PANIC STATIONS

Despairing Republicans Secretly Admit Painful Truth

With the midterms just weeks away, Republicans are more worried than ever.

Republicans are privately bracing for a devastating midterm defeat, with senior party figures increasingly convinced they are on course to lose control of the House.

Five senior Republican lawmakers have told Politico that the party’s prospects of holding the chamber have deteriorated sharply, as Democrats pull ahead in the polls and GOP campaign groups retreat from increasingly difficult races.

One senior House Republican said the priority was now to “save as many Republican seats as we can”—a task made harder, the lawmaker argued, by Trump’s attempts to put himself front and center of the party’s campaign.

“President Trump has made this election all about himself,” the Republican said. “Now we have to survive that political storm.”

Polls show a difficult road lies ahead for the GOP, with several House districts Trump won by double digits in 2024 now considered vulnerable. At-risk seats stretch across Ohio, Maine, Iowa, North Carolina and Nevada, as well as a Kentucky district Trump carried by 15 points.

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Pollster Angus Reid has Democrats 16 points ahead on the generic congressional ballot, their biggest advantage yet, adding to a string of surveys showing Republicans struggling to keep pace.

Former Republican congressman Carlos Curbelo, who lost his competitive Florida seat during Trump’s first midterm elections in 2018, said the political climate had become exceptionally hostile.

“The environment is about as tough as one could expect,” Curbelo said. “There is no one who has privately stated that they believe Republicans can hold the House — not in recent weeks, anyway.”

With polling turning increasingly bleak, Republicans are already pulling advertising money from House races they fear are slipping beyond reach. The Congressional Leadership Fund, the party’s leading House super PAC, has canceled ads for key candidates in Nebraska and Iowa.

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MAGA Inc. and a major House Republican super PAC have also withdrawn funding from Michigan’s 8th District, a GOP official familiar with the strategy told Politico.

Trump carried the district by roughly 50 percent to 48 percent in 2024, making it one of 13 House seats where voters backed him for president but elected a Democrat to Congress. The Cook Political Report now rates the seat “Likely Democrat.”

“These are not the moves of a party that’s going to keep the House,” one Republican lawmaker said.

While spending is being cut in some battlegrounds, millions are being redirected to other contests, including races in traditionally Republican territory. MAGA Inc. has poured more than $22 million into Texas over the past month to support GOP Senate candidate Ken Paxton, with at least another $5 million expected.

In newly redrawn Republican strongholds such as Texas and Florida, GOP candidates are “hanging on with their fingernails,” a second Republican lawmaker told Politico.

A New York Times/Siena University poll conducted September 21–30 put Democrat James Talarico at 51 percent and Paxton at 45 percent among likely voters.

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They added that the shifting campaign advertising funds were a telling indicator of the midterm landscape, predicting Democrats could gain around 10 seats—comfortably enough to take control of the House.

Republican leaders, however, are publicly brushing aside the warning signs. Trump insisted enthusiasm for his party was surging as he prepared for a rally in Alaska on Tuesday.

“The level of enthusiasm for the Republican Party is way up,” he said.

House Speaker Mike Johnson was equally dismissive, declaring during a campaign stop in deep-red Texas that “the polling is wrong” in suggesting Republicans could suffer a sweeping defeat.

Trump has also urged supporters to treat November’s elections as though he were personally running, hoping his presence might motivate them to turn out.

“When I am on the ballot, people show up and we always win,” he said earlier this month. “I am asking you to do me a favor and pretend I am on the ballot.”

Retiring GOP Rep. Don Bacon, however, pointed to the president’s declining standing as a major concern for candidates.

“I’ve talked to some who are making these decisions: The biggest problem is the president’s polling numbers and unfavorables,” Bacon told Politico.

Trump’s approval rating has reached an all-time low, falling to the low 30s.

The tide has been turning against Trump and his party ever since he launched his deeply unpopular war on Iran in February.

The war has caused energy prices to spike. AAA figures show the average price of fuel in the U.S. at $4.33 a gallon, while diesel stands at $6.30.

And Americans are not happy about it.

In the latest CNN/SSRS survey, two-thirds said Trump has made the economy worse, while a majority said the war in Iran has damaged their personal finances.

In Texas, 24-year-old Brandon Tremaine, who voted for Trump in 2020, told the New York Times: “President Trump has been saying, ‘Vote as if I was on the ballot,’ and that’s exactly what I’m going to do—not vote.”

“You do not campaign on being the ticket of peace and start a war of choice that is directly hurting Americans here at home and gotten Americans killed overseas.”

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