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      Doug Mastriano Gets Pennsylvania Republicans to Close Ranks Behind Him

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      STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Before Pennsylvania’s primary, much of the state’s Republican establishment agreed that Doug Mastriano would be a disaster as the nominee for governor.Andy Reilly, the state’s Republican national committeeman, had joined a stop-Mastriano effort by rival candidates, who feared that the far-right state senator and prolific spreader of election conspiracy theories would squander an otherwise winnable race.Yet on a warm evening last month, Mr. Reilly opened his suburban Philadelphia home for a backyard fund-raiser for Mr. Mastriano, who won his primary in May. Guests chipped in $150 for ribs and pulled pork and listened to Mr. Mastriano, fresh from an uproar over his presence on Gab, a social media site that is a haven for hate speech.Mr. Reilly later defended Mr. Mastriano as the better choice to lead Pennsylvania over his Democratic opponent, Josh Shapiro. “The question is can Doug Mastriano keep the Republican Party base and all the factions together?” Mr. Reilly said.In one of the most closely watched governor’s races of the year, Pennsylvania Republican officials who had warned that Mr. Mastriano was unelectable have largely closed ranks behind him, after he proved to be the overwhelming choice of base Republicans. On Friday, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida plans to headline a rally with Mr. Mastriano in Pittsburgh, a bearhug from one of the party’s most popular national figures.Mr. Shapiro, the state attorney general, has used a huge fund-raising advantage to batter Mr. Mastriano in TV attack ads as an extremist on abortion and on the 2020 election, opening a double-digit lead in polls. Still, Democrats remain anxious they could lose to Mr. Mastriano because of the free-floating anger of the electorate this year, with most voters worried primarily about the economy.Josh Shapiro, with supporters in Lock Haven, Pa., has battered Mr. Mastriano in TV attack ads as an extremist.Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesWhether the recent run of Democratic successes nationally — including the climate and drug-pricing legislative package and the resounding defeat of an anti-abortion measure in Kansas — can shift the fundamental midterm equation remains unclear.“The environment that Joe Biden has created for Josh Shapiro makes this year probably the only year that a Mastriano-type candidate could win in a purple state like Pennsylvania,” said Matt Brouillette, the head of a conservative political group in the state that opposed Mr. Mastriano in the primary. “While the Democrats want to focus on Jan. 6 and Roe v. Wade, the electorate is focused on putting food on their table and filling up the tanks in their cars.”The Democratic anxiety was on display recently at a party picnic in liberal State College, the home of Pennsylvania State University. At Mr. Shapiro’s mention of Mr. Mastriano during a speech, a woman shouted, “You better win!”More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsLiz Cheney’s Lopsided Loss: The Republican congresswoman’s defeat in Wyoming exposed the degree to which former President Donald J. Trump still controls the party’s present — and its near future.2024 Hint: Hours after her loss, Ms. Cheney acknowledged that she was “thinking” about a White House bid. But her mission to thwart Donald J. Trump presents challenges.The ‘Impeachment 10’: With Ms. Cheney’s defeat, only two of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump remain.Alaska Races: Senator Lisa Murkowski and Sarah Palin appeared to be on divergent paths following contests that offered a glimpse at the state’s independent streak.There was nervous laughter. The worry reflects the alarm of Democrats that if Mr. Mastriano, 58, becomes governor, he would sign severe abortion restrictions and would have the power to subvert the 2024 presidential election in the swing state in favor of the G.O.P. nominee.A Shapiro campaign event in State College. Democrats in Pennsylvania are worried about Mr. Mastriano’s positions on abortion and voting.Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York Times“I hear it every single day,” Mr. Shapiro told the crowd. “They’re worried about their rights being ripped away from them.”Mr. Mastriano, a retired Army officer who led Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election in Pennsylvania, marched on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, passing police barricades breached by other marchers. He has boasted that as governor, “I get to decertify any or all machines in the state.” He has called for compelling all nine million registered voters in the state to re-register, which experts say would violate federal law.“These are dangerous, extreme positions he’s taken, and these are things I know the people of Pennsylvania reject,” Mr. Shapiro, 49, said in an interview.Mr. Shapiro compared the unusually high turnout in deep-red Kansas in favor of abortion rights to how the issue is motivating his own supporters. “We have seen incredible intensity in our campaign post-Dobbs,” he said, referring to the Supreme Court decision leaving it to states to protect or deny abortion access.Many women who attended his events agreed, saying that abortion is their most important issue. “I was the generation that was young when Roe vs. Wade became the law of the land, and I’ve known women whose health was ruined because of an illegal abortion,” said Bonnie Hannis, 80, who came to hear Mr. Shapiro in rural Clinton County.“I’m excited to defend my reproductive rights,” said Gianna Renzo, 19, who grew up in the county and is now a student at Princeton. “I see women my age who are typically from Republican families, and they’re going to come over to the Democratic side” because of abortion.Mr. Mastriano, the sponsor in the State Legislature of a six-week abortion ban with no exceptions, has appeared to modulate that position lately, saying lawmakers will write whatever bill they choose and “my personal views are irrelevant.”But there are few signs that he has broadened his appeal to independent and swing voters, especially in the suburbs, who have played a pivotal role in recent Pennsylvania elections. He was supported by 82 percent of Republicans in a Fox News poll in late July, but independents preferred Mr. Shapiro by 28 points.It remains to be seen if Mr. Mastriano can broaden his appeal to independent and swing voters.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesMr. Mastriano declined to comment for this article.He has routinely snubbed the state’s TV news outlets and newspapers that might help him reach a broader audience. It is a purposeful strategy aimed at exciting conservatives who believe that Democrats have “the media in their pockets,” as he recently put it.This week, he said he would not participate in traditional debates run by independent news organizations because of what he called their “hidden partisan agenda.” He proposed debates in which each candidate names a moderator — a nonstarter for the Shapiro campaign, which called the idea an “obvious stunt.”Mr. Mastriano speaks almost exclusively to far-right podcasters like Stephen K. Bannon, conservative talk radio hosts and Fox News. On a recent swing through northwest Pennsylvania, he brushed off a Pittsburgh TV station that sought to interview him, and even the small-circulation Meadville Tribune.One result of that approach is that he seldom has to field tough questions. And his poor fund-raising — he ended the primary season with just $400,000 in his campaign account, compared with $13.4 million for Mr. Shapiro — has left him unable to run TV ads all summer to counter a barrage of attacks from his opponent.The Shapiro ads use Mr. Mastriano’s words to paint him as outside the mainstream, not just on abortion and election denial, but on gay marriage, which he has said should “absolutely not” be legal, and on global warming, which he called “fake science.”“You’ve basically got a one-person governor’s race right now in terms of voter contact,” said Christopher Nicholas, a Republican consultant in the state. “All the folks who listen to those far-right podcasts, I think he maxed out his vote potential. He has to move past his base.”At a recent appearance by Mr. Mastriano at the York County Fair, there were no signs on the sprawling fairgrounds directing potential voters his way. Outside the hall where he was to appear, a large crowd on bleachers at the appointed hour turned out to be waiting for the Hot Dog Pig Races.Mr. Mastriano showed up inside at the county Republican booth. He did not give a speech, but shook hands and posed for pictures with several dozen supporters.Donna VanDyne, an insurance agent, supported a no-exceptions abortion ban, claiming that victims of rape or incest who give birth adjust. “When they have their baby, they have each other and become support systems for one another,” she said.Dawn Smith, an aspiring teacher’s aide, repeated a debunked conspiracy theory Mr. Mastriano had spread about voting machines. “They switched President Trump’s votes to Joe Biden’s votes with the Dominion machines,” she claimed.Wayne Liek, a retired truck driver, recalling prayers he said in school in the 1960s, agreed with Mr. Mastriano that the Constitutional separation of church and state was, as Mr. Mastriano described it, “a myth.”A core of Mr. Mastriano’s popularity with Republicans is his embrace of views associated with Christian nationalism, the belief that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, and often intertwined with far-right conspiratorial thinking.Mr. Mastriano, the sponsor in the legislature of a six-week abortion ban with no exceptions, has appeared to modulate that position lately.