As expected, the Senate dropped all the woke restrictions from the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and added $300 million for Ukraine along with a four-month extension of the FISA 702 authority until April 19, 2024.
The vote roll for this bill is here. With the final vote at 87-13.
[SOURCE]
Only six republicans voted against the $886 billion dollar bill.
Then again, on the DeceptiCon playground of the professionally Republican, the cliques are always so tenuous. Former Ryan endorsed Ron DeSantis now has big sad watching the ‘Never Trump’ GOPe run to Nikki Haley as their best hope to stop Godzilla Trump.
(Via Politico) – […] during a flight from Canada to D.C. on Tuesday morning: former Speaker PAUL RYAN attempting to persuade Rep. MIKE GALLAGHER (R-Wis.) via text message to endorse Haley’s presidential bid.
“I think now is the time for a guy like you to endorse,” Ryan wrote, per photographs reviewed by Playbook. “Plus, Her foreign policy/world views track closest to yours. She brings the most excitement. I like Ron, but don’t think he is the growth stock Niki [sic] is. Just following up per our talk [in] September. Go Packers!”
Said a Gallagher spokesperson, “As Congressman Gallagher has repeatedly said, he has no intention to endorse any candidate at this time.” A spokesperson for Ryan, who opposes DONALD TRUMP’s re-nomination but hasn’t endorsed an alternative, noted that the former speaker publicly praised Haley as “the growth stock” in a CNBC appearance yesterday. (read more)
Robert Bigelow is a billionaire space industrialist and hotel conglomerate owner. In addition to his vast wealth, Bigelow believes space aliens are already on earth and we just have not discovered them yet. Bigelow gives a lot of money to republicans.
Last week the New York Times reported the DeSantis team had raised $30 million in the last month. Time Magazine is now reporting that $20 million of that financing came from one donor, billionaire Robert Bigelow.
(Via Time) – t’s been a rough two weeks for Ron DeSantis. Members of Congress from his own state have been endorsing Donald Trump in droves. A crippling gas shortage in South Florida coincided with the governor’s travel from South Carolina to South Korea, fueling a spate of negative headlines and “Where’s Ron?” memes. He’s been dropping in the polls. And perhaps most threatening to his presidential ambitions—some of his donors are pulling out.
But none of that is shaking the confidence of Robert Bigelow, the hotel tycoon and aeronautics executive who reveals to TIME that he is the largest donor by far to Never Back Down Inc., a super PAC backing DeSantis’s unofficial campaign for President. Bigelow, who was also the single-largest donor to DeSantis’s 2022 reelection bid, confirms that he has already donated a little more than $20 million to Never Back Down. He says that’s just a start. The super-rich businessman plans to continue putting his wealth behind sending the Florida governor to the Oval Office. “I will give him more money and go without food,” Bigelow says.
As I’m watching President Trump doing the familiar targeting of the GOPe roadmap, in this instance hitting the Club for Growth (CfG), my spidey senses are telling me their modified 2024 path will involve increased emphasis on the Republican Governors Association (RGA).
In the 2020 midterms, the RGA headed by Arizona Governor Doug Ducey was positioning: specifically positioning Ron DeSantis. If the modified establishment roadmap rolls out as it looks right now, I suspect the RGA will play a key role in it.
President Trump hit back against the always insufferable Club for Growth yesterday. The CfG, together with the Business Roundtable and U.S. Chamber of Commerce, are the political nexus for all things multinational, Wall Street and globalist. Republican candidates endorsed by either of these assembled corporate advocacy groups can always be counted on to sell-out the American worker. This is the insider club activity within the larger Republican network, all aligned with Mitch McConnell and the DeceptiCon crew.
Whenever you see President Trump hit the power dynamic, he generally hits the shadow network, the true motive for the attack, that aligns with it. In this case CfG has a long history of paid support for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
One thing I dislike immensely about Republican punditry, specifically as it relates to internal dynamics, is their tribal narrative engineering. The example from Breitbart about President Trump’s discussion of the next Speaker of the House is a case study.
Take out Matthew Boyle’s woven narrative; and remind yourself that Boyle is writing from a position of DeSantis advocacy; read just the direct quotes from President Trump about the risk of House Speaker if the party doesn’t align to support Kevin McCarthy, and the position is pragmatic.
