Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman predicted Monday that his party will lose seats in the House and Senate next month, yet retain control of both chambers.
“I believe we would keep the Senate,” Mehlman said at a breakfast sponsored by American Spectator magazine. “I think we’d lose seats.”
As for the House, Mehlman said his party will “absolutely” lose seats, especially if the election were held today.
“The House, if it was today, I think we’d probably keep it, but it’s obviously a closer proposition,” he allowed. “The House is harder to keep than the Senate, but I expect to keep both.”
Mehlman said it would not be productive for him to publicly estimate GOP losses three weeks before the election.
But he disputed news reports that the GOP is writing off Republican Sen. Mike DeWine, who is struggling to fend off a strong Democratic challenge in Ohio. Democrats seized on the reports as evidence that Republicans are panicking.
“The GOP’s game plan for holding the Senate was to focus exclusively on Tennessee, Missouri and Ohio — with the idea that winning two of those three states would keep them in the majority,” said Phil Singer, spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
“Over the last few weeks, it has become apparent that the Republicans are being forced to change this firewall strategy and are beginning to cut and run from Ohio,” he added.
Mehlman insisted the GOP is continuing to pour massive resources into Ohio and Pennsylvania, where polls show Republican Sen. Rick Santorum is even more vulnerable than DeWine.
Mehlman acknowledged that Republicans are in their “most challenging political environment” since at least 1982. Historically, the party of a two-term president often suffers congressional losses in his second round of midterms.
“It’s the six-year itch,” Mehlman explained. “You know, Ronald Reagan loses the Senate, Eisenhower gets creamed in ’58, more than 70 seats are lost by the Democrats in ’38.”
He added: “The nature of politics is that after six years in office, a political party attracts some barnacles. And we’re no exception — that’s just the reality.”
Mehlman said the GOP is also being hurt by “a war that is hard for people to get their heads around” and “a number of unfortunate scandals that have occurred in Congress.”
On the other hand, Mehlman said the GOP has been able to use computers to “micro-target” likely Republican voters in an effort to combat what conservatives view as the mainstream media’s liberal bias.
“The mainstream media helped them with the message,” he said of Democrats. “Technology allows us to overcome that.”
