Party Politics

Profiles in Courage: Why Republicans May Ride the Trump Train Off a Cliff

“Nobody has a sense of what to do, because they’ve inherited all the downsides of Trump and none of the up. They don’t have the 100 percent name I.D., the celebrity status, all that other shit,” says one strategist.
Image may contain Elizabeth Dole Gary Cohn Bill Shuster Mike Pence Tie Accessories Accessory Human Person and Crowd
Donald Trump with U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao (4th from left), former Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole (6th from left), Vice President Mike Pence (5th from right), Representative Bill Shuster (R-PA) (4th from right) and Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) (right), as he signs a letter of principles of proposed reforms to the U.S. air traffic control system at the White House in Washington, DC, on June 5, 2017.By Jonathan Ernst/REUTERS.

Donald Trump’s approval rating has been hovering at around 37 percent. He’s faced with a metastasizing investigation run by a dogged special counsel. He has no legislative accomplishments to speak of. Increasingly, it appears that 2018 will be a referendum on his presidency, and a disaster for Republicans. And yet, still, the vulnerable G.O.P. won’t break with him. Why? “Politics in Washington is driven by fear, and it’s fear of not getting elected,” Andrew Smith, a political-science professor and the director of the Survey Center at the University of New Hampshire, said in an interview. “You’re not gonna see a whole lot of profiles in courage coming up . . . regardless of what happens.”

Vulnerable Republicans are faced with an exquisitely painful calculation, a Trump trap that increasingly looks like a lose-lose. Leave Trump, and be dragged down by his base. Keep him close, and potentially be crushed by independents and highly motivated Democrats. Despite Trump’s plummeting overall approval numbers amidst the chaos of the investigation and policy failures, his base has been much steadier. “They are Trump supporters first and foremost, issues [are] secondary,” Doug Heye, former communications director for the Republican National Committee, said. “They like that he’s making the right enemies . . . they like that Trump is willing to pick the fights that they like.”

Among this slice of the electorate, Trump is still more popular than the generic Republican—along with many of the G.O.P. candidates up for re-election in 2018—in most districts he carried last fall. “Are you going to proactively anger those voters? I don’t think so,” Heye said. A top Republican strategist, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, refined the arithmetic: “Everybody does better being closer to him than trying to be farther away, because the closer they are to him, the better he will do because we’re all unified,” he said. “If Trump goes up two points, you go up two points. If he goes down and you try and break with him, you just lose some of the Republicans that actually like him and you really don't pick anybody up on this side . . . For every vote you lose on a Republican right now, you don’t gain it with an independent.”

The dispiriting possibility is that, while sticking with Trump could very well be the better strategy, it might still be a losing one. “Nobody has a sense of what to do, because they’ve inherited all the downsides of Trump and none of the up. They don’t have the 100 percent name I.D., the celebrity status, all that other shit,” Republican strategist and well-known anti-Trumper Rick Wilson said. “They have a much higher hill to climb and a much tougher hill to climb, in their races. The Republican voters that love Trump don’t necessarily love them. In fact, people who are pure Trump voters, they hate Republicans just about as much as they hate the Democrats. They hate the swamp, they hate the establishment.”

Trump’s base has eroded modestly. His strongly-approve number has declined from a peak of 33 percent in February to 25 percent in a recent poll. But for Republicans, that’s still a terrifying number.

The Republican Party’s reluctance to distance itself from Trump should not be confused with contentment with the president. “The general tenor and stability of the administration has a lot of members of Congress shaking their heads. What they’re saying privately is not what they’re saying publicly. They’ve been very critical,” Heye said. “For a lot of members that I’ve talked to, it’s not a Trump fatigue but a larger Trump exasperation that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of consistency from the White House, that there’s not the direction, that they still aren’t putting people in key positions that don’t need Senate confirmation.”

Lately, there have been a few green shoots of Trump disillusionment visible on Capitol Hill. Robert Mueller’s appointment as special counsel of the Russia probe was met with bipartisan applause; Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley accused the Office of Legal Counsel of “flooding the swamp”; and in a vote of 97 to 2, Senate Republicans overwhelmingly approved a bill that would make it harder for Trump to roll back Obama-era sanctions against Moscow.

But, while Trump’s current approval rating portends plentiful G.O.P. casualties in 2018, a true, public anti-Trump flowering is still a few points away. Two G.O.P. strategists put the approval rating below which there would begin to be meaningful defections at around 30 percent—George W. Bush -circa-2006 territory. Republicans are closely watching the numbers. “I’ve had a couple of members tell me that they’re polling in their districts a little more, just to make sure that they’re really seeing where their voters go,” Heye said. “That’s, I think, to be expected. The question is, what is that number? I don’t think anybody knows.”

If Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff wins the special election in Georgia against Republican Karen Handel for Health Secretary Tom Price’s vacant seat, Republicans could be forced to rethink their strategy. “This would be like a quasi -midterm election,” Smith said. “You’ll see the spin machines going on both sides . . . but if the story that sticks is that the Democrats win and Republicans are wounded, and that we better bail on Trump now, then you can see, a lot of Republicans are gonna be running for the hills.”

But the Republican strategist remains skeptical that Republicans will ever truly break with Trump. “I don’t think you’ll see like just overtly breaking with him. I think something has to come out of one of these investigations or his numbers have to be really, really bad and it starts to get really close to the election,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s gonna be like that for a long time.”

So, on the eve of the special election in GA 6, much of the G.O.P. doesn’t see the possibility of a meaningful course change. Historically, midterm elections are always bad for the party in power, but Trump’s dangerously low approval rating—coupled with the Democratic Party’s early success in recruiting candidates for 2018 and the overwhelming unpopularity of the House health-care bill—has warning bells sounding. Based on historical trends, Smith estimates that if the election were held today, Republicans could lose somewhere between 40 and 50 congressional seats. “The problem for these Republican congressmen is there is really not a whole lot they can do, because whether they like it or not, they are joined at the hip with Trump,” Smith said. “What people will look at is the ‘R’ or the ‘D’ after someone’s name when they’re in the voting booth, not so much what that person has actually done or not done for the district . . . They’re in a real tough spot, you get elected to these offices in large part because of what happens at the presidential level in the presidential years. Then in the midterm years, you’re kind of being swung around by the tail of that same dog that got you elected.”

It’s quite a tail.