Complacency Is The Enemy Of Democracy—Not As Big An Enemy As Trumpism... But, Still, A Big Enemy

Yesterday, after the second GOP debate, Trump reaffirmed he’s not going to the next one either— and told the RNC to cancel the rest of their debate schedule. “They have to stop the debates. Because it is just bad for the Republican Party. They are not going anywhere. There is not going to be a breakout candidate,” he told the right-wing Daily Caller. “I am very concerned about the RNC not being able to do their job.”

Former Republican operative turned NeverTrumper, Mona Charen, once a Nancy Reagan speech-writer, reported yesterday that Trump has accused critics of his of treason at least 24 times (including Democrats who declined to applaud for him at a State of the Union address), even before the current outrage of General Milley. Millions of Americans— morons— “take him literally and seriously.” Millions.

And he’s “upped the ante by including a reference to the death penalty, which is in fact a punishment available in cases of treason, not just ‘in times gone by.’ Trump knows full well that some of his more rabid followers may interpret this as an invitation to assassination, just as the January 6th crowd chanted ‘Hang Mike Pence.’ That thuggishness, that play of the finger near the trigger, places Trump in a category all his own in American politics. The stench of political violence has attached to Trump from the start… The MAGA Republican party is less like the party that nominated Romney than it is like the party that nominated Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. And it’s a mistake, in my judgment, to minimize the role that fear now plays in assisting and enabling Trump’s continued dominance.”

[Congress M]embers face their constituents in person on a regular basis. They do town halls and show up at church breakfasts and ribbon cuttings. They are at far higher risk from a stray gunman than journalists or others who also routinely receive threats… This level of intimidation is new. It can be countered with coordinated action by law enforcement, media, the courts, and the public— but only if we recognize the nature of what we’re dealing with. Our elaborate government and society were designed over centuries to prevent rule by fear and violence. But those ancient foes are very much alive in the MAGA GOP and cannot be wished away.”

Which brings us to… the 6 cowardly politicians on last night’s debate stage. They were all afraid today anything about the person standing between all of them and even a vague chance of being their party’s nominee. They mostly just through around as many right-wing buzz words as they could, regardless of what question they were asked. Joseph Rodota noted that they all were able to dish out one liners cooked up by media consultants and debate coaches, but for all the sizzle the audience saw, there was no steak for anyone. “The attacks that landed with the most force,” he wrote, “had something in common: They were based on opposition research.”

Opposition researchers— “oppo” to political insiders— provide the kind of information that can make attacks stick to their targets. They pore through a rival candidate’s record and produce a list of perceived vulnerabilities and the facts to back them up. Oppo researchers ply their trade at every level of democracy, from the local school board to the White House. They are often bookish and introverted, but they are also competitive and relentless. An oppo researcher can’t sleep peacefully until she’s unearthed a damaging quote or “smoking gun” video that can give her candidate an edge.

Wednesday night, only former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley brought the oppo research receipts.

When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called for national energy independence, Haley raised his record of opposition to fracking and offshore oil development. When Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) rolled out his federal budget platform, she pointed to his 12-year voting record in Washington.

The attack clearly stung. In the closing minutes of the debate, Scott wanted revenge. He charged Haley with wasting tax dollars on new curtains in her United Nations office. Haley saw it coming. “Bring it, Tim,” she smiled and then delivered a counterpunch: The curtains were ordered under the Obama administration.

Scott did try to expose Vivek Ramaswamy as a hypocrite, bringing up his record of doing business in China as a pharmaceutical CEO. But Scott’s charge was awkward and hard to follow, and the exchange devolved into cross-talk, prompting DeSantis to suggest the topic wasn’t worth debating. (Haley disagreed, and in a post-debate interview with Fox host Sean Hannity she filled in some of Scott’s gaps, asserting that Ramswamy’s Chinese partners also did business with Hunter Biden.)

Former Vice President Mike Pence half-heartedly challenged DeSantis’ fiscal conservatism, pointing out Florida’s budget has grown 30 percent. DeSantis didn’t bother responding.

In the first GOP debate, the candidates didn’t leverage oppo at all, relying on one-liners instead. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie dismissed Ramaswamy as “a guy who sounds like ChatGPT,” suggesting the glib businessman and author lacked originality and merely scraped and packaged his platform from the Internet. Christie’s zinger got a laugh, but it didn’t change the momentum of the debate. Ramaswamy simply absorbed the punch with a smile and moved on.

Without the heft added by facts, without the nuggets an oppo research unit generates, any impacts from these kinds of attacks are usually short-lived.

…As the candidates decamp from the Reagan Library in Simi Valley and start preparing for their next debate in Miami on November 8, they would do well to remember the legendary Reagan speechwriter Kenneth Khachigian. His advice, preserved in the 40th president’s archives, became the oppo researcher’s mantra: “Campaigns are won in the library.”

