President Donald Trump’s Republican Party is hoping to tap into public anger for the midterm elections.
Rather than focusing on how they can inspire and help Americans, Republicans are centering their midterm hopes on being the lesser of two evils, according to an Axios report Sunday.
“It’s going to be a hate election,” a Republican connected to Trump’s political operation told the outlet. “Voters have to hate the Dems more than they hate us. And we have material to work with.”
Following the upswing in victories by progressives across the nation, GOP operatives hope to capitalize on the opportunity by painting the left as too radical or too extreme, rather than highlighting their own strengths.
“Swing voters have a persistent fear the Democrats will just go too far left,” one GOP pollster told Axios. “So we can make the case that yeah, we suck. But they’re worse.”
Trump has repeatedly painted Democrats—or as he calls them, “Dumocrats”—as villains throughout his second term, fueling the ever-growing divide between political parties with aggressive rhetoric.
His bizarre primetime address to the nation on Thursday night, however, in which he reheated old claims of foreign interference in the 2020 presidential election, did little to inspire voter confidence, according to some operatives within his own base.
“I have yet to understand how we win the midterms by talking about what happened in 2020,” Texas Sen. John Cornyn, whom Trump neglected to endorse in favor of controversial candidate Ken Paxton, told Axios.
“We’ve studied this, and it’s not a winner,” a GOP pollster told the outlet regarding Trump’s speech. “Our research shows people want the president to make their life better, and they don’t believe he has.”
“The president has got to start talking about things people really care about — like tax cuts — and not all this other stuff. But we know he just won’t," the pollster added.
Both political parties appear to have low favorability ratings coming into the midterms, but Trump’s performance across his second term has particularly left a bad taste in voters’ mouths.
Trump’s net approval rating has sunk underwater at -10 points, according to a Washington Post/Ipsos poll on Thursday. His approval among registered voters is even lower at -19 percent.
Furthermore, MAGA candidates endorsed by the president are even less attractive to voters than Democratic Socialists, according to a CNBC poll from Friday.