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesFew attendees seemed aware of the furor over Mr. Mastriano’s presence on Gab. His campaign had paid $5,000 to broaden his support with users of the social media site, which is known as a haven for white nationalists. A post by Mr. Mastriano in July criticizing Democratic policies drew dozens of replies that were antisemitic insults of Mr. Shapiro.Gab’s founder, Andrew Torba, defended Mr. Mastriano in videos laced with antisemitic vitriol. Mr. Mastriano distanced himself from Mr. Torba on July 28, saying that he rejected “antisemitism in any form.’’At a later appearance where he did give a speech, in Cochranton, Mr. Mastriano said: “It’s funny, they want to call us extremists. They’re the extremists.’’He attacked Mr. Shapiro for suing, as attorney general, to keep a mask mandate in schools and to uphold Gov. Tom Wolf’s shutdown of nonessential businesses early in the pandemic. Mr. Mastriano first gained a following for leading protests against restrictions to prevent the spread of Covid. Fury at those orders lingers for many conservatives.Asked about the suits, Mr. Shapiro said that he personally opposes mandates for masks and vaccines, but as the state’s top lawyer he was required to represent the governor and executive branch in litigation. He prevailed in both cases.Before he campaigned in State College, a blue island in a sea of red in central Pennsylvania, Mr. Shapiro had visited Lock Haven in nearby Clinton County.Mike Hanna Sr., a retired Democratic state lawmaker from the area, said Mr. Mastriano “has a strong base here, just like Trump.” But Mr. Hanna said the former president had lost support since inciting the mob that attacked the Capitol.“I hunt with a bunch of veterans, and they just shake their heads,” Mr. Hanna said. “Trump has done a lot to erode his standing with his base, and Mastriano’s participation in all that, and the extreme positions he’s taken, have done the same thing.”“It’d be a lot scarier for us,” Mr. Hanna said, “if the Republicans had selected a moderate.” More

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      Gov. Ron DeSantis Announces Arrests in Florida for Election Fraud

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      Seven weeks after Florida’s state government opened a new office of election crimes and security, Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Thursday that 17 people had been charged with casting illegal ballots in the 2020 election, in which 11.1 million Floridians voted.The governor called the arrests “a first salvo” in a long-overdue crackdown on voting crimes. Critics called the announcement a publicity stunt that said less about voter fraud than about holes in the state’s election security apparatus that had allowed the violations to occur in the first place.Mr. DeSantis, who is seeking re-election this year and is widely considered to be running an unannounced campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has made action against voter fraud a centerpiece of his tenure as governor. He offered crucial backing last year to legislation tightening the rules for registering to vote and casting ballots. The State Legislature allotted $1.1 million for his 15-person election crimes office after he proposed its creation late last year.But while the specter of widespread fraud has become a staple of Republican political rhetoric, there is no evidence that election crimes are a serious problem in Florida or anywhere else in the nation. There and elsewhere, most violations appear to involve people who ran afoul of laws that restrict voting by former felons, or people who cast two ballots, usually in separate states where they spend different parts of the year.Experts say that many of those violations appear to be inadvertent. The 17 people charged on Thursday were all felons, convicted of murder or sex offenses, who were barred by law from casting ballots. All but one were men, and all but two were in their 50s or older.Casting an ineligible ballot is a felony punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment and up to $5,000 in fines. “That was against the law, and now they’re going to pay for it,” Mr. DeSantis said.The governor said more arrests were forthcoming, and suggested that they would include so-called double voters and noncitizens who cast illegal ballots — another offense that experts say is frequently the result of confusion about voting rules.He added that a paucity of voting fraud prosecutions in recent years reflects a lack of enforcement, not a lack of fraud. “Now we have the ability with the attorney general and statewide prosecutors to bring these cases on behalf of the state,” he said. He said that if anyone is thinking of committing electoral crimes: “Don’t do it, because we’re coming for you.”Local law enforcement officials made a flurry of voting-related arrests this spring after a researcher who scanned voting rolls claimed to have found scores of convicted sex offenders who cast ballots in 2020, although a constitutional amendment bars them from voting.A group that advocates restoring voting rights to former felons said on Thursday that none of the 17 people arrested would have faced charges had the state not allowed them to register and vote, despite their ineligibility.“When someone registers to vote, it is the responsibility of the state to utilize its vast resources to determine a person’s eligibility,” Desmond Meade, the executive director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, said at a news conference. “And once that person is eligible to vote, that person is issued a voter identification card.”Mr. Meade said state money would be better spent on improving voter registration systems to screen out potentially ineligible voters than on finding and prosecuting them.“What we’ve seen today is an indication that the system is broken,” he said. “These individuals should never have gotten to this point.”Mr. DeSantis’s announcement drew quick rebuttals from two Democrats who are vying to oppose him in the November election for governor.“Everybody wants elections to be secure, but Ron DeSantis — who has never refuted Donald Trump’s Big Lie — is the last person we can trust with ‘election police,’” Nikki Fried, the state agriculture commissioner and Florida’s highest-ranking Democrat, said in a statement. “As governor, I will disband this force and return jurisdiction back to local authorities.”Representative Charlie Crist, a former Florida governor, who is running against Ms. Fried in next week’s primary election, said in a statement that Mr. DeSantis’s news conference was “about playing politics, intimidating Democratic voters and his desire to run for president, not securing elections.” More

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      Ron DeSantis and Republicans’ Mar-a-Lago Playbook

