Bannon has Republicans looking over shoulders for 2018

WASHINGTON — Steve Bannon is telling people he’s not coming after mainstream Republicans in the House the way he’s targeting senators with anti-establishment disrupters in primaries. Many in the House are looking over their shoulders all the same.

“I can’t read Mr. Bannon’s mind,” said North Carolina Rep. Robert Pittenger, who could well be on the list.

Back atop the rightwing media organization Breitbart News, President Donald Trump’s ousted strategist is openly trying to topple Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell and incumbents backing the Kentucky Republican. Bannon and his supporters say Mcconnell is the embodiment of an insufficiently conservative, unproductive party establishment.

The House is a different story, so far.

The 435-representative chamber is far larger than the 100-member Senate, so it would take huge sums for Bannon to reshape. It’s also where Speaker Paul Ryan, Rwis., has steered bills erasing much of the Obama health law and cutting taxes. Conservatives such as Bannon may be able to tilt the House rightward simply by running primary candidates in open seats, rather than battling normally wellfunded Republican incumbents.

When Bannon met this month with Rep. Steve Stivers, R-ohio, who heads the House GOP’S campaign organization, he told Stivers their goals are aligned.

They’re “largely on the same page to defend and expand” the party’s majority, though there “might be a race here or there” where they clash, said Andrew Surabian, a Bannon associate and adviser to the Great America Alliance, a pro-trump political organization.