THE PRAIRIE EDITOR: What Could Happen To The GOP Senate Majority?

Now that the Republican majority in the U.S. senate has failed
to pass Obamacare repeal and replacement, the future of
their majority in 2018, unlikely as it seemed only a few days
ago, is now in doubt.

Here is what can happen in the coming months:

Those GOP senators who are vulnerable in 2018, and balked
at supporting the repeal and replacement, did so in many
cases because of their fear of voter reaction in their home
states. That fear flies in the face of political facts on the
ground, established in 2016, when some GOP senate
candidates failed to support Donald Trump. In most, but
not all cases, conservative voters showed less enthusiasm
for these Republicans, and in two examples (one in Mr.
Heller’s own Nevada) they lost races they might have won.
Many conservatives who support Obamacare repeal could
stay home next year.

But the bad news for GOP senate hopes in 2018 does not
stop there. Major conservative donors might well hold back
much-needed funds for senate campaigns. Potential
volunteers might not show up. And most ominously,
conservative candidates might run as independents. This
would doom not only vulnerable senators, but some of those
now considered to have safe seats. There are now at least
ten Democratic senate seats considered vulnerable  in 2018.
The Democrats could retain all or most of them.

This is a worst-case scenario, but mid-term elections often
go that way. They went that way against the Democrat in
2010 and 2014. The went that way against the GOP in
2006.

The Democrats paid dearly for taking their own voters for
granted in 2016., and obsessing on the corrosive Beltway
mentality. The same might likely also happen to Republicans
in 2018.

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Copyright (c) 2017 by Barry Casselman. All rights reserved.