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Over lunch a few blocks from the White House on a bright, sunny day in the summer of 2019, one of the architects of the modern Republican Party admitted he was thinking the unthinkable. If Joseph R. Biden, Jr., won his partys nomination, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III confided that he might vote for the Democrat over President Trump. For Baker, that would be a profound break with the Party he spent decades building. Until Trump came along, every Republican President for four decades had relied on Baker. Baker ran their campaigns or their White Houses, brought them to power or helped them stay there.

Not Trump, the antithesis of everything Baker stood for during his storied career as Washingtons indispensable man: the sitting President was a boorish, dishonest carnival barker who was tearing down everything Bakers party and generation had accomplishedfree-trade pacts, international alliances, American leadership in the world, nuclear-arms treaties. The words Baker kept coming up with to describe Trump to us were crazy and nuts.

But when we sat down in the fall of 2019 to talk it over again, at his office in Houston, he had changed his mind. Dont say that I will vote for Biden, Baker cautioned. I will vote for the RepublicanI really will. I wont leave my party. You can say my party has left me, because the head of it has. But I think its important, the big picture. What was the big picture? Republican control of the levers of power. Even if it means another four years of Trump in the White House.

For five years, ever since Trump first announced his Presidential candidacy, weve had a running conversation with Baker as he wrestled with conflicted feelings about the President, appalled by his erratic leadership yet unwilling to publicly break with him. We watched as Baker initially dismissed the reality-show veteran as a joke who would never win, then searched for reasons to embrace his partys choice and ignore his own personal misgivings. We saw him try to help Trump with advice and personnel recommendations only to find a President impervious to counsel. Eventually, Baker started rationalizing the outrages and forgiving the mistakes, focussing instead on those Trump Administration policies he supported.

Bakers struggle these last five years is a parable for the Republican establishment that he once embodied, a political leadership that ultimately chose to reconcile itself to what Jared Kushner, Trumps son-in-law, recently called a hostile takeover. Rather than reject a President they fear has damaged their party and may drag it down to defeat in the election five weeks from now, Republicans like Baker have doubled down on Trump without ever fully accepting himeven as the costs that Baker feared from a Trump Presidency have become all too real for the country and for Baker personally. With a pandemic raging in the U.S. that has now claimed more than two hundred thousand lives, Baker, ninety years old, and his wife fell ill last month with the coronavirus that the President had denied was a serious threat.

Few did more to build the modern Republican Party before Trump than James Addison Baker III. A courtly lawyer with a Texas twang, a genial manner, and an ear for gossip, Baker hails from Houston aristocracy but was an unlikely national and international power broker. His grandfather, one of the architects of modern Houston, had long enforced a family maxim: Work hard, study and apply yourself closely, stay on the job, and keep out of politics.

Baker ultimately disregarded that maxim thanks to a chance friendship forged on the tennis courts of the Houston Country Club with an ambitious oilman named George H.W. Bush. Through much of the nineteen-seventies, eighties, and early nineties, Baker was one of the dominant forces in both American politics and policymaking. As a delegate hunter, campaign manager, White House chief of staff, Treasury Secretary, and Secretary of State, he played a leading role at some of the most critical junctures in modern American history, capped by the peaceful end of the Cold War.

Baker had only a passing acquaintance with Trump before the 2016 Presidential campaign. When Baker was Treasury Secretary and laboring to overhaul the tax code for President Ronald Reagan, Trump was among those with special interests who objected to losing provisions that benefitted him. When the New York developer arrived at Bakers office at the Treasury Building for an appointment on July 9, 1986, he raised hell about the impact of the tax proposal on real estate. He came in there like a Storm Trooper, Baker recalled. The Treasury Secretarys patience finally wore thin, and he pointed out the window to the White House, next door. Look, he told Trump, youre at the wrong building. This building right across the street here, a guy that wants to do this is in that building, and you need to go there.

