I spoke to McClatchy‘s Dave Catanese about the the bipartisan gun safety package and decision of Senate GOP leadership to pursue and ultimately support such a deal.

“[John] Cornyn and McConnell are both realists and I think they went into this eyes open, with no illusions about how popular this might be with the base,” said Liam Donovan, a former Republican Senate campaign operative turned Washington lobbyist. “They’ve made a good faith effort to address the problem in common sense ways that voters broadly support.”

…

Donovan surmised that even though the loudest voices on the right are angered, the GOP leader sees a political upside.

He now has another significant vote in his pocket that he can hold up when Democrats complain the filibuster needs to be broken or amended to accomplish a legislative goal.

“Base blowback is a sunk cost having pursued a deal,” said Donovan. “You have to balance the prospect of a divisive vote with the fact that this is their last best chance to take the issue off the table for the foreseeable future, and on relatively favorable terms.”

Read the full piece here.

Jamie Dupree had a column quoting me in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution looking at the May primary gauntlet as a barometer for Trump’s political strength.

The first test is on Tuesday, May 3 in Ohio, where Trump has endorsed J.D. Vance for U.S. Senate, scrambling the GOP race. A few weeks ago, Vance was going nowhere. Now, he might win the primary.

“All things equal, he still matters,” GOP strategist Liam Donovan said of Trump. “A lot.”

Read the full piece here.

I spoke to POLITICO‘s Kate Davidson about the surprisingly ugly Q1 GDP number and what it means politically for the Biden administration.

The senior Biden administration official pointed to a thread Wednesday from Jason Furman, former chair of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, explaining why technical factors in the first quarter masked the economy’s underlying strength.

But one analyst said that kind of messaging from the White House wouldn’t work.

“Any time you’re relying on a 12-tweet thread from Jason Furman to explain why actually the economy is better than it looks — particularly when GDP is already an abstract thing that people are not necessarily intuitively feeling, unlike inflation — I think it makes the story they’re trying to tell now even tougher,” said Liam Donovan, a principal at Bracewell LLP and a former GOP operative. “There’s only so many indicators left that can provide good news. The last thing they need is further bad news.”

Read the full piece here.