I was talking with Rep. Kevin McCarthy recently about Republican chances in 2020. Naturally, he hopes to regain the House majority and wrest the speaker’s gavel from Nancy Pelosi’s claws. But he also seems optimistic about the Senate. Focusing in particular on a crucial race in Colorado, McCarthy told me, “I still have a lot of belief in Cory.”
Let’s hope his belief turns out to be justified, for Sen. Cory Gardner is in the toughest race of his career, as Nic Rowan writes in our cover story, “Fighting on Two Fronts.”
From the Left, Gardner faces old enemies, militant state groups funded by billionaire radicals. They depict him as a frothing right-winger, which would be laughable if the calumny had no chance of working. But these shock troops and their tactics have proven effective in the past.
Gardner now also faces incoming fire from supposed conservatives, who say he’s a sock puppet of the president. These antagonists have put together an anti-Trump auxiliary force self-aggrandizingly called the Lincoln Project. This is a group headed by, among others, George Conway, who, in addition to being an obsessive and myopic critic of President Trump, also happens to be married to the president’s senior adviser, Kellyanne Conway.
We’ve just ended an extraordinary week. Last Monday, the Democrats brought us their Iowa caucuses fiasco, which managed not to produce a victor for three days. As the tally ground on, Democratic candidates turned nasty on the road to the New Hampshire primary. On Tuesday, Trump delivered a brutal and effective State of the Union speech from the well of the House that impeached him. It was as startling an in-your-face confrontation as you’ll ever see unless political adversaries have actually resorted to violence. Then, on Wednesday, the Senate acquitted the president on both impeachment charges, and his public approval shot higher than at any time since he was inaugurated.
The consequences of impeachment are unknowable, but senior columnist Michael Barone makes it clear that congressional votes to convict and to acquit could cost both Republicans and Democrats seats in the November election.
Zaid Jalani scrutinizes Elizabeth Warren, whose candidacy is collapsing because she has turned with “woke” hostility on voters who disagree with her rather than trying to win them over. Senior columnist Timothy Carney and reporter Joseph Simonson dig into Iowa caucusgoers, and into Bernie Sanders’s vindication in the first-in-the-nation state. Jay Cost writes an obituary for the caucus itself. Surely, after this year, it is dead, or must die soon.
I also recommend our tribute to Peanuts creator Charles Schultz 20 years after his death. Jay Heflin reveals the pleasing reason why wage growth has slowed; Stefan Beck lays bare the grasping envy that motivates a hypocritical mob savaging author Jeanine Cummins for her awful novel, American Dirt; and Rob Long offers three rules for life.
