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      Trump’s Fraud Trial and McCarthy’s Ouster Show How Chaotic the GOP Has Become

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      A revolt in Congress. Insurgent candidacies in swing states. A likely nominee on trial. This week showed how the party has turned more insular, antagonistic and repellent to general-election voters.Turbulence has trailed the Republican Party ever since Donald J. Trump’s rise. This week, that chaos looked like an organizing principle.Internal discord rippled through the party’s ranks in battleground states and the nation’s capital, showing clearly how a Trumpian algorithm has incentivized Republicans to keep their electorally self-destructive patterns in place.In Arizona and Michigan, two firebrand conservatives kicked off campaigns for the U.S. Senate, complicating plans from party leaders to retake the chamber in November.In Congress, conservative lawmakers ended the speakership of Representative Kevin McCarthy in an unprecedented power struggle that served as a gift to gleeful Democrats eager to tell 2024 voters about the failures of Republican governance.And in downtown Manhattan, the prohibitive favorite for the party’s presidential nomination, Donald J. Trump, sat in a courtroom — his lips pursed and eyebrows knit — at his civil fraud trial, the latest in a long line of legal setbacks that will tie him up in court throughout the campaign season. Even after a judge imposed a gag order on him for attacking a court clerk on social media, Mr. Trump lashed out online at the prosecutor and declared the trial a “witch hunt.”Taken together, the events this week showed how disorder has created its own reward system among Republicans, turning the party increasingly insular and antagonistic — and, as a result, more repellent to general-election voters. After three consecutive disappointing election cycles for the party, it shows few signs of getting itself back on track.Long gone are the carrots and sticks that traditionally helped party leaders shepherd their flocks, like fund-raising help from national committees or plum committee assignments.Instead, the way to rise as a Republican is, one, to display unbending devotion to Mr. Trump and then, two, to embrace some mix of relentless self-promotion, militant opposition to Democrats and a willingness to burn the federal government to the ground — even if it means taking the party down, too.“This all goes back to our reward structure, and how that’s gotten turned on its head,” said Doug Heye, a former aide to Representative Eric Cantor, the onetime majority leader ousted in 2014 by a far-right challenger, pointing out that some of the most controversial Republicans in Congress have bigger social media followings than the party’s leaders.“As long as you’re talking about fighting — regardless of whether you have a strategy to land a punch or win a round — you never actually have to win, because that’s what gets the most attention,” Mr. Heye continued. “And that means Republicans are now sort of always talking between ourselves, and the rest of the country we either don’t engage or hold in contempt.”What’s new is how ingrained such instincts have become among Republicans. Impractical purity tests are creating new divisions in an already fragmented party, like an uncontrollable mitosis damaging nearby tissue with potentially fatal consequences.That means the challenge for one of the nation’s two major political parties is whether it can find a way to thrive when it is powered by a strain of conservatism that somehow grows more potent in defeat.This quandary was articulated by Representative Matt Rosendale of Montana, a far-right Republican weighing a Senate bid against Jon Tester, the Democratic incumbent. Mr. Rosendale recently told donors that while his party had anticipated a wave of victories in last year’s midterm elections, he had been “praying each evening for a small majority.”“Because I recognize that that small majority was the only way that we were going to advance a conservative agenda, and that if it was the right majority, that if we had six or seven very strong individuals, we would drag the conference over to the right — and we were able to do that,” Mr. Rosendale said in a video of the meeting posted by The Messenger.Mr. McCarthy’s ouster on Tuesday was carried out by just eight Republican members of the chamber, including Mr. Rosendale and Representative Matt Gaetz, a Floridian who sat next to Mr. Rosendale during the donor event.Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump White House strategist who interviewed the two congressmen during the fund-raiser, said, “Matt Gaetz gave me that lecture in July of 2022 about the smaller majority — and you are correct, sir.”While Mr. Bannon, now a podcast host, helped orchestrate Mr. McCarthy’s downfall, other conservative media personalities — including Mark Levin and Ben Shapiro — blasted the move.But this antagonistic partisanship has proved successful only for the most provocative members of the party who represent the most gerrymandered districts, which leave them accountable only to primary voters. Republicans following this playbook in battleground states or more competitive districts have shouldered the blame for the party’s underperformance in recent years.So far, many Republicans seem uninterested in mitigating their electoral misery.Far from viewing the gag order as an embarrassment, the Trump campaign sensed an opportunity. It blasted the news to supporters in an email that aimed to launder grievances into cash for his presidential bid.In many ways, the courtroom is the new campaign trail for Mr. Trump, who wasn’t required to appear at the trial but opted to do so anyway — and has repeatedly addressed the news media at the courthouse.Even after dozens of criminal charges piled up against him this summer, Mr. Trump has widened his lead in the presidential primary race by portraying himself as the victim of political persecution, and vowing revenge on his perceived enemies if voters return him to the White House.The tactics have rallied