Force women to carry pregnancies to term.
Push them to give the kids up for adoption.
Mock women with adopted children because
"they don't have kids of their own".
Showing posts with label republicans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label republicans. Show all posts
Sep 18, 2024
Jul 30, 2024
Uh-Oh, Don-old
Music to my tired old ears from: Arizona Republic
GOP Mayor of Major Arizona City Pens Scorching Op-Ed for the State’s Biggest Newspaper Endorsing Kamala Harris
Despite criticism on her handling of border policy, Vice President Kamala Harris scored an endorsement from Mayor John Giles, the Republican mayor of Mesa, Arizona.
In an op-ed published by the Arizona Republic on Monday, Giles made the case for Harris as president over his own party’s nominee, former President Donald Trump. As he invoked the memory of the late Sen. John McCain and his motto “Country First,” Giles said to readers and his fellow Republicans: “I call on other Arizona Republicans to join me in choosing country over party this election and to vote against Donald Trump.”
First, Giles laced into Trump over election denialism and how much it has affected the state of Arizona:
The Grand Canyon State is ground zero in the fight against repeated false claims to disrupt our electoral process — from fake presidential electors attempting to undermine Arizona’s election, to a sham “audit” by Arizona Senate Republicans that was spurred by conspiracy theories.Significant reforms to immigration and border policies that would have addressed the crisis at our southern border were blocked by Trump because he didn’t want the problem solved. He wanted to exploit it for personal political gain.
And for every point against Trump, Giles had one supporting President Joe Biden and Harris and what they accomplished:
Since 2014, I have had the honor of being mayor of Mesa, the nation’s 36th-largest city and one of the most conservative. Under Trump, American cities didn’t get the support they deserved. Infrastructure week was made into a joke.But under the Biden-Harris administration, Mesa has seen historic federal funding for the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport, along with investments to make sure our streets and public transit systems benefit from modern technology.With the CHIPS Act, Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden are delivering thousands of new jobs to Arizonans and helping us grow critical industries.
Giles continued to make the case for Harris:
Vice President Harris is fighting to make sure Americans can get ahead and be safe from gun violence and to restore and protect the rights of women. Donald Trump, on the other hand, could enact the extreme and dangerous Project 2025 agenda if elected, which would roll back our rights and freedoms.We can choose a future for our children and grandchildren based on decency, respect and morality — or succumb to the crudeness and vulgarity of Trump and JD Vance and the far-right agenda they would champion.Arizona leaders like McCain and Sen. Mark Kelly have embodied the commitment to country over party. And it’s that same high caliber of character and leadership I see in Vice President Harris.
Giles is not the only border state politician endorsing Harris. Her campaign told the Associated Press that a slew of mayors from Arizona border cities — “Bisbee, Nogales, Somerton, and San Luis, as well as by Yuma County Supervisors Martin Porchas and Tony Reyes” — “backed” Harris for president. Somerton Mayor Gerardo Anaya said of Harris in a statement: “I trust her to meet the needs of border cities and towns without taking advantage of us for her own political gain, like her opponent.”
Jul 20, 2024
About The Oil
That's a big fat lie.
Yes, we hit Net Exporter status under Trump, but these things don't happen overnight, so the drive towards that goal had to have started earlier - like under Obama maybe(?)
And it's not like Biden couldn't have fucked it up if he'd wanted to - but apparently, he didn't want to.
As much as I hate the Dirty Fuels Cartel, and I wish we were doing smarter things, I have to say Biden's actually doing what Republicans are always carping about, which means they're being true to form - ie: they're a buncha lyin' sacks of shit.
So Trump's "drill baby drill" is bullshit (surprise surprise), cuz that's kinda what we've been doing this whole time. And it lends a little more credence to the already fairly well documented belief that Trump is willing to turn the US into a Russia-style hellscape in return for the billion dollar "donation" he's asked the Dirty Fuels Cartel to give him.
(ed note: It took me a minute to get my brain to make the distinction that 'Crude Oil' is not the same as 'Petroleum Products')
The United States became a total petroleum net exporter in 2020
In 2020, the United States became a net exporter of petroleum for the first time since at least 1949. In 2022, total petroleum exports were about 9.52 million barrels per day (b/d) and total petroleum imports were about 8.33 million b/d, making the United States an annual net total petroleum exporter for the third year in a row. Total petroleum net exports were about 1.19 million b/d in 2022. Also in 2022, the United States produced about 20.08 million b/d of petroleum and consumed about 20.01 million b/d. Although U.S. annual total petroleum exports were greater than total petroleum imports in 2020, 2021, and 2022, the United States still imported some crude oil and petroleum products from other countries to help to supply domestic demand for petroleum and to supply international markets.
The United States remained a net crude oil importer in 2022, importing about 6.28 million b/d of crude oil and exporting about 3.58 million b/d. Some of the crude oil that the U.S. imports is refined by U.S. refineries into petroleum products—such as gasoline, heating oil, diesel fuel, and jet fuel—that the U.S. later exports. Also, some of imported petroleum may be stored and later exported.
U.S. petroleum imports peaked in 2005
After generally increasing every year from 1954 through 2005, U.S. gross and net total petroleum imports peaked in 2005. Since 2005, increased domestic petroleum production and increased petroleum exports have helped to reduce annual total petroleum net imports.
Shares of U.S. petroleum imports from OPEC and Persian Gulf countries have declined, and the share of imports from Canada has increased
U.S. petroleum imports rose sharply in the 1970s, especially from members of OPEC. In 1977, when the United States exported relatively small amounts of petroleum, OPEC nations were the source of 70% of U.S. total petroleum imports and the source of 85% of U.S. crude oil imports.
Since 1977, the percentage shares of U.S. total petroleum and crude oil imports from OPEC countries have generally declined. Saudi Arabia, the largest OPEC petroleum exporter to the United States, was the source of 7% of U.S. total petroleum imports and 7% of U.S. crude oil imports. Saudi Arabia is also the greatest source of U.S. petroleum imports from Persian Gulf countries. About 12% of U.S. total petroleum imports and 12% of U.S. crude oil imports were from Persian Gulf countries in 2022.
Petroleum imports from Canada have increased significantly since the 1990s, and Canada is now the largest single source of U.S. total petroleum and crude oil imports. In 2022, Canada was the source of 52% of U.S. gross total petroleum imports and 60% of gross crude oil imports.
Most U.S. total petroleum exports are petroleum liquids and refined petroleum products
Since 1977, the percentage shares of U.S. total petroleum and crude oil imports from OPEC countries have generally declined. Saudi Arabia, the largest OPEC petroleum exporter to the United States, was the source of 7% of U.S. total petroleum imports and 7% of U.S. crude oil imports. Saudi Arabia is also the greatest source of U.S. petroleum imports from Persian Gulf countries. About 12% of U.S. total petroleum imports and 12% of U.S. crude oil imports were from Persian Gulf countries in 2022.
Petroleum imports from Canada have increased significantly since the 1990s, and Canada is now the largest single source of U.S. total petroleum and crude oil imports. In 2022, Canada was the source of 52% of U.S. gross total petroleum imports and 60% of gross crude oil imports.
Most U.S. total petroleum exports are petroleum liquids and refined petroleum products
Because of logistical, regulatory, and quality considerations, exporting some petroleum is the most economical way to meet the market's needs. For example, refiners in the U.S. Gulf Coast region frequently find that it makes economic sense to export some of their gasoline to Mexico rather than shipping it to the U.S. East Coast because lower-cost gasoline imports from Europe may be available to the East Coast.
Petroleum liquids include hydrocarbon gas liquids (HGLs). HGL exports, mainly propane, have increased substantially since 2008, and in 2022, were about 25% of total U.S. total petroleum gross exports.
Some companies purchase imported crude oil and gasoline
Although we cannot identify which companies sell imported gasoline or gasoline refined from imported oil, we publish data on the companies that import petroleum into the United States. A company that imports crude oil does not necessarily use those imports to produce the gasoline sold as that company's brand of gasoline. Gasoline from different refineries and import terminals is often combined when shipped by pipeline. Different companies owning service stations in the same area may be purchasing gasoline at the same bulk terminal, which may or may not include imported gasoline or gasoline refined from imported oil.
May 6, 2024
Not Gonna Happen
Marge The Impaler Greene will probably not get her way.
House set to vote on Marjorie Taylor Greene effort to remove Mike Johnson
Far-right congresswoman has spearheaded effort to oust fellow Republican as speaker but motion to vacate widely expected to fail
The House is expected to vote this week on a motion to remove Republican Mike Johnson as speaker, but the effort, spearheaded by hard-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, faces virtually no chance of success.
Greene announced on Wednesday that she would move forward with forcing a vote on Johnson’s removal this week, following through on a threat she first issued in late March. Greene has consistently attacked Johnson for advancing bills that have attracted widespread bipartisan support, such as the government spending proposal approved in March and the foreign aid package signed into law last month.
As she called for Johnson’s removal, Greene accused the speaker of abandoning his Republican principles in favor of Democratic priorities, such as Ukraine funding.
“Mike Johnson is giving [Democrats] everything they want,” Greene said Wednesday. “I think every member of Congress needs to take that vote and let the chips fall where they may. And so next week, I am going to be calling this motion to vacate.”
But Greene’s proposal is widely expected to fail, as House Democratic leaders indicated last week that they would vote to table, or kill, the motion to vacate the chair. In a statement issued on Tuesday, the three leaders cited the passage of the foreign aid package, which included nearly $61bn in funding for Ukraine, to justify their stance.
