charges.

Judicial Watch uncovered troves of documents about the Obama IRS scandal (see, for example,hereandhere). Judicial Watch filed at least nine Freedom of Information Act lawsuits about the IRS scandal, and much of what is known about the scandal resulted from Judicial Watch litigation and investigations.

Here is a partial summary of Judicial Watch disclosures:

In September 2014, a Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuitforced the release of documents detailing that the IRS sought, obtained and maintained the names of donors to Tea Party and other conservative groups.IRS officials acknowledged in these documents that such information was not needed.The documents also show that the donor names were being used for a secret research project.

In April 2015, Judicial Watch released court orderedIRS documents that includedan emailfrom Lerner asking that a program be set up to put together some training points to help them [IRS staffers] understand the potential pitfalls of revealing too much information to Congress. The documents also contain a Lerner email from 2013 in which she says she iswilling to take the blameon some aspects of the scandal. She also indicates that she understands why the IRS criteria leading to the targeting of Tea Party and other opponents of the President Obama might raise questions.

In July 2015,records showed the IRS scandal also included the Justice Department and FBI as well. According to documents obtained by Judicial Watch under court order, in an October 2010 meeting, Lerner, Justice Department officials and the FBI planned for the possible criminal prosecution of targeted nonprofit organizations for alleged illegal political activity. As part of that effort, the Obama IRS gave the FBI 21 computer disks, containing 1.25 million pages of confidential IRS returns from 113,000 non-profit, 501(c)(4) social welfare groups as part of its prosecution effort. According to aletterfrom then-House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, This revelation likely means that the IRS including possibly Lois Lerner violated federal tax law by transmitting this information to the Justice Department

Also inJuly 2015, Judicial Watch released Obama IRSdocumentsconfirming that the agency used donor lists of tax-exempt organizations to target those donors for audits. The documents also show IRS officials specifically highlighted how the U.S. Chamber of Commerce may come under high scrutiny from the IRS.

In July 2016, Judicial Watch through a federalcourt orderin one of its FOIA lawsuits(Judicial Watch v Department of Justice(No. 1:14-cv-01239)) obtained FBI 302 documents, which contain detailed narratives of FBI agent investigations,revealing that top Washington IRS officials, including Lois Lerner and Holly Paz, knew that the agency was specifically targeting Tea Party and other conservative organizations two full years before disclosing it to Congress and the public.

The FBI 302 documents also confirm the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) 2013reportthat said, Senior IRS officials knew that agents were targeting conservative groups for special scrutiny as early as 2011. Lerner did notreveal the targetinguntil May 2013, in response to a planted question at an American Bar Association conference. The documents reveal that then-acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller actually wrote Lerners response, where she admits:

They [IRS staff] used names like Tea Party or Patriots and they selected cases simply because the applications had those names in the title. That was wrong, that was absolutely incorrect, insensitive, and inappropriate.

In November 2016, after the IRS refused to acknowledgeits targeting of conservative groups, Judicial Watch forced the release of IRS records revealing the agency used inappropriate political labels to screen the tax-exempt applications of conservative organizations. IRS agents were targeting organizations requesting tax-exempt status based on guilt by association and party affiliation. Judicial Watch brought to light that the IRS was going to require 501(c)(4) nonprofit organizations torestrict their alleged political activities in exchange for expedited consideration of their tax-exempt applications. FBI 302 documents uncovered by Judicial Watch also reveal that IRS officials stated that the agency was targeting conservative groups because of their ideology and political affiliation in the summer of 2011.

Judicial Watch also separately uncovered in its lawsuit Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Internal Revenue Service(No. 1:13-cv-01559) that Lerner was under significant pressure from both Democrats in Congress and the Obama Justice Department and FBI to prosecute and jail the groups the IRS was already improperly targeting. Indiscussing pressure from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) to prosecute these political groups, Lerner admitted, it is ALL about 501(c)(4) orgs and political activity.

In March 2017, Judicial Watch obtained IRSdocumentsthrough its FOIA lawsuit Judicial Watch v. Internal Revenue Service(No. 1:15-cv-00220) that contain admissions by IRS officials that the agency used inappropriate political labels to screen the tax-exempt applications of conservative organizations. Other records uncovered reveal that the IRS was going to require 501(c)(4) nonprofit organizations to restrict their alleged political activities in exchange for expedited consideration of their tax-exempt applications.