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      Republican politicians weighing how to react to the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago last week had several options. Boiled down, they were:1. Immediately denounce it as a “witch hunt” and threaten to investigate or even defund the bureau, while calling for Attorney General Merrick Garland’s impeachment.2. Issue a cautious, place-holder statement expressing confidence in the process while sounding a note of concern about the potential for Justice Department overreach. Say little that could become embarrassing should more facts emerge that portray the former president’s conduct in a negative light.3. Criticize Trump as having jeopardized the national security of the United States. Call on him to release the search warrant and explain what agents might have been looking for, and why he had not returned the documents they were seeking.4. Await more information before commenting at all.To defend or not to defend?The political dilemma was particularly acute for Republicans who aspire to run for president in 2024 — requiring a high-wire act worthy of the Flying Wallendas.Enter Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, who is widely viewed as Trump’s most serious potential rival in a Republican primary race. The political world watches DeSantis’s every move nowadays, and many awaited his reaction to the search with bated breath.Sometimes, mischief ensues.In a clever but dishonest bit of online skulduggery, someone spliced together two separate videos to make it seem as if DeSantis had defended the F.B.I. The manipulated video, which circulated widely on social media, purports to show DeSantis tangling with Sean Hannity over the Fox News host’s use of the word “raid” to describe the F.B.I.’s actions.“It’s not a raid,” DeSantis says in the edited video, adding, “they were serving valid process in accordance with the laws and Constitution of the United States.”It would have been an explosive moment — the first real fireworks of the shadow 2024 presidential primary.But it never happened.In reality, DeSantis had been defending a 2020 search by law enforcement officers of the home of Rebekah Jones, a former data specialist for the state of Florida who had claimed that the DeSantis administration was manipulating information about the coronavirus pandemic.Hannity, for one, called the video “FAKE NEWS” and demanded that Twitter remove it.What DeSantis actually said was this tweet:“The raid of MAL is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents, while people like Hunter Biden get treated with kid gloves,” DeSantis wrote. “Now the Regime is getting another 87k IRS agents to wield against its adversaries? Banana Republic.”Note what was missing here: any defense of Trump’s conduct. DeSantis made similar remarks at a rally on Sunday for Kari Lake and Blake Masters, the Republican nominees for governor and Senate in Arizona — criticizing the Justice Department and raising examples of what he characterized as F.B.I. misconduct, while remaining silent on the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified documents.DeSantis and Trump hats at a Turning Point USA event in Tampa, Fla., in July.Marco Bello/ReutersThe DeSantis danceDavid Jolly, a former Republican member of Congress from Florida, said the “dance” between DeSantis and Trump was quietly consuming both camps behind the scenes.Trump has periodically noted — accurately — that he remains the most popular Republican in hypothetical 2024 primary matchups, with DeSantis a distant second. But the two have yet to spar in earnest. More

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      Josh Hawley’s Manhood, Mike Pompeo’s Midriff and Other 2024 Indicators

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      Josh Hawley has a book about manhood coming out next year. Nikki Haley has a book about womanhood coming out in two months.Mike Pompeo has lost so much weight that he’s barely recognizable. Mike Pence has grown so much spine that he’s almost a vertebrate.Don’t tell them Donald Trump is the Republican Party’s inevitable 2024 presidential nominee. If that’s foreordained, then a whole lot of literary, cardiovascular and orthopedic effort has gone to waste.The news media is lousy of late with articles about the various Democrats potentially waiting in the wings if President Biden decides against a second term, to the point where he’s sometimes treated as more of a 2024 question mark than Trump is.Maybe that’s right. In a straw poll of Republicans at the Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend, Trump was the top choice to run for president, winning 69 percent of the vote. Second place went to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, with just 24 percent, and third went to Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, with a measly 2 percent.But Trump is no spring chicken, and by the looks of things, he pays much less heed to his health than Biden does. A year from now he could be unfit for office in more ways than he already is.He could be in handcuffs! OK, that’s probably just a happy fantasy. But maybe less of one since the F.B.I. raided Mar-a-Lago on Monday? He’s the subject of investigations civil and criminal, federal and state.Or he could finally wear out his Republican welcome. “It is a sign of weakness, not strength, that Team Trump has been reduced to touting straw-poll results from events that most Americans, and indeed the vast majority of Republicans, know nothing about,” Isaac Schorr wrote in National Review early this week, adding that CPAC had in fact “been repurposed into an appeal to the former president’s vanity.”The Republicans eager to take his place at the helm of the party know all that. And they don’t have to be quite as discreet and demure in their positioning as Democrats interested in standing in for Biden do. Trump’s not the incumbent president, at least not in the world beyond his and his supplicants’ delusions.That positioning, once you recognize it, is a hoot. Everyone’s after a kind of branding that rivals won’t copy, a moment in the spotlight that competitors can’t match, an angle, an edge.DeSantis’s action-figure approach to his role as governor of Florida is in part about the fact that Cruz, Hawley and others don’t have the executive authority that he does and can’t make things happen as unilaterally or as quickly. They’re would-be MAGA superheroes bereft of their red capes.So a week ago, DeSantis didn’t merely suspend the top Tampa Bay area prosecutor, who said that he would never consider abortion a crime. DeSantis also peacocked to that part of the state and, surrounded by a flock of law enforcement officials, crowed about his decision during a news conference.Cruz and Hawley were such hams during the confirmation hearings for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson because, as members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, they had a stage that DeSantis, Pence, Pompeo and others didn’t. Might as well pig out on the opportunity.Haley’s forthcoming book, “If You Want Something Done: Leadership Lessons From Bold Women,” is one that Cruz, Hawley, Pence and Pompeo would have an awkward time pulling off, and it beats voters over the head with the fact that she’s a trailblazer in ways that they can’t be.But does she or any other Republican love the Lord with Pence’s ardor? That’s a question he obviously wants to put in voters’ minds with his memoir, “So Help Me God,” to be released about a month after “If You Want Something Done.”Pompeo is doing a prep-for-the-presidency twofer. According to The New York Post, he shed 90 pounds in six months after his stint as Trump’s secretary of state was over. And he’s apparently putting the finishing touches on a memoir of his own, “Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love,” which Broadside Books is scheduled to publish in January.Its crowded company includes not only Haley’s and Pence’s books but also one by Cruz, “Justice Corrupted: How the Left Weaponized Our Legal System,” which is due in late October, and, of course, Hawley’s testosterone treatise, “Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs,” which has surely become a more risible sell in the wake of those images of him sprinting for the Capitol exit on Jan. 6, 2021.Here, for your delectation, is a snippet of the promotional copy for Hawley’s book: “No republic has ever survived without men of character to defend what is just and true. Starting with the wisdom of the ancients, from the Greek and Roman philosophers to Jesus of Nazareth, and drawing on the lessons of American history, Hawley identifies the defining strengths of men, including responsibility, bravery, fidelity and leadership.” I have goose bumps.Lest “Manhood” fail to persuade you of Hawley’s nonpareil virility, he summoned boundless courage last week to stand up to … Finland and Sweden. He was the only senator to vote against their admission to NATO.David Von Drehle sized it up correctly in a column in The Washington Post: “In search of a position that would set him apart from his rivals among the Senate’s young conservatives, Hawley arrived at the cockeyed notion that adding two robust military powers with vibrant economies would somehow increase NATO’s burden on U.S. resources.”Cockeyed? No! Cocksure — and undoubtedly weighing which fearsome and dastardly global actor he’ll unleash the full force of his manliness on next. The citizens of New Zealand tremble. The people of Andorra quiver.For the Love of SongsTracy ChapmanClayton Call/Redferns, via Getty ImagesI’m making a slight change to the title and tilt of this feature and putting the focus on songs instead of lyrics, because you can’t have the latter without the former and I don’t know anyone who listens repeatedly to a song if only the lyrics are appealing. Besides, the most poetic, truest and funniest lyrics don’t hit their marks unless their aural trappings complement them.The hundreds of unused nominations that you’ve sent in over time remain viable — you were always praising whole songs. And I’ll keep dipping into those nominations. I’m doing that today, with two very different but magnificent compositions that never lose their luster.