The circus has come to town! Step right up folks, because Arizona is currently hosting an absolute three-ring extravaganza. The Republicans who control the state senate decided the best way to get on Donald Trump's good side would be to chase down the rabbit hole of: "Maybe if we look at the ballots again, we'll find all that non-existent fraud Trump keeps telling us is there!" So even though the ballots in Maricopa County (the lion's share of the statewide vote totals) have already been audited twice, the state senate voted to conduct their own personal "audit" of the ballots. That word is in quotes to signify that this isn't a real and authentic audit, it is instead nothing short of a circus.

This isn't even my own personal hyperbole. Here is what the Maricopa Country Board of Supervisors just wrote, in a letter to the Republican leader of the state senate: "Your 'audit,' which you once said was intended to increase voters' confidence in our electoral process, has devolved into a circus." And that's not even the snarkiest thing they had to say. Four out of the five supervisors who signed this scathing letter are Republicans, mind you, so this cannot be cast as any sort of partisan name-calling.

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Georgia Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan just announced he will not be running for re-election next year, and instead will be devoting his time and energy to a new movement to reform the Republican Party. He calls this effort "GOP 2.0." His chances of success appear to be somewhere between "slim" and "non-existent." But you have to at least applaud the guy for trying.

He is essentially trying to build on the platform that Liz Cheney just created, that of Republicans who still value things like the truth and reality and who have realized that the party's unwavering fealty to Donald Trump is quite likely to end in disaster (one way or another). However, Liz Cheney is a nationally-known figure (even more so since she was unceremoniously ostracized by her peers in the House), while Duncan is only the number two guy in a single U.S. state. I certainly didn't immediately recognize his name when I heard about the GOP 2.0 idea, and I follow politics fairly closely. Also, unlike Cheney, he isn't a member of a well-known GOP political dynasty. All of this points to his effort making a very tiny splash, in the grand scheme of things.

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The more I see of President Joe Biden, the more I am reminded of Ronald Reagan. Not in substance, mind you (their policies could hardly be more opposed), but rather in style. Joe Biden is just likeable, no matter what you think of his agenda. He's beyond avuncular, he's downright grandfatherly. Just like Reagan was. Where Reagan had: "There you go again," Biden has instead: "C'mon, man." Both express exactly the same (and extremely rare) political quality -- the ability to defuse a story completely, right before reframing it in a way that most average non-political Americans would agree with (or at least relate to), even if it drives the pundits bonkers. You could call this inherent skill the ability to project being a "commonsense politician," I suppose.

Biden, of course, is nowhere near as charismatic as Reagan. Reagan was quicker with a joke than Biden, and quicker to give amusing faux backhanded compliments to his political opponents. But when confronted by a tough question, Reagan could slide away from it so easily (and sound so reasonable doing so) that he became known as the "Teflon president" -- nothing ever stuck to him. Biden, so far at least, seems to be exhibiting the same ability (albeit in a different way -- the two men's styles are merely similar in this respect, not identical in any way). Nothing bad -- no matter how bad -- ever stuck to Reagan. And even though it has only been four months, nothing so far has stuck to Biden, either.

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The Republican Party has officially divorced itself from reality. They have, quite simply, moved their headquarters to Cloud Cuckoo Land. Any among their ranks who do not swear fealty to the fantastic lies they now believe must be either shunned or expelled. That is the state of one of the two major American political parties, in the twenty-first century.

Normally, such a development would be a reason for glee among the other political party, but this is not merely a matter of Republicans believing that the world is flat, the moon is made of green cheese, or tax cuts always pay for themselves -- no, this is no mere pedestrian fantasyland they have now taken up residence within. This is far more dangerous.

Republicans now must bow down to Trump's Big Lie, that the 2020 presidential election was somehow "stolen" from him (with zero evidence to back this up, of course). Because of this forced fealty, Republicans have turned the Big Lie into a perpetual motion machine, feeding on itself. Since the election was stolen, that means lots of fraud must have taken place, and that means passing laws in as many states as they can to change the game for the next election cycle. But while most of the attention has been centered on all the voter-suppression aspects of these new laws, a much more insidious thing is also taking place -- Republicans are changing the rules of how votes are counted and certified. They saw what happened to Trump's attempt to steal an election last time, when Republican officials actually took their election oversight jobs seriously and resisted; and they aim to replace that system with one where Republican politicians are in charge of determining which elections they deem valid and which they don't. Elections with more votes for Democrats are obviously suspect and need overturning, to put it more plainly.

