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Welcome to FiveThirtyEights politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarah (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): Something weve written about pretty extensively at FiveThirtyEight is the fact that Democrats are on the upswing. Whether its special elections or the generic ballot, which asks voters which party theyd support in an election, Democrats standing has steadily improved since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson, in June.

This is especially true in the Senate, where Democrats currently have a 70 percent chance of winning in the 2022 FiveThirtyEight midterm election forecast.

Are Republicans in trouble in the Senate?

It certainly seems Minority Leader Mitch McConnell thinks thats the case. In August, he said at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Kentucky that I think theres probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate. Senate races are just different theyre statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.

So lets talk Senate races and the GOPs best pickup chances, along with the races where they might be surprisingly weak (and yes, those often might be the same races). Lets start with the four most competitive Senate seats that are the GOPs best pickup opportunities this year Georgia, Nevada, Arizona and New Hampshire as well as two other Senate seats they need to hold onto Pennsylvania, which is an open seat, and Wisconsin, where Republican Sen. Ron Johnson is seeking reelection, although that seat is currently rated as a toss-up in our forecast.

First up, whats going on with Wisconsin? Could Republicans lose it?

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, senior elections analyst): Yes, Republicans could absolutely lose Wisconsin. According to the Deluxe version of the FiveThirtyEight forecast, the race is a toss-up: Johnson has a 51-in-100 chance of winning, and Democrat Mandela Barnes has a 49-in-100 chance of winning.

And if you use the Lite version of our forecast which mostly uses just polls, no fundamentals or expert race ratings Barnes is leading, with a 72-in-100 chance of winning.

The big question is whether those polls, which have generally shown Barnes ahead, get better for Republicans. Weve seen only a few polls out of Wisconsin so far this year, so the picture there is fuzzier than in other states.

sarah: So few polls that we dont even have a polling average yet! (For curious readers, our criteria is: at least five polls from three different pollsters conducted this year.)

In other words #trustthepolls but with a healthy dose of skepticism when it comes to Wisconsin?

nrakich: Yes, polls in Wisconsin were notoriously bad in 2020. Our final polling average had Biden leading by 8.4 percentage points in Wisconsin, and he ended up winning by less than 1 point.

alex (Alex Samuels, politics reporter): From what polling Ive seen, Johnsons approval numbers leave a lot to be desired. A June Marquette University Law School had his favorability at just 37 percent among registered voters, with 46 percent saying they viewed the two-term senator unfavorably. That same poll also showed a tight race between Johnson and Barnes, with the latter narrowly ahead, 46 percent to 44 percent.

But I definitely dont think we should count Johnson out. The national climate is still probably on his side, for one, and hes defeated formidable opponents before. (Back in 2016, he narrowly bested three-term Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold.)

nrakich: I dont know, Alex. I think Johnson is a pretty weak candidate. He has made some conspiratorial comments about vaccines, and he was allegedly involved in the effort to throw the 2020 election to Trump. He did win in 2016, but I think he just got lucky Wisconsin banked hard to the right that year, as Hillary Clinton can attest.

geoffrey.skelley (Geoffrey Skelley, senior elections analyst): Well, Im not so sure, Nathaniel. Johnson is a Republican incumbent in a state that has a small lean toward the GOP, in a midterm in which Democrats hold the White House. Those sorts of conditions dont usually work out for the challenging party. In fact, earlier this year, for CNN, former FiveThirtyEighter Harry Enten looked at midterms dating back to 1982 and found that incumbent senators in circumstances like Johnsons have won 86 of 87 times since then.

alex: What could also work in Johnsons favor is that Republicans are looking to paint Barnes as too liberal and out of touch with the states politics. In August, I wrote about why Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar is a sort of bogey(wo)man for Republicans, so if the GOP can successfully tie her brand of firebrand progressivism to Barnes, then he could be in real trouble considering what Nathaniel said earlier about Wisconsin only narrowly going for Biden in 2020.

sarah: Indeed, Alex! In fact, FiveThirtyEights video team did a whole video on Barnes and how hes trying to cast himself as more of a moderate to voters.

But lets talk over the other seat that Republicans technically control Pennsylvania although its an open-seat race, with Sen. Pat Toomey retiring. How do things look for Republicans there?

geoffrey.skelley: Pennsylvania is problematic for the GOP, as our forecast currently gives Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman about a 4-in-5 shot of winning over Republican Mehmet Oz.

