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Establishment Republicans are looking to play a more assertive role in ensuring their preferred candidates win in competitive Senate primaries as they work to flip the upper chamber next year.

There’s broad consensus that candidate quality factored in to the party’s failure to take back the Senate in last year’s midterms, with a number of controversial candidates endorsed by former President Trump losing in key states like Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Georgia.

Now, GOP Senate leaders are doing whatever they can to prevent that from happening again in 2024. Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), the current head of the party’s campaign arm, has said he plans to be more active in recruiting candidates and selective in where the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) sends its support — a departure from his predecessor, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who argued it wasn’t his job to interfere in primaries.

In West Virginia, for example, Daines is backing Gov. Jim Justice (R) as he runs against fellow Republican Rep. Alex Mooney in the Senate primary. They’re both vying for the seat held by Democrat incumbent Sen. Joe Manchin, who hasn’t said whether he’s running for reelection. 

In Montana, Daines has been supportive of businessman Tim Sheehy, who is challenging incumbent Democrat Sen. Jon Tester, and said he’d prefer to avoid a contentious primary as Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) weighs a bid that could potentially tee up an eventual Tester-Rosendale rematch of their 2018 Senate race. 

“Senate Republicans have seen the majority slip through their fingers in previous cycles. And they’re so close to regaining the majority, they can taste it. Republicans in 2024 have an opportunity to be on offense, and they’re going to be looking for candidates who can prevail in a general election,” said Jeff Grappone, who led communications for the Senate GOP Conference under Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), adding that candidate quality “has been an issue” for the party.

“It’s understandable after the last cycle, that there would be a desire to have a different approach, a winning approach, to go on offense and to not leave any opportunities on the table,” Grappone said. 

Given the narrow Senate margin, and “given how high the stakes are, I think it’s the right decision for the NRSC to get involved in primaries,” said GOP strategist Matt Mackowiak, although he added that the decision is “not without some risks.”

“A 50-50 Senate could be decisive one way or the other. If you just look at Montana, Ohio and West Virginia, those three — the GOP should be favored in all three of those states if we don’t blow it,” Mackowiak said, noting that states like Arizona and Wisconsin could also be pickup opportunities this time around. 

“There’s a pathway to Republicans gaining three or more seats this election cycle, and that would be significant. It’s the most advantageous map, Senate map, in my lifetime for Republicans,” Mackowiak said. 

The election handicapper Cook Political Report rates the Senate races for Manchin’s seat in West Virginia, Democrat Sherrod Brown’s seat in Ohio and Independent Kyrsten Sinema’s seat in Arizona as “toss up” states, while Tester’s seat in Montana and Democrat Bob Casey Jr.’s seat in Pennsylvania are among five posts rated “lean Democrat.”

Daines told CBS News last week that the NRSC plans to stay neutral in the Ohio Senate race, where three Republican candidates are now jostling for their party’s nomination in a competitive primary. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) became the latest Republican to announce his candidacy, joining businessman Bernie Moreno and state Sen. Matt Dolan (R).

“When you have three candidates [where] anyone could win the general election, we don’t stay up late at night worrying about that,” the Senate campaign arm’s chair said of Ohio in an interview with CBS News.

“But if we have a situation where a candidate may not be able to appeal across a broader spectrum, that’s where we’ll be more intentional to try to get candidates that can,” Daines said.

But Brian Darling, a GOP strategist and former Senate aide, said establishment Republicans may be setting themselves up for failure by getting involved in primary battles. 

“I think it’s a mistake for the party to get involved in primaries,” Darling said. “The party has a mixed record on picking preferred candidates and it doesn’t always work out for them”

 Darling added that the party’s involvement in primaries causes rifts between conservatives and the more establishment-wing candidates, creating problems for the eventual general election. 

“You end up having these primaries that are pretty, pretty rough-and-tumble, that end up dividing the party and giving ammunition to the Democrats to go after the conservative if the conservative ends up winning,” Darling said. 

