Trump Doesn’t Need Different GOP Senators, He Needs More of Them

Jim Geraghty

Steve Bannon to Sean Hannity this week, discussing efforts to recruit primary challengers to incumbent Republican senators: "Nobody's safe. We're coming after all of them."

If every Republican senator is going to get a primary challenger backed by Bannon, no matter what, then what’s the incentive to vote Bannon’s way between now and Election Day?

“It’s about sending a message!” Yes, it sends the message that there is no amount of loyalty to Trump that is sufficient to placate the Steve Bannons of the world, so you might as well vote the way you and your constituents prefer and let the chips fall where they may.

The problem for the Trump administration is not really one of insufficiently loyal or cooperative Republican senators. Peruse the tables over at Five-Thirty-Eight about how often GOP senators vote the way the Trump administration prefers. Fifteen Republican senators have voted with the White House 95.9 percent of the time. The least “loyal” Republican senator is Susan Collins of Maine, and even she has voted with the White House position 79 ...

READ MORE

Democrats’ Choice: Dreamers or the Resistance

Jonathan S. Tobin

Democrats and their mainstream-media cheering section are panning the Trump administration’s latest terms for granting legal status to the “Dreamers” — illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as...

Can the NFL Survive National Polarization?

David French

Can the NFL Survive National Polarization?

Gillespie for Governor

The Editors

The party with control of the White House tends to lose the Virginia gubernatorial race. It would serve Virginia well to buck that trend and elect Ed Gillespie in November. Despite the drag...

The Grave-Hunter, Hunted

Jay Nordlinger

Editor’s Note: In the current issue of National Review, we have a piece by Jay Nordlinger on Yuri Dmitriev and his travails. Today, Mr. Nordlinger expands that piece in this space. At an Oslo...

The Harvey Weinstein Scandal Leaves a Trail of Hypocrisy

Jonah Goldberg

If hypocrisy were a greenhouse gas, the ice caps would be gone by now. Let’s start with the obvious: Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein wasn’t fired for being a pig, he was fired for being...

Our Halting Progress toward Maximum Economic Freedom

Michael Tanner

The good news is that the bad news isn’t quite as bad. Late last month, Canada’s Fraser Institute released the 2017 Economic Freedom of the World report. This year’s report covers the state...

Galileo Revisited: The Galileo Affair in Context

Dom Paschal Scotti

'This exquisite history of a defining moment at the birth of modernity resists the temptation to idealize or villainize, treating both Galileo and his opponents as the flesh-and-blood creatures they actually were.'
- Michael Augros, Ph.D, author, Who Designed the Designer? A Rediscovered Path to God's Existence

LEARN MORE