Toomeys retirement produced a highly competitive Republican primary, which Oz barely won, and Fetterman now holds an 8-point lead in the polls. But like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania has a slight Republican lean, so this really should be ground the GOP is better positioned to hold.

sarah: Pennsylvania is another state, though, where the polls werent exactly on target in 2020. Although as weve written extensively at FiveThirtyEight, just because the polls miss in one election, doesnt mean theyll miss in the following election or even in the same direction!

nrakich: This race has been a big surprise for me. Id have thought that Ozs more liberal past positions on issues like abortion and gun control would be helping him in a general election. Instead, hes had trouble improving his image after a really nasty Republican primary.

alex: Oz also isnt very well-liked in the state. A poll by AARP/Fabrizio Ward/Impact Research in June, for instance, found that his favorability rating among likely voters in Pennsylvania was 33 points underwater 30 percent favorable to 63 percent unfavorable.

Fetterman, on the other hand, had a net-positive favorability rating of 10 points: 46 percent to 36 percent. And the survey was taken prior to the Supreme Courts decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, so Im wondering if some Republicans and women, who were also not particularly keen on Oz, per the survey have since soured on Oz even more.

sarah: I am curious, though, how big of a problem Fettermans health is going to be for him in the general election. (He suffered a stroke in May.) The Pittsburgh Post-Gazettes editorial board wrote on Monday that if Fetterman isnt able to debate Oz, it should raise serious questions about whether hes up for the task of being a U.S. senator.

Its a challenging situation to discuss sensitively, and Ozs campaign definitely hasnt always done that, but Fettermans health could be a real liability for him this fall. Fetterman, for the record, told Politico on Wednesday that he plans to debate Oz.

geoffrey.skelley: Yeah, no one should be writing off Oz. Besides the fact that Pennsylvania has a slight Republican lean, its possible Oz could better consolidate support among Republicans and move into a more competitive position in the coming weeks.

Two recent polls from Emerson College and Susquehanna Polling and Research found that Republican voters were likelier to be undecided than Democrats, so if those voters come home to Oz, the race could get a lot tighter. Both of those polls also found a closer race than our polling average, instead finding Fetterman with a 4- to 5-point edge.

sarah: But OK. The two Senate races weve talked about so far are in states where Republicans currently have control. Lets talk about some of their best pickup opportunities, starting with Georgia.

alex: I know some recent polls have given Republican Herschel Walker a slight edge over Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, but I think itll be hard to take down the incumbent. For one, Walker has been dogged with not-so-great headlines that suggest he did not disclose all of his children, despite previously chastising absent Black fathers. He also has exaggerated his business and academic record. Moreover, Warnock has continued to be a fundraising behemoth, raising more than $17 million in the second-quarter of the year, compared with Walkers $6.2 million.

This race is tricky, though, because the national environment will probably be better for the GOP and Walker is relatively well liked in the state.

nrakich: If Republicans want to win the Senate, they basically have to defeat Warnock. Case in point: According to the build-your-own version of the FiveThirtyEight forecast, if Democrats win Georgia, they have a 91 percent chance of holding the Senate:

Put another way, according to the Deluxe version of our forecast, Georgia also has a 15 percent chance of being the tipping-point state in the Senate, or the state that decides control of the chamber which is more than the tipping-point odds of any other state in our forecast.

geoffrey.skelley: Theres a real push and pull here with Georgia, though. The state obviously is more politically competitive now than its been in a long time, which is helpful to Warnock. He is also a decently popular senator who could benefit at least a little bit from incumbency.

However, Georgia is also a state with a racially polarized electorate that is, as we say, highly inelastic because it just doesnt have a lot of swing voters. Historically, when major races like Senate and governor are on the ballot at the same time in Georgia, they usually wind up with pretty similar results. So with Republican Gov. Brian Kemp ahead by about 5 points in the polls and Warnock leading by roughly 2 points, that 7-point gap would be an especially large gap between the two contests if it holds.

