The Dash Files

In recent days, the national press has been reporting that failed New Jersey Governor and former Trump hostage Chris Christie is planning on entering the 2024 race for the Republican presidential nomination. But Christie is not joining the stupidest crowd of GOP candidates in American history because he plans to win; instead, he wants to take out Donald Trump and clear the field for a new leader to change the direction of the party. This plan will fail, and in fact, it will make the old GOP’s chances of reclaiming control of the party less likely to work. Here’s why: Christie’s claim to the throne of candidates-able-to-destroy- Trump stems from a particularly notable moment in a 2016 Republican debate just before the New Hampshire primary. Marco Rubio and Chris Christie had been engaged in a long feud since the beginning of the campaign, and in this debate, that fight would come to a dramatic climax. But to understand that moment, and how we got there, we have to rewind. Marco Rub...

The words “courage,” “republicans,” and “Donald Trump” almost never go together in a sentence, because for the last 7 years, we have watched as the GOP bends to Donald Trump’s will at every opportunity. Whether that be the 2016 GOP presidential candidates’ refusal to directly confront Trump before it was too late, Republicans’ acquiescence to his sexual misconduct, or the Senate GOP’s inability to impeach him after he tried to overthrow our government, any reasonable person could not possibly expect conservatives to ever take real action against Donald Trump. This is especially true in red-state state legislatures, whose legislators are owned by their lunatic constituents.  But one state party appears poised to deal a real blow to Trump’s 2024 campaign: The New Hampshire Republican Party. Although New Hampshire has not supported a statewide Republican at the federal level since Kelly Ayotte’s victory in the state’s 2010 Senate election, New Hampshire’s legislature as been completel...

As I predicted months ago , Ron DeSantis would finally be forced to make a move on the issue of abortion. With an upcoming war between the incumbent governor of Florida, Donald Trump, and many social conservative forces in the GOP, DeSantis must pass the litmus test on abortion to earn the votes and money of the religious right. At the same time, the American pubic's pro-abortion majority has become more pronounced than ever since the Dobbs  decision, and if DeSantis overreaches on curtailing reproductive rights, President Biden can take a blowtorch to his candidacy in a general election. Florida is currently the least restrictive republican-controlled southern state, with abortion banned at 15 weeks. Before the Dobbs decision, this might have been acceptable for social conservatives, but with the decision now in effect, the rabid anti-abortionists are hungry for more. DeSantis, as a primary contender for the nomination, had to make a decision. As I said in January, DeSantis had th...

These days, when we think about states in this union that have become threatened with autocratic rule, our first instinct is to look at red states. Wisconsin is the prime example of a democracy gone wrong. In fact, if it were its own country, it couldn't even be classified as a democracy anymore. Sure, its voters can still vote up-and-down for governor, but that doesn't do much for you if your legislature is so gerrymandered that democrats would need over 60% of the vote (something that hasn't happened since 1964) to win. Republicans are consistently able to control 2/3 of the seats in the legislature, and almost nothing can be done to stop it.  But luckily for Democrats, Wisconsin still has a couple of escape hatches, one of which is the elected state Supreme Court. If Wisconsin voters elect enough pro-democracy judges, they can strike down the legislature's anti-democratic laws and maps. And the other safeguard that lurks in the political waters, unseen and unheard, i...