Will: Spare Two GOP Senators

Monday, October 05, 2026

I generally agree with George Will's call for "carnage" for the GOP during the midterm elections, including his exceptions:

If Mike Rogers, former seven-term congressman and chair of the House Intelligence Committee, is not Michigan's next senator, Abdul El-Sayed will be. The Democrat is comfortable in the company of antisemites and Holocaust deniers.

If Sen. Susan Collins loses in Maine, this will be partly because she did something admirable and senatorial. Standing against manufactured hysteria, she voted to confirm Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. In 4,192 words spoken on the Senate floor, she examined his extensive judicial record and the sexual assault allegations against him. Demonstrating the complete lack of corroborating evidence, she concluded that the allegations could not meet even the minimal "more likely than not" standard. Read her statement and marvel at its sobriety about the Senate's "advice and consent" duty. This is vanishingly rare among incumbent senators of both parties. [bold added]
These and his hope, obiter dictum for just enough Republicans left to sustain a presidential veto sounds about right to me.

Will's rationale is spot-on:
If Republicans lose not only their House majority, but Senate seats they currently hold in Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio and Texas, they might begin to wonder: Could we be doing something wrong? Such a resort to thinking is necessary to begin restoring legislative checks on the executive. And it is necessary if America is ever again going to have a conservative political party. [bold added]
Or, better than merely conservative, I would add, a pro-liberty party.

-- CAV

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