Worried GOP bets on Trump-style division
Healthy economy obscured by president’s inflammatory moves
AWASHINGTON s Democrats enter the fall midterm campaign with palpable confidence about reclaiming the House and perhaps even the Senate, tensions are rising between the White House and congressional Republicans over who is to blame for political difficulties facing the party, with President Donald Trump’s advisers pointing to the high number of GOP retirements and lawmakers placing the blame squarely on the president’s divisive style.
Yet Republican leaders do agree on one surprising element in the battle for Congress: They cannot rely on the booming economy to win over undecided voters.
To the dismay of party leaders, the healthy economy and Trump have become countervailing forces. The decline in unemployment and soaring gross domestic product, along with the tax overhaul Republicans argue is fueling the growth, have been obscured by the president’s inflammatory moves on immigration, Vladimir Putin and other fronts, party leaders say.
These self-inflicted wounds since early summer have helped push Trump’s approval ratings below 40 percent and the fortunes of his party down with them.
“This is very much a referendum on the president,” Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., said of the November election. “If we had to fight this campaign on what we accomplished in Congress and on the state of the economy, I think we’d almost certainly keep our majority.”
Glen Bolger, a leading Republican pollster working on several top races this year, was even more blunt: “People think the economy is doing well, but that’s not what they’re voting on — they’re voting on the chaos of the guy in the White House.”
Democrats still face challenges of their own, namely the unpopularity of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, and the party’s tilt left on issues like immigration, both of which could chill support from some otherwise persuadable voters. And the threat of a Democratic majority impeaching the president, which Trump is eager to raise, could rouse some of his supporters who otherwise may not show up in a year when he’s not on the ballot.
Even so, Bolger and many other prominent Republicans now believe they are likely to lose the House, where they have a 23-seat majority and as many as 60 seats are being fiercely contested by Democrats. The party is preparing to shift advertising money away from some of their most beleaguered incumbents toward a set of races in somewhat more favorable territory. In the narrowly divided Senate, both parties see eight or nine seats, most of them held by Democrats, on a knife’s edge. And instead of attempting to highlight positive economic news like the 3.9 percent unemployment rate, Republicans have turned to a scorched-earth campaign against the Democrats in a bid to save their House majority and salvage their one-seat edge in the Senate.
Republican electioneering groups, including the Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC and the National Republican Congressional Committee, have spent millions in recent weeks attacking Democratic candidates in intensely personal terms. The committees, along with some Republican candidates, have blasted one Democratic hopeful in New York for rap lyrics he once wrote; branded another, in Pennsylvania, as a “trust fund baby” and “tax dodger;” and aired commercials featuring veterans in wheelchairs to sow doubts about the patriotism of some Democratic nominees.
The Republican lurch away from economic issues amounts to a bet on the politics of Trump-style cultural division as a means of driving up conservative turnout and disqualifying some Democratic candidates among more moderate voters.
Party leaders say the individual attacks are only the first step in a broader campaign to shift the midterms away from the Trump focus and toward the implications of Democratic majorities in Congress.
Laying out the strategy in an interview this week in his Capitol office, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the would-be successor to House Speaker Paul Ryan, warned that if Democrats took power they would swiftly impeach the president, stymie immigration enforcement and seek to enact universal health care.
“It’s just going to be chaos,” said McCarthy, trying to repurpose the sense of tumult that voters do not like about Trump’s administration.
McCarthy acknowledged House Republicans would suffer losses but predicted they would keep a narrow majority so long as Trump’s approval rating rebounded. He even settled on a specific threshold, saying Trump’s approval rating had to be above 43 percent to hold on to the House — even though, historically, the party out of power usually dominates midterm elections when a president’s approval rating is markedly under 50 percent.
“It’s week by week of where the weather is at — and it’s ever changing,” McCarthy said of the political environment. “Let’s just hope it’s a sunny day on Election Day.”