It was christened the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. But the $1.4 trillion overhaul of the federal tax code might as well be called the “Save the Republican Majority Act.”
Senior Republicans are suddenly feeling better about their prospects for holding their party’s House and Senate majorities. And they’re assigning the lion’s share of the credit to the tax bill they shepherded through Congress against unanimous Democratic opposition.
“If you look at the rise in the generic ballot over the past six weeks, it corresponds almost directly to the rise in approval of the tax package and Republicans’ handling of the economy,” said Josh Holmes, former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
He’s not wrong.
In late December, as Trump was signing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the legislation was about as popular as a root canal. So were Republicans in Congress. The generic ballot test, which measures voters’ preference for which party should be in charge on Capitol Hill, favored the Democrats by double-digit margins.
When Republicans looked at such numbers, it was like seeing 2010 in reverse. Back then, Barack Obama, another polarizing, unpopular president, was pushing another polarizing, unpopular piece of legislation, the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, through another one-sided Congress.
Obamacare’s approval numbers wouldn’t improve, and Obama’s first midterm election plundered his party’s majorities as Republicans flipped the House with a gain of 63 seats, plus seven seats in the Senate.
But something is happening to the dark blue Democratic tsunami that everyone saw coming, and it is happening just as the country heads toward Trump’s first midterm election. It is receding, shrinking into a swell that may prove navigable as voters increasingly feel the tax bill’s impact on the economy in general and their own pocketbooks in particular. They are reassessing their opinion of both the legislation and the Republicans who, without help from a single Democrat, delivered it.
Since the law was enacted, voters’ confidence in the economy and their personal finances have soared. Polling fluctuates, with some surveys still showing major turbulence ahead for Republicans. Party strategists warn that GOP majorities in Congress are still under significant threat. But Trump’s average job approval numbers have risen from the mid- to high-30s to the low- to mid-40s in what could be a critical indicator of GOP fortunes, and the Democrats’ average generic ballot advantage has dropped from double digits to single digits.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has proved more popular than unpopular in some recent surveys. It’s not just the public numbers, either. Republicans are seeing the results in their private data, easing some anxiety at least for now.
The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., routinely tracks voter sentiment in 60 battleground districts. Among the questions it asks in surveys is: Do you believe your taxes will go up or down? The super PAC won’t reveal specific poll data but said the trajectory of voters who believe they’re getting a tax cut is positive and continues to grow.
“As people learn about what’s in the bill, they like it,” said Corry Bliss, CLF’s executive director. “There’s no other reason we’re doing better.”
The super PAC is spending tens of millions of dollars to defend the Republicans’ 24-seat House majority. A big portion of that investment is being use to promote the tax bill, and to cricize Democrats for voting against it.
Bad history
The party in the White House usually loses seats in the midterm election. So, Trump and congressional Republicans are facing headwinds.
President Ronald Reagan dropped 26 House seats in 1982; President Bill Clinton lost 54 in 1994, ending 40 years of his party’s reign in the House; President George W. Bush shed 31 seats in 2006, as Democrats won back control of Congress for the first time in 12 years. And, of course, Obama suffered massive defeats, in 2010 and 2014, losing the House and Senate in spectacular fashion.
But Trump is unique, and so are the challenges he poses to his party. The GOP is unlikely to shed the nagging fear that no matter how popular the tax cuts end up being, the midterm election could still pound them for being the party of an extraordinary president.
Trump should be in much better political shape than he is. Job growth is up, unemployment is down, wages are rising, and voters are warming to his signature piece of legislation, which several major corporations credit for their decisions to give bonuses to staff and to expand domestic operations.
Despite all that, the president still languishes in the low- to mid-40s. Some polls show his job approval has even fallen back under 40 percent. Why? Many voters simply don’t like the way Trump behaves. They disapprove of his blunt rhetoric or abrasive treatment of others, friend or foe.
Trump stokes their disgust with his daily resort to his favorite communications medium, Twitter. Republican insiders concede that his tweeting is a serious problem for the party, and they worry that his social media habits could sink them in November.
“With men, taxes win, but with women, Twitter wins,” said a Republican strategist from a heavily suburban battleground state who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “Moderate men could be in play too” because of unhappiness with Trump’s aggressive brand of leadership.
The suburbs are crucial, and it’s here that Republicans face their biggest threat.
