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    Newt Gingrich Makes Endorsement in GOP Senate Primary in Ohio

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    Three Ohio Republicans are competing in the Senate primary. Mr. Gingrich plans to back Bernie Moreno, a businessman who is a relative political newcomer. The Senate race in Ohio is one of the best chances for Republicans to capture a seat from Democrats next year. But first, the Republican Party has to survive a three-way primary without damaging its increasingly strong brand in the state.Early polls suggest a tight race, but Bernie Moreno, a businessman making his second bid for the Senate, has started to compile the kind of political prizes that belie his status as a relative newcomer to electoral politics.Since opening his campaign in April, Mr. Moreno has raised nearly $3.5 million. That figure includes $2.3 million that he brought in during his first three months as a candidate, when he outraised every other nonincumbent Republican Senate candidate in the country.Mr. Moreno, known for his chain of car dealerships in the state, has pocketed endorsements from some high-profile Republicans, including former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who will announce his support on Tuesday, according to Moreno campaign officials.“As a conservative, a political outsider and a successful business leader, Bernie knows what it will take to disrupt the establishment in Washington, D.C.,” Mr. Gingrich said in a statement. In addition to Mr. Gingrich, Mr. Moreno has won support from Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Charlie Kirk, the combative young conservative activist who is the founder of Turning Point USA, a right-wing student group.The Republican Senate campaigns of his two rivals — Matt Dolan, a state senator, and Frank LaRose, the Ohio secretary of state — discounted the significance of Mr. Gingrich’s endorsement. Mr. Moreno’s out-of-state endorsements, they said, were aimed at giving the veneer of support from inside the state and masking his previous support for unpopular positions among Republican primary voters.“He’s an ideological shape-shifter who will say or do anything to get elected,” Chris Maloney, a spokesman for Mr. Dolan, said. “Maybe that helped him sell cars, but it destroys trust with voters and it would make him a lousy Republican nominee.”The three Ohio Republicans have increasingly taken aim at one another as the primary approaches. The state’s election, on March 19, means that early voting, which begins Feb. 21, opens in less than four months.“Despite running once and spending a great deal of his own money, Bernie hasn’t registered with Ohio voters and I don’t see that changing — he’s a car salesman and that comes across,” said Rick Gorka, a spokesman for the LaRose campaign.Last week, a Moreno campaign memo mocked Mr. LaRose’s fund-raising and attacked his Senate bid as immersed in “political ineptitude and negative press.”The memo criticized Mr. LaRose for his role in a ballot initiative in August that failed to make it more difficult to amend the State Constitution. The defeat of the measure, known as Issue 1, was widely seen as a victory for abortion-rights supporters who are backing a constitutional amendment in November that would guarantee abortion rights in the state.A poll this month from Emerson College showed all three Republican candidates within one or two percentage points of the incumbent, Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat seeking his fourth six-year term. That’s within the poll’s margin of error of 4.5 points. The poll did not test the primary race, but it did show all three candidates in a strong position with pro-Trump voters in Ohio, said Spencer Kimball, the executive director for polling at Emerson College.“It seems like it’s a fairly wide-open race between the three candidates,” Mr. Kimball said.Reeves Oyster, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Democratic Party, said all three Republicans would be flawed candidates in a general election against Mr. Brown. Mr. LaRose and Mr. Moreno have both signaled support for a national ban on abortion, which other Republican candidates have distanced themselves from as the party struggles to defend the position. “No matter who emerges from this primary, it is clear they won’t fight for Ohioans or the issues most important to their daily lives,” Ms. Oyster said.In his first campaign last year, Mr. Moreno had an early fund-raising lead but struggled to maintain that momentum. He ultimately lent his campaign nearly $4 million while raising another $2.8 million. He ended his campaign about two months before former President Donald J. Trump endorsed Mr. Vance, the eventual winner, in the final days of the race.Born in Colombia, Mr. Moreno immigrated to the United States with his parents as a child. He has been an active donor in Republican politics, but didn’t run for office until last year — a turn that has forced him to rethink his positions on some high-profile issues.While he previously supported a pathway to citizenship for many undocumented immigrants, he said at a candidate forum this month that all recent undocumented immigrants should be deported. He was also initially resistant to Mr. Trump’s rise, referring to him as a “lunatic invading the party” in 2016. But he has since called Mr. Trump “one of the greatest presidents I’ve ever seen.” Last year, he hired Kellyanne Conway, Mr. Trump’s campaign manager in 2016, to advise his campaign. And this year, his campaign team includes Andy Surabian, another Trump adviser.Mr. Moreno’s daughter, Emily, was a Republican Party official in 2020 and recently married Representative Max Miller, a former Trump aide who won his first Ohio election last year.Mr. Moreno has put $3 million of his own money into his campaign and has about $5 million on hand, according to the most recent campaign finance reports.Mr. Dolan, who also ran for Senate in 2022 and finished third, has given his campaign $7 million this year and has about $6.7 million on hand. His latest bid has been endorsed by more than 130 current and former Ohio officeholders.Mr. LaRose, a former state senator, entered the race in July and raised $1 million in his first 10 weeks as a candidate. A poll this month commissioned by the LaRose campaign showed Mr. LaRose leading a three-way primary with 32.2 percent, compared with 22.5 percent for Mr. Dolan and 10.4 percent for Mr. Moreno, according to an internal memo. More

