{"id":927,"date":"2018-04-28T22:52:25","date_gmt":"2018-04-29T02:52:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/?p=927"},"modified":"2018-04-30T22:55:29","modified_gmt":"2018-05-01T02:55:29","slug":"trumps-role-in-midterm-elections-roils-republicans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/?p=927","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s Role in Midterm Elections Roils Republicans"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n

By\u00a0Jonathan Martin<\/a>,\u00a0Alexander Burns<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Maggie Haberman<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\"\"<\/div>
President Trump campaigned in March for the Republican candidate in a Pennsylvania special election, but the Democrat, Conor Lamb, ended up winning.<\/span>Credit<\/span>Tom Brenner\/The New York Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n
\n
\u00a0WASHINGTON \u2014 President Trump is privately rejecting the growing consensus among Republican leaders that they may lose the House and possibly the Senate in November, leaving party officials and the president\u2019s advisers nervous that he does not grasp the gravity of the threat they face in the midterm elections.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
\n
\n

Congressional and party leaders and even some Trump aides are concerned that the president\u2019s boundless self-assurance about politics will cause him to ignore or undermine their midterm strategy. In battleground states like Arizona, Florida and Nevada, Mr. Trump\u2019s proclivity to be a loose cannon could endanger the Republican incumbents and challengers who are already facing ferocious Democratic headwinds.<\/p>\n

Republicans in Washington and Trump aides have largely given up assuming the president will ever stick to a teleprompter, but they have joined together to impress upon him just how bruising this November could be for Republicans \u2014 and how high the stakes are for Mr. Trump personally, given that a Democratic-controlled Congress could pursue\u00a0aggressive investigations and even impeachment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Over dinner with the president and other Republican congressional leaders this month, Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, phrased his advice for the president in the form of a reminder: Mr. Trump should never forget his central role in the 2018 campaign, Mr. McConnell said, explaining that Republicans\u2019 prospects are linked to what he says and does and underscoring that\u00a0their one-seat advantage in the Senate was in jeopardy<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

If Mr. McConnell\u2019s warning was not clear enough, Marc Short, the White House\u2019s legislative liaison, used the dinner to offer an even starker assessment. The G.O.P.\u2019s House majority is all but doomed, he said.<\/p>\n

But Mr. Trump was not moved. \u201cThat\u2019s not going to happen,\u201d he said at different points during the evening, shrugging off the grim prognoses, according to multiple officials briefed on the conversation.<\/p>\n

\n
\u00a0The disconnect between the president \u2014 a political novice whose confidence in his instincts was grandly rewarded in 2016 \u2014 and more traditional party leaders demonstrates the depth of the Republicans\u2019 challenges in what is likely to be a punishing campaign year.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Mr. Trump is as impulsive as ever, fixated on personal loyalty, cultivating a winner\u2019s image and privately prodding Republican candidates to demonstrate their affection for him \u2014 while complaining bitterly when he campaigns for those who lose. His preoccupation with the ongoing Russia investigation adds to the unpredictability, spurring Mr. Trump to fume aloud in ways that divide the G.O.P. and raising the prospect of legal confrontations amid the campaign. And despite projecting confidence, he polls nearly all those who enter the Oval Office about how they view the climate of the midterms.<\/p>\n

According to advisers, the president plans to hold a fund-raiser a week in the months to come and hopes to schedule regular rallies with candidates starting this summer. But there is not yet any coordinated effort about where to deploy Mr. Trump, and there are divisions within his ever-fractious circle of advisers about how to approach the elections.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Among his close associates, a debate is raging about whether to focus on House races that could earn the president chits with Republican lawmakers who might ultimately vote on impeachment, or to dig in to defend the party\u2019s tenuous Senate majority.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to be unified, and I know this is a frustrating business that we\u2019re involved in, but rather than having circular firing squads, we need to be shooting outward,\u201d Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the second-ranking Senate Republican, said of the White House.<\/p>\n

Nearly every modern president has lost seats in his first midterm election, and Bill Clinton saw both\u00a0the House and the Senate fall to Republicans in 1994<\/a>. But given Mr. Trump\u2019s polarizing administration, the results this fall are likely to hinge more than ever on the man in the White House.<\/p>\n

Anger toward Mr. Trump has become a crucial motivating tool for Democrats. Already, Republicans have spent millions on House special elections in strongly conservative areas of Pennsylvania and Arizona,\u00a0losing one seat<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0retaining the other by a relatively narrow margin<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n