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      The Republican Meltdown Shows No Sign of Cooling Off

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      Gail Collins: Bret, when we started our conversations, you generously agreed to stick to domestic issues. I’ve always steered away from commenting on foreign affairs because I have so very many colleagues who know so very much more about them than I do.But I know you’re weighed down by the situation in the Middle East. I’m gonna hand off to you here so you can share your thoughts.Bret Stephens: Thanks for raising the subject, Gail. And since I’ve written a column about it, I promise to keep it brief so we can talk about marginally less depressing things, like the increasingly plausible prospect of a second Trump term.Israel occupies such a big place in the public imagination that people often forget what a small country it is. When an estimated 700 Israelis (a number that is sure to grow, out of a total population of a little over nine million) are killed in terrorist attacks, as they have been since Hamas’s rampage began Saturday morning, that’s the proportional equivalent of around 25,000 Americans. In other words, eight 9/11s.I know some of our readers have strong feelings about Israeli policies or despise Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But what we witnessed on Saturday was pure evil. Habitual critics of Israel should at least pause to mourn the hundreds of young Israelis murdered at a music festival, the mothers and young children kidnapped to Gaza to be used as human shields, the Israeli captives brutalized, the thousands of wounded and maimed civilians who were just going about their morning on sovereign Israeli territory. And the critics should also ask whether the version of Palestine embodied by Hamas, which tyrannizes its own people even as it terrorizes its neighbor, is one they can stomach.Gail: Horrific stories like the music festival massacre make it flat-out clear how this was an abomination that has to be decried around the globe, no matter what your particular position on Palestine is.Now I will follow my own rule and dip back into domestic politics.Bret: OK, and I will have lots more to say about this in my regular column this week. I also know you’re raring to talk about those charming House Republicans who ended Kevin McCarthy’s speakership last week. But first I have to ask: How do you feel about Build the Wall Biden?Gail: I knew you were going to head for the wall! Couple of thoughts here, the first being that the money was appropriated by Congress during the Trump administration for his favorite barrier and President Biden was right when he asked for it to be reallocated to a general migration-control program.Which, of course, didn’t happen. I still hate, hate, hate the wall and all it symbolizes. But also understand why Biden didn’t want to give Republicans ammunition to claim he wasn’t trying to control the immigration problem.Now feel free to tell me that you differ.Bret: It ought to be axiomatic that you can’t have a gate without a wall. If we want more legal immigration, which we both do, we need to do more to prevent illegal immigration. It’s also a shame Biden didn’t do this two years ago when he could have traded wall building for something truly constructive, like citizenship for Dreamers and a higher annual ceiling for the number of political refugees allowed into the United States. Now he just looks desperate and reactive and late to address a crisis he kept trying to pretend wasn’t real.Not to mention the political gift this whole fiasco is to Donald Trump, who now has a slight lead over Biden in the polls. Aren’t you a wee bit nervous?Gail: Impossible not to be a wee bit nervous when Trump’s one of the options. But I still think when we really get into all the multitudinous criminal and civil trials, it’s going to be very hard for the middle-of-the-road, don’t-ask-me-yet voters to pick the Trump option.Bret: I wouldn’t get my hopes up on that front. For so many Americans, Trump’s indictments have gone from being the scandal of the century to just so much white noise on cable TV, like all of Trump’s other scandals. The only thing millions of Americans care about is whether they are better off in 2023 than they were in 2019, the last full year under Trump that wasn’t affected by the pandemic. And the sad truth is: Many believe that they aren’t.Gail: I will refrain from veering off into a discussion of how the Trump tax cuts caused the deficit to surge. Or mentioning the latest jobs report, which was really good.Bret: Shame about the high gas prices, rising mortgage rates, urban decay, a border crisis and all the other stuff my liberal friends keep thinking is just some sort of American hypochondria.Gail: It’s settled — we disagree. Time for us to get on to those embattled House Republicans. Anybody in contention for speaker of the House you actually like?Bret: You’re asking me to pick my poison. I’d say Steve Scalise, the majority leader who once described himself as “David Duke without the baggage,” is still better than Jim Jordan, but that’s because almost everyone is better than Jim Jordan, the former wrestling coach. Republicans don’t have particularly good experiences