The current posture of some congressional Republicans, including House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy and Sen. Lindsey Graham, reflects a clear belief that the party needs former President Donald Trump to be successful going forward.
McCarthy and Graham have leaned in on Trump’s popularity and suggested that his participation will be necessary to deliver a solid midterm performance. My hunch is that a Trump-centric strategy would have some chance of success in the House, where (a few exceptions aside) the races are confined to districts rather than being statewide. That would allow Republicans to play more safely to a specific proclivity among a district’s voters, such as support for Trump.
But considering where a few of the key open Senate seats are in 2022, and considering that the races are determined by statewide elections that require a much broader appeal, Trump’s overall unpopularity means that a Trump-centric strategy carries some obvious risks for Republicans’ effort to take back that chamber.
First of all, the McCarthy-Graham theory indicates a belief that, presumably through his endorsements and other means of participation, only Trump can keep the voters who are tethered specifically to him also tethered to the Republican Party. It’s a logical theory, considering that his popularity among Republican and GOP-leaning voters was 60% in the final weeks of his administration and considering the demonstrable fervor that so many have for him.
On the other hand, it could easily become a self-limiting strategy, depending on how heavily Trump involves himself (and he does nothing at half-throttle), because he left office with an overall approval at 29%, having also lost support among Republican voters. Seventy-seven percent of them approved of his job performance in August. After the Capitol riot, support had fallen 17 percentage points to 60%, according to Pew.
More than the poll numbers, based on what swing-state voters demonstrated in November, Trump proved to be a liability in the end. And, again, some of the key Senate seats for Republicans in 2022 are in these swing states.
Consider the seat currently held by Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. Toomey announced in October that he will not run for reelection in 2022, leaving Republicans the task of finding his replacement. Consider also that his margin of victory in 2016 was only 1.5%, that his Senate counterpart is Bob Casey (a Democrat whom voters gave a third term in 2018), and that his state just went for Biden in November.
Toomey won reelection in 2016 by a wider margin than Trump carried his state. For his Republican replacement to win with moderate voters in Pennsylvania, these details suggest he or she won’t get there running with Trump as the point of reference.
Next, consider the seat currently held by Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. As of December, Johnson had not decided whether or not he would run again, but his situation is much like Toomey’s: His counterpart is Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat, and her last margin of victory was three times his. Wisconsin also went for Biden, albeit narrowly. And in 2016, Johnson carried the state by a larger margin than Trump did.
In other words, Democrats do well in Wisconsin, and the state’s rejection of Trump, as in Pennsylvania, suggests that Trump’s involvement there in 2022 won’t be a silver bullet, either.
It must be said that these characteristics don’t inherently guarantee anything. Republicans outperformed Trump in various parts of the country in 2020, suggesting that voters in those places wanted Republicans but didn’t want Trump. But Trump lost both Arizona and Georgia, and Republicans just lost three Senate seats in those two states. One seat in each state will up in 2022, and victories there would be huge for Republicans but won’t come easy.
The feat that Democrats pulled off in taking all three Senate seats from Republicans, and in delivering Georgia and Arizona for Biden, makes one wonder whether Trump could actually become a critical asset for Republicans in both states in 2022.
Republicans may feel encouraged by the expectation that they, as the opposition party, are historically favored to do well during the midterm elections — though one would expect that their fragmentation hurts their ability to do that. And there is clearly fragmentation on this issue of Trump’s value beyond the House’s infighting over Rep. Liz Cheney.
At this juncture, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and some others are, by all indications, more convinced than Senate Republican leadership that the party needs Trump in 2022. Graham said recently, “To my Republican colleagues, there’s no way in hell we’re going to retake the House and Senate without President Trump’s help.”
If their public words about Trump, and Trump’s words about them, are any indication, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Whip John Thune do not believe that.
Without a doubt, the Trump variable that members have to consider is this, as the Washington Examiner’s Jim Antle wrote on Thursday: “He could remain a Republican kingmaker.”
Embracing that could help them — but it’s easy to see how it could backfire, too.