Essentially, if not Kevin McCarthy, and the House vote is dependent on Democrat support, the result will likely be worse.
Just the Trump quotes: “I think it’s a very dangerous game that’s being played,” Trump said. “It’s a very dangerous game. Some bad things could happen. Look, we had Boehner and he was a strange person but we ended up with Paul Ryan who was ten times worse. Paul Ryan was an incompetent speaker. I think he goes down as the worst speaker in history. We took [out] Boehner—and a group of people, some of whom are the same, and they’re very good friends of mine. All those people are very good friends of mine.”
[…] ““Think of it—we ended up with Paul Ryan. Boehner was like Winston Churchill compared to Paul Ryan,” Trump said. “Boehner wasn’t perfect—nobody’s perfect—but Paul Ryan was a disaster for the Republican Party. That’s what we got. Now we have to live with him. He’s destroying Fox and he’s destroying the New York Post. We got to live with this maniac. This guy, Paul Ryan, couldn’t have gotten elected in his own area of Wisconsin. I went with him after I won the election and we had a tremendous crowd of people and they booed him off the stage. You remember that? They booed him off the stage. This guy is now telling Fox what to do.”
In an op-ed from the New York Post today, former Attorney General Bill Barr joins the not coincidentally timed call from Republican Club officer Paul Ryan to dump Donald Trump. New York Post and Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch smiles gleefully, but the organized effort is transparent.
According to the diatribe from Bill Barr, things were much better for the leaders of the ‘acceptable Republican Party‘ when the unwashed masses of the unrepresented middle-class were compliant in their role as victims to the GOP. Battered conservatives are so much easier to manage if they just listen to the high-minded pontifications of the professional political class, pull lever and get pellet.
The tone of Barr’s screed is condescending in the extreme, as if he is delivering his prose to the RNC corporate boardroom at cocktail hour. With a backdrop buffet of crustless triangle cucumber sandwiches and a masked waitstaff hurrying to provide the gentle ladies with white wine spritzer refills, you can visualize the words “hear, hear” coming from atop the crystal glasses.
As customary amid these conversations, titles are left unattributed for the unapproved. “Trump brought his wrecking-ball style to the task of governing the nation. He did not temper his disruptiveness and penchant for chaos,” says Barr, pausing intentionally to afford his eloquence time to settle amid the less intellectually capable.
“It took his senior staff and cabinet secretaries an ungodly amount of maneuvering to keep him on track,” Barr continued. Murmured noises and well-toned grunts from the assembly communicated their seriousness in understanding and agreement. Barr’s tenure was obviously a time of unimaginable horror.
Sympathy, shock and sadness afforded for Barr’s recounting of his survival. Moments later, furrowed brows from the audience.
I keep saying the 2024 GOP nomination is going to be fun because this is an epic Wall Street -vs- Main Street battle that needs to be done. The conniving republican political class are openly wearing their anti-working-class uniforms now. Despite their efforts to remain hidden, and thanks entirely to their hubris, they are glowing.
The primary contest in 2024 is going to be epic, because this time the MAGA scruffnecks will, for the first time in years, clearly see who the enemy within the republican ranks really are. This makes them so much easier to defeat, and also explains why the professional managers behind Ron DeSantis are desperate to keep his alignment hidden.
Emerson College Polling has a granular poll out today [DATA HERE] & [Cross Tabs Here] that highlights some really interesting stuff. First, amid GOP voters Liz Cheney at 4% is beating Ted Cruz (3%), Nikki Haley (3%) and Larry Hogan (1%) for the 2024 GOP nomination. How funny is that?
I mean it’s funny as hell when you look at it from the position of Nikki Haley and the detached billionaires that are going to have to fund her. We’re just not into you Nikki. LOL.
Also, I mean, c’mon, ya gotta laugh. Imagine being one of the former 2016 members of Team Ted Cruz and seeing the insufferable Liz Cheney beating him in current 2022 polling… Seriously, ROFLMAO. Yer’ killing me. I mean could the Cruz Crew pick a winner or what? Too funny.
