Today, Explained - If Republicans win the midterms

Episode Date: October 11, 2022

They’ve got a few legislative ideas and a LOT of investigative ones. Vox’s Rachel Cohen and Ben Jacobs explain. This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Paul Robert Mounsey and Cristian Ayala, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Everyone seems to think that Republicans are going to win back the House and maybe even the Senate in these midterm elections. If and when they do, it sounds like they've got some legislative ideas. I think the general point is there's going to be even more pressure to obstruct Biden's agenda to prevent him or whoever runs on the Democratic ticket in 2024 from looking good. And a lot of investigative ones. So these are going to really span the wide world into broad issues that have been the subject of investigating reporting from The New York Times, things that have been subjects of investigative reporting from Breitbart. The GOP's plans.

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Today, Explained, Sean Ramos from here in the studio with Rachel Cohen from Vox, who's recently written about the Republicans in Congress. Why is it an important time for us to talk about the Republicans in Congress? Well, we are about a month away from the midterms, and most election forecasters think there's a pretty good chance that Republicans are going to take the House. Earlier this year, election watchers at the Cook Political Report forecast that Republicans would pick up 20 to 30 additional seats. That prediction has now dropped to a range of from 10 to 20. You know, recently 538 had it at 69 percent.

The economist model had it at 74 percent. So that's sort of the backdrop. And then the Senate, even though right now Democrats are slightly favored to win, there are a lot of smart people in politics who are fairly skeptical about the public polling we're seeing. They say at best it's going to be really close. We really don't talk that much about the United States Senate, I think, because the polling has been so limited. But in fact, we have basically a toss-up here for the United States Senate.

I think people feel pretty confident Republicans will definitely take the House, and they feel much more unsure about how the Senate is going to go. So either way, that means that it's a pretty good time to think, OK, well, what do Republicans want to do if they get control of the House? What bills do they want to pass? They won't be able to pass their bills into law, really, because Biden will still be in the White House. But they could potentially have a lot of power to push their agenda, try to block Democrats' agenda and launch a bunch of investigations against Democrats in the Biden administration. Well, let's pin investigations for a second and talk about legislation.

Do congressional Republicans have any kind of cohesive strategy? This is a good question. I spent some time for a recent article in Vax trying to sort of look through the various one-pagers and agendas and manifestos circulating around. There are a bunch. They all sort of overlap, but have a little different flavors. The big ticket news agenda that just came out on September 23rd is from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who would become House Speaker if Republicans win in November. So there is a decent shot. Right. This is sort of this big effort he calls the commitment to America platform. What we're going to roll out today is a commitment to America in Washington. Not Washington, D.C., but Washington County, Pennsylvania.

Where he's sort of trying to put out, hey, elect us. This is what we're going to do if we take power. But it's pretty vague in a lot of areas. I think there's a few specifics and a lot of talking points. We believe America is more than a country. America is an idea. And so you don't get the clearest sense of, OK, what would they actually do if they win? It sounds nice, a commitment to America, not like Nancy Pelosi taking trips to Taiwan. What's in it? He actually got some assistance from former House Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Wow, throwback. Yeah, he is still in the picture, actually, and has been advising Kevin McCarthy over the last year, giving him suggestions on what to do, because when he was part of the Republican group that took control of the House in 1994, they ran on a very similarly named platform called the Contract with America. And I want to say to every American that we believe in this contract and these reforms so deeply that we have not only put them in writing today, but that they will be in a full page ad and TV guide.

And they basically promised, they said, elect us and we'll put votes immediately to the floor, you know, in our first month. And that document listed sort of eight specific reforms Republicans would do and 10 specific bills to bring to the floor. This is not just a platform or just a set of ideas or just a brochure. And Republicans promised that all their proposals would be issues that had 60 percent support. Every item in our contract is supported by 60 percent or more of the American people. Some of the items are supported as much as 80 percent of the American people. And outside Washington, this is a contract with Americans for America. What does old Newt want to do? What's he whispering in Kevin's ear?

