Unpopularity of the House House Republicans Could Turn U.S. Senate Races

Few Republican elected officials are more insane and backward thinking than those in the Virginia House of Delegates - except for those in the U.S. House of Representatives where the GOP is the "party of No" and batshitery is the norm.  Now, some are predicting that the obstructionism and willingness of the House GOP to throw millions of Americans under the bus may be about to come back and bite the GOP in U.S. Senate races.  If this happens, it obviously would be a sweet pay back that would help insure that the most insane and draconian legislation flowing from the House could be killed in the Senate.  A column in the New York Times looks at this possible political pay back.  Here are excerpts:

To Representative Steve Daines, Republican of Montana, his vote this month against a 1,582-page, $1.1 trillion spending bill was at once a stand for fiscal sanity and a protest against spending cuts to rural communities, a “constructive no,” as he put it last week.

His opponents in the race for Montana’s open Senate seat quickly labeled it a vote against increased funding for the Indian Health Service, Pell Grants for low-income college students, mental health benefits for veterans and traumatic brain injury assistance for those who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as an effort to dry up the clean water supplies of rural Montanans.

The attacks on that one vote from Montana Democrats, including a possible challenger in Lt. Gov. John Walsh, highlighted a vulnerability to the Republicans’ quest for control of the Senate: They draw heavily from the unpopular House for candidates.

“They’re just trying to remind you these guys are members of a very unpopular body,” said Jennifer Duffy, the Senate analyst at Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election newsletter. “It’s something that worked well for them in 2012.”

[T]o take control of the Senate, Republicans need to net six seats, and they will probably need to do it with candidates currently serving in House seats in Montana, Louisiana, Arkansas, West Virginia and Georgia.

In 2012, Republicans fielded House members or former House members in Senate contests in North Dakota, Montana, Missouri, Florida, Michigan, New Mexico and Arizona. Six of them lost . . . .  In contrast, five of the six House Democrats seeking a seat in the upper chamber in 2012 won.

The effort to sully House Republicans has already begun. An advertisement funded by the Senate Majority PAC intones, “In Louisiana, we expect leaders to solve problems,” with an aerial shot of the countryside. The voice-over continues, “not become part of the problem,” as the image switches to the House floor and Representative Bill Cassidy, the Republican hoping to challenge the re-election of Senator Mary L. Landrieu, a Democrat. The ad then hangs the October government shutdown and House-approved budget cuts to Medicare around the neck of Mr. Cassidy, a three-term House veteran.

Republicans cannot get complacent, rerunning the 2010 playbook and simply attacking Mr. Obama and the health care law as they did in 2012, said Rob Jesmer, who led the Republican senatorial campaign that year. Rather, they will need a positive agenda to explain why they should take the Senate.

I for one hope that the GOP stumbles again and that the Democrats hold the Senate.