Darling also raised concerns that the NRSC risks “trying to defeat somebody who may eventually win,” which could then create “a lot of distrust with leadership before these members potentially get elected.”

Other strategists shrugged off that concern, saying those candidates would have to win a general election first in order for that distrust to become a factor.

After a disappointing midterm cycle in which Republicans barely etched out a majority in the House and lost a chance to lead the Senate, many pointed to controversial Trump-backed candidates as at least partially responsible for the failed “red wave.”

Now, some Republicans are saying Trump should stay out of the primaries.

Daines told CBS News that he’s “getting on the same page” with the former president about endorsements and has endorsed Trump in his 2024 bid to get back to the Oval Office. 

Darling said endorsements from the former president are “huge” for congressional hopefuls.

“That’s a much more important endorsement than the Senatorial Committee or anybody sitting in the U.S. Senate today,” he said. 

CNN reported this week that Trump has told both Mooney in Montana and Rosendale, if he runs in West Virginia, that they’re unlikely to secure his endorsement.

“Certainly, Trump hurt us” in states like Pennsylvania and Arizona last year, Mackowiak said, but it’s “good news” that the former president now seems not to be getting behind “less electable candidates” in places like Montana and West Virginia. 

“It appears as though, at least as of now, he’s not going to be the problem he’s been in the past,” the GOP consultant said of Trump. 

The party has also appeared to breathe a sigh of relief that some controversial candidates from last year’s midterms are foregoing getting into next year’s races for both the House and Senate. 

Pennsylvania’s state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R), who questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election during his 2022 gubernatorial bid, decided against a 2024 run for Sen. Bob Casey’s (D-Pa.) seat. Endorsed by Trump, Mastriano lost his race last year by 15 points. 

Others, though, could still jump into Senate races and complicate things for the establishment, like failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake (R), who is considering an upper chamber bid for Sinema’s seat. 

The Hill has reached out to the NRSC for comment. 

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Republicans to be more selective in choosing Senate candidates in 2024 - The Hill

Ron Brownstein

Brownstein's main concentration is on how Abbott and other southern governors have been usurping the federal government's powers in the area of immigration, based, as usual with such conservative projects, on theories based on the Constitution's saying what it doesn't say. But this kind of thing isn't limited to one issue or one state. Take what's going on in Alabama. Back in June, in a surprise ruling, the Supreme Court ruled that Alabama's new voting maps violated what's left of the Voting Rights Act. In its majority opinion, the Court strongly advised that the legislature draw up a new map with two majority-black congressional districts. The legislature went back, pondered the question, and promptly blew off the Supreme Court entirely, voting through a new map with one majority-black congressional district. From the Washington Post:

What the new map does is drain some black voters out of the pre-existing majority-black district into another pre-existing district that will now be 40 percent black, which is not a majority, even by Alabama math. But the Republicans are hanging their defiance on the fact that the Supreme Court had mandated a second majority-black district "or something quite close to it." (You have to love how the carefully manufactured conservative majority equivocates just enough to let the vote-suppressors get tricky.) The Democrats, of course, are planning another lawsuit.

Sooner or later, this Democratic administration is going to face a situation like the one Eisenhower had in Little Rock in 1957 and like the one Kennedy faced in Mississippi in 1962. The national government cannot stand idly by while a bunch of tinhorns take us all back to the Articles of Confederation, if not to the Confederate States of America. There will be hell to pay, but the price will be worth it.

Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.

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Greg Abbott and Republican Governors Are Reigniting the ... - Esquire

Republican Paul Melotik will represent Wisconsin's 24th Assembly District after winning a special election Tuesday.

Melotik defeated Democrat Bob Tatterson, with unofficial results showing he captured nearly 54 percent of the 12,023 votes cast.

The district covers parts of Ozaukee and Washington counties, plus a sliver of Waukesha County, to the north and west of Milwaukee. The special election fills the vacancy left when its previous representative, Dan Knodl, was sworn into a state Senate seat he won in an April special election.

