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      How Democrats Can Stop a Red Wave

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      Republicans like their chances in November. But politics can change quickly.A “red wave” is building this year — or so we’re told.Republicans are confident that the country’s sour mood will sweep them back into power in Congress, mainly because Americans are fed up with the coronavirus and inflation. They think they’ll pick up 30 or so House seats and four or five seats in the Senate.“It’s crystal clear,” said Corry Bliss, a partner at FP1 Strategies, a consulting firm that helps Republicans. He added: “The red wave is coming. Period. End of discussion.”But what if that’s wrong? We asked about two dozen strategists in both parties what would need to happen for Democrats to hold the House and Senate in November. And while we’re not making any predictions, it’s possible that Democrats could retain control of Congress. Difficult, but possible.Democrats have 222 seats in the House, and 50 seats in the Senate. That means Republicans need to pick up just six House seats and one Senate seat to take full control of Congress.Here’s what needs to happen for Democrats to pull off an upset in 2022:Biden voters show upPundits often make it sound like voters are judiciously studying each party’s arguments and forming conclusions. But that’s not really the way American politics works. Modern elections are much more about mobilization (getting your supporters to the polls) than persuasion (convincing the other side’s supporters to switch), though both matter.Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by more than 7 million votes in 2020. So for Democrats, winning in 2022 means figuring out how to get as many of those people as possible to vote, even though Trump won’t be on the ballot this time.“Their primary motivation for voting in the last election was defeating Trump,” said Guy Cecil, chairman of Priorities USA, which on Monday announced a $30 million program of digital ads aimed at reaching what he calls “new Biden voters” in seven swing states.The last two elections — the 2018 midterms and the 2020 presidential vote — saw the biggest turnout in history. That means there’s an unusual amount of uncertainty among insiders about which voters will show up in 2022.Regaining a sense of normalcyEvery person we spoke with agreed: This is the biggest unknown.While voters are upset about high prices today, inflation and the coronavirus could be down to manageable levels by the summer. Several strategists say it is also essential, politically speaking, that schools are fully open in September. If all of that happens, Democrats could enter the midterms as the party that defeated Covid and brought the economy roaring back to life, or at least fight Republicans to a draw on both issues.But the White House is well aware that it’s not really in control — the virus is.“The script’s not written yet for the remainder of the year,” said Representative Brad Schneider of Illinois, chair of the New Democrat Coalition, a group of House moderates.A Look Ahead to the 2022 U.S. Midterm ElectionsIn the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are 10 races to watch.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering.Governors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Campaign Financing: With both parties awash in political money, billionaires and big checks are shaping the midterm elections.Key Issues: Democrats and Republicans are preparing for abortion and voting rights to be defining topics.Biden finds a winning messageFor months, Democrats have fretted that the White House was too slow to recognize inflation as a political problem, and was too mired in endless congressional negotiations. That’s changing.President Biden has been speaking more frequently about the issue, at the urging of moderate Democrats. “The president is recognizing his superpower, which is empathy,” said Representative Dean Phillips, a Democrat in a swing district in Minnesota.Sean McElwee, executive director of the group Data for Progress, told us that the president should embrace what he calls “solverism” — basically, being seen on TV every day tackling the problems that voters care about.After a fall characterized by damaging infighting, Democrats have been working to bring more harmony to their messages. With the State of the Union address coming up, President Biden has a chance to rally the country around his vision and the improving economic numbers. But with the fate of Build Back Better now in question, what will he talk about, exactly?Redistricting being more or less evenDemocrats feel good about the maps that have been approved so far. For now, there are only three Democrats running in House districts that Trump won in 2020, and nine Republicans in districts that Biden won.But a few unknowns remain. The Democratic-controlled State Legislature in New York is still weighing how aggressively to redraw the state’s maps. Courts have yet to render final judgments in Alabama, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania. And in Florida, Republicans are divided between Gov. Ron DeSantis’s maps and those proposed by the State Senate.We do know that many of the House districts that are up for grabs in November are in the suburbs, which have shifted left in recent elections. That could help Democrats. Liberal strategists point out that Republicans won’t be able to benefit from the massive margins that they run up in rural areas and they also note that the seats Republicans picked up in 2020 were the easy ones.To which Republicans counter: Look at what happened in suburban Virginia, where Glenn Youngkin pared back the party’s past losses to win the governor’s race.The Supreme Court overturns Roe v. WadeIn that Virginia race, the Democrat, Terry McAuliffe, spent millions of dollars portraying Youngkin as an extremist on abortion. Democrats were convinced that the issue would help them with suburban women in particular, and McAuliffe predicted that abortion would be a “huge motivator” for voters. His campaign ran three different ads on the subject, which collectively aired more than 1,000 times.It didn’t work.Youngkin danced around the issue, while saying he preferred to focus on the economy, jobs and education. According to exit polls conducted by Edison Research, just 8 percent of voters said abortion mattered most to their decision, the least of five preselected topics.But abortion could come roaring back as a voting issue if the Supreme Court issues a clear repudiation of Roe v. Wade this year. Should that happen, many Democrats say it could help their candidates in Senate races, where they can highlight Republican positions that polls suggest are out of the mainstream.Republican candidates go hard rightDemocrats are watching Republican primary campaigns closely, clipping and saving remarks that the candidates are making that could prove hard to defend in a general election. The need to cater to Trump’s hard-line base of voters has made the Republican brand toxic, they say. But that’s where the consensus ends.Endangered Democrats want to localize their races as much as possible, and prefer to talk about kitchen-table issues like jobs and the economy. Nationally, Democrats are still debating how to communicate their alarm about the state of American democracy, which can come across as either abstract to voters or simply more partisan noise.For now, Democrats are planning to use Jan. 6 as just one of several data points to portray Republicans as extremists on a range of issues, including abortion and climate.