And thats a big if. Im inclined to think the races will converge as we get closer to November. And whether Kemp or Warnock loses ground is very important to keep an eye on. As things currently stand, Warnock needs some Kemp voters in order to win reelection, and given how polarized Georgias electorate is, Im not sure there will be a ton of those.

sarah: The one thing I think thats a little challenging with Georgia is how much its shifted toward Democrats. In other words, a lot could come down to turnout, and it looks as if enthusiasm (on both sides of the aisle) might be high again this year.

alex: If Kemp has a strong performance against his Democratic opponent, Stacey Abrams, could he help pull Walker across the finish line, Geoffrey?

geoffrey.skelley: Alex, thats a difficult question to answer. Kemp is pretty popular, so he can definitely help buoy the GOP ticket. Ultimately, I dont think the Senate and gubernatorial races are going to completely converge, but if its a difference of 2 to 3 points by Election Day, thats probably good news for Walker, whereas if its like 5 points or more, thats good news for Warnock.

alex: Its also possible that we get another runoff! Another candidate on the ballot Libertarian Chase Oliver could siphon off votes from both candidates, and if neither clears 50 percent of the vote in November, the top two vote-getters will go head-to-head on Dec. 6.

geoffrey.skelley: Yeah, the Senate race looks to have about a 1-in-5 shot of going to a runoff. The forecast gives a slight edge to Walker in a runoff, but we obviously saw Democrats win both Senate runoffs in January 2021 by running ahead of where they were in the November vote, which was at odds with most of Georgias recent electoral history, so it would be far from a sure thing for the GOP.

sarah: Lets talk about Nevada, the other Senate race Republicans are heavily targeting as a pickup opportunity. Is Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, like Warnock, perhaps in trouble?

alex: There are plenty of reasons to believe this race might not be as safe for Democrats as some polls suggest. For one, as weve reported before, Nevada is a pretty transient state, and according to The New York Times, the states share of registered Democrats has dropped. Moreover, Biden won Nevada by only a little over 2 points in 2020, so its very possible that Republicans do better here in a favorable midterm year. The COVID-19 pandemic and the business shutdowns that came with it were also particularly devastating to Nevadas tourism industry. That, plus low approval ratings for Biden, have definitely put Cortez Masto on the defensive.

nrakich: Yeah, she is actually the second-most vulnerable Democrat after Warnock, per our forecast. She has just a 63-in-100 chance of winning.

sarah: And, as Alex said, Nevada is maybe more challenging for Democrats than they realize, since it has been shifting away from Democrats in recent presidential elections.

geoffrey.skelley: Nevada definitely has a couple trends potentially working in the GOPs favor. For instance, Latino voters shifted to the right in 2020, although it varied from place to place. But still, Nevada has a sizable Latino population, and moreover, only a small share of Nevadas white population has a four-year college degree, which is significant considering that we know education is a big dividing line among white voters, with non-college-educated whites moving toward Republicans.

alex: Ill be curious to see which way Latino voters in the state swing, though, Geoffrey. Whats working in the GOPs favor is that Trump gained support among Latino voters, as you said; plus, like the rest of the country, inflation and concerns about the economy continue to be a top concern among Latino voters. If Republican Adam Laxalt can tap into that disillusionment and discontent, hell definitely make the race more competitive. But Cortez Masto, the first Latina to serve in the U.S. Senate, so far has a slight edge with Latino voters in the state, according to one poll.

sarah: What do we know about Laxalt as a candidate? We talked about this a little with Georgia and Pennsylvania, but part of the problem for Republicans in the Senate this cycle seems to be an issue of candidate quality. Does Laxalt fit into this mold?

nrakich: Not really, Sarah. He has some extreme views, like believing the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. But unlike Walker and Oz, he has experience as an elected official he won the Nevada attorney generals office in 2014.

geoffrey.skelley: Yeah, Laxalt is probably one of the least problematic candidates the GOP has nominated. He has an electoral track record, as Nathaniel mentioned, for one thing.

alex: Im curious how much the Dobbs decision will play a role in whether Cortez Masto ultimately prevails. Shes reportedly telling voters that a GOP-led Senate could lead to a national law banning abortions, and polls suggest that Nevadans also favor abortion rights at higher rates than the national average.

Per a July survey from The Nevada Independent/OH Predictive Insights, roughly 90 percent of the states registered voters believe abortions should be legal at least some cases. It also found that abortion rights were the most motivating issue to 17 percent of the states voters second only to the economy, at 40 percent.

sarah: There are two more Senate races we should talk about: Arizona and New Hampshire. Theyre also pick-up opportunities for the GOP, although perhaps a little bit more of a stretch for Republicans, at least according to the forecast. Republicans have about a 1-in-4 shot of winning Arizona and a 1-in-5 shot of winning New Hampshire.

So uh, what do we make of the Senate race in Arizona?

geoffrey.skelley: Blake Masters won the GOP primary with Trumps backing and millions of dollars in support from billionaire tech megadonor Peter Thiel. But Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly has regularly led in the polls, where he currently has an 8-point lead.

