Unpopular: Issa, left, and LungrenThat California Republican Party is so pathetic that it is tempting to bleeding-heart types to feel sad for them. GOP registration is on a years-long downhill slide (it could dip below 30 percent soon), and the state party is so underfunded that it could not afford to buy advertising in the 2008 campaign. In the 2010 midterms, a Republican wave election across the country, every statewide GOP candidate — for U.S. senator, governor, lieutenant governor, treasurer, etc. — but one lost to Democrats by 10 points or more. (The Democratic attorney general candidate won, but by a slim margin.)
The best known California Republicans are also the state’s least-popular politicians, including former Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Pete Wilson and current House members, Rep. Darrell Issa, the wealthiest House member, an accused car thief and arsonist who chairs the House committee that investigates the Obama administration, and Rep. “Styrofoam Dan” Lungren, the former state attorney general and current chairman of the House Administration Committee, who made news recently for rescinding Democrats’ efforts to “green” the Capitol Building.
Elon Musk is now wholly committed to the political game.
But his “America Party” and “Democrat Party” are both grammatically lame:
See, “America” is a proper noun, but not an adjective,
Whereas “American” can be either one — it’s relative.
As with “Democrat Party,” Musk is about to find out what’s in a name.
“This may have been a loss for the American people, but this was a big Trump win. He continues to plow through the norms, institutions, and guardrails of government, and he will use the BBB to accelerate his momentum. … Acknowledging this is not defeatism: it’s a recognition of the challenge ahead.”
“The president of the United States didn’t give us an assignment. We’re not a bunch of little bitches around here, okay? I’m a member of Congress. I represent almost 800,000 Wisconsinites.”
“You don’t have to be a mathematical genius to know that these are horrible, horrible, horrible numbers. Washington Post, -19 points, Fox News -21 points … holy Toledo — you just never see numbers this poor … to quote Sir Charles Barkley, ‘terrible terrible terrible’ … it is one of the most unpopular pieces of legislation that I have ever seen.”
“The volume of Canadians taking road trips into the U.S.—the means by which most Canadians visit—dropped by 33% last month compared to June 2024, following a 38% drop in May,” Forbes reports.
A new Morning Consult poll finds 53% of Americans don’t know why the American colonies adopted the Declaration of Independence to separate from Britain on July 4, 1776.
President Trump’s pardons and commutations have cost more than $100 million in fines owed to the federal government and another $1.5 billion in restitution to victims, Forbes reports.
Gallup: “A record-low 58% of U.S. adults say they are ‘extremely’ (41%) or ‘very’ (17%) proud to be an American, down nine percentage points from last year and five points below the prior low from 2020. … Democrats are mostly responsible for the drop in U.S. pride this year, with 36% saying they are extremely or very proud, down from 62% a year ago. This is only the second time Democrats’ pride has fallen below the majority level, along with a 42% reading in 2020, the last year of the first Trump administration.”
The CBO estimates that the Republican reconciliation bill that the Senate is considering will increase the deficit by nearly $3.3 trillion between 2025 to 2034, Bloomberg reports.Punchbowl News says Senate Republicans and the White House reject the CBO estimate as inaccurate. The White House estimates it will cut the deficit by $4.9 trillion over the next decade.