his base of supporters, and there is nothing to suggest Mr. Trump will shift that strategy as his trial dates collide with some of the most important milestones on the Republican primary calendar.The party’s first nominating contest is in Iowa on Jan. 15, the same day Mr. Trump’s civil trial is scheduled to begin into whether he owes the writer E. Jean Carroll damages for defaming her after she accused him of raping her.On March 4, Mr. Trump is set to stand trial over federal criminal charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. The next day, Republicans hold their “Super Tuesday” primaries.Two more trials will unfold during the primary season — one later in March over 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, stemming from a hush money payment made to a porn star in 2016, and another in May over charges of illegally retaining dozens of classified documents.Then, in July, Republicans hold their presidential nominating convention.But if Mr. Trump and other Republicans come up short on the first Tuesday in November 2024, the events that unfolded during the first week of October 2023 may begin to explain those failures. More

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      Scalise and Jordan Seek House Speaker Backing as Trump Hangs Over Race

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      The two lawmakers sought support from members of their fractured party as the former president threatened to get involved in a potentially fierce struggle over who will lead the House.The two leading candidates to become the next Republican speaker of the House worked the phones and the halls of the Capitol on Thursday, vying for support from within their party’s fractured ranks as the chamber remained in a state of paralysis after the ouster of Representative Kevin McCarthy of California.Representatives Steve Scalise, the majority leader, and Jim Jordan, the Judiciary Committee chairman, had each landed more than a dozen endorsements by the afternoon as they raced toward a vote of Republicans tentatively scheduled for Tuesday. An election on the House floor could follow the next day, though the process could stretch much longer if no consensus can be reached.Far from the Capitol, former President Donald J. Trump, whose far-right acolytes in Congress helped lead the rebellion that has plunged the House into chaos, weighed in on what could become an epic struggle.Representative Troy Nehls of Texas wrote Thursday evening on X, formerly Twitter, that he had spoken with Mr. Trump, and that he had said he was endorsing Mr. Jordan. “I believe Congress should listen to the leader of our party,” Mr. Nehls said. “I fully support Jim Jordan for Speaker of the House.”Mr. Jordan picked up an important G.O.P. backer and cleared a potential challenger from the field with the endorsement of Representative Byron Donalds of Florida, who had previously been exploring his own run for speaker, according to a person familiar with his calls to lawmakers. Mr. Donalds said on the social media site X that Mr. Jordan “has my full support to become the next Speaker of the House!”Both Mr. Scalise and Mr. Jordan are faced with the difficult challenge of attempting to unite a fractious Republican conference that is reeling after Mr. McCarthy’s removal from the speakership.For Mr. Jordan, an Ohioan and co-founder of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, the task will be to convince more mainstream Republicans that he can govern and not simply tear things down. He met on Thursday with members of the Main Street Caucus, a group of business-minded Republicans.For Mr. Scalise, a Louisianian who has won conference elections before as majority leader, the challenge will be to stay one step ahead of Mr. Jordan, and make better inroads with the right wing of the party.Both men are considered further to the right than Mr. McCarthy, a point Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, who led the drive to oust Mr. McCarthy, has noted with a sense of satisfaction.“If it’s Speaker Jim Jordan or Speaker Steve Scalise, there will be very few conservatives in the country who don’t see that as a monumental upgrade over Speaker McCarthy,” Mr. Gaetz said on Newsmax.Casting a long shadow over the race is Mr. Trump, the G.O.P. presidential front-runner who holds heavy sway among congressional Republicans because of his strong standing with the party base, including many of their constituents.Some right-wing Republicans had been encouraging Mr. Trump to make a run for speaker himself, though the party’s current conference rules would block him from doing so because he is under multiple felony indictments and facing the possibility of significant prison time. Speaking Wednesday outside a Manhattan courthouse where he is facing a civil fraud case, Mr. Trump seemed to enjoy dangling the possibility of a run for speaker, telling reporters: “Lot of people have been calling me about speaker. All I can say is we’ll do whatever is best for the country and for the Republican Party.”“If I can help them during the process,” he added, “I’ll do it.”Back in the halls of the Congress, a serious race was taking shape.Mr. Scalise, who has been in leadership since 2014, has built relationships across the Republican conference. He has been quietly securing commitments through one-on-one calls with members.On such calls seeking support, Mr. Scalise has emphasized that he is second only to Mr. McCarthy in fund-raising prowess, and he has locked up a string of commitments from the south and the Midwest, according to a person familiar with his private calls, who described them on the condition of anonymity.“Not only is Steve a principled conservative, he has overcome adversity far beyond the infighting in our conference right now,” said Representative Ashley Hinson of Iowa, who endorsed Mr. Scalise after speaking with him.One clear point of contrast between Mr. Scalise and Mr. Jordan is their dueling positions on continued aid to Ukraine for its war against Russian aggression, which has become increasingly politicized and is now regarded by many Republicans as toxic.Mr. Jordan was one of 117 Republicans who voted last week against continuing a program to train and equip Ukrainian troops, while Mr. Scalise sided with 101 Republicans in supporting it.