“I don’t think this election is going to easily fall into the traditional pattern, and it’s because of the radicalization of the Republican Party,” said Simon Rosenberg, the head of the New Democrat Network.Trump seizes center stageAfter the Virginia governor’s race, Democratic strategists launched various efforts to study the lessons of that campaign. One takeaway: Talking about Trump also energizes Republicans, which makes it tricky for Democrats to make the former president a central issue in 2022.Democrats have also found that it’s not effective simply to associate a Republican candidate with Trump, as McAuliffe did in Virginia. They believe they need to indict Republican candidates directly. But there’s an ongoing debate about whether Democratic candidates need to do this themselves, or have outside groups run attack ads on their behalf.The former president has endorsed dozens of candidates who in one way or another agree with his false notion that the 2020 election was stolen. On Sunday evening, he said it outright — claiming, falsely, that then-Vice President Mike Pence “could have overturned the election” on Jan. 6, 2021.If Democrats manage to hang on to their congressional majorities, Trump will be a major factor.What to readTrump had a greater role than previously known in plans to use his national security agencies to seize voting machines, our colleagues report.Marc Short, who was chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence, has testified before the congressional panel investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, Luke Broadwater reports.Katie Rogers reports that the White House has chosen Doug Jones, the former Democratic senator from Alabama, to shepherd its Supreme Court pick through the nomination process in the Senate.briefing bookGov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota filed amendments to a series of old F.E.C. reports.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesFilings cleanupAs our colleague Shane Goldmacher was digging on Monday through the glut of campaign disclosures covering the last quarter of 2021, he noticed updates to some very old filings.The filings, from as far back as 2017, were from the Keeping Republican Ideas Strong Timely & Inventive PAC. That’s better known as KRISTI PAC, as in Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, the former Republican congresswoman who created the committee.Governor Noem filed amendments to no fewer than 16 old Federal Election Commission reports this week. The amendments appeared mostly minor. But what is more interesting is that she was making those at all. It is the kind of cleanup that politicians typically do when they are considering a future run for president, mindful that opposition researchers will be looking for any slip-ups to feed to the press.The KRISTI PAC treasurer, Kevin Broghamer, simply told the F.E.C. that the PAC had “conducted a comprehensive review and reconciliation of all financial activity since January 1, 2017.”A spokesman for Noem, Joe Desilets, said that Broghamer had been asked to conduct the review “to ensure the governor’s committees were wholly compliant and amend any filings as needed. Unfortunately there isn’t anything else to read into with the amended filings.”Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Why Kristi Noem Is Rising Quickly as a Republican Prospect for 2024

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      Ms. Noem, the governor of South Dakota, has defied coronavirus restrictions and eagerly projects a rugged Great Plainswoman image. Her moves have stirred both support and conflict in the G.O.P.PIERRE, S.D. — With Republicans hungry to cultivate their next generation of national leaders, it is not a Capitol Hill comer or a veteran battleground-state politician who is stirring interest by fusing Trumpism with a down-home conservatism spin. It is the first-term governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, a rancher who delights in sharing images of herself shooting pheasants and riding horses.Ms. Noem began drawing wider attention last year for cozying up to President Donald J. Trump — so much so that she inspired suspicion that she was angling to replace Mike Pence on the 2020 ticket — and hosting him at a July 4 Mount Rushmore event where she gave him a model of the monument with his face included. Her defiance of coronavirus restrictions and her eagerness to project a rugged Great Plainswoman image helped her come in second in a 2024 straw poll of far-right conservatives looking for candidates if Mr. Trump doesn’t run again.But her approach to politics has sometimes made for rocky relations with her base. Late last month, she got herself into a showdown with the Republican-controlled State Legislature over her veto of a bill barring transgender girls from school sports. And as some party leaders were pressing her to resolve that fight, she prompted eye-rolling at home by inserting herself in an unrelated skirmish — over Lil Nas X’s “Satan Shoes.”“We are in a fight for the soul of our nation,” she wrote on Twitter, picking a fight with the rapper over his endorsement of $1,000 sneakers featuring a pentagram and, ostensibly, a drop of blood.If Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is widely seen as the brash heir apparent to Mr. Trump, and senators like Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton are attempting to put a more ideological frame on Trumpism, Ms. Noem is trying to cement her place as the only female Trump ally echoing the former president’s trigger-the-left approach among the upper tiers of potential 2024 candidates.But her stumble on the trans bill planted some doubts among social conservatives, and her appearances on Fox News most weeks and her time spent at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago fund-raising site have prompted griping in South Dakota.At home, Ms. Noem’s apparent White House ambitions bother Republicans who want her focused on the state’s needs, even as some in the party relish the attention her rising profile is bringing to the tourism-dependent state.She’s now on her fourth chief of staff in just over two years and has an increasingly awkward relationship with John Thune, South Dakota’s senior senator, and has favored the national party circuit over building relationships in the turn-of-the-century State Capitol in Pierre.“Let’s focus on the state of South Dakota right now,” Rhonda Milstead, a Republican state representative, said in an interview between floor sessions on the so-called veto day. “And if you’re going to run for governor in 2022, let’s focus on our state. I voted for her when she ran because I believe she cared about the state of South Dakota, so let’s do it.”Ms. Noem’s approach is markedly different from the arc of other modern governors-turned-presidents, such as Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Those politicians assiduously courted their states’ kingmakers, held up their legislative achievements as campaign calling cards and waited until they had been re-elected to the governor’s office before auditioning on the national stage.The question is whether that was then.As she steps up her already-busy travel schedule — she was the keynote speaker at the Kansas G.O.P.’s convention this month and will address Arkansas Republicans in June — Ms. Noem, 49, may represent the purest test of the potency of Trump-style pugilism.