Sunday School 1/21/24

I visited several classrooms yesterday, mostly to listen to the Republican side of things. 

First up?  Former 2024 presidential candidate and now Trump endorser Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND) met with Martha Raddatz in the This Week classroom. 

Burgum ran as a 'unifying' candidate before pulling out of the race $12M poorer. Raddatz asked if he believes Trump has the best chance of pulling the country together. He didn't answer the question but said serving as governor was better under Trump than under Biden.

And as we know, during the time that President Trump was in office, I mean, we had peace and prosperity in America. And under President Biden, we’ve got chaos around the world...

He centered his candidate on the economy, energy policy, and national security and how they're interrelated, and says

Joe Biden is taking us in the wrong direction on all of those, 180 degrees the wrong direction, and -- and not -- I'm confident that President Trump is -- he’s going to be right on the economy, right on energy policy, and right on national security.

Raddatz asked why he supports election-denier Trump; Burgum's on record saying Biden won in 2020. After trying twice to get an answer, she simply asked if he was an election denier too. He says no.

We have to make sure that Americans have confidence in these elections... Americans lack confidence in this, and that’s why -- that’s why we’ve got to make sure going forward that we have confidence. Democracy doesn’t exist unless people can trust the outcome of an election.

Another non-answer came to a question about Trump 'birthering' Nikki Haley. In a nutshell? Everyone's mean, the Dems say bad things about each other, too, and "it's the norm" in our politics. He's wrong on that, I think, but he's not all that far from right, is he?

Down the hall in the Face the Nation classroom, Margaret Brennan talked with Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R-kansaw). 

In Arkansas, other than "to save the mother's life in a medical emergency," all abortions are banned.  Any attempts to modify the law have been blocked by the state's Attorney General. Brennan wondered if Sanders would consider a ballot initiative to modify the law.

Look, I'm proud of the fact that Arkansas is one of the most pro-life states in the country. I'm unapologetically pro-life. I believe that we are a culture that protects life, that values life. I think that's who we are as a country and I'll continue to support those measures.

Brennan acknowledged the personal belief but asked if Sanders had any interest in hearing what her constituents thought. No need for that; she said her state is "overwhelmingly" pro-life, she said, and she's proud of efforts they've made, including with adoption, foster care, education, and 

empowering every single Arkansan to have a great quality of life. We are looking at every aspect in making sure that we're doing what we can to protect and value life at every stage here in the state of Arkansas.

She didn't expand post-partum care from 60 days to twelve months; some of her GOP counterparts did. Brennan asked why not, given the state has long had a high maternal mortality rate. Sanders said she wants to "do everything we can" during pregnancy and after, and that they've made several changes already. Unlike some of her counterparts, Arkansas will be participating in a summer food assistance program the feds are offering. 

When asked about Trump and Biden both being too old to be part of a new generation of leaders, Sanders talked about the candidates' records, not their ages, and to no one's surprise, thinks Trump is the better choice. As to whether Trump can unite us, she said

You know, one of the things that I think is so often left out of Donald Trump's story is the patriotism and the love of country that he brought back. We haven't seen that in this president... In fact, we've seen the total opposite. 

Brennan disagreed with several things Sanders touted as Trump's successes, including immigration, the Middle East, and Ukraine, to which Sanders responded,

Well, that's why we need him to come back for four years because he didn't get to finish, but he certainly made significant progress...

If you're wondering, she's focused on being governor for "the next seven years," seemingly shutting out becoming Trump's veep.  

Last, a speed round with Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH), who was heckled by Kirsten Welker on  Meet the Press. 

Is New Hampshire "make or break" for Haley?

No. No. She doesn't have to win. I mean, look, nobody goes from single digits in December to "you absolutely have to win" in January. I think that's a media expectation that's being set out there...

Is he concerned about Trump's mental capability, based on recent comments? 

I mean, look, the point is you have two nearly 80-year-olds fighting this thing out. That's not what America wants...this is not Donald Trump, the disruptor of 2016. This guy has lost his fastball... We always want that next generation. Neither of these guys represent the next generation.

Should a president have Trump's version of immunity? 

Of course not... I don't care what political party you're from, whether you're an extreme conservative or a socialist liberal – everybody should be concerned with that type of mentality going into the White House.

How can he support Trump, if he's the nominee?

I think most Republicans are going to get behind the Republican nominee...  This is how bad Joe Biden is. Six months ago Trump couldn't beat Biden...So this is where we've come, where Joe Biden is so bad that even folks would get behind Donald Trump.

And his last point?

... the more that come out, the better chance we have of beating him at the ballot box. And that's the only way to do it. The voters decide who's going to be the nominee. Not the media, not Chris Sununu, not even Nikki Haley. It's the voters, and that's the best process.

