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      There Has to Be a Tipping Point on Guns, Right?

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      Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. I know we’ll talk about Joe Biden’s gun-control proposals, but I wanted to ask how Dan is feeling — about Covid and the Celtics.Gail Collins: Thanks for asking, Bret. I can now march around with a little badge saying “My husband’s testing negative!” He didn’t have a major Covid case, but it was a reminder of how any illness can really lay a family low. And what a disaster it must be for, say, single mothers or poor seniors. And how important it is to have good social services for those folks and …Bret: And a timely prescription of Paxlovid, I presume. Glad he’s better.Gail: OK, not gonna try to lure you into an activist-government argument today. Will move on instead to the championship-contender Boston Celtics and my theory that professional sports, while cheesy in many ways, are an extremely useful part of the culture, not only providing diversion but also uniting folks who would otherwise have absolutely nothing in common.Anybody you’re rooting for?Bret: The Celtics, of course. What’s your over-under on the series, now that it’s tied? Or your bet on Biden getting anything passed on gun legislation?Gail: Sports-wise, I don’t like the idea of betting on whether some team will score over X points or under. Just tell me who you think is going to win.Bret: The Men in Green. Not only does God root for them, he also used to play for them.Gail: However, when it comes to betting on the Senate, God help us, I guess you need to look for ways to celebrate minimal achievement. I can imagine them passing a bill to raise the age for buying an assault rifle to 21, but don’t expect me to throw a party.Bret: I’m hardly the first person to suggest that no one should be able to legally buy a gun in the United States who can’t legally buy a beer in the United States. I’d also argue that every would-be gun buyer should be required to purchase a gun safe while also passing a criminal-background check, a psychiatric evaluation, a three-day waiting period and an extensive gun-safety course. Perhaps a few of the conservatives who argue that school shootings are part of a mental-health crisis might be persuaded to sign on.Gail: Can I also say how it drives me crazy when lawmakers respond to these gun crises by ranting about police efficiency or school construction?Bret: Well, the performance of the police in Uvalde was shameful and I hope the episode lives on as an example to cops everywhere of how not to act when the lives of children and teachers are at risk.Gail: Of course you want well-trained security officers, but that’s not going to stop all these horrors. And kinda amazed by the idea of eliminating entrances to reduce the chance of a murderer sneaking into a school. Could pose a problem if you’re down to one door and the building catches fire.Bret: Which sort of brings us to the nub of the problem: Conservatives want policies that don’t work in practice and liberals want policies that don’t work in politics.Our news-side colleague Nate Cohn had an eye-opening analysis last week on the wide disparity between the way gun-control measures poll and how people actually vote on them. Turns out, gun control just isn’t as popular at the ballot box as many liberals contend. And every time there’s a gun massacre, gun sales go up, not down. Liberals need to reconsider the way they make their case. Your thoughts?Gail: Well, my first idea would be to … ask an extremely talented communicator with ties to the right. Take it, Bret!Bret: Hmmm. Can I start with what doesn’t work?When Beto O’Rourke says, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15s,” it just encourages people to buy them. When Jimmy Kimmel makes a moving plea for gun control, he is preaching to the converted, but he isn’t moving the needle. When hyper-progressives say “abolish the police,” they are tacitly encouraging people — especially in low-income communities — to purchase weapons as a logical means of self-defense. When coastal elites denigrate gun culture, they foster precisely the kinds of cultural resentments that lead people to “cling to guns,” to use Barack Obama’s famous phrase. When Biden pleads “do something,” he merely invites the question: do what, exactly?Gail: As someone who is in favor of getting rid of every assault weapon in the world, I have to protest. Let’s open a conversation about what kind of guns are good for hunting and target shooting and separate them from the ones that are ideal for mowing down students or shoppers or whoever turn out to be the next heartbreaking mass murder victims.The major barrier is the profit-making gun manufacturers and the culture they subsidize. But I understand I’m not exactly moving many AR-15 owners. Give me a better strategy.Bret: Imagine a TV ad from a moderate Democrat like Ohio’s Tim Ryan or Virginia’s Abigail Spanberger that goes something like this:“I believe in the Second Amendment. But not for this guy,” followed by a picture of the Tucson, Ariz., mass murderer Jared Lee Loughner, “or this guy” — a picture of Aurora, Colo., mass murderer James Holmes, “or this guy” — a picture of Newtown, Conn., mass murderer Adam Lanza.It would continue: “I also believe in the right to own firearms responsibly for hunting and self-defense. But not for this” — a picture of the scene outside the Uvalde school, “or this” — a picture of the scene from the Buffalo grocery store, “or this” — scenes from the Parkland massacre.And it could conclude: “Justice Robert Jackson once told us that the Bill of Rights cannot become a suicide pact. That includes the Second Amendment. We can protect your guns while keeping them out of the hands of crazy and dangerous people by using common-sense background checks, 21-years-of-age purchasing requirements, three-day waiting periods and mental-health exams. It’s not about denying your constitutional rights. It’s so your children come home from school alive.”What do you think?Gail: I’m sold. And I have a feeling we’ll be talking about this much, much more as this election year goes on.Bret: Let’s hope it’s not after the next school shooting. Though, considering what we saw over the weekend in Philadelphia or Chattanooga, it may not be long.Gail: Let’s take a rest and talk about politics in the old, non-profound sense. I was fascinated when Mike Pence made a very public endorsement of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp in the primary. Kemp was perhaps Donald Trump’s top target — he hates him for allowing the state’s presidential vote to go, accurately, to Joe Biden.Bret: At least Pence has better political acumen than Trump. Kemp won his primary over David Perdue by more than 50 points, which was a very satisfying humiliation of one of Trump’s favorite bootlickers.Gail: And our colleague Maggie Haberman recently posted a story from her upcoming book, about the vice president’s security being warned that Trump was going to turn on Pence before Pence went on to accurately record the results of the presidential election.Are we looking at Pence as a hero in a possible primary with his old boss in 2024?Bret: I don’t see how a man whose political theme song might as well have been the Meat Loaf classic, “I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)” can sell himself as any kind of hero, much less as a plausible Republican nominee. He’s too close to Trump not to be tainted by his presidency and too alienated from Trump not to be diminished by his wrath.Frankly, Trump’s only serious opponent for the nomination at this point is Ron DeSantis, who seems to be beating the former president in the straw polls, at least in some states. Between those two, who would you prefer as the G.O.P. candidate?Gail: Well DeSantis made a trademark move last week when he canceled funding for a Tampa Bay Rays training facility because the team issued an anti-mass-shooting tweet. (They dared to say: “This cannot be normal.”) He’s horrible, and his advantage is that he’s smarter than Trump. But he doesn’t have nearly as much of that raise-the-rafters-split-the-country creepy charisma.Bret: You have to admire the ideological flexibility of self-described conservatives who are for free speech, until they aren’t, and who think corporations have speech rights, until they don’t. Still, DeSantis is very effective.Sorry, go on.Gail: Not quite sure who scares me more. Especially in an era when people are being encouraged to doubt the whole electoral system. Did you see the story in Politico about Republican poll workers being prepared to contest the Election Day process rather than making it work properly?Bret: This is the mental infection Trump has unleashed on the republic. The notion that elections are a case of “heads I win, tails you lose.”Gail: Just looking forward, I’m imagining an election this fall where either the Republicans win everything or the whole process gets blocked from even taking place. Or both.OK, I’m being way too negative. Be a pal and cheer me up.Bret: Here’s what my crystal ball tells me: ​​Democrats get hammered in the midterms. Biden realizes he has to announce he isn’t running in 2024 so that a savior can appear. Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, beats Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina for the Democratic nomination, and then chooses the widely respected retired Adm. Jim Stavridis as her running mate.Meanwhile, Republicans split acrimoniously between DeSantis and Trump. A brokered convention produces a compromise ticket headed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia with Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina as his veep choice. On Election Day, Americans breathe a little easier knowing that none of the candidates is out to destroy the Constitution, and we’re back to politics as it was before Trump.Reality check: Naaaaaaaaaaaaaah.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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      A Broken Redistricting Process Winds Down, With No Repairs in Sight