“Why should we be sending American tax dollars to Ukraine when we don’t even know what the goal is?” Mr. Jordan said Thursday on Fox News. “No one can tell me what the objective is.”Several Republicans said they were waiting to hear more from the candidates before deciding whom to support.Representative Marc Molinaro of New York said he had spoken with both Mr. Scalise and Mr. Jordan by phone.“There really wasn’t any one person in Congress who worked harder to help me get to Congress or to earn my support than Kevin McCarthy,” Mr. Molinaro said.“We now have individuals who have a week,” he added. “And so I’m going to observe, I’m going to listen, and I’m going to demand that members like me and the people we represent have a seat at the table, and then make a decision.”Robert Jimison More

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      New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu on How Donald Trump Loses the Primary

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      We saw a crowded Republican debate stage of seven candidates last Wednesday night — the kind of big field that worries New Hampshire’s governor, Chris Sununu, who has argued that candidates need to drop out if one or two strong rivals emerge to stop former President Donald Trump from winning the G.O.P. nomination.But can any of that happen? How? And do Republican voters even want Mr. Trump stopped? I spoke with the Mr. Sununu the day after the debate, and he described his vision for what an alternative could look like on a policy front, what it means to be a governor and whether Mr. Trump has fundamentally changed America. “Jerks may come and go, bad leaders may come and go,” he said, “but our institutions have stood through the test of times.” Mr. Sununu has served as governor of New Hampshire since 2017, and has maintained high levels of support from the battleground state that has otherwise voted for statewide Democrats in recent cycles.This interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, is part of an Opinion Q. and A. series exploring modern conservatism today, its influence in society and politics and how and why it differs (and doesn’t) from the conservative movement that most Americans thought they knew.Jane Coaston: It is the day after the second G.O.P. debate. Did anyone impress you last night?Gov. Chris Sununu: I think they were all very chippy. Tim Scott and Doug Burgum really knew that they had to push their way into the conversation, knowing that they had kind of gotten boxed out a little bit the first time. DeSantis did what he had to do, similar with the first one.Nikki Haley did a couple things. She showed she wasn’t a flash in the pan. I think she effectively won the first debate in that she showed them fire, she showed a good knowledge base. In the second debate, she didn’t disappoint either. I think she showed some grit and some fortitude.Elections are about choices. A real differentiation is saying, “I know where my opponent stands on these issues. I know exactly what their record is, and I can contrast that here.” She just seems very astute about everybody else’s record. And I think that does her very, very well in those debates.The other thing is that they finally started pulling at Donald Trump a little bit, in terms of his record. Again, Trump had some good ideas and good policies, but he couldn’t really execute on them. And again, showing that differentiation between someone who can actually execute on the policy, as opposed to someone who disagrees with the policy is a very important thing.Coaston: In The Times, you wrote, “In Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states that will vote in the 2024 Republican contests, Mr. Trump is struggling. In both Iowa and New Hampshire, he is consistently polling in the low 40 percent range. The floor of his support may be high, but his ceiling is low.” In New Hampshire and Iowa, Trump is leading by double digits. So if his ceiling is low, why is his floor so high? Why has his momentum stayed so consistent?Sununu: He does have this extremely strong base of populist Republican support. Folks that just will stand behind him no matter what, no matter all his faults. And we’ve seen that since 2016, right?In a recent poll, he was pulling in about 39 percent in New Hampshire. Which is actually really bad, by the way. I mean, he’s the former president, the voice of the G.O.P. for six years. Even with his base voters, he can’t get above 40 percent? And then the second part of that same poll is very interesting. About a third of his supporters would consider somebody else. So they’re not even that rock solid.Coaston: Gov. Chris Christie is polling well in New Hampshire, but not as well anywhere else. How can he grow his vote if he can? And do you think he could plausibly beat Trump for the nomination?Sununu: I think that’s a really good question. I like Chris a lot, I have the same concerns, but I think you’re expressing that he doesn’t seem to have created a strong ground game in any other state other than New Hampshire. So, New Hampshire can’t be your one and only, right? His poll numbers are decent, because he’s really willing to take on Trump, and that shows you that there’s a decent amount of people within the party that would just want to back the strongest anti-Trumper, which obviously he is.But where it goes from there, I’m not sure. I don’t know his campaign; I don’t know his ground game other than it doesn’t seem to be anywhere else but New Hampshire. That would make it really challenging, as opposed to just being a disrupter. If he actually wants to close the deal and win the primary with just New Hampshire in his back pocket, knowing that South Carolina and Florida come after that, you can’t be no-shows in Iowa, South Carolina and Florida.Coaston: There’s a type of current Republican governor who’s been critical of Donald Trump, or come under fire from him, or just managed to