In 2022, Tatterson ran against Knodl for the same Assembly seat in the reliably Republican district. In that race, he was defeated by a 22-point margin. In Tuesday's special election, he narrowed the margin to 8 points.

Stay informed with WPR's email newsletter.

Prior to the election, Charles Franklin, who directs the Marquette University Law School Poll,told WPR a Republican victory in the districtwas almost assured. But he said the margin of victory could offer perspective on how the area is changing.

"For Republicans, continued strength or even a growth in strength in this district might be a signal that some of the challenges they've faced especially in the Donald Trump era maybe are beginning to settle or reverse there," Franklin said. "So there is a tea leaf here to read on both sides of the equation. Are Republicans recovering a little bit in the suburbs, or are Democrats continuing to make gains in the suburbs?"

In the broadly conservative area, margins between Republican and Democratic candidates have become somewhat slimmer in recent years. Support for a Republican presidential candidate in Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington counties, known as the WOW counties, has declined since 2012 when GOP nominee Mitt Romney won the region by about 35 percentage points. Former President Donald Trump still won the WOW counties, but his margins were narrower: a cumulative 28 points in 2016 and 23 points in 2020. That decline has also been reflected in statewide races for governor and state Supreme Court.

Melotik is a businessman and a member of the Ozaukee County Board. With his victory, Republicans have a 64 to 35 majority in the state Assembly.

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Republican Paul Melotik wins special election for 24th Assembly ... - wpr.org

A Klan rally in Tallahassee in 1977. (Robert Burke/Florida Memory)

By Diane Roberts

In a recent CNN interview (and on many previous occasions), Alabama U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville insisted that the phrase a white nationalist simply meant someone whos a good American.

When reporter Kaitlan Collins explained slowly that awhite nationalistis someone who believes that the white race is superior to other races, Tuberville huffed, Well, thats some peoples opinion.

Some people like, say, Tommy Tuberville? Or Ron DeSantis? Moms for Liberty? The congressional Freedom Caucus? The right-wing Supreme Court majority? All those angry (yet terrified) Caucasians watching what they always assumed was their country become more brown and less Christian?

Tuberville laterretreated a bitfrom what sounded like something Foghorn Leghorn would say at the monthly klavern barbecue, but no matter what language he and his fellow knuckle-draggers use, hes another example of how the Republican brand is no longer bigger business and smaller government.

Its white supremacy. Their platform? White supremacy. Their political and social goals? White supremacy.

The U.S. Supreme Court seems to share the Republicans obsession with making America white again. Gutting the Voting Rights Act in 2013 and striking downaffirmative actionin university admissions dismisses the institutional racism of centuries of oppression, favoring instead the pale and the privileged.

And speaking of pale and privileged, declaring opposition to multiculturalism and pledging to support Christian Nationalism across the country, theCollege Republicans the future of the party! have invited Nick Fuentes, the out and proud anti-Semite and racist who boasts hes just like Hitler, to this years national convention on July 30.

Fuentes, whose pals include neo-Confederates and Klan-adjacent types, is popular with certain congressional Republicans. Reps. Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene made an appearance at his America First shindig last year.

A few alleged grown folks in the Republican Party actually condemned Gosar and Greene, shocked! shocked! that they would associate with anti-Semites (they werent so bothered about the racism).

Surely not that nice Paul Gosar, the one who posted a cheery video about murdering Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and employed an aide withties to neo-Nazis?

Or the lovely and talented MTG, she of the Jewish space lasers? She said she didnt even know who Fuentes was, or if she did, well, what matters is those Pharisees trying to destroy Jesus America: Were not going to be deterred by journalists and Washington insiders who fear the name of our Lord, she proclaimed, and relentlessly attack those of us who proclaim his name.

Greene was famously shunned by the insiders of her own party for a while, but shes now at the heart of congressional power, a close ally of Kevin McCarthy in a legislative body reluctant to condemn white supremacy and paranoid about an immigrant invasion designed to destroy American culture, engineered by nefarious non-Christian, un-American, crypto-Marxists from George Soros to Hillary Clinton to the Pentagon.