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      WASHINGTON — The brutal once-a-decade process of drawing new boundaries for the nation’s 435 congressional districts is limping toward a close with the nation’s two political parties roughly at parity. But the lessons drawn from how they got there offer little cheer for those worried about the direction of the weary American experiment.The two parties each claimed redistricting went its way. But some frustrated Democrats in states like Texas, Florida and Ohio sounded unconvinced as Republicans, who have controlled the House in 10 of the last 15 elections despite losing the popular vote in seven of them, seemed to fare better than Democrats at tilting political maps decisively in their direction in key states they controlled.At the least, political analysts said, Republicans proved more relentless at shielding such maps from court challenges, through artful legal maneuvers and blunt-force political moves that in some cases challenged the authority of the judicial system.And, to many involved in efforts to replace gerrymanders with competitive districts, the vanishing number of truly contested House races indicated that whoever won, the voters lost. A redistricting cycle that began with efforts to demand fair maps instead saw the two parties in an arms race for a competitive advantage.“Once the fuel has been added to the fire, it’s very hard to back away from it,” said Kathay Feng, the national redistricting director for the advocacy group Common Cause. “Now it’s not just the operatives in the back room, which is where it started. It’s not just technology. It’s not just legislators being shameless about drawing lines. It’s governors and state officials and sometimes even courts leaning in to affirm these egregious gerrymanders.”Democrats pulled nearly even — in terms of the partisan lean of districts, if not the party’s prospects for success in the November midterms — largely by undoing some Republican gerrymanders through court battles and ballot initiatives, and by drawing their own partisan maps. But the strategy at times succeeded too well, as courts struck down Democratic maps in some states, and ballot measures kept party leaders from drawing new ones in others.New York is a particularly glaring example. In April, the seven Democratic justices on New York’s highest court blew up an aggressive gerrymander of the state’s 26 congressional districts that had been expected to net Democrats three new House seats. The court’s replacement map, drawn by an independent expert, pits Democratic incumbents against each other and creates new swing districts that could cost Democrats seats.Weeks later in Florida, where voters approved a ban on partisan maps in 2010, the State Supreme Court, comprising seven Republican justices, declined to stop the implementation of a gerrymander of the state’s 28 congressional districts. The ruling preserves the new map ordered by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, that could net his party four new House seats. The ruling cited procedural issues in allowing the map to take effect, but many experts said there was never much doubt about the result.In New York, Democrats ignored a voter-approved constitutional mandate that districts “not be drawn to discourage competition” or favor political parties. And in Republicans’ view, Democrats sabotaged a bipartisan commission that voters set up to draw fair maps.“The Democrats seriously overreached,” said John J. Faso, a Republican and former New York state assemblyman and U.S. representative. The bipartisan commission, he added, “is what people voted for.”What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.Deepening Divides: As political mapmakers create lopsided new district lines, the already polarized parties are being pulled even farther apart.But in Ohio, Republicans who gerrymandered congressional and state legislative districts this spring also ignored a voter-approved constitutional ban on partisan maps. They not only successfully defied repeated orders by the State Supreme Court to obey it, but suggested that the court’s chief justice, a Republican, be impeached for rejecting the maps drawn by the state’s Republican-dominated redistricting commission.State Representative Doug Richey of Missouri, a Republican, showed fellow lawmakers a proposed congressional redistricting map in May.David A. Lieb, Associated PressOf the approximately 35 states where politicians ultimately control congressional redistricting — the remainder either rely on independent commissions or have only one House seat — the first maps of House seats approved in some 14 states fit many statistical measures of gerrymandering used by political scientists.One of the most extreme congressional gerrymanders added as many as three new Democratic House seats in staunchly blue Illinois. Texas Republicans drew a new map that turned one new House seat and eight formerly competitive ones into G.O.P. bastions.Republicans carved up Kansas City, Kan.; Salt Lake City; Nashville; Tampa, Fla.; Little Rock, Ark.; Oklahoma City and more to weaken Democrats. Democrats moved boundaries in New Mexico and Oregon to dilute Republican votes.Most gerrymanders were drawn by Republicans, in part because Republicans control more state governments than Democrats do. But Democrats also began this redistricting cycle with a built-in handicap: The 2020 census markedly undercounted Democratic-leaning constituencies, like Blacks and Hispanics.Because those missed residents were concentrated in predominantly blue cities, any additional new urban districts probably would have elected Democrats to both congressional and state legislative seats, said Kimball W. Brace, a demographer who has helped Democratic leaders draw political maps for decades.Undoing those gerrymanders has proved a hit-or-miss proposition.Lawsuits in state courts dismantled Republican partisan maps in North Carolina and Democratic ones in New York and Maryland. But elsewhere, Republicans seized on the Supreme Court’s embrace of a once-obscure legal doctrine to keep even blatant gerrymanders from being blocked. The doctrine, named the Purcell principle after a 2006 federal lawsuit, says courts should not change election laws or rules too close to an election — how close is unclear — for fear of confusing voters.Alabama’s congressional map, drawn by Republicans, will be used in the November election, even though a panel of federal judges ruled it a racial gerrymander. The reason, the Supreme Court said in February, is that the decision came too close to primary elections.The delay game played out most glaringly during the extended process in Ohio, where ballot initiatives approved by voters in 2015 established a bipartisan redistricting commission that Republicans have dominated. Federal judges ordered the gerrymandered G.O.P. maps of Ohio House and Senate districts to be used for this year’s elections, even though the state’s high court had rejected them.When a State Supreme Court deadline for the commission to submit maps of legislative districts for legal review came due last week, Republicans simply ignored it.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Florida Supreme Court Turns Down DeSantis Voting Map Challenge

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      WASHINGTON — The Florida Supreme Court refused on Thursday to step into a challenge to a new map of the state’s congressional districts that was approved by the Republican State Legislature. The ruling all but ensures that the November elections will be based on districts that a lower state court said diluted the voting power of Black residents, violating the State Constitution.The ruling, which preserves the new House map personally ordered by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, was a fitting coda to a once-a-decade redistricting process that began with efforts to reduce the raw political self-interest built into the exercise.But in the end, it devolved into a power struggle between Democrats intent on preserving their narrow majority in the House of Representatives and Republicans who feel confident about retaking control of the House in advance of the 2024 presidential race.The Democrats appear to have come out of the map-drawing battles in slightly better shape than before they began. But their gains were marginal in the face of President Biden’s plummeting approval ratings and the historical pattern of losses by the party in power. The Florida court ruling appeared to extinguish their last hope of further bolstering their midterm prospects.In its two-sentence denial, the State Supreme Court said it was premature for the justices to intervene in a suit seeking to overturn the congressional map because the case had not yet wound its way through the state court system, which could take months or years.The new House map dismantles a congressional district held by Representative Al Lawson, a Black Democrat, and strongly boosts Republican odds of capturing other competitive House seats.Donald J. Trump carried Florida by 3.3 percentage points in the 2020 election. Yet in the new map, Mr. Trump was favored by a majority of voters in 20 of the 28 districts, while voters favoring Joseph R. Biden Jr. were a majority in eight.What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.Deepening Divides: As political mapmakers create lopsided new district lines, the already polarized parties are being pulled even farther apart.Voting rights groups argued that the map ignored an amendment to the State Constitution approved by voters in 2010 that outlawed partisan mapmaking and specifically barred creating districts that diminished the likelihood that minority voters could elect their preferred candidates.Mr. DeSantis contended that Mr. Lawson’s district was itself unconstitutional because it was drawn specifically to permit the election of a Black representative, taking in African American voters from across northern Florida.A lower court blocked the Republican map from taking effect last month, substituting a map drawn by a Harvard University redistricting expert. The state’s First District Court of Appeal later lifted that stay, saying the judge had exceeded his authority. The Supreme Court ruling on Thursday rebuffed a request to overturn the appeals court’s decision.While the Florida lawsuit will grind on, as will a handful of other court challenges to political maps nationwide, the odds that they will produce further changes in maps before November are vanishingly small.