Newt has been, you know, generally advising Republicans to focus on, quote, kitchen table issues, to be really, really kind of happy warriors about the future of the country and double down on government oversight and accountability. So things like investigating Biden and election fraud, election security. Those, I think, are the messages he's pushed on Kevin McCarthy and Kevin McCarthy has heard loud and clear. So that's kind of the background. But not everyone thinks it's a good idea to run on like a specific platform of stuff you do in office. But that is what Kevin McCarthy has decided to do.

And he's taking close counsel from Newt Gingrich over the last year about that. And you've read this thing? Yeah, it's literally one page. There aren't that many words to read. Okay. Is there anything specific you parsed while reading this one page? Yeah. So it's divided into four sections, an economy that's strong, a nation that's safe, a future that's built on freedom, and a government that's accountable. And most of it's pretty vague and boilerplate-y. Like, you know, they promise if you elect Republicans, they will fight inflation and lower the cost of

living. You're living through 12 months with only 11 months pay now because inflation is so high. They will curb wasteful government spending and increase take-home pay and create good paying jobs. Can I afford to fill up my tank? Can I afford the food, the milk? Can I find baby formula? So, you know, they don't say much about like how they would do that and that stuff. You would hear sort of on any Republican campaign speech. There are like a couple of specific pieces.

They promise to end proxy voting for Congress, meaning you have to be in Congress to cast a vote. And they also say we'll support 200,000 police officers. So, you know, they give a specific number. Why 200,000? What about all the rest of them? 200,000 more. Okay.

And then there's stuff about making a parent's bill of rights for schools. We can build an education system that has a parent's bill of rights, that you have a say in your kid's education. And moving the supply chain away from China. Too long, China has too much control of our supply chain. We're going to bring that back to America. So on the whole, it's more vague than the 1994 contract with America. And I would say it's not very specific, but there are a couple of promises like eliminating welfare incentives, even though that's actually a very vague thing to say.

Well, if the chief takeaway here is they're being vague, but want to do nice things for America, what do we know concretely they're going to face? I mean, the war in Ukraine is raging. What else is this Congress going to have to deal with? Well, I think they're going to definitely have to deal with inflation. They're definitely going to be dealing with a nation that's grappling with reproductive rights politics. I do not think that's going to go away after November. Yeah, war, the energy crisis. I think if the Fed keeps going with the way they're going, there could be massive unemployment next year. So that's going to be up to the government to look at. I mean, one sort of worry is that Republicans would be really happy to make absolute chaos and have it then be blamed on Joe Biden. That's the thing. It's like how much responsibility will fall on

Republicans if they take power is kind of an open question. And they might want to try to make then be blamed on Joe Biden. That's the thing. It's like how much responsibility will fall on Republicans if they take power is kind of an open question. And they might want to try to make things extremely bad for Biden going into 2024. How unified are congressional Republicans behind Kevin McCarthy right now? I mean, at this point, everyone's kind of trying to stick to general talking points.

They want to minimize the opportunity to be attacked going into November. But I think it is absolutely true that there are a lot of factional disputes within the Republican Party that we tend to not hear about as much when they're just in the minority. And you're going to have people who want to put pressure on Kevin McCarthy from the right. And I do think while there are some more moderate centrist Republicans, there's going to be less space for them to work heading into 2024 because there's going to be so much pressure to take bipartisan victories off the table for Biden. Yeah. But yeah, if Republicans take the House,

I don't think Kevin McCarthy's ability to put out this agenda, you know, addresses the question of whether he'll be able to contain infighting if they're in power. Let's talk about the Senate a little bit. How unified are Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell? So Mitch McConnell took a very different approach over the last year. He's been under pressure from donors and party leaders to also develop some kind of what will Republican senators do if they win. And he's basically just rebuffed that. If Republicans take back control of Congress after the midterms, what would be your agenda? That is a very good question. And I'll let you know when we take it back.