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      In New Book, Romney Unloads on Fellow Republicans

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      The senator from Utah and 2012 presidential nominee is openly critical of the direction of his party. Here are some of his views on his colleagues and peers, past and present.Even before Senator Mitt Romney of Utah announced he would not seek re-election next year, he made no secret of his disapproval of the direction of the Republican Party and former President Donald J. Trump’s grip on it.But in a new, deeply reported biography, “Romney: A Reckoning,” set to be released next week, Mr. Romney goes beyond his broad disdain for the party and gives his unvarnished opinion of some of his fellow Republicans.In interviews with the book’s author, McKay Coppins, Mr. Romney, who was the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, offers frank appraisals that are rare in Washington.Such tell-all, insider books often foster a practice known as the “Washington read,” in which boldfaced names immediately flip through the index to find out what damaging assessments may come to haunt them.Here is a selection of what Mr. Romney’s peers and colleagues, past and present, might find.Christie, ChrisMr. Romney’s advisers in 2012 suggested that he consider Chris Christie, then the governor of New Jersey, as a running mate, according to the book.But Mr. Romney had reservations about Mr. Christie’s “prima donna tendencies,” and worried that the governor was not “up to the physical demands” of being on the ticket and was plagued by “barely buried” scandals, Mr. Coppin writes.The two also came into conflict in 2016 after Mr. Christie became one of the first establishment Republicans to back Mr. Trump.“I believe your endorsement of him severely diminishes you morally,” Mr. Romney wrote in an email. He added: “You must withdraw that support to preserve your integrity and character.”Evaluating Mr. Christie’s 2024 campaign, Mr. Romney labels him “another bridge-and-tunnel loudmouth” like Mr. Trump, saying it would be “a hoot” to watch the two of them spar on the debate stage.Cruz, TedMr. Romney called Senator Ted Cruz of Texas “scary” and “a demagogue” in his journal, and in an email assessing political candidates in 2016, he said Mr. Cruz was “frightening.”He was also bluntly critical of Mr. Cruz’s role in Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, including his perpetuating Mr. Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud.Mr. Romney said that he believed Mr. Cruz and Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, another objector, were too smart to believe what they were saying.“They were making a calculation that put politics above the interests of liberal democracy and the Constitution,” Mr. Romney said.DeSantis, RonOf all of the would-be challengers to Mr. Trump, Mr. Romney seemed to have the most to say about Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who was viewed early on as having the best shot at challenging Mr. Trump for the nomination.Mr. Romney’s views on the governor were decidedly mixed, according to the book.“Mr. Romney wanted to like the governor,” Mr. Coppins writes. The senator said that it was a “no-brainer” to support Mr. DeSantis if it meant keeping Mr. Trump out of the White House.Yet Mr. Romney appeared to have reservations. He worried that Mr. DeSantis shared “odious qualities” with Mr. Trump, pointing to his penchant for stoking the culture wars and his fight with the Walt Disney Company.And Mr. Romney appeared to have objections to the Florida governor on a more personal level.“There’s just no warmth at all,” Mr. Romney said. He added that when Mr. DeSantis posed for photos with Iowa voters, “he looks like he’s got a toothache.”Even his appraisal of Mr. DeSantis’s positive qualities came with a backhanded sting.“He’s much smarter than Trump,” Mr. Romney said. But, he added, “there’s a peril to having someone who’s smart and pulling in a direction that’s dangerous.”Gingrich, NewtWhile Mr. Romney was running unsuccessfully for Senate in Massachusetts in 1994, Mr. Gingrich, a hard-line conservative who would become House speaker, was rising to prominence.Mr. Romney recalls thinking, according to the book, that Mr. Gingrich “came across as a smug know-it-all; smarmy and too pleased with himself and not a great face for our party.”Two decades later, when the two were competing against each other in the Republican presidential primary, Mr. Romney was no more impressed.Mr. Coppins writes that Mr. Romney saw Mr. Gingrich as “a ridiculous blowhard who babbled about America building colonies on the moon.” He also had moral objections to Mr. Gingrich’s admitted adultery.In his journal, Mr. Romney wrote that his wife, Ann, thought that Mr. Gingrich was “a megalomaniac, seriously needing psychiatric attention.”McConnell, MitchAs he does with many other Republicans in the book, Mr. Romney hammers Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, over what he sees as a gap between his public and private statements relating to Mr. Trump.Mr. Coppins writes that Mr. Romney questioned “which version of McConnell was more authentic: the one who did Trump’s bidding in public, or the one who excoriated him in their private conversations.”Still, Mr. Romney seems to have respect for Mr. McConnell. In January 2021, he said, he believed Mr. McConnell had been “indulgent of Trump’s deranged behavior over the last four years, but he’s not crazy.”Pence, MikeMr. Romney makes his disdain for the former vice president abundantly clear, calling him “a lap dog to Trump for four years.”He seems particularly appalled by what he viewed as Mr. Pence’s willingness to compromise his own moral views, or contort them, to be a loyal foot soldier to Mr. Trump.