In June 2018, Judicial Watch obtainedinternal IRSdocuments through one of its FOIA lawsuits (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Internal Revenue Service(No. 1:13-cv-01559)) revealing that Sen. John McCains former staff director and chief counsel on the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee, Henry Kerner, urged top IRS officials, including then-director of exempt organizations Lois Lerner, to audit so many that it becomes financially ruinous. Kerner was appointedby President Trump as Special Counsel for the United States Office of Special Counsel.

In response to Judicial Watchs litigation, the IRS initially claimed that emails belonging to Lerner were supposedly missing. Later, IRS officials conceded that the missing emails were on IRS back-up systems.

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Judicial Watch: Unsealed Depositions of Former Obama IRS Officials Lerner and Paz Detail Knowledge of Tea Party Targeting - Judicial Watch

The importance of factions.Ever since the victory of the Republican Party in 1860, American politics has been dominated by two political parties Republicans and Democrats. And yet this apparent stability masks the fact that American parties have changed enormously over the years as one or the other political party morphs into something else. For instance, the Democratic Party was the party of segregation and Jim Crow after the Civil War and today it is the party of civil rights. The party of Lincoln has now become the party of Trump.

Factions surface in contests for the partys nominations at all levels of government. Today we see can see factions emerge as primaries unfold and we can gauge their strength by looking at the kinds of candidates who run in primaries and how they perform. Because primaries have traditionally been low turnout events, competing in them is cheaper than contesting a general election. It is no surprise therefore, that primaries especially congressional primaries have become the pre-eminent vehicle for activists seeking to affect their partys meaning.

Factional politics prior to 2022.[1] In the three congressional primary studies conducted prior to 2022, we coded each congressional candidate according to their position within their party. In 2014 we saw the beginning of the Republican Partys significant turn to the right as the Tea Party candidates challenged more traditional business minded Republicans. In 2016, the presidential primaries unearthed extensive divisions within each political party. The Democrats saw a resurgence of the left wing of their party under Senator Bernie Sanders and many pundits began to identify it as the Sanders/Warren wing of the partyreferring to Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. On the Republican side, Donald Trump managed to surprise the establishment and win the presidential nomination. The drama in the congressional primaries, however, was not as intense as it was in the presidential primaries.

By 2018 the intra-party factional divides had intensified as mainstream candidates were challenged on the left and on the right. The number of self-identified progressives increased dramatically in 2018, no doubt the result of Bernie Sanders desire to keep his revolution going and his strong showing in the Democratic primary two years prior.[2] On the Republican side, the number of business/establishment candidates remained the same; the number of Tea Partycandidates dropped but the plurality of candidates identified themselves as conservatives.[3] Thus by 2018 the two parties reflected what has come to be known as asymmetric polarization. Among Democrats the establishment and the left were fairly evenly matched but among Republicans there were substantially more conservatives than more traditional business Republicans running in primaries. Nonetheless, the establishment candidates continued to have better win rates than the more extreme candidates in both parties. This finding held even when incumbents were removed (since incumbents have many advantages in primaries besides ideology).

Factions in the 2022 congressional primaries. In 2022 Donald Trumps influence in the Republican primaries was even more evident than Bernie Sanders influence was in the 2018 primaries. In both instances, a defeated presidential candidate sought to keep the movement alive by encouraging like-minded candidates to run in congressional primaries. Conventional wisdom at the end of the 2022 primary season holds that Donald Trump had taken over the Republican Party.

To test Trumps impact we coded Republican primary candidates into four categories. The first one is composed of candidates who were explicitly endorsed by Trump. (Note, we did not include 2020 endorsements if there were no 2022 endorsements an important choice given the former presidents penchant for changing his opinion of individuals over even short periods of political time.) The second category included candidates whose website contained an explicit photo and/or a favorable mention of Trump; these were often constructed to give the viewer the idea that Trump had endorsed the candidate when he had not. The third category included candidates whose website contained favorable photos and/or mentions of Make America Great Again, MAGA and/or America First. Candidates in the second and third categories were often Trump wannabees lacking an explicit endorsement but trying to capture support of Trump voters. In some races such as the marquee Senate races in Ohio and Pennsylvania, we saw that candidates attacked each other for not being loyal enough to Trump or they tried to paint themselves as the best example of Trumpism, even when they did not get the formal endorsement. The following table shows the breakdown of Republican candidates:

Table 1.2022 Republican primary candidates by their attachment to Trump*

*Numbers dont add to 100% since candidates can fall into more than one category. For instance, a Trump endorsed candidate will also have photos or favorable mentions of Trump and photos and/or favorable mentions of MAGA/America First.