“It’s a contest about who can trigger the media and Democrats the most, and Noem is trying to get in that conversation,” said David Kochel, a Republican strategist and a veteran of presidential politics. “It’s, ‘Can I come up with something that’s going to inflame Rachel Maddow and raise awareness among conservatives because Fox will cover how much the left hates me?’”In the post-Trump party, a willingness to confront the news media and do battle with the left, preferably in viral-video snippets, is more compelling to activists than amassing a record of achievement or painstakingly building coalitions. Appearing at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, Ms. Noem received her loudest applause for saying that Dr. Anthony S. Fauci “is wrong a lot.”Former President Donald J. Trump speaking at a fund-raiser for Kristi Noem during her 2018 campaign for the governor’s office.Susan Walsh/Associated PressMoreover, with Republicans having lost the presidency and both chambers of Congress after struggling among female voters, many in the party want to elevate a woman to their ticket in 2024, when Vice President Kamala Harris is likely to be the Democratic nominee for president or vice president.“She is one of the strongest examples of a great Republican woman,” said Glynis Gilio, a law student, who waited with a few dozen other CPAC attendees for Ms. Noem’s autograph. “We really need that strong female conservatism to pack a punch.”Russell Olson, a former South Dakota lawmaker who was elected to the Legislature alongside Ms. Noem in 2006, said Ms. Noem is “a conservative woman and can talk without regurgitating talking points, so she rises to easy consideration in my book.”Mr. Olson, whom Ms. Noem reappointed to the State Game, Fish and Parks Commission, is not the only South Dakota Republican eager to remain on the governor’s good side. A number of party officials and donors did not want to speak on the record about Ms. Noem’s political prospects, many of them pointedly observing that it is a small state.The governor declined an interview and, in keeping with her public posture, had a spokesman email to archly ask if the story would be “about next year’s re-election campaign?”Other South Dakota Republicans are downright gleeful about the speculation — though not necessarily because they’re eager to see her become president. “Love her or hate her, she’s the best resource South Dakota has going for it right now,” said Lee Schoenbeck, the leader of the State Senate. “She’s got such a platform.”Despite the state’s high Covid death toll per capita, and the outbreak stemming from the Sturgis motorcycle rally that drew nearly 500,000 biker enthusiasts last fall, many Republicans in South Dakota believe that the governor’s opposition to shutdowns contributed to South Dakota’s lowest-in-the-country unemployment rate, kept tourists coming and made the state newly appealing to transplants.Whether Ms. Noem ultimately lands on the 2024 ticket or not, she has made a name for herself nationally by recreating South Dakota as a sort of red-state oasis for visitors, new residents and businesses.She won the governorship by just three and a half percentage points, a slim margin in a state that has not elected a Democratic governor since 1974. Her approval rating stood at just 39 percent at the end of 2019, according to a private Republican poll shared by a party official familiar with the results. By last June, three months into the virus outbreak, the same pollster found that 62 percent of the state’s voters approved of her performance.Ms. Noem had a relatively modest profile during four terms serving in Congress and in her first year as governor. By the end of 2020, however, she had gained the notice of Mr. Trump, who was egging her on to challenge Mr. Thune in his primary next year.She has disclaimed any interest in such a challenge. But her coziness with Mr. Trump and her hiring of the hard-charging Corey Lewandowski, the former president’s onetime campaign manager, has put a chill in her relationship with Mr. Thune, the second-ranking Senate Republican. Mr. Thune has been clear that he wants the G.O.P. to ease away from being a cult of personality and focus on ideas.John Thune of South Dakota, the Senate minority whip, has said he wants the Republican Party to focus on ideas rather than personalities.Amr Alfiky/The New York Times“Thune wants to move on and can’t with a Trump clone in own backyard,” said Drey Samuelson, the longtime top aide to former Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota.Ms. Noem plainly sees her opening as a Trump-of-the-prairie provocateur.In addition to her ubiquity on Fox News — one segment featured her escorting a network contributor on the state’s annual buffalo roundup — she has taken to Twitter with gusto. And not just to troll rappers.“This is how we do social distancing in South Dakota,” she wrote above a video of her shooting and downing a nearby pheasant, a clip that has drawn nearly seven million views.She also starred in a tourism commercial that aired nationally last year during the Covid surge. “We’re open for opportunity — and always will be,” Ms. Noem said as images of Mount Rushmore and galloping bison flashed on the screen.It’s difficult to overstate the importance of marketing to South Dakota.At the confluence of Midwest and West, and bifurcated by the Missouri River, the state has relied on tourism since the early part of the 20th century, when another ambitious governor, Peter Norbeck, relentlessly promoted the development of a granite monument in the Black Hills that could lure visitors to the region.Ms. Noem has shown a similar passion for making the state a destination, most memorably mixing tourism with politics by ensuring that fireworks could be displayed at Mount Rushmore to entice Mr. Trump there last year. South Dakota similarly trumpets its pheasant hunting, walleye fishing, and even more flagrant tourist pit stops, like Wall Drug and the Mitchell Corn Palace.“We don’t have a lot of industry in South Dakota, and we don’t have a lot of natural resources pumped out of the ground or mined, so when you have a state that’s basically ag and ranching, you need those out-of-state dollars,” said Ted Hustead, whose family owns Wall Drug, whose Western-themed collection of stores and restaurants is a major tourist attraction.That need is what put Ms. Noem in a vise over the transgender legislation.She initially said she would support the bill. But she reversed course after facing a backlash from South Dakota’s influential business community, which worried that the National Collegiate Athletic Association would pull moneymaking basketball tournaments out of the state.Ms. Noem was pressed about her change of mind by Tucker Carlson in a rare adversarial Fox News interview, and the flap fueled suspicions among social conservatives.“She says whatever she thinks she needs to say,” said Taffy Howard, a state lawmaker who has pressed Ms. Noem to disclose the details of state money she has been using for security on her frequent trips. “This was all about keeping her donors happy.”The House overrode Ms. Noem’s partial veto of the trans bill, but the State Senate declined to take action, dooming the legislation.Running for re-election with Mr. Trump’s support in a conservative state, Ms. Noem should be well-positioned next year. South Dakota, however, does have a history of spurning its politicians when their focus becomes more national than local.“Tom Daschles and George McGoverns are examples of what happens when you don’t pay attention at home — you got to make sure you’re balancing that well,” said Marty Jackley, a former state attorney general who lost to Ms. Noem in the primary election for governor, alluding to two of South Dakota’s most famous figures.Mr. Olson, Ms. Noem’s former colleague in the Legislature, said he nevertheless expected Ms. Noem to be a formidable candidate should she run for president. He learned his lesson, he said, after supporting her primary opponents when she ran for South Dakota’s lone House seat in 2010 and then for governor in 2018, and he was “not going to get the third strike.” More

