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House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy laid out Republican priorities if the party manages to take control of the chamber away from Democrats during the November midterms that included efforts to “hold the Biden administration accountable.”
“Republican priorities when we regain the majority next year: 1 – Hold the Biden Administration accountable 2 – Secure the Border 3 – Make our cities safe again 4 – Rein in the out-of-control inflation 5 – Stop the overreach of government mandates,” McCarthy, a California Republican, said in a Friday tweet containing a short video clip in which he outlined the GOP agenda.
Republican priorities when we regain the majority next year:
1 – Hold the Biden Administration accountable
2 – Secure the Border
3 – Make our cities safe again
4 – Rein in the out-of-control inflation
5 – Stop the overreach of government mandates pic.twitter.com/8dmYSVp8Z4— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) January 14, 2022
A source close to McCarthy’s thinking told Fox News that the Republican agenda is far more comprehensive than just the talking points he outlined during Friday’s press conference to include helping to solve the ongoing supply chain crisis and addressing President Biden’s deadly, hectic withdrawal from Afghanistan.
In addition, the source said the GOP will also focus on the migrant influx along the U.S.-Mexico border and the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, among other things.
The source said that GOP leaders have already sent out preservation notices to various agencies as well as requests for documents that “will be ready on Day 1 to use the various tools at our disposal” to learn more about what appears to be politically motivated moves by Biden’s Justice Department as well as how information about private citizens was disclosed by the IRS and National Security Agency.
Meantime, polling for months has shown approval ratings for both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris cratering, with one of the most recent surveys finding that just 33 percent of respondents said they approved of his job as president. The same survey found that 55 percent disapproved nearly a year into his first term.
Biden and Harris aren’t doing well with their own voters, either. In late December, a Yahoo News/YouGov survey found that just 38 percent of those who voted for Biden in 2020 want him to run again in 2024.
“A full 30 percent say he should step aside. Those numbers are a little more favorable among Democrats as a whole: 43 percent and 28 percent, respectively. But they’re still fairly soft,” Yahoo reported, adding:
Just one month ago, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents were about evenly divided over whether they preferred Biden (38 percent) or someone else (41 percent) as the party’s 2024 nominee. Now fewer say Biden (32 percent), and more say they’re not sure (27 percent, up from 21 percent previously).
Biden’s backing then plummets again (to just 20 percent) when he’s matched against a hypothetical field of potential Democratic alternatives, with double-digit support for Kamala Harris (13 percent), Elizabeth Warren (11 percent), Bernie Sanders (10 percent), and Pete Buttigieg (10 percent).
As for Harris, her polling numbers are so bad that a late November report said that Democrats were considering a “nuclear option” to replace her on the party’s 2024 ticket.
“With Kamala Harris looking unelectable, the Democrats are considering the nuclear option. Whispers in Washington suggest Joe Biden’s camp has a plan to find a more popular replacement ahead of the 2024 battle,” said the UK’s Telegraph.
“Democrats desperately scrambling to find a potential successor to Joe Biden in 2024 are whispering about a potential nuclear option that could see Kamala Harris nominated to the Supreme Court,” the report stated, adding that the scenario playing out is unlikely but being discussed nevertheless.
To that point, Harris refused to answer a direct question last week when asked what the Democrats’ 2024 ticket will look like.
“I’m sorry, we are thinking about today,” Harris told NBC’s Craig Melvin.
“Honestly, I know why you are asking the question because this is part of the punditry and the gossip around places like Washington, D.C.,” she added.