GOP faces reckoning over Trump’s virus strategy, diagnosis
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis on Friday was a momentof reckoning for his Republican Party, whose leaders largely adopted his strategy of downplaying the disease but are nowconfronted with a stark political nightmare weeks from Election Day.
The president’s infection thrust the pandemic front and center at a time when Republicans would rather be talking about Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, law enforcement or the economy as early voting is underway in most states. They include Iowa and North Carolina, states that Republicans must win to maintain their three-vote edge in the Senate.
As Trump headed to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for quarantine, the virus seemed to spill into every corner of the party. Tests came back positive for Republican Party Chair Ronna McDaniel, Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and former White House counselor Kellyanne Conway. One vulnerable Senate incumbent, North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, announced Friday night that he had also tested positive for the virus and that he’d quarantine for 10 days at the peak of election season.
The pandemic even spread to a subject the GOP hoped to be its safe harbor in the campaign’s closing weeks — the looming confirmation of Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett. Videos of an unmasked Lee mingling with other conservative luminaries at a White House ceremony for Barrett ran relentlessly on cable news, turning the party’s push to reshape the court into a story about the spread of a deadly virus.
“It’s challenging,” said Glen Bolger, a Republican pollster active in five competitive Senate races. “It would be better if the discussion was about jobs and the economy, or even Joe Biden is going to be held captive to the left. But the election is going to be about coronavirus, and that’s not favorable terrain for Republicans.”
In private conversations over recent months, Republicans had reached a level of stoicism about how their fates were yoked to the president’s, even as he ricocheted from outrage to outrage and denied the severity of a pandemic killing thousands of their constituents. Their inability to escape Trump is due partly to their embrace of his personality and agenda, but also to a reality of the nation’s polarized politics — legislators increasingly rise or fall with their party’s presidential candidate.
“People vote for the uniform, red or blue,” Bolger said. “As the president goes, so goes a lot of down-ticket Republicans.”
That’s required Republican legislators in competitive states to walk what GOP pollster Whit Ayres called “a fine line” — putting enough distance between themselves and Trump to pick off swing voters without alienating the president’s loyal base who will punish any Republican who disagrees with him.
Publicly, GOPsenators still don’t want any daylight between their majority and Trump. “Full steam ahead,” tweeted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell about Trump’s agenda, especially the confirmation of Barrett.
Candidates have tried different tactics. In Colorado and Montana, Sen. Cory Gardner and Sen. Steve Daines have touted a big conservation bill they sponsored. In Maine, Sen. Susan Collins has emphasized her history of relative independence from party leadership. In Iowa, Sen. Joni Ernst has tried to avoid discussing Trump’s more erratic tweets and statements.
Trump’s quarantine sidelines him from the campaign trail during a critical stretch. Several Republicans doubted the president will hit pause, praising his stamina, and some suggested the diagnosis might “soften” voters who have grown tired of Trump’s brash approach to governing.
“He works so hard to be a tough guy, but this may soften him a little bit and make people go, ‘OK, you know, he’s human, too,’ ” said Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., who was previously infected with the virus.
Still, it has been an anxious week for the party. The Senate races are tied far more to perceptions of Trump, including his handling of the pandemic, than the candidates’ specific messaging on the virus, GOP pollster Ed Goeas said.
“My bigger concern was the debate,” Goeas said. “He so badly performed in that debate, that not only could that have been the end of the Trump presidency and chances of winning re-election, but that it may have put another nail in the coffin of losing control of the Senate.”