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?????????????????????????????????????????????????Saturday, May 27, 2017
The Debrief: An occasional series offering a reporter’s insights
Republican
businessman Greg Gianforte won Montana's House seat a day after being
charged with attacking a Guardian reporter. He gave an apology during
his acceptance speech. (AP)
By Karen Tumulty and Robert Costa May 26 at 7:08 AM
The angry forces that propelled President Trump’s rise are beginning to frame and define the rest of the Republican Party.
The angry forces that propelled President Trump’s rise are beginning to frame and define the rest of the Republican Party.
When GOP House candidate Greg Gianforte assaulted a reporter who had
attempted to ask him a question Wednesday night in Montana, many saw not
an isolated outburst by an individual, but the obvious, violent result
of Trump’s charge that journalists are “the enemy of the people.”
Nonetheless, Gianforte won Thursday’s special election to fill a safe
Republican seat.
“Respectfully, I’d submit that the president has unearthed some demons,”
Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) said. “I’ve talked to a number of people
about it back home. They say, ‘Well, look, if the president can say
whatever, why can’t I say whatever?’ He’s given them license.”
Trump — and specifically, his character and his conduct — now thoroughly dominate the national political conversation.
Traditional policy arguments over whether entitlement programs should be
overhauled, or taxes cut, are regularly upstaged by a new burst of
pyrotechnics.
Republican Greg Gianforte won Montana's special congressional election on May 25, a day after he was charged with assaulting a reporter. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)
Republican Greg Gianforte won Montana's special congressional election on May 25, a day after he was charged with assaulting a reporter. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)
The dynamic is shaping the contours of this year’s smattering of special
congressional elections and contests for governor, as well as the
jockeying ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.
“It’s an entirely different atmosphere,” Michael Steele, a former
Republican National Committee chairman, said. “The president isn’t
ideological and ideology is no longer the anchor. So when reporters put
microphones in candidates’ faces, they’re asking about the president,
tweets, character, your moral outlook and not about a particular
policy.”
Few Republicans expect party leaders to do anything to lessen the toxicity.
Charlie Sykes, a conservative former talk-show host in Wisconsin and
author of the forthcoming “How the Right Lost Its Mind,” said “every
time something like Montana happens, Republicans adjust their standards
and put an emphasis on team loyalty. They normalize and accept
previously unacceptable behavior.”
Those who still navigate by the old maps are having trouble staying on course.
Karen Handel, a conventional Republican running in next month’s special
House election in Georgia, has railed against Obamacare, and campaigned
alongside House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who called her “tested
and true.” But she has been scorched endlessly on television for her
support of the president her Democratic opponent has claimed
“embarrasses our country” and “acts recklessly.”
Other GOP candidates, emboldened by Trump’s success at shattering norms,
have ventured further to test the limits of what the electorate can
stomach.
Corey Stewart, a former state chairman for Trump’s presidential
campaign, has embraced Confederate symbols as his gubernatorial bid has
flailed in Virginia, horrifying party leaders ahead of the June 13
primary and forcing the GOP front-runner to respond.
His primary opponent, former RNC chairman Ed Gillespie, has seen his
steady, well-funded campaign for governor all but drowned out recently
by Stewart’s rage over the effort to remove Confederate statues from
public spaces, which Stewart has said is proof that “ISIS has won.”
Their primary clashes have been more over style and political
correctness than any issue.
Gillespie has kept the edge. “Corey has labeled himself as Trump’s
Mini-Me, but the mojo ain’t there,” Shaun Kenney, the former executive
director of Virginia’s Republican Party, said earlier this year. But it
remains to be seen whether Stewart has damaged the GOP brand for the
general election.
Other polished exemplars of the establishment have struggled to set themselves apart.
Handel, a fixture of state politics, has seen suburban voters in her
district, which has been in Republican hands since 1979, grow so uneasy
about Trump that her once unknown Democratic challenger, Jon Ossoff, has
taken the lead in polls.
Appealing to voters weary over Trump’s comportment, Ossoff has seized on
Trump’s decision to fire James B. Comey as the FBI director
investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential race.
But for some Republican contenders, Trump has been a model — nowhere
more so than in deeply red Montana. Gianforte, a wealthy businessman,
touted his full-throated support for the president and pledged to “drain
the swamp” in his campaign against Rob Quist, a country music artist.
