Squishy Republicans Fear that They May Lose the Senate Due to Trump
Jose Nino
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A number of establishment Republicans in the Senate are growing anxious about their electoral prospects in the 2020 elections.
The Hill reported Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recently acknowledged that winning college graduates and suburban women will be crucial in maintaining their Senate majority in 2020.
With the election right around the corner, Senate Republicans are concerned that Trump is alienating this segment of voters at the moment.
“The last week and a half has certainly raised the level of angst over the politics of the presidential race and consequences on the Senate. I think it’s just kind of become one thing after another. Initially the handling of COVID and now this,” declared a Republican senator who requested anonymity.
GOP senators were already anxious about keeping their majority allegedly due to the administration’s slow response to the Wuhan virus pandemic.
“There are a lot of people in the middle that are looking for calmness,” remarked a second GOP senator who also requested anonymity. “It’s the tone and the words he’s using that I think might harm us back home.”
Establishment mainstay Lisa Murkowski criticized the president by celebrating a scathing critique of Trump’s administration by former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis as “true and honest and necessary and overdue.”
She argued it might give other Republicans the determination to rebel against the president and criticize his controversial behavior.
“Perhaps we’re getting to the point where we can be more honest with the concerns we might hold internally and have the courage of our convictions to speak up,” she stated.
North Dakota Senator Kevin Cramer recognized there is growing anxiety about the upcoming election among his Republican colleagues in the Senate.
“Any type of major crises like these probably never create great opportunities for incumbents,” he said of the Wuhan virus pandemic and the latest wave of protests and riots.
“There’s a lot of anxiety as people get closer to an election. It’s an election where the numbers don’t add up great for Republicans,” he said, calling attention to the fact that Senate Republicans have to defend 23 seats while Democrats only have to keep 12 seats from flipping red.
According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll of 1,113 adults conducted on June 1 and June 2, 55 percent of Americans voiced their disapproval of Trump’s handling of the protests while independents were also in the majority when it comes to their disapproval of Trump
In a Quinnipiac University poll released on June 3, Trump is in a statistical tie with former Vice President Joe Biden barely in the lead over Democrat favorite Joe Biden 44 percent to 43 percent, which is within the survey’s 2.9 percentage point of margin of error.
Republicans must catch on to President Trump’s America First agenda if they want to stay relevant.
Namely, policies such as immigration restriction and more nationalist trade policies will need to be campaign fixtures.
The former is one of the most important issues of contemporary politics in America. The past fifty years of migration voting patterns will have tremendous implications for American politics in the next few decades. Certain civil liberties such as free speech and the right to bear arms could be under major threat thanks to migrant voting patterns.
The Republican Party needs to wake up to this reality lest they want to become irrelevant.
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