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      Trumpism Grips a Post-Policy G.O.P. as Traditional Conservatism Fades

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPolitical memoTrumpism Grips a Post-Policy G.O.P. as Traditional Conservatism FadesDespite falling from power in Washington, the Republican Party has done little soul-searching or reflection on a new agenda, instead focusing on attacking Democrats and the news media.Merchandise bearing former President Donald J. Trump’s name was widely available at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla., last week.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesMarch 1, 2021Updated 9:15 p.m. ETORLANDO, Fla. — For decades, the same ritual took place in the aftermath of Republican electoral defeats.Moderate, establishment-aligned party officials would argue that candidates had veered too far right on issues like immigration, as well as in their language, and would counsel a return to the political center. And conservatives would contend that Republicans had abandoned the true faith and must return to first principles to distinguish themselves from Democrats and claim victory.One could be forgiven for missing this debate in the aftermath of 2020, because it is scarcely taking place. Republicans have entered a sort of post-policy moment in which the most animating forces in the party are emotions, not issues.This shift was on vivid display last weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where the annual gathering’s Trumpification and the former president’s vow to exact revenge against his intraparty critics dominated headlines.But just as striking was what wasn’t said at the event. There was vanishingly little discussion of why Republicans lost the presidency, the House and the Senate over the last four years, nor much debate about what agenda they should pursue to rebuild the party.The absence of soul-searching owes in part to the Republicans’ surprise gains in the House and the denialism of many activists that they lost the White House at all, a false claim perpetuated with trollish gusto by former President Donald J. Trump himself on Sunday, to the delight of the crowd.The former president was, however, hardly the only high-profile Republican to demonstrate that confronting Democrats and the news media, while harnessing the grievance of the party rank and file toward both, is the best recipe for acclaim within today’s G.O.P.“We can sit around and have academic debates about conservative policy, we can do that,” Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said to an ovation in his CPAC remarks. “But the question is, when the klieg lights get hot, when the left comes after you: Will you stay strong, or will you fold?”Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida was the first speaker at the conference on Friday.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesThis is the party Mr. Trump has remade — and it’s why so many traditional Republicans are appalled, or at least alarmed, that Trumpism is replacing conservatism.“The future of the Republican Party depends on debating and advancing big ideas rooted in our belief in limited government constitutionalism,” said Representative Chip Roy of Texas, arguing that the party needed to orient itself around “the case for freeing the American people from the mandates, shutdowns, regulations and taxes pushed by a powerful government.”Mr. Roy appeared on one of the few CPAC panels focused on government spending, once a central issue on the right, and used his time to plead with the audience. “There’s nothing more important right now than this,” he said. “We are allowing Washington, D.C., to take over our lives but we’re paying the bill.”If those in the audience felt the same sense of urgency, they didn’t show it.In his remarks later in the day, Mr. Trump sought to explain “Trumpism” — “what it means is great deals,” he ventured — but his would-be heirs plainly recognize that the core of his appeal is more affect than agenda.Beyond the former president, no two Republicans in attendance drew a more fervent response than Mr. DeSantis and Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, two former House members turned first-term governors.Neither sketched out a new policy agenda or presented a fresh vision for a party that has won the national popular vote just once in over 30 years. Rather, they drew repeated ovations for what they share in common: a shared sense of victimhood over media criticism for their handling of the coronavirus crisis and a pugnacious contempt for public health experts who have urged more aggressive restrictions in their states.“I don’t know if you agree with me, but Dr. Fauci is wrong a lot,” Ms. Noem said in her remarks, referring to the country’s top infectious disease expert. The statement brought attendees to their feet, even as she glossed over her state’s high mortality rate during the pandemic.Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota criticized Dr. Anthony S. Fauci in her speech at the conference on Saturday.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesSince the dawn of the modern conservative movement in the mid-20th century, there has been an element of victimhood politics on the right — a sense that powerful liberal forces are arrayed against conservatives, and that Republicans can send a message with their vote.“Annoy the Media: Re-elect Bush” was one of the more popular stickers in the 1992 campaign of George H.W. Bush, who is now frequently remembered as the gentlemanly antithesis of Mr. Trump. Yet within the Republican Party, there were always debates — intense, immense and highly consequential.In the 1970s, the party clashed over the United States’ role in the world, splitting over control of the Panama Canal and whether the Soviet Union should be confronted with an open hand or a clenched fist. In the 1980s and ’90s, the abortion battles raged, with opposition to Roe v. Wade emerging as a litmus test for many on the right.In the second Bush administration and the years after, Republicans were divided over immigration and, once again, on America’s footprint overseas.Notably, many of these clashes played out at CPAC. In 2011, Mitch Daniels, the governor of Indiana at the time, used a high-profile speech at the gathering to warn against the growing peril of “the new red menace” — red ink, not the Red Army — that was aimed at conservatives upset by the heavy spending of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.Former Representative Ron Paul of Texas, and then his son, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, used the conclaves to challenge Bush-style interventionism, delighting youthful audiences and prompting them to flood the straw poll balloting on their behalf.Not coincidentally, the three top finishers in this year’s straw poll were the three who most prominently flouted coronavirus restrictions: Mr. Trump, Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Noem.“They are perceived as Trump-friendly, new, young outsiders,” Amanda Carpenter, a former Senate G.O.P. aide who now writes for The Bulwark website, said of Mr. DeSantis, 42, and Ms. Noem, 49.Interviews with conference attendees suggested that many of them were drawn to the two governors primarily for their style.Sany Dash, who was selling merchandise at a CPAC booth, explained that she liked Ms. Noem “because she fights back,” adding: “I feel like she’s a female Trump, except not crass or rude.”“He’s got just the right amount of Trumpiness to him,” Brad Franklin, a recent college graduate, said of Mr. DeSantis.Others pointed out how the Florida governor had been criticized by the news media for his handling of the coronavirus even though the state has suffered fewer deaths per capita than a number of states with Democratic governors.Ms. Noem singled out one of those governors, Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, in her remarks on Saturday, prompting a cascade of boos.Something strikingly different happened, though, when Ms. Noem touched on policy just long enough to lament the rising national debt.“We have forgotten principles that we once held dear,” she said. Nobody applauded.Elaina Plott More