with former wrestling coaches who become speakers of the House.Admit it: You’re sorta enjoying this G.O.P. meltdown, right?Gail: At the moment, absolutely. Once again, this is a Trump creation. He was the one who engineered the nomination of so many awful House candidates that the Republicans couldn’t get the usual postpresidential election surge in the out-party’s seats. They’re not even a majority if you subtract the total loons, like our friend Matt Gaetz.But I’m not looking forward to a government shutdown, and I doubt these guys will be able to get the votes together to avoid one next month.Bret: We are in agreement. All the clichés about lunatics running the asylum, letting the foxes in the henhouse, picking the wrong week to stop sniffing glue and really futile and stupid gestures apply. A government shutdown will accomplish exactly nothing for Republicans except make them seem like the party of total dysfunction — which, of course, is what they are. Not exactly a winning political slogan.Gail: Can you make dysfunction a slogan? Maybe: Vote for this — total dys!Bret: Our colleague Michelle Goldberg got it right last week when she said that centrist Republicans would have been smart to team up with Democrats to elect a unity candidate as speaker, someone like Pennsylvania’s Brian Fitzpatrick, a moderate Republican. But of course, that would have meant putting country over party, a slogan that John McCain ran for president on but hardly exists today as a meaningful concept.Gail: You know, my first real covering of a presidential race was the one in 2000, and McCain was my focus. I followed him around on his early trips to New Hampshire. He’d drive to a town and talk to some small veterans’ gathering or student club or anybody who’d ask him. And his obsession was campaign finance reform.It was pretty wonderful to watch up close. Later, he got a bill passed that improved the regulations. Can’t think of a current Republican candidate who is superfocused on driving out big-money donors.Bret: I thought McCain was wrong about campaign finance reform; he would often be the first to admit that he was wrong about a lot of stuff. But politics was more fun, more functional, more humane and more honorable when his way of doing business ruled Congress than it is with the current gang of ideological gangsters.Gail: So true.Bret: Speaking of our political malfunctions, our colleague Alex Kingsbury had a really thoughtful Opinion audio short talking about how violent Trump’s rhetoric has become. Trump had suggested that Gen. Mark Milley had behaved treasonously and said shoplifters deserved to be executed. One point Alex makes is that a second Trump term would very likely be much worse than the first. Do you agree, or do you think it will be the same Spiro Agnew-Inspector Clouseau mash-up we had last time?Gail: You know, a basic rule of Trumpism is that he always gets worse. Alex’s piece is smart, and his prediction is deeply depressing.Bret: The scary scenario is that Trump 2.0 makes no concessions to the normal conservatives who populated the first administration: people like Gary Cohn and H.R. McMaster and Scott Gottlieb. So imagine Stephen Miller as secretary of homeland security, Tucker Carlson as secretary of state, Sean Hannity as director of national intelligence and Vivek Ramaswamy as vice president. This could be an administration that would pull the United States out of NATO, defund Ukraine, invade Mexico and invite Vladimir Putin for skeet shooting at Camp David.Gail: As I’ve pointed out before, this is one reason people watch football.Bret: Just wait until Steve Bannon somehow becomes N.F.L. commissioner during the second Trump term.Gail: One last issue: I know you’re not in favor of bringing up global warming when it’s time to admire the leaves, but whenever the weather gets bad now, I worry that it’s a hint of more dire things to come. This winter, if it’s colder than usual, I’ll be miserable because it’s … cold. But now I can’t really feel totally chipper if it’s warm, either.Bret: I really am concerned with the climate. But, hey, we may as well enjoy some nice fall weather while we still can.Gail: You totally win that thought. Look for the good moments whenever you can.Here at the end, you generally conclude with a poem or a nod to a great piece you read. Particularly eager to hear it this week.Bret: Did you know that one of Shakespeare’s sonnets touches on climate change? Here is another gem my dad had the good sense to make me memorize:When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defac’dThe rich proud cost of outworn buried age;When sometime lofty towers I see down-ras’dAnd brass eternal slave to mortal rage;When I have seen the hungry ocean gainAdvantage on the kingdom of the shore,And the firm soil win of the wat’ry main,Increasing store with loss and loss with store;When I have seen such interchange of state,Or state itself confounded to decay;Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,That Time will come and take my love away.This thought is as a death, which cannot chooseBut weep to have that which it fears to lose.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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      The Hidden Moral Injury of ‘OK Boomer’

