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The dispute over what it means to be a MAGA Republican has given the GOP an opening to accuse President Joe Biden of "smearing" half the voters in the country the roughly 47% of those who voted in 2020 for former President Donald Trump.

MAGA Trumps trademark Make America Great Again 2016 campaign slogan is subject to interpretation. Biden offered his take in a Sept. 1 speech in Philadelphia.

"There is no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country," Biden said. "MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people."

Bidens insistence during the address that "not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans," has hardly mollified his critics. Fox News commentator Kayleigh McEnany, a former Trump administration press secretary, echoed a common GOP theme, tweeting that Biden had delivered the "most divisive presidential speech" shed ever seen.

In a recent interview on CBS News "60 Minutes," Biden went further, citing two telltale markers that he believes distinguish MAGA Republicans.

"MAGA Republicans are the people who refuse to acknowledge that an election took place and there was a winner," Biden said Sept. 18. "The MAGA Republicans are those people who, in fact, say that the use of violence is a legitimate tool, like what happened to the Capitol."

We examined data to see where Republicans stand on election denialism and sympathy for the people who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. It shows that Republican voters are divided on those points, but the differences among them are rarely crisp and clean.

As political scientist Christopher Cooper at Western Carolina University put it, "People dont put on the MAGA label like a pair of pants its an identity that some people have more of and some people have less of."

A focus on Trump

MAGA is the Trump brand, from campaign slogan, to red hats emblazoned with the letters, to the closing line of his stump speeches.

"A MAGA Republican is first and foremost a Trump supporter, no matter what he seems to do or say," said American University political scientist James Thurber.

A survey of self-identified MAGA voters conducted just after the Capitol assault found they strongly believe the election was stolen and that the riot was the work of antifa, a loose collection of activists who rally against fascism and far-right groups.

Since January 2021, pollsters have been asking Republican voters which they identify more with Trump, or the Republican Party. In a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, support for Trump has been waning.

In January 2021, an equal number of Republican voters, 46%, said they supported Trump and the Republican Party. By September 2022, Trump supporters had dropped to 33%, and party supporters had risen to 58%.

A recent Politico/Morning Consult tracking poll asked Republicans to pick their preferred 2024 presidential candidate. Trump came in first with 52%, but that also meant about half of Republicans wanted another candidate. In a July New York Times survey, about a fifth of Republicans said Trumps actions on Jan. 6 "went so far that he threatened American democracy."

Others are eager to define what it means to be a MAGA follower, but Republican voters appear to apply the label to themselves flexibly.

Cooper at Western Carolina University was part of a study of Southern state Republicans people in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. The studys poll gave self-identified Republicans the option to choose among the labels Traditional Republican, America First Republican and MAGA.

Respondents were asked to rate how well the labels fit them on a scale of 1= "not at all" to 10= "completely describes me." Nearly three-quarters of respondents picked a 6 or higher for more than one label.

"There are not bright lines between the three categories," said Western Carolina Universitys Cooper. "But there is something distinct about MAGA Republican identifiers. They are less likely to believe that Donald Trump should be prosecuted for January 6, less likely to believe that our elections are free and fair, more likely to approve of Donald Trump."

Trumps influence was evident in the primaries.

An analysis from senior fellow Elaine Kamarck at the Brookings Institution, a research and policy center in Washington, D.C., found that 96% of Trump-endorsed candidates won their recent primary elections. Those candidates were a select group only about 12% of all Republican candidates got Trumps nod.

Kamarck noted that many contests included Trump "wannabes."

"Candidates attacked each other for not being loyal enough to Trump or they tried to paint themselves as the best example of Trumpism, even when they did not get the formal endorsement," Kamarck wrote.

Thirty-six percent of primary candidates identified themselves as Trump or MAGA Republicans; 47% called themselves mainstream conservatives.

A majority of Republicans challenge the 2020 election

Biden defined MAGA Republicans as those who refuse to accept that he won the 2020 election. And poll results suggest that is true.