be a different kind of Republican than him. I’m thinking of you, I’m thinking of Brian Kemp in Georgia. I’m thinking of Spencer Cox in Utah. And you’re all fairly popular in your own states. What do you attribute the popularity to?Sununu: Being popular isn’t just galvanizing your base, and ignoring the independents and the Democrats, right? Being popular is about governing for all of your constituents. Being conservative in your values and your principles, and being able to stand behind them, that’s great. But the job isn’t just to support your party; it’s to support, especially as a governor, your entire population, regardless of what services they need, where they go to school, what their business might be, it really has to be that way.Coaston: Do you see similarities between yourself and Governor Cox and Governor Kemp, ideologically? Is there a policy through line that connects you?Sununu: One thing that definitely link us all together is fiscal responsibility. A governor has to manage the finances of the state, balance the budgets, make sure the programs are properly funded. We don’t have printing presses like they do in Washington, which is a good thing.Governors have to understand the aspects of management, managing people, accountability, metrics of success.Coaston: So that actually goes with my theory. Normal people don’t think about politics as an end goal, but politics is the means by which they get the things that they want or don’t want. I think that’s to me, why there are so many popular Republican governors of blue states, and so many just popular governors writ large. Being governor isn’t a messaging vehicle, it’s an actual job.Sununu: I think governors started getting the credit they deserve during the pandemic, right? Congress passed a couple bills early on, and then they disappeared for political reasons. And the governor shouldered all the responsibility of managing each of the states uniquely. That’s really what started defining the red states and the blue states more than ever, right? Where the governors stood. Because how the governors managed tended to really differentiate along those lines. Blue states were very closed; red states tended to be more open. We all did it a little differently.You had to handle some pretty tough decisions that probably a good portion of the people were going to get upset with you on almost anything you did. So you had to be affable and approachable with a sense of transparency to re-instill public trust.Having good ideas is one thing, being able to manage and be accountable to it is another. And being able to do that in a public sphere with Congress. Congress doesn’t work for the president. I mean, Trump literally didn’t understand that for a while. Congress is their own entity, and you have to work with them, and manage a lot of what you want to do with their process, in order to achieve a goal and be able to move something forward.Coaston: You recently said, of Donald Trump and our institutions: “Trump’s too dumb to be a danger to democracy. Let’s not give him that much credit.” Now, recently, he suggested that General Milley should have been put to death. That there should be investigations into NBC for “treason.” How do you think about how voters see that and those kinds of comments? Do they not take him seriously, or are they into what he’s saying, or are they just not seeing it? Because there’s an argument to be made that many stupid people have done terrible things.Sununu: Trump speaks in hyperbole. He’s outrageous. And sometimes his hyperbole, he believes it. When Trump says these outrageous things, they don’t go, “Oh my God, I can’t believe he said that.” Nobody says that about Donald Trump anymore, right? They just take a lot of what he says with a grain of salt because he’s looking for the headline. He knows how to work the media and work the headlines. And that’s always been his M.O.Now, the way I try to define is this: A single individual is rarely, if ever, a threat to democracy in this country. Because we have a system of foundational institutions that really, for lack of a better term, are unwavering in a very good way. And the example I gave in that discussion was, we had a Civil War for goodness sakes. As tough and as horrific as that was, at the end of the Civil War, we didn’t have to change Congress or change the presidency.1968. I wasn’t here for it, but my goodness, when you had great American voices being assassinated, not shouted down. Literally assassinated while the Vietnam War was going on, while you had the Nixon [campaign] going on. People said it’s over. Democracy’s ending, this country’s doomed. It was a tough time, but we got through it. You had 9/11, right? And it’s a massive external threat. Our foundations, our institutions stood strong. Nothing fundamentally varied after that.You had the pandemic. You had Jan. 6. The fact that Congress met and certified the election and there was a peaceful transfer of power. Trump walked out the door. As much of a stink as he made that the election fraud in Jan. 6 and all this stuff, he still walked out the door.Jerks may come and go, bad leaders may come and go, but our institutions have stood through the test of times. I might disagree with policy, I might disagree that things are too liberal or too socialist, and other folks might think they’re too conservative or whatever it is. But that’s just policy and politics.Democracy at its core is solid. Our institutions at their core are solid. They really are. We’re not falling apart just because you have a couple idiots on top of the ticket on both sides, saying ridiculous things. It can be very disheartening, but it is also temporary. And it’s nature.