The GOP’s knives are already out — for each other

Por Meredith Lee Hill, Andrew Howard, Adam Wren and Mia McCarthy — POLITICO – TOP Stories

Republicans are already starting to blame each other as the midterm election spirals further out of their control.

Everyone is bracing for President Donald Trump’s ire if the party loses big in November. House Republicans are planning to accuse the Senate side. Trump political aides have taken to directly calling campaigns they feel aren’t performing well enough. National GOP operatives are quietly furious at lackluster candidates who didn’t do enough to prepare for a tough year despite early warnings. And some GOP candidates are pointing the finger back at their own party committees.

It’s a vicious cycle, according to more than a dozen top GOP operatives and lawmakers who spoke to POLITICO, some of whom were granted anonymity to candidly discuss private conversations.

“If it happens, there will be plenty of blame to go around,” said Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.), who is in his own tighter-than-comfortable race.

That Republicans have already spent significant time gaming out the aftermath and how to insulate themselves from the fallout of what they fear will be significant GOP losses illustrates how precarious the current landscape is for the party. That’s even as top Republicans publicly insist they are bullish on keeping control of both chambers in Congress.

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), who is widely expected to be the next National Republican Senatorial Committee chair, told reporters Thursday that “if the Democrats do win the House and the Senate, it won’t be because of their left-wing lunatic candidates, it’ll be because people are pissed off about gas prices, and I get that.”

House Republicans are annoyed with Senate Republicans for fumbling a once-safe GOP map as well as creating top-of-the-ticket drag for them with bad candidates in some key states — but senators privately put the onus on Trump for forcing out better Republican incumbents and then backing flawed GOP candidates, including Ken Paxton in Texas, according to three GOP senators and a national GOP operative.

The top Senate GOP Super PAC and Trump’s MAGA Inc. have spent nearly $200 million alone to save Paxton, who’s locked in a tight race with Democrat James Talarico.

Trump, for his part, has already landed on who to blame in the event of a Paxton loss next month.

“If Ken Paxton loses, it will be because of WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Political Hacks like John Cornyn and Karl Rove, who have ineffectively opposed me for my entire political career,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Thursday afternoon, targeting the Texas senator he endorsed against in the primary in Cornyn, and a longtime GOP foe in Rove.

There’s also particular frustration with Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), who numerous GOP operatives grumbled never took his race seriously and is now costing the party millions of dollars to rescue in a state Democrats haven’t won in almost a century. Marshall’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

“No one in the world expected that the Senate would need as much money as they did,” said one national GOP operative working on multiple competitive House races. “All of this money that was expected to go to the House, for the most part, is now being wasted on the Senate because they fucked up so bad.”

White House spokesperson Davis Ingle blasted “armchair experts peddling their baseless speculation” and said Trump “is laser-focused on maintaining Republican majorities in Congress this November, which is why he is traveling across the country highlighting the historic victories his Administration has delivered for the American people.”

“The choice has never been more clear: doubling down on President Trump’s winning, commonsense agenda or the Democrats’ extreme liberal policies and obstruction,” Ingle said.

“Those who are actually involved with Republicans’ midterm strategy remain laser-focused on winning races and are confident we are still in a position to protect and expand our majorities,” said RNC spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre.

A slew of troubling internal GOP polling in recent weeks set off a new level of panic across House GOP leadership, political operations and individual campaigns. It didn’t just reveal a harsh environment for the party in power on par with typical midterms, but potentially catastrophic scenarios in formerly safe red seats across the country. Even top House Republicans expect to lose the House majority at this point.

A growing group of Hill Republicans argue the blame rests with Trump, and his decisions to get the U.S. into an open-ended war with Iran that has driven up fuel prices, while enacting a slew of tariffs and other policy moves that have riled farmers.

“I’ve talked to some who are making these decisions: The biggest problem is the president’s polling numbers and unfavorables,” retiring Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) recently told POLITICO.

Still, not everyone is blaming Trump: In an explosive move this week, GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, who is close with the president and faces her own surprisingly competitive race, accused the National Republican Congressional Committee of dropping the ball.

“I am also getting calls from members wondering what is going on at the @NRCC,” Luna posted on social media, adding she was also getting inquiries about House leadership races. “Sounds to me like some in leadership need to focus on winning races instead of gaming their next steak donor dinner.”

Some rank-and-file Republicans are frustrated the NRCC didn’t pivot faster to trying to shore up at-risk GOP incumbents across the map as the landscape deteriorated in August and September. “The leadership at the NRCC is living in a bubble,” another House Republican said. “We’re getting killed out here.”

Mike Marinella, a spokesperson for the NRCC, noted that the committee moved early to launch coordinated advertising campaigns with incumbents in districts not initially rated as competitive, including those represented by Reps. Jeff Hurd (R-Colo.), Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.), Rob Wittman (R-Va.), Mike Turner (R-Ohio), and Monica De La Cruz (R-Texas). To date, the NRCC has run coordinated advertising in 51 districts, Marinella said.

GOP lawmakers and operatives working to defend the party’s majorities in Congress have been discussing amongst themselves how to avoid being thrown under the bus come Nov. 3, according to a dozen of the people interviewed.

The rising tensions have also turned up in the rather intense shadow leadership race underway within Speaker Mike Johnson’s circle and the senior ranks of the House GOP, with opposing camps preparing to blame each other, according to five of the people. GOP Whip Tom Emmer has said publicly that some of the GOP redistricting efforts won’t work, and Republicans won’t win all those seats.

Trump officials have also been feeling the pressure, sometimes calling campaigns to try to revive lagging operations or attempting to install new staff within them, according to two Republicans familiar with the matter.

In another stunning move, Trump officials are warning Republicans that pro-Trump super PACs can only help so much and the candidates need to shift their strategy to a positive message and a list of key deliverables for voters — or they will lose.

“Republican success in many cases is going to hinge on the following: do they give voters a reason to vote for them?” a senior Republican official familiar with MAGA Inc.’s plans said. “They’re being inundated with reasons to vote against the Democrats, and in many places they already instinctually want to. But are they given a reason to actually vote for the Republicans to show up and vote?”

The person added that “the number one thing that every Republican in the country” should be doing in the final weeks is laying out “things that they are going to do to tangibly improve people’s personal economic situation and their life” and “lower your cost of living.”

“If Republicans are failing to lay out a reason to come vote for them and saying, ‘Here’s what I, as a candidate, am for, what I am going to do to make your economics better,’ there’s a good chance they’re going to lose,” the Republican official warned.

That assessment has shocked several Republicans in tough races. It’s a big shift from even how House leadership has approached the campaign trail: Johnson has spent the last few weeks hammering a message of contrast between his party of “common sense” and Democrats as a party of dangerous socialists who will investigate the president and empower America’s “enemies” if they win.

“We’re running for our lives,” another House Republican in a tough race said. “Those are two totally different approaches. And we have two weeks.”

Erin Doherty contributed to this report. 

Fonte: POLITICO – TOP Stories