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We are in the midst of a bit of Washington Kabuki theater, which is underway with a very specific audience in mind: Senator Joe Manchin. The entire exercise is designed to prove to him that Republicans are fundamentally incapable of compromise and are not negotiating in good faith with President Joe Biden and the Democrats on anything, including things that used to be fairly universally-supported, such as infrastructure. So I do hope Senator Manchin is paying attention.

Joe Biden probably sincerely does want to work with Republicans, because he knows that picking up a handful of Republican votes in Congress would insulate him from all the cries of "partisan legislation" from the right. He also is old enough to remember when Democrats and Republicans weren't split on purely ideological lines, when conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans still existed in both the Senate and the House. So it's kind of nostalgic for him to even try to get bipartisan support. But Biden also remembers the endless stalling Republicans did under Barack Obama, and how they wound up with precisely zero GOP votes at the end of the process. So he's determined not to fall into that trap again.

He will accomplish this with deadlines. He has set Memorial Day as the deadline for his American Jobs Plan, and if he determines there has been no significant progress on a compromise by then, then Biden will push Chuck Schumer to just lump the whole thing with his American Families Plan and pass it with only Democratic votes (using budget reconciliation). The question of when we get to this point, though, has always been whether Manchin will go along with it or not.

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In more ways than one, Liz Cheney is her father's daughter. Coming from a liberal, however, that's not exactly a compliment. Both Cheneys are unapologetic warmongers, and both are extremely cunning denizens of Washington. Both stand for principles I personally abhor, and I doubt there's a single political issue or stance on which I would ever agree with either one of them. Having said all of that, though, Cheney is to be praised for going down swinging. She refuses to back down, she refuses to stay quiet, and she will tell anyone who will listen that what Donald Trump and his spineless enablers are doing is nothing short of an attack on both American democracy itself and the United States Constitution.

That is to be praised, at least these days. In times past, Cheney wouldn't even have to make such a stand, because in times past America had never seen a president attack democracy and an election he lost, and then actually egg on an insurrection against Congress finalizing the Electoral College vote. None of that would have even been conceivable before Trump, so there would have been no reason to oppose such a farfetched and unimaginable thing.

These days, however, Cheney is one of the precious few Republicans left who are strong enough to stand up and say: "I will not believe a lie -- the election was not stolen." And in the spirit of reinforcing positive behavior (even in your political opponents), I have to applaud her for doing so.

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This could be the week when we all learn whether bipartisanship is an achievable goal or whether it is merely a windmill not even worth tilting at any more. President Joe Biden is sitting down not only with all four congressional leaders (Nancy Pelosi, Kevin McCarthy, Chuck Schumer, and Mitch McConnell), but also with a delegation from the Senate Republicans who say they are making an honest attempt to come to a compromise on an infrastructure bill. Democrats have already signalled that this won't be an endless waiting game -- if nothing appears by Memorial Day, they are going to use budget reconciliation to pass their bills in the Senate with a simple majority vote, which will leave Republicans without any say over the final bill at all (which is exactly what happened on Biden's first major legislative achievement, the American Rescue Plan). So they've got roughly three weeks before their bipartisan dream bill turns back into a pumpkin.

Most media stories which have covered the give and take of negotiations have zeroed in on the overall size of the bills the two sides are proposing. There is quite a bit of difference between Biden's $2.3 trillion opening bid and the $568 billion the Republicans put on the table. But these sorts of issues are usually the easiest to compromise upon, because it is just an exercise in seeing who will give up more before a final number somewhere in the middle is agreed to. Joe Biden knows all about such haggling, from being in the Senate for so long.

That's not really the problem, though. What could be the irreconcilable difference between the two plans is how it will be paid for. And there hasn't been one inch of compromise offered up by either side yet. So that is really what is worth watching this week (and beyond).