[The U.S. government has continued to operate for a long time, and there is a real argument to be made that Jan. 6 ultimately reflected institutional resilience. It’s also true that through various crises in American life, there have often been changes to the shape and scope of government — from the 14th Amendment to the authorization for use of military force following Sept. 11. This is a longer conversation and debate.]Coaston: There’s a case that Trump really achieved a lot of the things conservative Republicans have long wanted. He built a strong conservative majority on the Supreme Court. His justices helped repeal Roe v. Wade. He cut taxes. Do you think that’s how your average Republican voter sees him as part of the continuum, or do you think that what people think of as “conservative” has changed?Sununu: Trump did get some good things done. I think he had some good ideas. But his failure was twofold. Number one, he said there were some really important things that he said he was going to do, and he just didn’t even try. Fiscal responsibility, completely out the door. The least fiscally responsible Republican president in history.He said he was going to secure the border. He didn’t secure the border. He barely touched it. He tried. Don’t get me wrong. I think he tried that, but he didn’t know how to work with Congress to negotiate and get something done. Now where he was able to get wins, this is the second part where he really fell down. He would get a win, and then almost immediately step all over it. And say something completely unrelated and outrageous or outlandish, or do something that the media jumped all over.And at the end of the day, he’s so divisive. I think what people are most frustrated with, what I’m most frustrated with, is he costs us seats. In a state like mine, as a Republican, you end up having to almost answer for the guy, and give excuses for the guy, as opposed to just talking about issues, and standing on your own two feet about what you are going to bring to the table as a candidate or offer to your community.I think Chris Christie actually, if you see his closing statement at last week’s debate, I think Chris really summed this up very, very well. We’re tired of the drama, we’re tired of making excuses. We might agree with him on policy. He didn’t get enough stuff done.Coaston: Forget the names of the candidates for a second. If you could see the field narrowed down, where it would just be Trump and another person or two, in your ideal world, what issues would that candidate be emphasizing, in terms of policy?Sununu: Local control, limited government, decentralizing Washington, D.C., balancing budgets and fiscal responsibility. If you have that core mind-set, everything else gets easier, everything else becomes possible. And America gets better because that empowers the citizens with more control back in their states, their hometowns, their cities, whatever it might be. We’ve just gotten to a place where Washington, even the Republicans in Washington, think that they’re the most important thing, and they’re not. The states are. We created Washington.Coaston: Now, governor, I love federalism. I truly do. But do you think that candidate would appeal to voters? I think that a lot of voters now, you see people who are like, “But this terrible thing is happening in this state I don’t live in. Make them stop.”Sununu: So, the mind-set I’m talking about definitely appeals in a general election. There’s no doubt. You need to work extra hard to get that message to carry through. But at its core, it’s the best form of government.I want to hand you the control, you the power, you the say, as an individual, what’s happening in your community. If you can articulate that, and get people there — it’s not easy. I think we do pretty well in New Hampshire. I think that’s one of the reasons that I stay popular. I’m not trying to control every town. I’m not trying to control every school board.Coaston: Why didn’t you run for president?Sununu: First, I have a 24/7 job. I would have had to really ignore a lot of very important aspects of what’s happening, and New Hampshire’s crushing it right now. I love the state; I didn’t want to basically live in Iowa for six months. That would have been the strategy, right?Plant yourself in Iowa, surprise everybody with a solid win or second place there, crush it here in New Hampshire, and then it’s me and Trump. And after that, I’d beat him. So there was a path. The second piece was, my family really wasn’t into it. And it’s such an endeavor.Coaston: Do you think Donald Trump will win the New Hampshire primary this winter?Sununu: Well, I hope not. He could. He very well could. Most voters that actually vote in the primary won’t make up their minds till after Thanksgiving. Trump has more to lose than the other candidates, if he were to lose New Hampshire and Iowa. The other candidates don’t necessarily have to win New Hampshire and Iowa. One of them or two of them just have to stand out as the clear second and third choice to Trump.So the field massively narrows down after New Hampshire, and then we go from there. And those candidates or candidate, if it’s just one especially, would have a ton of political momentum, a ton of money flowing into their campaign, a ton of opportunity to really turn on the jets, if you will, and fire forward to take Trump on one-on-one within the Republican primary process. And I believe very strongly, leave him behind.If six of those individuals on that stage have the discipline to get out when they need to get out, it’s Trump and one other person, and Trump loses. Think of it that way. Just those six individuals. They all have the same fundamental goal, for Trump not to be the nominee. But if they can just put a little bit of the ego and self-interest aside, and as soon as there’s no longer a very clear path to victory, they got to get out. If they have the discipline to do that early, it’ll all work.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Arnold Schwarzenegger Is Here to Pump You Up (Emotionally)

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      Arnold Schwarzenegger has been a part of the American landscape for so long that the improbability of his story is all too easy to take for granted: An immigrant bodybuilder from Austria with a long and unwieldy name, a heavy accent and a physical appearance unlike that of any other major movie star became one […] More

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      Meet the Republican Voters at the Heart of the G.O.P. Identity Crisis