The next time he recalled hearing much about Trump was a couple of years later, when Baker was stepping down from the Cabinet to manage Bushs campaign for President, in 1988. Trump sent word through Bushs campaign adviser Lee Atwater offering himself up as a Vice-Presidential running matea proposal that Bush dismissed as strange and unbelievable, an assessment Baker shared. It was no less strange or unbelievable when Trump kicked off his own campaign for President in 2015 and promptly demolished a field of experienced Republican rivals, including Jeb Bush, a son of Bakers friend. As he found himself falling short, Jeb warned, presciently, that Trump was a chaos candidate who would become a chaos President. But Baker was not ready to give up on the Republican Party just because it was embracing this crude outsider.

In March, 2016, at a memorial service for Nancy Reagan, where Baker delivered the eulogy, he found himself talking politics with former Secretary of State George Shultz, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, of Canada. I see some eerie parallels to the way Reagan came up and the way Trump is coming up, Baker recalled telling them over lunch. Not that they were precisely the same but they were both disruptors feared by the establishment, not to mention entertainers before they became politicians. They both appealed to disaffected Midwest Democrats who flocked to the Make America Great Again slogan first used by Reagan and later adopted by Trump. We thought he was a grade-B movie actor, Bedtime for Bonzo, he was going to get us in a nuclear war, and we were scared to death, Baker recalled saying to the other lunch guests, as he reflected on the initial fears of Reagan. And look at the people he brought into the Republican Party, and then I see somewhat the same kind of phenomenon at work here.

Bakers effort to see Trump in the best light struck Mulroney, who was friendly with the real-estate developer in Palm Beach, Florida, where they both lived part of the year. When Mulroney returned home, he called Trump and told him about what Baker had said. I think that you should put in a call to Jim Baker and visit with him, Mulroney told him. Hell give you nothing but the straight talk and good advice. Trump agreed. A call was set up, and they ended up speaking for twenty minutes.

I really think you need to be thinking about pivoting to becoming more Presidential, Baker told the candidate.

I hear that a lot, Trump said. But, when Im under attack, I have to fight back. And, as far as Trump was concerned, he was always under attack.

Not long after their phone conversation, Trumps campaign Convention manager, Paul Manafort, called Baker. Manafort had worked for Baker during the 1976 Republican Convention, counting delegates for President Gerald R. Ford before going on to a long and ultimately criminal career as a big-money lobbyist for an array of Russian-aligned interests. At that point, though, Manafort was the bridge between an insurgent candidate and the G.O.P. establishment. Manafort asked Baker to meet with Trump. Baker agreed, reasoning that he had met with other Republican candidates. One afternoon, he slipped into the offices of a Washington law firm that worked for Trumps campaign and the two sat down for about twenty-five minutes. Baker handed Trump a two-page list of suggestions for what to do now that he was becoming the nominee.

You do not need to abandon your outsider/rebel persona, Bakers memo said. But you do need to bring on board other voters if you expect to win. Stop attacking people who might be allies, Baker urged. Dont feed the shoot-from-the-lip big mouth narrative. Reach out to women, minorities, and establishment Republicans. Steer clear of isolationism; embrace a more balanced immigration plan; stop talking about getting rid of NATO; do not advocate a new arms race.

Baker, the master of compromise, recommended negotiating with Democrats, much as he had done brokering a landmark Social Security deal in 1983 and the tax overhaul in 1986. These suggestions, Baker concluded, come to you from one who, at the age of eighty-six, doesnt want anything except a Republican president in 2017 who is like the four I was privileged to have served.

The meeting was supposed to be off the record, but naturally it leaked almost immediately. That was why Baker gave Trump the two-page paper in the first place, so that the campaign could not spin the meeting as a quasi-endorsement. Baker had, in effect, laid out conditions for his support, conditions that Trump would never meet. Baker was recommending that Trump abandon the political formula that had taken him to the brink of the Republican nomination, that had enabled him to triumph over sixteen other candidates. Trump would never do that. He would not pivot to the center, as the candidates of Bakers day had invariably done. He did not care about being Presidential. He would never be like the four Republican Presidents Baker had served.