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      Mourners gathered around San Francisco City Hall this week to remember Senator Dianne Feinstein, one of the most formidable politicians of her generation. Her passing meant not just the end of her political career, but also the end of a furious argument over her age and condition. Why did she stay in the Senate for so long? And even so, as one argument ends, others continue: about Joe Biden, Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump and many others.I can’t remember the last time our country had a longer or more agonizing conversation about age. It kicked off in the most morally troubling way possible, in the early days of the pandemic, when a number of politicians, celebrities and even ordinary people minimized the severity of the disease in language that diminished the value of older Americans.Notoriously, in March 2020, Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor of Texas, went on Tucker Carlson’s television show and suggested that senior citizens should be “willing to take a chance” on their survival to preserve the American economy. In New York, nursing home deaths were deliberately concealed, an act that publicly minimized the magnitude of the loss.The right-wing influencer Candace Owens dismissed the seriousness of Covid, because, in her words, “people think it’s novel that 80 year olds are dying at a high rate from a flu.” I heard similar sentiments from members of my own community throughout the lockdowns. I can’t tell you how many times someone said, when an older person died, “How much time did they have left anyway?”This debate unfolded as the term “OK Boomer” was taking off, both as a silly mockery of tech-ignorant grandparents and an angry battle cry against an older generation that younger Americans believe failed them. Worse still, they just won’t get out of the way.It’s impossible to ignore the advanced age of key American leaders. Joe Biden is 80. Donald Trump is 77. Mitch McConnell is 81. Chuck Grassley is 90. Feinstein was 90 when she died in office. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was 87. Age was on 76-year-old Mitt Romney’s mind when he announced that he wouldn’t seek re-election to the Senate. “At the end of another term, I’d be in my mid-80s. Frankly, it’s time for a new generation of leaders,” he said.I don’t equate all these situations. Some of the sentiments expressed at the start of the pandemic were monstrous. Concerns about aging and often infirm leaders at the highest levels of American politics, in all three branches of government, are far more understandable and much less grotesque than asking senior citizens to court death in the midst of a pandemic. The generational dismissiveness inherent in “OK Boomer” lies somewhere in between. Nonetheless, there is a common theme — a shift to viewing older people in America not as assets, but rather as obstacles. They’re barriers to our own dreams and ambitions.One column is insufficient for teasing out all the reasons for this shift, but I want to explore one aspect that bothers me greatly. The centrality of work and career to our sense of self and identity — especially in America’s educated classes — is damaging old and young alike. In 2019, Derek Thompson popularized the term “workism” in The Atlantic to describe how our careers have “morphed into a religious identity.” Earlier this year, he summed up the “history of work” like this: “from jobs to careers to callings.”In January, the Pew Research Center released a startling report describing parents’ priorities for their children. An extraordinary 88 percent said that financial independence was extremely or very important. The same percentage placed the same priority on their kids having careers they enjoy. In contrast, only 21 percent said it was extremely or very important for their children to get married. A mere 20 percent said it was extremely or very important for their kids to have children.Workism tells older Americans who might think otherwise that their job is core to who they are. Likewise, workism tells younger Americans that their job will define them. It is core to who they’re becoming. Read in this way, it is easy to see why older Americans are reluctant to simply “step aside.” If they feel able — and it’s easier to feel able when your job centers on your mind rather than your body — then the demand to leave is an attack on their essential identity.At the same time, for those who are seeking to forge their identity, the obstacle of aging leadership can be maddening. Young professionals do seek mentorship, of course, but all too often mentors are seen as valuable only so long as they keep giving. And then, when they’ve given all they can, they must decrease, so that their protégés can increase and take their place in the sun.It’s necessary to think hard about our first answers to a deceptively simple question: “Who are you?” If my honest first response is “I am a columnist” more than a husband, a father, or a grandfather, then when I get older I will wrap my arms around that identity and refuse to let go. If that first answer is centered on faith and family, then the sunset of my career will not be the sunset of my purpose. I will be more willing to release that which I value less because I still preserve that which I value most.But just as older Americans can have an obligation to let go of professions and power, young Americans can have obligations to hold on to their elders, to treasure them rather than shove them aside. Ancient wisdom can speak to modern conflicts, and ever since the onset of the generational conflicts during the pandemic, I’ve pondered a key part of the Westminster Larger Catechism, an almost 400-year-old statement of Protestant theology. It takes an expansive view of the Fifth Commandment, “Honor thy father and thy mother.” The catechism asserts that father and mother don’t merely refer to your biological parents, but to “all superiors in age and gifts.”And what duties do we owe to the older people in our lives? The catechism outlines a beautiful balance. We are called to the “defense and maintenance of their persons and authority” at the same time that we are “bearing with their infirmities, and covering them in love.” In a true ethic of respect and care, the spirit of “OK Boomer” is nowhere to be found.The Mitt Romney Christmas card is legendary in some niche circles in Washington. Every December, he sends out a simple picture of his growing family. You can Google it and see it expand, year by year. First, he and his five sons could field a Romney basketball team. Then, when the sons married and had children, they could field a Romney football team. But that picture is also a declaration — this is who I am.Skeptics might claim that Romney let go of his power because holding it would be hard. In these polarized times, he was vulnerable to a challenge from the Utah right. Perhaps, but it’s also true that he retains immense purpose, and the picture captures that purpose. An ethos that locates our meaning in those relationships can tell the young to value the wisdom and experience of the old and tell our nation’s older generations that great blessings can flow from the end of even the most rewarding careers.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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      Now Is the Time to Pay Attention to Trump’s Violent Language

