For Republicans, ‘Crisis’ Is the Message as the Outrage Machine Ramps Up

With next year’s midterm elections seen as a referendum on Democratic rule, Republicans are seeking to create a sense of instability and overreach, diverting focus from their own divisions.

WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders would like everyone to know that the nation is in crisis. There is an economic crisis, they say, with rising prices and overly generous unemployment benefits; a national security crisis; a border security crisis, with its attendant homeland security crisis, humanitarian crisis, and public health crisis; and a separate energy crisis. Pressed Tuesday on whether the nation is really so beleaguered, the No. 2 Republican in the House, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, thought of still more crises: anti-Semitism in the Democratic ranks, “yet another crisis,” he asserted, and a labor shortage crisis.