Young Guns

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</div><div>=see young guns<a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/06/donald-trumps-parting-gift-to-washington-was-a-party-of-shitposters/">https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/06/donald-trumps-parting-gift-to-washington-was-a-party-of-shitposters/</a>
rkji've  seen many things at the Conservative Political Action Conference over the years, including many things I wish I hadn’t. But until Ted Cruz spoke to a ballroom of activists from the main stage in Orlando in February, I had never seen an elected official interrupt his own speech to promote a podcast.“Please go subscribe,” <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?509081-3/senator-ted-cruz-deliver-remarks-cpac" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url("");">barked</a> the Texas Republican, sounding more like a street performer with a SoundCloud than a second-term senator. “Verdict With Ted Cruz! Verdict With Ted Cruz! Click on ‘subscribe.’ Five stars, please!”<div class="incontent-promo" id="incontent_promo_1" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; position: relative; left: -157.5px; height: auto; width: 100vw; margin-bottom: 1rem; clear: both;"><section id="mj-incontent-ad-widget-4" class="widget mj-incontent-ad-widget" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="incontent-ad-container" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-width: 1300px; margin: 0px auto;" /></section></div>One week earlier, Cruz had left his constituents <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/02/ted-cruz-flees-texas-for-cancun-ditches-family-poodle.html" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url("");">and his poodle</a> behind to wait out his state’s deadly grid failure at the Ritz-Carlton in Cancun. It was the sort of PR disaster that would leave many politicians reeling. Cruz tried to monetize the controversy instead, printing a line of Barstool Sports–chic “<a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ted-cruz-spring-break-merch-cruzcrew_n_605d9a0dc5b6531eed03b240" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url("");">spring break</a>” tank tops with a caricature of his nascent mullet. He may never lead the Republican Party, but Cruz always knows its temperature, and in the space of a few minutes in Orlando, between jokes about his ill-advised Mexican vacation and plugs for his side project, he managed to distill this conservative moment to its essence. Increasingly, as world-historical crises unfurl all around them—often exacerbated by their own policies and actions—the GOP’s most ambitious officials view their primary responsibility less as public servants than as content creators, churning out an endless stream of takes, memes, stunts, and podcasts. So many podcasts.The Republican Party has long been infused with an irrepressible hustle, what the historian Rick Perlstein calls “<a href="https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-long-con" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url("");">mail-order conservatism</a>.” Talk radio and direct mail were not only effective at peddling reactionary politics to voters; they were also perfect vehicles to sell products, such as <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/05/glenn-beck-goldline-weiner/" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url("");">gold</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=10157932039825389" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url("");">home-security system</a>s. For decades these conjoined strains of politics, entertainment, and marketing have eroded trust in public institutions and the media and provided a template for self-aggrandizement and enrichment. There is nothing really like this on the left; Infowars and Goop <a href="https://qz.com/1010684/all-the-wellness-products-american-love-to-buy-are-sold-on-both-infowars-and-goop/" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url("");">sell the same pills</a>, but Gwyneth Paltrow is not fomenting rebellion.The way conservatism manifested itself over the airwaves has shaped what rank-and-file conservatives expect to be told and how they expect to feel about it. The late Rush Limbaugh’s listeners called themselves “dittoheads,” eager to nod along with everything. Newt Gingrich used to <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/andrewkaczynski/the-gopac-tapes" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url("");">distribute tapes</a> of himself talking so that candidates could emulate his language. In the 1980s, he <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/before-wall-brawl-there-was-camscam/577945/" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url("");">weaponized</a> C-SPAN’s new House cameras—where members previously addressed each other, Gingrich and his allies began speaking past them. They turned the Capitol into a studio and made politics into a product. Donald Trump easily won the Republican base because it had been primed for someone who could provide both the programming and the commercial breaks, sometimes all at once; in conservative politics, after all, you’re always being asked to buy something. Trump’s presidency blew past the old frontiers: The performance