Third Republican Senator Breaks With Trump On Whistleblower

For four years now, it has been an open question of what it would take to get Republican congressmen to break with Donald Trump. As the whistleblower scandal widens, it appears that we may be reaching a point of enough-is-enough. So far, at least three Republican senators have broken with the party to criticize President Trump for requesting that Ukraine aid his personal attorney in investigating Joe and Hunter Biden.

The first Republican senator to speak out against the president’s actions was Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), a frequent Trump critic. Back in September, Sasse said that the whistleblower allegations contained “real troubling things.” Sasse added, “Republicans ought not just circle the wagons” to protect Trump.”

Earlier this week, Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), joined Sasse in breaking with the Administration. In particular, Grassley was at odds with Republican attacks on the credibility of the whistleblower based on the belief that the complaint was based on secondhand information.

“This person appears to have followed the whistleblower protection laws and ought to be heard out and protected. We should always work to respect whistleblowers,” Grassley said in Politico. “Complaints based on second-hand information should not be rejected out of hand, but they do require additional leg work to get at the facts and evaluate the claim’s credibility.”

Now, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) is also breaking ranks. “Whistleblowers should be protected," Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa told a constituent at a town hall yesterday. "I stand with Chuck Grassley on this. We have laws in place."

NBC News reported that the constituent also asked, “Where is the line [that Trump would have to cross to lose Republican support]?”

"You didn't pledge an oath to the president, you pledged it to our country, you pledged it to our Constitution. When are you guys going to start standing up and actually be there for us?" the constituent asked.

Ernst answered, “The president is going to say what the president is going to do. It's up to us as members of the Congress to continue working with our allies making sure that we remain strong in a face of adversity."

A lot of Americans would like to know just what it will take to break the bond between Trump and the GOP. This is not the first time that Republican officials have criticized the president’s actions. Some Republicans have criticized the president on issues such as the firing of James Comey, interference in the Russia investigation, and the trade war. However, few, if any, have gone so far as to retract endorsements of the president’s re-election campaign.

It is beginning to look like the 2020 campaign may look a lot like a mirror image of 2016. In the last election, Hillary Clinton was damaged by the constant drip of damaging information from her email scandal and WikiLeaks dumps of stolen DNC emails. This time around, it appears that the drip of damaging information may be aimed at Donald Trump.  

At this point, it appears that the whistleblower scandal will continue to unfold in a slow dribble of embarrassing and possibly incriminating leaks about Donald Trump. With 13 months left to go before the election, Republicans have time to rally behind an alternative candidate, but time is running out. If the leaks are coordinated, as it appears that they are, Democrats may stage the scandal so that the most embarrassing and damaging information comes out after Mr. Trump has clinched the Republican nomination next year, leaving Republicans with both a mortally damaged candidate and an economy that is slowing due to the trade war. 

While most Republicans are still standing by the president at this point, the excuse that “this is just Trump being Trump” only goes so far. If continued revelations of poor judgment and possible criminal wrongdoing, together with a slowing economy, continue to dog Trump to the point where his campaign appears to be beyond salvaging, Republicans may finally start to may a clean break with the president. By then, however, it may be too late for 2020.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Electoral map requires flipping four states in 2016

While moving toward the 2016 presidential election, Republican voters would do well to remember that the election is not a single election, but 50 state elections plus the final election in the Electoral College. When these individual state elections are taken into account, national polls are almost meaningless. What matters is the polling in the individual states.

To be more precise, what matters is the polling and the elections in a handful of swing states. In 2012, Mitt Romney needed to win several swing states to win the Electoral College election. These states included Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Colorado, New Hampshire and Iowa. Of these, Romney was only able to win North Carolina with President Obama winning all other swing states.

Below is the actual 2012 electoral map.

To win in 2016, the Republican candidate must hold onto every state won by Romney as well as adding several more states to the Republican column. The map below flips the swing states of Florida, Virginia and Ohio to the Republicans. It is worth noting that no Republican has ever won the presidency without winning Ohio.

In past elections, Republicans have hoped for victories in other blue states such as Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Nevada. So far these hopes have not been realized and at this point there is no reason to expect that 2016 will be different.

Moving these three states to the Republican candidate moves a total of 60 electoral votes, but this is still not enough to secure a Republican victory. A fourth state needs to be flipped to send a Republican to the White House.

There are several candidates for the state to bring the Republicans to 270 electoral votes, the number needed to win the presidency. The two most likely would be Iowa and Colorado, commanding 6 and 9 electoral votes respectively. Both states seem to have shifted to the right since 2012. In the 2014 midterm elections, both states replaced a Democratic senator with a Republican one (Joni Ernst and Cory Gardner)

The final electoral map shows the effect of adding Iowa’s six electoral votes to the Republican column.

Iowa’s six electoral votes would allow the Republican candidate to eke out a win in the Electoral College. The slim two vote margin above the required 270 is one of the most likely routes to a Republican victory.

The question that Republican primary voters should be asking is which candidate can deliver Florida, Ohio, Virginia and Iowa. A candidate that cannot deliver those four states is not going to win, regardless of how conservative he or she is.

The conservative leader, William F. Buckley, famously said that conservative voters should vote for the most conservative candidate who can win. Conservative voters should bear the electoral map in mind when deciding which Republican candidates are viable… and which are not.