“Fast Car,” written and performed by Tracy Chapman, is close to perfect. Scratch that: It is perfect. Released in 1988, it’s one of those ambitious songs, like Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle,” that tells a decades-spanning story and captures a life’s arc in just a few minutes, its lyrics a feat of economy and deftly chosen anecdotes and imagery:See, my old man’s got a problemHe lives with a bottle, that’s the way it isHe says his body’s too old for workingHis body’s too young to look like hisIt’s a song about a poor woman’s yearning and disillusionment, about how trapped she is, and the “fast car,” mentioned over and over, becomes both incantation and multipurpose metaphor, a means of escape, a vessel of delusion, a promise, a betrayal. The music works gorgeously with the words: During the verses it communicates the grind of her existence, but then it speeds up for the chorus, which captures the exhilaration of her dreams.When I went looking online for live performances of the song, the one I found had, below it, this comment from someone identified as Avila Dauvin: “How can someone write a song that breaks your heart and lifts your soul at the same time? Absolute legend.” I can’t say it any better.And I’m not surprised that “Fast Car” has been covered many times. Here’s a compendium of versions by Khalid, Birdy, Sam Smith and more. (Thanks to Carole Randolph Jurkash of Darien, Ill., and Deirdre Godfrey of Chicopee, Mass., for drawing my attention to “Fast Car” anew.)The other song I want to celebrate isn’t as lyrically epic or eloquent, but it’s gorgeous, and it lifts my soul even higher than “Fast Car” does. Please tell me that you’re familiar with Van Morrison’s “Sweet Thing,” which was released in 1968 and became a classic over the years. Please tell me that you smile at its start, when it playfully canters, and that you’re mesmerized two minutes in, when it reaches full gallop. And please tell me that its description of love’s spell — of how love puts stars in your eyes and the wind at your back — rings true to you:And I will walk and talk in gardens all wet with rainAnd I will never, ever, ever, ever grow so old again“Sweet Thing” is a sublimely sweet thing, salted in just the right measure by Morrison’s voice. (Keith Krabbe, Princeton, N.J.)“For the Love of Songs” appears monthly(ish). To nominate a songwriter and song, please email me here, including your name and place of residence. “For the Love of Sentences” will return with the next newsletter; you can use the same link to suggest recent snippets of prose for it.What I’m ReadingMany Latino voters’ movement away from Democrats and toward Republicans is a fascinating and important political story, and Axios recently put together a broad-ranging but succinct examination of the shift.My belief that North Carolina is an instructive mirror of America, my attention to L.G.B.T.Q. issues and my worry about our ability to find common ground all fed my interest in this article by my Duke University colleague Barry Yeoman in The Assembly. It’s about a schism in the United Methodist Church, and it asks “how long the ‘United’ in their name will hold.” The question applies to the United States these days as well.Another Duke colleague of mine, David Schanzer, recently began a newsletter, Perilous Times, which provides commentary about political and policy-related news, especially developments that underscore threats to our democracy. He weighed in this week on the meaning of the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban’s rapturous reception at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas.I’m a bit late to “American Made: What Happens to People When Work Disappears,” by my Opinion colleague Farah Stockman, but I’m very glad I finally got there. Published last October, Farah’s book chronicles the closing of a factory in Indiana that made ball bearings, and it’s both epic and intimate, with big thoughts about America and poignant details about the three people at the center of her meticulously reported narrative.On a Personal NoteXose Bouzas/Hans Lucas, via ReduxIf April is the cruelest month, August is the laziest. Businesses shutter. Beaches fill. From my observation, more people take weeklong or weekslong vacations around this time of year than any other, and if you’re one of them, and you’re away right now or will be heading off soon, I’m curious:Is your destination where you really want to be? Or is it where you want to say and show you’ve been?Did you choose it based on the tug of your heart? Or based on the tyranny of expectation?These questions came to mind as I read an excellent recent column in The Times by my colleague and friend Ginia Bellafante, who reflected on the crush of tourists using the Manhattan Bridge as a backdrop for selfies. She wondered, rightly, whether the look-at-it majesty of the landmark was being lost in the look-at-me mania for proof of having brushed up against it.I in turn wonder how much joy we lose — with travel as with so many other dimensions of life — by striking certain poses, honing certain images and fussing over how the world receives us rather than simply relishing our movement through it.The way so many people choose their vacation spots is a case in point. They collect places the way a Boy Scout or Girl Scout collects badges. Or they follow the crowd. They do what they think people like them are supposed to do — maybe because they lack the confidence to call their own shots, maybe because they lack the energy, maybe because they lack the imagination.They go to a given landmark because aren’t they supposed to? Don’t they want a record of the encounter? That record used to be a traditional photograph or maybe a silly souvenir. Now it’s a selfie, which is often as much an advertisement — an act of personal branding — as it is a keepsake.But there’s a difference between memorializing a vacation and enjoying it. I saw that less clearly in the past than I do now, and I do my flawed best to stay focused on it — to realize that my least ambitious, least photographed, most private breaks from work and escapes from routine are among my favorites. I’m not a big fan of precious portmanteaus, but I’m modestly fond of “staycation” — or, rather, the message of it: You needn’t necessarily set out for any coveted locale or impress anyone, including yourself, to lighten your load, free your thoughts, lift your spirit, find your bliss. More

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      Is It All About ‘Fealty to Trump’s Delusions’? Three Writers Talk About Where the G.O.P. Is Headed

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      Ross Douthat, a Times Opinion columnist, hosted an online conversation with Rachel Bovard, the policy director at the Conservative Partnership Institute, and Tim Miller, the author of “Why We Did It: A Travelogue From the Republican Road to Hell,” about the recent primaries in Arizona, Michigan and beyond, and the strength of Donald Trump’s hold on the Republican Party.Ross Douthat: Rachel, Tim, thanks so much for joining me. I’m going to start where we always tend to start in these discussions — with the former president of the United States and his influence over the Republican Party. Donald Trump has had some bad primary nights this year, most notably in May in Georgia.But overall Tuesday seems like it was a good one for him: In Michigan, his favored candidate narrowly beat Peter Meijer, one of the House Republican votes for impeachment. In the Arizona Republican primary for governor, Kari Lake is narrowly ahead, which would give Trump a big victory in his battle of endorsements against Mike Pence, who endorsed Lake’s main rival.Do you agree, or is Trump’s influence just the wrong lens through which to be assessing some of these races?Rachel Bovard: It was a good night for Trump’s endorsements, which remain critical and decisive, particularly when he’s picking candidates who can change the ideological direction of the party. No other major figure in the G.O.P. has shown they can do the same.Tim Miller: An early agreement! The Republicans put up a slate of “Big Lie” candidates at the top of the ticket in an important swing state last night, which seems pretty important.Bovard: I would dispute the notion that Arizona represented “a slate of ‘Big Lie’ candidates.”Miller: Well, Lake has long brought up fraud claims about the 2020 election. Rare potential evidence of the party bucking Trump could come from the Third Congressional District in Washington, benefited by a “jungle” primary — candidates for an office, regardless of party, run on the same ballot, and the top two candidates square off in the general election. If the Trump-endorsed candidate loses, it seems a good endorsement for that set up.Bovard: But the Blake Masters campaign in particular represented a depth of issues that appealed to Arizona voters and could represent a new generation of Republicans.Douthat: Let’s get into that question a little bit. One of the questions hanging over the phenomenon of Trumper populism is whether it represents any kind of substantial issue-based