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      Progressive Groups Push Democrats on ‘Freedom’ for Midterm Election Message

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      For much of the midterm campaign, Democrats have grappled with how to define their message, weighing slogans like “Democrats deliver” and “Build back better,” and issuing warnings against “ultra-MAGA” Republicans.Now, a coalition of progressive organizations has settled on what its leaders hope will be a unified pitch from the left. This November, they plan to argue, Americans must vote to protect the fundamental freedoms that “Trump Republicans” are trying to take away.That pitch is the product of a monthslong midterms messaging project called the “Protect Our Freedoms” initiative, fueled by polling and ad testing.The move is the latest evidence that Democrats at every level of the party and of varying ideological stripes — including President Biden, abortion rights activists in Kansas and, now, a constellation of left-leaning groups — are increasingly seeking to reclaim language about freedom and personal liberty from Republicans. It is a dynamic that grew out of the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June, and one that is intensifying as more states navigate abortion bans while Republicans nominate election deniers for high office.The messaging project is a sprawling effort from progressive groups, activists and strategists aimed at getting Democrats on the same page, as they seek to crystallize the choice between the two parties and emphasize the consequential nature of the midterm elections.“Freedom is a powerful frame for this election, to make clear what the stakes are,” said Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, an architect of the messaging project as well as a co-founder and vice president of Way to Win, a collective of left-leaning Democratic donors and political strategists.What is most striking about the initiative is not the initial size of the investment — there is a $5 million national paid-media component associated with the campaign, a relatively modest sum — but the fact that left-wing organizations are now embracing language that has been more closely associated with small-government-minded conservatives.“For far too long, we’ve witnessed how the right wing has masterfully sort of owned and captured the language of freedom,” said Maurice Mitchell, the national director of the Working Families Party, one of the organizations involved in the “Protect Our Freedoms” effort. Such language has never been limited to the right: former President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously promoted the “Four Freedoms,” for instance, and a major campaign for marriage equality was framed as Freedom to Marry. But Republicans have long cast their party as the bastion of freedom — whether as the defender of free markets or more recently, in opposition to coronavirus-related mandates.In a statement, Emma Vaughn, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, highlighted the effort to paint Democrats as anti-freedom over pandemic measures, calling them the party of “shuttered businesses, school lockdowns, masks on toddlers and forced vaccines.”Ads that draw from the “Protect Our Freedoms” messaging argue that core American values — such as free elections in which the will of the people is upheld, or freedom for individuals to make decisions for their families — are now uniquely jeopardized. Just last week, a group of academics issued stark warnings to Mr. Biden about the state of democracy, The Washington Post reported.An ad produced by Way To Win Action Fund suggests that Americans must vote to protect the fundamental freedoms that “Trump Republicans” are trying to take away.Way To Win Action Fund“We’ve seen what happens when Trump Republicans have claimed to be for freedom, only to take it away and impose their will,” says an ad paid for by Way to Win Action Fund, as images from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol flash across the screen. “This November, remember: You’re a part of the fight for freedom.”Ms. Fernandez Ancona said the national ad campaign offers “the example of the message that we’re trying to put forward,” one that leaders of the initiative hope will be echoed in grass-roots efforts and advertising from individual organizations.MoveOn Political Action is planning a television and digital ad buy for later this month, aimed at statewide races in Arizona and Pennsylvania, that will incorporate “Protect Our Freedoms” messaging, said Rahna Epting, the executive director of MoveOn. And officials with several organizations said the messaging lessons will mold how they engage voters at their doors or on the phone.Ten organizations were involved in the “Protect Our Freedoms” messaging initiative, including Indivisible and Future Forward.Within the broader Democratic ecosystem, candidates and party institutions are still pursuing a broad range of messaging tactics.But in an interview last week after Kansas voters defeated an anti-abortion measure, Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, the chair of the House Democratic campaign arm, also reached for the “freedom” language as he described the choice between the two political parties.“The MAGA movement will take away your rights, your benefits, your freedoms, and you have to vote Democratic if you care about those things,” he said.Research assembled by the “Protect Our Freedoms” campaign helps explain why Democrats see such messaging as potent: A data point cited in a campaign presentation said that 42 percent of individuals, when asked in a survey to identify the values that mattered most to them as Americans, picked “freedom and liberty,” far outpacing other options like equality and and patriotism.The presentation also said that the overturning of Roe v. Wade had opened a “persuasion window,” putting more voters into play. Anat Shenker-Osorio, a progressive consultant involved in the messaging project, said there was a powerful opening to tie “actions on Roe and on abortion to this broader framework of taking away our freedoms.”Ms. Fernandez Ancona said that “the idea of ‘freedom’ really pops.”“People need to understand that they’re going to lose things if this Republican Party wins,” she added. More

