Liberal and moderate Republicans aligned with former President Donald Trump in firing House Freedom Caucus Chairman Bob Good. In last week’s Virginia primary, The long battle appeared to end on Monday, but Good still trails his opponent, John McGuire, by 373 votes.
Goode was not cheap: A conservative heavyweight who won the last election by 15 points, he had the backing of conservative members of the House and Senate as well as grassroots activists.
“This was a targeted assassination.”
Republican groups have spent $5.9 million trying to oust the safe incumbent president ahead of the 2024 election, in which congressional Democrats have raised 25% more money than Republicans and have a 20% advantage in cash on hand.
Main Street PAC, the political arm of the liberal Main Street Republican Caucus, has spent $451,990 on the race, just over 20% of all the money the PAC has raised so far for 2024.
American Patriots, a super PAC funded by Nikki Haley megadonors Paul Singer and Ken Griffin, has donated $3.4 million to Goode’s opponent, John Maguire, making it the biggest spender in the race.
Marjorie Buckley, a prominent Republican and Trump donor, lobbied Virginia for Freedom PAC to step in from outside the state, pumping in another $762,000 to oust Good from Congress.
Meanwhile, House Speaker Mike Johnson remained on the sidelines. This contrasts with his support for other embattled incumbents, including liberals like Rep. Tony Gonzales (Texas), conservatives like Rep. William Timmons (South Carolina) and sporadic lawmakers like Rep. Nancy Mace (South Carolina).
Trump’s ire at Goode was largely due to his support for the Florida governor’s presidential bid, but Ron DeSantis also stayed out of the race.
Goode didn’t lack Republican allies, but rather a wealth of GOP foes: House, Senate and grassroots conservatives raised more than $4.8 million to support Goode, and the race was close, despite Trump’s vocal endorsement of Maguire.
in reality Good’s opponents were determined to make an example of the firebrand. In an environment where voter fatigue with infighting has made this a surprisingly safe year for incumbents, he was both a more visible and a softer target than other Republicans who ran against then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California, who sided with DeSantis, who ran against liberals in the GOP primary, or who opposed further spending on foreign wars in Israel and Ukraine.
“You have to fight fire with fire,” Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, a member of the Main Street Caucus, told reporters after endorsing Maguire. Good had backed Bacon’s opponent in his own primary.
“This was a targeted assassination,” one Republican staffer told The Blaze News.
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In other news
The Squad’s Jamaal Bowman loses in hotly contested New York primary
Democrats tempted to celebrate Goode’s downfall should remember for whom the bell tolls: In New York’s 16th Congressional District, the bell tolls for you.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a left-leaning Democrat, lost a tough primary election Tuesday night to Westchester County Mayor George Latimer, who had received millions of dollars in backing from the powerful America Israel PAC, as well as support from former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, former New York Democratic governors David Paterson and Andrew Cuomo, and former Rep. Eliot Engel (D), whom Bowman defeated in 2020.
The Squad first came to the fore in 2018, spurred by the growing craziness of Trump. Since then, they have lavished Democratic political capital on radical experiments like “defunding the police” and “abolishing ICE,” successfully convincing the entire party to comply, or at least pay lip service to them. But as the results became clear, these utopian plans fell on voters, the Democratic Party was held accountable, and the Squad’s members became increasingly unpopular with their peers. By the time Bowman sided with Hamas after the October 7 attacks, even his liberal voters had had enough.
Bowman, ironically along with Squad leaders Sen. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), held an embarrassing R-rated rally outside his own district to deflect accusations that he is more interested in causes and fame than his constituency.
“We’re going to show f***ing AIPAC the power of the f***ing South Bronx,” Bowman told the crowd. Meanwhile, Trump drew nearly 10 times the roughly 1,200 participants the Squad drew. And Bowman doesn’t represent the South Bronx; his district starts about 10 miles north of where the rally was held.
$25 million was spent both for and against Bowman, making it the most expensive primary in House history, but that doesn’t matter: All we have to do is watch (and bet) on how long it will take the outgoing congressman from New York’s 16th district to call his constituents racists.
Liberal Republicans win Mitt Romney’s successor
There was also a mini-drama in Utah on Tuesday night, when Rep. John Curtis defeated Riverton Mayor Trent Staggs in the election to replace retiring Sen. Mitt Romney, a liberal Republican and frequent critic of President Trump.
Curtis, a Democrat turned liberal Republican best known for founding the House Climate Caucus, which seeks to cloak liberal policies in Republican overtones, has raised significantly more money than Staggs, who was backed by not only President Trump but also Sen. Mike Lee of Utah.
Fires rising: Transom: Democrats believe abortion will save them in 2024, but will it really?
On Tuesday, Roe v. WadeBut it also marked the beginning of two years of steady Democratic gains. Dobbs In the aftermath of the ruling, the pro-life movement proved unprepared, Republicans struggled to unify their position, and Democrats capitalized, defending weak incumbents and mobilizing voters to win tough seats. But polls suggest that internal enthusiasm may be cooling as the initial confusion fades and Democrats’ most extreme rhetoric falls flat. Ben Domenech reports:
…There’s no question that abortion was a central issue in the 2022 midterm elections. According to a Gallup poll, abortion was the second most It became a key issue for voters in the week before the election, but many Republicans were caught off guard and failed to get good messaging on the issue. But now things have changed: In a recent Gallup poll, only 3% ranked gun control as a top issue. Gun control may be shifting to be as influential as gun control policies, which are a motivator for Democrats but less appealing as a deciding factor for independents and swing voters. It’s hard to read the numbers above and grasp the large percentage of the vote that Republicans have lost at this point…
