Recent crushing Democratic victories in Virginia, Alabama, Pennsylvania, and now this week in Wisconsin demonstrate that something is very wrong in Republicanland.
The voters who want to turn Republicans out of power are showing up to vote in every by-election. The voters who want to keep them in power are largely staying home.
For those old enough to remember, it feels a lot like 2006, when the question on many people’s minds wasn’t whether Republicans would lose Congress, but how badly.
And if this trend continues into November, then the GOP will lose both its majorities in Congress and its advantage in state governments, built up from its modern low point at the beginning of former President Barack Obama’s administration.
So how do Republicans prevent this? There are two sensible answers to that question.
The first is that they can prevent it by returning to their principles and governing in a consistent way that gives heart to their supporters and gets them excited about voting again. This concept is at least partly sound, but of course it doesn’t guarantee that anything can stop Democratic gains or even dominance in the next general election.
The second answer is that the so-called “blue wave” is coming, and Republicans can’t prevent it at all. In that case, the prescription is exactly the same. They should spend the next seven months governing as if it’s their last chance. Because it really might be their last chance.
In the states, Republicans are already going back to their roots, whether that means mitigating Obamacare’s ongoing damage to their insurance markets, putting public pensions back on sustainable footing, cutting taxes, and protecting the rights to property and life while they still can.
At the federal level, Republicans seem to have run out of ideas since tax reform. Their passage of a bloated spending bill last month was especially disappointing. But believe it or not, there’s still time for them to cut spending using a little-known tool to rescind authorized spending with a bare congressional majority.
As rare as this procedure is, the Trump administration is being urged to give it a try, at least on a small scale. He would simply propose a rescission in certain areas, probably to funding levels that match his own earlier presidential budget draft. If simple majorities in both houses of Congress approve the rescission within 45 days, then taxpayers save a few bucks. Democrats, being in the minority in both chambers, would be powerless to stop them.
Republicans have run election campaigns year after year on a platform of fiscal probity. Here’s a chance to exercise a bit of that. They have no excuse not to give something like it a try, especially given that their electoral fortunes are unlikely to change one way or the other.
From here out, conservatives should be governing as if they have nothing left to lose. If they use their freedom to pursue constructive goals that they can be proud of, then they’ll be winners in November and beyond, whether or not they get re-elected.
