But they could rise or fall based on who the party chooses in primary elections this spring and summer. “How could you screw this up? It’s actually possible,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) recently warned his party. (The Senate is split 50-50, and Democrats hold the majority in the House by just a few seats.)
Even in safe races Republicans expect to win this November, the real drama is playing out in the primaries. In many of these contests, former president Donald Trump has put his reputation at stake by endorsing unconventional candidates and pursuing vendettas against members of his party who bucked him while he was president.
Ohio: This might be the year’s most contentious primary. Here in Ohio, a state Trump won twice, Republicans can grab a rare open Senate seat. For months, the former president stayed out of the primary and watched as the candidates tried to out-Trump each other with controversial statements. On Friday, he endorsed “Hillbilly Elegy” author and former Trump critic J.D. Vance, even though, according to Washington Post reporting, some of Trump’s own advisers wanted him to choose former state GOP chair Jane Timken or former Ohio treasurer Josh Mandel, whom they view as more electable statewide. “It is all about winning!” Trump said in a statement in which he acknowledged Vance’s anti-Trump past and asserting that the candidate gets it now. (Vance went so far to the right that he won the backing of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a...
A front-page article with the byline of veteran New York Times opinion writer Nicholas Kristof is the latest poisonous example of what I call the NGO “halo effect.” Headlined “The Silence That Mee...