| Q: What’s up with Matt Gaetz? He’s one of the least-liked members of Congress. So any news about him gets a lot of attention. He’s a Republican from Florida who led the successful effort to oust the House Republican speaker, then Kevin McCarthy, last fall.
Why we’re talking about him now: For years, he was under investigation by the federal government over whether he had sex with a 17-year-old and paid for her to cross state lines to have sex. In essence, he faced allegations of sex trafficking of a minor. But investigators decided not to charge Gaetz over concerns about the credibility of two witnesses, The Washington Post reported. That wasn’t the end for him. This week, the nonpartisan House Ethics Committee reiterated that it’s been investigating Gaetz for years and is opening new lines of inquiry, like that he may have engaged in sexual misconduct and illegal drug use and accepted improper gifts. Gaetz has denied everything. Congress can’t bring criminal charges, but it could punish him in other ways, like fines, censure or even expulsion. And the investigation keeps Gaetz in the news in a way he’d rather not. Q: If Trump did not accept the results of the 2020 elections (and still doesn’t), why do Republicans think he will accept the 2024 election results? They don’t. Rather, Trump has made it a requisite for ambitious Republicans to question the election results right alongside him. A good example of this is Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a potential vice-presidential pick. In 2020, he voted to certify Joe Biden’s win when many of his colleagues didn’t. But now he won’t commit to accepting the results.
In fact, Rubio told NBC News, “The Democrats are the ones that have opposed every Republican victory since 2000.” Quick fact check of that: Members of Congress on both sides have raised questions to certifying election results. But it was usually just a handful of lawmakers. No party has refused to certify election results to the magnitude that Republicans did in 2020, where eight Republican senators and 139 House Republicans questioned the results — even after Trump supporters attacked the Capitol. Q: Please give me definitions of conservatism and liberalism. Are Republicans always conservative and Democrats always liberal? Not necessarily. There are a lot of conservatives who hold liberal social views, but when it comes to the economy and crime, they go with a Republican candidate, explained Salena Zito, a columnist at the conservative-leaning Washington Examiner and author of the book “The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics.” The definition has been shifting in the Trump era, but in general, conservatives tend to value tradition and norms that have been tested over time, as well as personal responsibility, while liberals tend to value new approaches to social problems and prioritize social equity. Historically there has been lots of overlap in the beliefs of people who identify as conservative versus liberal. But that’s happening less and less. A 2022 Pew Research analysis found that the ideological differences between Republicans and Democrats in Congress are wider than at any time in the past 50 years. Twenty years ago, the least liberal Democrat and least conservative Republican had quite a bit in common. Today, they don’t. That’s driven in large part by the right. Conservatives in Congress have gotten much more conservative over the decades, more than liberals have moved toward the left, that Pew survey finds. And Congress is a reflection of America: Of the two-thirds of voters who consider themselves partisan, more consider themselves conservative than liberal, an April Pew Research Survey finds. |
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