Kelly has a combination of things working for him at the moment. First, hes raised a prodigious amount of money that Masters simply cannot match on his own. In fact, this has created conflicts within the GOP, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wants Thiel to keep spending money on Masterss behalf, but so far, Thiel appears unwilling. Second, Kelly seems to be winning at least a small portion of Republican voters in Arizona, and he leads among independents as well. A Fox News/Beacon Research/Shaw & Co. Research poll from last month found Kelly attracting about 10 percent of GOP voters, which would make him tough to beat if that comes to pass.

alex: Whats interesting to me about this race is that, on paper, it should be an easy get for Republicans. Kelly won the special election that got him into Congress in 2020 by 2 points, and Biden barely eked out a win that same year. But I think candidate quality will definitely play a role in this race, and Masters is carrying a lot of baggage. Just to name a few things: He once said that Black people, frankly are to blame for gun violence in the U.S., has promoted the debunked great replacement theory and once argued that Iraq and al-Qaida did not constitute substantial threats to Americans.

geoffrey.skelley: Some of this is stuff Masters said when he was younger, but I suspect part of the issue is that hes only 36 years old, so these controversial comments are not really that far in the past!

nrakich: Yeah, I feel more confident in the forecasts prediction of a Kelly win in Arizona than, say, Fetterman in Pennsylvania. Kelly has a kings ransom in campaign cash (hes raised more than $54 million), and the polls in Arizona in 2020 were pretty accurate.

sarah: OK, that leaves us with one last state to discuss: New Hampshire. The primary there hasnt yet happened yet, but how are things looking for Republicans?

nrakich: New Hampshire is the least competitive of the races weve discussed here, and honestly, its hard to see it flipping unless Republicans have already flipped places like Georgia and Nevada. Democratic incumbent Maggie Hassan has an 80-in-100 chance of winning.

One complication here is that New Hampshire hasnt held its primary yet, as you noted, Sarah, and it looks like far-right candidate Don Bolduc could defeat more establishment-flavored state Senate President Chuck Morse.

Consider that the latest poll from the University of New Hampshire, conducted in late August, gave Bolduc 43 percent and Morse 22 percent. Since then, the establishment Republicans have spent heavily on Morses behalf, so the final result could be tighter. But if Republican primary voters elect Bolduc, Republican party leaders could write off New Hampshire completely.

alex: Republicans seem to have struggled to find a likable, well-known candidate who everyone could coalesce around especially after Gov. Chris Sununu decided against running for U.S. Senate and instead decided to seek reelection.

An August survey by Saint Anselm College Survey Center found that 39 percent of Republican voters were still undecided ahead of next weeks primary. But, similar to Arizona, I think this could be an easier pickup opportunity for Republicans: Per the poll, Hassan has an underwater approval rating in the state 44 percent who approve versus 51 percent who disapprove, with only 39 percent saying she deserved to be reelected.

geoffrey.skelley: We do have some recent evidence, though, that Democrats can win a Senate race in New Hampshire even in a bad midterm. Take Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. She held onto her seat in 2014 despite a red wave.

sarah: OK, phew weve run down six of the big Senate races this year. What are folks concluding thoughts on the GOPs path to winning back the Senate or Democrats chances to holding on?

alex: This should be an easy year for Republicans, but problematic candidates with little to no political experience may well cost the party their chances of winning the chamber back.

nrakich: Completely agreed about the weaker candidates, but Im also struck by the tough path Republicans have to picking up even one seat. They need to defeat at least one of what looks like a formidable quartet in Warnock, Kelly, Cortez Masto and Hassan, while also not losing any of their own seats.

Thats hard to do, so I think the FiveThirtyEight forecasts current estimation of a 70 percent chance of a Democratic hold sounds right to me.

geoffrey.skelley: Republicans may have an uphill battle to a Senate majority, considering the political environment isnt proving to be as advantageous for the GOP as we might have expected (at least so far). Theyve also nominated some weaker candidates, as Alex mentioned.

Still, I think theres reason to believe some of these races, like Arizona and Pennsylvania, are going to be closer than they currently appear to be. Our forecast definitely keeps that in mind, too. Its why Id love to see more polls, especially in Wisconsin.

More polls, please the constant FiveThirtyEight refrain.

Read the original:
What Is Republicans Path To Winning The Senate? - FiveThirtyEight

Suddenly, Democrats would be blissfully free of any need to moderate or play defense on culture, and they could make everything about, say, higher corporate tax rates and Medicare for All.