Bakers flirtation with Trump was enough to cause heartache among his friends and family. He got a call one day from Tom Brokaw, the now-retired NBC anchor who had become a close friend. Jim, you do not want to do this, Brokaw warned him. You served your country nobly and your party admirably and youre at an age and stage, Im telling you, as a friend, that this is not a good move. Baker was hardly convinced by Trump. Hes probably his own worst enemy, he reflected to us one day shortly before the 2016 Republican Convention. I dont think hes disciplined enough to do what he needs to do. But, he added, Im a Republican and I will tell you thisIve always believed at the end of the day there has to be a really overriding reason why you wouldnt support the nominee of your party.

A few months later, on Halloween, with the election days away, we sat down with Baker in his favorite suite at the Willard Hotel, near the White House. The guy is nuts, he sighed. Hes crazy. I will not endorse him. He ticked off some of the ways that Trump was promising to upend everything Baker had built. Hes against free trade. Hes talking about NATO being a failed alliance. Hes dumping all over NAFTA, a trade agreement that Baker had a role in forging. That was a hell of a deal, he said, shaking his head.

So could Jim Baker, the very definition of the establishment, really vote for Donald Trump? Baker looked stricken. Well, he said, almost pleadingly, I havent voted for him yet.

Baker had a ready-made excuse to vote against Trump, given the candidates vilification of the Bushes. The Bush family loathed Trump. One day, when we met with them in the midst of the 2016 campaign, Barbara Bush scrunched her face in horror at the thought of Trump as President. Were talking about ego that knows no bounds, she said. Months later, she wrote in her son Jebs name on her ballot while her husband and her eldest son, George W. Bush, also voted against Trump, the elder former President casting his ballot for Hillary Clinton and the younger for none of the above.

Yet Baker could not bring himself to follow their lead and bolt from the Party. Im a conservative, he explained, almost with a shrug. Better to have a conservative in the Oval Office than a liberal, even if hes crazy. His compromise was not to publicly come out for Trumpno statement, no joint appearance. But, in the privacy of the voting booth, Baker later told us, he voted for Trump.

Still, the ambivalence with Trump that we found in all our conversations with Baker was real, too. During the succeeding four years, Baker would be offended by the new Presidents sheer incompetence even more than the outrageous tweets and statements. The failure to hire an effective staff, the myriad ethical scandals, the gratuitous insults to alliesit all grated.

Baker recommended the new President appoint his friend, Rex Tillerson, the chief executive of ExxonMobil, as his first Secretary of State. Im hopeful Trump will listen to him, Baker told us. Trump did not. Tillerson was cast aside just as so many others would be. Every few months, we sat down with Baker again, and he would roll his eyes or make a face when asked about the latest Trump outrage.

By the time the House brought impeachment charges against Trump, Baker had all but given up. As the elder Bushs White House chief of staff in 1992, Baker had rebuffed attempts to seek campaign help from Russia and Britain. Now Trump was charged with leveraging military aid to force Ukraine to help him denigrate his domestic rivals. Egregious. Inappropriate. Wrong, Baker told us. But then he added, Not a crime. As the hearings proceeded toward the inevitable trial, Baker assumed correctly that the Republican-controlled Senate would not convict the President. But, boy, its hard to defend the antics, he allowed. Thats the only way to say it.

In the end, Baker was against Trump but could never bring himself to become an outright Never Trumper. If Trump was Republicanism now, then rejecting the President meant rejecting the Party. Baker saw that clearly from the start. What he had learned in a lifetime of wielding power was that on the outside you have none. Becoming a Never Trumper and publicly embracing Biden would have meant giving up whatever modest influence he had left; whether he actually needed it anymore was not the point. He had succeeded by working within institutions, not by blowing them up. He worked fundamentally with the world as he found it.

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The Private Trump Angst of the Republican Icon James Baker - The New Yorker

As she and her husband watched hospitalizations skyrocket in Houston, they turned their attention to the election, and began to research the two Republican candidates in their district vying to succeed Mr. Olson, only to be disappointed.

Houston was just out of control, and not one of those candidates talked about what were going to do about Covid, Mr. Mattison, an engineer and Army veteran, said in a phone interview.