“No one had been more loyal, more willing to smile when he saw absurdities, more willing to ascribe God’s will to things that were ungodly, than Mike Pence,” Mr. Romney told Mr. Coppins.Perry, RickMr. Romney described Mr. Perry, the former Texas governor who was a rival for the 2012 Republican nomination, as a “dimwit,” Mr. Coppins writes.In his journal, Mr. Romney wrote of Mr. Perry that “Republicans must realize that we must have someone who can complete a sentence.”In 2016, when Mr. Perry ran a short-lived campaign for president, Mr. Romney said that the Texan’s “prima donna, low-IQ personality” was a non-starter.Santorum, RickThe former senator from Pennsylvania, who also ran against Mr. Romney in 2012, was “sanctimonious, severe and strange,” in Mr. Romney’s assessment.At one point during the 2012 campaign, Mr. Romney finds himself irked by his rival’s “apparently bottomless self-interest,” Mr. Coppin writes.In his journal, Mr. Romney said Mr. Santorum was “driven by ego, not principle.”Trump, Donald J.Perhaps the freshest revelation in Mr. Romney’s book is his acknowledgment that many of his colleagues in the Senate, including Mr. McConnell, privately shared his poor view of Mr. Trump.But that harsh assessment — which would set up Mr. Romney’s conflict with Mr. Trump throughout his presidency — was made most clear in the email Mr. Romney sent to Mr. Christie in 2016.“He is unquestionably mentally unstable, and he is racist, bigoted, misogynistic, xenophobic, vulgar and prone to violence,” Mr. Romney wrote. “There is simply no rational argument that could lead me to vote for someone with those characteristics.” More

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      Republican Speaker Fight Has Parallels in the Gingrich Era

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      The current chaos is not the first time Republicans have found themselves rocked by a vacancy at the top.The House speaker had been unceremoniously dumped by colleagues unhappy with his performance and overly optimistic political predictions. Those who would typically be considered next in line had made too many enemies to be able to secure the necessary numbers to take his place. The House was in utter chaos as bombs fell in the Middle East.Today’s relentless Republican turmoil over the House speakership has striking parallels to the tumult of 1998, when House G.O.P. lawmakers were also feuding over who would lead them at a crucial period.Then as now, personal vendettas and warring factions drove an extraordinary internal party fight that threw the House into chaos. The saga had multiple twists and turns as Republicans cycled through would-be speakers in rapid succession — just as the G.O.P. did this week. And in the end, they settled on a little-known congressman as a compromise choice.It’s not clear how the current speaker drama will end; Republicans left Washington on Friday after nominating their second candidate for speaker of the week, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, with plans to return on Tuesday for a vote but no certainty that he could be elected.Back in 1998, Republicans moved swiftly to fill their power vacuum in just one day, unlike the present situation, where they have let unrest fester for more than a week while struggling to overcome deep internal divisions and anoint a new leader.“That was pretty chaotic,” said Representative Harold Rogers, the Kentucky Republican who was already a veteran lawmaker at the time and is now the dean of the House as its longest-serving member. “But it didn’t last very long.”Both dramas began when a Republican speaker lost the faith of some key colleagues. Hard-right Republicans precipitated their party’s current crisis by forcing out Representative Kevin McCarthy of California from the speaker post as punishment for working with Democrats to avert a government shutdown. Twenty-five years ago, Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Georgia Republican whose closest allies were turning on him, announced he would not run again for speaker.Mr. Gingrich, whose scorched-earth tactics had returned Republicans to the majority in 1995 after four decades in the minority wilderness, was finally burned himself after predicting Republican gains in that November’s elections, only to lose seats.Representative Richard K. Armey of Texas, who held the same majority leader position then as Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana does today, was a potential replacement, as was Representative Tom DeLay, the powerful No. 3 Republican whip who was also from Texas. But both had political baggage likely to keep them from the top job, and Mr. Armey faced a fight just to remain in the No. 2 slot.Neither even bothered going through the motions of seeking their party’s nomination, as Mr. Scalise did successfully on Wednesday — only to discover quickly that he lacked the support to be elected, leading to his abrupt withdrawal.“Both of them were toxic, and they knew it,” Fred Upton, the recently retired moderate Republican from Michigan who was in the House at the time, said of Mr. Armey and Mr. DeLay.Sensing an opportunity, Robert Livingston, an ambitious Louisiana Republican who commanded a solid bloc of supporters as chairman of the Appropriations Committee, jumped into the speaker’s race and cleared the field. He won the Republican nomination without opposition in mid-November.Mr. Livingston went about setting up his new leadership operation as Republicans plunged ahead with the impeachment of President Bill Clinton growing out of his relationship with a White House intern. Many Republicans believed the impeachment push had cost them in the just-concluded election, but pursuing Mr. Clinton was a priority of Mr. DeLay, whose nickname was the Hammer, and he was not one to be deterred.Then Saturday, Dec. 19, arrived, with the House set to consider articles of impeachment even as Mr. Clinton had ordered airstrikes against Iraq over suspected weapons violations — an action that Republicans accused him of taking to stave off impeachment.Mr. Livingston, who had not yet assumed the speakership but was playing a leadership role, rose on the floor to urge Mr. Clinton to resign and spare the nation a divisive impeachment fight. But Mr. Livingston himself had acknowledged extramarital affairs a few days earlier to his colleagues. Democrats began shouting “no, no, no” as he spoke.