Republicans have a message for all the Elon Musk haters out there: He isn’t going away.

That’s even after Musk put himself center stage in Wisconsin and poured $25 million into the race for a supreme-court seat only to see his preferred candidate lose by nine points to Democratic-backed candidate, and after a pair of special congressional elections in Florida revealed a worsening national political environment for the GOP. “This is one of the moments when we separate the men from the boys,” says one longtime adviser to President Donald Trump. “These are battles worth fighting. And anybody that wants to go against Elon or the president is going to reveal what side of the line they are on.”

The result of Tuesday’s elections left Democrats crowing about what an increasing drag Musk is on Republican fortunes, especially after a series of polls over the past several weeks showed how precisely unpopular Musk and his DOGE initiative to reduce the size of government are. A survey by the Democratic polling outfit Blueprint earlier this month showed Musk’s favorability is 16 points underwater, ten points worse than Trump’s, as voters fret that he will move to cut Social Security and Medicare.

“Elon Musk turned what should have been a pretty run-of-the-mill judicial election into a........

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