This was always a fantasy, and sure enough, the Democrats are regaining their footing in the midterms with a completely opposite approach.

Over the last couple of months, the party has set about to out-culture war the Republicans, using a different set of issues. As Republicans around the country desperately try to keep the focus on the ultimate kitchen-table concern, inflation, Democrats insist on talking about one of the most contentious issues in American politics, abortion and for good reason.

It has Democratic voters energized, and Republicans running scared.

Back in July, I was dismissive of the idea that Dobbs would have a major impact on the midterms, but it has clearly made a difference.

Abortion opponents suffered a debacle in a Kansas referendum in early August. It turned out that, from a progressive perspective, there was nothing wrong with Kansas that couldnt be cured by shooting down a poorly crafted ballot measure that stoked massive Democratic turnout. Since then, Republicans outside the deepest red areas have been in full-blown retreat, trying to avoid the topic or recalibrating on the fly.

Arizona GOP Senate candidate Blake Masters rewrote his campaign website to soften his position, a maladroit, if understandable maneuver. He had, in effect, a heedlessly maximalist pre-Dobbs, primary-electorate position on abortion, which he shifted to make an incrementalist post-Dobbs, general-electorate position on abortion.

He now insists that abortion is a media-driven distraction from other more important issues like inflation.

Its not just abortion. Democrats have portrayed Dobbs as a threat to a suite of right to privacy issues, from contraceptives to interracial marriage and gay marriage. Senate Democrats hope to make Republicans squirm over the last of these, with a vote on a federal codification of gay marriage that will split the GOP caucus just prior to the midterms.

Even Joe Bidens focus on Donald Trump, transparently a tactic to swing the midterm debate on to more favorable terrain, has a cultural element.

Bidens case against his predecessor is swathed in the rhetoric of the defense of democracy and the threat of election denialism, but ultimately Trump is the biggest cultural lightning rod in the country. For both his supporters and opponents, what is most important about Trump is that he stands for a cluster of values. Depending on who you ask, he represents a defense of the nation or xenophobia, anti-elitism or anti-intellectualism, protean strength or a threat to the rules, authenticity or an untutored demagogy.

Surely, the suburban women who appear to be swinging back the Democrats way consider Trump, as such, a hateful figure.

Cultural issues have never inherently been a vulnerability for Democrats. It has always depended.

They are at their strongest when they can portray their positions as the logical extensions of individual autonomy and choice, as they do with abortion and gay marriage.

They are at their weakest when their positions conflict with strongly held community values like patriotism and lawfulness, reflect the priorities of a small, out-of-touch elite (for example, the push for the adoption of the term Latinx), or take on a hectoring tone.

The last couple of months should underline the legitimacy of culture-war politics, if there were ever any doubt. Appeals to such issues are not just a Republican plot, and theyre available to both sides.

Cultural issues are especially powerful because they involve a clash of values and elemental questions of who we are as a people. They are inherently divisive people are deeply dug in and emotionally committed on both sides, which is what makes them cultural issues in the first place. And they almost always involve identifying an internal threat from which an embattled constituency has to be defended in this case, purportedly, a runaway Supreme Court and extremist Republicans who want to trample the rights of women.

Its not as though Republicans dont have cultural issues of their own in this campaign. They want to talk about the border, crime and transgender issues. Its the economy that they overwhelmingly want to focus on, though. It still looms, as it always does, incredibly large. Part of Bidens modest recovery in the polls is clearly attributable to gas prices and inflation abating somewhat.

But Republicans, as Democrats have proved over the years, cant simply talk or wish their way past cultural pitfalls for their party. They need to establish a compromise position on abortion that they feel confident defending, and they need to avoid, to the extent they can, falling into the trap of litigating Trumps myriad conflicts with Biden and the Department of Justice.

It may provide some measure satisfaction to complain about the other side using cultural issues to their advantage, but its much better to have an effective answer.

Read the original post:
Opinion | Republicans Aren't the Only Ones Who Can Play Culture Warrior - POLITICO

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In the months following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, popular support for abortion has energized Democratsespecially womenand cut into Republicans polling leads ahead of the midterms.

The latest Pew polling shows that 62 percent of Americans think that abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances. Gallup polling from May found that 35 percent of Americans supported abortion under any circumstances, and 50 percent supported it only under certain circumstances. Last months referendum on abortion rights in Kansas is a strong indicator that restricting abortion access is a losing issue.