Trump’s comment: “Did you see any vice presidents up there? I don’t think so.” Bob Costa reported on how rich Republicans are still trying to draft Glenn Youngkin to save them from Señor Trumpanzee and his gang of trumpanzees. “Some of the biggest Republican donors in the country,” he wrote, “will converge next month at the historic Cavalier Hotel in Virginia Beach for a two-day meeting to rally behind Gov. Glenn Youngkin. The closed gathering, named the ‘Red Vest Retreat’ after the fleece Youngkin wore during his 2021 campaign, will begin Oct. 17 and be focused, officially, on the Republican effort to win full control of the General Assembly in Virginia’s upcoming elections. But unofficially, several donors tell me, it will be an opportunity for them to try to push, if not shove, Youngkin into the Republican presidential race… Wednesday’s debate in California likely did little to calm the restlessness felt by plugged-in Republicans desperate for an alternative to Trump. Even as some contenders understandably boast about a bounce, dissatisfaction with the field has become a refrain that will not abate. The thirsting for Youngkin is not a well-orchestrated power play. It is the latest slapdash scheme in a long search for a standard-bearer and a portrait of the powerlessness so many Republicans feel as Trump plows ahead, shrugging off criminal indictments and outrage over rhetoric they fear is growing dark and dangerous.”

Everyone is aware that their hopes are riding on what happens in the Virginia elections November 7. With early voting going on now, and the media starting to really talk about the Republican shutdown starting this weekend… well, Virginia has 140,000 federal workers, and a lot of people whose economic lives are dependent on military bases. The shutdown is going to harm GOP chances in some of the swing district races— like for Jessica Anderson and Victoria Luevanos— and that could dash any hopes Youngkin may be harboring for a presidential run in 2024.

The various Youngkin 2024 theories go something like this: If Virginia’s state legislature goes Republican on Nov. 7, Youngkin could claim he flipped a state that Joe Biden won in 2020. If the governor then signaled interest in exploring a run, supporters could rush to collect signatures for him to get on the ballot in delegate-rich states, many of which have December deadlines. If he got in, he’d make a play for Iowa and build a campaign with an eye on staying in until the convention.

If that isn’t daunting enough, he would have to do it all while Trump takes aim. There are some around Youngkin who say the prospect of relentless attacks from the GOP front-runner could be what keeps him on the sidelines, with one person close to him saying, “Glenn cringes when he thinks about what Trump would do.”

…Youngkin’s push to restrict abortion in Virginia after 15 weeks of pregnancy would be under the microscope from rivals who think he doesn’t want to go far enough and from supporters of abortion rights who think he might as well be Trump. Opposition researchers would dig into his record, and Democrats would happily revive the playbook they used against Mitt Romney in 2012, painting him as out of touch, uber-rich former chief executive.

“If somebody wants to come in, great,” Romney told me, but he said any addition to the race would risk being meaningless if the Republican field remains crowded and the non-Trump vote is split a dozen or so ways. “I don’t really know Governor Youngkin. I’ve heard him give one speech to our caucus,” Romney said. “I wish him well, but I don’t begin to know how he would fare on the national stage.”

…History has frequently been unkind to those who run late. In November 2019, after months of wavering about a run, allies of billionaire Democrat Mike Bloomberg began to hustle to get him on primary ballots. Within days, he ran and became a ripe target— and after spending more than $1 billion on his campaign, he secured a mere few dozen delegates. Dust off old campaign memoirs and look up chapters on the bids of candidates like Wesley Clark, Fred Thompson and Rick Perry and you’ll see that few of them have happy endings.

The ballot deadlines would present huge hurdles for Youngkin. He would likely miss some key contests in Nevada and South Carolina, which have October filing deadlines, forcing supporters to scramble to get him on the ballot in delegate-rich states holding primaries throughout March, beginning with Super Tuesday on March 5.

“If he misses some, it’s going to compromise the number of delegates he’d be eligible for,” the nonpartisan elections expert Josh Putnam told me. “While there are some contests after April 2, there are not too many heavy hitters after that.”

Putnam went on: “That’s only the ballot deadline part. Getting folks in line to be delegates in these states is going to be another tough logistical nut to crack.”

Youngkin— or anyone running late— also can’t count on the party convention as a place where the race could be upended, even if Trump were to be convicted in one of his several trials scheduled for next year.

“Trump will elect a fair number of delegates and they will not be people subject to switching,” Bolton said. “The famous battles in the past where conventions did make a difference is where people were prepared to switch or freed and Trump’s not going to do that. He would fight to the bitter end.”

Behind the scenes, Youngkin’s political talent is widely debated by senior Republicans. Some of them find him likable and able to handle the populist headwinds in the party without seeming uneasy. They point to the governor’s support for election denier Kari Lake as evidence of his willingness to dance with Trump’s coalition without much hand-wringing.

“That, more than anything, tells me he wants to run for president,” one longtime Republican presidential campaign adviser told me. “He’s willing to get into the mud with people who lie about the election because he knows he has to.”

Others worry that he’s not doing enough to put himself in a position to come across as commanding and viable, organizationally and in terms of his message. Several Republicans told me he has a window of maybe days, if that, after Virginia’s elections to decide or else supporters would struggle to secure enough signatures.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who challenged Trump in 2016 and has not yet endorsed in 2024, smiled tightly when I asked him how Youngkin would fare if he jumped in.

Trump, Rubio said, is “basically the de facto Republican incumbent running for reelection.” He added, “If you’re going to run for president, you can’t just put that thing together in a couple months.”

…In the meantime, Youngkin’s supporters on Wall Street and in Washington will keep trying.

Remember, red sweater vest or not, Youngkin has said Ron DeSantis-- a bona fide fascist-- is his favorite fellow-governor. If he gains control of the state Senate next month, Virginians will see just what that means in their lives.