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      Republican voters are looking to the presidential debate stage as they decide who should win the party primaries. And even though Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, his return to the top of the ticket feels all but inevitable. But at least one-third of Republican voters are left wondering why their party can’t quit this guy.The Opinion deputy editor Patrick Healy guides us through a recent focus group discussion with 13 longtime Republican voters who are desperate for their party to get over the Trump appeal, lest the G.O.P. risk losing their support in the 2024 election.Illustration by Akshita Chandra/The New York Times; Photograph by Burazin/Getty ImagesThe Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.This Opinion Short was produced by Phoebe Lett. It was edited by Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Efim Shapiro, Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. Special thanks to Alison Bruzek and Jillian Weinberger. More

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      DeSantis Says He Would Sign a 15-Week Abortion Ban as President

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      The little-noticed remark came during a chaotic moment in the second G.O.P. debate. Mr. DeSantis signed a six-week abortion ban in Florida, but had not clearly committed to federal restrictions.In the chaos of Wednesday night’s noisy Republican presidential debate, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina interrupted Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida to pose a question on abortion that Mr. DeSantis had dodged directly answering for months.Would the Florida governor sign a “15-week limit” on abortion as president, Mr. Scott asked, talking over both Mr. DeSantis and Dana Perino, one of the moderators, in a way that made his full remarks difficult to hear.“Yes, I will,” Mr. DeSantis replied.The moment — which largely escaped attention in real time but was noted by The Daily Signal, a news website published by the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank — clarifies Mr. DeSantis’s position on abortion, an issue that has split the Republican primary field. Mr. DeSantis signed a six-week abortion ban in Florida this year, but had not clearly committed to supporting federal legislation restricting the termination of pregnancies.Mr. DeSantis is using abortion to attack former President Donald J. Trump, particularly in socially conservative states like Iowa, where he is making his biggest push to dethrone Mr. Trump as the race’s front-runner.Despite appointing the Supreme Court justices who proved critical in overturning Roe v. Wade, Mr. Trump has ducked questions about whether he would support a 15-week ban, the baseline position of many anti-abortion activists in the Republican Party. And, with a clear eye on the general election — where a hard-line position on abortion could turn off moderate and independent voters and galvanize Democrats — Mr. Trump has criticized Mr. DeSantis for signing the six-week ban, calling it a “terrible mistake.”Mr. DeSantis used those comments to open a line of attack against the former president, telling “pro-lifers” that Mr. Trump was “preparing to sell you out.” Other conservatives, including Kim Reynolds, the popular Republican governor of Iowa who signed a similar abortion ban, have also joined in criticizing Mr. Trump. (Few women know they are pregnant by six weeks.)Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said that the former president had “championed the life of the unborn.”Previously, Mr. DeSantis had generally said he would support anti-abortion legislation but had not committed to signing such a federal ban. At the first debate in Milwaukee last month, Mr. DeSantis seemed to hedge when asked if he would support a six-week ban as president. “I’m going to stand on the side of life,” he said, adding that conservative and liberal states would want to handle abortion restrictions differently.On Thursday, Mr. DeSantis’s campaign disputed the idea that his comments were a change from his past position, pointing to an interview he gave to Radio Iowa this month. Asked if he would sign a 15-week ban, Mr. DeSantis said, “You put pro-life legislation on my desk, I’m going to look favorably and support the legislation.”Other candidates running for the Republican nomination have been more clear. Former Vice President Mike Pence has said he supports at least a 15-week ban. Mr. Scott has also suggested he would, at a minimum, sign a 15-week ban. At the same time, former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, who calls herself “unapologetically pro-life,” has knocked her rivals for what she has said are empty promises, given that Republicans would find it nearly impossible to force such restrictions through a polarized Congress.“Ron had months to advocate for a federal limit,” said Nathan Brand, Mr. Scott’s communications director, “yet discouraged efforts to protect life. If you’re going to back down on an issue, this is the one to do it on. Glad Ron is now on board.”Abortion barely featured at Wednesday’s matchup, after playing a far more prominent role at the previous debate. Only Mr. DeSantis and former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey were asked to comment. The question that prompted Mr. Scott’s interruption was a challenge to Mr. DeSantis asking how he would win over abortion rights supporters in Arizona, a key swing state.Mr. DeSantis responded that he had won a resounding re-election in Florida last year. And he took the opportunity to criticize Mr. Trump, who skipped the debate.“The former president, you know, he is missing in action tonight,” Mr. DeSantis said. “He’s had a lot to say about that. He should be here explaining his comments to try to say that pro-life protections are somehow a terrible thing.”The next day, Democrats seized on Mr. DeSantis’s pledge to sign a 15-week ban — a reminder of how potent both parties see the issue in November’s election. On Twitter, the Democratic National Committee’s rapid response “War Room” account said that Mr. DeSantis had “an extreme anti-abortion record” and wanted to “rip away reproductive freedoms from women across the country.” More

