Rep. Steve Stivers of Ohio on Friday expressed confidence House Republicans would retain the majority in the midterm elections.
The congressman, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, hedged only a little as political reporters during a Christian Science Monitor breakfast peppered him with questions about his strategy for surviving a tough fall campaign unfolding as a backlash against President Trump and one-party rule in Washington.
“I feel pretty good about our chances to hold the House majority,” Stivers said. “This is peace and prosperity versus, I guess, poverty and insecurity.”
“I think it’s a pretty good matchup for us,” he added.
The Republican Party’s 23-seat House majority is in deep trouble, with fresh public opinions polls showing Democrats ahead on the generic ballot question that asks voters which part they prefer be in charge in Congress. Fueling the headwinds are energized Democrats, disgruntled suburban Republicans, and independents fed up with hyperpartisanship.
Friday delivered more good news on the economy, more than 200,000 jobs created in August and an unemployment rate at 3.9 percent, a welcome development for worried Republicans. The party is hoping to use voters’ satisfaction with their pocketbooks to escape the dragnet of Trump’s low approval ratings. He is stuck at 41.6 percent in the RealClearPolitics average despite the booming job market.
Yet Stivers sounded more like Trump as he devoted a substantial portion of his argument for GOP success in November to cultural issues designed to motivate the conservative base. He warned Democrats would raise taxes, abolish Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, and push the U.S. toward socialism.
To be fair, many prominent Democrats are campaigning on some or all of these. But in focusing so heavily on the dangers of the opposition, Stivers appeared to concede that Republicans’ economic pitch isn’t sufficient for the party to withstand the political headwinds fanned by Trump.
The Republicans had initially hoped that the $1.3 trillion tax overhaul, legislation signed into law after clearing Congress with zero Democratic support, would prove a cure for their midterm ills. But Stivers said that it was nearly impossible for House Republicans to build support beyond their base in a political environment dominated by hyperpartisanship and societal divisions.
“The thing that’s going to make this election cycle work for us is what I talked about at the beginning: This election is a choice, and the energy in the Democratic Party is on the very progressive Left toward the socialist [end of] the Democratic Party. And that is going to be a hard thing to sell in the suburbs which is where the majority runs through,” Stivers said.