“At this point, it seems hard to see congressional maps being upset for this November, especially given the Supreme Court’s repeated admonitions to federal courts to hold back on changes to election laws in the period close to the election,” said Richard L. Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine.The Democrats’ comparative success in this year’s map drawing is a marked departure from the last redistricting in 2011, when Republicans’ dominance in state legislatures enabled the party to gerrymander its way to comfortable control of the House until the Democratic wave election of 2018. Even as President Barack Obama won re-election in 2012, Republicans maintained a 17-seat majority in the House.That edge slowly eroded as courts undid some gerrymanders and the political landscape shifted. Redistricting this year netted the Democratic Party further small gains: Mr. Biden carried 226 of the 435 new districts in 2020, two more than before the new maps were drawn, while Mr. Trump carried 209 districts, two fewer than before.Still, those numbers do not tell the whole story. According to an analysis by The New York Times, Mr. Biden performed better than his 2020 average in 215 of the new House districts — a big improvement from the current map, where he only outperformed in 207 districts. But Mr. Trump beat his average in 220 of the new districts, an indication that the House as a whole still tilts slightly Republican.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Trump’s Primary Losses Puncture His Invincibility

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      With many of Donald J. Trump’s endorsed candidates falling to defeat in recent primaries, some Republicans see an opening for a post-Trump candidate in 2024.Donald J. Trump had cast this year’s primaries as a moment to measure his power, endorsing candidates by the dozen as he sought to maintain an imprint on his party unlike any other past president.But after the first phase of the primary season concluded on Tuesday, a month in which a quarter of America’s states cast their ballots, the verdict has been clear: Mr. Trump’s aura of untouchability in Republican politics has been punctured.In more than five years — from when he became president in January 2017 until May 2022 — Mr. Trump had only ever seen voters reject a half-dozen of his choices in Republican primaries. But by the end of this month, that figure had more than doubled, with his biggest defeat coming on Tuesday when Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia thrashed a Trump-backed challenger by more than 50 percentage points. Three other Trump recruits challenging Kemp allies also went down to defeat.The mounting losses have emboldened Mr. Trump’s rivals inside the party to an extent not seen since early 2016 and increased the chances that, should he run again in 2024, he would face serious competition.“I think a non-Trump with an organized campaign would have a chance,” said Jack Kingston, a former Georgia congressman who advised the first Trump presidential campaign.Mr. Trump remains broadly popular among Republicans and has a political war chest well north of $100 million. But there has been a less visible sign of slippage: Mr. Trump’s vaunted digital fund-raising machine has begun to slow. An analysis by The New York Times shows that his average daily online contributions have declined every month for the last seven months that federal data is available.Mr. Trump has gone from raising an average of $324,633 per day in September 2021 on WinRed, the Republican donation-processing portal, to $202,185 in March 2022 — even as he has ramped up his political activities and profile.Those close to Mr. Trump — and even Republicans who aren’t — caution against misreading the significance of primary losses in which he himself was not on the ballot. Mr. Kemp, for instance, took pains ​​not to say a cross word about the former president to avoid alienating his loyal base.“To be the man, you have to beat the man,” said Jim Hobart, a Republican pollster with Public Opinion Strategies. “And until Trump either bows out of electoral politics, or is beaten by a Republican at the ballot box, his strength remains.”Rivals, including his own former vice president, Mike Pence, are gearing up for potential presidential runs, as he and others visit key early states like Iowa and ramp up their own fund-raising operations. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has amassed a $100 million re-election war chest and is the talk of many donors, activists and voters interested in the future of Trumpism without Trump.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida speaking to the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla., in February.Scott McIntyre for The New York Times“Donald Trump had four good years,” said Cole Muzio, president of the Frontline Policy Council, a conservative Christian group based in Georgia, who voted twice for Mr. Trump but is now looking for someone more “forward-looking.”“DeSantis is great about seeing where the left is going and playing on the field that they’re going to be on, rather than reacting to what happened a couple of years ago,” Mr. Muzio said, echoing the frustration that Mr. Trump continues to obsess about denying his 2020 election loss.After the Georgia Primary ElectionThe May 24 races were among the most consequential so far of the 2022 midterm cycle.Takeaways: G.O.P. voters rejected Donald Trump’s 2020 fixation, and Democrats backed a gun-control champion. Here’s what else we learned.Rebuking Trump: The ex-president picked losers up and down the ballot in Georgia, raising questions about the firmness of his grip on the G.O.P.G.O.P. Governor’s Race: Brian Kemp scored a landslide victory over David Perdue, delivering Mr. Trump his biggest setback of the 2022 primaries.2018 Rematch: Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor, will again face Mr. Kemp — but in a vastly different political climate.Mr. Muzio, whose organization is hosting former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as its fall gala headliner, spoke as he waited to hear Mr. Pence this week in Kennesaw, Ga., at a rally for Mr. Kemp — all names he included in the party’s “deep bench” of 2024 alternatives.Mr. Trump still remains the most coveted endorsement in his party, and he has boosted some big winners. Sarah Huckabee Sanders in Arkansas virtually cleared the field for governor with his support, and Representative Ted Budd in North Carolina defeated a past governor to win his party’s Senate nomination.Yet the difficult primary season has added to Mr. Trump’s personal anxieties about his standing, after he has sought to fashion himself as something of an old-school party boss in his post-presidency. He has told advisers he wants to declare his candidacy or possibly launch an exploratory committee this summer.Most of Mr. Trump’s advisers believe he should wait until after the midterm elections to announce a candidacy. Yet the sense among Republicans that Mr. Trump has lost political altitude is taking hold, including among some of those close to him.Taylor Budowich, a Trump spokesman, said the “undeniable reality” is that Republicans rely on Mr. Trump to “fuel Republican victories in 2022 and beyond.”“President Trump’s political operation continues to dominate American politics, raising more money and driving more victories than any other political organization — bar none,” Mr. Budowich said.Some Republican strategists have fixated on the fact that so many of Mr. Trump’s endorsees have landed about one-third of the vote — big winners (J.D. Vance in Ohio), losers (Jody Hice in Georgia, Janice McGeachin in Idaho and Charles Herbster in Nebraska) and those headed for a recount (Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania).One-third of the party is at once an unmatched base of unbending loyalists — and yet a cohort far from a majority.Notably, Mr. Trump’s share of what is raised overall among all Republicans online has also declined. Mr. Trump’s main fund-raising committee accounted for 19.7 percent of what was raised by Republican campaigns and committees on WinRed in the last four months of 2021, but just 14.1 percent of what was raised during the first three months of 2022. Some of that decrease is the result of other candidates on the ballot raising more this year.Still, only 10 times since July 2021 has Mr. Trump’s committee accounted for less than 10 percent of the money raised on WinRed during a single day — and nine of those instances came in March 2022, the last month data was available.The vocal opposition is no longer just confined to anti-Trump forces inside the party but is also evident in the pro-Trump mainstream. When a triumphant Mr. Kemp, whom Mr. Trump had targeted because he refused to go along with his efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election, arrived in Nashville on Thursday to speak before a gathering of the Republican Governors Association, he received a standing ovation.Former Vice President Mike Pence, left, joined Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia during a Kemp campaign stop in Kennesaw, Ga.Nicole Craine for The New York Times“There is this temptation to engage in wish-casting in which, ‘This is the moment in which Trump is slipping!’” said Charlie Sykes, a conservative anti-Trump commentator. “On the other hand, what happened in Georgia was significant. He drew a bright red line — and voters just stampeded across it.”Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      America’s Doug Mastriano Problem

