![]() He rejects most abortion bans as divisive and dangerous, but he also opposes unlimited late-term abortion, and he speaks unapologetically about “ the unborn” and “ the sanctity of life.” He focuses not on passing legislation to outlaw the procedure-he regards most such bills as partisan “ messaging” devices-but on reducing the abortion rate itself. On abortion, McMullin is pro-life but practical. And on Thursday, he chastised the senator for campaigning with former Rep. He also noted Lee’s opposition to sanctions against Russia. In the debate, he raked Lee for going along with Trump’s explosion of the federal debt. Often, McMullin rebukes Lee from the right, exposing the senator’s betrayals of conservative principles. On Thursday, McMullin told MSNBC it was time to “get our fiscal house in order.” In other interviews, he has rejected the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act (“I don’t think it did much to actually reduce inflation”), blasted Biden’s handling of the Afghan withdrawal (“ a total disaster”), chided Biden and his predecessors for failing to deter the invasion of Ukraine (“We were just too slow”), and rebuffed the left’s talk of packing the Supreme Court (“the Court will lose all legitimacy”). Last week, in a televised debate with Lee, McMullin blamed inflation in part on Biden’s “reckless spending.” He also criticized Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan as too broad and inflationary. ![]() He says he’d rather have Mitt Romney than Joe Biden as president. He praises Utah’s Republican governor, Spencer Cox. In interviews and campaign appearances, he talks about his years working in the Republican trenches, first as a national security adviser to House Republicans from 2013 to 2015, and then as chief policy director for the House Republican Conference from 2015 to 2016. McMullin is polling within a few points of Lee, with many voters still undecided.ĭespite this alliance, McMullin is openly conservative. The idea was to narrow the field to two candidates, allowing McMullin-who got 27 percent of the Republican vote in Utah when he ran for president against Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016-to consolidate support from Democrats, independents, and principled Republicans. For these reasons, the Utah Democratic Party chose to endorse him rather than field its own nominee. Utah is an overwhelmingly Republican state, and McMullin has promised that if he goes to the Senate, he won’t caucus with either party. And they’re ugly.Ī Colorado case will determine whether Trump should be kept off the ballot there because… McMullin is discovering that there are answers to that question. The Lee-McMullin race poses a difficult question: What exactly does the GOP stand for? Why should voters support a Republican senator against an opponent who agrees with him on policy but not on subverting democracy? If economic, moral, and foreign-policy conservatism no longer define the party, what does? What does it mean to be a Republican in 2022, beyond conspiring-or defending others who have conspired-to overturn elections when your party doesn’t win? ![]() By neutralizing the GOP’s favorite lines of attack, McMullin has reduced the race to one crucial difference between the candidates: Lee’s complicity in Donald Trump’s schemes to undo the 2020 election. McMullin, a nearly lifelong Republican, is conservative on most issues, so Lee can’t beat him with the usual playbook-calling him woke or a tax-and-spender or a socialist. Mike Lee faces independent challenger Evan McMullin. It’s in Utah, where incumbent Republican Sen. The most interesting political race of 2022 isn’t between a Democrat and a Republican.
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