Farha Ahmed, a lawyer in Sugar Land, said she has consistently voted Republican for the past 30 years and previously served as general counsel for her countys local Republican Party. She plans to support Mr. Kulkarni in November.

I dont see a lot of leadership" from Republicans, she said in an interview. The megaphone is really with the president and that is what has translated to all the Texas Republican leaders. It makes it very difficult for them to carry out what they need to do for health and safety reasons.

In Houstons northern suburbs, Representative Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee who won re-election in 2018 by five points, is facing a rematch from Mike Siegel, a progressive civil rights lawyer. Republican strategists say that Mr. McCauls campaign this cycle is far stronger, but privately acknowledge Mr. McCaul could fall if an exceptionally strong Democratic wave sweeps across the country.

They are worried about voters like Wade Miller, 51, in Cypress. Mr. Miller, in an interview, described himself as a longtime Republican, but said he was reluctant to support Republicans in the coming election, citing their response to the pandemic. He and his wife had stopped watching national television news because listening to the presidents talk made us angry for a little bit there, he said.

I have always been a mostly straight-ticket voter I dont think I will be this coming election, Mr. Miller said. Were talking about human lives here, and if people arent willing to do what it takes to save lives, what else arent they willing to do? I will definitely be changing my vote come November.

Link:
Alienated by Trump, Suburban Voters Sour on G.O.P. in Battle for the House - The New York Times

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Gov. Greg Abbott will skip the Republican National Convention later this month in North Carolina as he continues to respond to the coronavirus pandemic in Texas, and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick will instead chair the state's delegation to the scaled-down gathering.

Abbott announced the plan in a letter dated Friday to the national GOP chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel.

"It was an honor being selected to serve as Chair of the Texas Delegation for the 2020 Republican National Convention," Abbott wrote. "However, as we deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, my top priority remains focused on protecting the health and safety of Texans."

Later this month, Charlotte will host the national convention, which has been pared down to delegates' official business due to the pandemic. President Donald Trump initially sought to hold a portion of the convention his renomination acceptance speech in Jacksonville, Florida, but abandoned that plan late last month amid a rise in coronavirus cases there.

The Republican National Committee decided earlier this summer to limit state's in-person delegations to Charlotte to six members an especially significant reduction for Texas, which normally sends over 150 delegates to the national convention.

Patrick, who chairs Trump's reelection campaign in Texas, was already the vice chair of the delegation to Charlotte. The five other delegates who will join him now are Allen West, the new state party chairman; Toni Anne Dashiell and Robin Armstrong, Texas' two RNC members; Deon Starnes, a member of the State Republican Executive Committee; and Adolpho Telles, the chairman of the El Paso County GOP.

Abbott also missed the Republican National Convention in 2016. At the time, he was recovering from severe burns he suffered during a family vacation earlier that summer.

Abbott's letter to McDaniel was first reported by The Dallas Morning News.

The state Republican Party last month held its convention, which went virtual despite a legal battle to hold it in-person in Houston as that city experienced a dramatic surge in coronavirus infections. The convention ended up being plagued by technical issues and long delays, so much so that delegates voted to finish their business at a later date. A special party committee has since recommended that the SREC take up the unfinished business at its Sept. 19 meeting.

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Greg Abbott skipping Republican National Convention to deal with coronavirus - The Texas Tribune

Amid all the noise of an election involving Donald Trump all the inflammatory tweets and shadowy Facebook posts one set of ads has somehow managed to break through.

Theres the one of the US president shuffling down a ramp that declares that the president is not well. Theres the whispering one about Trumps loyalty problem inside his White House, campaign and family.

Theres the epic Mourning in America that remakes Reagans election-defining 1984 ad, turning the sun-bathed suburbs into a dark national portrait of pandemic and recession. On Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, those three ads alone have racked up more than 35m views.

The Lincoln Project, run by a group of renegade Republican political consultants, has crystallized one of the core narratives of the 2020 campaign in ways that few other political commercials have in past cycles.

Its work on brutal attack ads sits alongside the swift boat veterans against John Kerry in 2004, the Willie Horton ad against Michael Dukakis in 1988, and the daisy ad against Barry Goldwater in 1964.

