Republicans awoke Wednesday buoyed by renewed optimism about the midterm elections after avowed socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez upset Rep. Joe Crowley in a Democratic primary in New York.
In Ocasio-Cortez and her advocacy for socialized medicine, federally subsidized “free” college education and a job for every American guaranteed by the government, Republicans see a political tonic to the simmering backlash against President Trump that threatens to undercut GOP congressional majorities in November.
“Our party is celebrating this,” Republican National Committee spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said in a Twitter post. “As Democrats lurch toward the failed socialist platform of Bernie Sanders, our Party’s prospects of electoral success are secured for many years to come…”
There’s scant evidence to back up the celebration — and Republicans in Congress, versus those tied more directly to the White House, appeared more circumspect about what the results portend for 2018. Trump’s job approval ratings are stuck in his typically low range, percentage-wise, ranging from the high 30s to mid 40s. The generic ballot, gauging which party voters would be in charge on Capitol Hill, still favors the Democrats just enough to compete for the House.
Recent history would suggest that the nomination of aggressively partisan candidates isn’t enough to dissuade Americans from sending the president a message of disapproval in a midterm election. Democrats in 2010 and 2014 crowed that Tea Party candidates were too extreme; the claims fall on deaf ears as voters lined up to rebuff then-President Barack Obama in two historic waves.
Indeed, in 2014, Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, was ousted by now-Rep. Dave Brat in a Republican primary in Virginia’s suburban Richmond Seventh District. It was a political earthquake similar to Ocasio-Cortez’s defeat of Crowley, the fourth-ranking House Democrat, in New York’s 14th District encompassing Queens and the Bronx. Yet neither Cantor’s loss, nor Brat’s strident opposition to immigration reform, altered the GOP’s political trajectory that fall.
But on the heels of fresh anxiety about the midterm elections sparked by Trump’s zero tolerance policy that led to the separation of families apprehended crossing the border illegally, Ocasio-Cortez represents to many Republicans an extreme liberal counterbalance to the elements of the president’s polarizing rhetoric and provocative agenda that independents and disaffected GOP voters find repellent.
These voting blocs aren’t thrilled with the direction of the Republican Party under Trump, jeopardizing control of the House, and an opportunity to pick up Senate seats in the midterm.
But Trump, and Republicans in his orbit, are comforting themselves with self-assurances that they’ll stick with the president over progressive, anti-establishment Democrats, who, like Ocacio-Cortez, favor European-style socialism in the U.S. and, increasingly, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the primary federal agency responsible for border security.
“The Democrats are in Turmoil! Open Borders and unchecked Crime a certain way to lose elections. Republicans are for Strong Borders, NO Crime! A BIG NIGHT!” Trump tweeted Wednesday morning.