**Most of Trumps endorsements were of incumbent members of Congress. As noted incumbentsusually win their primaries.Nonetheless of those races without an incumbent Trumps win rate isstill relatively high at 86.21%

The story from Table 1 is pretty clear Trump dominated the Republican Partys congressional primaries his endorsed candidates almost always won their races. Many of the candidates he did not endorse tried to get some of the Trump magic into their campaigns by featuring Trump and/or MAGA/America First on their website. They did less well than the candidates Trump actually endorsed. Interestingly, nearly 60% of the Republican primary candidates did not mention Trump, MAGA, or America First on their websites at all. Nonetheless, Trump, master of branding, proved the value of his brand in the Republican primaries.

On the Democratic side, the story is very different. Senator Bernie Sanders, famous for saying we need a revolution, was a far weaker factional leader in 2022 than Donald Trump. As Table 2 indicates, Sanders and his allies and organizations on the far left endorsed very few congressional candidates. Only half of those won their primaries. We also coded for favorable mentions of specific phrases that have become popular on the left wing of the Democratic Party. Slightly more than a quarter of all Democratic candidates used one of those phrases on their campaign website and about 40% of those candidates won. But perhaps the most important lesson from the 2022 Democratic primaries was that nearly three quarters of all the Democratic candidates stayed away from the far left wing of the Democratic Party in marked contrast to the Republicans who were trying like heck to wrap themselves in the Trump flag.

Table 2. 2022 Democratic Congressional candidates by their left wing sympathies

46.98%

In addition to looking at the impact of factional leaders on the primaries we also coded each candidate for where they stood within the party. Here we relied primarily on the candidates own self-identification. As Table 3 illustrates, the 2022 Republican primaries reflect the move to the right that began in 2014 with the Tea Party candidates and that accelerated with the triumph of Trump over his party.

Table 3. Factional self-identification of Republican primary candidates in 2022

The leftward movement on the Democratic side is far less dramatic than the movement to the right on the Republican side, a trend our colleagues Tom Mann and Norm Ornstein have been writing about for much of the 21st century. As Table 4 illustrates, there are still a large number of Mainstream Democrats running in the Democratic primaries, and they do fairly well. In addition, there are a large number of candidates who call themselves progressives and they too do fairly well. In a finding sure to make Republican ad makers unhappy, there are very few Democratic Socialists running in Democratic primaries and they lose more than half their races. Of the 13 candidates using that label only five won, and all of those races were in very Democratic districts where the Cook Political Report rates them above D+20. The revolution appears to be losing steam.

Table 4. Factional self-identification of Democratic Congressional candidates in 2022 primaries

Conclusion. In the past decade each major political party has found itself embroiled in factional wars. But the impact on the parties has been very different. On the Republican side candidates have embraced Trump even when he has not embraced them and done very well in the primaries because of it. On the Democratic side, the impact of Bernie Sanders revolution has been smaller, more muted, and less successful in primaries. These facts are often overlooked for two reasons. First, the Republican Party works hard to paint all Democrats as socialists who would wreck our economy, defund the police, and open our borders to everyone. Second is the inclination in the press towards what our colleague and distinguished journalist Marvin Kalb has called the journalistic curse called bothsideism.[4] The way this has worked in recent years is to assume symmetry if the Republican Party is being jerked to the far right; the Democratic Party must be being jerked to the far left. As weve seen, theres not much evidence to support that trend among the Democrats but plenty of evidence to support it among the Republicans.

Some years ago, political scientists Norm Ornstein and Tom Mann popularized the notion of asymmetric polarization and argued that it was worse among elites such as lawmakers on the Republican side than it was among lawmakers on the Democratic side.[5] The ongoing work in the Primaries Project offers evidence that polarization is worse on the Republican side than on the Democratic side, and that moving far right is received more enthusiastically among Republican voters than moving far left is among Democratic voters.

The question this poses for the elections of 2022 and beyond is whether the Republican Partys enthusiastic embrace of Trumpism will, at some point, go so far as to backfire and create a large and sustainable Democratic majority. Early indications are that abortion politics may be the cutting edge of this kind of overreach.

Footnotes:

[1] For research from prior years go to: https://www.brookings.edu/project/the-primaries-project/ (Back to top)

[2] https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-2018-primaries-project-what-are-the-internal-divisions-within-each-party/ (Back to top)

[3] Ibid(Back to top)

[4] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2022/07/21/press-bothsideism-has-failed-biden-and-america/ (Back to top)

[5] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/yes-polarization-is-asymmetric-and-conservatives-are-worse/373044/ (Back to top)

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Lessons from the 2022 Primaries what do they tell us about Americas political parties and the midterm elections? - Brookings Institution