I spoke to NBC News‘ Alex Seitz-Wald for his look at the unusually busy summer for politics.
“It used to be that even the most addled political junkies got to dry out in August,” said Liam Donovan, a lobbyist and former GOP campaign operative. “But between the new season of Law & Order: MAGA and Trump’s would-be challengers desperate to gain traction via the debate stage, this year offers even less of a respite than usual.”
Did anyone land a successful punch at the Republican Debate? (And did it matter?) Our reactions to Trump’s interview with Tucker Carlson, and the new song that catapulted a relatively unknown country singer to conservative folk hero and progressive hate object status.
Join our host, Ron Steslow, as he explores the most important political news with guests Susan Del Percio (MSNBC political analyst and crisis communications expert), Liam Donovan (Principal at Bracewell LLP) and Liz Gilbert Cohen (President of the 2020 Democratic National Convention).
Segments to look forward to:
(02:18) A deep dive into the first Republican primary debate, who won and who lost, Nikki Haley’s swipe at Donald Trump, and Vivek Ramaswamy’s annoying performance that could endear him to MAGA voters
(31:50) Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson counterprogramming the debate with a pre-taped interview where they discussed whether Trump’s political rivals would try to kill him and whether we’re heading toward a civil war.
(41:40) The little known Virginia country singer who was catapulted to conservative folk hero and progressive hate object status for the song “Rich Men North of Richmond”
[Politicology+] The continued legal troubles for Hunter Biden and how Joe Biden can respond to the Republican attacks.
Politicology+ is our private, ad-free version of this podcast, with subscriber-only episodes, strategy, and analysis. To join us there, visit politicology.com/plus or subscribe in Apple Podcasts.
I spoke to the Washington Post‘s Maxine Joselow for her Climate 202 post on the ballooning revenue estimates for the IRA clean energy tax title and GOP efforts use them as offsets for their policy priorities.
That doesn’t mean the GOP won’t keep targeting the credits. But tax experts predicted that even if Republicans win full control of Washington in the 2024 election, they won’t seek to scrap all the incentives, especially as the money keeps flowing into red states and districts.
“Just as a matter of good tax policy, you don’t want to go after things people have made long-term investments in,” said Liam Donovan, a principal at the law and lobbying firm Bracewell. “People are sinking billions and billions of dollars into clean-energy projects across the map based on long-term certainty.”
I spoke to Grace Segers of The New Republic for her piece on Speaker McCarthy’s surprising success in uniting House Republicans and negotiating a debt limit deal with President Biden.
“McCarthy has exceeded whatever conceivable expectations people might have had,” said Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist. “There’s no question that he has enhanced his credibility. He has proved his mettle to the president, to congressional Democrats, and to the people in his conference who matter at the end of the day.”
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Still, although some Republicans have floated triggering a no-confidence vote on McCarthy, which would require only one member filing a “motion to vacate” the speaker’s chair, such a move would be unlikely to garner majority support in the Republican conference. Representative Dan Bishop, among McCarthy’s loudest critics, has said that it is “inescapable,” but, he added, it depends on whether members “have the courage.” That more Democrats voted for the bill than Republicans may spur McCarthy’s right-wing critics to action.
But Donovan, the Republican strategist, argued that the vote’s partisan breakdown doesn’t change anything. “It just means [Democrats] will refuse to give him any credit and [the Freedom Caucus] will have more grist for the outrage mill,” he told me after the vote on the deal.
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McCarthy has long prized his ability to build and maintain relationships with his members, making those connections the locus of his power. The 15 rounds of speaker votes, and the various concessions he made to obtain the gavel, may have strengthened his sway with conservatives rather than weakened it. Perhaps McCarthy did not sell the farm so much as hire it out to contractors.
“To put together a coalition that could function in this environment, McCarthy really had no choice but to deal these guys in, to give them power, and with that power came responsibility and skin in the game,” Donovan said. For example, McCarthy ensured that the powerful Rules Committee included three conservatives, including Representative Thomas Massie, who has often been a thorn in the side of Republican leaders. But Massie was a McCarthy ally in the debt ceiling fight: He voted to advance the legislation in the Rules Committee, ensuring it made it to the House floor, and supported the final product.
I spoke to Josh Green for his Bloomberg piece on the anticlimactic finish to the debt limit saga.
Assuming McCarthy can whip a majority of his members to support the bill and Democrats supply the remaining votes, we won’t have to think about the 80th debt-ceiling fight until after the next presidential election. By then, passions may have cooled. Reason might prevail. Members of Congress might finally see the debt ceiling as the fool’s gold that it always is.
“When Dems were freaking out because Biden was caving, that felt really good for Republicans,” says Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist and debt-ceiling expert. “Now that they’re looking at the deal, it’s turning into a bitter pill. I hope it makes them think this isn’t worth doing again.”
