Republicans and Trump midterms are colliding in a way the GOP does not want. Don Bacon says Donald Trump’s numbers are becoming a ball and chain as the party heads toward November, and the warning is landing in tough House races and Senate races where swing voters decide everything.
Bacon said, “I’m fearful that the president’s numbers are a ball and chain that will be hard to overcome.” He also said Republicans have lost a lot of their swing voters, then pointed to tariffs in the Midwest and Ukraine polling at 70 percent as signs that the usual Trump message is not closing the gap.
Don Bacon Reads The Map
The Nebraska Republican is not running for re-election in a battleground district, so his warning carries immediate weight for candidates who are. He said, “I’m worried that we’ve lost a lot of our swing voters. In the Midwest, tariffs aren’t popular. Ukraine polls at 70 percent — why aren’t we doing more for them? Nebraskans don’t like chaos and all the name calling and treating our allies bad.”
That is the dilemma facing the party after over a decade of tying itself to Donald Trump. A /Ipsos survey last week found that only 35 percent of Republicans said they strongly support him, a level that makes his brand useful in some places and costly in others.
Dallas Pressure For GOP
Trump said last week that he will campaign like he did for himself. He added, “But some people like me more than they like the party.”
Only two Republicans in tough House races were headed to Dallas for the GOP’s midterm convention next week. Kevin Madden said most congressional candidates are better served by getting out of the national political jet-stream, and he said they are better off reinforcing local credentials, local messages and local issues than trying to make the case for re-election from a platform in Dallas.
Some Republicans are already acting on that advice. Mike Lawler aired a digital advertisement last week that includes Trump calling him a “pain in the ass” for being a holdout for tax deductions last year, while Tom Barrett took out ads on Facebook that highlighted his votes to limit Trump’s war powers in Iran.
Texas Brings The Friction
Even with those efforts, the party’s Trump problem does not disappear. Lawler and Barrett have both campaigned with Trump in recent months, and some Republicans are still fuming over his decision to endorse Ken Paxton over John Cornyn.
Cornyn was one of the strongest fundraisers for the GOP in the upper chamber, yet the party now has to pour money into Texas while polling shows James Talarico has real momentum going into November. Paxton has been seen as absent from the campaign trail, which leaves Republicans trying to square the same contradiction: Trump remains central to the GOP, but his numbers are becoming harder to carry.
The question hanging over the race is how many Republican candidates will keep trimming Trump from their campaigns before November. Some are already deleting references to him from their websites, and more are leaning on local messages because the party’s midterm math now looks like a test of whether his name still helps more than it hurts.