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      Republican Group Running Anti-Trump Ads Finds Little Is Working

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      With over 40 ads and $6 million spent, a group tied to the Club for Growth is no closer to an answer, a memo to donors says. Some ads even gave Donald Trump a boost.A well-funded group of anti-Trump conservatives has sent its donors a remarkably candid memo that reveals how resilient former President Donald J. Trump has been against millions of dollars of negative ads the group deployed against him in two early-voting states.The political action committee, called Win It Back, has close ties to the influential fiscally conservative group Club for Growth. It has already spent more than $4 million trying to lower Mr. Trump’s support among Republican voters in Iowa and nearly $2 million more trying to damage him in South Carolina.But in the memo — dated Thursday and obtained by The New York Times — the head of Win It Back PAC, David McIntosh, acknowledges to donors that after extensive testing of more than 40 anti-Trump television ads, “all attempts to undermine his conservative credentials on specific issues were ineffective.”The memo will provide little reassurance to the rest of the field of Mr. Trump’s Republican rivals that there is any elusive message out there that can work to deflate his support.“Even when you show video to Republican primary voters — with complete context — of President Trump saying something otherwise objectionable to primary voters, they find a way to rationalize and dismiss it,” Mr. McIntosh states in the “key learnings” section of the memo.“Every traditional postproduction ad attacking President Trump either backfired or produced no impact on his ballot support and favorability,” Mr. McIntosh adds. “This includes ads that primarily feature video of him saying liberal or stupid comments from his own mouth.”For the polling underpinning its analysis, Win It Back used WPA Intelligence — a firm that also works for the super PAC supporting Mr. Trump’s chief rival in the race for the presidential nomination, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.Examples of “failed” ads cited in the memo included attacks on Mr. Trump’s “handling of the pandemic, promotion of vaccines, praise of Dr. Fauci, insane government spending, failure to build the wall, recent attacks on pro-life legislation, refusal to fight woke issues, openness to gun control, and many others.” (Dr. Anthony S. Fauci led the national response to the Covid pandemic.)The list of failed attacks is notable because it includes many of the arguments that Mr. DeSantis has tried against Mr. Trump. The former president leads Mr. DeSantis by more than 40 points in national polls and by around 30 points in Iowa, where Mr. DeSantis’s team believes he has the best shot of defeating Mr. Trump.Mr. McIntosh, a former Indiana congressman who co-founded the Club for Growth and the Federalist Society, makes it clear in the memo that any anti-Trump messages need to be delivered with kid gloves. That might explain why Mr. DeSantis’s super PAC, Never Back Down, has treated Mr. Trump gingerly, even in ads meant to contrast his character and his record unfavorably against Mr. DeSantis’s accomplishments.“Broadly acceptable messages against President Trump with Republican primary voters that do not produce a meaningful backlash include sharing concerns about his ability to beat President Biden, expressions of Trump fatigue due to the distractions he creates and the polarization of the country, as well as his pattern of attacking conservative leaders for self-interested reasons,” Mr. McIntosh writes in the memo.“It is essential to disarm the viewer at the opening of the ad by establishing that the person being interviewed on camera is a Republican who previously supported President Trump,” he adds, “otherwise, the viewer will automatically put their guard up, assuming the messenger is just another Trump-hater whose opinion should be summarily dismissed.”The polling conducted for Win It Back showed diminishing returns for the anti-Trump messaging and emphasized that Mr. Trump benefited from the fact that his rivals were still dividing up the non-Trump vote.In Iowa, Win It Back observed that in the areas where it ran ads, Mr. Trump’s likely share of the Republican vote fell by four percentage points. In the areas where the group did not advertise, Mr. Trump’s support grew by five points.Mr. DeSantis has made his handling of the pandemic a centerpiece of his campaign. But the analysis suggests that this strategy leads to a dead end.The memo says this of Win It Back’s most promising pandemic-themed ad: “This ad was our best creative on the pandemic and vaccines that we tested in focus group settings, but it still produced a backlash in our online randomized controlled experiment — improving President Trump’s ballot support by four points and net favorability by 11 points.”Win It Back did not bother running ads focused on Mr. Trump as an instigator of political violence or as a threat to democracy. The group tested in a focus group and online panel an ad called “Risk,” narrated by former Representative Liz Cheney, that focused on Mr. Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021. But the group found that the Cheney ad helped Mr. Trump with the Republican voters, according to Mr. McIntosh.In a section of the memo titled “next steps,” Mr. McIntosh concludes, “We plan to continue developing and testing ads to deploy when there are signs of consolidation.” More

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      What Polling After the First Debate Tells Us About Round 2