“At this moment, upon completion of our national security work, the time has come to turn the page on this chapter of pro-Putin Republican obstruction,” the leaders said. “We will vote to table Marjorie Taylor Greene’s motion to vacate the chair. If she invokes the motion, it will not succeed.”
Among House Republicans, Greene’s campaign has attracted little interest, as only two of her colleagues – Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Paul Gosar of Arizona – have expressed their support of the motion.
Although the effort will almost certainly fail, Greene can still force a vote on her motion to vacate. Current House rules stipulate that a single member of the chamber may “offer a privileged resolution declaring the Office of Speaker vacant”. Greene introduced such a resolution in March, but she stopped short of calling for a vote on the matter.
Greene plans to move forward with requesting a vote on the motion, which will force the House to take up the matter within two legislative days.
Before voting on removing the speaker, one of Johnson’s allies is expected to introduce a motion to table the proposal. When then speaker Kevin McCarthy was facing the threat of removal in October, his allies tried the same tactic, but the motion to table failed in a vote of 208 to 218.
This time around, the House will almost certainly be able to pass a motion to table Greene’s resolution. With House Democratic leadership signaling that they will support the motion to table and only two Republican colleagues joining Greene’s cause, she remains hundreds of votes short of the majority that she will need to remove the speaker. (However, Democrats are not expected to unanimously back the motion to table, as some have signaled they will oppose it or vote “present”.)
Johnson himself has appeared largely unbothered by Greene’s threats, criticizing her motion as “wrong for the Republican conference, wrong for the institution, and wrong for the country”. At a press conference on Tuesday, Johnson insisted that he remained laser-focused on advancing House Republicans’ legislative priorities.
“I have to do my job. We have to do what we believe to be the right thing,” Johnson said. “We need people who are serious about the job here to continue to do that job and get it done.”
If Johnson were ousted, he would become only the second House speaker in US history to be formally removed from the position – and yet he would also be the second speaker removed in less than a year. In October, a small group of Republicans joined Democrats in ousting McCarthy, making him the first House speaker to ever endure that humiliation.
McCarthy’s departure set off weeks of chaos in the House, as Republicans repeatedly failed in their efforts to choose a new speaker. The House remained at a complete standstill for three weeks, unable to conduct any official business, until Johnson (the conference’s fourth speaker nominee) won election.
Johnson has often referenced that embarrassing episode in recent weeks, as he has attempted to dissuade Republicans from joining Greene’s campaign.
“We saw what happened with the motion to vacate the last time,” Johnson said on Tuesday. “Congress was closed for three weeks. No one can afford for that to happen.”
And I'll resist crowing about how this could signal continued erosion of the assumed power of the Klown Kar Kauscus, because even though this may be the classic over-reach, it could take a long time for this thing to crumble and fall.
Far-right congresswoman has spearheaded effort to oust fellow Republican as speaker but motion to vacate widely expected to fail
The House is expected to vote this week on a motion to remove Republican Mike Johnson as speaker, but the effort, spearheaded by hard-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, faces virtually no chance of success.
Greene announced on Wednesday that she would move forward with forcing a vote on Johnson’s removal this week, following through on a threat she first issued in late March. Greene has consistently attacked Johnson for advancing bills that have attracted widespread bipartisan support, such as the government spending proposal approved in March and the foreign aid package signed into law last month.
As she called for Johnson’s removal, Greene accused the speaker of abandoning his Republican principles in favor of Democratic priorities, such as Ukraine funding.
There's that new oxymoron again: "Republican principles"
“Mike Johnson is giving [Democrats] everything they want,” Greene said Wednesday. “I think every member of Congress needs to take that vote and let the chips fall where they may. And so next week, I am going to be calling this motion to vacate.”
But Greene’s proposal is widely expected to fail, as House Democratic leaders indicated last week that they would vote to table, or kill, the motion to vacate the chair. In a statement issued on Tuesday, the three leaders cited the passage of the foreign aid package, which included nearly $61bn in funding for Ukraine, to justify their stance.
“At this moment, upon completion of our national security work, the time has come to turn the page on this chapter of pro-Putin Republican obstruction,” the leaders said. “We will vote to table Marjorie Taylor Greene’s motion to vacate the chair. If she invokes the motion, it will not succeed.”
Among House Republicans, Greene’s campaign has attracted little interest, as only two of her colleagues – Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Paul Gosar of Arizona – have expressed their support of the motion.
Although the effort will almost certainly fail, Greene can still force a vote on her motion to vacate. Current House rules stipulate that a single member of the chamber may “offer a privileged resolution declaring the Office of Speaker vacant”. Greene introduced such a resolution in March, but she stopped short of calling for a vote on the matter.
Greene plans to move forward with requesting a vote on the motion, which will force the House to take up the matter within two legislative days.
Before voting on removing the speaker, one of Johnson’s allies is expected to introduce a motion to table the proposal. When then speaker Kevin McCarthy was facing the threat of removal in October, his allies tried the same tactic, but the motion to table failed in a vote of 208 to 218.
This time around, the House will almost certainly be able to pass a motion to table Greene’s resolution. With House Democratic leadership signaling that they will support the motion to table and only two Republican colleagues joining Greene’s cause, she remains hundreds of votes short of the majority that she will need to remove the speaker. (However, Democrats are not expected to unanimously back the motion to table, as some have signaled they will oppose it or vote “present”.)
Johnson himself has appeared largely unbothered by Greene’s threats, criticizing her motion as “wrong for the Republican conference, wrong for the institution, and wrong for the country”. At a press conference on Tuesday, Johnson insisted that he remained laser-focused on advancing House Republicans’ legislative priorities.
“I have to do my job. We have to do what we believe to be the right thing,” Johnson said. “We need people who are serious about the job here to continue to do that job and get it done.”
If Johnson were ousted, he would become only the second House speaker in US history to be formally removed from the position – and yet he would also be the second speaker removed in less than a year. In October, a small group of Republicans joined Democrats in ousting McCarthy, making him the first House speaker to ever endure that humiliation.
McCarthy’s departure set off weeks of chaos in the House, as Republicans repeatedly failed in their efforts to choose a new speaker. The House remained at a complete standstill for three weeks, unable to conduct any official business, until Johnson (the conference’s fourth speaker nominee) won election.
Johnson has often referenced that embarrassing episode in recent weeks, as he has attempted to dissuade Republicans from joining Greene’s campaign.
“We saw what happened with the motion to vacate the last time,” Johnson said on Tuesday. “Congress was closed for three weeks. No one can afford for that to happen.”
Apr 26, 2024
And Another'n
It may be worth noting: In politics, more often than not, assholes have the upper hand simply because they're willing to be assholes.
Kern County supervisor stabbed by own child, under investigation for alleged sexual assault
BAKERSFIELD, CA – A Kern County supervisor was allegedly stabbed by his child and is now under investigation over allegations of sexual assault involving a separate child, Sheriff Donny Youngblood told reporters Thursday.
Youngblood said deputies seized 30 firearms, boxes of documents and electronic devices that may have captured the alleged assault at the home of Supervisor Zack Scrivner in Tehachapi, a city less than an hour east of Bakersfield. No charges have been filed.
Deputies were called to Scrivner’s home late Tuesday with reports he was allegedly “armed and suicidal.”
Kern County District Attorney Cynthia Zimmer, who is Scrivner’s aunt, contacted the sheriff himself in distress, Youngblood said. She believed Scrivner was suffering a “psychotic episode.” When authorities arrived, they found Scrivner had been stabbed twice “in the upper torso.”
An early investigation revealed the stabbing occurred over allegations that Scrivner sexually assaulted one of his four children, the sheriff said. When pressed on those allegations by a reporter, the sheriff responded: “I wouldn’t be standing up here if we didn’t believe something occurred.”
Youngblood said it appeared one of Scrivner’s children was defending a sibling when the alleged stabbing occurred. The names and ages of the children, who are minors, were not released to protect their identities, Youngblood said.
Evidence collected by the sheriff’s office will be processed outside of Kern County due to Scrivner’s relation to Zimmer, the district attorney. The California Attorney General’s Office was contacted to review the criminal case.
Scrivner was treated for non-life-threatening injuries at Kern Medical Hospital. Youngblood declined to say whether the supervisor had been detained for mental health reasons.
Deputies seized a small quantity of psychoactive mushrooms but no other illegal substances were found at the Kern County leader’s home, the sheriff added.
An attorney for Scrivner told local media after Youngblood's press conference the information the sheriff released was "not reliable."
"It's remarkable that the sheriff would come out at this point without conducting a full investigation and make allegations like that," Attorney H.A. Sala said.
Sala did not disclose where Scrivner was Thursday, and did not say whether Scrivner would resign or remain as county supervisor.
He disputed the allegation of sexual assault of a minor as "absolutely not reliable," and said he had reason to believe no evidence to prove the allegation was taken from the home. He also said an altercation at Scrivner's home involved a "disarming" of Scrivner, adding that a gun was taken away from him so he would not use it against himself.
Scrivner’s wife filed for divorce last month, according to court records. Scrivner was first elected to the Kern County Board of Supervisors in 2010.
Chairman David Couch said it was “inappropriate” to comment on the case involving his colleague pending the criminal investigation, according to a statement.
Kern County supervisor stabbed by own child, under investigation for alleged sexual assault
BAKERSFIELD, CA – A Kern County supervisor was allegedly stabbed by his child and is now under investigation over allegations of sexual assault involving a separate child, Sheriff Donny Youngblood told reporters Thursday.