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      Donald Trump has never been shy with his language but recently, the editor Alex Kingsbury argues, his violent speech has escalated. In the last few weeks alone, Trump suggested his own former general was treasonous, said that shoplifters should be shot and exhorted his followers to “go after” New York’s attorney general. Kingsbury says he understands why voters tune Trump out, but stresses the need to pay attention and take action for the sake of American democracy.Illustration by Akshita Chandra/The New York Times; Photograph by Kenny Holston/The New York TimesThe 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.This Opinion short was produced by Jillian Weinberger. It was edited by Kaari Pitkin, Alison Bruzek and Annie-Rose Strasser. Mixing by Pat McCusker. Original music by Carole Sabouraud, Sonia Herrero and Pat McCusker. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. More

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      The Climate Fight Will Be Won in the Appliance Aisle

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      More than a year after its passage, much about President Biden’s climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, is working.America is putting in more solar panels than ever before, with installations expected to be up 52 percent compared with last year. The law has helped lock in America’s transition to electric vehicles. Companies have announced more than $60 billion in E.V. manufacturing investments since the I.R.A. passed, and Hyundai is rushing to finish its new E.V. factory in Georgia because the law’s incentives are so good. Across the country, investment in all forms of clean-energy manufacturing has ramped up, with spending this spring five times the level of two years ago, according to a new tracker from M.I.T. and the Rhodium Group, a research firm.The law is supposed to do more than transform the economy, though. It’s also supposed to change how and even where Americans live. The I.R.A. contains nearly $9 billion in rebates meant to help people upgrade and decarbonize their homes — for example, install an induction stove, a heat pump or a new electrical or insulation system. Since the climate law passed last year, Mr. Biden and Democrats in Congress have hyped the savings on energy that these policies will bring to consumers; that is, after all, the inflation that the law is meant to be reducing.But I have grown worried about these efforts — and about the next phase of the I.R.A.’s implementation more broadly. The building sector accounts for about 13 percent of America’s climate pollution, so the success of these programs is essential to the country’s decarbonization efforts. Yet more important, the execution of these programs poses a political risk for the Biden administration. These rebate and tax credit programs are some of the law’s most visible provisions. Other than the law’s electric vehicle subsidies, these home-focused policies will be most Americans’ best opportunity to get I.R.A. money in their pockets.If the programs fail, they could seriously mar the I.R.A.’s public image. And right now, they are faltering.Perhaps the biggest problem is inherent to their design. The most successful federal programs are simple, straightforward and easy to use. Think of the U.S. Postal Service sending free at-home Covid tests to all Americans or the relative ease of signing up for and receiving Social Security benefits. These new home-upgrade programs, meanwhile, seem likely to be especially persnickety, complicated and onerous for many Americans.That’s because, first, there are a lot of programs in play. Although the I.R.A. streamlined some of the most important existing climate tax credits (for example, for greening the grid), it included four home-focused programs. Two of these programs are tax credits meant to give Americans a tax discount when they install a new rooftop solar system, a geothermal-powered heater, a heat pump or another technology that reduces demand for carbon-emitting fossil fuels. Unlike other tax credits in the law, these programs have no income cap, so they can be used by wealthy Americans who can presumably afford to pay upfront to install residential equipment like a water heater. But like other new tax credits in the law, they require Americans to have some federal tax liability in the first place. If you owe nothing on your taxes, then you can’t get a discount.These credits are likely to be generous in aggregate, but in some cases they will be too small to spur a serious change of behavior. Installing a whole-home heat-pump system, for instance, can cost tens of thousands of dollars, but the I.R.A.’s new tax credit will cover only $2,000 of that in one calendar year.That’s when another set of programs is supposed to come in. The I.R.A. introduced a pair of rebate programs meant to help working- and middle-class Americans afford to upgrade appliances and other features of their homes. These two programs, known as HOMES and HEEHRA, are important. When it’s finally put in place, HEEHRA will lower the cost of heat pumps and other climate-friendly appliances at the point of sale, making them more affordable to consumers, including those who are not even aware of the policy. More than perhaps any other programs in the law, these rebates are meant to allow low-income Americans to reduce their monthly energy costs. And because they involve direct cash grants, using the rebates will not require oweing any taxes to the federal government. That is huge for retirees and Social Security recipients, many of whom have no earned income and little to no federal tax liability.Regardless of how consumers are reimbursed, the programs are exceedingly — perhaps even fatally — complicated. The reason they have yet to take effect is that although these programs will be