GOP has jitters about midterms

Party looking for candidates

A raft of retirements, difficulty recruiting candidates and President Donald Trump's pattern of throwing his party off message have prompted new alarm among Republicans about a potential Democratic electoral wave in November.

The concern has grown so acute that Trump received what one congressional aide described as a "sobering" slide presentation about the difficult midterm landscape at Camp David last weekend, leading the president to pledge a robust schedule of fundraising and campaign travel in the coming months, White House officials said.

But the trends have continued, and perhaps worsened, since that briefing, with two more prominent Republican House members announcing plans to retire from vulnerable seats and a would-be recruit begging off a Senate challenge to Democrat Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota despite pressure from Trump to run.

And by the end of the week, many Republicans were scrambling to distance themselves from the president after a report that he used a vulgarity to disparage African countries during an Oval Office meeting with lawmakers about immigration policy. Rep. Mia Love, R-Utah, a rising star in the party who faces a strong Democratic challenge this year, quickly denounced Trump for apparently denigrating Haiti, the birthplace of both her parents, during the Oval Office discussion.

"The president must apologize to both the American people and the nations he so wantonly maligned," Love said.

In the Camp David presentation, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., described scenarios to the president ranging from a bloodbath where Republicans lost the House "and lost it big," in the words of one official, to an outcome in which they keep control while losing some seats.

McCarthy outlined trends over recent decades for parties in power and spotlighted vulnerable Republican seats where Hillary Clinton won in 2016. Eight years ago, before the 2010 midterms swept the GOP to power, he had drafted a similar presentation with the opposite message for his party.

Republicans hold the advantage of a historically favorable electoral map, with more House seats than ever benefiting from Republican-friendly redistricting and a Senate landscape that puts 26 Democratic seats in play, including 10 states that Trump won in 2016, and only eight Republican seats.

But other indicators are clearly flashing GOP warning signs. Democrats have benefited from significant recruitment advantages -- there are at least a half dozen former Army Rangers and Navy SEALs running as Democrats this year, for example -- as Republicans struggle to persuade incumbents to run for re-election.

At least 29 House seats held by Republicans will be open in November after announced retirements, a greater number for the majority party than in each of the past three midterm elections when control of Congress flipped.

Amid the onslaught, Republican strategists say they continue to pin their party's electoral hopes on the nation's still-rising economic indicators, the potential effects of the recent tax-overhaul bill and Trump's ability to rally the conservative base.

That optimism extends to the top of the Republican leadership who are hopeful that Trump's disruptive effect on the political landscape can once again surprise the nation this fall.

"Who knows what 2018 will be like? Nobody called 2016, right?" said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, the second-ranking Republican in that chamber. "Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was going to get elected and that Chuck Schumer was going to be the majority leader."

In private conversations, Trump has told advisers that he doesn't think the 2018 election has to be as bad as others are predicting. He has referred to the 2002 midterms, when George W. Bush and Republicans fared better after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, these people said.

But his ability to shape the midterm field has repeatedly been frustrated.

Trump worked hard to recruit two 2018 Senate candidates, Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., and incumbent Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, both of whom announced in recent weeks that they would not run.

Those decisions strengthened the hopes of Heitkamp, who is running for re-election in a state that Trump won by 36 points in 2016, and provided an opportunity in Utah for a Trump antagonist, former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, to launch a Senate bid of his own.

A Section on 01/15/2018

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