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      If the Ohio Senate primary two weeks ago provided some clarity about the ideological divisions in the Republican Party, Tuesday’s primaries often seemed more like a showcase for the distinctive personalities that populate a Trumpified G.O.P.The Pennsylvania Senate race gave us an especially vivid mix: As of this writing, the Celebrity Doctor and the Hedge Fund Guy Pretending to Be a MAGA True Believer may be headed for a recount, after the Would-Be Media Personality With the Inspiring Back Story and the Unfortunate Twitter Feed faded back into the pack. In the governor’s race, Republican voters chose to nominate Doug Mastriano, a.k.a. the QAnon Dad. In North Carolina, they ended — for now — the political career of Representative Madison Cawthorn, the Obviously Suffering Grifter.On substance, as opposed to personality, though, the night’s stakes were relatively simple: Can Republicans prevent their party from becoming the party of constitutional crisis, with leaders tacitly committed to turning the next close presidential election into a legal-judicial-political train wreck?This is a distinctive version of a familiar political problem. Whenever a destabilizing populist rebellion is unleashed inside a democratic polity, there are generally two ways to bring back stability without some kind of crisis or rupture in the system.Sometimes the revolt can be quarantined within a minority coalition and defeated by a majority. This was the destiny, for instance, of William Jennings Bryan’s 1890s prairie-populist rebellion, which took over the Democratic Party but went down to multiple presidential defeats at the hands of the more establishmentarian Republicans. You can see a similar pattern, for now, in French politics, where the populism of Marine Le Pen keeps getting isolated and defeated by the widely disliked but grudgingly tolerated centrism of Emmanuel Macron.In the alternative path to stability, the party being reshaped by populism finds leaders who can absorb its energies, channel its grievances and claim its mantle — but also defeat or suppress its most extreme manifestations. This was arguably the path of New Deal liberalism in its relationship to Depression-era populism and radicalism: In the 1930s, Franklin Roosevelt was able to sustain support from voters who were also drawn to more demagogic characters, from Huey Long to Charles Coughlin. Two generations later, it was the path of Reaganite conservatism in its relationship to both George Wallace’s populism and the Goldwaterite New Right.The problem for America today is that neither stabilizing strategy is going particularly well. Part of the Never Trump movement has aspired to a Macron-style strategy, preaching establishment unity behind the Democratic Party. But the Democrats haven’t cooperated: They conspicuously failed to contain and defeat Trumpism in 2016, and there is no sign that the Biden-era variation on the party is equipped to hold on to the majority it won in 2020.Meanwhile, the Republican Party at the moment does have a provisional model for channeling but also restraining populism. Essentially it involves leaning into culture-war controversy and rhetorical pugilism to a degree that provokes constant liberal outrage and using that outrage to reassure populist voters that you’re on their side and they don’t need to throw you over for a conspiracy theorist or Jan. 6 marcher.This is the model, in different styles and contexts, of Glenn Youngkin and Ron DeSantis. In Tuesday’s primaries it worked for Idaho’s conservative incumbent governor, Brad Little, who easily defeated his own lieutenant governor’s much-further-right campaign. Next week the same approach seems likely to help Brian Kemp defeat David Perdue for the governor’s nomination in Georgia. And it offers the party’s only chance, most likely via a DeSantis candidacy, to defeat Donald Trump in 2024.Unfortunately this model works best when you have a trusted figure, a known quantity, delivering the “I’ll be your warrior, I’ll defeat the left” message. The Cawthorn race, in which the toxic congressman was unseated by a member of the North Carolina State Senate, shows that this figure doesn’t have to be an incumbent to succeed, especially if other statewide leaders provide unified support. But if you have neither unity nor a figure with statewide prominence or incumbency as your champion — no Kemp, no Little — then you can get results like Mastriano’s victory last night in Pennsylvania: a Republican nominee for governor who cannot be trusted to carry out his constitutional duties should the presidential election be close in 2024.So now the obligation returns to the Democrats. Mastriano certainly deserves to lose the general election, and probably he will. But throughout the whole Trumpian experience, the Democratic Party has consistently failed its own tests of responsibility: It has talked constantly about the threat to democracy while moving leftward to a degree that makes it difficult to impossible to hold the center, and it has repeatedly cheered on unfit Republican candidates on the theory that they will be easier to beat.This happened conspicuously with Trump himself, and more unforgivably it happened again with Mastriano: Pennsylvania Democrats sent out mailers boosting his candidacy and ran a big ad buy, more than twice Mastriano’s own TV spending, calling him “one of Donald Trump’s strongest supporters” — an “attack” line perfectly scripted to improve his primary support.Now they have him, as they had Trump in 2016. We’ll see if they can make the story end differently this time.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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      10 Republicans on President Trump’s Sway in Georgia, Ohio and Pennsylvania

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      The nostalgia was powerful, and came with a twist.In the latest Times Opinion focus group, 10 Republican voters in swing states wished for an America before 8 percent inflation, before high gas prices, before the Ukraine war. Wished for a leader they saw as strong, commanding, feared. Wished for a party that, in the words of one, “put America first again.”They wished, in other words, for a return of President Donald Trump.But here’s the twist: When asked if they felt it was extremely important to vote for someone this year who embraces Mr. Trump’s agenda, eight of the 10 Republicans raised their hands. A few seconds later, when asked if it was extremely important to vote for someone who has the same style and personality as Mr. Trump, no one raised a hand.Throughout the 90-minute discussion with these Republicans, from Georgia, Ohio and Pennsylvania — three states with big primaries for Senate and governor this month — Mr. Trump’s record looked only better to them in hindsight, especially without the distraction of his “mean tweets” or personal manner. One Georgia Republican who didn’t vote for Mr. Trump in 2020 even said he’d consider supporting the former president if he ran again in 2024. “I don’t like what I’m seeing, as far as the direction that the country is headed,” this Republican said.As for the influence of Mr. Trump’s endorsements in party primaries this month, it was most potent when voters didn’t already have strong attachments to candidates, as our focus group moderator, Kristen Soltis Anderson, noted. The Ohio and Pennsylvania Republicans were mostly taking their cues from Mr. Trump in their Senate primaries; by contrast, the Georgia Republicans were more inclined to buck Mr. Trump and stick with their incumbent Republican governor, Brian Kemp, whom the former president is trying to oust in next week’s primary.This is the 10th group in our series America in Focus, which seeks to hear and understand the views of cross-sections of Americans whose voices are often not heard in opinion journalism. We conducted the discussion with Ms. Anderson, who does similar work for political candidates, parties and special interest groups. (Times Opinion paid her for the work.) This transcript has been edited for length and clarity; an audio recording and a video clip of the session are also included. Participants provided their biographical details.Kristen Soltis Anderson: If you had to pick a word or phrase for what matters most to you in the upcoming elections, what would it be?Jennifer (38, white, Georgia): Inflation and gas prices. We have an R.V. that takes diesel, so it’s been really hurting at the gas pump.Raquel (29, Hispanic, Pennsylvania): Inflation. Education for our children. Just teach them math, science and reading, and we’ll do the rest at home.Kim (58, white, Ohio): Inflation and border control.Justin (38, white, Ohio): The economy.Kristen (49, white, Pennsylvania): Economy.