Youngblood said deputies seized 30 firearms, boxes of documents and electronic devices that may have captured the alleged assault at the home of Supervisor Zack Scrivner in Tehachapi, a city less than an hour east of Bakersfield. No charges have been filed.
Deputies were called to Scrivner’s home late Tuesday with reports he was allegedly “armed and suicidal.”
Kern County District Attorney Cynthia Zimmer, who is Scrivner’s aunt, contacted the sheriff himself in distress, Youngblood said. She believed Scrivner was suffering a “psychotic episode.” When authorities arrived, they found Scrivner had been stabbed twice “in the upper torso.”
An early investigation revealed the stabbing occurred over allegations that Scrivner sexually assaulted one of his four children, the sheriff said. When pressed on those allegations by a reporter, the sheriff responded: “I wouldn’t be standing up here if we didn’t believe something occurred.”
Youngblood said it appeared one of Scrivner’s children was defending a sibling when the alleged stabbing occurred. The names and ages of the children, who are minors, were not released to protect their identities, Youngblood said.
Evidence collected by the sheriff’s office will be processed outside of Kern County due to Scrivner’s relation to Zimmer, the district attorney. The California Attorney General’s Office was contacted to review the criminal case.
Scrivner was treated for non-life-threatening injuries at Kern Medical Hospital. Youngblood declined to say whether the supervisor had been detained for mental health reasons.
Deputies seized a small quantity of psychoactive mushrooms but no other illegal substances were found at the Kern County leader’s home, the sheriff added.
An attorney for Scrivner told local media after Youngblood's press conference the information the sheriff released was "not reliable."
"It's remarkable that the sheriff would come out at this point without conducting a full investigation and make allegations like that," Attorney H.A. Sala said.
Sala did not disclose where Scrivner was Thursday, and did not say whether Scrivner would resign or remain as county supervisor.
He disputed the allegation of sexual assault of a minor as "absolutely not reliable," and said he had reason to believe no evidence to prove the allegation was taken from the home. He also said an altercation at Scrivner's home involved a "disarming" of Scrivner, adding that a gun was taken away from him so he would not use it against himself.
Scrivner’s wife filed for divorce last month, according to court records. Scrivner was first elected to the Kern County Board of Supervisors in 2010.
Chairman David Couch said it was “inappropriate” to comment on the case involving his colleague pending the criminal investigation, according to a statement.
Mar 12, 2024
Sure Seems Like It Tho'
It can't always be a Republican, but ...
A Google Docs list of sex criminals known to be Republicans or MAGA or "conservative" or "Christian" or or or.
Here's the first dozen - out of more than 1,200:
- Donald Trump is accused of sexual assault by more than two dozen women. He is accused of raping a 13-year-old girl, talked about having sex with his daughter, bragged of walking in on underage girls at pageants, claimed he can grab women by the pussy. He is convicted of sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll.
- Judge Roy Moore is accused of sexual assault and dating underage women.
- Jim Jordan is in Republican House leadership though he is accused of ignoring sexual assault of more than a hundred young men while a coach, dismissing it as locker room talk. Students have said they told him and he is said to have called the parents of one complainant asking them to get their son to back off.
- Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert sexually abused his high school students. He is outside the statute of limitations but was convicted of paying off/bribing some of his victims.
- Cobb County GOP Chairman Joseph Russell Dendy - child molesting - pleaded guilty, life sentence, parole possible in 30 years. He was 72.
- So-called "pro-life"/ antigay activist Howard Scott Heldreth was convicted of raping a child.
- GOP Ohio County Commissioner David Swartz convicted of raping two girls - released after only 5 years!!!! Back in prison after contacting one of his victims.
- Republican judge Mark Pazuhanich pleaded no contest to fondling a 10-year old girl.
- Republican anti-abortion activist Nicholas Morency pleaded guilty to possessingChild Sexual Abuse Material on his computer and offering a bounty to anybody who murders an abortion doctor.
- Republican Speaker of the House in PR Edison Misla Aldarondo was sentenced to 10 years in prison for raping his daughter between the ages of 9 and 17.
- Republican Mayor Philip Giordano is serving a 37-year sentence in federal prison for sexually abusing 8- and 10-year old girls.
- Republican campaign consultant Tom Shortridge was sentenced to three years probation for taking nude photographs of a 15-year old girl.
Feb 25, 2024
Questions
Until Republicans admit they've been hornswoggled, Putin will continue pulling the shit he's always pulled.
So I have to ask - why?
Why are Republicans always lining up with Putin?
And actually, are they really being hornswoggled, or are they willingly participating?
We're pretty deep in some pretty bad shit here, guys.
Oct 30, 2023
Disassociating
A spineless, soul-less chickenshit Republican attempting to un-Trump himself, but doing it by proxy. He praises Pence in order to signal his resurfacing dislike of Trump (and the MAGAbots) in that very Lindsey Graham-ish passive aggressive way.
There is no honor in any of this.
Sep 15, 2023
In Search Of A Beard
On the surface, it seems odd that Republicans express a need for their candidates to have a certain purity, but when it's painfully obvious they don't (eg: Trump), they just kinda make believe that he's pure, or that "he's a flawed man, but forgiven", or they insist on that purity, but not in a virginal way. ie: they want somebody who fucks, but only if that fucking is under official sanction of the church and civil law - and then, strictly heterosexual. Unless you're Lindsey Graham - or they need to take you down by implying something may be "wrong" with your sex life.
Tim Scott’s girlfriend
The unmarried Republican presidential candidate doesn’t like talking about his new relationship very much. But he is talking about it.
In June, as Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) began to get a little momentum in the presidential primary, a person working on behalf of one of Scott’s Republican opponents messaged me, asking to chat.
“Have you seen the video,” he asked over the phone, conspiratorially, “where he says he has a girlfriend?”
The video in question was from a May event organized by the news website Axios, where the interviewer asked the South Carolina senator about the possibility of becoming the first bachelor president since the 19th century. “I probably have more time, more energy and more latitude to do the job,” he replies. And then the senator adds — quickly, as an aside: “My girlfriend wants to see me when I come home.”
The Republican operative who called me wasn’t sure said girlfriend existed. He suggested I look into it. He followed up on our conversation with an email that included a dossier of Scott’s known personal relationships. “No fingerprints,” he said.
Scott’s romantic endeavors aren’t a scandal so much as they are a mystery. At 57, he’s never been married and rarely talks about girlfriends past or present. Late last year, as Scott was ramping up his run for president, I asked Jennifer DeCasper, his close friend and campaign manager, about the status of his dating life. “It’s nonexistent,” she said.
Now, Scott was suggesting otherwise. And the timing of that revelation seemed a bit convenient.
“He has staked so much on his personal story, character and faith,” said the operative, who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity because, well, that’s how people kick dirt around in this business. “He’s running as America’s pastor, so to speak, as he courts evangelicals in Iowa, and I think a lot of folks may wonder about his lack of a family.”
It seemed like a not-terribly-original attempt to stir up gossip among conservative voters about how an unmarried Republican candidate might be weird about women, or to raise questions about his sexuality within the party’s stubbornly homophobic factions. (And let’s just get this out of the way: This is not a wink-wink story that uses “single” in place of “gay.” Despite the retrograde assumptions people still like to make about wifeless men of a certain age, there really is nothing to suggest that Scott is anything other than a confirmed bachelor in the most literal sense of the phrase.)
I wasn’t interested in laundering innuendos for this Republican operative. At the same time, the whole exchange left me intrigued about how voter interest (or lack thereof) in Scott’s love life (or lack thereof) might illuminate the politics of marriage, family and masculinity in today’s GOP. Donald Trump scrambled the values of the “family values” party to such a degree that the base kept loving him despite the “locker-room talk” about grabbing women and the allegation — which Trump denies — that he had cheated on his third wife with a porn star.
And yet, for all the conventional wisdom that went out the door when Trump walked in, a long-held belief persists: that the absence of a wife and kids would make voters uneasy, especially the kind who vote in Republican primaries. Was that still true?
There is a legitimate public interest in the partner of any would-be president. A first lady in waiting is typically a close confidante whose values reflect on, and influence, a potential leader of the free world. If Scott and his mystery woman were still in the get-to-know-you phase, voters might feel the right to get to know her, too. Plus, a new relationship can be strange to navigate under ordinary circumstances, so what’s it like when one of the people is running for president?
I decided that, yes, I would try to figure out whether Tim Scott has a girlfriend.
But I would also investigate a deeper question: Does anybody care?
On a Tuesday morning in mid-August, Scott sat on an outdoor stage at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, discussing his thoughts on policies that allow parents to direct public funds to private schools (he’s for it) and China “spying on our kids” via TikTok (he’s against). While he spoke, DeCasper, his campaign manager, stood at the back of the crowd in a campaign T-shirt.
“Do you work for Tim Scott?” asked an 88-year-old man in a short-sleeved checkered button-up and a National Rifle Association cap.
The man was Max Hagen, a self-described “Fairaholic” who claimed to have shaken every president’s hand since Dwight D. Eisenhower.
“How come he doesn’t bring his wife and kids with him like all the other candidates do?” Hagen asked.
“Well,” DeCasper said, “that’s because he’s single.”
“He’s single?”
“He has a very lovely girlfriend.”
“How come he doesn’t bring her around?”