change in what the G.O.P. stands for, or whether it’s just all about fealty to Trump.The Masters campaign and the Lake campaign seem to represent different answers to that question — Masters leveraging Trump’s support to try to push the party in a more nationalist or populist direction on trade, foreign policy, family policy, other issues, and Lake just promising to stop the next (alleged) steal. Or do we think that it’s all the same phenomenon underneath?Bovard: A very significant part of Trump’s appeal, what he perhaps taught the G.O.P., was that he spoke for voters who stood outside of party orthodoxy on a number of issues. And that’s where Masters tried to distinguish himself. He had a provocative campaign message early in his campaign: American families should be able to survive on a single income. That presents all kinds of challenges to standard Republican economic policy, how we think about family policy and how the two fit together. He also seems to be fearless in the culture wars, something else that Republicans are anxious to see.So this constant distilling into the “Big Lie” overlooks something key: A sea change is slowly happening on the right as it relates to policy expectations.Miller: But you know who distilled the Masters campaign into the “Big Lie”? Blake Masters. One of his ads begins, “I think Trump won in 2020.” This is an insane view, and I assume none of us think Masters really believes it. So fealty to Trump’s delusions is the opening ante here. Had Masters run a campaign about his niche, Peter Thiel-influenced issue obsessions but said Trump lost and he was harming Republican voters by continuing to delude them about our democracy, he would’ve lost like Rusty Bowers did.I do think Masters has some differentiated policy ideas that are probably, not certainly, reflective of where the G.O.P. is headed, but that wasn’t the main thing here.Douthat: So Tim, speaking for the “it’s Trump fealty all the way down” camp, what separates the Arizona results from the very different recent results in Georgia, where Trump fealty was insufficient to defeat either Brian Kemp or even Brad Raffensperger?Miller: Two things: First, with Kemp, governing actually matters. With incumbents, primaries for governor can be somewhat different because of that. Kemp was Ron DeSantis-esque without the attention in his handling of Covid. (This does not extend all the way to full anti-Trump or Trump-skeptical governors like Larry Hogan of Maryland or Charlie Baker of Massachusetts — Kemp almost never said an ill word about Trump.)Second, the type of electorate matters. Republican voters actually bucked Trump in another state, my home state, Colorado. What do Georgia and Colorado have in common? Suburban sprawl around a major city that dominates the state and a young, college-educated population.Douthat: Does that sound right to you, Rachel? And is there anything we aren’t seeing about a candidate like Lake that makes her more than just a stalking horse for Trump’s own obsessions?Bovard: Tim is right in the sense that there is always nuance when it comes to state elections. That’s why I also don’t see the Washington State primary race as a definitive rejection of Trump, as Tim alluded to earlier. Lake is, as a candidate, bombastic on the election issue.Miller: “Bombastic” is quite the euphemism for completely insane. Deliberate lies. The same ones that led to the storming of the Capitol.Bovard: Well, I don’t see that as determining how she governs. She’s got an entire state to manage, if she wins, and there are major issues she’ll have to manage that Trump also spoke to: the border, primarily.By the way, I regularly meet with Democrats who still tell me the 2018 election was stolen, and Stacey Abrams is the rightful governor of Georgia, so I’m not as pearl clutchy about it, no.Miller: “Pearl clutchy” is quite a way to describe a lie that has infected tens of millions of people, resulted in multiple deaths and the imprisonment of some of Trump’s most loyal supporters. I thought the populists were supposed to care about these people, but I guess worrying about their lives being ruined is just a little “pearl clutching.”Bovard: I know we don’t want to relitigate the entirety of Jan. 6, so I’ll just say I do worry about people’s lives being ruined. And the Jan. 6 Select Committee has further entrenched the divide that exists over this.Douthat: I’m going to enforce a pivot here, while using my moderator’s power to stipulate that I think Trump’s stolen-election narrative has been more destructive than the left’s Abrams-won-Georgia narrative or the “Diebold stole Ohio” narrative in 2004.If Lake wins her primary, can she win the general-election race? Can Doug Mastriano win in Pennsylvania? To what extent are we watching a replay of certain Republican campaigns in 2010 — long before Trump, it’s worth noting — where the party threw away winnable seats by nominating perceived extremists?Bovard: A key for G.O.P. candidates going forward is to embrace both elements of the cultural and economic argument. For a long time in the party these were seen as mutually exclusive, and post-Trump, I don’t think they are anymore. Glenn Youngkin won in Virginia in part by embracing working-class economic issues — leaning into repeal of the grocery tax, for example — and then pushing hard against critical race theory. He didn’t surge on economics alone.Douthat: Right, but Youngkin also did not have to run a primary campaign so deeply entangled with Trump. There’s clearly a sweet spot for the G.O.P. to run as economic moderates or populists and anti-woke fighters right now, but can a figure like Lake manage that in a general election? We don’t even know yet if Masters or J.D. Vance, who both explicitly want to claim that space, can grab it after their efforts to earn Trump’s favor.Tim, can these candidates win?Miller: Of course they can win. Midterm elections have historically washed in candidates far more unlikely than nominees like Masters (and Lake, if she is the nominee) or Mastriano from tossup swing states. Lake in particular, with her history in local news, would probably have some appeal to voters who have a personal affinity for her outside the MAGA base. Mastriano might be a slightly tougher sell, given his brand, vibe and Oath Keeper energy.Bovard: It’s long been conventional wisdom that you tack to the right in primaries and then move more to the center in the general, so if Lake wins, she will have to find a message that appeals to as many voters as possible. She would have to present a broad spectrum of policy priorities. The G.O.P. as a voting bloc has changed. Its voters are actively iterating on all of this, so previous assumptions about what appeals to voters don’t hold up as well. I tend to think there’s a lane for Trump-endorsed candidates who lean into the Trump-style economics and key culture fights.Miller: I just want to say here that I do get pissed about the notion that it’s us, the Never Trumpers, who are obsessed with litigating Jan. 6. Pennsylvania is a critical state that now has a nominee for governor who won because of his fealty to this lie, could win the general election and could put his finger on the scale in 2024. The same may be true in another key state, Arizona. This is a red-level threat for our democracy.A lot of Republicans in Washington, D.C., want to sort of brush it away just like they brushed away the threat before Jan. 6, because it’s inconvenient.Douthat: Let me frame that D.C. Republican objection a different way: If this is a red-level threat for our democracy, why aren’t Democrats acting like it? Why did Democratic Party money enter so many of these races on behalf of the more extreme, stop-the-steal Republican? For example, given the closeness of the race, that sort of tactic quite possibly helped defeat Meijer in Michigan.Miller: Give me a break. The ads from the left trying to tilt the races were stupid and frankly unpatriotic. I have spoken out about this before. But it’s not the Democrats who are electing these insane people. Were the Democrats responsible for Mark Finchem? Mehmet Oz? Herschel Walker? Mastriano won by over 20 points. This is what Republican voters want.Also, advertising is a two-way street. If all these self-righteous Republicans were so angry about the ads designed to promote John Gibbs, they could’ve run pro-Meijer ads! Where was Kevin McCarthy defending his member? He was in Florida shining Mr. Trump’s shoes.Douthat: Rachel, I watched that Masters ad that Tim mentioned and listened to his rhetoric around the 2020 election, and it seemed like he was trying to finesse things, make an argument that the 2020 election somehow wasn’t fair in the way it was administered and covered by the press without going the Sidney Powell route to pure conspiracism.But let’s take Masters’s spirit of generalized mistrust and reverse its direction: If you were an Arizona Democrat, why would you trust a Governor Lake or a Secretary of State Mark Finchem to fairly administer the 2024 election?Bovard: Honestly, the thing