The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
GOP buoyed by tax cuts, but braces for losses
Midterm elections could be punishing for party.
WASHINGTON — The sweeping tax overhaul approved by Congress this week hands Republicans a long-sought achievement they believe will bolster their defenses in next year’s midterm campaign, but party officials concede the measure can only mitigate their losses in what is shaping up to be a punishing election year.
While the tax legislation is broadly unpopular as it reaches President Donald Trump’s desk, the bill offers Republicans the sort of signature accomplishment they have been lacking to galvanize their demoralized donors and many of their voters.
Republican lawmakers, who spent much of this year forced to explain or defend Trump’s erratic behavior, now have an opportunity to go on the offensive with an issue that unites their increasingly fractious party. And they hope that up-forgrabs voters will reward them should the economy keep growing while their tax bills are falling.
“Once the withholding tables change in January, voters will realize their paychecks are bigger as a result of tax reform,” said Rep. Steve Stivers of Ohio, who runs the House Republican campaign arm. But, alluding to past midterm defeats for the party in power at the White House, he acknowledged that “history is against us.”
To reinforce the party’s message, the primary House Republican “super PAC,” the Congressional Leadership Fund, is planning a $10 million advertising and grassroots campaign beginning
next month in some of their most competitive districts to highlight the rate reductions, higher standard deduction and child tax credits in the bill. Corporations such as AT&T and Wells Fargo delivered Republicans an immediate gift by announcing they would give employees a bonus because of the tax cut.
Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said in an interview that Senate Republicans next year would batter the many Democrats who are on the ballot in states won by Trump, such places as North Dakota, West Virginia and Indiana, for opposing the bill.
Yet with voters indicating by wide margins they prefer Democrats to control Congress and bestowing Trump with historically low approval ratings, the tax plan is hardly a panacea for Republican lawmakers on the ballot in 2018. At best, it is the political equivalent of tacking up plywood against
exterior windows to lessen the inevitable damage of an impending storm.
Officials in both parties believe Democratic gains in the House, where Republicans enjoy a 24-seat majority, could reach as high as 40 seats if the political environment does not improve for the Republicans.
And, as of now, it only appears to be worsening.
A CNN poll released on Wednesday found that 56 percent of registered voters said they would vote Democratic next November, compared to 38 percent who favored the Republicans, a yawning 18-percentage-point gap that was only slightly bigger than other recent polls. Through that lens, impressions of the new tax law could be warped by partisan feelings.
This advantage is showing up in fundraising, where Democrats are harvesting small-dollar contributions. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced on Wednesday that it raised $6.9 million
in November, outraising its Republican counterpart for the seventh month in a row. In November, the National Republican Congressional Committee raised only $3.8 million.
House Republicans, however, still have more money on hand and the Republican National Committee has far more cash than the Democratic National Committee. In the Senate, the Democratic campaign arm has slightly more money in the bank than the Republicans.
Beyond the raw numbers, Democratic enthusiasm is soaring. And the sort of centrist voters that both parties covet are contemptuous of Trump because of his behavior and character, elements that are highly unlikely to change by next fall no matter what policies emerge from Washington.
“The downside of doing nothing was much higher,” former Rep. Thomas M. Davis III, R-Va., who previously led the party’s House campaign efforts, said of the tax bill. “But the major problem for Republicans is not that they haven’t delivered — it’s the way he conducts himself.”
“Republicans have a big storm coming at them,” he added. “We just don’t know if it’s a bad wind storm or a Category 5 hurricane.”
Trump has the lowest approval rating of any modern president this soon into his tenure, and midterm elections are inevitably referendums on the party that controls the White House. He is especially unpopular among women, who in this year’s statewide and special elections have overwhelmingly supported Democrats. According to a new NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, 62 percent of female voters disapproved of Trump.
So Democrats, some of them still bearing wounds from President Barack Obama’s midterm losses, believe the tax measure will ultimately be of little consequence compared to the man who occupies the Oval Office.
“You can’t run from the top of your ticket,” said Rep. Rick Larsen of Washington, who got a scare in the Affordable Care Act-fueled backlash of 2010. “That’s been proven to me over and over again. And the driver won’t be the tax cut vote. It’ll be the unpopularity of the president.”
Complicating matters for Republicans, some of their House seats that are most in jeopardy are in high-income and high-tax states where many voters will feel little benefit from a bill that limits mortgage interest deductions and state and local tax writeoffs. Eleven of the 12 House Republicans who opposed the bill hail from California, New York and New Jersey, most of them from affluent districts that are already uneasy with Trump.
“I think each individual congressman will be judged on how they voted,” said Rep. Dan Donovan, the only Republican who represents New York City, who opposed the measure because of the limitations on local tax deductions. “The voters will know how hard we fought.”
Veteran Republicans are sober about how daunting 2018 is shaping up to be, and hope that a clash on taxes at the very least offers the prospect of shifting the political debate onto more favorable terrain.
“If you’re a Republican and you think about what’s coming, and the range of things you could be fighting about, to have a fight about this tax bill is among the better things they can fight over in 2018,” said Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster, conceding that Republicans are facing “very tough numbers.”
McInturff, who recently conducted a survey showing Republicans trailing Democrats by 12 points on the so-called generic ballot, said his party could not change the minds of those with fixed views about Trump, but that the tax bill offered an argument for those willing to hear them out.
“You better have something to say that the 60 percent is willing to listen to,” he said, noting polls that show 40 percent of voters want to impeach Trump.
Stivers acknowledged the partisan preferences of voters at the moment were tilting away from Republicans. “Right now there are people that don’t like the president, and they’re expressing it in that way,” he said of the generic ballot. But he suggested that voters uneasy with the president are still willing to support Republican congressional candidates, pointing to the Atlanta-area special House election the party won earlier this year despite a massive influx of money for the Democrats.