Frankly, the whole interaction was a bit on-the-nose. I had come to Iowa to try to get an idea of what people thought of his being a bachelor. DeCasper, who previously served as Scott’s chief of staff, had told me last year that, yes, there were times in his career when Scott had fretted about “the optics” of not having a spouse. More recently, however, she had told her boss not to worry about it. “Honey, it’s two-thousand-whatever, you’re fine,” she recalled saying to Scott. She had told me something similar last fall: “That’s old-school,” she’d said about needing a spouse to run for president. “We don’t operate that way anymore.”
It’s true that remaining single deep into adulthood is not as unusual as it used to be. In 1980, only 6 percent of 40-year-olds had never been married, according to Pew Research; in 2021, it was 25 percent. In politics, however, a family tableau remains core to “the optics.” The Republican primary field includes a conservative variety pack of Wife Guys — such as Ron DeSantis, who reportedly changed the way he pronounced his last name to the way his wife, Casey, preferred saying it, and Mike Pence, who reportedly won’t eat alone with a woman unless his wife, Karen, is also present. And although there have been unmarried candidates for president over the years — including the other Republican senator from South Carolina, Lindsey O. Graham, in 2015 — you would have to go all the way back to Grover Cleveland, in 1884, to find a bachelor who won. (Cleveland married two years later.) Before that, there was James Buchanan, who stayed single after winning in 1856. And yeah, it was a thing.
“An Old Bachelor is at most but a half man,” wrote the New York Evening Post in an editorial about Buchanan. “How can such a person make more than a half-President?”
Fast-forward to two-thousand-whatever. Despite an evolving understanding of gender — or, more likely, because of it — Republicans have made defining “masculinity” a part of their political playbook. This includes promoting some pretty old-school ideas about marriage.
“Men are meant to be husbands, to form the virtues of a husband in their souls,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) wrote in his book “Manhood.”
Before Trump, when Tim Miller was working in opposition research on the Republican side, finding a sex scandal used to be an effective way to topple an opponent. It may say something about our current political moment that Scott’s opponents might see an opportunity to damage him with a sexless scandal.
“What might be salient with Republican voters is not that he isn’t a perfect family man,” Miller told me, “but that he might not have the macho womanizing strength of the MAGA god-king.”
Scott’s current mission is to impress a particular subset of Republicans: the ones who will be participating in the Iowa caucuses early next year. What do they think of the idea of an unmarried, childless commander in chief?
“I think 10 or 20 years ago, people had a kind of romance with the first family,” said Bob Vander Plaats, the head of the Family Leader, a social conservative organization in Iowa. “But I think our country is at the point where being married isn’t the top qualifier. It probably doesn’t make the Top 50.”
Scott’s unmarriedness isn’t the only thing that distinguishes him from other Republicans who are trying to rise in the party. He is not a perpetually aggrieved, rhetorically aggressive culture-warrior type. He’s also a Black man who has spoken out against whitewashing America’s racial history and has experienced being stopped by the police frequently for offenses such as, as he put it in 2016, “driving a new car in the wrong neighborhood.”
At the same time, Scott does not believe there is systemic racism in America today, and lately he has been talking a lot about “backing the blue,” locking up violent criminals, securing the southern border and implementing a federal ban on abortions after the 15th week of a pregnancy, “at a minimum.”
When I asked Steve Deace, a conservative talk-show host from Iowa, about how Scott’s marital status plays into everything, Deace predicted that Republican voters aren’t going to evaluate the candidate on that factor alone — but that it could work against him if he doesn’t measure up in other ways.
“In the end, someone who is unmarried, hasn’t been part of a meaningful conservative fight and was on the wrong side of virtually every flash point in the last cycle just won’t pass muster,” he said. “If he were polling in double digits in November, there would be a super PAC running ads in Iowa pointing this stuff out.” (Scott is polling at 9 percent in the state, per an August poll by the respected Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer.)
For now, many of the Republicans checking out Scott at the Iowa fair didn’t really seem to specifically care that Scott was single.
“What matters to me is that he’s in favor of putting the family unit back together,” said Brian Heck, 60. “I’d be more worried about him having a bunch of illegitimate kids than having no kids.”
“I wouldn’t want someone to bring their children to the White House. That’s no place for them,” said Connie Hoksbergen, 57.
“I think it will just be less distracting,” said Greg Pollak, a pastor from Altoona, noting the drama that has lately swirled around presidential offspring. “It seems like the family have been a problem these past several years. I could even see it being an advantage.”
Scott’s parents didn’t have a marriage worth aspiring to. In his memoir, “America: A Redemption Story,” Scott writes that his father was a mercurial man who suffered mental trauma while serving in Vietnam, and whose drinking and tirades drove his mother — along with Scott and his older brother — out of the house.
As a teenager, Scott found a father figure in a man named John Moniz, the owner of a Chick-fil-A franchise, who mentored Scott and taught him about conservative values. Scott was a charmer, even back then, according to Brian Moniz, John’s son and Scott’s friend since childhood. Scott and the younger Moniz used to spend a lot of time hanging around the mall and flirting with girls.
“He’s always had a way with the ladies,” Moniz said.
I’ve seen Scott flirt. It was 2012, and we were having lunch at Clyde’s in downtown Washington. A waitress came up and put her hand on his freshly shaved (and perspiring) head.
“I think you’re hot,” she told him. “I can feel your heat from over here.”
“Most people say I’m hot,” Scott said. “I agree.”
A few days after that, I asked Scott whether he was still a virgin.
The question wasn’t quite as prurient as it might sound. I had been assigned to write an article about Scott, then a freshman member of Congress, for National Journal. In my research, I’d found a 1995 interview he’d done with the Charleston Post and Courier in which he’d discussed speaking to students about the importance of abstinence until marriage. “Talking to teens and college students about sexual purity is a hot ticket for me because I’m single,” Scott, then a 30-year-old city councilman, had told the paper. “I know what it means to struggle on the issue of sex. But it’s worth the wait.” Seventeen years later, he was still unmarried, and sex education was a political issue, so it seemed fair to ask whether the congressman — who, according to the same article, once drove a Nissan with a bumper sticker that said “True Love Waits” — practiced what he preached.
“Not as well as I did then,” he said, adding that he still believed sex before marriage was a “sin” and that he wished “we all had more patience.”
Around the time that article ran in National Journal, The Washington Post reported that Scott had taken the general manager of a Charleston lingerie store called Bits of Lace on a trip to an exclusive resort. Less than a year later, anonymous sources told a gossip blog that the two had broken up.
They preach a hard-n-fast moral code, but then practice situational ethics. And then they bitch about how nobody has any principles anymore, looking the other way when their own guys screw the proverbial pooch, and then they pat themselves on the back for being charitable and inclusive and forgiving.
Gosh - it's almost as if they don't want us to be able stand on any solid ground that we can really count on.
"Every time we call it a game, you call it a business. And every time we call it a business, you say it's just a game."
Tim Scott’s girlfriend
The unmarried Republican presidential candidate doesn’t like talking about his new relationship very much. But he is talking about it.
In June, as Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) began to get a little momentum in the presidential primary, a person working on behalf of one of Scott’s Republican opponents messaged me, asking to chat.
“Have you seen the video,” he asked over the phone, conspiratorially, “where he says he has a girlfriend?”
The video in question was from a May event organized by the news website Axios, where the interviewer asked the South Carolina senator about the possibility of becoming the first bachelor president since the 19th century. “I probably have more time, more energy and more latitude to do the job,” he replies. And then the senator adds — quickly, as an aside: “My girlfriend wants to see me when I come home.”
The Republican operative who called me wasn’t sure said girlfriend existed. He suggested I look into it. He followed up on our conversation with an email that included a dossier of Scott’s known personal relationships. “No fingerprints,” he said.
Scott’s romantic endeavors aren’t a scandal so much as they are a mystery. At 57, he’s never been married and rarely talks about girlfriends past or present. Late last year, as Scott was ramping up his run for president, I asked Jennifer DeCasper, his close friend and campaign manager, about the status of his dating life. “It’s nonexistent,” she said.
Now, Scott was suggesting otherwise. And the timing of that revelation seemed a bit convenient.
“He has staked so much on his personal story, character and faith,” said the operative, who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity because, well, that’s how people kick dirt around in this business. “He’s running as America’s pastor, so to speak, as he courts evangelicals in Iowa, and I think a lot of folks may wonder about his lack of a family.”
It seemed like a not-terribly-original attempt to stir up gossip among conservative voters about how an unmarried Republican candidate might be weird about women, or to raise questions about his sexuality within the party’s stubbornly homophobic factions. (And let’s just get this out of the way: This is not a wink-wink story that uses “single” in place of “gay.” Despite the retrograde assumptions people still like to make about wifeless men of a certain age, there really is nothing to suggest that Scott is anything other than a confirmed bachelor in the most literal sense of the phrase.)
I wasn’t interested in laundering innuendos for this Republican operative. At the same time, the whole exchange left me intrigued about how voter interest (or lack thereof) in Scott’s love life (or lack thereof) might illuminate the politics of marriage, family and masculinity in today’s GOP. Donald Trump scrambled the values of the “family values” party to such a degree that the base kept loving him despite the “locker-room talk” about grabbing women and the allegation — which Trump denies — that he had cheated on his third wife with a porn star.
And yet, for all the conventional wisdom that went out the door when Trump walked in, a long-held belief persists: that the absence of a wife and kids would make voters uneasy, especially the kind who vote in Republican primaries. Was that still true?