Not joking: Republicans have turned on the United States military.

Members of Congress who keep forgetting to get their rabies shots have worked themselves into a froth over gay soldiers, trans soldiers, diverse soldiers, and soldiers reading critical race theory.

You may recall that time in 2021 when U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, Floridas Most Punchable person, tried to challenge the militarys diversity reading matter and Gen. Mark Milley took him down: Ive read Mao Zedong. Ive read Karl Marx. Ive read Lenin, Milley said. That doesnt make me a communist. So, what is wrong with understanding having some situational understanding about the country we are here to defend?

Now the Republican House wants the Pentagon to ban critical race theory as well as drag shows and women controlling their own reproduction. Oh, and do something about China, too, if theres time after trying to make the services whiter, maler, and straighter.

Tommy Tubervilles single-handedly holding up 265 promotions: Officers and their families have no idea where theyll be stationed or when, because ol Tommy objects to funding military womenfolk to get access toabortions.

Aint like theres any trouble brewing in Foreign Parts.

Not to be outdone, Floridas tantrum-prone governors hollering about wokeness, vowing that when hes in the White House, On Day 1, were ripping out all the Obama-Biden policies towoke-ify the military.

Thats just one component of DeSantis white supremacist agenda: Hes also trying to erase diversity as a goal in education and suppress learning about this countrys systemic racism. He wants to end birthright citizenship, too.

DeSantis conjures up images of alien hordes incentivized to get here by any means necessary so they can drop a baby on American soil and claim unearned American citizenship for that little freeloader.

He says he wants todefy the Fourteenth Amendment, which ensures that anyone born in the United States is entitled to equal protection under the law. It was passed right after the Civil War to give the formerly enslaved their rights or, at least, try to.

DeSantis prefers to think the Fourteenth Amendment doesnt actually say what it says.

Justice Clarence Thomas, his fellow irascible Ivy Leaguer, is also inclined to read the Fourteenth Amendment as somehowcolor-blind.

In Thomas concurring opinion in the courts dismantling of affirmative action, he argues that the amendment doesnt really have anything to do with race.

This might come as a surprise to descendants of slaves and veterans of the Civil Rights Movement.

Perhaps even more surprising is the fact that white supremacists arent always white.

They are, however, always hypocrites. Ron DeSantis is the great-great-grandchild ofLuigia Colluci, a woman who landed at Ellis Island on Feb. 21, 1917, with no visa, 16 days after Congress passed an immigration act designed to keep the likes of her out.

The law was aimed in particular at Asians, southern Europeans, and other undesirables, including idiots, imbeciles, poor, beggars, criminals, polygamists, anarchists, people with physical and mental disabilities, the sick, prostitutes, etc. a population that would not help keep America a white mans country.

Luigia Colluci was illiterate technically a disqualifier and pregnant with an anchor baby.

America let her in.

The rest as we know to our sorrow is history.

Diane Roberts is an 8th-generation Floridian, born and bred in Tallahassee. Educated at Florida State University and Oxford University in England, she has been writing for newspapers since 1983, when she began producing columns on the legislature for the Florida Flambeau. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Times of London, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Oxford American, and Flamingo. She has been a member of the Editorial Board of the St. Petersburg Timesback when that was the Tampa Bay Timess nameand a long-time columnist for the paper in both its iterations. She was a commentator on NPR for 22 years and continues to contribute radio essays and opinion pieces to the BBC. Roberts is also the author of four books.

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The Republican Brand Returns to White Supremacy - FlaglerLive.com

More than once, as president, Donald Trump mused about firing missiles at the drug labs of Mexican cartels. No one would know it was us, he declared, before being talked out of the idea. Mark Esper, the then defence secretary, recounted the incident in his memoirs published last year, astonished that bombing a neighbour could be seriously thought of.

