Sunday School 11/27/22

Back at it after a longer-than anticipated writing break. I hope all who celebrated the American Thanksgiving holiday did so with an appropriate balance of moderation and exuberance. 

For this week's Sunday School, I meander through the panel discussions, starting off in CNN's SOTU classroom, where Dana Bash hosted Hillary Rosen, Ashley Allison, and Kristen Soltis Anderson, all tied to the network in some capacity, and former Pence chief of staff Marc Short. Here are some highlights:

• Soltis Anderson, on turnout in the Georgia runoff: she thinks the drop-off here will be greater than the 10% turnout drop-off from the '20 general election to '22, and that "it's going to be a harder lift to get them back out to the polls." 

• Rosen, on the midterm election: losing the House is "nothing to celebrate. We're still going to have really horrible committee chairmen taking on issues that the American public do not care about. We're going to have divided, ugly government for the next two years." She thinks the Rs "depended too much on kind of the culture wars." Ultimately, she thinks all of them failed all of us "a little bit on the economic discussion."

• Short, on Trump and that dinner with Ye and Nick Fuentes: "it's incredibly poor judgment... ever since the election in 2020, I think the (former) president's descended deeper into heart of darkness here." He thinks that's why the Rs "are looking in a different direction" for '24. 

• Allison, on 2024: "Donald Trump is homophobic. He is an anti-Semite. He does racist things. And if he's the candidate for 2024, I think it will just not be bad for Republicans. I think it will be bad for our country" because of the polarization and "this heightened tension of hate and violence in our country that we - people are sick of."

Next up, we've got the gang at MTP. What's-his-name had Susan Page (USA Today), Reid Wilson (Pluribus News), Matt Gorman (GOP consultant) and María Teresa Kumar (Voto Latino), and they talked about Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the man who will most likely be the next Speaker of the House. Here's how the panelists looked at things, building off an interview with Rep. Jim Comer (R-KY).

• Page, on McCarthy's chances: Comer made it clear McCarthy doesn't have the votes now, and she said "that doesn't mean he won't get them, but if he gets them, he'll get them by making concessions that he will have to live with for the next two years."

• Wilson, on the Freedom Caucus: they're looking to the future, he said. McCarthy "has within reach the goal he has chased for his entire career, and yet it could be so short-lived. If he's not in service to the Freedom Caucus or in an election if the House Republicans become Joe Biden's bad buy, then you know, this could be an extremely short-lived majority." (Here's how the Freedom Caucus handled the Speaker election in 2015.)

• Gorman, on the new Republicans from Biden-supporting districts: he thinks they're going to provide a check on the far-right members. On things like Congressional oversight, he said they're taking a position of "Wait a minute. We are going to DC to do other things, not just investigate full time." He also suggested that looking into the origins of COVID might rally both the newbies and the right-wingers, if they take a "Look how do we prevent another global pandemic" and, when it comes to China, "what are they covering up?"

• Kumar, on the bigger picture: this is all about being a 'politician,' "trying to figure out, who is, what are the concessions that we can get in trading whatever you want for speakership?" And, she said, with the Rs in charge, there'll be lots of investigations, "but it's all machinations behind the curtain... How do we control the ways and means? How do we actually control the mechanics of legislation?" These are things most Americans don't understand, she said, but there'll be long-term effects "we will feel later."

And finally, a quick stop with Jon Karl and his panel on This Week: Ramesh Ponnuru (National Review and Bloomberg), ABC contributor former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-SD), Mary Bruce (ABC News), and Rachel Bade (Politico). Much of the conversation was about the Rs and the orange elephant outside the room, desperately trying to get back in. 

• Ponnuru on Trump's announcement: he thinks Trump still has strong support with the base, but maybe not a majority of support, and the launch of his '24 campaign was "lackluster." He noted Trump attacked his magazine, the National Review, and in response, people started sending donating to it, not the kind of reaction Trump expected.

• Heitkamp on the lack of GOP support: she figures Trump is pretty unhappy with the lack of support, and the pointed comments from Rs in Vegas. "Can you imagine how angry he is right now, with all these people on the stage... basically saying, move over?" As the self-described deal maker, he's getting nothing, and he's calling everyone to stand with him, to no avail - or worse. 

• Bade, on scaredy-cat critics: that they won't even say his name when criticizing him "is really telling... still clearly afraid of Trump." And, she thinks, that could lead to a repeat of '16, when everyone thought he was weak and they all joined the fray. If that happens in '24? "Trump still has his core base and he could very easily, you know, run away with this nomination... So yes, it's tough."

• Heitkamp on whether Dems should be rooting for Trump: similar to how the Ds went "all in on more conservative, more Trump candidates," there's some of that now. "Trump is the candidate that keeps losing. If you are going to pick someone to run against, why wouldn't you pick Donald Trump? He's the gift that keeps on giving to Democrats."

See you around campus. And feel free to chime in on McCarthy, Trump, Georgia, or anything else; the comment box is always open.