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      Herschel Walker Is Target of Ad on Domestic Abuse Accusations

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      ATLANTA — In his campaign for the Senate, Herschel Walker has not hidden his past struggles with mental illness and violence in past relationships, aspects of his background that he outlined in a 2009 memoir and that his campaign sought to address in its earliest days.Now, a group of anti-Trump Republicans is hammering him over one of those episodes.In a new advertisement running on major networks in the Atlanta media market, footage of Mr. Walker scoring a touchdown for the University of Georgia is juxtaposed with close-up video of his ex-wife, Cindy Grossman, describing how he once held a gun to her temple and threatened to pull the trigger.“Do you think you know Herschel Walker?” a narrator asks. “Well, think again.”Mr. Walker has not denied Ms. Grossman’s accusations, saying his violence against her was a consequence of his struggles with mental health. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment.The ads were purchased by a subsidiary of the Republican Accountability PAC, a group that grew out of Republican Voters Against Trump, which was established in 2020 by “never-Trump” Republicans including the strategist Sarah Longwell and the writer William Kristol. It says it has allocated $10 million in negative advertising and voter mobilization efforts over the next three months to stop Mr. Walker and other candidates it views as unfit for office or a danger to democracy. They include two candidates for governor, Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Kari Lake in Nevada.The initial ad buy against Mr. Walker in the Atlanta media market is just $100,000. It would take far more to make serious inroads with Georgia’s vast Republican base, for whom Mr. Walker still retains near-godlike status from his career as a college running back. But the anti-Trump group is hoping at least to turn the heads of some swing voters.Specifically, Ms. Longwell, the group’s executive director, said it hoped to exploit what she called an emerging gap in support for candidates atop Georgia’s Republican ticket. While Mr. Walker was running roughly even in the polls with Senator Raphael Warnock, the incumbent Democrat, she said, Gov. Brian Kemp was outpacing his Democratic opponent, Stacey Abrams, by a slightly larger margin.“We think that there’s a lot of these voters in Georgia who will split their ticket, and who will vote for Kemp, who will vote for Brad Raffensperger, but cannot vote for Herschel Walker,” she said, also naming the Georgia secretary of state. “For a lot of these voters, it’s about understanding the difference between the football player and the person running for Senate.”One such voter she pointed to was Brenda James, a Republican from Columbus, Ga., who in an interview said she voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 but President Biden in 2020, according to the Republican Accountability PAC. She condemned Republicans for “attempting to manipulate and use” Mr. Walker.“Bless poor Herschel’s heart,” Ms. James said. “The man needs help. He doesn’t need to be thrust into political limelight in the way that they are doing. Frankly, I think it’s disgusting and despicable.” More

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      Dick Cheney Excoriates Trump in an Ad for His Daughter Liz Cheney

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      A new advertisement for Representative Liz Cheney’s re-election campaign features a leader of a bygone era in the Republican Party excoriating the leader of the current one.“In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual that was a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Ms. Cheney’s father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, said in the ad, released less than two weeks before Wyoming’s primary elections on Aug. 16.He praised Ms. Cheney, who has become a pariah among Republicans for her criticism of Mr. Trump and her work as vice chairwoman of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, for “honoring her oath to the Constitution when so many in our party are too scared to do so.”The one-minute ad landed with a bang Thursday on social media, where a single copy racked up seven million views. But in Wyoming, where Mr. Trump won 69.9 percent of the vote in 2020 — more than in any other state — it is highly unlikely to sway any significant number of voters in Ms. Cheney’s favor.For decades before Mr. Trump transformed the party, Mr. Cheney was one of the most influential Republicans in the nation: He was the White House chief of staff under President Gerald Ford, secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush and vice president under President George W. Bush, a position in which he wielded uncommon power and was an architect of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But the Republican Party of 2022 bears little resemblance to the party he held power in.At least six of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump will be leaving Congress in January: Four of them are retiring and two were defeated in primaries, with another two still awaiting primary results several days after voting ended in Washington State. It would take an astonishing political turnaround for Ms. Cheney to avoid joining them. In a Casper Star-Tribune poll last month, she trailed her opponent, Harriet Hageman, by 22 percentage points.In light of those numbers, the ad, like many of Ms. Cheney’s public statements as a leader of the Jan. 6 committee, seemed more of an appeal to history than one to the electorate.Mr. Trump “tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him,” Mr. Cheney said in the ad. “He’s a coward. A real man wouldn’t lie to his supporters. He lost his election and he lost big. I know it, he knows it, and, deep down, I think most Republicans know it.”Of his daughter, he continued, “There is nothing more important she will ever do than lead the effort to make sure Donald Trump is never again near the Oval Office — and she will succeed.” More

