The Great Republican Panic Is Upon Us

The Surge Saddled with an unpopular president and price spikes they can’t afford, Republicans are running away from Trump—and toward whatever safety they can find. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Mark Schiefelbein-Pool/Getty Images and Leon Neal/Getty Images. The Surge is your weekly political sanity check: What matters, what might, and what’s just political theater. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. Welcome to this weekend’s edition of the Surge, Slate’s politics newsletter. Oh, you think it’s “bad” or “completely and obviously illegal” that Donald Trump has used taxpayer dollars to air a campaign-season ad celebrating himself while the lyric “love me” plays repeatedly in the background? Sounds like you’ve got Trump Derangement Syndrome, cowpoke. We are little more than a month from the stupid midterms, and Republicans Are in Disarray. They were specifically promised that the Iran war would not have trade-offs! Susan Collins is not concerned about a major story that dropped this week, but perhaps she should be. Plus, why do some Democrats keep describing one New York Republican House member as unbeatable? He may be with that attitude. First up, though: If you’ve got some diesel sitting around the house, you could make a pretty penny on Facebook Marketplace. The week Republicans in red states realized they’re going to have to hustle. Everyone has understood for some time that this would be a favorable election cycle for Democrats. But this seemed to be the week that this passive knowledge blew into true panic for Republicans—in red states. The Iran war raised energy prices since its inception. But it’s the recent price spike of diesel fuel, late in campaign season, that’s driven Republicans into a previously unseen fit of panic. A diesel price spike isn’t good for anyone who enjoys such things as, say, eating food or purchasing products. But it’s especially bad for big agricultural states, where margins were already thinned due to tariffs and fertilizer prices. Indeed, one of the truly unusual features of the Trump administration has been how the president has so specifically worked to make people’s lives difficult in places like, say, Iowa and Kansas. Well, Iowa and Kansas have a bunch of races this year, and the candidates are abruptly sounding different. Rep. Ashley Hinson, running for Senate in Iowa against Democrat Josh Turek, posted this week that “the war needs to be brought to a successful and immediate end,” while Iowa GOP Reps. Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks went a step further and actually voted to end the war last week. All are in competitive races, and one poll this week showed Hinson trailing Turek by 8 points. This was a bit of an outlier, but the race shouldn’t be especially competitive to begin with. In Kansas, meanwhile, Sen. Roger Marshall—running against Democratic nominee Adam Hamilton in an ever-closer race—separated himself from the president by chastising Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s behavior in the state. Marshall has continued voting for the Iran war, and Hamilton is hammering him over it. How deep will this red-state incursion go? Already, national Republicans have all but given up purple-state Senate races like Georgia and North Carolina, as more and more money will have to go to defensive measures in Texas, Ohio, Alaska, Iowa, and Kansas. Nebraska? Maybe South Carolina and Mississippi? As National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Tim Scott told GOP senators this week, senators in deep-red states need to run as if they’re behind so all resources can go toward the “record number of toss-up races” on the map. Democrats shouldn’t get overly excited about the prospect of winning, say, eight Senate seats. Republicans still have the money advantage, and their recent deluge of spending should tighten things a bit. Trump will pull some gimmick with diesel prices, like an export ban, that will be terrible policy but might offer relief for a hot second. And many swing voters, while livid at Republicans, still do consider Democrats to be helpless freaks. But this week? Take in the GOP panic. Marinate in it. It is rich. And all because of policy choices—wars, tariffs—that did not need to be made. Will that story about Susan Collins and the scam defense contractor matter? Not every Senate race is a vision of unadulterated joy for Democrats. They still have to watch their backs in races where they nominated more-left-wing candidates (Michigan, Minnesota, Maine) or where people might be conflating the Republican candidate with his more popular brother (New Hampshire). In Maine, for example, the Collins machine is still chugging along in a tight race with Troy Jackson, and even led him in a New York Times poll released this week. (Others showed Jackson ahead.) On Tuesday, though, ProPublica published a much-discussed investigation into the Collins team’s relationship with Martin Kao, the former CEO of a Hawaiian defense contractor. Kao is now in federal prison after his business plan—buying off politicians with campaign donations in exchange for defense contracts that never went anywhere—was exposed. The story reveals that Collins helped secure the company funds while Kao used shell companies to make large donations to Collins’ super PAC. The FBI was supposedly digging deep into the situation until Trump came to office, at which point FBI agents were either fired or reassigned to assisting Homeland Security in the pervasive harassment of immigrants. The Collins team portrayed it all as a hit piece, saying any notion of a pay-to-play scheme was “categorically false.” Her strongest argument in response to it is that much of it relies on interviews Kao did with the FBI once he was already in jail and looking to save himself, although ProPublica countered that it had independently verified many of his claims. (There are also some not-great emails from members of Collins’ orbit in there.) But even if there’s no hard camera footage of Kao giving Collins burlap sacks full of cash, there is undoubtedly a story that she got duped into delivering federal dollars to a scammer. One quote that didn’t make it into our feature on Collins earlier this year, but that came back to me this week, was from former Sen. Roy Blunt: “I can’t think of an earmark that Susan has ever asked for that turned out to be a problem for her politically.” That may no longer be the case. Is Mike Lawler really a brilliant political force of such magnitude that he cannot be defeated? Last week, moderate, retiring Maine Democrat Jared Golden—who’s really winging it on his way out of office—endorsed New York GOP Rep. Mike Lawler for reelection, citing Lawler’s ability to work with the other side to pass legislation. What caught our eye about this was a reaction from one House Democrat, who told the Washington Sun that Golden’s endorsement didn’t bug them, since “I don’t think Lawler’s beatable.” And this caught our eye because we read the same line from a “senior House Democrat” in an Axios story last month, almost word for word. Well, these House Democrats—or this one House Democrat who really likes delivering the same line to multiple reporters—are suffering from acute confidence issues, because: what? Sure, Lawler is pretty talented at maintaining his individual brand, either by carving out additional tax relief for his constituents in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year or by calling out bigots within his party. And, sure, Lawler was one of only three House Republicans who won districts in 2024 carried by Kamala Harris. That’s all a testament to his skill, but it’s also a sign that he would be directly underneath a blue wave should it come to crash. As ol’ Bert Camus would say: One must imagine Lawler beatable. Republicans have put a lot of money behind defending Lawler’s seat, and there’s been some question as to why Democrats haven’t kept up in propping up his opponent, Cait Conley. (Conley is arguably the purest distillation of DCCC recruitment ever: West Point. Military. Harvard. MIT. National Security Council.) But part of the reason they haven’t kept up is because Democrats … don’t have as much money. 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