There is a legitimate public interest in the partner of any would-be president. A first lady in waiting is typically a close confidante whose values reflect on, and influence, a potential leader of the free world. If Scott and his mystery woman were still in the get-to-know-you phase, voters might feel the right to get to know her, too. Plus, a new relationship can be strange to navigate under ordinary circumstances, so what’s it like when one of the people is running for president?
I decided that, yes, I would try to figure out whether Tim Scott has a girlfriend.
But I would also investigate a deeper question: Does anybody care?
On a Tuesday morning in mid-August, Scott sat on an outdoor stage at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, discussing his thoughts on policies that allow parents to direct public funds to private schools (he’s for it) and China “spying on our kids” via TikTok (he’s against). While he spoke, DeCasper, his campaign manager, stood at the back of the crowd in a campaign T-shirt.
“Do you work for Tim Scott?” asked an 88-year-old man in a short-sleeved checkered button-up and a National Rifle Association cap.
The man was Max Hagen, a self-described “Fairaholic” who claimed to have shaken every president’s hand since Dwight D. Eisenhower.
“How come he doesn’t bring his wife and kids with him like all the other candidates do?” Hagen asked.
“Well,” DeCasper said, “that’s because he’s single.”
“He’s single?”
“He has a very lovely girlfriend.”
“How come he doesn’t bring her around?”
Frankly, the whole interaction was a bit on-the-nose. I had come to Iowa to try to get an idea of what people thought of his being a bachelor. DeCasper, who previously served as Scott’s chief of staff, had told me last year that, yes, there were times in his career when Scott had fretted about “the optics” of not having a spouse. More recently, however, she had told her boss not to worry about it. “Honey, it’s two-thousand-whatever, you’re fine,” she recalled saying to Scott. She had told me something similar last fall: “That’s old-school,” she’d said about needing a spouse to run for president. “We don’t operate that way anymore.”
It’s true that remaining single deep into adulthood is not as unusual as it used to be. In 1980, only 6 percent of 40-year-olds had never been married, according to Pew Research; in 2021, it was 25 percent. In politics, however, a family tableau remains core to “the optics.” The Republican primary field includes a conservative variety pack of Wife Guys — such as Ron DeSantis, who reportedly changed the way he pronounced his last name to the way his wife, Casey, preferred saying it, and Mike Pence, who reportedly won’t eat alone with a woman unless his wife, Karen, is also present. And although there have been unmarried candidates for president over the years — including the other Republican senator from South Carolina, Lindsey O. Graham, in 2015 — you would have to go all the way back to Grover Cleveland, in 1884, to find a bachelor who won. (Cleveland married two years later.) Before that, there was James Buchanan, who stayed single after winning in 1856. And yeah, it was a thing.
“An Old Bachelor is at most but a half man,” wrote the New York Evening Post in an editorial about Buchanan. “How can such a person make more than a half-President?”
Fast-forward to two-thousand-whatever. Despite an evolving understanding of gender — or, more likely, because of it — Republicans have made defining “masculinity” a part of their political playbook. This includes promoting some pretty old-school ideas about marriage.
“Men are meant to be husbands, to form the virtues of a husband in their souls,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) wrote in his book “Manhood.”
Before Trump, when Tim Miller was working in opposition research on the Republican side, finding a sex scandal used to be an effective way to topple an opponent. It may say something about our current political moment that Scott’s opponents might see an opportunity to damage him with a sexless scandal.
“What might be salient with Republican voters is not that he isn’t a perfect family man,” Miller told me, “but that he might not have the macho womanizing strength of the MAGA god-king.”
Scott’s current mission is to impress a particular subset of Republicans: the ones who will be participating in the Iowa caucuses early next year. What do they think of the idea of an unmarried, childless commander in chief?
“I think 10 or 20 years ago, people had a kind of romance with the first family,” said Bob Vander Plaats, the head of the Family Leader, a social conservative organization in Iowa. “But I think our country is at the point where being married isn’t the top qualifier. It probably doesn’t make the Top 50.”
Scott’s unmarriedness isn’t the only thing that distinguishes him from other Republicans who are trying to rise in the party. He is not a perpetually aggrieved, rhetorically aggressive culture-warrior type. He’s also a Black man who has spoken out against whitewashing America’s racial history and has experienced being stopped by the police frequently for offenses such as, as he put it in 2016, “driving a new car in the wrong neighborhood.”
At the same time, Scott does not believe there is systemic racism in America today, and lately he has been talking a lot about “backing the blue,” locking up violent criminals, securing the southern border and implementing a federal ban on abortions after the 15th week of a pregnancy, “at a minimum.”
When I asked Steve Deace, a conservative talk-show host from Iowa, about how Scott’s marital status plays into everything, Deace predicted that Republican voters aren’t going to evaluate the candidate on that factor alone — but that it could work against him if he doesn’t measure up in other ways.
“In the end, someone who is unmarried, hasn’t been part of a meaningful conservative fight and was on the wrong side of virtually every flash point in the last cycle just won’t pass muster,” he said. “If he were polling in double digits in November, there would be a super PAC running ads in Iowa pointing this stuff out.” (Scott is polling at 9 percent in the state, per an August poll by the respected Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer.)
For now, many of the Republicans checking out Scott at the Iowa fair didn’t really seem to specifically care that Scott was single.
“What matters to me is that he’s in favor of putting the family unit back together,” said Brian Heck, 60. “I’d be more worried about him having a bunch of illegitimate kids than having no kids.”
A Republican voter is worried about a black man having a bunch of illegitimate kids.
Is that just too fucking perfect or what?
“I wouldn’t want someone to bring their children to the White House. That’s no place for them,” said Connie Hoksbergen, 57.
“I think it will just be less distracting,” said Greg Pollak, a pastor from Altoona, noting the drama that has lately swirled around presidential offspring. “It seems like the family have been a problem these past several years. I could even see it being an advantage.”
Scott’s parents didn’t have a marriage worth aspiring to. In his memoir, “America: A Redemption Story,” Scott writes that his father was a mercurial man who suffered mental trauma while serving in Vietnam, and whose drinking and tirades drove his mother — along with Scott and his older brother — out of the house.
As a teenager, Scott found a father figure in a man named John Moniz, the owner of a Chick-fil-A franchise, who mentored Scott and taught him about conservative values. Scott was a charmer, even back then, according to Brian Moniz, John’s son and Scott’s friend since childhood. Scott and the younger Moniz used to spend a lot of time hanging around the mall and flirting with girls.
“He’s always had a way with the ladies,” Moniz said.
I’ve seen Scott flirt. It was 2012, and we were having lunch at Clyde’s in downtown Washington. A waitress came up and put her hand on his freshly shaved (and perspiring) head.
“I think you’re hot,” she told him. “I can feel your heat from over here.”
“Most people say I’m hot,” Scott said. “I agree.”
A few days after that, I asked Scott whether he was still a virgin.
The question wasn’t quite as prurient as it might sound. I had been assigned to write an article about Scott, then a freshman member of Congress, for National Journal. In my research, I’d found a 1995 interview he’d done with the Charleston Post and Courier in which he’d discussed speaking to students about the importance of abstinence until marriage. “Talking to teens and college students about sexual purity is a hot ticket for me because I’m single,” Scott, then a 30-year-old city councilman, had told the paper. “I know what it means to struggle on the issue of sex. But it’s worth the wait.” Seventeen years later, he was still unmarried, and sex education was a political issue, so it seemed fair to ask whether the congressman — who, according to the same article, once drove a Nissan with a bumper sticker that said “True Love Waits” — practiced what he preached.
“Not as well as I did then,” he said, adding that he still believed sex before marriage was a “sin” and that he wished “we all had more patience.”
Around the time that article ran in National Journal, The Washington Post reported that Scott had taken the general manager of a Charleston lingerie store called Bits of Lace on a trip to an exclusive resort. Less than a year later, anonymous sources told a gossip blog that the two had broken up.
Since then, Scott has occasionally hinted at past and present girlfriends while never mentioning anyone by name, which only led to questions like this from CNN’s Dana Bash in 2017:
“What gives?” she asked about his unmarried status.
Scott then surprised Bash by offering an otherwise unreported tidbit: that he had once been engaged.
“I didn’t know that,” Bash said, to which Scott offered a deadpan reply: “Shhh, don’t tell anyone.”
Apparently nobody told Brian Moniz, the childhood friend.
“No, I don’t think he’s ever been engaged,” he said when I spoke to him in August.
As for any current girlfriend, Moniz said: “I am not aware of anyone at this time.”
Playing things close to the vest doesn’t necessarily play well with everyone. A few weeks ago, Axios reported that Scott’s privacy about his personal life was an issue with conservative donors who might otherwise consider backing his candidacy. “The joke has always been that he is secretly gay or something,” the unnamed operative told me. “I don’t really buy that. But he’s got an interesting history.” The dossier he’d sent included details about Scott having owned property and shared a jet ski with male friends.
Scott is not gay, DeCasper told me, and nobody who knows him suggested otherwise. But the rumor mill is lazy, and the “joke” about the senator’s sexuality still gets repeated. Early last year, for example, Matt Schlapp, the head of the Conservative Political Action Conference, asked me whom I thought Trump might choose as his 2024 running mate. When I mentioned Scott, Schlapp replied: “You think he picks a gay vice president?” (Incidentally, Schlapp, who is married with five kids, was later accused of unwanted groping by a male staffer on Herschel Walker’s Senate campaign. He has denied the allegations.)
According to Moniz, Scott’s bachelorhood is a simple case of being married to his job.