Predictably, a handful of Republicans running for office are now walking back their anti-abortion stances.Here are a few.

Blake Masters, the Peter Thiel protg who is running to unseat Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly in Arizona has significantly altered his public pose.

As NBC News has reported, Masters campaign website once said, I am 100% pro-life and outlined his support for a federal personhood law (ideally a Constitutional amendment) that recognizes that unborn babies are human beings that may not be killed.Now, the bullet point that said PROTECT BABIES, DONT LET THEM BE KILLED has been removed from his policy page. (Dont worry, the Wayback Machine archived it.)

Before updating his website to remove the pro-life claim, Masters released an ad seeking to characterize Kellys stance on abortion as extreme. Look, I support a ban on very late-term and partial-birth abortion, and most Americans agree with that, Masters said in the ad.

Setting aside that partial-birth abortion is a political and legal term for an extremely rare medical procedure known as dilation and extraction, Masters statement that he supports a ban on late abortions isnt exactly a lie: People who are 100% pro-life do support those bansand all other bans, too. But if Masters is implying that he hasnt been flagrant in his support of much more than just that ban then his campaign ad is nothing more than a clever flip-flop.

In the ad, Masters goes on to state that the only countries that support Kellys no-limits, extreme abortion policies are China and North Korea. Thats just plain false.

Masters isnt the only Republican pandering to voters via campaign ads. Republican Scott Jensen, who is running to unseat Minnesotas Democratic governor Tim Walz, told Minnesota Public Radio in March that if elected, I would try to ban abortion.

Then, after it became clear that that wasnt a great idea politically, Jensen released an unsettling video of him cradling a babyin which he declares: Abortion is divisive, and Tim Walz is weaponizing the issue. In Minnesota, its a protected, constitutional right, and no governor can change that.

Other Republicans, like Joe ODea, who is running for Senate in overwhelmingly pro-choice Colorado, are trying to have their cake and eat it too.

For months, ODea refused to specify how he would approach the issue if he were elected. But hes also the same guy who once voted yes on a proposition that sought to ban abortion after 22 weeks in Colorado with no exceptions for rape and incest.

ODea finally announced his more moderate stance last month: Legal abortion through 20 weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother.

This is a growing list. If you know of any Republicans who are trying to soften their stance on abortion to garner votes, drop me a line at aweinberg@motherjones.com.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the office for which ODea is running. He is running for Senate.

More:
Republicans Are Desperately Trying to Change Their Tune on Abortion Mother Jones - Mother Jones

That Donald Trump has acted recklessly and lawlessly, without empathy, as if he lives in a world devoid of moral rules, should surprise no one. Some of us warned back in the summer of 2016 that Trump was erratic, unstable, and temperamentally unfit for office. He had what I referred to then as a personality disorder. I believed then and I believe now that it is the most essential thing to understand about him. Trump in power couldnt end well.

Trump never found a way to escape the antisocial demons that haunt him. But heres what turned a personal tragedy into a national calamity: He imprinted his moral pathologies, his will-to-power ethic, on the Republican Party. It is the most important political development of this century.

The GOP once advertised itself as standing for family values and law and order, for moral ideals and integrity in political leaders. Such claims are now risible. The Republican Party rallied around Trump and has stuck with him every step of the way.

Republican officials showed fealty to Trump despite his ceaseless lying and dehumanizing rhetoric, his misogyny and appeals to racism, his bullying and conspiracy theories. No matter the offense, Republicans always found a way to look the other way, to rationalize their support for him, to shift their focus to their progressive enemies. As Trump got worse, so did they.

Republicans defended Trump after the release of the Access Hollywood tape and alleged hush-money payments to a porn star. They defended him when he obstructed justice to thwart the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and sided with Russia over U.S. intelligence during a press conference in Helsinki, Finland. They defended him after learning of his effort to solicit foreign interference in the 2020 presidential election. They defended him despite his effort to overturn the election by pressuring state officials to find votes and send fake electors, by wallpapering the country with lies, and by instigating a violent assault on the Capitol. The ex-president continues to peddle the Big Lie to this day, and any Republican who challenges it is targeted.

Read: Trumps rejection of observable reality

Something malicious has occurred since Trump won the nomination in 2016. Six years ago, Republicans jettisoned their previous moral commitments in order to align themselves with the MAGA movement. Today, they have inverted them. Lawmakers, candidates, and those in the right-wing media ecosystem celebrate and imitate Trumps nihilism, cynicism, and cruelty. What was once considered a bug is now a feature.