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Sometimes the headlines just write themselves, folks. House Republicans are about to joyfully embrace the "cancel culture" they routinely decry, by forcing Representative Liz Cheney out of her leadership position. Cheney keeps saying things they don't like (such as the incontrovertible fact that the 2020 election was safe and secure and that Donald Trump lost, for instance), so they are going to try to squelch the power of her voice by kicking her out. The Republican journey from selling themselves as the "party of personal responsibility" to the party of endless victimhood is now complete.

Since the Republicans are now rebranding themselves as the Big Lie Party, they are of course using another lie (big or small, take your pick) to oust Cheney. According to them, Cheney keeps "living in the past" or "bringing up the past" instead of properly concentrating on the future (the 2022 midterm election) and selling the party brand to the voters. The problem with this construct is that the entire fight is about the past, not the present or the future. It is Trump who refuses to let go of redefining the party around his Big Lie. It is Trump who refuses to even engage Joe Biden and his policies. It is Trump who keeps bringing it up -- Cheney is merely reacting to him when he does. This is not about the future, it is about the party's willingness to redefine its core ideology to "the election was stolen, Trump really won." That's really it. That's all they've got left, other than "rich people should pay no taxes at all." That is all that is left in the Republican ideology cupboard.

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In 2018, Democrats dominated the midterm elections. This was not historically unusual, although the size of the victory was at the high end of the scale. Since there is now a Democrat in the White House, the 2022 election has to be seen as tilted towards the Republicans. But there is one very potent issue that Democrats should truly begin exploiting -- in the same manner they exploited healthcare in 2018. Back then, Democrats ran on a very obvious choice: vote for us, we will try to make health insurance cheaper and easier to get, while Republicans' only answer is to repeal Obamacare (which, by then, had become quite popular). It worked. In 2022, the Democrats' message should be: vote for us, we will make [or, if it passes, "we made"] four additional years of education free, while Republicans told you it was evil and socialism and maybe even communism -- while they fought hard against two free years of preschool for America's children.

This is a truly perfect message, because it aims right at the heart of the key demographic battleground: suburban women. Who here thinks suburban women are going to militantly fight against free preschool and two years of free community college? Because that is exactly what the new Republican position is. Don't believe this? Here they are in their own words:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell: "[the Biden administration] wants to jack up taxes in order to nudge families toward the kinds of jobs Democrats want them to have, in the kinds of industries Democrats want to exist, with the kinds of cars Democrats want them to drive, using the kinds of child-care arrangements that Democrats want them to pursue." Those dastardly Democrats! Forcing people not to pay for child care! Oh, the horror!

Senator Tim Scott (in his response to Biden's speech to Congress): "[Democrats want] to put Washington even more in the middle of your life, from the cradle to college." To Republicans, providing free schooling is somehow the jackboot of tyranny, obviously.

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The way things are going, they might as well just go ahead and rename the Republican Party the "Party of Trump." It'd certainly be more honest, that's for sure. Not only has Donald Trump successfully co-opted the party from within, he is now also in charge of who is allowed to stay. If you're in Trump's good graces, then you are a true Republican (and a patriot to boot). If you are not, then you are shunned and booed and excluded. There is no "big tent" to the party anymore -- it's a small tent (and getting smaller) and the tent is wholly owned by Trump, Inc.

Plenty of people -- President Joe Biden among them -- expected some sort of magical return to normalcy after Trump's forced exit (both from public office and from social media). They figured most Republican politicians would sort of come out of their daze, shake themselves vigorously, and return to garden-variety conservatism. The party would reunite in opposition to a Democratic president, and by the next election cycle almost all of the Trumpian fervor (or fever) would have melted away.

They were wrong. This has not happened. In fact, the opposite has happened. The remaining "never-Trumpers" and those who were aghast at Trump inspiring and egging on a direct attack on American democracy and our elections have now been both ostracized and silenced. Or "cancelled," perhaps. They're about to be put out to pasture, in one way or another. And it doesn't matter how prominent they are, their former political heft now means very little.

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