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      Eric Greitens May Just Get What He Deserves

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      On Tuesday, Republican voters in Missouri will send a signal to G.O.P. leaders nationwide about what they will and won’t accept in a top candidate in the party’s current, Trumpian era: Namely, do they want a Senate nominee who exists in a perpetual swirl of scandal, including fresh accusations of domestic violence?For much of Missouri’s Senate primary race, it sure seemed Republicans were content to careen down this path. Consistently, if narrowly, the crowded G.O.P. field was led by Eric Greitens, the state’s disgraced former governor. Leaning into his bad boy rep, Mr. Greitens sold himself as an ultra-MAGA warrior being persecuted by his political enemies — just like a certain former president! — and a good chunk of the party’s base seemed ready, even eager, to buy his line.But it appears that MAGA may have its limits even in a deep-red state like Missouri. Certainly, electability has mattered more for many Republican officials and donors there, who have been less than enthusiastic about Mr. Greitens’s candidacy. It’s not necessarily that they found his behavior morally disqualifying — this is, after all, Donald Trump’s G.O.P. — so much as they were afraid his scandals would make him a weak general election candidate. (Democrats were certainly raring to run against him.) Losing this seat, currently held by the Republican Roy Blunt, who is retiring, would be a blow to the party’s midterm dream of winning control of the Senate. But efforts to nudge Mr. Greitens out of the race only ticked him off and provided fodder for his martyr self-mythologizing. He looked to be a classic example of how the G.O.P. had lost control of its MAGA monster.Until late last month. That’s when a group of Republicans rolled out a super PAC, named Show Me Values, aimed at bringing down Mr. Greitens. Just a few weeks — and an estimated $6 million in ad spending — later, the effort seems to be working. Multiple polls show the former governor’s support slipping, dropping him behind a couple of his opponents. The state’s attorney general, Eric Schmitt, appears to have taken the lead. He, too, is an election-denying Trump suck-up. But at this point the G.O.P. is operating on a curve; simply weeding out those alleged to be abusers and other possible criminals can feel like a major achievement.Polls are not votes, and the race remains too tight for anyone to exhale. But with only days to go, it looks as though Mr. Greitens’ political resurrection may flop. This would be a good thing for the people of Missouri. It could also serve as a model, or at least an encouraging data point, for more sensible Republicans looking to stave off the worst actors and excesses of Trumpism — and maybe eventually put their party back on the road to sanity.In an election cycle awash in MAGA bomb throwers vying for the title of biggest jerk, Mr. Greitens has been a top contender. Charismatic, combative and shameless, he is in many ways the essence of Trumpism. Heading into the race, he bore the stench of the multiple scandals — including allegations of sexual misconduct — that led him to step down as governor in 2018 to avoid impeachment by the state’s Republican-dominated legislature.Then, this March, his ex-wife filed an affidavit as part of a child custody dispute, swearing that he had physically abused her and their young son. (He has denied those allegations and, of course, blames dirty politics.) This was an offense too far for many Republicans, some of whom called on Mr. Greitens to leave the race. Among these was Senator Josh Hawley, who asserted, “If you hit a woman or a child, you belong in handcuffs, not the United States Senate.”When you’ve lost the guy who gave the infamous fist salute to the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, you know you’ve crossed a red line.In another era, or another party, a candidate dragging around such sordid baggage might have slouched quietly away. But Mr. Greitens has adopted the Trump guide to making vileness and suspected criminality work for you: Brace up, double down and bray that any and all allegations are just part of — all together now! — a political witch hunt.Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Greitens is a political grievance peddler. Also like Mr. Trump, he saves his most concentrated bile for fellow Republicans. One of the most puerile ads of the midterms thus far has been Mr. Greitens’s “RINO hunting” spot, in which he leads a group of armed men in tactical gear as they storm a lovely little suburban home in search of G.O.P. heretics. “Get a RINO hunting permit,” Mr. Greitens urges. “There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.” Banned by Facebook, flagged by Twitter and trashed by pretty much everyone, the ad is pure political trolling.It was around the time of the RINO hunting ad that the Show Me Values PAC was announced. Team Greitens responded with characteristic invective. “These swamp creatures and grifters know their time at the trough is finished,” said Dylan Johnson, the campaign manager. “That’s why they’re scared of America First champion Governor Greitens.”Whatever its roots, fear is a powerful motivator. Show Me Values began gobbling up ad time like Skittles, becoming the race’s biggest spender on TV. The spots detailing the abuse allegations by Mr. Greitens’s ex-wife appear particularly devastating. It seems that, with the proper message — and money to drive that message home — even the most flamboyant MAGA candidates can perhaps be deflated.Mr. Trump did not pioneer the brazen-it-out strategy being attempted by Mr. Greitens. But he perfected and popularized it, and under his reign, the G.O.P. has grown ever more willing to tolerate its politicians’ sketchy, creepy, violent and possibly illegal behavior, as long as they toed the line.Just look at Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, who won his primary in May, putting him on a glide path to a third term. Republican voters stuck by him despite his having been under indictment on charges of securities fraud and other naughtiness since 2015 and, in 2020, having had multiple staff members ask federal authorities to investigate him for a smorgasbord of “potential criminal offenses.”And for sheer MAGA shamelessness, it’s hard to top Representative Matt Gaetz, the Florida Panhandle’s trash-talking mini-Trump. It takes real moxie to fund-raise off the fact that one is being investigated by the feds on suspicion of child sex trafficking. But that is how Matt rolls, and his voters seem cool with it.This is not the mark of a healthy political party. Neither is it sustainable. Republican leaders need to get serious about reining in the Frankenstein’s monsters they have so long nurtured — before the party devolves even further into a circus of thugs, grifters and conspiracy nutters. This Tuesday, Missouri voters will, hopefully, take a baby step in that direction.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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      Democrats Aid Far-Right Candidate Against Republican Who Backed Impeachment

