Jennifer Rubin/WaPo:
If today’s GOP baffles you, consider what motivates its base
For answers, turn to the Public Religion Research Institute’s American Values Survey, which provides insight into the beliefs of White evangelical Christians, who make up the core of the GOP. It reveals a lot about what they think and why they vote the way they do.
A striking 71 percent of these voters think the country has gone downhill since the 1950s (when women were excluded from most professions, Black Americans faced barriers to voting, 50 million Americans still used outhouses and only about 5 percent of Americans were college-educated). Because White Protestant evangelicals make up such a large share of the GOP, that means 66 percent of Republicans want to go back to the time of “Leave It to Beaver.”
Half of White evangelical Protestants also think God intended America to be the promised land. Nearly two-thirds say immigrants are a threat, and 61 percent say “society has become too soft and feminine.” And they are the only discrete religious group polled to support overturning Roe v. Wade.
NY Times:
Judge Curbs Actions of Election-Monitoring Group in Arizona
The group may not take photos or videos of voters, openly carry firearms near ballot boxes, or post information about voters online, a federal judge ruled.
Last week, the League of Women Voters sued the group, saying that its actions amounted to “time-tested methods of voter intimidation,” and seeking an injunction to halt its activities. Early on Tuesday before a hearing on the matter, Clean Elections USA said it had agreed to cease some activities, including refraining from openly carrying guns or wearing visible body armor within 250 feet of ballot boxes, as well as following or interacting with voters within 75 feet of the boxes.
But the temporary restraining order issued by Judge Michael T. Liburdi, who was appointed by former President Donald J. Trump, goes well beyond that agreement, prohibiting the group “and other persons in active concert or participation with” it from taking photos or videos of voters or disseminating information about voters online, and also from “making false statements” about Arizona’s statutes regarding early voting in interviews or on social media. Lawyers for Clean Elections USA had resisted those limits, claiming they impinged on the group’s First Amendment rights and, in the case of comments made by its founder, Melody Jennings, would amount to unconstitutional prior restraint.
But what about the previous ruling that their First Amendment intimidation rights were protected? Derek Muller [Divergent strategies may yield divergent outcomes in Arizona drop box voter intimidation cases] argues the first case remedy requested was overly broad, but this latest case was well put together and got the desired result.
Timothy Noah/TNR:
“We” Don’t Have a Political Violence Problem. Republicans Do.
The Paul Pelosi attack was no aberration. Only one party counts violent insurrectionists as a constituency it dare not alienate.
“Reasonable” Republicans like New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu say America has a problem with political violence “on both sides of the aisle.” That isn’t true. America has a problem with political violence against Democrats.
The proof lies in what unreasonable Republicans have been saying since Paul Pelosi, 82, got his skull cracked at 2:30 a.m. Friday morning by a hammer-wielding QAnon enthusiast shouting, “Where is Nancy?” Donald Trump Jr. retweeted a photograph of a hammer and a pair of underwear—an early news report, since corrected, said the attacker was stripped to his underwear—captioned, “Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready.” Representative Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican, posted and then deleted a tweet saying Pelosi’s assailant was a male prostitute whom Pelosi had hired (which of course wasn’t true). Elon Musk, who is not a Republican but appears drawn to the GOP’s more fetid precincts, tweeted along the same lines, later removed the tweet, and still later joked about it rather than apologize. Charlie Kirk suggested the whole story was intended “to smear millions of conservatives.” (For a fuller review of such stomach-turning statements, see Michael Tomasky’s piece, “Paul Pelosi Almost Died, and Most Republicans Don’t Have A Big Problem With That.”)
William Saletan/The Bulwark:
Even the Sane Republicans Are Embracing Election Deniers
Chris Sununu is just the latest to put party before country.
Chris Sununu, the governor of New Hampshire, is one of the saner people in today’s Republican party. He concedes that the 2020 election was free and fair. He acknowledges climate change. He has criticized Republican leaders for ostracizing Rep. Liz Cheney and other principled dissidents while protecting the party’s worst extremists.
That’s why Sununu’s decision in the final weeks of the 2022 campaign to embrace election deniers is a particularly bad sign. Like other Republican officials, he has decided that sabotage of public faith in democracy doesn’t matter, as long as the saboteurs are Republicans. And he’s defending their reckless behavior with pernicious excuses.