“It’s been a challenge, mainly for the females in his life over the years,” Moniz said. “They get put on the back burner. Women have hung around for a while, and they realize they’re not going to be the top priority right now.”
Bobby Harrell, who has been friends with Scott since the two served together in the South Carolina State House, told me that Scott talked often about how much he admired Harrell’s 44-year marriage and “wished for something like it someday.” In 2018, Scott told Politico that he wanted to have six(!) children once he found “Mrs. Right.”
“Every time my wife talks to him,” Al Jenkins, a longtime friend and current staffer, told me in 2020, “she says, ‘Who is she, and when are we going to meet her?’”
Now, three years later, I had the same questions. Six friends I spoke with said they didn’t know about a woman in his life. Others never returned my calls. The campaign, of course, was well aware that I was trying to get to the bottom of Scott’s love life. They were polite, but not exactly eager to spill.
Finally, with one debate out of the way and the end of summer approaching, Scott’s campaign did agree to make the principal available for a brief interview on the subject.
And so, two weeks ago, I flew to South Carolina to ask a 57-year-old presidential candidate whether he had a girlfriend.
“If I had my druthers, we wouldn’t be doing this,” Scott said.
We were sitting at a conference table at the DoubleTree hotel in North Charleston. Scott was looking sharp in a blue suit with no tie. His head was freshly shaved. A security guard stood sentry outside the door, and Scott was flanked by three different spokespeople. The whole thing felt a little like a one-man news conference, or perhaps a deposition. He came armed with talking points about how American voters cared about their own families, not about his family.
“I have been very protective of my family and my loved ones,” he told me. “I signed up for this. If we make it, she will be signing up for it as well, but at least then she’ll know what she’s getting into. But until then, the only conversation I’m going to have about her in any form or fashion is right now.”
For months, Scott explained, a friend from church had been trying to set him up with a woman the friend knew. Scott had told him that he wasn’t ready for a relationship. Then, late last year, the friend texted Scott the woman’s photo.
“You know what?” Scott recalled telling his friend after seeing the picture. “I’ve prayed on it. Tell me about her again?”
He got the woman’s number. They started talking, hitting it off with discussions about God and using a phone app to do a Bible study together. Scott said he loved her laugh. They had dinner at a downtown Charleston restaurant. She got the steak, he got the swordfish, and they shared even though, as Scott would later learn, she didn’t care for swordfish. They played pickleball, and Scott was embarrassed to find out that he was the “weak man on the court.”
He wouldn’t tell me her name, and the campaign declined to make her available to chat, even off the record. Technically I can’t verify that she exists, except to note that for a presidential campaign to essentially reverse-catfish America would be insane. (By way of corroboration, DeCasper offered that she’s personally hung out with her at the zoo.)
Scott said he had theories about why other campaigns might want to draw attention to his being single. It’s just a way to “sow seeds of doubt” about his campaign, he said, a way “to say that, ‘That guy isn’t one of us.’”
“It’s like a different form of discrimination or bias,” Scott said. “You can’t say I’m Black, because that would be terrible, so find something else that you can attack.”
Throwing himself into work was always kind of a defense mechanism, he said — a response to watching his parents’ marriage blow up when he was a child. “For me, it was the defining moment of my entire life,” he said. “It creates scar tissue. One thing you can do when that happens is run away or run toward something else. And I ran toward purpose.”
What, other than a photo and some prayerful reflection, might have made Scott decide to run toward a relationship at the same time as he’s running, harder than ever, toward his life’s purpose? A cynic would note that, when a person sets out to run for president, nearly everything they do in the lead-up to the election is done with a campaign in mind, and perhaps Scott thought finding a partner would help his candidacy.
As the interview came to a close, I half expected the door to the conference room to swing open, and for the mystery woman to waltz in for a dramatic reveal.
Then again, Scott isn’t the reality TV guy in the race.
“I can’t imagine dragging her onto the campaign trail unless I have the intention of marrying her,” he said. “I hope that happens, to be honest with you.”
He paused.
“I guess I should be careful about how I say that,” Scott said, with a sheepish grin. “Strike that comment.”
He laughed. His relationship and campaign were both new. It’s hard to know, this early, if any of this is real.
“What gives?” she asked about his unmarried status.
Scott then surprised Bash by offering an otherwise unreported tidbit: that he had once been engaged.
“I didn’t know that,” Bash said, to which Scott offered a deadpan reply: “Shhh, don’t tell anyone.”
Apparently nobody told Brian Moniz, the childhood friend.
“No, I don’t think he’s ever been engaged,” he said when I spoke to him in August.
As for any current girlfriend, Moniz said: “I am not aware of anyone at this time.”
Playing things close to the vest doesn’t necessarily play well with everyone. A few weeks ago, Axios reported that Scott’s privacy about his personal life was an issue with conservative donors who might otherwise consider backing his candidacy. “The joke has always been that he is secretly gay or something,” the unnamed operative told me. “I don’t really buy that. But he’s got an interesting history.” The dossier he’d sent included details about Scott having owned property and shared a jet ski with male friends.
Scott is not gay, DeCasper told me, and nobody who knows him suggested otherwise. But the rumor mill is lazy, and the “joke” about the senator’s sexuality still gets repeated. Early last year, for example, Matt Schlapp, the head of the Conservative Political Action Conference, asked me whom I thought Trump might choose as his 2024 running mate. When I mentioned Scott, Schlapp replied: “You think he picks a gay vice president?” (Incidentally, Schlapp, who is married with five kids, was later accused of unwanted groping by a male staffer on Herschel Walker’s Senate campaign. He has denied the allegations.)
According to Moniz, Scott’s bachelorhood is a simple case of being married to his job.
“It’s been a challenge, mainly for the females in his life over the years,” Moniz said. “They get put on the back burner. Women have hung around for a while, and they realize they’re not going to be the top priority right now.”
Bobby Harrell, who has been friends with Scott since the two served together in the South Carolina State House, told me that Scott talked often about how much he admired Harrell’s 44-year marriage and “wished for something like it someday.” In 2018, Scott told Politico that he wanted to have six(!) children once he found “Mrs. Right.”
“Every time my wife talks to him,” Al Jenkins, a longtime friend and current staffer, told me in 2020, “she says, ‘Who is she, and when are we going to meet her?’”
Now, three years later, I had the same questions. Six friends I spoke with said they didn’t know about a woman in his life. Others never returned my calls. The campaign, of course, was well aware that I was trying to get to the bottom of Scott’s love life. They were polite, but not exactly eager to spill.
Finally, with one debate out of the way and the end of summer approaching, Scott’s campaign did agree to make the principal available for a brief interview on the subject.
And so, two weeks ago, I flew to South Carolina to ask a 57-year-old presidential candidate whether he had a girlfriend.
“If I had my druthers, we wouldn’t be doing this,” Scott said.
We were sitting at a conference table at the DoubleTree hotel in North Charleston. Scott was looking sharp in a blue suit with no tie. His head was freshly shaved. A security guard stood sentry outside the door, and Scott was flanked by three different spokespeople. The whole thing felt a little like a one-man news conference, or perhaps a deposition. He came armed with talking points about how American voters cared about their own families, not about his family.
“I have been very protective of my family and my loved ones,” he told me. “I signed up for this. If we make it, she will be signing up for it as well, but at least then she’ll know what she’s getting into. But until then, the only conversation I’m going to have about her in any form or fashion is right now.”
For months, Scott explained, a friend from church had been trying to set him up with a woman the friend knew. Scott had told him that he wasn’t ready for a relationship. Then, late last year, the friend texted Scott the woman’s photo.
“You know what?” Scott recalled telling his friend after seeing the picture. “I’ve prayed on it. Tell me about her again?”
He got the woman’s number. They started talking, hitting it off with discussions about God and using a phone app to do a Bible study together. Scott said he loved her laugh. They had dinner at a downtown Charleston restaurant. She got the steak, he got the swordfish, and they shared even though, as Scott would later learn, she didn’t care for swordfish. They played pickleball, and Scott was embarrassed to find out that he was the “weak man on the court.”
He wouldn’t tell me her name, and the campaign declined to make her available to chat, even off the record. Technically I can’t verify that she exists, except to note that for a presidential campaign to essentially reverse-catfish America would be insane. (By way of corroboration, DeCasper offered that she’s personally hung out with her at the zoo.)
Scott said he had theories about why other campaigns might want to draw attention to his being single. It’s just a way to “sow seeds of doubt” about his campaign, he said, a way “to say that, ‘That guy isn’t one of us.’”
“It’s like a different form of discrimination or bias,” Scott said. “You can’t say I’m Black, because that would be terrible, so find something else that you can attack.”
Throwing himself into work was always kind of a defense mechanism, he said — a response to watching his parents’ marriage blow up when he was a child. “For me, it was the defining moment of my entire life,” he said. “It creates scar tissue. One thing you can do when that happens is run away or run toward something else. And I ran toward purpose.”
What, other than a photo and some prayerful reflection, might have made Scott decide to run toward a relationship at the same time as he’s running, harder than ever, toward his life’s purpose? A cynic would note that, when a person sets out to run for president, nearly everything they do in the lead-up to the election is done with a campaign in mind, and perhaps Scott thought finding a partner would help his candidacy.
As the interview came to a close, I half expected the door to the conference room to swing open, and for the mystery woman to waltz in for a dramatic reveal.
Then again, Scott isn’t the reality TV guy in the race.