“You resign,” shouted Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California. “You resign.”To the amazement of everyone present, Mr. Livingston did just that, saying that he would set an example for the president and that he would not run for speaker. The House was stunned as lawmakers absorbed the news — similar to the surreal atmosphere last week when it became clear that Mr. McCarthy would be removed as speaker after hard-right Republicans moved to oust him and eight of them joined Democrats in pushing through a motion to vacate the chair.Dennis Hastert became the longest-serving Republican speaker in history before Democrats won the House back in 2006. He was later convicted of paying to cover up sexual abuse.Doug Mills/The New York TimesA mad scramble was on to identify a new speaker candidate. Names of prominent and seasoned House Republicans were bandied about, but Mr. DeLay, a singular force in the chamber, was not about to accept one of them as a potential rival.He turned to a fairly innocuous Illinois Republican who had watched Mr. Livingston from the back row of the House, J. Dennis Hastert, a former wrestling coach who served as Mr. DeLay’s chief deputy and would not be a threat to usurp much of his influence. Mr. DeLay and others told Mr. Hastert that he needed to step up to unify Republicans.By the end of the day, Republicans had approved articles of impeachment against Mr. Clinton and coalesced around Mr. Hastert as the next speaker — a rapid resolution that Mr. Upton noted was lacking in the present speaker drama. He said Republicans should have moved much more quickly after the vote to depose Mr. McCarthy to install someone rather than recessing for the week.“It would have been over and done with,” Mr. Upton said.Mr. Hastert went on to be the longest-serving Republican speaker in history before Democrats won the House back in 2006. But his public career ended in disgrace when he was convicted and sentenced to 15 months in federal prison in 2016 for paying to cover up admitted sexual abuse of young wrestlers committed long before he rose to surprising power in Congress.Mr. DeLay, his patron, was forced from Congress by ethics issues but ultimately had his conviction on campaign finance violations thrown out of court. Mr. Livingston went on to become a successful Washington lobbyist. Mr. Clinton was acquitted by the Senate. Mr. Gingrich remains a voice in G.O.P. politics. And Republicans still struggle with speaker issues. More

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      Can Kevin McCarthy and Joe Biden Fix Washington?

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      Among the various reassessments of Kevin McCarthy following his successful debt ceiling negotiations, the one with the widest implications belongs to Matthew Continetti, who writes in The Washington Free Beacon that “McCarthy’s superpower is his desire to be speaker. He likes and wants his job.”If you hadn’t followed American politics across the last few decades, this would seem like a peculiar statement: What kind of House speaker wouldn’t want the job?But part of what’s gone wrong with American institutions lately is the failure of important figures to regard their positions as ends unto themselves. Congress, especially, has been overtaken by what Yuval Levin of the American Enterprise Institute describes as a “platform” mentality, where ambitious House members and senators treat their offices as places to stand and be seen — as talking heads, movement leaders, future presidents — rather than as roles to inhabit and opportunities to serve.On the Republican side, this tendency has taken several forms, from Newt Gingrich’s yearning to be a Great Man of History, to Ted Cruz’s ambitious grandstanding in the Obama years, to the emergence of Trump-era performance artists like Marjorie Taylor Greene. And the party’s congressional institutionalists, from dealmakers like John Boehner to policy mavens like Paul Ryan, have often been miserable-seeming prisoners of the talking heads, celebrity brands and would-be presidents.This dynamic seemed likely to imprison McCarthy as well, but he’s found a different way of dealing with it: He’s invited some of the bomb throwers into the legislative process, trying to turn them from platform-seekers into legislators by giving them a stake in governance, and so far he’s been rewarded with crucial support from figures like Greene and Thomas Massie, the quirky Kentucky libertarian. And it’s clear that part of what makes this possible is McCarthy’s enthusiasm for the actual vote-counting, handholding work required of his position, and his lack of both Gingrichian egomania and get-me-out-of-here impatience.But McCarthy isn’t operating in a vacuum. The Biden era has been good for institutionalism generally, because the president himself seems to understand and appreciate the nature of his office more than Barack Obama ever did. As my colleague Carlos Lozada noted on our podcast this week, in both the Senate and the White House, Obama was filled with palpable impatience at all the limitations on his actions. This showed up constantly in his negotiation strategy, where he had a tendency to use his own office as a pundit’s platform, lecturing the G.O.P. on what they should support and thereby alienating Republicans from compromise in advance.Whereas Biden, who actually liked being a senator, is clearly comfortable with quiet negotiation on any reasonable grounds, which is crucial to keeping the other side invested in a deal. And he’s comfortable, as well, with letting the spin machine run on both sides of the aisle, rather than constantly imposing his own rhetorical narrative on whatever bargain Republicans might strike.The other crucial element in the healthier environment is the absence of what Cruz brought to the debt-ceiling negotiations under Obama — the kind of sweeping maximalism, designed to build a presidential brand, that turns normal horse-trading into an existential fight.Expectating that kind of maximalism from Republicans, some liberals kept urging intransigence on Biden long after it became clear that what McCarthy wanted was more in line with previous debt-ceiling bargains. But McCarthy’s reasonability was sustainable because of the absence of a leading Republican senator playing Cruz’s absolutist part. Instead, the most notable populist Republican elected in 2022, J.D. Vance, has been busy looking for deals with populist Democrats on issues like railroad safety and bank-executive compensation, or adding a constructive amendment to the debt-ceiling bill even though he voted against it — as though he, no less than McCarthy, actually likes and wants his current job.One reason for the diminishment of Cruz-like grandstanders is the continued presence of Donald Trump as the G.O.P.’s personality-in-chief, to whose eminence no senator can reasonably aspire. At least through 2024, it’s clear the only way that Trump might be unseated is through the counterprogramming offered by Ron DeSantis, who is selling himself — we’ll see with what success — as the candidate of governance and competence; no bigger celebrity or demagogue is walking through that door.So for now there’s more benefit to legislative normalcy for ambitious Republicans, and less temptation toward the platform mentality, than there would be if Trump’s part were open for the taking.Whatever happens, it will be years until that role comes open. In which case Kevin McCarthy could be happy in his job for much longer than might have been expected by anyone watching his tortuous ascent.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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      Republicans Revive a Debate on Term Limits