In the survey of Southern state Republicans, about 80% of those who identified strongly as MAGA said they did not believe the 2020 election was fair or accurate, compared with 66% of those who identified as Traditional Republicans.

But the percentages of election deniers are high for all Republicans. In survey after survey, between 60% and 70% of Republicans say Biden was not the legitimate winner.

The violence on Jan. 6

Biden said MAGA Republicans believe the violence that took place at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was justified.

Surveys show that Republican attitudes on the Capitol breach and the battle with law enforcement are divided. But a Monmouth University poll also found that in the past year, Republicans became a little more accepting of the violence that day.

In June 2021, 62% of Republican respondents said it was appropriate to call the event a riot. In August 2022, 45% said so.

In June 2021, 47% of Republicans said it was a legitimate protest, In August 2022, the fraction rose to 53%.

That roughly equal division among Republicans showed up again in a December 2021 CBS News poll. Then, 47% of Republicans said the people who stormed the Capitol were patriots; 53% said they were not.

But when asked in the CBS poll whether they approved of what took place, 76% of Republicans said they disapproved.

Original post:
PolitiFact | What is a MAGA Republican?

1. These Republicans who disputed Trump's loss just got handed their own defeats  POLITICO
2. Election Denial Didnt Play as Well as Republicans Hoped  The New York Times
3. Republican candidates who denied or questioned 2020 election results: results  NBC News
4. Trump and other Republicans are already casting doubt on midterm results  CNN
5. These Republicans Are Casting Doubt on Election Results and Refusing to Concede  Yahoo News
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

More:
These Republicans who disputed Trump's loss just got handed their own defeats - POLITICO

How a divided America, including the 15% who are 'MAGA Republicans,' splits on QAnon, racism and armed patrols at polling places  The Conversation Indonesia

Link:
How a divided America, including the 15% who are 'MAGA Republicans,' splits on QAnon, racism and armed patrols at polling places - The Conversation...

1. Why Republicans are gaining with less than a week to go  CNN
2. Republicans hold edge over Democrats in congressional races among definite voters: poll  Fox News
3. Coming: Totally predictable, utterly normal Republican midterm sweep  The Hill
4. Midterm elections 2022: The tide is turning for Republicans  Axios
5. White Suburban Women Swing Toward Backing Republicans for Congress - WSJ  The Wall Street Journal
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

More:
Why Republicans are gaining with less than a week to go - CNN

Politics stops at the waters edge, or it may have in 1947, when then-Sen. Arthur Vandenberg, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, first made the remark. But as partisan politics increasingly have bled into U.S. foreign policy in recent years, next months midterm elections have raised concerns about how the election could impact U.S. support for Ukraine as the war against Russia grinds into the winter.

Republicans have been widely predicted to retake control of the House of Representatives, and the future of the Senate remains up in the air. Although there has been strong bipartisan support for Kyiv since the war began among mainstream Republicans, former U.S. President Donald Trump-aligned members as well as influential commentators on Fox News and other parts of the right-wing echo chamber have begun to question the degree of military aid provided by Washington.

The decision to further arm Ukraine maps onto a deepening rift within the Republican Party between hawkish establishment conservatives, not shy of overseas intervention, and a growing chorus of isolationists who gained prominence during the Trump administration.

Politics stops at the waters edge, or it may have in 1947, when then-Sen. Arthur Vandenberg, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, first made the remark. But as partisan politics increasingly have bled into U.S. foreign policy in recent years, next months midterm elections have raised concerns about how the election could impact U.S. support for Ukraine as the war against Russia grinds into the winter.

Republicans have been widely predicted to retake control of the House of Representatives, and the future of the Senate remains up in the air. Although there has been strong bipartisan support for Kyiv since the war began among mainstream Republicans, former U.S. President Donald Trump-aligned members as well as influential commentators on Fox News and other parts of the right-wing echo chamber have begun to question the degree of military aid provided by Washington.

The decision to further arm Ukraine maps onto a deepening rift within the Republican Party between hawkish establishment conservatives, not shy of overseas intervention, and a growing chorus of isolationists who gained prominence during the Trump administration.

