Let’s walk through this blow by blow, since it appears to be the last-ditch argument the GOP wants to try to hang its hat on:

Why is the Hillary situation different from the Trump situation and why is it *not* a double standard to charge Trump and not Hillary? (1/) Hillary’s case concerned use of a private email server for official govt biz during her time as Sec of State & the content of those emails.

So, Difference #1: Hillary didn’t willfully handpick the most sensitive NatSec items to shove in boxes & take home. It was all her emails.

So, after yelling “RINO” at those of us who said Paxton should resign for this behavior years ago, and after re-electing Paxton with more than half of the primary vote… Texas Rs are now admit we were right.

More Republicans should ask what else we might be right about!

https://twitter.com/JessicaHuseman/status/1661848700904255489

Oh, and it probably shouldn’t go unnoticed by @ColinAllredTX that @tedcruz just hired as his Chief of Staff Paxton’s longtime number two who was well-aware of all this conduct and said nothing and defended Paxton until as recently as last week.

What say you, Ted?

I’m sorry, but this guy just does not have presence. He doesn’t sound like a president at all. And that’s unfortunately a big part of the smell test. He is not the best chance to defeat Trump. Somebody else needs to emerge quickly, because this isn’t going to get it done.

https://twitter.com/desantiswarroom/status/1657455315464474625

My point has zero to do with RDS’s policies & everything to do with his skills as a candidate. To be a nat’l candidate, you have to pass believability tests from the stump & on TV. It’s why the highest RDS ever polled was at the very beginning before he started doing all of this.

If you’re not worried about the direction of our country and its severe lack of quality public leaders, you should be. It is seriously threatening the long-term strength of the United States. More good people need to step up and good people need to follow them. It’s about competence and vision and courage. We’re basically stuck playing defense against ourselves, protecting the country against our own domestic strain of craziness. And as a result, we stand still so nothing breaks.

That may be okay for now, but it’s not going to cut it.

A big problem for the “Democrats are never prosecuted for this type of thing” argument is that Democrats are, in fact, also prosecuted for this type of thing. nytimes.com/2022/06/22/us/… “Come on, Heath. That’s just one example… but generally speaking, surely you agree that Dems…” washingtonpost.com/politics/john-…

The boost in Trump’s polling in the wake of the indictment and his continued strength even after J6 makes clear that Republican voters get a completely separate diet of content even beyond Fox that actively attacks US institutions to prop up Donald Trump as a moral actor. That’s why the traditional pillars of the GOP—Fox, the party, think tanks, even PACs like Club for Growth and others—are completely powerless to persuade the GOP base differently. Their message doesn’t even reach them. The base is captured completely by fringe media by design.

A new leader could make hay with sharp answers to these domestic problems:
— AI, automation & labor displacement
— Bankrupt safety net
— Cost & quality of education
— Inflation & bank pains
— Gerrymandering & hyperpartisan primaries

Few dealing thoughtfully with these right now. Someone could cut through the culture war noise with an urgent message centered on generational inflection. Big changes are happening in the world that we aren’t even talking about because politicians are focused on too many small things. America is distracted & losing.

The Silent Republicans who think DeSantis has some groundswell of support coming among rank-&-file Rs have another thing coming.

The DeSantis base is the anti-anti-Trump wing of the GOP—& it will crumble quickly b/c they always hide in the corner when people like this get loud.

https://twitter.com/Timcast/status/1638589321417564175

They analyze tea leaves and say things like “But Trump will lose!”

They don’t believe in anything. And that’s why they’ll lose. They will get destroyed. The real political power is with those who will defend Trumpism at all costs—& those who will help defeat it at all costs.

.@FedSoc has died. As a proud member in law school, I’m disgusted. It isn’t an intellectual movement anymore. It’s just rationalizing priors in bowties. Zero principles.

FedSoc should be ashamed it’s strayed so far. This isn’t law—it’s embarrassing. politico.com/news/magazine/… “On the dais, the panelists squirmed at the invocation of [national divorce], and Alicea offered some high-level philosophical objections...But the question seemed to linger in the room.” politico.com/news/magazine/…

The OpenAI / GPT 4 technology is going to dramatically change our economy and our labor markets. We need to prepare now. It won’t displace everything—but it will displace a lot and dramatically increase productivity across nearly every sector. It is the most quickly adopted tool or application in the history of the internet—which means it is serving a useful purpose for a wide array of people in a very intuitive and useful way that is immediately apparent.

Don’t take my word for it. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

I’m tired of both parties telling the “Forgotten Man” narrative of America. We’ve talked about ourselves this way for nearly a decade now. How we’re all just living week-to-week & feel ignored & trampled. It’s weak & selfish.