“I can’t imagine dragging her onto the campaign trail unless I have the intention of marrying her,” he said. “I hope that happens, to be honest with you.”
He paused.
“I guess I should be careful about how I say that,” Scott said, with a sheepish grin. “Strike that comment.”
He laughed. His relationship and campaign were both new. It’s hard to know, this early, if any of this is real.
Aug 3, 2023
"Leadership"
The Republican Conference in the US House of Representatives is what you get when you allow the radical libertarian anti-government hyper-individualist "philosophy" to run itself out to the logical extreme.
It's the Geejy Bird up close and personal.
Jun 21, 2023
You Little Bitch
Marj and Bobo got after it pretty good on the House floor. No ripped pantyhose or hair-pulling or busted glasses though.
Republicans have long made their dissatisfaction with President Joe Biden known, with some advocating for impeachment. Earlier this year, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced articles of impeachment, but Boebert took the threat a step further and introduced the articles of impeachment against Biden in a strategic way that would force a floor vote.
Some Republican officials expect the motion to worsen relationships in the Republican Party, and McCarthy is asking the legislators to vote down the proposal when it reaches the House floor.
Boebert announced the motion on Twitter on Tuesday, citing Biden's handling of the U.S.-Mexico border as the reason behind the articles of impeachment.
"The American people can no longer be subjected to a President who refuses to secure our borders. His open border agenda has put every American at greater risk, allowed human traffickers to thrive and given the cartel a free pass. He is not fit to remain as Commander in Chief," she tweeted.
But McCartney advised his party to vote against Boebert's proposal, urging them to bide their time and wait for the right moment before impeaching Biden.
According to a tweet from Punch Bowl News founder Jake Sherman, McCarthy suggested that by voting in favor of Boebert's proposal, House Republicans could lose the majority they just fought so hard to win. He reminded his colleagues that Republicans have taken back the House only five times in the past century: 1946, 1952, 1994, 2010 and 2022.
"But the first 2 times, we lost it right away the next cycle. The second two times we held it for 12 and 8 years," he said, according to the tweet. "What majority do we want to be? Give it right back in 2 years or hold it for a decade and make real change. How are we going to censure [Representative] Adam Schiff for abusing his position to lie and force an impeachment and then turn around and do it ourselves the next day?"
McCarthy reminded House Republicans that House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer is already investigating Biden, and if the investigation leads to articles of impeachment, then the House should vote to impeach.
Boebert's proposal also annoyed Greene, who allegedly called Boebert a "copycat" for offering a Biden impeachment resolution similar to the one she proposed, according to a tweet by CNN reporter Annie Grayer.
Boebert and Greene have disagreed in the past, such as when House Republicans finally voted in favor of McCarthy for speaker. McCarthy secured the position after 15 rounds of voting, with Greene voting in favor of McCarthy and Boebert voting against him.
Newsweek reported on Tuesday that one political science expert called Boebert's act a "political stunt, pure and simple."
"No one wants to be seen as sticking up for the White House or failing to go after the president. At the same time, they know that an impeachment vote is both substantively baseless and would backfire politically."
It doesn't look like much, but people within earshot have said it was pretty nasty.
It remains to be seen, of course, if the followers of either one will attack the other - rhetorically or bodily or whatever.
We might also look forward to a time when the "grownups" in GOP Leadership step up and try to tell these idiots they're doing harm to their own ambitions, and they ... nah, never mind.
But wait - what's this? Kevin McCarthy speaks.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is urging House Republicans to vote against a proposal from Representative Lauren Boebert this week.
Republicans have long made their dissatisfaction with President Joe Biden known, with some advocating for impeachment. Earlier this year, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced articles of impeachment, but Boebert took the threat a step further and introduced the articles of impeachment against Biden in a strategic way that would force a floor vote.
Some Republican officials expect the motion to worsen relationships in the Republican Party, and McCarthy is asking the legislators to vote down the proposal when it reaches the House floor.
Boebert announced the motion on Twitter on Tuesday, citing Biden's handling of the U.S.-Mexico border as the reason behind the articles of impeachment.
"The American people can no longer be subjected to a President who refuses to secure our borders. His open border agenda has put every American at greater risk, allowed human traffickers to thrive and given the cartel a free pass. He is not fit to remain as Commander in Chief," she tweeted.
But McCartney advised his party to vote against Boebert's proposal, urging them to bide their time and wait for the right moment before impeaching Biden.
According to a tweet from Punch Bowl News founder Jake Sherman, McCarthy suggested that by voting in favor of Boebert's proposal, House Republicans could lose the majority they just fought so hard to win. He reminded his colleagues that Republicans have taken back the House only five times in the past century: 1946, 1952, 1994, 2010 and 2022.
"But the first 2 times, we lost it right away the next cycle. The second two times we held it for 12 and 8 years," he said, according to the tweet. "What majority do we want to be? Give it right back in 2 years or hold it for a decade and make real change. How are we going to censure [Representative] Adam Schiff for abusing his position to lie and force an impeachment and then turn around and do it ourselves the next day?"
Uh - 'scuse me, Kev - when did you start getting all ookie about Republicans looking like a buncha fuckin' hypocrites?
McCarthy reminded House Republicans that House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer is already investigating Biden, and if the investigation leads to articles of impeachment, then the House should vote to impeach.
Boebert and Greene have disagreed in the past, such as when House Republicans finally voted in favor of McCarthy for speaker. McCarthy secured the position after 15 rounds of voting, with Greene voting in favor of McCarthy and Boebert voting against him.
Newsweek reported on Tuesday that one political science expert called Boebert's act a "political stunt, pure and simple."
"No one wants to be seen as sticking up for the White House or failing to go after the president. At the same time, they know that an impeachment vote is both substantively baseless and would backfire politically."
What does and doesn't amaze me is that people like Boebert and Greene seem to have no fucking clue how badly they're being manipulated by handlers and staffers who are puppeteering the fuck out of them - it's like they think they're actually smart enough and skilled enough to do this shit on their own.
High on their own supply.
May 2, 2023
Ya Mean It Wasn't A Drag Queen?
If immigrants - and brown people and queer people and all those "other" people - are the threat Republicans love to say they are, then most of the really disgusting scum-suckers wouldn't be middle class white guys who rape and murder children, or gun freaks who think they can kill their way out of their problems.
This story raises questions in my fevered little brain - it's pretty disturbing and more than a little confusing:
Henryetta, Okla. — Authorities searching a rural Oklahoma property for two missing teenagers discovered the bodies of seven people Monday, including the suspected remains of the teens and a convicted sex offender who was sought along with them, the local sheriff said.
Okmulgee County Sheriff Eddy Rice said the state medical examiner will have to confirm the identities of the victims, but "we believe that we have found the persons." He said the bodies were believed to include those of 14-year-old Ivy Webster and 16-year-old Brittany Brewer, along with Jesse McFadden, the felon authorities had said the teens were traveling with.
"We are no longer looking," Rice said. "We believe to have found everything that we were seeking this morning. Our hearts go out to the families and friends, schoolmates and everyone else."
He declined to provide details of how they died or other details.
The bodies were found during a search near the town of Henryetta, a town of about 6,000 about 90 miles east of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation spokesman Gerald Davidson said.
A missing endangered person advisory was issued earlier in the day for the two teenagers but it was canceled Monday afternoon by the Oklahoma Highway Patrol.
The advisory for Webster and Brewer had said they were reportedly seen traveling with McFadden, who was on the state's sex offender registry. Oklahoma Department of Corrections prison records show McFadden was convicted of first-degree rape in 2003 and released in October 2020.
Court records show McFadden was scheduled to appear in court Monday for the start of a jury trial on charges of soliciting sexual conduct with a minor and possession of child pornography. A message left Monday evening with McFadden's attorney in that case wasn't immediately returned.
Brittany Brewer's father told CBS Tulsa affiliate KOTV that one of the bodies discovered was his daughter.
"Brittany was an outgoing person. She was actually selected to be Miss Henryetta ... coming up in July for this Miss National Miss pageant in Tulsa. And now she ain't gonna make it because she's dead. She's gone," Nathan Brewer said.
CBS Oklahoma City affiliate KWTV quotes him as saying he's in shock. "I'm lost. I'm really lost," he said. "End of school's fixing to be here, she ain't gonna be there. I mean, she's gone. I have five kids but she was like my sidekick. She helped me on the cars, she helped me everywhere, and she's gone."
At a Monday night vigil, Brewer told hundreds of people: "It's just a parent's worst nightmare, and I'm living it."
He said his daughter had aspired to be a teacher or a veterinarian.
Henryetta Public Schools posted on Facebook and its website that it is grieving over the loss of several of its students.
"Our hearts are hurting, and we have considered what would be best for our students in the coming days," the note said. Officials said school would be in session, and mental health professionals and clergy would be on hand to help counsel students. But they said they would understand if families want to keep their children home from school.
In a separate Okmulgee County case, the bodies of four men were found Oct. 14 in the Deep Fork River in Okmulgee, a town of around 11,000 people some 40 miles south of Tulsa. Joseph Kennedy, 68, is facing four counts of first-degree murder in that case.
I get the uncomfortable feeling that some very cynical social-engineering plutocrats are doing nefarious things in order to keep us shooting each other, so we don't start shooting them.
Mar 4, 2023
Behind The Masks
Why are Republicans meeting with mask-off neo-Nazis?