There are a lot of Republicans who are strongly behind Ukraine, who want the administration to do more, said Democratic Rep. Adam Smith, chair of the House Armed Services Committee.

There is, however, a creeping anxiety among Republicans, Democrats, and Ukrainians as to whether they could be overwhelmed by the vocal minority. In May, 57 Republican members of the House and 11 Republican senators voted against a $40 billion aid package for Ukraine while several members of the House Freedom Caucus, which represents some of the most extreme right-wing members, have spoken out explicitly against sending further aid to Ukraine. In August, members of the caucus co-sponsored a bill that called for no more federal funds to be sent to Ukraine until a wall is erected along the U.S. border with Mexico.

These voices that believe in America First isolationism dominate all of the major right-wing media, said Melinda Haring, deputy director of the Atlantic Councils Eurasia Center. Theyre the noisiest and the loudest, and they get the most attention.

Since the day Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, highly influential Fox News anchorssuch as Tucker Carlsonhave portrayed the war as a failing of the Biden administration, an effort to avenge Russias interference in the 2016 presidential election. At times, Carlson has echoed Russian talking points about the war.

Other conservative commentators dismissed the impact that Carlson and others had on the broader Republican Party. Anytime youre citing [Rep.] Matt Gaetz and Tucker Carlson, it sounds like there is an agenda behind it, said Danielle Pletka, a senior foreign-policy and defense fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Pletka noted that senior Republicans across the House and Senate have all encouraged the administration to provide more aid to Ukraine.

I think a lot is overblown in terms of the effect of Fox News commentators, said a Republican congressional aide who requested anonymity to discuss the matter. The aide noted that Republican concerns about military aid have largely centered on bureaucratic fights over appropriations and the urge to get heavy weaponry into the hands of the Ukrainian military faster. In a speech on the Senate floor in late September, minority leader Sen. Mitch McConnell urged the Biden administration to move faster in delivering weapons to Ukraine.

The other hesitancy about providing money to Ukraine is not as much to do with Ukraine itself but the Biden administration not doing the proper oversight and accountability of very large sums of money being given to a foreign partner, the aide added.

Others found little substance to the GOPs critiques of the way the Biden administration has handled military aid to Ukraine. Republican critiques of the Biden administration are nonsense on Ukraine. And I say that as a lifelong Republican and an Ukraine expert, Haring said.

But views from the fringes of the party have proven capable of moving into the mainstream in recent years, as evidenced by the partys coalescence around claims that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent. A majority of GOP candidates running for office in November have questioned or rejected the outcome of the vote.

That small group has certainly shown that they have a disproportionate influence on the direction that [House Minority Leader Rep.] Kevin McCarthy chooses, Smith said.

Opinion polls already show creeping fatigue among Republican voters for U.S. support for Ukraine, which could come to weigh on members. A Morning Consult poll released on Monday found only 32 percent of Republicans believe that the United States has a responsibility to protect and defend Ukraine from Russia, compared to 58 percent of Democrats. I think its incumbent on mainstream Republicans to get out of Washington and New York and start talking to Americans, Haring said. We need to do better, and we need to explain why support for Ukraine is in the U.S. national interest.

Between January and October, Washington pledged $26.8 billion in military aid, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economys Ukraine Support Tracker, several times that of the second-biggest donor, the United Kingdom.

Any cutbacks to U.S. military aid to Kyiv could deal an existential blow to Ukraine.

People in Ukraine do believe that support for Ukraine is a bipartisan issue, said Olena Tregub, secretary-general of NAKO, an independent defense anti-corruption commission in Ukraine.

Yet, of course, here in Ukraine, there is a strong reaction [to] some statements of Donald Trump or Tucker Carlson. These are really shocking statements for Ukrainians, and they are confused as to how Russian propaganda has penetrated the American Republican Party to such an extent, she added.

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Kyiv Is Hoping the Republican Party's Better Angels Prevail in the U.S. Midterms - Foreign Policy