overseen by the Department of Energy, they will be administered separately by each state’s energy office. The department is still finalizing the last few rules that will govern how these programs work. When it finishes that process, then states will apply for their share of the money. Only then — after states receive their funding and set up their programs — will they be able to start disbursing it to their residents.So far, very few state offices have received any funds from the programs — not even the preliminary funds meant to help them hire more staff members and manage administration costs. This could directly hurt the programs’ chances of success in the next year. State energy offices employ anywhere from a handful of people to more than 100, and they have now been tasked with overseeing complicated, high-stakes federal programs.The experts and business leaders I’ve talked to think that these problems will push any serious efforts to carry out the programs well into next year. Montana has said that it doesn’t expect to make rebates available until the first half of 2024. Georgia’s energy office recently estimated that rebates would become available by Sept. 30, 2024, at the latest — barely a month before the presidential election.Even then, major questions remain about how the programs will work. Democratic lawmakers have called on the Energy Department to consider allowing the rebates to be used retroactively — meaning that someone who bought, say, a heat pump in late 2022 could get free money for it under the law. But that would sharply increase the program’s complexity, and it would more quickly deplete the limited funds allocated to the rebates. The programs draw from fixed pools of funding — about $250 million per state — and when that money runs out at the state level, the rebates will lapse in most cases.This is not the only place where the I.R.A.’s implementation is mired in confusion. The initial rules of the home energy rebates have left state officials unsure of whether they can use someone’s eligibility for other social welfare programs, such as food stamps, to gauge whether they qualify for a rebate. (The Energy Department has published guidelines about this, but they are not comprehensive.) That may force states to set up expensive processes that will duplicate work that’s already been done and make it even more burdensome for people to use these programs. It’s also unclear whether households can use several Energy Department programs at once — such as the new HOMES rebates and the longstanding weatherization-assistance program — to reduce the cost of a major project.Unless the Biden administration acts now, these consumer-facing programs could be a big mess by next fall. They will have confusing criteria, work differently in each state and may require applicants to go through time-sucking paperwork before receiving any funds. They will not showcase the nimble, modern government, fighting for working people, that Mr. Biden hopes to sell to voters.The I.R.A. is going to change people’s lives — I have little doubt of that. But only eventually. And for the next year, many of the law’s benefits for average Americans will remain largely theoretical. The M.I.T. and Rhodium tracker says that of the $137 billion in announced clean-energy investment, only $37 billion — just 27 percent — has started to flow. There is a growing risk that as the presidential election arrives, the law’s most world-changing programs to stimulate clean electricity and E.V.s will have yet to show their impact, and its smaller programs will be mired in public operation headaches.There is recent precedent for such a failure. Although most Americans now approve of the Affordable Care Act, the law was blamed for Democrats’ losses in the 2010 midterms, and it remained desperately unpopular for much of the following decade. Even when Donald Trump was elected, most independents still disapproved of the law and wanted to see it rolled back. Only in 2017, when Republicans repeatedly tried to repeal the law, did popular opinion swing in its favor. It has remained popular ever since.The I.R.A., like the Affordable Care Act, aims for a higher purpose than being politically popular. But the law’s survival depends on its — and Mr. Biden’s — ability to win a literal popularity contest next year. Mr. Trump and other Republicans are already cultivating a hatred of the clean-energy transition among voters; failing consumer-facing rebate programs would be a gift to them. And if Mr. Trump wins next year, his team will have plenty of opportunities to undermine the I.R.A.’s emission-cutting policies, even without repealing the whole law.The aspirations of 30 years of climate policies ride on the I.R.A. If this one law is successful, it will open up other ways of making policy for the environment and economy; if it fails, then lawmakers will shy away from tackling climate change for years. The law’s home-rebate programs will not be large enough to fully decarbonize America’s millions of buildings. But if they are successful, then they will allow the creation of future policy that is.The I.R.A., I believe, is still on track to be a success. But voters won’t see the new E.V. factories that it’s building or the sparkling new manufacturing hubs. They will see what’s at Home Depot or in the back of their contractor’s pickup truck. And if people have to fill out 20 pages of paperwork just to save less money on a heat pump than they initially hoped for, that’s what they’ll always remember about the I.R.A.The climate fight might be waged in the streets. But it will be won in the appliance aisle.Robinson Meyer is a contributing Opinion writer and the founding executive editor of Heatmap, a media company focused on climate change.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Why Non-Trump Republicans Must Join Or Die. (They’ll Probably Still Die.)