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      The House Democrats’ official campaign arm is stepping into a Western Michigan Republican primary to elevate a candidate endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump against one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him.The $425,000 advertising run is the latest in a slew of Democratic efforts to draw attention to far-right candidates, hoping that they will be easier to beat in November than more mainstream Republicans. But in this case, it could also be seen as a slap to Representative Peter Meijer, the incumbent in the Grand Rapids-area district who braved blowback from his own party over his vote to impeach Mr. Trump and is now fighting skulduggery from the right and the left.The ad, which will begin airing on Tuesday and was openly cut and funded by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, proclaims that John Gibbs, who is challenging Mr. Meijer, is “too conservative” for West Michigan. But in tone and content, it is clearly meant to appeal to pro-Trump voters in the Aug. 2 Republican primary, hailing Mr. Gibbs as “handpicked by Trump to run for Congress,” buffing his bona fides as an aide in the Trump administration and promising that he would push “that same conservative agenda in Congress,” including a hard line against illegal immigration and a stand for “patriotic education.”It is similar to an advertisement run by the House Democratic super PAC that unsuccessfully tried to bolster a pro-Trump candidate against Representative David Valadao in California, another of the 10 Republicans who voted for impeachment. That ad infuriated even some Democrats.By law, elected Democrats must stay at arm’s length from the super PAC, known as the House Majority PAC, that was responsible for the ad in Mr. Valadao’s race. But with the Gibbs ad, the campaign committee responsible for it is run by a member of Democratic leadership, Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, and the group is far more integrated into official actions.The Democratic campaign committee refused to comment on the advertisement. But the intent was clear. Mr. Meijer’s redrawn district has shifted from one that narrowly voted for Mr. Trump in 2020 to one that President Biden would have carried by nine percentage points.The tone of the current ad is bright, but if Mr. Gibbs were to win the primary, the next effort from Democrats is likely to be considerably darker. Mr. Gibbs, who was an aide to former Housing Secretary Ben Carson, could not win confirmation in 2020 to direct Mr. Trump’s Office of Personnel Management over comments he made accusing Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, of taking part in a “Satanic ritual,” and calling Democrats the party of “‘Islam, gender-bending, anti-police, ‘u racist!’”More recently, Mr. Gibbs and Mr. Meijer clashed over the legitimacy of Mr. Biden’s 2020 victory, which Mr. Gibbs baselessly called “simply mathematically impossible.”In Pennsylvania, the state’s Democratic Party singled out State Senator Doug Mastriano during his successful quest for the Republican nomination for governor, despite his propagation of false claims about the 2020 election and his presence in Washington during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Polling last month showed that Mr. Mastriano’s race against Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee, appeared to be a dead heat.Democrats believe that Michigan’s Third District, with its new boundaries, is one of the few in the country that they can take from a Republican, and they are willing to risk electing a Trump-backed election denier with a history of inflammatory remarks to make it easier on their favored candidate, Hillary Scholten.After Mr. Meijer’s impeachment vote, Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the House majority leader, praised Mr. Meijer for what he called “a very impressive display of courage and integrity.”“Guess that doesn’t count for much when a marginally increased chance of flipping a House seat is on the table,” Mr. Meijer quipped in a text message on Monday. More