Without a peep from the Republican Owned Media . Not even mentioned in Google…
Republican congressman Matt Rosendale from Montana met with:
- Ryan Sanchez, disgraced former marine and member of the Rise Above Movement - a neo-Nazi street gang prosecuted for their role in the deadly 2017 Charlottesville Nazi rally.
- Pro-Hitler blogger Greyson Arnold, a white supremacist Groyper* and January 6th insurrectionist.
From Mastodon:
https://kolektiva.social/@VPS_Reports/109961490100833234
* Groypers are a loose network of alt right figures who are vocal supporters of white supremacist and “America First” podcaster Nick Fuentes.
Patrick Casey, who heads the white supremacist American Identity Movement, is also a “lead” Groyper.
Groypers regularly confront mainstream conservative organizations like Turning Point USA (TPUSA) for failing to promote a truly “America First” agenda and for not being adequately “pro white.”
Many Groypers hold racist and antisemitic views.
* Groypers are a loose network of alt right figures who are vocal supporters of white supremacist and “America First” podcaster Nick Fuentes.
Patrick Casey, who heads the white supremacist American Identity Movement, is also a “lead” Groyper.
Groypers regularly confront mainstream conservative organizations like Turning Point USA (TPUSA) for failing to promote a truly “America First” agenda and for not being adequately “pro white.”
Many Groypers hold racist and antisemitic views.
Fuentes is careful to position the Groypers not as white supremacists but rather as “Christian conservatives” who oppose, among other things, immigration (undocumented and legal), globalism, gay and transgender rights and feminism.
Anti Defamation League:
Anti Defamation League:
One more thing: http://bit.ly/3SWwqLV
Feb 8, 2023
Knives Out
Nobody's going to be surprised to learn George Santos has joined the Mean Girls Caucus, right?
As lawmakers and other guests were entering the chamber ahead of President Biden’s speech, Romney and Santos were spotted having a brief but tense conversation. Romney glared at Santos, who smiled slightly, nodded and seemed to dismiss Romney before continuing to greet others.
Romney later said that he told Santos — who has admitted to fabricating large swaths of his biography and whose campaign finances are under investigation — that he did not belong there. Santos is under investigation by the bipartisan House Ethics Committee and last month stepped down from his committee assignments.
“I didn’t expect that he’d be standing there trying to shake hands with every senator and the president of the United States,” Romney told reporters after Biden’s speech concluded Tuesday night, when asked why he had confronted Santos.
“Given the fact that [Santos is] under ethics investigation, he should be sitting in the back row and staying quiet instead of parading in front of the president and people coming into the room,” Romney added.
Romney said that Santos’s claims that he had “embellished” his record were absurd.
“Look, embellishing is saying you got an A when you got an A-minus. Lying is saying you graduated from a college you didn’t even attend,” Romney said. “And he shouldn’t be in Congress. And they’re going to go through the process and hopefully get him out. But he shouldn’t be there and if he had any shame at all, he wouldn’t be there.”
Romney told reporters that Santos may have responded to him, but that he did not hear it on the House floor. After the State of the Union concluded, Santos lashed out at Romney on social media.
“Hey @MittRomney just a reminder that you will NEVER be PRESIDENT!” he posted to Twitter.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) later defended Santos, describing Romney’s words as “the rudest I’ve ever seen a human being be to another human being.”
 |
| Say what, Tom? |
Romney, who was the Republican nominee for president in 2012, was the only Republican to stand and clap when Biden said unemployment was at a 50-year low Tuesday night, and applauded alongside Democrats at other points in Biden’s speech.
Jan 24, 2023
Jan 2, 2023
How Does This Work?
"...Republicans are calling on the party to step up its outreach, including by finding more Gen Z surrogates, engaging with young voters on social media platforms and speaking to issues those voters care about."
Republicans are good at pretending the problem is with the voters themselves, or with the GOP's difficulty in arguing their case - "We're just not getting thru to them..."
Bullshit.
Their policies suck. And they suck. And their arguments in favor of GOP policies will never be convincing for people whose friends are among those who the GOP is constantly telling them to hate.
Let's send the Boomers out to apply for jobs right now, going on the 50-year-old "advice" they've been trying to peddle young people, just to see how long it takes them to reach total emotional collapse.
But anyway,
Republicans are urging the party to do a better job engaging with young voters after the GOP saw Generation Z voters cast ballots by large margins for Democrats in the November midterms, making the difference in key congressional and gubernatorial races.
While the party has long struggled with attracting younger voters, the 2022 midterm elections underscored the extent to which those struggles are a liability for it. Now, Republicans are calling on the party to step up its outreach, including by finding more Gen Z surrogates, engaging with young voters on social media platforms and speaking to issues those voters care about.
“When you ignore people’s bread-and-butter concerns and their more cultural concerns, you can’t expect to win their votes. And we’re having a series of close elections, and the Republicans are just throwing away an entire demographic, and it’s costing them elections,” said veteran GOP strategist Keith Naughton.
An analysis by Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) using day-after estimates suggests that voter turnout among 18- to 29-year-olds in 2022 was at the second highest of the last 30 years for a midterm election. In House races alone, the demographic favored Democratic candidates to Republicans 63 percent to 35 percent, remaining mostly consistent since 2020 but a slight drop from 2018, when the margin was 67 percent to 32 percent.
Overall, more than a quarter of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 are estimated to have cast a ballot during the November midterms, according to an analysis of Edison Research’s National Election Poll Survey by CIRCLE, often playing a critical role in battleground races.
David Morgan, a senior at Pennsylvania State University and the political director of the Penn State College Republicans, believes the GOP is facing challenges with young voters because they’re not speaking to social policies and issues.
“Better health care, LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights, stuff like that … climate change, those issues are huge for Gen Z. And because the party kind of is a little bit slow on the uptake initially with kind of some of these issues … I think it kind of automatically slanted our generation to go more towards Democrat,” he noted.
Other Republicans say the problem lies not only with the substance of their messaging but also with the method of communication.
“We have a tendency to do a lot of things wrong talking to younger voters. One is we don’t go to where they are,” said veteran GOP strategist John Brabender, noting how young voters are increasingly on TikTok.
“Our party says we can’t be on TikTok for privacy and security reasons,” he added. “Well, that’s great, but you better come up with an alternative really quickly, then, because we have a whole generation growing up with that being their number one news source yet we’re not talking to them there.”
CIRCLE’s analysis of AP VoteCast data and election results from other news outlets suggests that Gen Z voters and millennials were pivotal in deciding the most competitive elections. In the Arizona gubernatorial race, CIRCLE found 18- to 29-year-olds offered Democrat Katie Hobbs a net of 60,000 votes at a time when Hobbs was projected to win her race by just a third of that.
And in the Georgia Senate race, CIRCLE’s analysis found that Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) received a net of 116,000 votes from that demographic in the general election. Warnock placed first over Republican Herschel Walker during the November election by about 37,000 votes. The race later went to a runoff, which Warnock won.
“It’s a very secular cohort, and it’s a very progressive cohort on social issues. Very tolerant, firmly believe in LGBTQ rights, firmly believe that gender is not binary, very concerned about climate change … very concerned about gun violence, [which] they see as their generations’ issue, so the issues have really favored the Democrats,” said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, who worked on President Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.
Lake suggested that voters between the ages of 18 and 29 years old are at odds with former President Trump and his ideology while noting that “they’re not necessarily that happy with the Democrats. They think the Democrats are often not producing, but two-thirds strongly believe in a role for government.”
Former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), who serves as president for Young America’s Foundation, argues that “liberal indoctrination” — the idea that young voters are not often introduced to multiple schools of thought on issues, including views considered right of center — is at least partly responsible for the party’s challenges.
“Any of the consultant class in Washington who thinks just more clever digital ads or some sort of student coalition is going to make the difference I think don’t realize what they’re up against,” Walker said.
Some Republicans see an opportunity in the latest election results. Andrew Kolvet, a spokesperson for the conservative Turning Point Action, noted in exit polling published by CNN that 61 percent of those aged 18 to 24 years old voted for Democrats, slightly fewer than the 65 percent of 25- to 29-year-olds who voted for the party.
Meanwhile, 63 percent of voters aged 18 to 29 voted Democrat in 2022, compared to 35 percent who voted for the GOP. That suggests a slight dip for both of those demographics compared to 2018, when 67 percent of that same demographic voted Democratic compared to 32 percent voting for the GOP.
Of course, those figures still underscore the difficulties the GOP faces with young people. And while members see this as an issue that stretches back some time, Republicans say it’s one that requires devoted infrastructure toward tackling that age gap.
“Not trying to throw the RNC [Republican National Committee] under the bus here, but there’s so much focus on fundraising I think within the Republican Party because we do not effectively raise and we do not effectively spend that there is an unhealthy imbalance on one specific type of voter and that those are the people who meet that cross section of the ones that we need to turn out and also the ones that have money to do it,” said Tyler Bowyer, the chief operating officer of Turning Point Action who also serves as an RNC National Committeeman in Arizona.
“You have the old guard trying to raise money for baby boomers, and you have millennial/Gen Z, which is like this massive bucket, now the biggest part of the electorate that we have to focus on, and we don’t have enough people, we don’t have enough money in that group to make it worth it to the old guard. And we don’t have enough know-how and experience in how to message those people,” Bowyer, who is a millennial, continued.
“So it’s an opportunity for us moving forward, but it’s gonna take some real innovative leadership to look at this and say, ‘Hey, we need to do more work in the influencer space, and we need to do more work in the social media space. We need to do more work in how we message and who’s delivering the message,’ ” he said.
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