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I want to ask you about leaders you admire. Who is an American leader during your lifetime who you admired?Robert (60, white, Ohio): Ronald Reagan. He brought about a good feeling in America after we had been through a complete disaster with Jimmy Carter. Carter’s a wonderful guy, but it was just a disaster for four years. With Reagan, it came back — the flag waving, the patriotism. People feared us once again.Brandon (32, Black, Georgia): Andrew Yang. He has an eye towards the future with A.I. and robots taking all the jobs.Kimberly (38, white, Georgia): I know Donald Trump’s pretty controversial. But I’ll take mean tweets all day when I can afford my groceries and my gas for my kids and my family.Jennifer: George W. Bush. When 9/11 happened, I was a senior in high school. He kind of brought the country back together. And I just think he’s an overall pretty cool guy, nice family man, just very respectable.10 Republican Voters in Swing States on Trump’s Hold on the PartyKristen Soltis Anderson: My next question pivots to things that you’re looking for in candidates. When you’re trying to decide what candidate to vote for, what are the characteristics, qualities, viewpoints you are most looking for?Sanjeev (48, Asian, Georgia): Transparency. And I’m getting sick and tired of these politicians who’ve been in office 40, 50 years who don’t seem like they’re doing anything.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I saw a lot of heads nod when you said that. Raquel?Raquel: Honesty. And I watched the Senate debate for Pennsylvania’s election and saw a lot of the candidates throwing shade at each other instead of really speaking up about you. Tell me what you’re going to do.Justin: I’m looking for someone more moderate, someone that’s willing to work with both sides.Robert: Somebody honest. Trustworthy. It would be nice to have somebody that isn’t a millionaire already and understands what it’s like to have to pick, scrape, somebody who understands what it’s really like to not be able to go out and buy exactly what you want when you want it. And somebody strong, who walks into the room and commands it.Casey (52, white, Pennsylvania): I just wish younger and stronger people would get involved and start accepting new ideas and collaborate with each other instead of bickering back and forth. Compromise. Get to the point and get it done. Keep America living.Patrick Healy: So all of you are voting in the Republican primary elections in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Georgia. How confident are you that the votes in the Republican primaries will be counted fairly and accurately? Raise your hand if you are confident in that.[Six raise their hands.]Patrick Healy: And how many are not confident? We’ve got Kristen and Raquel. Raquel, what’s your concern there?Raquel: With the last presidential election, I feel like there were a lot of things that happened that haven’t been brought to light just yet. I just moved to Pennsylvania from Florida, so I’m not sure what the laws are here. But we should have to bring your ID, to vote in person, because through the mail, I feel like that’s kind of iffy.Patrick Healy: Kristen, what would make you feel more confident that votes were being counted fairly and accurately?Kristen: I don’t know. I mean, I think up until the last election with Trump, I felt confident in elections. And I think the mail voting definitely had a big issue. That’s a big reason for my feelings that it’s not really secure.Kristen Soltis Anderson: All right. So, early this month there was a primary in Ohio. I want to focus on the Senate race. Who did you choose and why?Robert: I ended up voting for J.D. Vance. I was not going to. I really liked what Mike Gibbons had to say. But I ended up going with J.D. Vance primarily because President Trump endorsed him. I trust a lot of the things President Trump did. I thought, “If this man endorses J.D. Vance, even after he stood publicly and said he was a No Trumper and a Never Trumper and he couldn’t stand him, there’s got to be something there.”Kim: I also chose J.D. Vance. And it was because of President Trump.Justin: I did research. I chose Matt Dolan. He was more moderate. I voted for Trump the last two times. As a person, I don’t like him, but I do like more what he did for the economy. I want someone more moderate in office. I’m tired of extremes both ways.Kristen Soltis Anderson: In Georgia, your primary is coming up May 24. The big race is between Brian Kemp, the incumbent governor, and a variety of challengers. President Trump has had some criticisms of Governor Kemp, and he has endorsed one of the challengers, David Perdue. For those who plan to vote for Brian Kemp, tell me why.Kimberly: I did vote for him the last time, and I will vote for him again. I think he’s done a great job handling Georgia through Covid. He’s done a great job with our economy. I hate that our primary is going to be split probably between him and Perdue. I think that’s just going to hurt us in the long run. But we’ll see what happens.Brandon: Well I voted for Kemp last time. And I felt like he kept most of his campaign promises. And he didn’t let Trump bully him. He’s going to get my vote again for that reason.Sanjeev: It’s going to come down to Kemp and Perdue, but I don’t know yet. I’m going to have to think about it a lot more and do some research.Kristen Soltis Anderson: OK. Kimberly, when you mentioned the primary being really divided, tell me a little bit more about what you mean by that.Kimberly: I’m a Trump supporter. I voted for him. I like generally what he does. But I think sometimes he takes things to the extreme and sometimes he needs to just butt out of the states’ elections. I know that he’s a big Perdue fan, but I really do think that Kemp did a great job with our economy. He did not get bullied by Trump. Or he did, but he didn’t give in to him.Patrick Healy: President Trump did ask Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Raffensperger for help after the 2020 election. Kimberly, you’re a Trump supporter. How sympathetic were you to Trump in regard to asking for help from Kemp and others? Or did you think he was crossing a line?Kimberly: I think when he initially reached out, he wasn’t crossing a line. I do think as time went on and he took it more on a personal level, the name calling he does — I just want to roll my eyes. Golly, man, chill. I mean, I am a supporter of him, but let’s be honest, anybody that’s his supporter has rolled their eyes at him a time or two as well.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I had you down as a Perdue voter, Jennifer.Jennifer: Yeah. I wasn’t really sure. But the more I think about it, I’m probably going to go back with Kemp again. I voted for him to begin with. I think he’s done a pretty good job. I wasn’t a huge fan of how he handled a lot of the Covid stuff, but —Kristen Soltis Anderson: In what way?Jennifer: I understand you need to get businesses going. But I mean, there was still just a huge pandemic going. And I have family members that are immunocompromised, and it’s just like, are you really thinking about the health of others?Kristen Soltis Anderson: Pennsylvania has a Senate primary race on Tuesday. Former President Trump has endorsed Dr. Mehmet Oz. Who are you leaning towards at the moment?Kristen: I’m leaning towards Dr. Oz just because Trump endorses him. I voted for Trump twice. I don’t like him as a person, but I did like what he did when he was in office.Raquel: I’m going to vote for Kathy Barnette. She is pro-life, and that’s really important to me. That’s one of my No. 1 issues as to why I would vote for somebody. And she comes across as just the most genuine person. She’s a byproduct of rape. Her mom decided to keep her at a very young age. And it goes to show you can do it. You know what I mean? So I think it’s amazing.Casey: I’m leaning towards Oz because Trump’s backing him up.Patrick Healy: Kristen and Casey, do you think, if President Trump hadn’t endorsed Dr. Oz, that you would definitely still be voting for him?Kristen: I’m not sure. I mean, I like him on TV.Casey: I’d probably be open to more candidates.Patrick Healy: I’d love to see a show of hands of those of you who say it’s extremely important that a candidate do the following things. Raise your hand if it’s extremely important that a candidate show that they can work in a bipartisan way with Democrats.[Two raise their hands.]Patrick Healy: Next one is fight against the media — who says that’s an extremely important thing for a candidate to do?[One raises a hand.]Patrick Healy: Win over swing voters?[Five raise their hands.]Patrick Healy: Push to overturn Roe v. Wade?[Five raise their hands.]Patrick Healy: Support the same sort of agenda as Donald Trump?[Eight raise their hands.]Have the same style and personality as Donald Trump?