This is the result of individuals and institutions accommodation of one moral transgression after another after another. With each moral compromise, the next onea worse onebecomes easier to accept. Conduct that would have horrified Republicans in the past now causes them, at best, to shrug their shoulders; at worst, they delight in it.

How does that change play out in our politics? Five years ago, leading Republicans were publicly critical of Trumps statements following the white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Now consider that just a few weeks after far more ominous actions by Trumpinspiring and provoking an insurrectionHouse Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy flew to Mar-a-Lago to grovel before Trump. Initially, Republicans accepted the need for a bipartisan commission to find out what had happened on January 6; since then, they have undermined every effort to uncover that days events and how central a role Trump played in them.

The 2016 Republican platform said, The next president must restore the publics trust in law enforcement and civil order by first adhering to the rule of law itself. Today, Republicans, in response to a lawful search of the home of a lawless ex-president, compare the FBI to the Gestapo and the Stasi. Trump himself, during a rally, referred to the FBI and the Department of Justice as vicious monsters. And no political party in living memory has done as much as the GOP to undermine civil order and the publics trust in law enforcement, or to attack the rule of law.

In hindsight, January 6, 2021, was a milestone along not just one path of radicalization, but two. Of course, it represented an unprecedented assault on democracy by the violent mob on Capitol Hill and the president who incited it. But it also represented what turned out to be the last moment when Republicans considered repudiating Trump. For a few days, party leaders seemed, at last, horrified enough to break with him. But when McCarthy slunk to Mar-a-Lago, hat and apology in hand, and when thenSenate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Senate Republicans backed away from Trumps impeachment and removal, the moment was over, and a door slammed shut. There would be no more wavering. Today, the dominant faction in the GOP is not conservative in the American tradition; it is authoritarian and revolutionary, like far-right parties in Europe.

Karen Stenner, a political psychologist and the author of the groundbreaking The Authoritarian Dynamic, argues that about a third of people across 29 liberal democracies seem to have a psychological predisposition toward authoritarianism. The tendency exists on both ends of the political spectrum, though its more prevalent on the right.

Stenner defines authoritarianism, which she believes is about 50 percent heritable, as a deep-seated psychological predisposition to demand obedience and conformitywhat she calls oneness and samenessover freedom and diversity. Authoritarians have an aversion to complexity and diversity. They tend to be intolerant on matters of race, politics, and morals; to glorify the in-group and denigrate the out-group; and to reward or punish others according to their conformity to this normative order.

The danger, Stenner says, arises when that tendency, which is often latent, is activated by normative threats, a deep fear of change, and a loss of trust in our institutions. She also made this point to my colleague Helen Lewis: In normal, reassuring, and comforting conditions, people with authoritarian tendencies could be your best neighbor. But those predispositions are activated under conditions of threat and produce greater intolerance to differences.

Donald Trump has made his supporters feel permanently panicked, according to Stenner. He never got past the constant-rage-and-fear stage. And it doesnt help that modern lifes complexity is overwhelming for many people.

For those with authoritarian tendencies, Stenner says, theres a need to reassure them and calm them down. Her goal is to help authoritarians live in peace with liberal democracy. We need to reintegrate, rather than triumph over and banish, the authoritarians. Demeaning and dismissing a significant part of the country wont turn out well. And so the focus of her work is to find practical ways to bring activated authoritarians back from the brink, including by means of normatively reassuring messages. The key, she believes, is to reduce the feelings of being threatened and to find the right languagelanguage that is less alienating to those with authoritarian tendenciesto talk about things such as diversity and immigration. She and the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt point out that moral elevation, the response we have when we witness virtuous acts, can also be helpful.

This approach is commendable; my guess is that right now it might have sway with the minority of Republicans who are uneasy about Trump. Perhaps, combined with an indictment of Trump, it might be enough to weaken the ex-president to the point where the Republican Party breaks with him. But will its members break with the authoritarian tendencies that now define the GOP?

That seems unlikely. The majority of the party has gotten more radicalized, more aggressive, and more conspiracy-minded, not less, since Trump left office. The MAGA movement has provided many of its adherents with an identity, a source of personal meaning, and a cause for which to fight. They have created a narrative in which they are heroic figures fighting malevolent forces. They find psychological satisfaction in relentless conflict; their lives seem more vivid and more purposeful within MAGAs ever-combative frame. Politics has become, for them, an ersatz religion. In this activated state, they are not reachable by reason or open to amelioration. In fact, many in MAGA world are looking for reasons to take offense, to feel victimized, to lash out.