Suburban strongholds that typically vote Republican, such as California’s 39th congressional district and Greater Atlanta’s 6th district, began to drift left in 2016. Conservative-minded swing voters and those who liked Republicans but disliked Trump threw their support to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Educated white women are key. Republican operatives report some recent progress with them, and once again, it’s because of the tax cuts.
Two months before the bill became law, the political environment was so bad for the Republicans that even heartland suburban seats drawn to protect GOP incumbents in almost any political environment began showing signs of vulnerability. A Republican operative active in one of them agreed to discuss what he experienced as long as the district and the incumbent remained anonymous.
That October, as Republicans were dealing with the GOP’s failure to keep its promise to repeal and replace Obamacare, the otherwise well-liked Republican incumbent’s unfavorable ratings spiked by 11 percentage points, led by dissatisfaction among female voters in this suburban district.
Since late December, the incumbent’s favorable numbers have recovered, and Trump’s job approval numbers, though not his personal favorable ratings, are rising, too. In modeling done for this incumbent’s reelection, 55 percent of voters deemed most likely to show up at the polls have a positive view of Trump’s job performance.
“It’s still shaky with suburban women out there,” the Republican operative said. “But just environmentally, it has gotten a lot better. The president is not dragging people down anymore.”
The tax law solved several political problems that plagued Republicans for much of 2017.
Chief among them was that it gave them an achievement to brag about and to attribute to the full control of government in Washington. It can be presented as a return on the investment voters made in the GOP. That alone helped improve the party’s position with its own voters frustrated over a lack of action. Importantly, it also serves as a shared achievement for Trump and Republicans in Congress.
The two spent much of last year at war with each other, deepening the image of a party in disarray and incapable of leading the country. For the first time, the president and his party allies on Capitol Hill are linked by their mutual interest to promote the tax bill to resuscitate their political health before November.
That’s important because Trump isn’t on the 2018 ballot, but Republicans in Congress are, and the infighting between them tended to hurt lawmakers disproportionately. The GOP base, suspicious of the party establishment, usually sides with Trump in intraparty disputes, and is less likely to show up this fall if it thinks House and Senate Republicans are disloyal to the president.
“I think something has fundamentally changed with the passage of the tax cuts, and that is that the president and [congressional] Republicans are now all in the same boat, with the same incentives,” GOP strategist Brad Todd told the Washington Examiner in a recent interview.
Democrats starting to worry
The Democrats are dubious of Republican claims that Trump has turned a corner. His domination of the news cycle with off-putting behavior and acrimonious tweets is not something they expect to change. Republicans are hard-pressed to disagree.
But even as Republicans fret about the long-term prospects of the tax bill and pressure the party to keep its foot on the gas, a prominent liberal super PAC is worried that Democrats are losing the messaging war. Priorities USA, concerned about the Republicans’ recovery in polling, cautioned Democrats in a recent memo not to take success in the midterm election for granted.
They warn that the party is relying too heavily on Trump’s unpopularity and the cloud of scandal surrounding the White House. It may not be enough to win back the House and the Senate. The Republicans hold a slim 51-49 Senate majority, but are blessed by the fact that 10 Senate seats they’re defending this year were won by Trump in 2016.
“Democrats continue to hold an advantage over Republicans heading into the midterms but must reassert control over the economic narrative if they are going to maximize electoral success in House, Senate, and governors’ races this fall,” wrote Democratic pollsters Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group and Global Strategy in the mid-February memo, described by one GOP insider as “smart, kind of dead-on.”
It was a tacit admission that while Trump remains toxic, and his approval ratings are still dangerously low for Republicans, the GOP is no longer in free fall, in part thanks to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Priorities USA claims that Republicans are worse off because of the tax bill than they realize. But in an interview with the Washington Examiner, it conceded that Democrats have to do a better job of emphasizing kitchen table issues such as jobs and the economy, and on drawing a contrast between their fiscal agenda and the Republican tax bill, if they expect voters to side with them on Election Day.
“It would be a mistake for Republicans to think they’re in the clear on this,” said Josh Schwerin, a Priorities USA spokesman. “For Democrats, this is about maximizing our wins, not winning or losing.”
“Trump is everywhere and injects himself into everything,” Schwerin continued. “People detest his temperament and don’t think he’s telling the truth. That’s going to be there no matter what everyone else is talking about, and it’s why it’s important Democrats are talking about the economy and healthcare.”