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      CPAC Takeaways: Trump, Kristi Noem, Ron DeSantis, 'Cancel Culture'

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCPAC Takeaways: Trump Dominates, and DeSantis and Noem Stand OutAt their three-day gathering, pro-Trump conservatives tried to turn “cancel culture” into their new “fake news” and spent little time on policy (either their own or President Biden’s).Former President Donald Trump spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Sunday. Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesShane Goldmacher and Feb. 28, 2021Updated 8:37 p.m. ETAny lingering belief that Donald J. Trump would fade from the political scene like other past presidents evaporated fully on Sunday as he spoke for more than 90 minutes in a grievance-filled and self-promoting address that sought to polish up his presidential legacy, take aim at his enemies and tease his political future.Here are six takeaways from the first major Republican gathering of the post-Trump era, the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla.Trump has (almost) total dominance.“I am not starting a new party,” Mr. Trump declared, nixing rumors and making news in the first moments of the first speech of his post-presidency.And why would he? Mr. Trump remains the most influential Republican politician in the nation. The three-day CPAC gathering in Orlando showed how fully the Republican Party has been remade in his image in the five years since he boycotted the conference in 2016 en route to capturing the party’s nomination.In a meandering speech guided by a teleprompter and interrupted with cheering that at times read more obligatory than enthusiastic, Mr. Trump lashed out at President Biden and outlined his vision of a culture- and immigration-focused Republican Party while relitigating his specific grievances from 2020.Mr. Trump named every Republican who voted for his impeachment. “Get rid of them all,” he said. And he predicted a Republican would win the White House in 2024. “Who, who, who will that be, I wonder?” he mused.The speech came right after Mr. Trump won a CPAC 2024 presidential straw poll, finishing with 55 percent of the vote — more than double the percentage of his closest runner-up. But that victory was dampened by the fact that only 68 percent of the attendees at the conference said they wanted him to run again.A second straw poll, without Mr. Trump, was carried by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who received 43 percent on his home turf, followed by Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota with 11 percent.Those results showcased the challenge that senators face in edging ahead of governors in the 2024 pack of potential presidential candidates. Both Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Noem highlighted their efforts to keep the economy open during the coronavirus pandemic, which proved a more popular résumé point than the legislative fights that senators in Washington have been engaged in.‘Cancel culture’ is the new ‘fake news.’In his first presidential bid, Mr. Trump adopted “fake news” as a rallying cry against the traditional news media and then effectively and relentlessly deployed it to position himself as the sole arbiter of truth for his supporters.The lineup of CPAC speakers over the weekend showed how thoroughly a new pair of catchphrases — “cancel culture” and the “woke mob” — are animating a Republican Party that, beyond supporting Mr. Trump, appears increasingly centered on defining itself in opposition to the left.“Didn’t anybody tell you?” Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri began his CPAC speech. “You’re supposed to be canceled.”The crowd cheered as “cancel culture” served throughout the weekend as shorthand for bashing the news media, railing against the tech industry (in particular, Twitter’s and Facebook’s decisions to bar Mr. Trump from their platforms), and spreading fear about the decline of conservative and religious values in American popular culture.Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, one of his party’s most adroit culture warriors, summarized the annoyance and alienation felt by attendees at the right-wing gathering because of the continuing pandemic.“You can French kiss the guy next to you yelling ‘Abolish the police’ and no one will get infected,” he mocked. “But if you go to church and say ‘Amazing grace,’ everyone is going to die.”Audience members cheering Mr. Trump.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesA ‘rigged’ 2020 is now a G.O.P. article of faith.T.W. Shannon, a Republican from Oklahoma, was the first to say it. Speaking Friday morning on a panel called “Tolerance Reimagined: The Angry Mob and Violence in Our Streets,” Mr. Shannon said the reason pro-Trump demonstrators stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 was that “they felt hopeless.”And that, he said, was “because of a rigged election.”The election was not rigged, of course, but by the end of CPAC it was clear that the lie Mr. Trump had promoted vigorously had become canon among the base of the Republican Party. On Sunday, the conference’s straw poll results revealed that 62 percent of attendees ranked “election integrity” as the most important issue facing the country.For those who tuned into Mr. Hawley’s speech, this was probably unsurprising: Mr. Hawley, who was the first Senate Republican to announce his plans to object to the Electoral College certification, electrified the CPAC audience when he reminded them of his defiance.“On Jan. 6, I objected to the Electoral College certification — maybe you heard about it,” Mr. Hawley said with a wry grin. People erupted in applause.In interviews, multiple CPAC attendees were adamant that widespread voter fraud had led to the election of Mr. Biden — and some inadvertently suggested the long-term consequences this could pose for the party.Pamela Roehl, 55, who traveled to the conference from Illinois, said some of her pro-Trump friends had written off civic engagement for good. “They voted for Trump, and they said they’re not going to vote again, because they just feel like it’s so tainted,” she said. “And that is just so sad.”There was little interest in policy — whether Biden’s or the Republican Party’s.As the conference began, House Democrats were preparing to approve a coronavirus relief package worth nearly $2 trillion that was opposed by every House Republican. But inside the Hyatt Regency in Orlando, it was hard to find many conservatives who cared.CPAC in past years has served, at minimum, as a forum for conservatives to unite in opposition to a Democratic policy agenda. But most speakers over the weekend won applause by channeling the preoccupation with personality over policy that animated the party during Mr. Trump’s presidency. The result was an event in which conservatives signaled their lack of interest not just in mobilizing against Mr. Biden’s policies, but also in debating the finer points of their own.Mr. DeSantis suggested that the current threat posed by the left was too dangerous for conservatives to prioritize policy discussions.