It was another day marked by strange presidential tweets. I wrote about the fallout at New York:

Republicans everywhere are running for the hills in the wake of the president’s bizarre, reprehensible tweets this morning describing generally accepted estimates of the death toll in Puerto Rico attributable to last year’s Hurricane Maria as a conspiracy hatched by Democrats. House Speaker Paul Ryan’s reaction was pretty typical:

“Ryan didn’t answer a question about whether Trump’s claim disturbed him or whether Trump should apologize to the victims’ families. He reiterated that there’s no reason to dispute the numbers.

“‘It’s a function of, this was a devastating storm that hit an isolated island,’ he said. ‘And that’s really no one’s fault. That is just what happened.’”

In other words, the president is lying again, but the real issue is that the Sun King should not fear that those 3,000 deaths dim the dazzling brilliance of his reign.

But while Republicans everywhere are probably rolling their eyes and wondering why on earth Trump would bring up his weird claims about Maria with both the midterms and another potential hurricane approaching, Trump’s tweets hit Florida politics like a stink bomb. The state’s large (an estimated 1.1 million) and politically pivotal Puerto Rican community — enhanced by post-Maria refugees, aside from the many Florida residents with family and friends on the island — is going to be enraged by Trump’s dismissive claims about the disaster and the suffering it caused. And already Florida Republicans are distancing themselves from their Maximum Leader with varying degrees of intensity, as Politico reports:

“’Mr. President. SHUT UP,’ Alan Levine, a Republican appointed by Gov. Rick Scott — a top Trump ally — to Florida’s university governing board, replied on Twitter.

“’Any death, whether one or 3,000 is a tragedy. That doesn’t mean you caused it, and its not about you. Show compassion for the families,” Levine wrote. “Learn what we can so future response can improve. Honestly…’.”

Florida governor and Senate candidate Rick Scott took a few beats to react, and did so firmly if calmly:

https://twitter.com/ScottforFlorida/status/1040265322270474242?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1040265322270474242%7Ctwgr%5E373939313b73706563696669635f73706f7274735f616374696f6e&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fnymag.com%2Fdaily%2Fintelligencer%2F2018%2F09%2Fflorida-republicans-repudiate-trump-tweets-on-maria-deaths.html

Scott has invested heavily in outreach to the normally Democratic-leaning Puerto Rican community. So he can be expected to defend that investment against offensive comments from Trump. A more interesting case is that of the Republican nominee to succeed him as governor, U.S. Representative Ron DeSantis:

“’Ron DeSantis is committed to standing with the Puerto Rican community, especially after such a tragic loss of life,’ his spokesman Stephen Lawson said in an email. ‘He doesn’t believe any loss of life has been inflated. Ron is focused on continuing to help our Puerto Rican neighbors recover and create opportunities for those who have moved to Florida succeed.'”

There is no way Ron DeSantis would be the GOP nominee for governor without the early and avid support he received from Trump. Yet he’s basically calling his supreme benefactor a liar here. That’s how explosive this issue could be in Florida.

Marco Rubio came the closest of any prominent Florida Republican to offering an defense of Trump among early reactions:

“These days even tragedy becomes political. 3k more Americans died in #PuertoRico after Hurricane than during comparable periods before. Both Fed & local gov made mistakes. We all need to stop the blame game & focus on recovery, helping those still hurting & fixing the mistakes.”

So the president abruptly denies 3,000 deaths, but hey–everybody makes mistakes, and “we all” need to stop the “blame game.” As Trump himself might put it, that’s sad.

Republicans keep trying how to figure out how to help their midterm prospects from Washington. One strategem they’ve hatched may backfire, as I noted at New York this week:

[T]his apparent decision is a risky one.

“House Republican lawmakers introduced legislation Monday that would make the 2017 tax cuts for individuals permanent in a bid to highlight their signature economic policy achievement ahead of the November elections.

“The legislation – released as Republicans are at risk of losing their majority in the House – is seen as a last-ditch effort by GOP lawmakers to convince voters of the benefits of their new tax code. Polls consistently show less than half of Americans approve of the tax cut.”

The bill, to be clear, is not going to be enacted; without the protection of a budget reconciliation vehicle like the one used to pass the first big Trump tax cut last December, it has zero chance in the Senate. So this is an election year “messaging” bill designed to tell voters: Hey, here’s some more money we’ve wrenched from the swamp. Don’t forget to say thank you on November 6.

There’s a problem, though: the original tax bill was very unpopular among higher-income voters in high-income, high-tax states because of its provisions reducing the deductibility of state and local income and property taxes (SALT) — notably California, New Jersey, and New York. Indeed, some Republicans were undoubtedly proud at their success in screwing over these states as havens of godless immigrant-coddling tree-hugging baby-killing liberals. Reminding them of this screwing-over shortly before the midterms has its perils.

