The election of President-elect Trump and a low number of Republican Senate seats at stake in the 2018 midterm elections has the GOP mapping an attack plan for a highly unusual goal — upending the typical model of a new president losing seats in the first election after his victory.

While nobody inside the National Republican Senatorial Committee is predicting a runaway election, incoming Chairman Sen. Cory Gardner sees 2018 laying the groundwork for an eventual filibuster-proof majority of 60 seats or more.