Giving the GOP the Heimlich
Giving the GOP the Heimlich
Plus, Lollapalooza Brasil and American Greatness.
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New from me: Giving the GOP the Heimlich.
Phil Heimlich was a late entrant into the Republican primary for Ohio’s 8th Congressional District. He’s a guy with a famous last name—his dad invented the maneuver everyone learns in First Aid class. And he wants to help turn the GOP into a responsible political party again.
He has already had a long career in politics: as a former assistant county prosecutor in Hamilton County (home of Cincinnati); as a member of the Cincinnati city council; and as Hamilton County supervisor. He’s been out of politics since 2007, when he briefly ran a House primary campaign, but dropped out after concluding there was no path to victory. In the meantime, he’s been on the speaking circuit, writing op-eds, and hosting a podcast called “Hard Truths.”
The boundaries of the 8th district haven’t been finalized because the state legislature’s Republicans are still battling with the Ohio Supreme Court over the map. (Ohio lost a seat in the most recent census.) But the district is expected to run along Ohio’s western border from Cincinnati’s northern suburbs up to near Celina and Lake St. Mary’s. It will not, by any means, be a swing district.
The West had begun to take liberal democracy for granted. Then came the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Is it a turning point? Francis Fukuyama joins Charlie Sykes on today’s podcast.
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SHAY KHATIRI: NATO Must Free Itself from Its Promises to Russia.
In retrospect, Vladimir Putin announced his intention to abrogate the NATO-Russia Founding Act in 2007, though of course, not in so many words. Two months after his bellicose speech at 2007 the Munich Security Conference, Russia conducted the first state-sponsored cyberattack against Estonia. The next year, Russia invaded Georgia, one-fifth of which remains under Russian occupation. Five years after that, Russia annexed Crimea and launched a proxy war in eastern Ukraine. A year after that, the Russian military returned to the Middle East for the first time in half a century to save Bashar al-Assad’s genocidal regime. All throughout, the Russian secret security agencies conducted a series of assassinations and assassination attempts on NATO soil, including with banned radiological and chemical weapons, and cyberattacks against Western companies.
If, despite repeated hostility and aggression, the “current and foreseeable security environment” from 1997 still existed in January 2022, it ended in February, when Putin decided to try to force Ukraine to abandon its independence with a war the likes of which Europe has not seen since World War II. Russia is in violation of the NATO-Russia Founding Act, has been for years, and has no intention of returning into compliance. It is time to accept this reality and act accordingly.
The Trump administration appeared to be inching away from the 1997 diplomatic resolution inadvertently. In 2019, the administration reached an agreement to rotate 1,000 troops through bases in Poland, thereby modestly strengthening NATO’s eastern flank without breaking the letter of the Act. The following year, President Trump erratically ordered the relocation of 12,000 American troops from Germany to Poland, and the Polish Ministry of Defense confirmed that it would have been the first move towards a permanent American base in Poland, but President Joe Biden froze the move upon taking office, so NATO remains in compliance with the agreement even as Russia flouts it.
TIM MILLER: On Lollapalooza Brasil and American Greatness.
Staggering atop the Budweiser stage in São Paulo’s Interlagos Autódromo, a seemingly sloshed, but many years sober, Julian Casablancas paused The Strokes’ headlining set for a little light crowd work.
Looking out at the throngs from behind his nighttime sunglasses, he became transfixed not with the beautiful adoring Paulistanos but the garish brand installations that dotted the landscape. To his right was the Coca Cola EDM activation, a massive plastic gazebo with epilepsy-inducing strobe lights. Straight ahead, the Doritos Lounge, a two-story adult fun house presumably sprinkled with nacho cheese dust.
“I’m up here trying to focus but I can’t think about anything except this fucking LSD tent mall,” he riffed.
This gave me a bit of a chuckle. It was a ludicrous scene. But none of my neighbors seemed to follow the frontman’s attempt at humor given his garbled speaking-style, the language barrier, and their lack of schooling in Gen X’s disdain for corporatism.
🚨OVERTIME 🚨
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Joey Votto… Continues to create the #content.
Life in the suburbs… I feel seen.
The virus gets a vote. Just because we want the pandemic to be over, doesn’t mean it is.
What Should Have Happened at the Ketanji Brown Jackson Hearings… Reason delivers the goods.
This isn’t believable. Like, at all.
Is Kevin McCarthy going to really set Madison Cawthorn straight? I have my doubts, but it’s probably going to go more like this.
Vertically grown strawberries. Will it become a thing?
Meowow! I do not want to spoil one single aspect of this story for you. It’s glorious.
“You can’t do this on a podcast!” The gag lives on.
“People say Ron’s all Trump? But he is so much more…” That line from a campaign ad from Casey DeSantis has always stuck with me. Because I am #NeverDeSantis. Jonathan Chait delved into DeSantismentum at NY Mag, and it’s must reading, because much of the institutional right has gotten behind him and Chait explains why.
If “competent Trumpism” is what DeSantis offers, I am not buying.
That’s it for me. Tech support questions? Email members@thebulwark.com. Questions for me? Respond to this message.
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