There are many ways Republicans can lose control of the House and Senate in November. But there’s only one way they stand a good chance to hold both chambers. It’s to run on the tax cuts.
One reason is that it’s the best thing Republicans have done in the Trump era. But there are bigger reasons. It’s a very tangible issue. That matters. Voters can see and feel the cuts. This month tens of millions of Americans will get paychecks with less withheld in income taxes. And the tax cuts will be visible each payday. Still, they’ll need to be reminded who’s responsible for this windfall.
The tax cuts, plus the end of burdens like the individual health insurance mandate, represent a huge shift in national policy. Companies are not only responding with bonuses and wage hikes for their employees, they’re plowing billions into expansion, research, and hiring.
Then there’s the opposition of Democrats. Led by House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, they’ve made themselves vulnerable with wild claims about how the tax cuts will enrich the wealthy and drag down the middle class. At least we’ve learned Pelosi is an economic illiterate.
The GOP tax cuts might appear to need no boosting in the 2018 campaign. But tax cuts can be taken for granted. Voters are often dubious about anything that comes out of Washington. And Democrats have conditioned taxpayers to think Republicans were created to reward the rich. It’s in their GOP genes.
The brain behind the tax-cuts strategy is Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker. He’s now a Republican strategist, adviser to GOP leaders, and friend of President Trump. In a speech to the Republican National Committee, he said 50 percent of the party’s effort in the midterm “should be spent on the tax cuts.”
Republicans should explain the cuts and their impact “at a cultural level . . . the large economy level . . . and at a personal level,” he said. This would send a simple message: “We want you to have money in your pocket, a better job, a greater future, more money in your 401(k) for retirement. [Democrats] want all that money for their bureaucrats and their giveaways. You pick which team you like.”
Gingrich does not believe “the traditional Republican party” can win this fall: “We’re at an edge of a wave election, and if we end up with a wave election on their side, you can’t raise enough money to win normal races.”
His speech to the RNC was not Gingrich’s first stab at persuading GOP leaders to emphasize their tax success. Shortly after Christmas, he privately circulated a draft plan titled “Tax Cuts and the Potential for a 2018 Realigning Election” to Republican leaders.
It used the tax cuts as the model for “a larger vision of a more successful and dynamic country” in contrast with “the big government, big bureaucracy, high tax, low growth history of the eight Obama years.”
The five-page outline is vintage Gingrich. Rather than propose merely to stave off a massive Republican defeat in November, he insisted the Tax Cut and Job Act “is so large and has so many advantages for so many different Americans that it could be the engine that drives a realigning election.” Wow!
This may sound farfetched, but Gingrich is still remembered as the man who led Republicans out of the political wilderness in 1994 and became House speaker.
The outline was discussed by GOP leaders, congressional leaders, and administration officials. It never leaked. And if the plan or any part of it was agreed on, it wasn’t announced.
In what he called the “Newt Draft,” Gingrich cited the plan’s historic roots. “Everything outlined is as doable as the rise of supply-side economics, the Reagan Revolution, and the Contract with America campaign of 1994,” he noted. Gingrich was an active participant in those movements.
But it will need more unity, training, and organization than in 1994. The plan’s timetable saw the tax cuts as a “major component” of Trump’s State of the Union address in January. Trump did focus on them, but his assurances that winning in 2018 is in the bag didn’t increase the sense of urgency.
“Nothing outlined will happen here [in 2018] unless the President and Vice President, the Speaker of the House, the Senate Majority Leader and the Republican National Committee decide they want a realigning election,” according to Gingrich. “Muddling through, focusing on opportunistic tactics, hoping that money can replace strategy will all put the 2018 election in doubt.”
Gingrich offers a convincing kicker: “The dangers of a Speaker Pelosi and a bitterly anti-Trump Democratic majority leader should be enough to make it obvious that a Republican realigning election is much the better choice.” Should be enough, yes. But I’d go further. Newt’s on to something.