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      Nikki Haley received a small lift, but another good performance Wednesday may simply splinter the opposition to Donald Trump.Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley had a debate within the debate. Kenny Holston/The New York TimesWith the benefit of hindsight, there was one big winner of the first Republican presidential debate: Donald J. Trump.He has gained more support in the post-debate polls than any other candidate, even though he didn’t appear onstage last month. He’s up 3.5 percentage points in a direct comparison between polls taken before and after the debate by the same pollsters. Only Nikki Haley — up 1.5 points across the seven national pollsters — can also claim to have gained a discernible amount of ground.This basic lesson from the first debate might just be the most important thing to keep in mind heading into the second Republican debate Wednesday night. Candidates might be flashy. They might be broadly appealing. They might hit MAGA notes. But after the last debate, there’s that much less reason to think this one will make a big difference in the race. It might even add up to helping Mr. Trump, by splintering his potential opposition.Here are some lessons from the last debate — and what they mean for the next one.Being center stage isn’t enoughNo one seemed to command more attention during the debate than Vivek Ramaswamy. Perhaps no one ought to be more disappointed in the post-debate polls.Despite gaining a fair share of the headlines, Mr. Ramaswamy failed to earn additional support. He has even lost ground in the FiveThirtyEight Republican polling average since the debate.Why didn’t he surge? Is it because he was “annoying,” as the Times Opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg put it? Or maybe it’s because he mostly appealed to Trump supporters, who weren’t going to flip to the young upstart?Either way, his failure to turn a breakout performance into a polling breakthrough raises questions about his upside. It could also raise doubts about everyone else’s upside — at least as long as voters remain loyal to Mr. Trump.Standing up for a faction still paysIf any of the actual debaters “won” the debate, the polls say it was Ms. Haley.Her gains have been fairly modest nationwide, but they have been clearer in the early states. She has re-established herself as a relevant candidate by leapfrogging Ron DeSantis in New Hampshire and overtaking a fellow South Carolinian, Tim Scott, to move into third place in Iowa.Ms. Haley won the old-fashioned way: She vigorously defended the traditional, neoconservative foreign policy views of the Republican Party in a high-profile showdown with Mr. Ramaswamy. And she was modestly rewarded by the party’s moderate establishment voters — a group that is distinct for its committed opposition to Mr. Trump.It’s hard to see a moderate-establishment-type like Ms. Haley seriously contending for the Republican nomination in a populist-conservative party, let alone with a juggernaut like Mr. Trump in the race. But it is quite easy to imagine her adding to the challenges facing Mr. DeSantis or other mainstream conservatives, by winning over many moderate voters who might otherwise represent the natural base of a broad anti-Trump coalition.Her re-emergence as a relevant factional player was probably the most important thing that came out of the debate, and, at least for now, it helped Mr. Trump’s chances by further splitting his opposition. If she builds on her last performance in the next debate, Mr. Trump might count as the winner yet again.Broad appeal isn’t enoughThere’s a fairly strong case that Mr. DeSantis had a decent debate. He promoted a conservative message with fairly broad appeal throughout the party and stayed out of the fray. In the end, a plurality of Republican voters, as well as plenty of pundits, said he performed the best.Nonetheless, he has slipped another two points since then. Of course, he has been sliding in the polls for months, so there’s not necessarily any reason to assume that his debate performance was the cause. But at best, he failed to capitalize on a rare opportunity to regain his footing. At worst, the emergence of Ms. Haley created an additional threat to his left flank.There’s a lesson in Mr. DeSantis’s failure to turn a reasonable performance into gains in the polls: It’s hard to be a broadly appealing candidate in primary politics. Broad appeal, of course, is necessary to win the nomination. But it’s often easiest to build support by catering to the wishes of an important faction, as Ms. Haley did when she blasted Mr. Ramaswamy’s anti-interventionist foreign policy.Usually, broadly appealing candidates overcome this problem with brute force: superior name recognition, resources, media attention and so on. If Mr. Trump weren’t in the race, perhaps Mr. DeSantis would run a broadly conservative campaign and win the nomination by relying on many of these attributes. But right now, it’s Mr. Trump, not Mr. DeSantis, who has the traits of a winning conservative with broad appeal. Not only could Mr. Trump skate by with broadly appealing platitudes if he wanted — but he doesn’t even need to show up.Trump isn’t beating himselfIn August, someone could have plausibly wondered whether Mr. Trump might lose support because of the first debate. Maybe voters would have held his nonparticipation against him. Maybe his opponents would have gone after him. Maybe some voters might have decided they liked one of the other candidates after seeing that person for the first time.Maybe not. In the end, Mr. Trump emerged unscathed. No one really landed a punch on him, whether on the issues or for being too “chicken” to debate. More important, the candidates didn’t draw support away from the former president.After the last debate, we can probably cross “some voters might decide they liked one of the other candidates” off the list of “maybe this will hurt Trump” possibilities. But there’s still an opportunity for the candidates to try something new by attacking him vigorously on his recent abortion comments or for failing to show up. There’s no reason to expect either tactic to yield a huge shift in the race, but it would at least give some reason to wonder whether maybe, just maybe, Wednesday night’s debate will have a different outcome than the first. More