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      Similar proposals to restrict lawmakers’ tenures that the party pushed in the 1990s went nowhere. In this new Congress, the result is likely to be the same.WASHINGTON — In grabbing control of the House, Republicans promised a vote on a proposition that always strikes a chord with frustrated voters: imposing term limits on members of the House and Senate to finally depose those entrenched, out-of-touch lawmakers.Within months of taking power, the new majority put the idea on the floor, where it flopped spectacularly. That episode was in 1995, when Republicans, led by newly installed Speaker Newt Gingrich, pledged a vote on term limits as part of their vaunted Contract with America, only to have the proposal rejected by some of the same folks who signed off on the contract. Voters get much more excited about term limits than do those who would be bound by them.Now the new House Republican majority is again pursuing limits on how long members of Congress can serve, and the result is likely to be the same: failure to garner the votes needed to send a constitutional amendment to the states for approval. But that won’t deter the backers of the plan, who once again say the public is fed up with career politicians and that those who reject term limits do so at their political peril.“This is a long stairway, but you take the first step,” said Representative Ralph Norman, the South Carolina Republican who is the lead backer of term limits in the House. “Let everybody vote up or down. This time I think there will be consequences for those who vote against it. There is a time for politicians to go home and live under some of the rules they have passed.”Mr. Norman said he expects Speaker Kevin McCarthy to allow a vote on the idea in the next few months. A similar resolution in the Senate sponsored by Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, is unlikely to get a vote because it is opposed by both Democratic and Republican leaders.“Leadership in both parties is opposing the overwhelming consensus of the American voters on this issue,” Mr. Cruz said. “The one group that doesn’t support term limits are career politicians in Washington. If it comes to a vote, I think it is hard for elected officials to vote against it.”Critics assail the effort as gimmickry, an easy show vote for lawmakers who want to be seen as fighting the status quo in Washington while knowing they will not have to abide by term limits themselves since there is little chance they will be imposed. Opponents also say that enacting term limits would deprive Congress of the experience and savvy that lawmakers develop over years of serving.“The fact that I have had the institutional memory that I’ve had here has always been helpful to the national debate and certainly back home as well,” said Representative Richard E. Neal, Democrat of Massachusetts and a former Ways and Means Committee chairman just elected to his 18th term. “If you want to turn Congress over to the amateurs and the antis and the special interests, embrace term limits.”Newt Gingrich first oversaw a vote on term limits, which failed decisively, back in 1995.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesThe call for term limits was a central part of Republicans’ takeover of the House in the 1994 midterm elections, helping them build the case that Democrats had become corrupt and arrogant after four decades in power. The “citizen legislature” was a major plank of the contract, pledging a “first-ever vote on term limits to replace career politicians with citizen legislators.” Republicans had also been heartened by seeing state legislatures around the country impose term limits on their office holders.After Republicans won that November, the vote finally rolled around on March 29, 1995. The day before, Mr. Gingrich published an op-ed in The Washington Post laying the groundwork for a loss by blaming Democrats, since the House could not muster the two-thirds majority necessary to send a constitutional amendment to the states — 290 votes — without significant Democratic support.“This vote says to the American people that this is their country,” Mr. Gingrich wrote. “It says to our citizens that they are entrusted with greater control.”Despite his pleas, the vote to impose 12-year limits on both the House and Senate attracted a bare majority of just 227 votes, significantly short of the required supermajority threshold. A barbed Democratic alternative that would have imposed term limits retroactively, knocking out scores of lawmakers of both parties, did not even attract a majority.While Republicans tried to hold Democrats responsible for the failure, 40 Republicans also balked, and 30 of them were among the most senior Republicans in the House. That included Representative Henry J. Hyde, of Illinois, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who won an ovation for his speech in opposition to the proposal.“I just can’t be an accessory to the dumbing down of democracy,” Mr. Hyde told his colleagues.After the defeat, Republicans sought again to make term limits a major issue in the 1996 elections and staged another vote in February 1997. The proposal fared even worse than before, barely surpassing a majority, let alone a supermajority, and any momentum for imposing term limits slowed.The momentum for adhering to personal pledges also dissipated. In one of the best-known cases, George Nethercutt, a Washington Republican who ousted Speaker Thomas S. Foley in 1994 almost solely on the basis of Mr. Foley’s opposition to term limits, reneged on his promise to serve only three terms in the House and was elected twice more.Last year, Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, won a third term in the Senate despite promising to serve only two terms, saying he broke his pledge because the nation was in too much peril for him to leave.The concept of term limits has always been more popular in the House than in the Senate, where seniority is extremely advantageous. Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader who this year broke the record for the longest-serving Senate leader, has been particularly opposed, arguing that elections already serve as term limits.But Mr. Norman, who is in his third full term after winning a special election in 2017, dismisses the idea that experience is a plus in Congress.“Look at the shape of the country,” said Mr. Norman. “I could pick 435 people off the streets to get a better return on investment than with politicians.”The resolution being pushed by Mr. Norman and Mr. Cruz is more restrictive than the ones defeated in the 1990s and would allow just three terms in the House and two in the Senate. Mr. Norman said he is open to slight upward adjustments in House tenure and has said he expects to run just a few more times himself.But Mr. Cruz, who will complete his second term next year, said his support of a two-term limit on senators does not mean he won’t be seeking a third term for himself in 2024, in line with his own bill.“I have never suggested that I support unilateral term limits,” he said. “I would happily comply with them if they applied to everyone. I never said I would do it alone if no one else complied.” More

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      After Georgia Senate Loss, Republicans Stare Down Their Trump Dilemma

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      ATLANTA — The Democrats’ capstone re-election victory of Senator Raphael Warnock forced Republicans to reckon on Wednesday with the red wave that wasn’t, as they turned with trepidation to 2024 and the intensifying divisions in the party over former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Warnock’s two-and-a-half percentage point win over Herschel Walker in the Georgia Senate runoff left Democrats with a 51-49 seat majority in the upper chamber, a one-seat gain. That came despite dire predictions for a blood bath for President Biden’s party.It quickly had Republican fingers pointing every which way: at Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader accused by detractors of abandoning or belittling embattled Republican Senate candidates; at Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, who many feel badly mismanaged the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm; and at Mr. Walker himself, for hiding and lying about his past, only to see the details stream out steadily over the course of his campaign.But for a handful of Republicans, newly emboldened by re-election or retirement to say so aloud, the biggest culprit was Mr. Trump. In increasingly biting terms, they slammed him for promoting flawed candidates, including Mr. Walker, dividing his party and turning many swing voters against the G.O.P. for the third election cycle in a row.“I think he’s less relevant all the time,” Senator John Cornyn, a Republican of Texas, said of the former president, who has begun a third bid for the White House.“It’s just one more data point in an overwhelming body of data that the Trump obsession is very bad for Republicans,” said Senator Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, a retiring Republican whose seat was flipped to Democrats by Lt. Gov. John Fetterman.Trump campaign aides responded with defiance, in a back-and-forth likely to be on repeat for the foreseeable future. Steven Cheung, a senior communications adviser for the former president, said they “are not going to be lectured by political swamp creatures who are already looking to find ways to make a quick buck in 2024 by running to the media and providing cowardly quotes.”The midterm losses like Mr. Walker’s not only squashed the G.O.P.’s high hopes of retaking control of the Senate but also signaled the party’s steep climb ahead. Voters in several presidential battleground states resoundingly rejected candidates aligned with the former president, handing Republicans losses in winnable races in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New Hampshire and, finally, Georgia.Mr. Trump’s influence was indisputable in the suburbs, said Rusty Paul, the Republican mayor of Sandy Springs, a booming suburban city on Atlanta’s northern edge.Mr. Paul allowed that the once almost-wholly affluent, almost-wholly white community had become more diverse ethnically, racially and economically, tipping it in Democrats’ favor.Herschel Walker giving his concession speech on Tuesday night.Nicole Buchanan for The New York TimesA scorecard with election results left at Mr. Walker’s election night party.Nicole Buchanan for The New York Times“All of those are factors, but the greatest factor is Trumpism,” he said.“There’s a very strong conservative streak in the northern suburbs, Cobb, North Fulton — if Trump’s not engaged, they’ll still vote Republican,” he continued, speaking of the northern edge of Atlanta’s main county and Cobb County, just to the west. “But if they feel Trump’s influence, they’ll vote against him.”Trump loyalists in Georgia and beyond disputed that assessment. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who represented many of those suburbs for years as a House Republican, blamed a list of factors beside Mr. Trump, down to the mockery by “Saturday Night Live” of Mr. Walker three days before the runoff election. It’s the G.O.P. versus the media, Big Tech, Hollywood and the nation’s social power structures, he said.Understand the Georgia Senate RunoffNew Battlegrounds: Senator Raphael Warnock’s win shows how Georgia and Arizona are poised to be the next kingmakers of presidential politics, Lisa Lerer writes.A Rising Democratic Star: Mr. Warnock, a son of Savannah public housing who rose to become Georgia’s first Black senator, is a pastor and politician who sees voting as a form of prayer.Trump’s Bad Day: The loss by Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate, capped one of the worst days for former President Donald J. Trump since he announced his 2024 bid.“We underestimate how big the mountain is that we’re trying to climb,” he said.But Mr. Gingrich also raised the prospects of a disastrous 2024, as Trump’s supporters split acrimoniously with its anti-Trump wing of the party the way conservatives in 1964 backed Barry Goldwater and moderates sided with Nelson Rockefeller.