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Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, a politics newsletter whose authors will be responding to any and all social invitations this weekend with: “My love for the United States of America does not allow me to do so.” (More on that in a bit.)

But first: What a week of self-destruction in American politics, as officials from each party scramble to undermine themselves in the midterms. With Donald Trump leading the way, Republicans are engaged in a lemminglike rush over an electoral cliff. Democrats, meanwhile, have turned a report on why they lost the previous election into a squabble that could make it harder to win the next ones. It’s a real “resistible force vs. highly mobile object” situation we have here.

Before we get into it, you may have noticed a distinct lack of Jim Newell in this week’s edition, but fear not: He’ll be back next week, so please be sure to send any compliments to us and complaints to him. Onward.

Republicans may be tired of (him) winning.

There was a lot of talk this week of Donald Trump’s command over the Republican Party, and for good reason. He has made it clear that his endorsement can make or break GOP candidates. Two incumbents—Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky—saw their political careers launched directly into the sun recently after the president backed their primary challengers. (Cassidy voted to remove Trump from office over Jan. 6, and Massie pushed a bit too hard for the administration to release information about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the powerful—and gross—men who maintained ties with him.)

But Trump’s dominance in Republican primaries sometimes means that Republicans struggle to dominate anywhere else, as the president has a history of siding with candidates who fall hard on their faces when they have to win over voters who aren’t already MAGA faithful. In 2022 Trump arguably cost the party control of the Senate, backing terrible candidates for winnable races. (You may remember flops like Pennsylvania’s (Dr.) Mehmet Oz, whose campaign suffered from its deep ties to New Jersey. Or Blake Masters’ charisma-free run in Arizona. Or the incomparable Herschel Walker, who mixed the despicable—allegations of domestic violence—with the nonsensical: Who could forget his campaign-trail meditation on the relative merits of vampires vs. werewolves?) We’ll never know if better candidates could have won those races, but the ones Trump elevated in GOP primaries certainly........

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