of politics became the purpose of it.But Trump’s presidency blew past the old frontiers: The performance of politics became the purpose of it, and the grind of governance became secondary to the responsibilities of posting. It was as if, after years of awkward but largely profitable power-sharing between conservative politicians and conservative media, the Republican Party at last stumbled upon the ultimate efficiency: What if both roles could be played by the same person? Trump once dreamed of spinning a losing presidential bid into his own media entity. During the pandemic, in lieu of crisis management, he turned briefings into <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/04/trumps-press-conferences-are-just-infomercials-now/" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url("");">a variety show</a>, assembling a rotating cast of characters, and plugging an array of sponsors—MyPillow, Carnival, Pernod Ricard. You would not necessarily get good medical advice, but you would learn that Hanes is a “great consumer cotton products company” that’s being recognized more and more.no lnxThere was no issue grave enough to take seriously and no controversy too petty to weigh in on. Anything could be resolved via tweet, precisely because nothing really can; the ephemerality was the point. And a rising generation of politicians learned an important lesson about what conservative voters wanted. If Limbaugh taught them all how to talk, Trump taught them how to govern. His enduring gift was a caucus of content creators.Just consider the Republican congressional class of 2021—the new arrivals to Washington who modeled themselves most directly after Trump. They seem almost blissfully detached from the work of Congress. There is 25-year-old Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, who was elected on the strength of a largely invented personal story amplified with loads of influencer-style Instagram posts. He recently posted a 19-second video of himself punching the bark off a tree. Cawthorn boasted to his colleagues that he had built his staff “around comms rather than legislation.” He was in Washington, in other words, mostly just to post.Cawthorn boasted to his colleagues that he had built his staff “around comms rather than legislation.”When Marjorie Taylor Greene, the QAnon representative from Georgia, was stripped of her committee assignments in February by colleagues upset that she had harassed fellow members of Congress and blamed forest fires on the Rothschilds, she greeted the news with relief. “If I was on a committee, I would be wasting my time,” she said. Now she was more free to share videos of her CrossFit workouts with the hashtag #FireFauci. Not that showing up for committee hearings necessarily means you’re there to work. Colorado’s Lauren Boebert, who like Cawthorn and Greene spent her first weeks on the job scaring the shit out of her co-workers, recently hijacked a virtual committee hearing by posing like John Wick in front of a shrine of firearms in her living room. (“Who says this is storage?” she responded to critics. “These are ready for use.”) Cawthorn, Greene, and Boebert were all members of the National Republican Campaign Committee’s “Young Guns” program, which takes its name from an earlier trio of House Republicans—one of whom, Paul Ryan, went on to become a vice presidential nominee and speaker of the House and unite the party behind a vision of budget austerity. There is surely some sort of ideology at work here, too, but it’s more Jake Paul than Paul Ryan; they are treating the Capitol like their own hype house, using the stature of their office for clout.R. Kikuo JohnsonThese younger, gunnier guns are taking cues from their elders. Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a content farm of a congressman who has filmed not one but two Avengers-style videos in which the ex–Navy SEAL parachutes out of airplanes to fight Democrats, also hosts a podcast. So does Devin Nunes. Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz has a podcast called Hot Takes. Before he became publicly embroiled in a federal sex-trafficking investigation (“If you aren’t making news, you aren’t governing,” Gaetz once said), he was considering retiring to take a job at the conservative cable channel Newsmax. In February, more than a dozen House Republicans—including Gaetz and Nunes—skipped work to speak at CPAC with Cruz. They took advantage of a covid-era policy that let members vote by proxy in medical emergencies; to them, promoting their brands is the job.After watching Cruz’s speech I took his advice and checked out Verdict, which he co-hosts with Michael Knowles, who rose to prominence after publishing an entirely blank book called Reasons to Vote for Democrats. Cruz recorded the first episode at 2:40 a.m. after the opening day of Trump’s Ukraine impeachment trial—hence the name of the show—and returned to the studio every night of the proceedings. Within days of its debut, Verdict had passed Joe Rogan on the iTunes charts. At CPAC, Cruz announced it had been downloaded 25 million times. It is almost certainly the most popular thing he has ever done....