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Welcome to the commentary magazine Daily podcast. Today is Wednesday, May 5th, 2021. I'm John

Pothor. It's the editor of commentary magazine with me as always executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi,

Abe. Hi John. Associate editor Noa Rothman. Hi, Noah. Hi John. And senior writer Christine

Rosen. Hi, Christine. Hi John. So just as the Republican Party is starting to lick its chops

at all sorts of signs, portents and and and and presages of a really bad 2022 midterm election

for Democrats. The in terms of their ability to hold the house. We have now six democratic

retirements from Democrats who may well be just high-tailing it because they don't think they can

win another term and there's they have a five seat majority in the house. So right there,

if they're right and they're leaving for this reason, you got absent some of the changes

from redistricting after the census. You've got the Republicans taking the majority back in November

2022, but it's like going to be way worse than that. Remember there were 48 Republican retirements

in 2017, 2018 that pressaged the the the huge democratic wave of 2018 in which 18 of those 48 seats

flipped from the Republicans to the Democrats. So they are they're looking good and yet they are

having a gigantic fight inside their own ranks with Kevin McCarthy, the speaker of the house and

the whip Steve Scalice basically doing everything they can to get Liz Cheney, the third ranking

Republican to resign or before or you know leave before she's ousted at the next

meeting of the House Republican conference, which I guess takes place next week.

And this reminds me of a Mel Brooks bit with Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks when

he's playing an advertising executive, Mel Brooks and he and and and he's explained to Carl

Reiner how you get out at a recalcitrant employee you don't want it. You're advertising agency and he

says and they start a vicious whispering campaign. And Carl Reiner says, well, what's the whispering

...