Peter Wehner: Dont succumb to MAGA fatalism

There is an analogy to nature: When a thunderstorm cloud has sufficient electrostatic charge, it has to discharge toward the ground. If the lightning bolt doesnt find one target, it will find another. So will Trump supporters.

We have a big faction of one of our two major political parties who wants to unravel our democracy because it no longer serves them, Barbara Walter, a professor at UC San Diego and the author of How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them, recently told CNN. The reality is if you dont say anything, if you stick your head in the ground, this makes it easier for those who do want to create some sort of authoritarian or strongman, minority-rule governmentsort of what you have in Hungaryit simply allows them to do that more easily. They can do it quietly behind the scenes when no ones looking.

Im of two minds about all this. I admire groups such as Braver Angels, which is attempting to bridge partisan divides, decrease affective polarization, and help Americans understand one another beyond stereotypes. If we can help those with authoritarian tendencies reintegrate themselves into liberal democracy, we should certainly do so. Its important to hear perspectives that differ from our own. And its imperative that we relearn how to talk with one another as fellow citizens instead of as combatants.

I also believe we should continue to stay in relationships whenever possible, including with family members and friends whose authoritarian attitudes have been activated, even as we look for the right moment and the right way to name our differences and express our disappointment with those who have aligned themselves with malignant political figures and movements. We should speak with candor but not with malice, striving for grace as well as for truth. Its an impossible balance to always achieve, at least for me; my frustrations can sometimes get the better of me, and perhaps they get the better of you too. But the balance is still worth fighting for.

But even though we shouldnt give up on individuals, I cant escape concluding that the time for mollifying grievances is over. In our political endeavors, the task is now to contain and defeat the MAGA movement, shifting away from a model of psychological amelioration and toward a model of political confrontation. This is the model that Liz Cheney embraces, and so do I.

Mark Leibovich: Liz Cheney, the Republican from the state of reality

It requires defeating Trump Republicans at the polls, but it goes well beyond that. It also means rallying the forces that must rise up to oppose authoritarianism by speaking honestly about the nature of the threat. It means telling the truth about not just Trump but many of his supporters, who remain complicit in a corrupt and corrupting enterpriseone that is inflicting grave injury on our nation and its ideals.

MAGA supporters have had countless opportunities to take the exit ramp, and they have always found reasons not to. At some point, when an enterprise is thoroughly corrupt, staying a part of it, helping it along, refusing to ever speak up, is not just a mistake in judgment; it is a failure of intellectual and moral integrity. This doesnt mean that every area of a MAGA supporters life is devoid of rectitude, of course. But it does mean that one important area is. And that needs to be said.

So, no, I am not suggesting giving up on individual MAGA supporters, writing them off, throwing them out of polite societyeven if I were in a position to do any of those things, which Im not. I am suggesting that much of MAGA world is authoritarian, that Liz Cheney is right to turn all her political energies to opposing it, and that containing and defeating MAGAnot hoping it will change, not placating its grievancesis now the No. 1 priority for friends of democracy. Maybe well succeed, maybe well fail, but the mission is unavoidable. And honorable.

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Republicans Will Defend Trump Through Anything - The Atlantic

close Video Ned Ryun: This is what's really extreme

American Majority founder and CEO Ned Ryun breaks down two steps Republican lawmakers can take to 'actually represent' the Republican Party on 'Jesse Watters Primetime.'

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American Majority founder and CEO Ned Ryun weighed in on President Biden's anti-MAGA Republican rhetoric on "Jesse Watters Primetime."

NED RYUN: The first thing is Republicans in D.C. should probably stop despising their base. And then the next step is they should stop being afraid of the corporate propagandists and the semi-senile person in the White House and go on the attack and actually define what is extreme. What is extreme is to actually butcher babies up to the moment of birth.

MCCARTHY SAYS BIDEN VILIFIED AMERICANS, HITS DEMS ON INFLATION, IMMIGRATION AND MORE IN CAMPAIGN SPEECH

What's extreme is to actually allow millions of illegal aliens in, destroying our border and destroying the idea of national sovereignty. What's extreme is to actually let people advance the idea that somehow mutilating underaged children is perfectly normal. What's also extreme is to allow hardened criminals back onto the streets so they can kill again.

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Ned Ryun says Republicans need to find a 'backbone' and start 'swinging back' against anti-Trump rhetoric - Fox News