[No one raises a hand.]Kim: I have something to say.Patrick Healy: Please.Kim: I want a strong person that is not going to take any crap. And sometimes you have to be blunt. You just have to because you have to stand up against whatever that’s not right. So I’m kind of like halfway hand for what you asked. I just wanted to explain why.Patrick Healy: Is there a candidate running who embodies Donald Trump’s agenda but not his personality?Kimberly: So Herschel Walker is running on the Republican ticket for Senate in Georgia. I think he follows really closely with Trump’s agenda. I haven’t seen the personality as much.Patrick Healy: To go back to those who said that it’s extremely important to you that the candidate support turning over Roe v. Wade, let’s talk about that.Raquel: I think life begins at conception. I used to get picked on at school, when we had debates in class, I was the odd one out for being pro-life. Even in college I used to get called names. I’m not going to repeat them, but it was really crazy how an ethics class — I’m the odd one out. So I think it’s time to stand strong in your belief. And if I’m pro-life, then that’s 100 percent.Patrick Healy: Is there anyone who has concerns about overturning Roe v. Wade?Justin: Personally I am pro-choice. And with that leak, it almost makes me want to, when the primaries come around, vote Democratic. I mean, I think it’s almost crazy that they’re going to overturn something that has been law for that long. It’s not my body. I have a mom, three sisters. I’m just pro-choice.Brandon: In my younger years, I was more pro-choice. But as I’ve gotten older, I’m more pro-life. I think it’s going to be one of those things that generations from now, you’re going to look back and it’s going to be one of those things that you can’t believe was ever legal.Kimberly: Since I was old enough to vote, a candidate’s stance on abortion has been a reason I will or will not vote for a candidate. So I’m very much pro-life. And I think that it will go back to the states, like it should.Patrick Healy: Kimberly, is that what you want to see — each state decides? Or would you ultimately like to see a national ban for all states on abortion?Kimberly: That’s a very slippery slope question. Because if I say I want there to be a ban on abortion for the entire United States, then if the Democrats have something that they want to ban, that would affect me. I choose to live in what until recently has been a very conservative state. I’m not moving to California because I know what goes on in California and I know their laws. I don’t want to be there. So I don’t want to say, “Well, they can’t have abortions in California.” Religiously, it’s a conviction of mine. I’m 100 percent pro-life. But I don’t want to say I would want to see a national ban, because it goes both ways: If we want to ban something, then we have to be OK when they want to ban something.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I want to bring the conversation back to Donald Trump. Show of hands — how many of you think it’s good that Donald Trump is making a lot of endorsements in different races right now?[Four raise their hands.]Robert: I think he’s looking for people that will support his agenda. And he knows that he is extremely popular in x number of states, Ohio being one of them. And I think J.D. Vance, he came from way behind and ended up winning. And he won pretty handily. And there’s only one thing I can attribute to it. I didn’t know Vance. I never read his book. But I thought, well, President Trump doesn’t usually put his name on anything that’s a losing battle.Kristen: All right.Robert: Trump said way back in 2016, you’re going to get tired of winning, winning, winning. We really did win, win, win with a lot of things. And I just can’t think of anything except to attribute it to him and his policies. And I’m thinking if we can just clone or mirror some of the things he did, just bit by bit, piece by piece in some of the states, maybe we can get back on the road to recovery and abolish some of this craziness, like a war on fossil fuels in Ohio.Kristen Soltis Anderson: There’s a presidential election on the horizon. A show of hands — how many of you would say Donald Trump should run for president in 2024?[Eight raise their hands.]Sanjeev: I liked his first term. Not everything he did, but for the most part, I liked him, so I’d like to vote for him again. He’s got that business world perspective that he brings.Kristen: I think people can see the difference now that he’s not in office and what’s going on. I think when he was in office, people were more focused on him not being very presidential. Now that he’s not in office and we see what is happening, you can see what he did. It’s clearer now.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I want to ask a slightly different question. If Donald Trump runs for president again and there are other Republicans who are also running for president, how many of you think you would probably choose Donald Trump over other Republicans in a primary race?[Seven raise their hands.]Kristen Soltis Anderson: It’s most of the same hands.Raquel: That’s a tough one because I am really hoping that DeSantis says he’s going to run for president. I really like him as a governor. I think it comes down to giving someone new a chance and seeing if they could work, too.Kimberly: You know Trump’s qualified. You know he can do it. Do we want to stick with somebody that we know is going to probably come in and get us back on track and help us, or do we say, “We’re going to give you a chance”? Do we gamble our future here?Justin: So I’m torn on if he should run. But I would definitely vote for him in the primary just because he’s pro-America, he’s more about the economy. I think if he would have won his election again, I don’t think Russia would have probably invaded Ukraine.Patrick Healy: Justin, a quick follow-up. You are interested in moderate politicians. You’re pro-choice. You mentioned some issues with Trump’s style. And yet you are drawn to him.Justin: So if I can explain it, I think he’s more about the economy. And that’s my No. 1 issue is the economy. Yes, I differ with a lot of people with being pro-choice, but the economy is my No. 1 thing.Kim: I would vote for him again. Like someone else said, you can see the difference with when he was president. Biden — it’s like night and day.Patrick Healy: Is there anyone in the group who did not vote for Donald Trump in 2020 but who would consider voting for him if he ran again in 2024?Brandon: Well I voted for a third party in 2020. So I think this time around, I’ve seen the things that are happening. And I don’t like what I’m seeing, as far as the direction that the country is headed. So, yes, I’m going to consider voting for him.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I want to ask about some other folks in the Republican Party who might consider running for president in 2024. I’m going to say a name. If you have heard of this person before, give me one word or phrase that comes to mind when you think about that person. We will start off with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.Jennifer: I just kept hearing his name in regards of Covid and Florida being a hotbed and all that stuff.Sanjeev: The same things that Jennifer just mentioned. He was keeping pretty much everything open, and Covid was having big outbreaks. And so nationally he was getting a lot of negative press.Justin: Same. I remember during Covid he didn’t want to lock down. He wanted the state to stay open.Kimberly: Disney — I think that Disney got into the political field and thought they were going to just go on and say what they wanted to say. And I think it’s potentially going to bite them in the rear because he’s like, “OK, if you want to be political, we’ll be political.”Kristen Soltis Anderson: What do you think of when you think of former vice president Mike Pence?Robert: I think he’s an honest, God-fearing man that probably would do what’s right. Although I don’t know that he’s as firm as Trump, I think he’s an honest man.Kristen: I don’t think he’s as strong as Trump.Kim: I lost a lot of respect. I do like him being a Christian man, but he isn’t strong. He doesn’t have the backbone.Kristen Soltis Anderson: Thoughts about Chris Christie?Kristen: Yeah, don’t like him. I don’t think he’s honest. I think he’s for himself, not for the people, and he’s just a fool.Justin: With Christie and Mike Pence, I think they’re both career politicians. That’s someone that I don’t want in the office. I’d rather a businessman come to the office.Robert: I think he’s a powerful guy. And I think whatever he says, he’s going to do along the lines of Trump.Raquel: I feel like they’re just part of the same old politicians.Kristen Soltis Anderson: What do folks think about Texas Senator Ted Cruz in one word?Raquel: I donated money to him. He’s pro-life. And he’s on Instagram a lot speaking up against a lot of big money people.Justin: The first thing that came to mind was when he flew to Mexico and got caught during Covid. I think he was a hypocrite.Brandon: I think he would be my second choice. I hope that it would be between him and DeSantis.Kristen Soltis Anderson: And would DeSantis be your first choice in that matchup?Brandon: Yes, because DeSantis is a little bit stronger. And I feel like we need to regain our standing in the world.Kristen Soltis Anderson: Jennifer, any of these folks seem appealing to you?Jennifer: I guess the best one out of them would be Pence, I guess. Just because he was from the Trump time. But Cruz, I would say no. A little too religious for me mixing in with politics.Kristen Soltis Anderson: So my last question then to each of you is: If you had to give the Republican Party some advice, what would that advice be?Kimberly: I would say stop cowering to the Democrats all the time. Stand up. You have so many people in this country that support you. And maybe we’re just quieter. The media don’t talk about us. But you have