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      ‘Snooki’ Is Enlisted in John Fetterman’s Campaign Trolling Dr. Oz

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      On the list of potential political vulnerabilities, ties to New Jersey are rarely a campaign killer; for all the jokes, New Jersey has offered some of the greatest musical, culinary and cultural additions to the country.But the campaign of John Fetterman, the Democratic candidate for the open Senate seat in Pennsylvania, has been repeatedly nagging his Republican opponent, Mehmet Oz, for living in New Jersey before announcing his campaign in the Keystone State.In his latest such post on Twitter, Mr. Fetterman enlisted Nicole Polizzi, a cast member of the “Jersey Shore” franchise better known as Snooki, and a self-described “hot mess on a reality show,” to chide Dr. Oz for choosing to leave New Jersey “to look for a new job.”“Personally, I don’t know why anyone would want to leave Jersey,” Ms. Polizzi says in the video, which is framed to look like a spot from Cameo, a website that allows users to pay for personal video messages from celebrities (and, apparently, Snookis).The video, a tongue-in-cheek accusation of carpetbagging, was posted to Mr. Fetterman’s Twitter account, where he has been using memes and other internet “trolling” tactics to remind voters of Dr. Oz’s ties to the Garden State.Mr. Fetterman, who is recovering from a stroke in mid-May, recently copied pictures of Dr. Oz’s mansion in New Jersey from a 2020 spread in People magazine to match a recent campaign ad set that featured Dr. Oz appearing to speak from a room in the expansive home. And Mr. Fetterman’s campaign paid to fly a banner welcoming Dr. Oz back to New Jersey along southern Jersey Shore beaches, according to NJ.com.Dr. Oz has said he lives in Bryn Athyn, Pa., a suburb of Philadelphia about 12 miles from the New Jersey border.Asked for comment, a press officer for the Oz campaign directed reporters to a tweet from Mr. Oz’s account that did not respond to any residency questions, but rather a screenshot from a newscast from a 2013 incident where Mr. Fetterman had pulled a gun on Black jogger after saying he heard gunshots in the neighborhood. (Mr. Fetterman has defended his response to this episode.) More

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      Democrats Face Deepening Peril as Republicans Seize on Inflation Fears

