House GPO looks for right message
WASHINGTON, May 10, (AP): House Republicans surveying the midterm election landscape are sharpening their message and assessing their standing with voters after watching their colleagues’ wipeout in highprofile primary elections this week.
Republican congressmen lost across the board in key races. Two of them bruised each other so badly in Indiana’s Senate primary that they created an opening for Mike Braun, a businessman and former state lawmaker, to win the nomination. Another lost his bid in the Senate primary in West Virginia, and an incumbent GOP congressman in North Carolina lost to a popular pastor. The outcome raises the question: Is there something voters don’t like about House Republicans?
“It takes some discipline to stay focused on what people care about,” said Rep Andy Barr, a Kentucky Republican focusing on jobs and the economy. He represents the kind of district Democrats are eyeing this fall, a complicated mash-up of liberals in Lexington, suburbanites wary of both parties and the rural outposts of Trump country. “The more we’re talking about the agenda, the better it is for us.”
One problem for Republicans is that they’re going into battle without the full armor of a forward-looking agenda that promises voters a to-do list of priorities if they keep majority control of the House.
There’s no bumper-sticker-ready platform like House Speaker Paul Ryan’s “Better Way” agenda, the tea party-inspired “Pledge to America” or Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Contract with America although campaign officials say they’re working on one framed as the “Great American Comeback.”
Until then, incumbents and candidates are left to point out to voters what Republicans have already accomplished and what they promise to achieve from their alliances with President Donald Trump. The dynamics leave some rank-and-file members grumbling quietly that they’d prefer to have a clear, concise agenda to present voters.
Ryan argued Wednesday that if the midterms were held today, voters would reward Republicans for tax reform, regulatory relief and a strong economy. But, the speaker, who is retiring rather than seek his own re-election in Wisconsin, also warned that Republicans can’t ignore a political environment where Democrats are fired up to oppose Trump.
“The president clearly has people who don’t like him, and they’re motivated,” he said on a Wisconsin radio show.
Democrats need to flip 24 GOP-held seats to regain control of the House. But the problem for Republicans is they must defend 25 districts where Trump finished behind Hillary Clinton in 2016, and there’s been a wash of Republican retirements. Democrats, meanwhile, enjoy an overflowing field of challengers, many of them first-time candidates motivated by Trump’s election to run for office.
Leaders
Democratic leaders say at this stage in the election cycle, Republicans have already hitched their campaign wagons to Trump and the work of the GOP-controlled Congress.
“Their leader expresses their platform every day: It is a platform of chaos. And a platform of dysfunction,” Rep Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the Democratic whip, told reporters recently. “They’ve shown what their objective is and we’re going (to show) that ours is better for the American people.”
House Democrats have compiled their own campaign pitch, the “Better Deal,” an economic platform promising more jobs, infrastructure and economic mobility. It harkens back to the 1930s “New Deal” of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the late 1940s “Fair Deal” of Harry Truman. But it’s not something all Democratic recruits have embraced.
Democrat Anthony Brindisi, who wants to unseat Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney in upstate New York, said the takeaway from Tuesday’s results is that “Congress is just very unpopular.”
But he doesn’t need a pithy slogan to make his case. “I get my messaging directly from voters in my district,” he said, adding that he’s talking about affordable health care, fair tax policy, economic opportunity and higher-quality infrastructure, rather than the cable-news diet of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. “I’m not focusing so much on some of the national issues that are making the headlines.”
A Ryan-affiliated political action committee is flooding key Republican districts with a two-track advertising campaign hailing the GOP’s new tax law and reminding voters that a Democratic majority would mean Rep Nancy Pelosi returning to the speaker’s rostrum.
Campaign
Meanwhile, taking the reins as party leader, President Donald Trump is returning to his campaign roots with big-stage events allowing him to target vulnerable Senate Democrats and mobilize his most fervent supporters on behalf of Republicans.
Trump was set to rally supporters in Elkhart, Indiana, on Thursday night, two days after state Republicans nominated former state lawmaker Mike Braun to challenge vulnerable Democratic US Sen Joe Donnelly. Trump’s political advisers view the event, which will also be attended by home-state Vice President Mike Pence, as a way to project party unity following a bruising primary.
Trump, who helped the Republican National Committee raise a record $132 million last year, has told advisers he is eager to ramp up his campaign travel on behalf of Republicans. The president carried 10 states in 2016 that have Democratic senators on the ballot this year and is expected to campaign heavily to help Republicans maintain Senate and House majorities and elect GOP governors.
“The president takes his role as leader of the Republican Party very seriously and after more than a year in office he understands too few Democrats are willing to join hands across party lines to support issues that the American people resoundingly called for,” said White House political director Bill Stepien. “The president’s calendar is mapped out with his political priorities in mind.”
For Trump, who is preparing for a historic meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un amid an ongoing investigation into Russian election meddling and daily developments about his personal attorney’s payments to a porn actress, the travel will allow him to frame the campaign debate, specifically Donnelly’s no vote on last year’s tax overhaul.