A big contrast between 1994 Republicans is 2014 Republicans. That's another time Republicans won the Senate. And basically all they did in that cycle was talk about how bad Obama was and how this election is a referendum on the White House and how, you know, voters should throw Obama out of office and he's ruining the country. Yeah. This was all about a direct rejection of the Obama agenda. And that's basically the strategy Mitch McConnell has endorsed taking, which is like, give Democrats and liberals in the media no specifics to attack us. Just focus on the White House. Make 2022 a referendum on Biden. Keep all focus on the White House and rejecting the party in power. I'm sorry, but McConnell's going basically full Seinfeld, waging a campaign about nothing. That's just a very different strategy from the Kevin McCarthy, Newt Gingrich path. Sounds like classic Mitch, though. Yeah. And I mean, I will say,

even though he's been not putting out his own platform, he did praise Kevin McCarthy on Twitter when he released his plan. So I don't think they're not at war with each other. They just have definitely different approaches for strategy. So it sounds like if one thing's for sure, though, it's that we're not going to see a ton of bipartisanship if Republicans take the House or the Senate, for that matter. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I will say we saw more bipartisan dealmaking this cycle than I would have expected. The infrastructure bill could not have passed the Senate

without Republican support, and the GOP was critical to getting the bill through the House as well. President Biden signed the Chips and Science Act into law this morning. The bipartisan package aims to boost production of computer chips here at home in an effort to keep the U.S. competitive with China. So, you know, who knows? We could be surprised. There are certainly areas where I think there's a lot of potential sort of just policy wise where they could do stuff. But I think the general point is there's going to be even more pressure to obstruct Biden's agenda to prevent him or whoever runs on the Democratic ticket in 2024 from looking good.

That's why I think it's absolutely more likely you're going to see a lot of investigations just focused on trying to make Biden and the Democratic Party, quote, exposing them, revealing their faults or how they may or may not be breaking the law. And I think that's definitely going to be a big priority. The investigations when we're back on Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. You're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained. Ramp.com slash explained.

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Tell us, investigations into what? This will be the whole laundry list of investigations. There's going to be investigations into stuff that is broad issues of bipartisan concern from the withdrawal from Afghanistan and how that got bungled, the situation at the border to, you know,

the origins of COVID working down through into, you know, investigating Hunter Biden into looking into even the January 6th committee or even into, you know, investigating the investigations of Donald Trump. We're absolutely going to look into this stuff. We're going to reveal it for the American people. My Democrat colleagues are not going to like the results, but there's nothing you can do about it because this house will once again belong to we the people,

and we the people demand accountability out of this body. So these are going to really span the wide world into broad issues that have been the subject of investigating reporting from The New York Times, the things that have been subject of investigative reporting from Breitbart. So it'll be the whole range of everything under the sun. Is there any through line here, Ben? Do you see any connection between all the stuff that the GOP might start to investigate if they take back Congress? The through line is stuff that either Joe Biden and his administration has screwed up,

stuff that either people think Joe Biden and the administration has screwed up, or stuff that gets talked about on Fox News. It's sort of whatever sort of gets folks going in terms of, you know, every possible criticism under the sun, that it's legitimate criticisms like the Afghanistan situation being screwed up all the way down to, you know, that there's talks about a special committee to investigate Hunter Biden and sort of getting into the swamps so that it's sort of just about everything under the sun in terms of what motivates conservatives right now and where people have concerns. And it's a question of then the legitimacy of those concerns or what they are. So everything from the legitimate to perhaps the less legitimate. I mean, some of the

more fringy Republicans want to impeach Joe Biden. Yes. I've introduced articles of impeachment on President Joe Biden. Will McCarthy tolerate any of that business? Right now, you have Marjorie Taylor Greene, who I believe is under her fifth different impeachment resolution of Joe Biden, which probably won't go anywhere. Their impeachment resolutions to Kamala Harris. Ted Cruz suggested that there would be an impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas, the Homeland Security Secretary, over the handling of things at the border. And I'll tell you what, the House of Representatives needs to impeach Merrick Garland, and they need to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of Homeland Security. And we need to have trials in the United States Senate on their abuse of power

and the incredible damage it's doing to the rule of law and to Americans across this country. But, you know, it's worth noting that all of this is also dependent on the size of the Republican majorities, too, and how much there's the vote to do this and how much this can be shut down in committee, you know, that this is not just about what Kevin McCarthy would want in an ideal world, but what Kevin McCarthy can keep 218 votes together to do. You mentioned Marjorie Taylor Greene. Of course, she doesn't even accept that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. That's right. We know President Trump won.