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      I’m not sure that an assembly of presidential candidates has ever given off stronger loser vibes, if I may use a word favored by the 45th president of the United States, than the Republicans who debated at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library this week.A snap 538/Washington Post/Ipsos poll and a CNN focus group showed Ron DeSantis as the night’s winner, and that seems right: After months of campaigning and two debates, DeSantis is still the only candidate not named Donald Trump who has a clear argument for why he should be president and a record that fits his party’s trajectory and mood.On the stage with his putative rivals, that makes him the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind. Against Trump, that’s probably going to be good for an extremely distant second place.The path that I (and others) once saw for the Florida governor, where he would run on his political success and voters would drift his way out of weariness with Trump’s destructive impact on Republican fortunes, has been closed off — by DeSantis’s own struggles, the rallying effect of Trump’s indictments and now Trump’s solid general-election poll numbers against Joe Biden. The path other pundits claimed to see for non-Trump candidates, where they were supposed to run directly against Trump and call him out as a threat to the Republic, was never a realistic one for anything but a protest candidate, as Chris Christie is demonstrating.So what remains for Trump’s rivals besides loserdom? Only this: They can refuse to simply replay 2016, refuse the pathetic distinction of claiming momentum from finishing third in early primaries and figure out a way to join their powers against Trump.This is not a path to likely victory. Trump is much stronger than eight years ago, when the crowded battle for second and third place in New Hampshire and South Carolina helped him build unstoppable momentum and the idea of a Ted Cruz-Marco Rubio unity ticket was pondered but never achieved. He’s also much stronger than Bernie Sanders four years ago, when Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar traded the ego-inflating satisfactions of delegate accumulations for a place on Joe Biden’s bandwagon.But unity has been the road not taken for anti-Trump Republicans thus far, and it feels like the only scenario in which this race stays remotely interesting after the Iowa results.One problem, of course, is that unity still requires a standard-bearer — it would have been Cruz first and Rubio second in 2016, for instance, which is probably one reason Rubio didn’t make the deal — and DeSantis’s edge over his rivals isn’t wide enough for them to feel they need to defer to him.Another problem, central to Trump’s resilience, is that the different non-Trump voters want very different things. Some want DeSantis’s attempts to execute populist ambitions more effectively or the novel spin on Trumpism contained in Vivek Ramaswamy’s performance art. Others want the promise of a George W. Bush restoration offered by Nikki Haley and Tim Scott; others still want the Never Trump absolutism of Christie. Would Ramaswamy’s voters go for Scott and Haley? Doubtful. Would Scott’s or Christie’s voters accept DeSantis? Probably, but he hasn’t made the sale.Meanwhile, despite Trump’s claim that he won’t pick as his vice president anyone who has run against him, he’s been known to change his mind — and that reality influences the ambitions of Ramaswamy (who at least hopes for a Buttigieg-style cabinet spot), Scott (who seems he’s been running to be V.P. from the start) and even Haley. So, too, does the possibility that a conviction before the Republican convention somehow prevents his coronation, creating theoretical incentives for delegate accumulation, however remote the odds.All of these incentives are probably enough to prevent real consolidation. But if the non-Trump Republicans were serious enough about their larger cause, they would be planning now for the morning after Iowa. If Haley or (less plausibly) Scott comes in second and DeSantis falls to third, the Florida governor should drop out and endorse the winner. If DeSantis wins but Haley is leading in New Hampshire, then he should offer a place on his ticket, and she should accept. Christie should then obviously drop out pre-New Hampshire and endorse the Iowa winner as well. (Ramaswamy, I assume, would eventually endorse Trump.)Since this maneuvering could still just lead to Trump winning primaries by “only” 60-40 instead of 52-21-14-7-6, a final impediment to consolidation is just the fear of looking a little bit ridiculous — like Cruz and Carly Fiorina campaigning as supposed running mates in the waning moments of the 2016 primaries.And that, too, is also part of how Trump has always steamrollered his Republican opponents. They tend to hesitate, Prufrock-like, on the brink of boldness, while he rolls the dice without a single qualm or doubt.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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      Meet the Republican Voters at the Heart of the G.O.P. Identity Crisis