a huge base. So stop cowering down to them and stop being intimidated by them. And if they want to play — I don’t want to say dirty games, but — let’s play the same games they play. Stop saying we’re going to take the high road all the time. No. Give it back to them. Say the truth.Kristen Soltis Anderson: Are there particular things that you think Republicans have cowered over when it comes to —Kimberly: Trump was really one of those people that was like, “I’m not taking anybody’s crap. And I’m going to give it right back to you. Maybe I tweet about you for 15 days and how much you suck. At least I’m tweeting, at least I’m saying something.”Kristen Soltis Anderson: Kristen, what would your advice be to the Republican Party?Kristen: Just get us back on track. Get the economy back on track and just put America first again.Kristen Soltis Anderson: Justin?Justin: The economy, bringing jobs back to America. In Ohio, in Columbus, in New Albany, we’re having that Intel plant come to Ohio. So I’d like to see those kind of things happen.Raquel: I think it would be to stand strong by your beliefs and stand up for yourself. Have a voice. Be mean if you have to be mean but stand true to your beliefs. Don’t cower to others just because you’re in a room with other people that don’t believe in the same thing you do.Kim: I would say Republicans need to unite. If they are united and had the backbone, we would be in a much better place right now.Robert: It’d be, get this economy back to where we’re in the plus side instead of the minus. And let’s get a constitutional amendment on term limits in every elected office in this country. It’s long overdue. I’m tired of seeing both D’s and R’s that are 80 years old standing there, can hardly even say two words together. And they’re supposed to be representing us. That wasn’t intended to be a career job. Serve your community, then go back home and do your thing at home.Brandon: Focus on healing the country, and let’s try to get away from everything being so partisan and so far left and so far right.Casey: Don’t beat around the bush. Just get to the point and stick your ground.Sanjeev: Stop fighting with each other and work together for the party and the greater good.Kristen Soltis Anderson: OK. Jennifer, last one’s to you.Jennifer: I would say definitely put the economy first. And maybe not talk about the social stuff as much and kind of be more moderate. Because a lot of things just seem really far right or really far left and just need a happy medium. We’re missing a happy medium.Patrick Healy is the deputy Opinion editor. Adrian J. Rivera is an editorial assistant in Opinion.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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      in Elections

      Why Ron DeSantis Is the New Republican Party

      by

      Two weeks ago, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida appeared with the Fox News host Laura Ingraham for a town hall that lasted the full hour of her prime-time show. That kind of airtime tends to be reserved only for Donald Trump, but Mr. DeSantis has had a meteoric rise. He’s far and away the most popular potential 2024 presidential candidate among Republicans after Mr. Trump.Even if you would never consider voting for him, it’s important to understand the sources of his appeal and the direction of his politics, because one way or the other — whether he ever runs for president or not — Ron DeSantis is the new Republican Party.Governor DeSantis’s combativeness on hot-button social issues reflects Mr. Trump’s influence, but he’s gone even further and used government power as an instrument in the culture war — something Mr. Trump talked about but never really did. If any of Mr. DeSantis’s Republican admirers are hoping he will chart a path back to the pre-2016 party, they’ll probably be disappointed. Instead, the governor is a leader in a new, Trump-inflected party, but without the character flaws and baggage of the former president.Mr. DeSantis became a Republican hero for his response to Covid-19. When many states were instituting far-reaching lockdowns and mask requirements, he took a different path. Under his leadership, Florida did what it reasonably could to protect its nursing homes, while minimizing lockdowns and other restrictions because of their economic and social downsides. When I talked to the governor in May 2020 for an article about his Covid strategy, I found him — contrary to the crude image of him as a reckless ignoramus — well versed on the research and thoughtful about the lessons from other countries. The broad parameters of his strategy — recognize there’s a balance between mitigation and its social and economic costs; keep the schools open; don’t force students to wear masks — have now become widely accepted.Thanks to his Covid response, Mr. DeSantis attained a status that is invaluable in Republican politics — that of a lightning rod. His legend grew with every attack on him, especially the ones that were inaccurate or unfair. In April 2021, the CBS program “60 Minutes” ran a flagrantly flawed and misleading report alleging corruption in the distribution of Florida’s vaccines. The news media was also much too quick to amplify claims by a former state health department employee that Florida was hiding a huge number of Covid deaths. Clips of Mr. DeSantis in confrontations with reporters spread on social media, and he repeated his mantra of defending “freedom over Faucism.”In general, there is no controversy that Mr. DeSantis doesn’t address. In two weeks in April alone, Mr. DeSantis signed a 15-week abortion ban, revoked the special tax status of Disney for its opposition to his “Don’t Say Gay” bill, threatened legal action against Twitter if it didn’t agree to sell to Elon Musk (Florida’s retirement pension fund is an investor) and signed a bill creating a task force to investigate election fraud. Meanwhile, his department of health issued guidance pushing back against the Biden administration’s recommendations for treating youth with gender dysphoria.For all the talk of how Trumpy Mr. DeSantis is, though, there is much about him that recalls the party’s pre-Trump era. He was elected to Congress as a Tea Party conservative in 2012, and he is fond of boasting that Florida’s budget is roughly half the size of New York’s even though his state is more populous. He’s proud and protective of Florida’s status as a low-tax state.He’s been a highly committed advocate of expanding charter schools and scholarship programs to help families send their children to private schools. He’s firmly anti-regulation. We haven’t heard from him in a significant way on trade or foreign policy — two of the key issues on which Trump populists have diverged from past Republican orthodoxy. He hasn’t endorsed industrial policy, a priority of a segment of the populist right.Indeed, any movement conservative sealed in a time capsule circa 1984 and emerging today would recognize Mr. DeSantis as a more or less standard Sunbelt Republican — a fiscal conservative wooing people and businesses to his state based on a favorable economic climate who is also anti-elitist, socially conservative and eager to reform public schools.None of this is new. What stands out as a true departure is Mr. DeSantis’s willingness to use government power in the culture war.Sometimes this has involved areas, like public education, where the government has every right to set the rules. One such example is the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, more properly known as the Parental Rights in Education bill, which prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. Another is the “Individual Freedom” bill, which, among other things, prohibits promotion of the concept that a person “must feel guilt, anguish or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the individual played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, sex or national origin.”Other times, Florida has pursued a laudable goal in a dubious manner. Its “Big Tech” bill seeks to keep social media companies from removing political candidates and other users from their platforms, but it has serious First Amendment conflicts and has been enjoined by a federal judge.Then there’s the fight with Disney. The revocation of its special tax status is a frankly retaliatory act that also presents free-speech issues and could prove a legal and policy morass. That said, Disney got a truly extraordinary deal from the state that allowed it, in effect, to run its own city. The company never would have been granted this arrangement 55 years ago if its executives had told the state’s leaders, “And, by the way, eventually, the Walt Disney Company will adopt cutting edge left-wing causes as its own.”The broader point of making an example of Disney is to send a message to other corporations that there could be downsides to letting themselves be pushed by progressive employees into making their institutions weapons in the culture wars, and conclude it’s best to stick to flying planes, selling soda, and so on.How can a limited-government Tea Party Republican like Mr. DeSantis have become comfortable with this use of government? For that matter, how is it that so many Tea Party types moved so easily toward Trumpist populism?The key, I think, is that for many people on the right, a libertarian-oriented politics was largely a way to register opposition to the mandarins who have an outsized influence on our public life. And it turns out that populism is an even more pungent way to register this opposition. Progressive domination of elite culture has now grown to include formerly neutral institutions like corporations and sports leagues. More conservatives are beginning to believe that the only countervailing institutional force is democratic political power as reflected in governor’s mansions, state legislatures and — likely beginning next year — Congress.