A wave of panic is sweeping through the Republican Party as President Donald Trump racks up political liabilities that threaten to drag the party toward a midterm bloodbath.
Republicans across the country are increasingly haunted by the prospect of a 2006-style wipeout, when Democrats seized control of both the House and Senate, according to Politico’s politics bureau chief Jonathan Martin.
One of the biggest sources of alarm for the GOP is the Midwest, where Trump has steadily burned through his support among farmers, according to Martin, who has been traveling the country ahead of the November elections.
“He’s in serious trouble in farm country,” Sen. Kevin Cramer, a Republican from North Dakota, told Martin. “He being Trump—and Trump is us. I’m not very optimistic.”
In states like Ohio and Iowa, Trump has given voters a growing list of reasons to sour on him, including his trade wars, the war with Iran—which has sent diesel and fertilizer costs soaring—and his decision to import foreign beef in hopes of lowering grocery prices.
“The beef thing, are you kidding me?” Cramer, 65, said. “The one ag producer making money for a change and you shrink his revenue.”
Republicans are also worried that the “contagion” is spreading beyond the heartland, fueled by the punishing cost of living, Trump’s weakness among political centrists, and Democrats’ huge advantage in voter engagement, according to Martin, who reports that Maine, Texas, North Carolina, and Alaska could all turn into Republican nightmares.
According to the political columnist, GOP officials are worried that voter discontent is hardening into something nearly impossible to reverse as Trump continues to pursue what pleases him rather than what could shore up his party’s vulnerable candidates.
The 80-year-old president’s attention has been consumed by a parade of vanity projects in Washington, sporting spectacles like the UFC fight and IndyCar race, and his personal grievance crusades—including his latest spat with Canada, which prompted his push to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America.”
“I would remind [Trump] that Canada is our friend, our closest ally and our biggest trading partner,” Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who is fighting to hold onto her Senate seat in Maine, told Martin. “And that our economies are so linked that if you try to hurt one, you end up hurting Maine and other border states.”
But party strategists are frustrated not only that Trump won’t spend more of his war chest on GOP candidates this fall, but that he has given them so little to run on, according to Martin.
And while the party is staging a “midterm convention” in Dallas next month to put Democrats back in the crosshairs, one of Trump’s advisers conceded to Martin that the actual message will be determined by “whatever crazy stuff the president says.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
