Tag: Republican Party
Adam Kinzinger: Kevin McCarthy Is the Man to Blame
Adam Kinzinger, the former Republican congressman from Illinois, is best known for his service on the congressional committee that investigated the January 6 insurrection. He and Liz Cheney were the only two Republicans on that committee, and completely noncoincidentally, neither one is in Congress today. The new speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, is more typical of the House Republican caucus: He was a leader of the election deniers.
In his new book, Renegade: Defending Democracy and Liberty in Our
Did Mitt Romney Save His Soul?
Mitt Romney and his family are gathered inside a budget hotel room. It is January, 2008, and the New Hampshire primary is just days away. Romney, a candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination, sits in a high-backed chair, clad in his usual armor: a navy-blue tie, a gleaming white shirt with cufflinks, and dress pants. His wife, Ann, is seated next to him; two of his sons and a daughter-in-law are arrayed around them. Romney’s campaign is going poorly. He
Abraham Lincoln Wasn’t Too Good for Politics
Abraham Lincoln was a politician, though people like to describe him in ways that sound more noble. Contemporaries considered him a Christlike figure who suffered and died so that his nation might live. Tolstoy called him “a saint of humanity.” Lincoln himself said he was only the “accidental instrument” of a “great cause”—but he preserved the country and took part in a social revolution because he engaged in politics. He did the work that others found dirty or beneath
Wisconsin and North Carolina Republicans Are Playing a Dangerous New Game
Even as U.S. politics became more contentious and polarized over the past quarter century, a few pockets of the government remained comparatively above the fray, including the courts, which sought to position themselves apart from politics, and state capitols, where pragmatism trumped partisanship.
But those redoubts have fallen in recent years. The Supreme Court has become more ideologically aligned with the Republican Party, and state legislatures host pitched ideological battles. Now institutions that sit at their intersection—state courts, especially state
What Trump Brings Out in Americans
Plus: Will the Hunter Biden story spell trouble for Democrats?
Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Question of the Week
If you could pose one earnest question to any of the Republican candidates, what would it be? (No insults disguised as questions allowed.)
The First GOP Debate Makes It Obvious Where the Republican Party Is Headed
On Wednesday night, the 2024 campaign season officially began, and it was the weirdest season opener in recent memory. Former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination, did not show up. And even though the contenders on the stage likely have no chance of winning the nomination, the debate was important, in that a lot was revealed about the future of the party.
Nikki Haley came across as the reasonable, truth-telling candidate. She got nowhere. Newcomer Vivek Ramaswamy,
Trump’s Threat to Democracy Is Now Systemic
The long-awaited federal indictment of Donald Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election may be necessary to contain the threat to American democracy that he has unleashed. But it’s unlikely to be sufficient.
The germ of election denialism that Trump injected into the American political system has spread so far throughout the Republican Party that it is virtually certain to survive whatever legal accountability the former president faces.
With polls showing that most Republican voters still believe the
The Trump Indictment Puts the GOP on Trial
Updated at 7:45 p.m. ET on August 1, 2023
Earlier today, Donald Trump was indicted for a third time, on the charge that he attempted to subvert the 2020 presidential election. The indictment, filed by Special Counsel Jack Smith, accuses Trump of a conspiracy to defraud the United States by “using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit”; a conspiracy to “corruptly obstruct and impede” an official proceeding of the U.S. government and for actually partaking in that obstruction; and a
Trump’s Inevitability Problem – The Atlantic
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
There’s Donald Trump, and there’s everyone else. At the moment, the former president of the United States appears unbeatable in the 2024 Republican primary race. But perhaps inevitable is a trickier word than it seems.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic
Mike Pence’s Rickety Revival | The New Yorker
Mike Pence was having a hard week. The second fund-raising quarter for Presidential candidates had ended on July 15th, and he’d only brought in about a million dollars. In the prediction markets, he had sunk to the least likely of all declared Republican candidates to win the nomination. In Iowa, he was booed onstage by two thousand Christian conservatives and mocked by Tucker Carlson, who compared interviewing him to beating a five-year-old at Ping-Pong. A video of the former Vice-President