Even better are the ways Emerson uses the demographics of the poll to explain the political alignment and who the typical supporters are for President Donald Trump (55%) -vs- Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (25%). The Emerson polling data nails the demographics perfectly.
An inflection point is coming. In preparation for what we are about to witness, it is critical to understand that both the DNC and RNC are private corporations with no affiliation to government.
It is a difficult shift in thinking to appropriately understand, but the party system in U.S. politics revolves around two clubs that feed from the same corporate trough and position for influence and affluence within a political dynamic they control.
The priority for both clubs, Republican and Democrat, is NOT primarily ideological. In the modern era, the corporate priority first begins with a battle over who controls each corporation.
As long as there is no challenge, the clubs operate without issue. However, when there is a battle for control of the corporation, a battle that will ultimately determine the financial outcome, the internal battle becomes the priority.
2024 is going to be the election season when we see this corporate battle explode inside in the Republican group. Decades of entrenched power are at stake, and there has been four years of counter positioning and backroom discussion leading up to this moment.
As a consequence, and I know this might sound odd to many people – but winning and/or losing elections becomes a secondary issue. The RNC is not focused on winning elections. The RNC corporation is focused on retaining control.
The RNC want to give the illusion of support for MAGA conservatism because they need the base voter, and they need to maintain the illusion of choice. However, every move they make on an operational level is exactly in line with their previous outlook toward cocktail class republicanism. The MAGA base of support cannot trust this corporate group and we must not be blind or unguarded about the Machiavellian schemes they construct.
When you hear the influence group saying the two priorities for control of the Republican Club involve, (1) eliminating populism in the ranks; and (2) realigning with multinational corporate objectives (vis a vis Wall Street), what they are publicly expressing is their RNC corporate need to get rid of the America First economic agenda; to get rid of the MAGA influence.
How has this historically surfaced?
This interview is excellent news as Paul Ryan delivers a full-throated dismissal of Donald Trump and puts himself as the arbiter of “acceptable republicans” moving forward.
This Big Club operation in public is exactly what we need to see happen in order to wage a war against uniformed enemies within the republican party. Keep in mind, as Paul Ryan talks about winning elections he recently campaigned for Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger in their failed 2020 midterm reelection campaigns.
Nothing about this interview where Paul Ryan positions himself against the blue-collar working-class MAGA movement is bad. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and for Paul Ryan to openly proclaim his anti-Donald Trump allegiances, which will soon evolve into open promotion for Ron DeSantis, will only help the awakening as we highlight the Republican Club strategy for 2024. WATCH:
As I have said for years, there was no doubt in my mind that Paul Ryan was positioning himself to lead the “establishment” republican wing of the UniParty. He has now openly and publicly embraced that role. Pretenses are dropping, and that is a glorious thing. However, in reality, Paul Ryan as a candidate for Vice-President in 2012 received less votes in his own state of Wisconsin than candidate Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020.
The ‘America First’ national agenda, both economically and in larger global terms, was not represented in either wing of the UniParty system until Donald Trump came into politics. The economics of the thing, the financial graft that oils the wheels of politics, is the source of all opposition.
On the part where Ryan outlines his view of the current financial situation, I can only laugh in his face.
This is the guy who was Speaker of the House of Representatives when he dispatched regular budgetary order in order to facilitate President Obama’s need for omnibus spending and continuing resolution bills. Obviously, Ryan needs to pretend not to know that, and counting on, as Jonathan Gruber would say, “the stupidity of the American electorate.”
This battle into 2024 is going to be epic and fun.
Ryan named Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott as his three favorites. {source} DeSantis fighting Disney was “really good for him, from a political perspective,” Ryan said.
During a Pennsylvania MAGA rally tonight, President Trump went through the republican polling for the 2024 nomination contest.
When it came to the second-place polling finisher, President Trump gave the Florida governor a new nickname, “Ron DeSanctimonious.” LOL {Direct Rumble Link}
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Many people were caught off guard by the rather humous slight, aka a shot across the bow as subtle as a brick through a window; however, it’s likely President Trump was responding to the latest, well, rather cringy campaign ad from the Florida governor’s campaign, “Ron is God.” WATCH: