Republicans admit the GOP’s midterm forecast is bleak. But they’re clinging to two hopes: voters’ fear and loathing of Democrats.
“It’s going to be a hate election,” a Republican tied to President Trump’s political operation told Axios. “Voters have to hate the Dems more than they hate us. And we have material to work with.”
Why it matters: There’s broad GOP frustration that Trump has made challenging midterm elections worse by not focusing heavily on pocketbook issues — especially the tax cuts Republicans won — while launching the Iran war, which raised gas prices and fueled inflation.
Trump’s prime-time speech Thursday night about China’s alleged influence campaign targeting U.S. voters six years ago did little to assuage those concerns.
“I have yet to understand how we win the midterms by talking about what happened in 2020,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told Axios.
The Republicans’ plan will probably work too. Hate is the opiate of the masses. Some say its religion, but religion is merely a syringe.
So the standard election strategy for the GOP. It’s always hate, they just change up who it’s targeted at. Recently it’s been a mix of “immigrants” (I.E. non-white people), muslims (once again non-white people), trans people (the easier target in the LGBT sphere now that gay and lesbian people are broadly accepted), and of course the perennial favorite Democrats (and if they’re feeling spicy they accuse anyone left of Fox News of being a communist).
I’ve been around a long time now and this has been the GOP playbook literally since Reagan if not longer. Reagan was a slight break from the norm for them in that he focused on the debunked and incredibly damaging trickle down economic theory (something they’ve continued to pursue since then leading to our current late stage capitalism that’s teetering on the edge of collapse).