</div><div>=</div><div>In 2010, two-thirds of the nearly 90 candidates given the designation rode a Republican wave into Congress, an achievement lauded by House Majority Whip and Young Guns co-founder Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) Read more: <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/house-races/265735-young-guns-unlikely-to-fare-as-well-in-house-races#ixzz2iHKWZpGh" style="border: 0px; font-size: 10pt; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/house-races/265735-young-guns-unlikely-to-fare-as-well-in-house-races#ixzz2iHKWZpGh</a>  Follow us: <a href="http://ec.tynt.com/b/rw?id=bNYbpAvBir4Pxiacwqm_6l&u=thehill" target="blank" style="border: 0px; font-size: 10pt; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(24, 29, 120); outline: none;">@thehill on Twitter</a> | <a href="http://ec.tynt.com/b/rf?id=bNYbpAvBir4Pxiacwqm_6l&u=TheHill" target="blank" style="border: 0px; font-size: 10pt; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(24, 29, 120); outline: none;">TheHill on Facebook</a></div><div></div><div>
</div>wa times <div>at Meehan can work a room, and the room he hopes to be working next year is the chamber of the House of Representatives.The gregarious one-time U.S. prosecutor, smiling and shaking hands as he zigzagged through a room of supporters and journalists at the Capitol Hill Club, traveled to Washington this week as one of the National Republican Congressional Committee’s designated “Young Guns” - the NRCC’s premier recruits in a full-bore drive to reclaim control of the House in November’s midterm elections.Mr. Meehan, 54, running for an open seat in a swing district in the suburbs of Philadelphia, impressed party elders with his campaign’s organizational drive and fundraising ability. He boasts one of the largest campaign war chests of any House challenger in the country, having already raised more than $790,000.But he joked in an interview that he went into law - and now into politics - because he could not realize his real life’s ambition.“I think every young kid wants to pitch in a World Series, but I learned early on that that wasn’t going to happen,” he said with a laugh.But in a year in which GOP strategists speak hopefully of a “wave election” that could change the balance of power in Washington, Mr. Meehan’s decision to enter the race in Pennsylvania’s 7th District is no laughing matter.If the Republican Party hopes to reclaim the House this fall, its fortunes are likely to ride on the shoulders of candidates like Mr. Meehan. The party is on the offensive, touting its new candidates this year as the best crop of recruits since the watershed election of 1994, when the GOP reclaimed control of Congress after 40 years in the minority.
House Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia and other senior House Republicans helped create the NRCC’s Young Guns program in the 2007-08 election cycle. The higher visibility, it is hoped, will encourage party donors and fellow Republican officeholders to contribute to their campaigns.NRCC spokesman Tony Mazzola said the organization looks at every aspect of a candidates campaign, from infrastructure to communications, when selecting its top prospects. The program sets benchmarks for other candidates and allows them to move up as they reach these goals.<a name="pagebreak" style="color: rgb(22, 74, 110); padding: 2px 2px 2px 0px; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;" /><a name="pagebreak" style="color: rgb(22, 74, 110); padding: 2px 2px 2px 0px; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;" /><a name="pagebreak" style="color: rgb(22, 74, 110); padding: 2px 2px 2px 0px; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;" /><a name="pagebreak" style="color: rgb(22, 74, 110); padding: 2px 2px 2px 0px; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;" /><a name="pagebreak" style="color: rgb(22, 74, 110); padding: 2px 2px 2px 0px; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;" /><a name="pagebreak" style="color: rgb(22, 74, 110); padding: 2px 2px 2px 0px; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;" /><a name="pagebreak" style="color: rgb(22, 74, 110); padding: 2px 2px 2px 0px; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">“The goal is to build the most competitive, effective campaigns across the country,” Mr. Mazzola said.</a>Other Young Guns include Vaughn Ward, a former CIA officer running in Idaho’s 1st District; state Sen. Andy Harris, challenging Democratic freshman Rep. Frank Kratovil Jr. in Maryland’s 1st District; and Martha Roby, a Montgomery City Council member running against freshman Democrat Rep. Bobby Bright in Alabama’s 2nd District.Mr. Meehan, a one-time referee in the National Hockey League who built a record of fighting high-level public corruption during his seven years as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, at one point last year was widely expected to make a run for governor.But now he is eyeing the seat being vacated by Rep. Joe Sestak, a Democrat who is leaving the House to pursue a primary challenge of his own to Sen. Arlen Specter.

Read more: <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/26/armed-with-guns-gop-seeks-majority/#ixzz2iHJwmr74" style="color: rgb(0, 51, 153); text-decoration: none; padding: 2px 2px 2px 0px;">http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/26/armed-with-guns-gop-seeks-majority/#ixzz2iHJwmr74</a> 
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