that concerns me most is that there is zero trust at all on elections at this moment. If I’m a Democrat, I don’t trust the Republicans, and vice versa. Part of that lack of trust is that we aren’t even allowed to question elections anymore — as Masters did, to your point, without going full conspiracy.We regain trust by actually allowing questions and full transparency. This is one of the things that worries me about our political system. Without any kind of institutional trust, or trust of one another, there’s a breakdown.Miller: This is preposterous. Arizona had several reviews of their election. The people lying about the election are the problem.Douthat: Last questions: What do you think are the implications of the big pro-life defeat in the Kansas abortion referendum, for either abortion policy or the November elections?Bovard: It shows two headwinds that the pro-life movement is up against. First is money. Reporting shows that pro-abortion advocates spent millions against the amendment, and Democrats in many key races across the country are outpacing Republicans in fund-raising. Second, it reflects the confusion that exists around this issue post-Roe. The question presented to Kansas voters was a microcosm of the general question in Roe: Should abortion be removed from the state Constitution and be put in the hands of democratically elected officials? Yet it was sometimes presented as a binary choice between a ban or no ban. (This early headline from Politico is an example: “Kansas voters block effort to ban abortion in state constitutional amendment vote.”)But I don’t think it moves the needle on the midterms.Miller: I view it slightly differently. I think most voters are in a big middle that Republicans could even use to their advantage if they didn’t run to the extremes. Voters do not want blanket abortion bans or anything that can be construed as such. Something that moved the status quo significantly to the pro-life right but still maintained exceptions and abortion up to a certain, reasonable point in pregnancy would be politically palatable.So this will only be an effective issue for Democrats in turnout and in places where Republicans let them make it an issue by going too far to the extreme.Douthat: Finally, a different short-answer question for you both. Rachel, say Masters and Vance are both in the Senate in 2023 as spokesmen for this new culturally conservative economic populism you favor. What’s the first bill they co-sponsor?Bovard: I’d say a large tax on university endowments.Douthat: Tim, adding the evidence of last night to the narrative, can Ron DeSantis (or anyone else, but let’s be honest, there isn’t anyone else) beat Trump in a Republican primary in 2024?Miller: Sad to end with a wishy-washy pundit answer but … maybe! Trump seems to have a plurality right now within the party on 2024, and many Republicans have an affinity for him. So if it were Mike Pence, Chris Christie or Liz Cheney, they would have no chance.Could DeSantis thread a needle and present himself as a more electable Trump? Some of the focus groups The Bulwark does makes it seem like that’s possible. But will he withstand the bright lights and be able to pull it off? Will Trump be indicted? A lot of known unknowns. I’d put DeSantis as an underdog, but it’s not impossible that he could pull it off.Douthat: There is absolutely no shame in the wishy-washy pundit game. Thanks so much to you both for joining me.Ross Douthat is a Times Opinion columnist. Rachel Bovard is the policy director at the Conservative Partnership Institute and a tech columnist at The Federalist. Tim Miller, a writer at The Bulwark, is the author of “Why We Did It: A Travelogue From the Republican Road to Hell.”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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      Targeting ‘Woke Capital’

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      West Virginia’s banning of five big Wall Street banks for doing business with the state is yet another step toward a politicized world of red brands and blue brands. Florida’s DeSantis: Make profits great again.Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressStates take action against ‘woke C.E.O.s’ Five big Wall Street firms woke up to a headache yesterday, and the ailment seems to be spreading fast. Riley Moore, the outspoken treasurer of West Virginia, announced that Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, BlackRock, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo were banned from doing business with the state because they had stopped supporting the coal industry, reports The Times’s David Gelles.The banks have sharply reduced financing for new coal projects, while BlackRock has been reducing its actively managed holdings in coal companies since 2020. Coal, the most polluting fossil fuel, has become less profitable in recent years.Some of the firms do business with West Virginia in various ways. JPMorgan, for example, handles some banking services for West Virginia’s public university. But the dollar figures are relatively small, and the law does not affect the holdings of the state’s pension fund.The development is yet another step toward a politicized world of red brands and blue brands. In these hyperpartisan times, companies are increasingly being caught between conservatives and progressives, and some brands are being typecast as Republican or Democratic. The timing of the announcement was striking, coming just hours after Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who had been the chief Democratic holdout on climate legislation, relented and agreed to sign on.Meanwhile in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis unloaded on the supposedly “woke” ideology of some financial services firms, criticizing E.S.G. investing and announcing plans for legislation that would “prohibit big banks, credit card companies and money transmitters from discriminating against customers for their religious, political or social beliefs.” At a news conference this week, he also said he wanted to prohibit the state’s pension fund managers from considering environmental factors when making investment decisions. Instead, he said, they need to be focusing only on “maximizing the return on investment.”Businesses now “marginalize” people because of political disagreements, DeSantis said. “That is not the way you can run an economy effectively.” He singled out PayPal, which has cut off accounts associated with far-right groups that participated in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and GoFundMe, which blocked donations to a group supporting truckers who occupied Ottawa this year.HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING Amazon’s shares soar as the company says consumer demand remains strong. The positive comments from C.E.O. Andrew Jassy and other top executives caused investors to shrug off the fact that the giant internet retailer reported its slowest quarterly sales growth in two decades, and has cut nearly 100,000 workers. Apple’s quarterly results were also better than expected, as Big Tech’s profits have been resilient even as the economy has slowed.The eurozone economy grew faster than expected, but so did inflation. Positive G.D.P. growth for the region, a day after the U.S. reported that economic growth slumped for the second quarter in a row, relieved some worries about growing stagflation. Still, inflation in the eurozone hit 8.9 percent in July compared with a year ago, a fresh record.The Biden administration plans to offer updated booster shots in September. With reformulated shots from Pfizer and Moderna on the horizon, the F.D.A. has decided that Americans under 50 should wait to receive second boosters.Read More About Oil and Gas PricesPrices Drop: U.S. gas prices have been on the decline, offering some relief to drivers. But weather, war and demand will influence how long it lasts.Stock Market: As financial markets around the world fell this spring amid worries about inflation and rising interest rates, energy was the only sector gaining ground. Summer Driving Season: The spike in gas prices is being driven in part by vacationers hitting the road. Here’s what our reporter saw on a recent trip.Gas Tax Holiday: President Biden called on Congress to temporarily suspend the federal gas tax, but experts remain skeptical the move would benefit consumers much, because tax is such a small percentage of the price you pay at the pump..A new book reignites a debate about how L.A. Times editors handled a 2017 exposé. Paul Pringle, a veteran reporter at the L.A. Times, writes in his book “Bad City” that top editors tried to slow-walk the paper’s initial groundbreaking article, which detailed how the dean of the University of Southern California’s medical school used drugs with young people.Trader Joe’s workers at a Massachusetts store form a union. It is the only one of the supermarket chain’s more than 500 stores with a formal union, but similar moves are afoot elsewhere, just as the union campaign has spread