Could Republicans lose their majority in the House of Representatives come November? What was once unthinkable doesn’t seem so unthinkable anymore.
Earlier this month, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report shifted their forecasts of ten House races in the Democrats’ direction.
“All cycle, Democrats have daydreamed about Republicans nominating an extremely polarizing presidential candidate, and suddenly it’s almost certain they will get their wish,” writes David Wasserman in an essay explaining the change. “A Trump or Cruz nomination wouldn’t guarantee a down-ballot disaster for the GOP, but operatives on both sides admit it would inject much more uncertainty into races — especially if it were Trump.”
For now, the National Republican Congressional Committee doesn’t think that a media environment dominated by a nasty fight about the candidates’ wives, a battery charge against Trump’s campaign manager, and an endless stream of outrageous provocation is likely to hurt the average Republican House member.
“Cable news networks might not cover the ins and outs of local members of Congress, but when our voters wake up in the morning and read their local paper they are seeing our Republican incumbents getting the job done for them,” says Katie Martin, communications director for the NRCC. In other words, stories in the local news about an incumbent’s work in the district will ultimately outweigh any misgivings about the man atop the presidential ticket.
There are some indications that the national media’s portrait of a raging electorate ready to burn down Washington isn’t quite accurate. For all of the anger reflected in Congress’s consistently abysmal approval rating, not a single House or Senate incumbent in either party has lost a primary so far this year. While they may hate Congress as a whole, voters seem to like their own congressmen well enough.
#share#The NRCC argues that even in a bad environment for Republicans, there’s no realistic way for Democrats to win the 30 seats they would need to retake control of the House. But that doesn’t mean that incumbent House Republicans couldn’t face a rough year. “A far more plausible scenario, assuming the GOP presidential ticket is weak, would be a loss of a dozen or more seats for Republicans, cutting their House margin in half,” writes Charlie Cook, Wasserman’s boss. He adds that at least twice as many Republicans as usual could defect to the Democratic presidential candidate if Donald Trump is the GOP nominee, “and just as important, Republican turnout could plummet, drowning down-ballot Republicans along with the top of the ticket.”
Already, some House Republicans in swing districts have made moves to distance themselves from Trump.
Representative Barbara Comstock, who represents a suburban district in Northern Virginia, took $3,000 that Trump had previously given to her campaign and donated the money to local centers for wounded veterans. She told the Winchester Star that Trump is not a good role model and “doesn’t represent” the Republican party.
Representative Bob Dold, who represents the northern suburbs of Chicago in Illinois, has already announced he will not support Trump in November, adding, “Trump’s disgusting and offensive comments toward Hispanics, veterans, women, Muslims — the list goes on — disqualify him from holding the office of president of the United States.”
#related#Representative Carlos Curbelo, who represents the southern tip of Florida and Key West, said he hoped that Trump would be defeated in the primaries but refused to rule out voting for Clinton if no third-party conservative candidate emerges.
There have been recent presidential elections with significant shifts in the House (2008, when Democrats picked up 21 seats) and ones that barely altered the lower chamber’s balance of power at all (2004, when Republicans picked up three seats, and 2012, when Democrats picked up eight). But Republicans have never before run with a presidential nominee who is perceived unfavorably by 63 percent of poll respondents. That 30-seat majority could be sorely tested in the next seven months.
— Jim Geraghty is the senior political correspondent for National Review.