Do we know if Kevin McCarthy is going to give in to any of the election deniers in his ranks who want to investigate Biden's win? I mean, it really doesn't seem like that's anything that realistically could happen,

that, you know, while most Republicans voted to raise concerns, you know, voted to try to overturn the 2020 election, you know, it's a question with this, folks, about what you're talking about, an election denier that, you know, a lot of people are just trying to go along with where the party's at versus people who legitimately think Mike Lindell's right about the conspiracy

with Hugo Chavez and the Italian satellites to change the results of the 2020 election. I mean, there's no upside for this, but there's a question of what that majority looks like, and that's sort of the question, whether they're going to get fully caught up with the fever swamps and what the hardcore base of the party wants. And that obviously depends on size. It depends on the political winds and depends on what's happened.

It seems like people on the left and the right are already making preparations for the GOP to at least take the House of Representatives. That includes, you know, Nancy Pelosi and her trip to Taiwan, arguably, or Chuck Schumer and holding off on this vote to solidify gay rights until after the midterms. Are Republicans making any preparations for these

investigations? I mean, Republicans already talking about oversight. They're sending in document preservation requests. They're already getting entirely ready to sort of lay out what they want to do. And everyone, I think, is anticipating this, that they're already sort of laying the pathwork and starting the process to get the ball rolling so that they can provide it if they take over the House on January 3rd, which seems more likely than not. They'll be ready to go and to start, you know, subpoenaing everyone they can whenever they can. What kind of document requests? What do they tell us about what might happen. You have document requests being sent over on Afghanistan. You have document requests that James Comer, who's the top Republican in House oversight, is already sending letters to banks and Treasury Department relating to Hunter Biden's business dealings, that this sort of everything under the sun that would be at the top, that they're already starting

this process and getting things going. Kevin McCarthy has told Merrick Garland to clear his schedule and preserve all documents. That is actually an official action from the Congress in terms of document preservation. But as long as Democrats have control of the White House, do any of these investigations have teeth? Yes, they certainly have real teeth, that these are congressional investigations with subpoena power that can drag folks before Congress and testify. There's obviously questions about how much we'll sort of see precedents being followed from the Trump administration where they refuse to play ball to essentially face down showdowns over contempt of Congress. And, you know, it remains to see how much that will happen. But, you know, Congress has real power to do things as subpoena stuff. And they can also turn this into things that can become government shutdown fights that they can

sort of attach to fights over spending, over the debt limit, over the defense authorization bill, that being a member of Congress still has some power these days. A lot of the investigations you're alluding to feel at least tangentially related to the former president, if not directly related to the former president. How much of a wild card is he over all of this stuff? I mean, he's certainly a bit of a wild card,

but some of that is sort of priced in. I mean, I think we all live in a universe and we're prepared for certainly not a tweet anymore, but a statement or truth social, whatever, or rally speech or interview something that obviously, you know, this is a lot of this is sort of soaked in Trump's influence, but it's also going to take place in what will be a competitive 2024 Republican primary too. Trump would be more likely to run than not, but he'll have competition if he runs. And if he doesn't end up running, there'll be 37 Republicans all competing for the mantle of successor to his political movement. But I think some of this is certainly soaked in Trumpism, but all of American politics across the political spectrum bears the influence of Donald Trump and what's happened over the past seven or eight years. And so whatever the GOP does,

if and when it takes back the House or even the Senate, sets the stage for whatever might happen next in the White House. I mean, I think it certainly will determine some of the mood music for this. But, you know, it's also worth noting that, you know, aggressive oversight when the Congress and the presidency are held by different parties is absolutely nothing new. That you can turn back to all the Clinton investigations in the 90s. You can look at Benghazi, sort of normal at this point for House majorities of a different political party than the White House to try to find ways to extract political cost and to score partisan points when you have divided government. That there's a Trump influence on this, but, you know, nothing's that new under the sun.

That was Ben Jacobs, along with Rachel Cohen, who you heard from earlier in the show. He writes for Vox.com. Check it out. Our program today was produced by Avishai Artsy, edited by Matthew Collette, engineered by Paul Robert Mounsey, and fact-checked by Laura Bullard. It's Today Explained. Thank you.