“We can sit around and have academic debates about conservative policy — we can do that,” he said. “But the question is, when the Klieg lights get hot, when the left comes after you: Will you stay strong, or will you fold?”In an illustration of how Mr. Trump has transformed the party, there was strikingly little mention of curbing spending at a moment when congressional Democrats are moving to restore earmarks. And while CPAC attendees ranked immigration as the third most important issue facing the country, few speakers discussed specific policy proposals to shape the party’s stance on the issue beyond continuing to support Mr. Trump’s border wall.Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota drew one of the most enthusiastic receptions at CPAC.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesKristi Noem is hailed as ‘a female Trump.’Ms. Noem, who came in second to Mr. DeSantis in the CPAC straw poll without Mr. Trump, was one of the standout speakers of the weekend, delivering a staunchly pro-Trump message and highlighting the anti-lockdown and anti-mask policies that in the past year have made her a darling of the base of the Republican Party.She jolted to stardom in Republican circles last year when she refused to issue a lockdown order for South Dakota or to enforce a mask mandate. Instead, she advocated “washing your hands and making good decisions.”South Dakota now has the country’s eighth-highest death rate from Covid-19.Ms. Noem received a standing ovation at CPAC when she boasted that she had never ordered a “single business or church to close,” and another one when she attacked Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert.In the hours leading up to her speech on Saturday, many attendees praised Ms. Noem as their favorite Republican — apart from Mr. Trump, of course.“I like Kristi Noem because she fights back,” said Sany Dash, who sold pro-Trump merchandise at the conference. “I feel like she’s a female Trump, except not crass or rude. ”The Republican ‘civil war’ remains very much uncanceled.Senator Rick Scott of Florida, who runs the Republican political committee trying to win back the Senate in 2022, tried to downplay any intraparty disagreements and urged activists to focus on opposing the Democratic agenda.The problem is that some of his party’s biggest names — including and especially Mr. Trump — are focused first on exacting revenge for those who strayed from the Trump party line on impeachment.Donald Trump Jr. excoriated Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the top-ranking Republican to vote to impeach his father, as aggressively as he did any Democrat in his speech. Mr. Trump on Friday announced that one of his first 2022 endorsements would be for the primary opponent of Representative Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, another Republican who voted for impeachment. The mere mention of Senator Mitt Romney’s name drew derision.In his own speech, Mr. Trump named every Republican who voted for his impeachment in the House and for conviction in the Senate, focusing special attention on Ms. Cheney, whom he called a “warmonger.”But even if there are critical parts of the Republican apparatus at war, the activist flank of the party remains firmly behind Mr. Trump. Or, as he put it, “The only division is between a handful of Washington, D.C., establishment political hacks and everybody else.”There were no more surefire applause lines than those that heaped praise on the former president.When Donald Trump Jr. jokingly called the gathering “TPAC” instead of CPAC — “It’s what it feels like, guys!” he said — it felt less like an awkward joke and more a statement of 2021 reality.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Trump Wins CPAC Straw Poll, but Only 68 Percent Want Him to Run Again

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTrump Wins CPAC Straw Poll, but Only 68 Percent Want Him to Run AgainThe Conservative Political Action Conference, made up largely of far-right Trump supporters, held two 2024 presidential straw polls. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida won one that did not include Mr. Trump.Former President Donald J. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida led two straw polls conducted on Sunday by the Conservative Political Action Conference, which now includes many far-right supporters of Trump.CreditCredit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesElaina Plott and Feb. 28, 2021Updated 8:00 p.m. ETORLANDO, Fla. — Nearly four months after he lost the 2020 election, Donald J. Trump was able to celebrate being a winner again on Sunday, after he captured the 2024 presidential straw poll of the Conservative Political Action Conference, while Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida finished first in a second 2024 straw poll covering a field of potential candidates that did not include Mr. Trump.But in a surprise bit of downbeat news for Mr. Trump, only 68 percent of those at the conference said they wanted the former president to run again in 2024. Far more attendees, 95 percent, said they wanted the Republican Party to advance Mr. Trump’s policies and agenda than endorsed him running again, even as the mere mention of Mr. Trump’s name earned loud applause throughout the three-day gathering of activists. The straw polls, conducted by secret ballot, reflected the views of current and former elected officials, activists, writers and others who attended the three-day conference — a group that, generally speaking, represents the far-right wing of the Republican Party and now includes a disproportionate number of Mr. Trump’s most passionate supporters.The former president had thoroughly dominated the weekend gathering in Orlando — a giant golden replica of him was a top attraction for activists — and organizers of the event, better known as CPAC, put together two straw polls to gauge the next presidential field whether Mr. Trump runs or not.Mr. Trump carried 55 percent of the vote in the straw poll he was included in. Mr. DeSantis was the only Republican to reach double digits, with 21 percent support, in the straw poll that included Mr. Trump. The results were presented by Jim McLaughlin, a pollster for Mr. Trump who conducted the survey for CPAC.Throughout the weekend, many of the CPAC speakers, especially other potential Republican 2024 candidates, had hailed Mr. Trump and made a case for his achievements to loud ovations on Friday and Saturday. “Donald J. Trump ain’t going anywhere,” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said on Friday to thunderous applause.The results were released on Sunday afternoon just before Mr. Trump appeared at CPAC to make the first speech of his post-presidency.The top finish for Mr. DeSantis in the straw poll without Mr. Trump is a boost to his emergence as a leading Republican for the post-Trump era. As the governor of the crucial swing state of Florida (which is also now home to Mr. Trump), Mr. DeSantis has become a popular figure among science-skeptical Republicans for his resistance to Covid-related lockdowns.His speech on Friday capture the current post-policy phase of Republicanism. “We can sit around and have academic debates about conservative policy, we can do that,” he said. “But the question is, when the Klieg lights get hot, when the left comes after you: Will you stay strong, or will you fold?”Mr. DeSantis also vowed never to return to “the failed Republican establishment of yesteryear.” Mr. DeSantis, like other prospective presidential candidates, has not indicated if he indeed plans to run for the Republican nomination for the White House in 2024.He earned 43 percent in the straw poll without Mr. Trump, with Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota finishing second, with 11 percent.The CPAC straw polls have not proved particularly predictive of future presidential nominees. