Can Republicans salvage their congressional majorities in the Year of Trump? Each day brings conflicting evidence. Donald Trump’s stalling poll numbers are depressing performance for Republican Senate candidates in swing states like Nevada and Florida, and some are predicting big losses for the GOP in the Senate. On top of that, Democrats even smell blood in House races. On the other hand, incumbents like Kelly Ayotte and Barbara Comstock remain in the hunt in difficult races, and the latest news that Obamacare premiums are going up 25 percent as open enrollment begins gives the GOP a great talking point for swing voters not thrilled with the idea of President Hillary Clinton.
The biggest drag for Republicans is their presidential nominee, who is likely to lose and seems to have given up on the race, but there’s a lesson in recent political history Republicans might learn from. As David Grann wrote in THE WEEKLY STANDARD in 1996, the Republican National Committee and its chairman, future Mississippi governor Haley Barbour, withheld their fire for much of the campaign, playing wait-and-see on both the presidential and congressional levels. Here’s Grann on Barbour:
More valuable than his homespun spin, each of his ten stubby fingers seemed to possess its own Midas touch: He raised a record $65.8 million in 1994 and helped rescue the National Republican Congressional Committee from a staggering debt. Ironically, the man now under fire from Hill Republicans for hoarding GOP money shelled out more on a midterm election than anyone in RNC history. In a less talked-about gamble, Barbour even borrowed $5 million in the final months of the 1994 campaign to restock Republican war chests. After the election, Paxon, the jubilant chairman of the NRCC, raved to the National Journal: “It isn’t too much to say that he is, next to Newt Gingrich, the guy that we think is most responsible for us winning our majority.” The Economist put it more succinctly: “Saint Haley.” Saint Haley. Now that’s a cross to bear. And if Dole’s weak campaign and the worrisome decline in public support for congressional Republicans do not improve, poor Barbour may soon find himself hanged upon it. But like William Wallace, the Scottish hero played by Gibson in the epic movie Braveheart, Barbour hopes to keep Democratic spears just far enough from Republican hearts until the eleventh hour, when, allies say, he will unload his ammunition.
In the end, as Grann noted in his post-election follow-up, that’s exactly what Barbour did. The RNC’s strategy made the best of a bad situation and saved the GOP from a complete blowout:
Like any good poker player, Barbour played the hand he was dealt. Unfortunately, one of those cards was a deuce—Bob Dole—and another a wild card—Newt Gingrich. “It’s not exactly what you want to bet the house on,” says one Dole strategist. While Gingrich’s toxic image polluted Republican campaigns from Connecticut to California, Dole’s invisible candidacy remained a larger problem. Relations between the avuncular Mississippian and the stoic Kansan had steadily improved since Dole booted Barbour from legislative strategy sessions on the Hill in October 1995; Dole even confided in Barbour that he planned to resign from the Senate. Yet they remained from the outset wary allies, linked by fortuity rather than fortune. In the past, the GOP president had always handpicked his RNC chairman. But when some Dole-ites wanted to dump Barbour for one of their own, Barbour made it clear he wasn’t budging until the new year. The announcement preempted any insurgence, and ensured the RNC’s financial independence in the final weeks of the election.
Dole was unable to break 40 percent in the polls all fall and so, as Grann noted, “Barbour and his team plotted ads and state-party expenditures that would protect congressional Republicans in the face of a presidential blowout…the RNC launched a massive advertising attack warning voters not to give Bill Clinton unbridled power—tacitly conceding Dole’s impending defeat.”
The scene Grann observed on Election Night certainly was far from ebullient, but Republicans had plenty to be relieved about after this tactical reordering:
As the balloons hung from the rafters at the Renaissance Hotel in Washington, Republicans were not in the mood for a coronation. Dole was losing nearly as badly as George Bush, while congressional Republicans were being routed in the Northeast. On the 14th floor, in a smoke-filled suite, Barbour watched the returns grimly with his team. At 10:30, it was still unclear whether Republicans had even held the House. “If I had to do it all over again,” Barbour insisted, “I’d do it the same way.” By 1:30 a.m., the electoral landscape had improved. Republicans had retained the House and gained in the Senate. Yet the room by then was oddly quiet; members still smoldered in ashtrays, beer bottles crowded table tops. Only Barbour and his onetime top aide, Don Fierce, remained. “You did great,” Fierce said. “We couldn’t have done any better,” Barbour replied.
Barbour’s move protected the party and spared the country from Democratic control of the federal government. The stakes of the 2016 race are remarkably similar: A Democratic Clinton leads comfortably in the presidential race, the Republican nominee is expected to lose, and hard-fought Republican majorities in both Houses of Congress are on the line. But if 2016 doesn’t go as 1996 did for the GOP, it’s worth remembering that Republicans could have done better. They had before.