“The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society,” Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York once wrote. “The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.”Given the state of play, conservatives have been learning to appreciate Moynihan’s liberal truth. If Florida’s culture-war initiatives succeed, the education establishment in the state will not mindlessly absorb the latest left-wing fad. Corporations will be warier of wading into hot-button social fights. In other words, the culture of these institutions will have changed for the better.Even if Mr. DeSantis is willing to avail himself of this use of government power, it doesn’t mean that he’s abandoning his limited-government orientation. The libertarian Cato Institute ranks Florida the second-most free state in the country (after New Hampshire), and Mr. DeSantis has shown no inclination to change the tax, spending and regulatory policies that contribute to that status. On Covid, he has consistently emphasized the importance of individual autonomy.Mr. DeSantis’s detractors are fond of saying that he’s worse than or more dangerous than Mr. Trump. If, by this, they mean that a President DeSantis would be more focused and disciplined in pursuing a conservative agenda than Mr. Trump was, they’re probably right. Otherwise, it is completely wrongheaded. Mr. DeSantis doesn’t have Mr. Trump’s failings. He’s sharp in his rejoinders to reporters, but never gratuitously insulting. He cares about facts and takes time to master them.Mr. DeSantis is the hottest thing in national Republican politics right now and he is doing everything to lay the groundwork, assuming he wins re-election this year, to run for president. It’s impossible to know how that will go — he could get blocked by Mr. Trump or not live up to the hype. What’s clear is that his synthesis of the old and new, and the resonance it has had with the rank-and-file, points to the Republican future.Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review.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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      in Elections

      States Turn to Tax Cuts as Inflation Stays Hot

      by

      WASHINGTON — In Kansas, the Democratic governor has been pushing to slash the state’s grocery sales tax. Last month, New Mexico lawmakers provided $1,000 tax rebates to households hobbled by high gas prices. Legislatures in Iowa, Indiana and Idaho have all cut state income taxes this year.A combination of flush state budget coffers and rapid inflation has lawmakers across the country looking for ways to ease the pain of rising prices, with nearly three dozen states enacting or considering some form of tax relief, according to the Tax Foundation, a right-leaning think tank.The efforts are blurring typical party lines when it comes to tax policy. In many cases, Democrats are joining Republicans in supporting permanently lower taxes or temporary cuts, including for high earners.But while the policies are aimed at helping Americans weather the fastest pace of inflation in 40 years, economists warn that, paradoxically, cutting taxes could exacerbate the very problem lawmakers are trying to address. By putting more money in people’s pockets, policymakers risk further stimulating already rampant consumer demand, pushing prices higher nationally.Jason Furman, an economist at Harvard University who was an economic adviser under the Obama administration, said that the United States economy was producing at full capacity right now and that any additional spending power would only drive up demand and prices. But when it comes to cutting taxes, he acknowledged, the incentives for states do not always appear to be aligned with what is best for the national economy.“I think all these tax cuts in states are adding to inflation,” Mr. Furman said. “The problem is, from any governor’s perspective, a lot of the inflation it is adding is nationwide and a lot of the benefits of the tax cuts are to the states.”States are awash in cash after a faster-than-expected economic rebound in 2021 and a $350 billion infusion of stimulus funds that Congress allocated to states and cities last year. While the Biden administration has restricted states from using relief money to directly subsidize tax cuts, many governments have been able to find budgetary workarounds to do just that without violating the rules.Last week, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed a $1.2 billion tax cut that was made possible by budget surpluses. The state’s coffers were bolstered by $8.8 billion in federal pandemic relief money. Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, hailed the tax cuts as the largest in the state’s history.“Florida’s economy has consistently outpaced the nation, but we are still fighting against inflationary policies imposed on us by the Biden administration,” he said.Adding to the urgency is the political calendar: Many governors and state legislators face elections in November, and voters have made clear they are concerned about rising prices for gas, food and rent.“It’s very difficult for policymakers to see the inflationary pressures that taxpayers are burdened by right now while sitting on significant cash reserves without some desire to return that,” said Jared Walczak, vice president of state projects with the Center for State Tax Policy at the Tax Foundation. “The challenge for policymakers is that simply cutting checks to taxpayers can feed the inflationary environment rather than offsetting it.”The tax cuts are coming in a variety of forms and sizes. According to the Tax Foundation, which has been tracking proposals this year, some would be phased in, some would be permanent and others would be temporary “holidays.”Next month, New York will suspend some of its state gas taxes through the end of the year, a move that Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said would save families and businesses an estimated $585 million.In Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, has called for gradually lowering the state’s corporate tax rate to 5 percent from 10 percent — taking a decidedly different stance from many of his political peers in Congress, who have called for raising corporate taxes. Mr. Wolf said in April that the proposal was intended to make Pennsylvania more business friendly.States are acting on a fresh appetite for tax cuts as inflation is running at a 40-year high.OK McCausland for The New York TimesMr. Furman pointed to the budget surpluses as evidence that the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package handed too much money to local governments. “The problem was there was just too much money for states and localities.”A new report from the Tax Policy Center, a left-leaning think tank, said total state revenues rose by about 17.6 percent last year. State rainy day funds — money that is set aside to cover unexpected costs — have reached “new record levels,” according to the National Association of State Budget Officers.Yet those rosy budget balances may not last if the economy slows, as expected. The Federal Reserve has begun raising interest rates in an attempt to cool economic growth, and there are growing concerns about the potential for another recession. Stocks fell for another session on Monday, with the S&P 500 down 3.2 percent, as investors fretted about a slowdown in global growth, high inflation and other economic woes.Cutting taxes too deeply now could put states on weaker financial footing.The Tax Policy Center said its state tax revenue forecasts for the rest of this year and next year were “alarmingly weak” as states enacted tax cuts and spending plans. Fitch, the credit rating agency, said recently that immediate and permanent tax cuts could be risky in light of evolving economic conditions.“Substantial tax policy changes can negatively affect revenues and lead to long-term structural budget challenges, especially when enacted all at once in an uncertain economic environment,” Fitch said.The state tax cuts are taking place as the Biden administration struggles to respond to rising prices. So far, the White House has resisted calls for a gas tax holiday, though Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said in April that President Biden was open to the idea. The administration has responded by primarily trying to ease supply chain logjams that have created shortages of goods and cracking down on price gouging, but taming inflation falls largely to the Fed.The White House declined to assess the merits of states’ cutting taxes but pointed to the administration’s measures to expand fuel supplies and proposals for strengthening supply chains and lowering health and child care costs as evidence that Mr. Biden was taking inflation seriously.“President Biden is taking aggressive action to lower costs for American families and address inflation,” Emilie Simons, a White House spokeswoman, said.The degree to which state tax relief fuels inflation depends in large part on how quickly the moves go into effect.Gov. Laura Kelly backed a bill last month that would phase out the 6.5 percent grocery sales tax in Kansas, lowering it next January and bringing it to zero by 2025. Republicans in the state pushed for the gradual reduction despite calls from Democrats to cut the tax to zero by July.Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 6What is inflation? More