Truer words, and whatnot.  See you around campus.

TGIF 12/2/22

It's time for some good week/bad week accounting again. 

Let's start in Arizona, where the Board of Supervisors of Cochise County has finally certified November's election results. It wasn't out of the goodness of their hearts - it was because a court ordered them to.

Two of the three members - one Democrat, one Republican, voted to do the right thing. The third member - another R - didn't bother showing up.  The judge, Casey McGinley, noted

it is "clear" that the board was "duty bound" to certify the results and submit them to the secretary of state by Monday given that no results were missing from the county's totals.

McGinley said the board "exceeded its lawful authority in delaying the canvass for a reason that was not permitted by the statute."

The Dem supervisor who asked the court to issue a quick decision, had a good week; so did the judge, for requiring the board to do their job. And the supervisor who couldn't be bothered? Yeah, you know what list he's on. 

Let's shift to Texas, and the heartbroken city of Uvalde, where another lawsuit related to the school shooting there in May was filed this week. 

Survivors of the fatal mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, have filed a $27 billion class action lawsuit against multiple law enforcement agencies in Texas, according to court documents.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in federal court in Austin, names the city, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, the school district’s police department, the Uvalde Police Department, the Texas Department of Public Safety and a number of persons who are members or former members of the agencies listed as defendants. 

The lawsuit says

Instead of swiftly implementing an organized and concerted response to an active school shooter who had breached the otherwise ‘secured’ school buildings at Robb Elementary school, the conduct of the three hundred and seventy-six (376) law enforcement officials who were on hand for the exhaustively torturous seventy-seven minutes of law enforcement indecision, dysfunction, and harm, fell exceedingly short of their duty-bound standards.

This suit just the most recent one to be filed. 

One federal lawsuit filed earlier this week alleges nearly two dozen people and entities, including the gun manufacturer and store that provided the rifle used in the attack, were negligent and failed to protect a student who was killed. Other families filed a similar lawsuit in September.

No amount of money can ever make up for what happened in May, but there needs to be accountability somewhere in all of this. I'd say the folks had a good week for at least bringing the suits and trying to keep the accountability ball rolling.

And, to Florida, where a former president Donald Trump lost another court case. 

A unanimous federal appeals court on Thursday ended an independent review of documents seized from former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate, removing a hurdle the Justice Department said had delayed its criminal investigation into the retention of top-secret government information.

The three-judge panel, which included two Trump-selected Republicans, said

It is indeed extraordinary for a warrant to be executed at the home of a former president — but not in a way that affects our legal analysis or otherwise gives the judiciary license to interfere in an ongoing investigation...

The law is clear. We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so. 

The judges from the 11th Circuit who looked beyond who picked them, and did the right thing had a good week. And, of course, put another bad week in the books for the Florida Man.

Continuing our swing through the states, let's look at the Democrats and their plans to realign the early primaries. 

The Democratic National Committee voted on Friday to radically alter its presidential nominating calendar, following President Joe Biden’s recommendations to elevate South Carolina as the first primary state and to eliminate Iowa, breaking with a half-century of historical precedent. But there are still several logistical hurdles for the party to clear to make the new vision a reality.

Under the plan, South Carolina will go first on February 3rd, with New Hampshire and Nevada following three days later. Georgia would vote on February 13th, and Michigan on February 27th. Iowa's completely out of the early states. 

The full DNC still has to approve the plan, and the states that are moving up have until early January to certify they'll be able to meet the schedule. And, New Hampshire's required to go a week before any other state primary, so there's that.

Some people will suggest this was solely a move by the Biden camp to help ensure the octogenarian's chances in '24, but there are legitimate reasons to make some changes to crazy rules that give precedence to Iowa (31st in population, 90% white) and New Hampshire (41st/92% white).

Biden and the Ds had a good week on this; we'll see if it turns into a good week for voters if everything works out.

TGIF, everyone.

Sunday School 11/13/22: Extra Credit

In this week's Sunday School lesson, we heard perspective on the 2022 midterms from five people - two senators, the House Speaker, a re-elected governor, and a newly elected governor.  

For today's Extra Credit, I go back into the classrooms for more perspective, starting again today with Dana Bash on CNN's SOTU; she spoke with outgoing Gov. Larry Hogan (R-MD). I've referred to him as 'my favorite Republican,' for his steadfast refusal to cave in to the whole extremist, cultist GOP and opposition to the Big Lie.

What did think of the election outcome?

the way I would interpret it, look, this was -- this should have been a huge red wave. It should have been one of the biggest red waves we have ever had, because President Biden's approval rating was so low, one of the lowest historically. More than 70% of people thought the country was going in the wrong direction. And yet we still didn't perform.