On Sep. 13, election deniers won the Republican primaries for two of New Hampshire’s three federal offices. Don Bolduc, who has insisted that “Trump won the election” in 2020, captured the GOP nomination to face off against incumbent Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan. And Karoline Leavitt, who has said Trump “absolutely” won, got the nomination for one of the state’s two congressional seats.
Sununu could have said that he considered these nominees unfit for office. At a minimum, he could have kept his distance. Instead, he has endorsed Leavitt and praised Bolduc.
Semafor:
Democrats hope a ‘tidal wave’ of Republican-sponsored polls aren’t midterm reality
The midterm campaign is basically cooked at this point, meaning there’s only one thing left to do: Argue over the polls.
Democrats are publicly questioning the narrative of a “red wave,” pointing to an influx of polls sponsored by Republicans or allied groups in critical races across the country.
Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist, said he recently analyzed public polls in eight battlegrounds that found Republican polls dominating surveys from the month of October. He argued it was evidence of an apparent effort to “game the poll averages” in order to demoralize Democrats and create headlines about struggling candidates.
“It’s just this tidal wave of Republican surveys that have driven this narrative that is perhaps not a reality,” argued Tom Bonier, CEO of the Democratic data firm TargetSmart.
Or perhaps it is. Consider:
David Dayen/Daily Kos:
The Craziest House Race of 2022
In Orange County, California, Republican Michelle Steel is painting her opponent as a tool of China with unhinged red-baiting attacks.
This midterm election has played host to the usaual cornucopia of misinformation, baseless accusations, and barely contained rage. But few places have seen such a sustained bout of open demonization as Steel’s campaign against Chen, a Taiwanese American lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve and community college trustee, running as the Democratic candidate in California’s heavily Asian 45th District. Steel, herself a Korean immigrant, is targeting ads at the local Vietnamese community—the largest anywhere outside of Vietnam—which has historically been virulently anti-communist. She is playing on that history to tar her opponent as being in league with the Chinese Communist Party.
Walter Shapiro/TNR:
The 2022 Midterms Are the Ultimate Triumph of Campaign Consultants
For decades, strategists have been trying to control candidates. Now, with fewer debates and events, they’ve finally gotten their way.
Candidates—especially right-wing Republicans—shun the traditional media as they largely campaign on conservative talk radio and safe venues such as Fox News and Newsmax. Public campaign schedules, which used to clog inboxes, are now often as closely guarded as all the nuclear secrets that are not housed at Mar-a-Lago. Safe spaces are what all campaigns desire since, in an age when everyone is a videographer, an off-key joke or a snappish response to a voter can be plastered all over Twitter and YouTube within three minutes.
…
In 2022, consultants in both parties have stumbled on the simplest solution to debate risk—avoid them.
Robert A. Pape/Foreign Affairs:
Bombing to Lose
Why Airpower Cannot Salvage Russia’s Doomed War in Ukraine
In effect, Putin was reminding the Ukrainian government of his ability to attack its main population centers—a threat that Ukraine, having scrapped Soviet-era bombers long ago, having no long-range rockets able to hit Russian cities, and having only a tiny number of ground attack aircraft—is unable to match. The goal, it seems, is to punish civilians, wearing them down in the hope of convincing their leaders to sue for peace.
But it is a strategy doomed to failure. As in earlier phases of the war, Russia’s supposed air superiority has done little to shift the overall momentum on the ground. Despite the significant damage they have caused, Putin’s airstrikes have failed to hinder Ukrainian advances in the east. And when they have reached civilian targets they have only served to strengthen Ukrainian resolve.
In fact, the paradoxical outcome of Russia’s bombing campaigns suggests a more important insight about airpower in contemporary warfare. For decades, bombing civilian areas—as ugly and immoral as it gets in war—has been one of the most common strategies that states have used to undermine the target population’s morale and induce the target government to surrender. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and especially his recent escalation, has been no different. But as dozens of conflicts over the past century have demonstrated, using airpower against civilian targets is almost always doomed to failure. And as target countries like Ukraine obtain more advanced land-based munitions, the flaws of the airpower strategy have only become more apparent.