at Starbucks. Trader Joe’s will face at least one more union vote soon, at a Minneapolis store next month, and workers at a store in Colorado filed an election petition this week.Big oil’s big profitsOil companies are reporting surging profits, even as consumers and world leaders are dealing with the hardships caused by higher energy prices.Buoyed by high oil and gas prices, the energy sector is expected to have swelled earnings by more than 250 percent in the second quarter. Exxon Mobil and Chevron, the U.S.’s two largest oil companies, reported record profits this morning, with Exxon’s profit more than tripling from a year ago. Europe’s biggest oil companies, Shell and TotalEnergies, yesterday reported a combined $21 billion in profits.The fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to significant financial benefits for energy companies and their investors. The pain of rising energy prices and shortages, though, has been felt particularly strongly by consumers and businesses in Europe, which received roughly half of Russia’s oil exports before the invasion. In Asia and Africa, higher energy prices could push millions of people back into energy poverty, the International Energy Agency warned last month.It’s also led to claims of profiteering. President Biden said last month that oil companies were benefiting from their own underinvestment in refining capacity. In Britain, Boris Johnson, the outgoing prime minister, imposed a windfall tax on major oil and gas companies. But a top contender to replace him, Liz Truss, said that she opposed the tax because it would send “the wrong signal to the world,” and that Shell should be encouraged to invest in Britain.Oil companies have pointed the finger back at politicians. Ben van Beurden, Shell’s chief executive, said yesterday that energy prices were high in part because of government policies that discouraged investment in oil and natural gas in recent years.Gas prices in the U.S. have fallen over the last month, and there are some indications that more relief could be ahead. Citigroup said in a research note today that it expected growth in the supply of oil to outpace weaker demand. Still, geopolitical factors and the weather could change the trajectory of prices, particularly if the U.S. has an active hurricane season that disrupts refining capacity. “Just a few of these risks materializing could work up a continued perfect storm of high volatility,” Citigroup said.“There is a principle at stake. What can you buy if you have unlimited cash? Can you bend every rule? Can you take apart monuments?”— Stefan Lewis, a former member of Rotterdam’s City Council, explaining the outrage over the city’s decision, which has since been reversed, to temporarily dismantle a bridge to accommodate Jeff Bezos and his superyacht.The dark secrets of corporate subsidy deals Every year, state and local officials negotiate about $95 billion in economic development deals, competing with one another to recruit companies to their communities with lucrative subsidies in exchange for their business.But some corporations are becoming increasingly aggressive about forcing officials to sign nondisclosure agreements that could end up hurting the communities that the businesses were supposed to help, according to a new report by the American Economic Liberties Project, a progressive antitrust advocacy group. The N.D.A.s sometimes prohibit officials from disclosing basic information about a corporation, like its name and the type of business it’s building, Pat Garofalo, an author of the report, told DealBook.These N.D.A.s prevent community members, like workers and local businesses, from sharing their input on the deal until after it is completed. One recent example is the $4 billion battery factory that Panasonic will build in Kansas, which will get nearly $1 billion in subsidies. Before the deal was completed, Panasonic was also negotiating with Oklahoma, and the states were in a bidding war over the electronics giant’s business. But lawmakers could not talk about the corporation on the other side of the bargaining table in public — and sometimes didn’t even know its name. In April, Oklahoma officials complained that they had two hours to contemplate a complex incentive package worth $700 million, or about 8 percent of the state budget. “How am I supposed to go back to my constituents and say, ‘I gave away three-quarters of a billion dollars to a company that I don’t even know their name?’ Is that responsible?” State Representative Collin Walke said during an appropriations meeting.Some states have introduced bills to ban these N.D.A.s, which the report calls “an extremely common tactic” in development deals. This year, such legislation was introduced in New York, Michigan, Illinois, and Florida. New York’s State Senate voted unanimously to approve a ban. Garofalo thinks the New York lawmakers were galvanized by the Amazon HQ2 bid that fell apart in 2019. But he notes that communities don’t have to wait for politicians to fix the problem. Engaged citizens have used public meeting and records laws to solve subsidy mysteries, and sometimes a little transparency is all it takes, Garofalo said. “When the public does get a say,” he told DealBook, “the deals are better, or bad deals are knocked off right away.”THE SPEED READ Deals“Private equity giant Carlyle’s latest big play: Small Brooklyn buildings” (The Real Deal)Ernst & Young’s plan to split is reportedly being held up by debt issues. (WSJ)Newsmax renewed a deal to be carried by Verizon’s Fios, days before its rival One America News is to be dropped. Both are known for their loyalty to former President Trump. (NYT)PolicyThe private equity industry is objecting to a proposed U.S. tax increase on carried-interest income. (NYT)“Dry Fountains, Cold Pools, Less Beer? Germans Tip-Toe Up the Path to Energy Savings” (NYT)The big question is not whether the U.S. is in a recession. It’s whether the economy’s problems will worsen. (NYT’s The Morning)Best of the restArchitects have a reimagined vision for the former Deutsche Bank atrium at 60 Wall Street, with plans to make it look less like a Mediterranean spa and more like a Singapore airport. (NYT)Instagram is rolling back some product changes after celebrities like Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian criticized them. (NYT)TV showrunners are demanding that studios create protocols to protect employees in states where abortion has been outlawed. (Variety)Richard Rosenthal, the top defense lawyer for dangerous dogs, has even frustrated animal rights groups. (NYT)We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. More

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      These Republican Governors Are Delivering Results, and Many Voters Like Them for It

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      Republican flamethrowers and culture warriors like Donald Trump and Representatives Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene typically draw an outsize amount of media attention.Americans may conclude from this that there is a striking, and perhaps unfortunate, relationship between extremism and political success.But Republicans aren’t hoping for a red wave in the midterms only because norm-thrashing or scandal sells. The truth is much more banal — yet also important for parties to internalize and better for politics generally: In states across the country, Republican governors are delivering real results for people they are physically more proximate to than federal officials.Now, it’s true that the party that controls the presidency nearly always gets whipped in midterm elections, and inflation would be a huge drag on any party in power. And it’s also true that among those governors are culture warriors like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas.But people too often overlook the idea that actual results, especially ones related to pocketbook issues, can often be as important as rhetoric. Looked at that way, lots of Republicans — some with high public profiles, and some who fly below the radar — are excelling.Start with the simplest measure: popularity. Across the country, 13 of the 15 most popular governors are Republicans. That list does not just include red states. In fact, blue-state Republican governors like Phil Scott of Vermont, Charlie Baker of Massachusetts and Larry Hogan of Maryland are among the most popular.There are many reasons that G.O.P. governors seem to be succeeding. It’s true that governors can’t take credit for everything. Sometimes they just get lucky. But they do make policy choices, and particularly those made by governors since the start of Covid have made a difference.For example, take a look at the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data on unemployment. In the 10 states with the lowest rates as of June, eight were led by Republican governors. Several governors who don’t make frequent appearances in national news stand out, like Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, Spencer Cox of Utah and