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Now the extraordinary is becoming more commonplace as Republicans argue that greater use of military force, or the threat of it, can help control Americas southern border and curb the smuggling of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is produced illegally in Mexico.

One congressman, Michael McCaul of Texas, has introduced a bill to classify fentanyl as a chemical weapon. Lindsey Graham, a senator from South Carolina, is pushing one to designate Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organisations. Dan Crenshaw and Mike Waltz, congressmen from Texas and Florida respectively, have proposed another that would authorise all necessary and appropriate force against foreign states, organisations or people linked to trafficking fentanyl.

Republican presidential candidates, too, are talking tough. Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, has suggested a naval blockade of Mexico-bound shipping to halt the import of fentanyl precursor chemicals from China. Nikki Haley, a former ambassador to the UN, has proposed sending in special forces with a warning to Mexico: Either you do it or we do it. Tim Scott, the other senator from South Carolina, declared in May, I will allow the worlds greatest military to fight these terrorists.

Tucker Carlson, a former Fox News host beloved by Americas hard right, goes further, regarding Mexico as an outright foe. On July 14th, while interrogating Republican presidential hopefuls (minus Mr Trump) at the Family Leadership Summit, a gathering of religious conservatives in Iowa, he grilled Mr Scott about his support for Ukraine: No Americans killed by Russia. Hundreds of thousands killed by Mexico. But Mexico is our ally and Russia is our enemyhow does that work? Mr Scott did not demur from the idea that Mexico was an enemy, but said America could deal with Russia and Mexico simultaneously.

Many Mexicans feel they are again the piata of Americas election season, freely beaten by any politician. Earlier this year Mexicos president, Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador, a left-wing populist who got on with Mr Trump, took issue with the militarist talk, saying: In addition to being irresponsible, it is an offence to the people of Mexico, a lack of respect for our sovereignty. He warned that he might urge Mexican and Hispanic voters not to cast their ballots for Republicans.

The anti-Mexican mood on Americas right is hardening, moving beyond Mr Trumps cheap shots against migrants in 2015, when he said they are bringing drugs, theyre bringing crime, theyre rapists. According to tracking polls by YouGov, Republican voters are fast turning against Mexico. Roughly as many think Mexico is now an enemy as consider it an ally, with about 45% supporting each proposition (see chart). Democrats are largely unchanged, with about 70% regarding their southern neighbour as an ally. The Republican disenchantment has grown in the past year.

At least three factors may be at play. The first is frustration over fentanyl-related deaths, which rose sharply in 2020 and 2021. The drug has become the biggest killer of Americans aged 18-45, responsible for most of the 70,000 deaths from overdoses of synthetic opioids in 2021. Second, suggests Mark Jones of Rice University, the defeat of Mr Trump unshackled Republicans, freeing them to denounce President Joe Biden for his handling of the border. There is no better issue for Republicans, he says. It mobilises their base. And it splits Democrats: whatever Joe Biden does will seem too fascist by the left and too permissive by centrists.

A third factor, adds David Frum, a writer and former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, is the war in Ukraine. Given the MAGA movements hostility to Ukraine and sympathy for Russiaa position that runs against many voters viewsdenouncing Mexico allows them to cast themselves as guardians of the country.

Such policies are gaining an intellectual underpinning through a network of Trump-leaning think-tanks preparing for a future administration. A paper by the Centre for Renewing America, entitled Its time to wage war on transnational drug cartels, is reported to have caught the attention of Mr Trump, among others. Its author, Ken Cuccinelli, argues that America should be free to take military action in Mexico given that its government does not fully control its territory. Never mind that it would stir deep anti-Americanism, or that treating Mexico like a failed state might turn it into one. Mexico is not a friend. It is complicit in the drug cartels, says Mr Cuccinelli. Its time to acknowledge that the relationship has changed.

Stay on top of American politics with Checks and Balance, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter, which examines the state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters. For more coverage of Joe Bidens presidency, visit our dedicated hub.

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How Mexico has become the enemy of America's Republicans - The Economist