Gianforte’s election-eve eruption capped weeks of frothing frustration
within the ranks in Montana and elsewhere about scrutiny of Trump and
Republicans in the media, with the Trump-friendly candidate fuming and
reacting physically to a question from Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs.
Ryan, who has labored to swing the spotlight away from GOP missteps and
toward his agenda, criticized Gianforte’s actions and said, “There is no
time a physical altercation should occur.” But he did not rescind his
endorsement and, along with other Republicans, plodded forward Thursday
reluctant to delve into a character debate. “I’m going to let the people
of Montana decide,” he said.
The Republican lurch away from running highly disciplined, by-the-book
campaigns on curbing spending and stoking economic growth is, in part,
the evidence of how fully Trump has upended the party. Republicans
haven’t abandoned the views and positions they have cultivated since
Ronald Reagan’s presidency, but instead appear unable to focus on them.
Trump’s barrage of news-making and controversy drives the GOP even at
its lowest levels, with his raucous populism and blustering behavior
reshaping its identity. Candidates often are either adopting aspects of
his persona or finding themselves having to fitfully explain why they
back him. Coupled with a national conservative media complex that sears
the press as much as it does Democrats, they are navigating a highly
charged and volatile environment.
Fox News, the network beloved by Republicans, has also found itself
dealing with the right’s disruptive fury and questions of conduct, even
among its high-profile hosts. Sean Hannity has been criticized and lost
advertisers for promoting a conspiratorial account of the slaying of a
former Democratic National Committee staffer. Hannity has reacted by
charging that “liberal fascists” were conspiring to cripple his career.
Some advocates for the press say that the culture Trump has created
within his party is responsible and has had a cascading effect on the
way 2017 campaigns have unfolded.
“Before the 2016 campaign, we could at least expect civility from
candidates and their staffs,” Lucy A. Dalglish, the dean of Philip
Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, said.
“Trump has declared open season on journalists, and politicians and
members of his Cabinet have joined the hunt.”
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s
Annenberg School for Communication, added: “By casting the press as the
enemy of the American people, Donald Trump has contributed to a climate
of discourse consistent with assaulting a reporter for asking an
inconvenient question.”
For Democrats, the GOP disarray presents perhaps the ripest opportunity
for a blue political wave in over a decade, especially if the
Republicans are alienating suburban professionals and independents.
In Georgia, for instance, Democrat Ossoff is running not as a vocal
young progressive but a thoughtful, middle-of-the-road and careful
Democrat. Republicans Gillespie and Handel are shying away from
Trump-style theatrics.
Democrats, who are in the midst of their own political tug-of-war
between progressives and centrists, have not yet been able to translate
the Republican scandals and Trump tiffs into convincing wins.
Ossoff nearly captured the Georgia seat last month, but did not garner enough votes and the race went to a runoff.
Yet there have been flashes of opportunity: Democrats won two special
state legislative elections this week in New York, with one of the
pickups coming in a district that Trump won.
In early April, Republicans fended off a strong Democratic challenger in
ruby-red Kansas in this year’s first special House election, following
last-minute support from Trump and Vice President Pence.
Republican Ron Estes won by eight percentage points; two years earlier a Republican had won the seat by 31 percentage points.
Meanwhile, in New Jersey’s gubernatorial campaign, the two leading
Republicans running ahead of a June 6 primary — Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno
and Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli — are dealing with the cloud not only
of Trump but of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), whose tumultuous
leadership and bridge-closing scandal has left the state GOP fractured
and been a burden on the Republican hopefuls.
Longtime watchers of Trump do not expect him to speak out against
Gianforte or to urge his party against the politics of bellicosity.
They recalled that he fiercely defended his then-campaign manager, Corey
Lewandowski, when he was accused last year of grabbing a female
reporter’s arm. Trump himself once said of a protester at one of his
campaign rallies: “I’d like to punch him in the face.”
In Sicily at a G-7 summit on Friday, Trump praised Gianforte for a “great win in Montana.”
In the Trump era, it is far from clear what is over the line — or even if a line exists any more.
“There is a total weirdness out there,” Sanford said. “People feel like,
if the president of the United States can say anything to anybody at
any time, then I guess I can too. And that is a very dangerous
phenomenon.”
Mike DeBonis and Paul Schwartzman contributed to this report.