I think Americans are done feeling forgotten. The new story we should be telling is about transformation. Over the next 30 years, the world is going to change more rapidly than ever before and we’re either going to welcome & lead the change or be swallowed up by it trying to take it easy.

We aren’t even out of the gate yet.

If a Republican candidate is an election denier, @Liz_Cheney says, as a conservative, she’ll campaign for the Democrat, despite other core policy differences with them.

I agree with her. Constitution first. Policy second. It’s pretty simple: if an R denies our elections, vote D. It’s a very clear and effective voting strategy. It puts Republicans on notice: denying our elections is a line you cannot cross if you want to win competitive races around the country.

The principled conservatives will bolt and vote against you.

Legal immigration is good. The GOP used to believe this, but MAGA corrupted it. To MAGA, the immigrant is the problem, despite the legality. MAGA wants to cut quotas b/c they see immigrants as a threat—to jobs & to culture.

It’s nonsense rooted in stigma & it makes America weak. America’s greatness was built by immigrants of every stripe. The skilled who came & engineered our cities & innovations; but also low-skilled immigrants who brought their sweat equity & desire for a better life. We all share that immigrant heritage. Bizarre many don’t see it.

JD Vance: “I got to be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.”

This alone should cost him a seat in the US Senate. For the MAGA folks upset about Ukraine’s latest success, let me spell it out for you: if JD Vance doesn’t understand or care that a weakened Putin and a strong, independent Ukraine serves the national security & economic interests of Americans, he doesn’t belong in the US Senate.

Today’s GOP stands actively against many of my beliefs. It believes in big gov’t, rejects the rule of law, ignores the Constitution to target political enemies, thinks isolationism works, spends big during prosperity, supports authoritarians like Orban, & lies about basic facts. It has also become a party of petty personal invective. Just yesterday, the House GOP personally attacked its own female staffer.

So long as the institutional mouthpieces of the GOP continue to stand for these things, the GOP should & will keep losing votes from conservatives.

Lots of “conservatives” suddenly calling on the federal government to “do something” & displace private supply chains & market forces... odd.

The fastest way to fix the formula shortage is to let companies respond to demand. What can government do here other than get in the way? The problem is moral hazard. If the government “steps in” & builds out new “support mechanisms” to help companies deliver products they failed to deliver on their own... there’s less incentive for companies to fix the original issue. They’ll just rely on the gov’t help next time.

Do you think the President should unilaterally declare an emergency to immediately thereafter redirect taxpayer funds Congress appropriated for the military to a pet project Congress didn’t fund?

Today’s right had no problem with that. Don’t tell me the right hasn’t changed. Do you think the President should host large events of state at his own properties without a competitive bid and then bill the US taxpayer for government’s use of said properties?

Today’s right had no problem with that.

With all the criticisms of the left for going too far with “wokeism” & “socialism” and of the right for going too far with “nationalism” & “culture war populism”—it’s astounding to me more politicians aren’t championing what so many Americans clearly want: Classical Liberalism. Seems like the conditions are ripe for a new leader to break through with a robust commitment to the spirit of the Founding—an evenhanded defense of everyone’s individual rights, renewed aspiration for equality & justice for all, respect for the Constitution and the rule of law..

As a general rule, I think localized government policy is better than nationalized policy. Sometimes scale and nationwide application is necessary, but I think the burden should be to prove why a federal policy is needed rather than just assume it’s the better way. The default should be that we try things at the local & state levels. Why? The bad effects of poor policy can be limited to the narrower jurisdiction and the limited scale permits faster remediation. It also gives us multiple cracks at the same problem across jurisdictions.

There is room for a clear alternative to Trumpism for the center-right. People are hungry for it. It’s not just Never Trumpism. It’s not “National Conservatism” or Libertarianism. And it’s not even Reaganism.

Not sure what to call it, but here are a few of its potential themes.. OPPORTUNITY: Policy should focus resources at points in people’s lives where their opportunity is most at stake (e.g., education, when they get sick, when they lose their job, when they interact with the justice system, etc.) instead of equalizing outcomes.

If you even once claim the election was “stolen,” you don’t deserve to be taken seriously on anything. Why? Because you prove with that one statement either (1) that you will say harmful, demonstrably false things to try to get votes, or (2) that you are duped by conspiracies. In fact, the claim is so demonstrably false and so many of its proponents even know it’s false that the claim itself is no longer a claim at all. It is a signaling proxy for candidates to show precisely how willing they are to lie in service to the base. “See, I’ll lie for you!”