Using the Cook Political Report’s ratings, there are 13 highly competitive (Lean D, Lean R, or Tossup) races in Republican-controlled districts in those three states where the SALT provisions are generally hated. There are another six in the Likely Republican category that could become competitive between now and November 6. Democrats need just a net gain of 23 seats to take control of the House.

To be sure, 11 House Republicans from California, New Jersey, and New York voted against the tax bill, mostly because of the SALT provisions. But it’s not going to help them very much if their constituents are reminded their party screwed them over, and if their own protestations grow too loud, “base” voters who love the tax cuts could be annoyed, undermining GOP turnout. As David Dayen put it:

“Brilliant work by the House GOP, forcing suburban Republicans to once again vote to either defy their party or raise taxes on their constituents.”

This could partially be a matter of the many lobbyists for industries and interests benefiting from the original tax cuts wanting to get Republicans locked into making them permanent while the bill is still viewed as a net plus. But if it helps lose them the House, that will be a pyrrhic victory of the highest order.

There’s a new wrinkle in the GOP attacks on single-payer health care proposals. I wrote about it this week at New York:

But what Trump and Scott are doing is asking seniors to selfishly (or resentfully) oppose giving younger people the same kind of health coverage they enjoy because it might somehow put their own “socialist” benefits at risk. And as with the attacks on Obamacare, there is more than a bit of a whiff of racism involved, as Cohen observes:

[T]aken literally, Trump was saying that Democrats want to raid socialism to pay for socialism, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

But Trump was probably making a clumsy version of the pitch that helped him get elected and that continues to keep his base loyal ― namely, that Democrats want to shift money and status away from the kind of people who voted for him and give those things to others.

His message to supporters, in other words, was that Democrats want to raid your socialism to pay for theirs.

It’s not crazy to hear a racist dog whistle in there, given Trump’s history. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that a Republican tried to rally white voters by telling them that Democrats were going to take their money and give it to nonwhite people.

You could argue that Republicans are simply appealing to the innate conservatism of old folks who fear change even if they would be helped very directly by that change. But the country could do without the lies told by those with bad intent towards Medicare posing as its champions.

While following Brett Kavanaugh’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee from gavel to gavel, I saw a strange unscripted moment that told us a lot. I wrote about it at New York:

Throughout the confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, Democratic senators have challenged his acceptance of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that established a constitutional right to an abortion. He’s become adept in reciting a sort of formula acknowledging (in language also used by Chief Justice John Roberts at his own confirmation hearing) Roe as “settled law” and an important SCOTUS precedent — and then refusing to answer questions about Roe’s original legitimacy (the key to a possible future reversal by SCOTUS itself, which is not bound to its own precedents the way lower courts are) because his answers might prejudge a future case.

But Republican Lindsey Graham threw Kavanaugh a curve today by asking him to criticize Roe on the standard grounds that conservatives like both of those men have heard (and almost certainly agreed with) thousands of times in their adult lives.

Graham went back to basics:

GRAHAM: Is there anything in the Constitution about the right to an abortion? Anything written in it …

KAVANAUGH: Senator, the Supreme Court recognized the right to an abortion in the 1973 Roe v. Wade case, and has reaffirmed it many times.

GRAHAM: Look, my question is, did they find a phrase in the Constitution that says the state cannot interfere with a woman’s right to choose, until medical viability occurs? Is that in the Constitution?

KAVANAUGH: The Supreme Court, applying the liberty —

GRAHAM: This is pretty simple: “No, it’s not, Senator Graham.”

KAVANAUGH (laughing): I want to be very careful …

Kavanaugh tried to talk about the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the constitutional “liberty cause,” but Graham wasn’t having any of it:

GRAHAM: What are the limits on the Court’s ability to find a penumbra of rights to apply in a particular situation? What are the checks and balances for people in your profession, if you can find five people who agree with you, to confer rights, whether the public likes it or not, based on this concept of a penumbra of rights? What are the limits to this.

Graham is alluding to the famous “penumbra” doctrine of unenumerated but implied rights contained in Justice Willam O. Douglas’s decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 SCOTUS case that struck down a state ban on contraception as violating a right to privacy the Court had never explicitly identified before. It was, more importantly, the chief precedent cited by the Court majority in Roe v. Wade. Every American who has ever taken a constitutional law class knows all about Douglas, “penumbras,” Griswold, privacy rights, and Roe, and has heard the standard conservative complaint, echoed by Graham, that the whole thing is the epitome of illegitimate “judicial activism.”

But instead of agreeing or disagreeing with Graham, Kavanaugh tried to go off on a tangent about later Supreme Court cases about privacy rights being rooted in the country’s history and traditions. After mocking that idea, Graham got back to his basic objection of “five people” (justices) using “one word” (privacy) to “tell everybody elected in the country you can’t go there” (in restricting abortion).