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky won three in a row in the run-up to the 2016 primary, which he quit after a poor showing in one contest — the Iowa caucuses. Senator Mitt Romney of Utah won four CPAC straw polls (in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2012) but now is a figure whose name drew boos and derision as one of Mr. Trump’s fiercest Republican critics.Still, the early 2021 success for Mr. DeSantis gives him a larger platform and bragging rights for a party that remains very much in search of any identity beyond fealty to Mr. Trump.The straw poll result was most likely discouraging for former Vice President Mike Pence, who did not attend the conference. He had served as Mr. Trump’s loyal No. 2 for four years, but his unwillingness to try to challenge or overturn the results of the 2020 election earned him Mr. Trump’s anger and, in turn, that of many in the Republican base. Mr. Pence earned 1 percent of the CPAC vote.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      At CPAC, a Reverence for Trump

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAt CPAC, a Golden Image, a Magic Wand and Reverence for TrumpThe faithful who flocked to the annual conference of conservatives made it clear that their allegiance was to the former president far more than to the Republican Party.A woman standing next to a metal replica of former President Donald Trump, made by Tommy Zegan, on the second day of the Conservative Political Action Conference.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesFeb. 28, 2021Updated 10:13 a.m. ETORLANDO, Fla. — Tommy Zegan was appalled by the few sculptures of Donald J. Trump in existence — the life-size nude statue that popped up in major cities in America, the golden toilet in London. So in 2018, he got to work.Mr. Zegan, a Trump supporter who had recently moved to Mexico from the United States, created a six-foot-tall fiberglass mold of the former president and painted it gold. Mr. Zegan’s Trump carried a magic wand in his left hand, a reference to Barack Obama’s quip in 2016 about Mr. Trump’s needing one to bring back manufacturing jobs. The sculpted Trump wore his customary suit jacket and red tie, American flag shorts — and flip-flops — “because technically he should be retired,” Mr. Zegan explained, “but he chose to be a servant.”The final product, titled “Trump and His Magic Wand,” was among the more popular attractions at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla. On Saturday, attendees flocked to the event’s merchandise hall for photos with the golden sculpture, the scene an almost literal rendering of the Republican Party, which continues to reserve its reverence not for ideas or elected officials but for one man.“It’s definitely not an idol,” Mr. Zegan insisted. (“I was a youth pastor for 18 years,” he noted.) “An idol is something somebody worships and bows down to. This is a sculpture. It’s two different things.”The defiantly pro-Trump mood at CPAC represented a culmination of a cycle that began in 2016, when Republican leaders publicly supported Mr. Trump’s nomination for president while privately presuming a landslide defeat and subsequent irrelevance. It was a pattern that held firm over the four years that followed, with many lawmakers continuing to indulge the president, all while confident that a breaking point — whether a loss in 2020 or, most recently, the riot at the Capitol by Trump supporters on Jan. 6 — was imminent.Meanwhile, their constituents’ devotion to Mr. Trump only hardened. For many voters, Mr. Trump became the party. And at CPAC, many of the thousands of attendees sporting Make America Great Again hats made it clear that their loyalties no longer lay with the institution itself.Despite four years of professions of fealty to Mr. Trump from the party’s elected officials and their orienting of the G.O.P. around his image, dozens of conservatives this weekend bristled at the Republican label, castigated the party’s current congressional leadership and vowed to leave the party altogether should Mr. Trump decide not to run for a second term in 2024.Sany Dash selling merchandise at her CPAC booth. “We’re so disgusted by Republicans that, honestly, if Trump’s not running, we don’t care who wins,” she said.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesThe party’s viability in the future, these people suggested — some as they proudly displayed their well-worn Trump 2020 T-shirts — was entirely contingent upon its members’ willingness to remain fixed in the past.“We’re so disgusted by Republicans that, honestly, if Trump’s not running, we don’t care who wins,” Sany Dash said as she worked at her Trump merchandise booth.Ms. Dash’s store, Bye Bye Democrats, was bustling on Saturday as CPAC attendees browsed bejeweled MAGA clutches, plush elephants and a tapestry featuring an image of Mr. Trump drinking coffee accompanied by text reading, “The best part of waking up is Donald Trump is president.” (“We’ve sold probably 1,400 Nancy Pelosi toilet paper rolls here,” she said. “Our toilet paper is always a hit.”)Yet Ms. Dash, an Indian-American from New York who called herself a “Day 1” Trump supporter, appeared angrier at the moment at Republicans, and specifically at Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who has urged her party to break with the former president. Ms. Dash said she was preparing to open a store in Wyoming in the next two months and call it Bye Bye Liz.“Liz Cheney is a descendant of a warmonger,” she said. “Sorry, we got into war with Iraq, and so many people died — millions of people’s lives changed.”She continued: “I don’t care what she has to say now. It’s like the Bush girls in Austin. I don’t care how woke you are in Austin, just because now you get along with Michelle Obama, but your father killed a lot of people. So excuse me, I don’t want anything to do with you people.”Like all of the dozens of CPAC attendees interviewed, Ms. Dash said she hoped Mr. Trump would run for president in 2024. There are some other Republicans she likes, including Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota — “I like Kristi Noem, because she fights back,” she said, calling her a “female Trump” — but she said she would stick with the G.O.P. only if Mr. Trump, or someone who pledges to lead as he did, was the nominee.“I mean, I’ve heard the rest of them — if they actually come through, that’s wonderful,” she said. “If they don’t, I’m going to be out of this party, just like everyone else. It’s that simple.”Della Striker, 70, is a lifelong Republican and, for the past three years, has been a fitness instructor at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s resort in Palm Beach, Fla. But she said her allegiance to Mr. Trump had come to transcend political parties. “I only voted Republican, but I never loved anyone — I voted Republican because they were at least pro-life and loved Israel.”But in 2015, she said, she heard a voice.