But Lynda Payette, 68, of Bethlehem, N.H., waved away any talk of Mr. Trump’s vulnerabilities. “I believe that God placed him there and no man is going to take him down,” she said. “He’s electable, same as 2015.”
Then she turned the electability question on Mr. DeSantis, pointing to his decision to sign a six-week abortion ban, which she called extreme. “I really think we’ve got to give a little on this abortion thing,” she said, as a friend nodded in agreement.
For the sizable faction of the G.O.P. that has swallowed Mr. Trump’s falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen, electability is a particularly moot argument. They don’t think he lost.
If an anti-Trump electability message were to gain ground anywhere, it might be New Hampshire, where multiple competitive seats were fumbled away in 2022 by Republican candidates whom party leaders had warned were out of the mainstream, including in a marquee Senate race.
The state’s governor, Chris Sununu, who has teased…
This article was written by Shane Goldmacher and originally published on www.nytimes.com