President Biden's job approval rating flipped upside down in the late summer of 2019, and has never recovered. The point at which he lost the confidence of a majority of the American people is directly traceable to the debacle he oversaw in Afghanistan. The president's competence and credibility were gravely wounded during that avoidable lethal fiasco, and voters continue to give him low marks on his overall performance. We'll return to that political theme in a moment, but here's an update related to the Afghanistan withdrawal and the administration's Taliban policy. We know that the president broke his word and left thousands of American citizens, legal residents, and Afghan allies behind amid the deadly chaos. Many of these people were left at the mercy of the terrorist organization that fully took over the country as soon as the US military fully departed.
People have questions about how taxpayer dollars may have flowed to these terrorists -- beyond the billions in military equipment we abandoned to them, that is -- and it seems the administration is not keen on allowing those answers to be known. The Free Beacon reports:
JUST IN: White House Won’t Say How It Spent $1 Billion in Taliban-Controlled Afghanistan -- State Depart stonewalls watchdog investigation into taxpayer funds to Taliban's Afghanistan https://t.co/3eOlxJWDNZ
— Adam Kredo (@Kredo0) November 11, 2022
The State Department says it will not comply with a government watchdog’s investigation into how more than $1 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds was spent in Afghanistan since the Taliban terror group retook control of the country. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), a government watchdog established in 2008 to perform oversight on America’s $146 billion reconstruction project in the war-torn country, announced that for the first time in its history, the State and Treasury Departments will not comply with its investigations...SIGAR says the Biden administration’s refusal to cooperate with its investigation into the allocation of $1.1 billion in taxpayer funds since the Taliban regained power constitutes a "direct violation" of the watchdog group’s congressional mandate. The administration also is withholding evidence related to the collapse of the U.S.-backed Afghan government, as well as information about whether the State Department is complying with laws prohibiting the transfer of American funds to the Taliban. "No federal agency has challenged SIGAR’s authority to conduct oversight of such programs until now," the watchdog agency said.
"The standoff is the latest controversy surrounding the Biden administration’s botched 2021 evacuation from Afghanistan, which left 13 Americans dead and thousands more stranded in the Taliban-controlled country," Adam Kredo writes. "The administration also has stonewalled congressional investigations into the matter, including probes into its decision to abandon around $7 billion worth of advanced American military equipment inside Afghanistan." The story notes that the Special Inspector General's office says this is the first act of non-compliance from any administration from either party over the course of its existence, which has spanned well over a decade. More:
"After more than a decade of cooperation, State, and USAID have for months now refused to provide SIGAR with information and assistance needed for several audits and Congressionally mandated reviews" into the "collapse of the U.S.‐backed government in Afghanistan," the report says. These agencies are also withholding information pertaining to their "compliance with laws and regulations prohibiting the transfer of funds to the Taliban." A State Department official further "informed SIGAR that department staff have received internal direction to not engage with or speak to SIGAR without prior clearance from State legal counsel," a directive that violates laws meant to protect government whistleblowers and protect SIGAR’s investigation power, according to the report.
This is outrageous and merits aggressive Congressional oversight, which might arrive in some form if Republicans take control of the House of Representatives when all the outstanding races are called, as is believed to be likely. A very narrow majority may produce any number of governing and whip count headaches, but control of committees is a straightforward and importance advantage of holding the majority of any size. The fact that the House didn't flip easily, and that the Senate will remain in Democratic hands, is a surprising blow to Republicans in Washington, who'd expected wave-level victories. Incredibly, President Biden had one of the most successful first midterm elections of any modern-era American president, despite his own serious unpopularity and widespread economic discontentment. Fox's voter analysis (modernized and expansive exit polling) found that among last week's electorate, Biden's disapproval rating was 57 percent. Yet his party suffered minimal losses.
As I wrote on Wednesday, that's an indictment of the opposition party, which was seen as so unpalatable to independents at the federal level that this swing group defied history and sided slightly with the party in power, of whose leader they lopsidedly disapprove. Voters said they view the GOP as too extreme. Many of those same independents flocked to familiar Republican governors, however. Types of Republicans on the ballot vary, and such distinctions matter quite a lot. Writing at National Review, Yuval Levin sounds stupefied by both major parties' manifest inability to avoid actively repelling voters beyond their respective bases:
But since the mid-’90s, we have had two minority parties. Both are unpopular, each only wins by highlighting the other’s weaknesses, and neither is doing much to expand its appeal. At first, this meant that power would swing back and forth, leading each party to think it was on the verge of a long and grand new era of dominance after its victories, only to see it all fall apart just two years later. But now, it feels more like we are stuck in the middle, with a genuinely 50–50 politics. The last two presidential elections have come down to a few pockets of votes in each of a small number of states and each could easily have gone the other way. The last two years have seen the narrowest congressional majority in the history of our country. And although it won’t be entirely clear for some time, it sure looks like Tuesday’s midterms will result in majorities roughly as slim. Nominal control of one or both houses may shift, but nobody won power in this election. The public said “no” to what both parties offered, again...It would be easy to assume that the reason for this polarized deadlock is that there are almost no winnable voters left, and that Americans aren’t willing to split their tickets anymore. But this is just not true. When the parties don’t go out of their way to repel voters, they can win decent majorities. The reason such majorities have become rare is that both parties have worked hard to become repulsive to the median voter.
I had plenty to say about Donald Trump earlier, so I won't subject you to more criticism of him here -- but Levin makes some important points, if you're interested in reading his full piece. I'll leave you with a two points:
This isn’t going to happen. Republicans either adapt to mail-in voting and ballot harvesting or they don’t win. California Republicans have been doing it for years, catch up. Adapt or die. https://t.co/mA0nwwUc5u
— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) November 14, 2022
A slight oversimplification, but basically right: The voters who decide elections in key states & districts have demonstrated what sorts of Republicans they’re willing/eager to support, and what sorts they’re not. GOP/primary voters can either notice and win — or not, and not.
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) November 15, 2022