Their reward? Disdain from independent media, distrust across the political spectrum and a recent series of harshly negative coverage from pro-Trump media outlets.

Disdain appears to be the consensus view from the pundits. Atlantic magazine called their ads personally abusive, overwrought, pointlessly salacious, and trip-wired with non sequiturs. The New Republic examined what it called the viral impotency of the Lincoln Project, suggesting they couldnt persuade voters of anything. Even the Washington Post declared most of their ads were aimed not at persuading disaffected Republicans but simply at needling the president.

But thats not how the projects leaders see their work or purpose. In their launch manifesto, published as a column in the New York Times, the founders said their goal was defeating President Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box, including his Republican supporters in Congress.

To that end, they said their efforts were about persuading enough disaffected conservatives, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in swing states and districts to defeat Trump and elect congressional majorities opposed to Trumpism.

In practice, that means organizing anti-Trump Republicans in eight swing states including Florida, Ohio, Arizona and North Carolina to hold virtual town halls and write postcards to Republican neighbors and friends. It also means organizing surrogates to speak to those voters in their home states and towns.

These are Republicans they are familiar with former representatives and mayors, said Sarah Lenti, executive director of the Lincoln Project. People like Rick Snyder in Michigan who will come out and say, Were supporting the Lincoln Project and supporting Joe Biden this cycle. It gives people the cover to say, Our leadership is doing this, so its OK for us too.

Alongside the top-tier surrogates and ads, there is a grassroots effort to organize women, veterans and evangelicals to reach out to persuade Republicans to abandon the president who dominates their party.

There are certain voters were not going to move the one-issue voters on the right to life and thats OK, says Lenti.

Were looking at 3-5% of Republicans in certain states. They tend to be more educated than not. Over 40 years old, and the demographic split is about 50/50, maybe a little towards men. Were also seeing traction with some evangelicals, and those are typically older and less educated.

That sliver of disaffected Republicans is the target for ads like Mourning in America: people who are old enough to remember the original from three decades ago are also old enough to be at the highest risk of the coronavirus. Under the leadership of Donald Trump, the narrator says, our country is weaker, and sicker, and poorer.

That was the first ad that triggered Trump enough to tweet-storm about the group two months ago: a presidential outburst that transformed the Lincoln Projects profile and resources.

A group of RINO Republicans who failed badly 12 years ago, then again 8 years ago, and then got BADLY beaten by me, a political first timer, 4 years ago, have copied (no imagination) the concept of an ad from Ronald Reagan, Morning in America, doing everything possible to get even for all of their many failures, Trump tweeted.

If Trump was truly tormented by the Reagan reference, the irony is striking. Trump himself stole, without attribution, Reagans 1980 slogan: Make America Great Again.

For the most part Trumps tweets focused on the individual founders of the project that troubles him so deeply. Given their track record in GOP politics, his dismissal of them as Rinos Republicans In Name Only means there are very few Republicans who can pass the Trump test.

The Lincoln Project founders include John Weaver, who was a political strategist for George HW Bush in 1988 and 1992, as well as John McCains strategist for a decade; Reed Galen, who worked on both Bush campaigns in 2000 and 2004; Steve Schmidt, who ran the McCain campaign in 2008 and worked in the Bush White House and campaigns before that; and George Conway, a conservative lawyer whose wife Kellyanne just happens to work as Trumps counselor in the West Wing.

The pushback did not stop there. The conservative Club for Growth took the extraordinary step of creating and airing its own ad attacking the Lincoln Project. It depicted the group as a bunch of failed strategists trying to make a quick buck by hating not just Trump but the American people.

This month they have been joined by two hit stories in the Murdoch-owned New York Post, accusing the founders of ties to Russia and tax troubles as well as secretly wanting to work for Trump. These may be confusing lines of attack for Trump supporters who have grown numb to ties to Russia, tax troubles and think highly of those who want to work for Trump.