“I’ve heard the Lord five times in my life,” she said. “I woke up in 2015 — I was waking up, and it said, ‘I want you to pray for Donald Trump.’”Six years later, Ms. Striker said she was “very upset.”“Seven Republicans turned on him,” she said, referring to the senators who voted to convict in Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial this month. While she had enjoyed listening to some speakers at CPAC, such as Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, she wondered why there were not more speakers she considered sufficiently pro-Trump — in particular, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.Ms. Greene, who was elected in 2020 despite a history of racist, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic remarks and her embrace of the QAnon conspiracy theory, was not on the CPAC agenda. But she attended the conference anyway, posing for photos on Saturday with throngs of fans in the hallways of the Hyatt Regency.Other CPAC attendees also questioned Ms. Greene’s absence from the agenda.Timothy Shea and Johnny Flynn, a Republican who is running for Senate in Connecticut, fist bumping in front of a cardboard cutout of Mr. Trump on the second day of the Conservative Political Action Conference.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesPamela Roehl, a Realtor from Illinois who was wearing a red “Keep America Great” cowboy hat, frowned slightly when asked if she considered herself a Republican. “I’m a conservative,” she said. For her, that meant “following the Constitution” and “America first.” She felt many speakers at this year’s conference — her fourth — fit that mold, but she was also looking forward to learning more about “the new congresswoman from Georgia.”Ms. Roehl, 55, unlocked her iPhone, whose screen background was a photo of Donald Trump Jr., and pulled up a group text to double-check that Ms. Greene was indeed in Orlando. “Yeah, I’m going to go hear her speak,” Ms. Roehl said. “I know she’s controversial with, like, the QAnon stuff and everything, but I like CPAC because you can hear people out.”Ms. Roehl acknowledged that Ms. Greene’s history of inflammatory remarks was “kind of a blemish on her,” but she saw a positive in them, too, contrasting Ms. Greene to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat. “A lot of the unfiltered women I’ve seen in politics are more like A.O.C. and other people, so it’s kind of neat to see a more conservative person kind of unfiltered,” she said.Yet when it came to other Republicans who were missing from CPAC’s agenda, including former Vice President Mike Pence and Nikki Haley, Mr. Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations, many attendees seemed ambivalent, as if those figures’ absence hadn’t even occurred to them.“No opinion,” Mr. Zegan, the sculptor of the golden Trump, said with a shrug when asked about Mr. Pence. Mr. Zegan, like several of those interviewed, expressed the false belief that the loosely affiliated group of far-left anti-fascism activists known as antifa was responsible for the riot at the Capitol (“It’s eventually going to come out,” Mr. Zegan promised). But while some said that Mr. Pence had “let down” Mr. Trump by presiding over the congressional certification of Electoral College votes, even they seemed not so much angry toward him as indifferent.As for Ms. Haley, Mr. Zegan was a bit more animated, pulling out his phone and showing a photo of a painting he had made of her. “I would love to present it to her, but I’m kind of disappointed in her,” he said. “When she bad-mouthed Trump — she should’ve just kept her opinion to herself.”In other words, two figures who were once considered rising stars in the G.O.P., who for years have had an eye to 2024, appeared to have less currency at CPAC than a freshman congresswoman known for her conspiracy theories and her devotion to Mr. Trump.Asked how he defined the Republican Party right now, Mr. Zegan grinned weakly. “In shambles,” he said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      A Day Before He Speaks, Conservative Gathering Is Mostly About Trump

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutNew Variants TrackerAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA Day Before He Speaks, Conservative Gathering Is Mostly About TrumpAt CPAC on Saturday, the focus was on praise for Mr. Trump in advance of his speech there on Sunday.Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, was one of the Republicans who lavished praise on former President Donald J. Trump at the CPAC conference in Orlando, Fla., on Saturday.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesFeb. 27, 2021, 7:36 p.m. ETORLANDO, Fla. — A pair of influential House Republicans used a conservative political gathering on Saturday to lavish praise on former President Donald J. Trump and, in ways subtle and direct, marginalize their G.O.P. colleagues who have distanced themselves from Mr. Trump in the aftermath of the Capitol riot last month.House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who faulted the former president for his role in the attack and at one point considered asking him to resign, credited Mr. Trump at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference with helping Republicans with their surprise gains in the House last year.“You know why we won that?” Mr. McCarthy asked of the 14 seats the G.O.P. claimed in 2020. “President Trump worked on all these races.” He also recalled how Mr. Trump, even when in quarantine after his coronavirus diagnosis, would do “rallies over the phone for each district.”The top House Republican sat onstage alongside Representative Jim Banks of Indiana, an emerging conservative leader who answered a question aimed at minimizing the party’s internal fractures by drawing attention to them.Mr. Banks highlighted Mr. McCarthy’s popularity before pointedly noting that “the least popular” congressional Republicans “are the ones who want to erase Donald Trump and Donald Trump supporters from our party.”If that happens, he continued, “we won’t win back the majority in 2022 — we definitely won’t win back the White House in 2024.”Neither lawmaker mentioned Representative Liz Cheney, the third-ranking House Republican. But their unprompted rhetorical embrace of the former president illustrated how little appetite there is among Ms. Cheney’s colleagues for cutting ties with Mr. Trump, as she has urged.In fact, Mr. McCarthy’s joint appearance with Mr. Banks was something of a brushback pitch at Ms. Cheney, who earlier in the week restated her hope that Republicans would move on from Mr. Trump just moments after Mr. McCarthy had said the former president should attend this conference.The Indiana Republican, who heads the conservative Republican Study Group, has sought to take a more prominent role in the caucus following Ms. Cheney’s break with Mr. Trump. On Saturday, Mr. McCarthy hailed Mr. Banks as “an amazing individual” shortly before he assailed the anti-Trump Republicans in their ranks.In the weeks since he criticized Mr. Trump over the deadly Jan. 6 attack, Mr. McCarthy has scrambled to patch up his relationship with the former president, visiting him at his home in Florida and welcoming him to play a continued role in the party.Yet he has not proved able to dissuade Mr. Trump from mounting a revenge campaign against those Republicans who voted to impeach him last month — a fact made vividly clear Friday when the former president endorsed a challenger against Representative Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump over the Capitol attack.The Coronavirus Outbreak More