Phil Scott of Vermont. Their states have unemployment rates under 2.5 percent, and of the 20 states with the lowest unemployment rates, just four are led by Democrats.States with Republican governors have also excelled in economic recovery since the start of the pandemic. Standouts in this measure include Mr. Abbott and Doug Ducey of Arizona.These results reflect many things — some states have grown and others have shrunk, for example — but are at least in part a result of policy choices made by their elected leaders since the start of the pandemic. For example, governors like Kristi Noem in South Dakota often rejected lockdowns and economic closures.Republican governors were also far more likely to get children back to in-person school, despite intense criticism.Covid policy doesn’t explain everything. Fiscal governance has also made a difference. The Cato Institute’s Fiscal Report Card on America’s governors for 2020 (the most recent edition available), which grades them on tax and spending records, gives high marks to many Republicans. Nearly all of the top-ranked states in this report have Republican governors, like Kim Reynolds of Iowa or Mr. Ricketts. (Some Democratic governors also ranked highly, including Steve Sisolak of Nevada and Roy Cooper of North Carolina.) Some have made their mark with employer-attracting tax cuts; others with spending controls; others with a mixture.Most states mandate a balanced budget, so taxing and spending policies are important for fiscal stability. Low taxes tend to attract and keep employers and employees. Restrained budgets help ensure that taxes can be kept low, without sacrificing bond ratings, which may matter if debt-financed spending is needed in a crisis or to try to stimulate businesses to hire more.Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas has cut taxes for individuals, reduced the number of tax brackets and cut the corporate income tax rate. Mr. Sununu has restrained spending, vetoed a payroll tax proposal and cut business taxes. Brian Kemp of Georgia, by contrast, actually paused some tax cuts that had been scheduled — and focused almost exclusively on spending restraint, issuing a directive for state agencies to generate budget cuts and keeping 2020 general fund growth to a tiny 1 percent.Even in blue Vermont, Mr. Scott has constrained general fund spending — despite being an odd duck out among governors in that he is not constrained by a balanced-budget amendment — to rise by an annual average of just 2.4 percent between 2017 and 2020, and he has also cut taxes. He signed a bill to ensure that the federal tax reform instituted under Mr. Trump and limiting state and local tax deductions wouldn’t result in Vermonters getting hammered. He has also cut individual income tax rates, reduced the number of tax brackets and resisted new payroll taxes in favor of voluntary paid leave plans for private-sector employers.Republicans who have a big impact on the day-to-day lives of many Americans — unlike, say, Representative Kevin McCarthy or certainly Mr. Trump, and in terms of the quality of state economies, the local job market and education — are delivering. In our federalist system, a lot of power still sits with states and not the federal government and determines much about citizens’ lives.This is a big reason that Republicans are well-positioned heading into the midterms. It should be a warning to Joe Biden and Democrats — and to some of the culture warriors. Cable-news combat over whatever the outrage of the day is may deliver politicians the spotlight. But sound economic policy and focusing on the job, not theatrics, is delivering basic day-to-day results Americans want, need and will reward.Liz Mair (@LizMair), a strategist for campaigns by Scott Walker, Roy Blunt, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina and Rick Perry, is the founder and president of Mair Strategies.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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      Why Trump Is Weakening

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      In Donald Trump’s quest to sustain his dominance over the Republican Party, his claim to have been robbed of victory in 2020 has been a crucial talisman, lending him powers denied to previous defeated presidential candidates. By insisting that he was cheated out of victory, Trump fashioned himself into a king-in-exile rather than a loser — an Arthur betrayed by the Mordreds of his own party, waiting in the Avalon of Mar-a-Lago to make his prophesied return.As with many forms of dark Trumpian brilliance, though, the former president is not exactly in conscious control of this strategy. He intuited rather than calculated his way to its effectiveness, and he seems too invested in its central conceit — the absolute righteousness of his “Stop the Steal” campaign — to modulate when it begins to reap diminishing returns.That’s a big part of why 2022 hasn’t been a particularly good year for Trump’s 2024 ambitions. Across 2021, he bent important parts of the G.O.P. back to his will, but in recent months his powers have been ebbing — and for the same reason, his narrative of dispossession, that they were initially so strong.While Ron DeSantis, his strongest potential rival, has been throwing himself in front of almost every issue that Republican primary voters care about, Trump has marinated in grievance, narrowed his inner circle, and continued to badger Republican officials about undoing the last election. While DeSantis has been selling himself as the scourge of liberalism, the former president has been selling himself mostly as the scourge of Brian Kemp, Liz Cheney and Mike Pence.Judging by early primary polling, the DeSantis strategy is working at the Trump strategy’s expense. The governor is effectively tied with the former president in recent polls of New Hampshire and Michigan, and leading him easily in Florida — which is DeSantis’s home state, yes, but now Trump’s as well.These early numbers don’t prove that Trump can be beaten. But they strongly suggest that if his case for 2024 is only that he was robbed in 2020, it won’t be enough to achieve a restoration.This is not because the majority of Republicans have had their minds changed by the Jan. 6 committee, or suddenly decided that actually Joe Biden won fair and square. But the committee has probably played some role in bleeding Trump’s strength, by keeping him pinned to the 2020 election and its aftermath, giving him an extra reason to obsess about enemies and traitors and giving his more lukewarm Republican supporters a constant reminder of where the Trump experience ended up.By lukewarm supporters, I mean those Republicans who would be inclined to answer no if a pollster asked them if the 2020 election was fairly won, but who would also reject the conceit — as a majority of Republicans did in a Quinnipiac poll earlier this year — that Mike Pence could have legitimately done as Trump wished on Jan. 6.That’s a crucial distinction, because in my experience as well as in public polling, there are lots of conservatives who retain a general sense that Biden’s victory wasn’t fair without being committed to John Eastman’s cockamamie plans to force a constitutional crisis. In the same way, there are lots of conservatives who sympathize in a general way with the Jan. 6 protests while believing that they were essentially peaceful and that any rioting was the work of F.B.I. plants or outside agitators — which is deluded, but still quite different from actively wishing for a mob-led coup d’état.So to the extent that Trump is stuck litigating his own disgraceful conduct before and during the riot, a rival like DeSantis doesn’t need the lukewarm Trump supporter to believe everything the Jan. 6 committee reports. He just needs that supporter to regard Jan. 6 as an embarrassment and Trump’s behavior as feckless — while presenting himself as the candidate who can own the libs but also turn the page.A counterargument, raised on Friday by New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait, is that so long as those lukewarm supporters still believe the 2020 election was unfair, Trump will have a trump card over any rival — because if you believe a steal happened, “you are perfectly rational to select a candidate who will acknowledge the crime and do everything to prevent it from reoccurring.”But it seems just as possible for the lukewarm supporter to decide that if Trump’s response to being robbed was to first just let it happen and then ask his vice president to wave a magic wand on his behalf, then maybe he’s not the right guy to take on the Democratic machine next time.There is more than one way, in other words, for Republican voters to decide that the former president is a loser. The stolen-election narrative has protected him from the simplest consequence of his defeat. But it doesn’t prevent the stench of failure from rising from his well-worn grievances, his whine of disappointment and complaint.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