GRAHAM: The only real check and balance is a constitutional amendment, to change the ruling. Would you agree with that?

This was a treacherous question, since most of the conservatives backing Kavanaugh would begin rioting in the streets if he conceded the Court had no power to “fix” Roe v. Wade. After a brief pause, Kavanaugh objected that he did not want to “comment on potential constitutional amendments,” and then mostly fell silent as Graham continued to offer the standard conservative rant about “judicial activists” robbing legislative bodies of their power to determine public policies. At the end, recognizing that Kavanaugh wasn’t going to comment, Graham concluded: “All I ask is that you think about it,” as though the veteran conservative jurist never had.

This near-comical exchange was revealing in that the well-rehearsed Kavanaugh had the discipline to act as though Graham, in enunciating tenets of liberal judicial overreaching that are part of his own philosophical inheritance, was handing him a rattlesnake to cuddle. There is no way Kavanaugh would have passed the Federalist Society vetting process if he didn’t at the very least broadly share Graham’s point of view about Roe. And if he is confirmed to the Court and blandly follows Roe as unshakable precedent, there will be hell to pay in conservative circles — from white-shoe law offices to small Evangelical churches — that will burn all the Republicans who voted to confirm him, and will even scorch Donald Trump if he is still in office at that point.

Everyone on the Judiciary Committee understands the deceptive game that he and Republican senators are playing on this subject. And that’s probably why Lindsey Graham felt secure in just making a speech to the galleries.

It was a true “teaching moment.”

All sorts of big things begin happening in election cycles around Labor Day. I discussed one of them at New York:

There comes a time in any campaign cycle when parties and the donors affiliated with them review their investments and cut their losses. It can be an especially painful process in a potential “wave” election year, particularly a midterm when the party in power knows it’s going to lose House seats but is focused on maintaining control.

For Republicans right now, that means holding the line at 22 net lost House seats at worst. Since there are very, very few vulnerable Democratic seats that could offset GOP losses (of the 66 House races the Cook Political Report considers competitive, only four are in districts held by Democrats), Republicans must triage their most afflicted incumbents. And as Politicoreports, the process is fully under way:

“Behind the scenes, senior party strategists have begun polling to determine which incumbents may be beyond saving. Among those most in jeopardy of getting cut off, they say, are Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock, Pennsylvania Rep. Keith Rothfus, and Iowa Rep. Rod Blum, all of whom are precariously positioned in their districts.

“The party has to date reserved millions of dollars of future advertising time to buttress Comstock and Rothfus. Yet those funds are not guaranteed — they still might be diverted to other incumbents viewed as more likely to win in the fall.”

Cook rates the Comstock and Rothfus races as “Lean Democratic,” but still has Blum’s race as a toss-up. The three districts are illustrative of the range of problems the GOP is having this year. Comstock’s district is a classic suburban enclave loaded with college-educated voters who are hostile to Donald Trump. Rothfus was stricken by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s remapping of the state’s congressional districts to erase the effect of an earlier GOP gerrymander. He was tossed into a district with Democrat Conor Lamb, fresh from his astonishing special election win in more difficult terrain. And Blum is a conservative ideologue who won and was reelected in Iowa’s very good Republican years of 2014 and 2016, but is endangered by what appears to be a Democratic comeback in that state.

But these incumbents are just the low-hanging spoiled fruit, and others may soon get the financial heave-ho:

“The anxiety is already rising among lawmakers and their allies. Kansas Rep. Kevin Yoder, an imperiled suburban congressman whom Democrats are spending heavily to defeat, has recently complained to allies that the national committee hasn’t done enough to help him in his reelection bid, according to four people familiar with the conversations.”

Such complaints, however, go in both directions:

“During a House GOP Conference meeting this spring, NRCC [the party’s House fundraising committee] Chairman Steve Stivers told members not to expect the party to bail them out later in the campaign if they failed to pull their weight. He pointed out that the party had already waged a costly and ultimately unsuccessful effort to rescue an underperforming candidate in a Pennsylvania special election.

“As proof of that approach, the House GOP campaign arm has barely budged despite pleas for additional financial support from endangered Iowa Rep. David Young and his campaign team — at least partly because they view him as a sluggish campaigner, said two senior Republicans familiar with the party’s deliberations.”

It’s true that incumbents are likely to get a thumb on the scales in such calculations as opposed to open seat candidates or those challenging Democrats, since the party committees are supervised by incumbents and the “outside” groups tend to follow their lead. But when all those chairmanships and other perks of the majority are in danger, collegial solidarity will only go so far:

“‘The NRCC isn’t going to be able to help those who haven’t helped themselves,’ said former Pennsylvania GOP Rep. Phil English, who was involved with the committee during his House tenure. ‘These are very Darwinian decisions. It means selection of the fittest.'”

Donald Trump’s party can’t expected to do too much for “losers.”