"Commonsense conservatives" who focused on the issues won; those who "tried to relitigate the 2020 election and focused on conspiracy theories and talked about things the voters didn't care about, they were almost universally rejected," he said.

And I think it's basically the third election in a row that Donald Trump has cost us the race. And it's like three strikes, you're out... Donald Trump kept saying, we're going to be winning so much, we will get tired of winning. I'm tired of losing. I mean, that's all he's done.

He suggested the Rs need to figure out how to "appeal to a broader group of voters" because they "turned off wide swaths of swing voters. And that's why we didn't perform."

And, on the threatened announcement from Trump about 2024? 

...I would just say that we're two years out from the next election, and we're just trying to -- the dust is settling from this one. I think it'd be a mistake. As I mentioned, Trump's cost us the last three elections. And I don't want to see it happen a fourth time.

Does he have presidential ambitions of his own?

 I have been saying since 2020 that we have to get back to a party that appeals to more people, that can win in tough places, like I have done in Maryland. And I think that lane is much wider now than it was a week ago.

Next up? George, on This Week, talking with Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH), one of the people What's-his-name on MTP said was a "normal Republican." Sununu won re-election by 15 points, while the R running for Senate lost by nearly 10. What did he have to say about that?

Candidate quality matters. You know, there's a chance of extremism that I think a lot of Republicans were painted with, rightfully or not. You know, when you have a product, you can't let the other side define you, right? And that's what -- what campaigns are. It's a product of good ideas and what you want to bring to the table. And, ultimately, I think the Democrats did a very good job of defining a lot of these candidates before they even had a chance to introduce themselves...

He also mentioned the extremism that's out there, saying it "scared a lot of folks."

This was just a rejection of that extremism. I don't think anyone likes the policies out of D.C. No one likes paying, you know, six bucks for a gallon of heating oil, especially with winter coming. But what I think people said was, "Look, we can work on these policies later, but as Americans we've got to fix extremism right now." And I think that's exactly what you saw.

And it's not just Trump - "there's a whole stream of things out there that can be deemed extreme," and there are extremists in both parties, but that's not what the people want.

Let's go back to the 2020 election. Joe Biden was the most moderate of all the candidates running on the Democrat side. He was deemed the most moderate of both he and Donald Trump. So, America has been asking for more moderation for quite some time. There's just, you know, certain parts of the Republican Party that haven't listened so well. We've just got to get back to basics. It's not unfixable. We've just got to get back to basics.

Sununu also hammered the Dems for supporting MAGA extremists, including the Senate candidate in NH, saying "I think that's a complete manipulation of the process, to be sure... And they were successful." 

He has no regrets about not running for Senate, saying (as he has before) that being governor's better than being senator. He also said there's no circumstance that'd have him supporting Trump in 2024, and that he thinks "there's going to be a lot of great candidates out there," but Joe Biden won't be one of them. And Sununu might not be one of them either.

Well, maybe, I suppose. I don't know. You know, a lot of folks are talking about that, but, look, I've got a state to run, unlike Congress I don't get vacation. It’s a 24/7 job, 365. Unlike Congress, I have to balance a budget in the next couple of months. Unlike Congress, I just have a lot of demands on me and I love that. It’s a hard job but, man, it is so fulfilling when you get stuff done. 

And finally, we hear from author and Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR); he talked with Margaret Brennan on CBS' Face the Nation. What did he think of what Brennan called "this complete disappointment?" On the one hand, he saw strong GOP candidates win big - DeSantis, Kemp, Abbott, DeWine in gubernatorial races; Rubio and Scott and Johnson in Senate races. But then, there's the other hand.

I think the lessons in our victories can be applied to some places where we came up a little bit short. We need to focus on serious substantive accomplishments and issues like crime, like our wide-open border, like addressing runaway inflation. Even in places where we came up a little bit short, like Lee Zeldin's race for governor in New York, he performed very well compared to Republicans in recent elections, and he probably helped save the House of Representatives by bringing four new Republican Congressman-elect across the finish line...

On whether Trump should "remain the leader of the Republican Party," Cotton said the party out of power doesn't have a single leader.

The former president is obviously very popular with many of our voters. But we also have important other leaders as well, like some of those victors I just mentioned earlier... Last year, you had Glen Younkin have a great victory in a bluish democratic state like Virginia. I hope to remain a leader in the United States Senate as well, in addition to people like some of those I just mentioned who were reelected... So, when you're in opposition, you don't have a single leader. That won't be the case until we're through the '24- '24 nominating season, and we have a new nominee.

And tonight, of course, the former president shined the spotlight on himself, and announced his candidacy for '24. So here we go, again.

See you around campus.