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The Brexit And Political discussion Forum

Brexit may have begun but it is not over, indeed it may never be finished.

Abbreviated pundit roundup: The sharks start circling

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Philip Bump/WaPo:

No, the Jan. 6 committee didn’t make Trump stronger


“These folks don’t get it that when they come after me, people who love freedom rally around me,” Trump said in a statement. “It strengthens me. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” He then tacked on false claims about his efforts to curtail the violence that unfolded at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — the aforementioned insurrection.


Setting aside the statement’s dude-who-quotes-Nietzsche vibe, the former president raises an interesting point. He’s made a political career out of parlaying criticism into support, casting himself as the eternal target of devious, desperate hubs of power. Was it true, then, that the House select committee’s investigation actually bolstered his standing among Republicans or Americans more broadly?

Nope.

McDaniel may have helped bury Trump with Jan. 6 testimony, report shows via MSNBC https://t.co/rtvifPLSt2

— Jeffrey Levin ?? (@jilevin) December 21, 2022


Trump’s taxes to be released. The omni moved through the Senate. Zelinsky with surprise visit to DC and Congress.

Stuff’s happening.

Zelensky’s trip to Washington (his first outside Ukraine since the invasion), his meeting with Biden, and address to Congress tie Ukraine and the US together more indelibly than ever. They are very public allies, confirming the Ukraine war is clearly superpower vs. superpower.

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) December 21, 2022


Maggie Haberman/NY Times:

A Diminished Trump Meets a Damning Narrative


Former President Donald Trump’s current woes extend beyond the report by the House Jan. 6 committee, but the case the panel laid out against him further complicates his future.

Indeed, some Republicans said privately that the House select committee’s criminal referrals could serve to galvanize Mr. Trump’s supporters behind him, as was the case for a short time after the F.B.I. searched his club, Mar-a-Lago, in August, looking for additional classified documents.

Some other Republicans are more skeptical.

“I don’t think that anything can save Donald Trump,” said former Representative Carlos Curbelo, Republican of Florida. “He’s decidedly on the path to irrelevance. He reduces himself by the day.”

Remember, for some Republicans, everything is good for John McCain. Also, there’s a red tsunami coming in the midterms.

NYT is back to 'fairness and tradition are back in vogue, but it could all come back to haunt Democrats' mode We get it. Republicans are vindictive and like to broadcast it. @DougJBalloon doesn't have to do much beyond linkshttps://t.co/OatM0WP6Bs

— Greg Dworkin (@DemFromCT) December 20, 2022


And you can use a GOP angle for this if you wantedhttps://t.co/VRGuOmWwmQ

— Greg Dworkin (@DemFromCT) December 20, 2022


Francis Wilkinson/Bloomberg:

Truth Is Reasserting Itself Over Trump’s Lies


Too many Republican members of Congress still believe in conspiracies about the 2020 election, but voters seem to be moving on.

Mark, when we lose Trump we lose our Republic,” Representative Brian Babin of Texas texted Meadows on Nov. 6. “Fight like hell and find a way.”

It’s disturbing that so many who prospered under the nation’s democratic rules could be so eager to subvert them — or to equate a republic with a cult of personality. But it’s even more remarkable to witness members of Congress, each of whom represents more than a half million Americans and employs a government staff to help sift and analyze information, as broken as a Q-Anon devotee awaiting the second coming of JFK Jr.

Adam Wren/Politico:

‘He’s Got a Huge Problem’

Mike Pence is struggling to find his path back to the White House.


The core of Pence’s identity has always been loyalty — to his friends, his wife, his faith, his party, his country. Then came the day he had to choose between his boss — the leader of his party — and the Constitution. And he chose the latter. Suddenly, Pence found himself in unfamiliar territory — politically isolated. Reviled by former President Donald Trump’s supporters who saw him as a coward but not completely embraced by Trump’s critics who saw him as permanently tainted for having stood by the former president, he had no natural constituency upon which to build the last act of his political project. Now, as Pence peddles a new memoir and ponders his own run for president, he’s struggling to demonstrate where his loyalties really lie — to the former president whose White House record he proudly touts as a shared legacy, or to a wing of the party that is debating whether to unshackle itself from a conspiracy-laden cult of personality. At a moment when Pence most needs to clearly identify himself to a party that is beginning to audition alternatives to its divisive de facto leader, Pence seems stuck in some muddled attempt to be multiple things simultaneously. And nothing expresses that strained compromise quite like his tortured rationale about whom to support on the campaign trail this fall.

There is no path.​

New USA TODAY/Suffolk poll: — 5% of Americans, including just 8% of Rs, say investigating Biden should be the top priority in 2023 — By 13pts (51-38), a majority says probes are politically-motivated vs. appropriate. Independents agree by 20pts (54-34).https://t.co/Jr06IClxvq pic.twitter.com/Afq8Ux6EHZ

— Ian Sams (@IanSams46) December 18, 2022

Jonathan Weiler/Substack:​

Inflation inflation

The bias in elites' priorities

At the heart of this debate, leaving aside technical and long-difficult to answer questions about the behavior of the macroeconomy, is whether we can have our cake and eat it, too. Mainstream economics tends to use scientific and dispassionate language that obscures the ethical and moral tradeoffs at the heart of all of our debates about fiscal policy.​

Judith Newman/NY Times:​

John Fetterman’s TikTok Whisperer


Fresh off a frantic election cycle, the former Fetterman campaign social media producer — and dedicated Swiftie — takes time to shake it off.

“John already had this amazing comms team working for him, and he himself had been a Twitter guy for years,” Ms. Henry, said on a video call from her apartment in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia. She was wearing sweats and a hoodie (“very on-brand today,” she said with laugh). “But we were able to move his voice and his message to other platforms,” she said.

And those other platforms were even “more important than it might have been normally,” Ms. Henry said, because Mr. Fetterman couldn’t be out on the trail after his stroke in May.

Ms. Henry quickly became, according to Mr. Fetterman’s director of communications, Joe Calvello, their “TikTok Queen.” The account accrued more than 240,000 followers in three months, with three million likes and tens of millions of views. Ms. Henry was able to make the fun serious, and the serious fun; her motto — in life and on TikTok — is “embrace the cringe.” That is, let the world see you as your messy, authentic self.​


Embedded Content

Alan Elrod/Arc Digital:​

Who Likes Ron DeSantis Anyway?

Time for some reflection on what a GOP pivot toward DeSantis would mean politically

To the extent that there is a Republican rebellion against Trump, it’s about one thing and one thing only: winning. After all, Republicans stood in lockstep with Trump during the height of his boorish authoritarianism—their only misgivings arising from Trump’s clumsily ineffectual form of governing, not his, you know, words or actions or policies. Most tellingly, the prime candidate to replace Trump in Republican hearts is a candidate whose ideological core, governing style, culture war preoccupations, even his mannerisms, all resemble Donald Trump. Just, they hope, without the electoral toxicity that has been emanating from the former president for a few cycles now.​


Excellent thread. Calmly demonstrates that the sharp waves of RSV etc that many countries have been seeing are not due to any “Covid-induced immune impairment” etc, but are simply the results of immunity doing what immunity does, and the basics of epidemiology. https://t.co/AcIjRC9VZc

— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) December 19, 2022
 
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