The Republicans' Trump Problem And Ours
by Michael Tomasky at the Daily Beast
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/05/15/the-republicans-trump-problem-and-ours
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Then Trump’s polling numbers go down below 30. And 30 percent is a crucial benchmark because that’s about the percentage of Americans who are loyal partisan Republicans. If he’s down to 25, that will mean he’s losing even Republicans in fairly large numbers. That, in turn, will mean he’ll start to be a liability to Republican House members in swing districts. And if gets down into the low 20s, that will mean Republicans are really jumping ship.
The Cook Report currently rates six Republican-held House seats as toss-ups, 18 as leaning Republican, and 19 as likely Republican. If Trump’s ratings tumble, Cook will start shifting some likelys to leaning, and it will come clear to Ryan that his majority is seriously at risk.
In other words—and this is the hard political point—it doesn’t have to be that the GOP House members in the deepest-reddest districts feel that Trump threatens their hold on their seats. That won’t happen until Trump gets down to the single digits. But if the 43 Republicans Cook rates as representing potentially vulnerable districts sense that Trump is going to bring them down, then essentially the whole party will abandon Trump if the leaders decide it’s what they have to do to keep the House majority. The House majority is more important to them than Trump for a host of reasons. Trump’s just useful to them, for now.
Now that I think about it, the scenario above won’t really count as putting country ahead of party, will it? It will merely constitute putting the congressional Republican Party ahead of the presidential Republican Party. So the real answer to the question that opened this column, about when Republicans will put country ahead of party, is never.
But you knew that already.
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