For Democratic ad-makers, the work of the Lincoln Project has earned their respect, even if questions remain about its impact. The ads have struck a chord with progressives and activists who see the Project as validating everything weve been saying about Trump, but now being voiced by the people we usually campaign against, said Jim Margolis, a veteran Democratic strategist and ad-maker for the Obama and Clinton campaigns. The question is whether independent voters, moderate Republicans and white suburban voters will respond as well.

If the objective is modest moving a point or two in the right states with the right people I think they can help win the election. Remember: Hillary Clinton lost the presidency in 2016 by less than one point in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. So even small gains can mean the difference between a Trump second term and a new day in America.

But for some of the ads it is clear they are engaged in a battle for the attention of a singular target.

Some of these ads have an audience of one, says Lenti. Thats always been part of the strategy. Because every time he gets off message, spewing grievances, hes not campaigning. The idea is to get him off message again and again and again. It bothers him. We hear from people inside the White House that he wants them to make us go away. But were not going away.

Trumps concern about the Lincoln Project has only helped to fill its coffers. After seeing Mourning In America, Trump stepped off Marine One and talked to reporters before boarding Air Force One.

They should not call it the Lincoln Project, he complained, after taking more potshots at its founders. Its not fair to Abraham Lincoln, a great president. They should call it the Losers Project.

Instead of turning them into losers, Trump helped raise $2m for his sworn enemies. The group raked in more than $20m by the end of June, far ahead of its target of raising $30m by the end of the election cycle. Most of those funds came after Trumps attacks in May, with small donors making up the bulk of its supporters: the average donation is around $50.

Now the group has enough funds to go after Trumps supporters in tight Senate races. This week it placed its biggest ad buy $4m in Alaska, Maine and Montana as the expanded battlefield underscores its bigger goal.

I dont think this wing of the party is going away, says Lenti. Our job isnt to reform the Republican party. Our job is to end Trump and Trumpism.

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Could this anti-Trump Republican group take down the president? - The Guardian

The death of Herman Cain, attributed to the coronavirus, has made Republicans and President Trump face the reality of the pandemic as it hit closer to home than ever before, claiming a prominent conservative ally whose frequently dismissive attitude about taking the threat seriously reflected the hands-off inconsistency of party leaders.

Mr. Cain, a former business executive and candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, had an irreverent, confrontational style that mirrored the presidents own brand of contrarian politics. In his more recent role as a public face for the presidents re-election campaign, he became an emblem of Trump-supporting, mask-defiant science skeptics, openly if not aggressively disdainful of public health officials who warned Americans to avoid large crowds, cover their faces and do as much as possible to limit contact with others.

His view was shared by many conservatives, who have applied a hard-nosed, culture-war mentality to the virus, the most serious public health crisis in a century.

Mr. Trump wrote in praise of Mr. Cain on Twitter on Thursday, calling him a Powerful Voice of Freedom and all that is good.

But Mr. Cains death showed how ill suited that mind-set is to the countrys current predicament. More than 150,000 Americans have died in a pandemic that is ravaging parts of the country where conservative leaders long resisted taking steps that have slowed the virus elsewhere, such as mask mandates and stay-at-home orders.

Those include places like Tulsa, Okla., where Mr. Cain attended a Trump campaign rally in June and showed his disregard for safety precautions on social media shortly before receiving a diagnosis for the virus.

With a uniformity that has defied rising death tolls in their own backyards, Republicans at the federal, state and local levels have adopted a similar tone of skepticism and defiance, rejecting the advice of public health officials and deferring instead to principles they said were equally important: conservative values of economic freedom and personal liberty.

From Arizona to Texas, as infection rates soared and hospital beds filled up, Republican governors stood in the way of local governments that wanted to do more. They overruled city mask mandates, arguing that it amounted to a form of government overreach. They said that requiring businesses to close or limit their capacity would strangle the economy and save few lives. They accused the news media and political opponents of exaggerating the risks to hurt the presidents chances for re-election.

They scorned the experts and mocked those who heeded the governments warnings. Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, a close ally and vigorous defender of the president, walked around the Capitol in March wearing a Hazmat-style gas mask as he prepared to vote on coronavirus relief legislation.