“My greatest fear is that we’re going to end up in a 1964 division” that left Republicans crippled in Congress, he said in an interview Wednesday. “I can imagine a Trump-anti-Trump war over the next two years that just guarantees Biden’s re-election in a landslide and guarantees that Democrats control everything.”Senator Raphael Warnock visited students at Georgia Tech on Monday.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesMr. Warnock speaking to reporters on Tuesday in Norcross, Ga.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesEmerging from the midterms, the anti-Trump wing has plenty of ammunition to make its case for a break. Two of Mr. Trump’s most prominent Republican foils in Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, won re-election easily, in part because of their refusal to back the former president’s lie that the state had been stolen from him in 2020. Their resistance confirmed to Republican-leaning swing voters that they were not in Mr. Trump’s thrall.In contrast, Mr. Walker, who was urged to run by the former president and has already said he intends to vote for Mr. Trump for president, lost ground among almost every type of precinct in the four weeks between Election Day on Nov. 8 and runoff day on Tuesday, according to a New York Times analysis.The Republican fared worse in the runoff at precincts that initially backed Mr. Warnock and Mr. Kemp, at precincts dominated by college graduates, at urban and suburban precincts, affluent precincts and at Black precincts and Hispanic precincts. The only precincts where he held his own were in rural areas and areas with white, noncollege voters.Mr. Walker, a first-time candidate and former football star, had plenty of troubles that had nothing to do with Mr. Trump. His campaign was repeatedly hit with damaging revelations that might have knocked other candidates out of the race, including accusations of domestic violence, unacknowledged children and hypocrisy on abortion.And beyond Mr. Trump, there are other factors changing Georgia’s political hue: the in-migration of voters of color from around the country, the movement of politically active Black voters from central Atlanta to suburbs near and far, where they carried on their organizational activities, and the activation of white women like Jennifer Haggard, a real estate agent and lifelong Sandy Springer, who cast aside reflexive conservatism for a more open-minded politics.“I’m the white Republican who turned swing voter for sure,” Ms. Haggard said after voting for Mr. Warnock. She cited Mr. Trump as easily the biggest factor, but happily voted for Mr. Warnock.In the face of trends favoring Democrats, Georgia Republicans failed to nominate a Senate candidate who could galvanize both the party’s hyper-conservative base and its moderate factions — a group that many in the G.O.P. believe still makes up a majority of the state’s electorate.That failure extended beyond Georgia. Republican candidates in the primary season reached into Mr. Trump’s ideological milieu to capture his voters, moving so far that they could not credibly swing to win back the center in the general election.“Even if you capture all of the Trump voters, you may be able to win a primary but you’re not necessarily going to win a general election and in this business, you have to win an election before you can actually govern,” said Mr. Cornyn, who for years dodged questions about Mr. Trump. “It’s not like coming in second and getting a trophy like you did in junior high school for participation.”For many Trump-loyal voters, the question may come down to whether they are willing to make a cold-eyed assessment of electability or follow their hearts. The chorus of Republican voices arguing for electability is growing louder.“More strings of defeats delivered to us clearly by Donald Trump is enough for our party to realize we’ve got to move on if we want to win,” Paul D. Ryan, the former Republican Speaker of the House, said in a SiriusXM interview. “We should not just concede the country to the left by nominating an unelectable candidate like Donald Trump.”Even Mr. Walker’s team seemed to acknowledge Mr. Trump was a drag on the candidate in the final weeks of the race. As the former president teased a visit to Georgia, Trump aides worked with the Walker campaign to agree to scrap an in-person rally and instead hold the event via phone. Mr. Walker did not frequently mention Mr. Trump in his campaign speeches. And in his final concession speech, he did not say the former president’s name.Jack Kingston, a former House Republican from the Savannah area, argued that Mr. Trump’s influence was overblown. In 2021, as two Georgia Senate races headed to a runoff, Mr. Trump, then the president, was railing against a rigged election, signaling to Republicans that their vote wouldn’t count, he noted. This time around, he was far less present.“I would not say the invisible hand of Donald Trump was telling Herschel Walker what to do,” Mr. Kingston said on Wednesday. “He was his own man.”Stephanie Lai More

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      Herschel Walker Stresses Georgia Roots on Campaign As Many Top Republicans Shift Away

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      Before the November election, Mr. Walker had help from Republicans far and wide. Now, he’s relying heavily on Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia to pull him ahead of Senator Raphael Warnock, the Democratic incumbent.For weeks during the general election, Herschel Walker was joined on the campaign trail by top Republican senators, party leaders and conservative activists eager to help the former football star’s Senate bid in Georgia. Now, with certain exceptions, he’s often been the only draw at his events.The shift reflects fresh doubts at the top of the Republican Party, where disappointing midterm election results last month have triggered an identity crisis among conservatives reeling from losses in a third consecutive campaign cycle.The uncertainty has affected Mr. Walker’s campaign, where his team has avoided appearances with former President Donald J. Trump, who had endorsed him and whose divisiveness has been particularly acute among Georgia voters.According to a recent private poll of likely runoff voters in Georgia, conducted for a pro-Walker super PAC, just 36 percent of respondents said they had a favorable view of Mr. Trump, compared to 59 percent who said they had an unfavorable view of him. The same survey showed that Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, a Republican re-elected to a second term last month despite Mr. Trump’s attempts to unseat him, was viewed favorably by 60 percent of voters and unfavorably by 33 percent.But containing Mr. Trump has become something of a chess match for Mr. Walker’s team.Senator Lindsey Graham joined Mr. Walker at his campaign event on Thursday.Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesMeanwhile, few other Republicans have appeared with Mr. Walker during the runoff.Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesFears about the former president’s penchant for prioritizing his own grievances — as he did during a disastrous runoff for Republicans in the state just two years ago — convinced some Walker advisers not to seek help from some of Mr. Trump’s potential White House rivals in 2024. The benefit of campaigning with rising stars in the party, like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida or Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, wasn’t worth the risk of provoking the former president, these advisers said.It’s unclear whether Mr. DeSantis or Mr. Youngkin was particularly interested in helping Mr. Walker, who was slightly behind incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock in a CNN/SSRS poll released Thursday. While Mr. DeSantis recently signed an online fund-raising plea for the Walker campaign, both men campaigned almost exclusively this year with candidates for governor.What to Know About Georgia’s Senate RunoffCard 1 of 6Another runoff in Georgia. More

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      Gingrich Is Willing to Testify to Jan. 6 Panel, His Lawyer Says

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      Mr. Gingrich would speak about his role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, a move his lawyer suggested should spare him from having to testify in a separate inquiry in Georgia.ATLANTA — Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker involved in efforts to overturn Donald J. Trump’s 2020 election loss, is willing to give an interview to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol after certain conditions are met, his lawyer said Thursday.Mr. Gingrich, a staunch ally of Mr. Trump, was asked to appear before the committee in a Sept. 1 letter from Representative Bennie Thompson, the Democrat who serves as the panel’s chairman. The letter noted that the committee’s investigators had obtained evidence that Mr. Gingrich had been in touch with senior advisers to Mr. Trump about advertisements that amplified false claims about election fraud in the November 2020 election.According to Mr. Thompson, Mr. Gingrich urged the Trump campaign to run ads focused on the bogus assertion that suitcases of fake ballots had been smuggled into a vote-processing area by election workers in Atlanta.Mr. Gingrich, 79, a former member of Congress from Georgia, rose to power and fame in the early 1990s promoting a so-called “Contract with America,” a statement of conservative governing principles. Mr. Gingrich has also been ordered to give testimony on Nov. 16 before a special grand jury in Atlanta that is conducting a criminal investigation into efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to reverse Mr. Trump’s loss in the Southern state.A court hearing in Fairfax County, Va., where Mr. Gingrich lives, on whether he must testify in Georgia is scheduled for Wednesday.However, in an interview on Thursday, Mr. Gingrich’s lawyer, J. Randolph Evans, said that he hoped a Virginia judge would be convinced that Mr. Gingrich’s testimony before members of Congress would render his client’s appearance in Atlanta unnecessary.“The idea being that if this really is about information, presumably the Jan. 6 committee would do a good job and obviate the need for testimony in Georgia,” Mr. Evans said.Mr. Evans described the outstanding conditions to be agreed upon as “transparency and attorney-driven issues” but did not elaborate further.Mr. Evans said that John A. Burlingame, the lawyer representing Mr. Gingrich in the Virginia hearing, would also likely argue that he does not have to testify in Georgia and follow a legal strategy used, with varying success, by other out-of-state Trump allies who have fought orders to testify in Georgia. The strategy rests on the idea that the special grand jury is civil in nature, not criminal, and therefore lacks the power to compel appearances by people who are not residents of Georgia.A spokesman for Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney who is leading the investigation, declined to comment on Thursday. Mr. Evans said that his client had broken no laws and was not a target of the investigation but rather “just a potential witness.”In a court document seeking Mr. Gingrich’s testimony, Ms. Willis referenced the advertisements mentioned by Mr. Thompson in his letter, noting that they had “encouraged members of the public to contact their state officials and pressure them to challenge and overturn the results of the election.”The ads ran, Ms. Willis stated, “in the days leading up to Dec. 14, 2020, when both legitimate and, in several states, nonlegitimate electors met to cast electoral college votes, and they were purportedly personally approved by former President Donald Trump.”Mr. Thompson, in his letter, said that Mr. Gingrich was involved in the plan to put forward pro-Trump electors in states that were won by Joseph R. Biden Jr.Mr. Evans, Mr. Gingrich’s lawyer, was named ambassador to Luxembourg by Mr. Trump and is also mentioned by name in the court documents filed by Ms. Willis.The prosecutor noted that on or around Nov. 12, 2020, Mr. Gingrich wrote an email to Pat Cipollone, then the White House counsel, and to Mark Meadows, then Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, who has also been ordered to testify in the Atlanta investigation.“Is someone in charge of coordinating all the electors?” Mr. Gingrich wrote, according to Ms. Willis. She added that Mr. Gingrich then wrote that Mr. Evans had made the point “that all the contested electors must meet on Dec. 14 and send in ballots to force contests which the House would have to settle.” More