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      Economists warn that a blitz of midterm election campaign ads could push consumer prices even higher.WASHINGTON — Triple-digit gasoline bills. Bulging hamburger prices. A Fourth of July holiday that broke the bank.Prices are rising at the fastest rate in four decades, a painful development that has given Republicans a powerful talking point just months ahead of the midterm elections. With control of Congress very much in play, Republicans are investing heavily in a blitz of campaign advertisements that portray a dark sense of economic disarray as they seek to make inflation a political albatross for President Biden and Democrats.According to Kantar’s Campaign Media Analysis Group, candidates running in House, Senate and governor races around the country have spent nearly $22 million airing about 130,000 local and national television ads that mention inflation from early April through the beginning of July. Inflation was the 10th most common issue mentioned by Democrats and 11th most common for Republicans, according to the data, underscoring how critical the issue is to both parties this election cycle.The data released Wednesday showing that prices in June climbed 9.1 percent over the past year gave Republicans fresh ammunition against Mr. Biden and his party, ammunition that includes faulting Democrats for passing a $1.9 trillion stimulus package last year and efforts to push through additional spending in a sweeping climate and economic package known as “Build Back Better.”The intensifying focus on inflation is already weighing on Mr. Biden’s poll numbers. A New York Times/Siena College poll this week showed his approval at a meager 33 percent, with 20 percent of voters viewing jobs and the economy as the most important problem facing the country. Inflation and the cost of living followed closely behind. The poll also showed that the race for control of Congress is surprisingly tight.While gas prices have fallen from their $5 a gallon peak and there are signs that inflation might be slowing, consumers are unlikely to feel better off anytime soon. Gas prices are still much higher than they were a year ago, with the average national price for a gallon at $4.60 versus $3.15 in 2021, according to AAA.Voters view jobs and the economy as among the most important issues facing the country.Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times“It’s a very negative thing politically for the Democrats,” said Jason Furman, an economist at Harvard University and former Obama administration economic adviser. “My guess is that the negative views about inflation are so deeply baked in that nothing can change in the next few months to change them.”The White House, while acknowledging the pain that inflation is causing, has tried to deflect responsibility, saying that it is a global problem and attributing it to shortages of food and oil stemming from Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.On Wednesday, Mr. Biden called the latest Consumer Price Index “out-of-date” given the recent fall in gas prices and said the data “is a reminder that all major economies are battling this Covid-related challenge, made worse by Putin’s unconscionable aggression.”8 Signs That the Economy Is Losing SteamCard 1 of 9Worrying outlook. More

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      In Ad, Shotgun-Toting Greitens Asks Voters to Go ‘RINO Hunting’

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      A right-wing Senate candidate accompanies a squad of heavily armed men as they storm a home looking for ‘Republicans in name only.’Eric Greitens, a Republican candidate for the United States Senate in Missouri, released a violent new political advertisement on Monday showing himself racking a shotgun and accompanying a team of men armed with assault rifles as they stormed — SWAT team-style — into a home in search of “RINOs,” or Republicans in name only.“Join the MAGA crew,” Mr. Greitens, a former Navy SEAL, declares in the ad. “Get a RINO hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.”The ad by Mr. Greitens was just the latest but perhaps most menacing in a long line of Republican campaign ads featuring firearms and seeking to equate hard-core conservatism with the use of deadly weapons.It was posted online less than a week after the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol showed how threats by former President Donald J. Trump against his own vice president, Mike Pence, had helped to instigate the mob attack on the building.During a hearing by the committee on Thursday, J. Michael Luttig, a former federal judge widely respected by conservatives, suggested that Mr. Trump and his allies posed a “clear and present danger to American democracy.”The use of violent rhetoric has steadily increased in Republican circles in recent months as threats and aggressive imagery have become more commonplace in community meeting rooms, congressional offices and on the campaign trail.While much of the violent speech and image-making by Republicans has been aimed at Democrats, some of it, as in Mr. Greitens’s ad, has been focused on fellow party members thought to be insufficiently conservative.On Sunday, Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois and a member of the Jan. 6 committee, published a letter addressed to his wife from someone who had threatened to execute the couple.By midafternoon on Monday, Twitter had hidden Mr. Greitens’ new ad behind a warning saying that it violated rules about “abusive behavior.” Facebook removed the ad altogether.Mr. Greitens’s campaign made no apologies for it, however. “If anyone doesn’t get the metaphor, they are either lying or dumb,” said Dylan Johnson, the campaign manager.The ad by Mr. Greitens, a former Missouri governor, comes as his campaign for Senate has stumbled following lurid allegations of blackmail, sexual misconduct and child abuse. In March, Mr. Greitens’s former wife, Sheena Greitens, accused him of abusive behavior, including an incident she recounted that loosened one of their son’s teeth. A number of Republicans, including Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, called on Mr. Greitens then to quit the race.Mr. Greitens has sought an endorsement from Mr. Trump, so far without success. His campaign chair is Kimberly Guilfoyle, the fiancée of Donald Trump Jr.Experts have warned that violent rhetoric can often result in actual physical violence.“When individuals feel more confident and legitimate in voicing violent sentiments, it can encourage others to feel more confident in making actual violence easier,” said Robert Pape, who studies political violence at the University of Chicago. “Unfortunately, this is a self-reinforcing spiral.”Some Republicans criticized Mr. Greitens for posting the ad.“Every Republican should denounce this sick and dangerous ad from Eric Greitens,” Barbara Comstock, a former Republican congresswoman from Virginia, said on Monday. “This is just a taste of the ‘clear and present danger’ that Judge Luttig talked about last week.” More