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      Republican voters are looking to the presidential debate stage as they decide who should win the party primaries. And even though Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, his return to the top of the ticket feels all but inevitable. But at least one-third of Republican voters are left wondering why their party can’t quit this guy.The Opinion deputy editor Patrick Healy guides us through a recent focus group discussion with 13 longtime Republican voters who are desperate for their party to get over the Trump appeal, lest the G.O.P. risk losing their support in the 2024 election.Illustration by Akshita Chandra/The New York Times; Photograph by Burazin/Getty ImagesThe 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.This Opinion Short was produced by Phoebe Lett. It was edited by Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Efim Shapiro, Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. Special thanks to Alison Bruzek and Jillian Weinberger. More

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      in Elections

      The Presidential Politics of the Autoworkers’ Strike

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      Rikki Novetsky, Olivia Natt, Eric Krupke and John Ketchum and Marion Lozano, Rowan Niemisto and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicAlthough one major strike, against Hollywood studios, was finally resolved this past week, another, against U.S. vehicle makers, is expanding. The plight of the autoworkers has now become a major point of contention in the presidential race.Jonathan Weisman, a political correspondent for The Times, explains why the strike could be an essential test along the road to the White House.On today’s episodeJonathan Weisman, a political correspondent for The New York Times.Members of the United Automobile Workers are seeking a contract with substantial wage increases.Matthew Hatcher/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBackground readingA day after President Biden appeared on a picket line with United Automobile Workers, former President Donald J. Trump spoke at an auto parts factory.The U.A.W. strike could either accelerate a wave of worker actions or stifle labor’s recent momentum.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Jonathan Weisman More

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      in Elections

      Think Nikki Haley Is the Right G.O.P. Candidate? Think Again.

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      All eyes are on Donald Trump’s top rivals ahead of Wednesday night’s second G.O.P. primary debate. And according to the Opinion columnist Pamela Paul, it is a disappointing lineup — Nikki Haley especially. Paul argues that Haley is not the moderate anti-Trump alternative she is touted to be. But rather, is an opportunist, pandering to both sides and lacking “a core philosophy and a commitment.” As a candidate, she promises to bring back the old Reagan-esque Republican values, but Paul believes that Haley is a hypocrite whose loyalty resides exclusively with her personal agenda.Illustration by Akshita Chandra/The New York Times; photograph by Scott Eisen/Getty ImagesThe 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.This Opinion short was produced by Vishakha Darbha. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Sonia Herrero. Original music by Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. More