The governor of Oklahoma, Kevin Stitt, posted a picture of himself eating dinner with his family at a crowded restaurant a few days after the World Health Organization formally declared a pandemic. Its packed tonight! his caption read.

And this month in Missouri, Gov. Mike Parson scoffed at the idea of a mask mandate, telling a cheering crowd of supporters, You dont need government to tell you to wear a dang mask.

Yet the virus more than occasionally reminded them that it strikes people of all political stripes indiscriminately.

After his mask stunt, Mr. Gaetz learned that he might have been exposed to someone who was infected and attended the Conservative Political Action Conference. He said he would enter quarantine, and he did not end up having the virus. Mr. Stitt tested positive for the virus this month, the first governor in the country to do so. He continues to resist pressure to issue a mask order, calling it a personal preference.

And this week, adding to the list of people with direct access to the president who have tested positive was Robert C. OBrien, the national security adviser. Others include Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Fox News commentator who is dating Donald Trump Jr. and is helping lead the Trump campaigns fund-raising efforts.

Among some conservative defenders of the president, there is a sense that complaints about masks and other mandates as a threat to personal freedom are overblown.

Grover Norquist, a conservative activist who lobbies for lower taxes and regulations and has served on the board of the National Rifle Association, said that using Mr. Cains death to attack Republicans is going two steps too far. But he added, Theres a difference between not being excited about being told what to do and refusing to do it altogether. But on something like this, when youre out in public, you should wear a mask because its not about you.

Yet there have been few indications that the spate of coronavirus cases among Republicans is leading to any kind of major reckoning in the party. After Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas tested positive this week, he blamed his diagnosis on wearing a mask.

Mr. Trump, who has spoken of being rattled by the death of an old friend who contracted the virus, has been photographed only rarely with a mask on and has repeatedly said he does not consider wearing one the appropriate step for him. He has allowed, however, that he is supportive of mask-wearing by others.

The visuals that emerged from the White House from the beginning of the pandemic suggested an attitude that was, at best, not overly cautious. At an event at the White House in March with executives from Walmart and Walgreens in which Mr. Trump praised his administrations preparedness, he shook hands and patted the backs of multiple people, prompting critics to complain that the president was sending mixed signals to the public.

When the virus re-emerged after it initially appeared to have been subdued, it took weeks of public pressure and private lobbying by advisers and friends before Mr. Trump more frankly acknowledged the toll the resurgent virus has taken across the American South and West.

Even some of the harshest critics of Republican leadership said they did not think that Mr. Cains death would cause much reflection inside the party.

Evan McMullin, who ran against Mr. Trump as a third-party candidate in 2016, wrote on Twitter that Mr. Cain was the first senior casualty of the science denial Trump cult.

In an interview, Mr. McMullin said he had little hope this was a wake-up call. I wish that was the case, he said. Many voters who support the president live in a totally different, alternate information environment in which the news of Herman Cains death his visit to the Trump rally, his decision to not wear a mask wont reach them.

Mr. Cain was eager to display his disregard for the experts and their warnings. Before the Trump rally in Tulsa, which local public health officials had urged the campaign to postpone, Mr. Cain urged people to Ignore the outrage and to defy the left-wing shaming!

Mr. Trump did at one point reschedule the rally, but only after an outpouring of anger that it had been scheduled for the day of Juneteenth, the holiday commemorating the emancipation of slaves.

When the rally went forward on June 20, Mr. Cain, one of the most prominent African-American Trump supporters and a member of his Black Voices for Trump coalition, posed for a photo with other Black attendees. None, including him, wore masks.

A few hours before the event, the campaign had disclosed that six Trump campaign staff members who had been working on the rally had tested positive for the coronavirus during a routine screening.

Mr. Cain tested positive on June 29. On July 2, his staff announced that he had been hospitalized. Weighing in on the no-mask policy for a Trump rally planned at Mount Rushmore on July 3, Mr. Cains Twitter feed was approving: PEOPLE ARE FED UP!

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Will Herman Cains Death Change Republican Views on the Virus and Masks? - The New York Times