Top Republicans: "Unlikable" Ted Cruz Might Lose

Personally, I hope that Republicans who keep claiming that their "organization" and fundraising advantage will allow them to hold control of Congress after the 2018 midterm elections will prove to be little more than a group of delusional misogynist rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  While Trump lies and says his approval ratings are soaring even as new polls show him with a 36% approval level, some Republicans seemingly are realizing that Trump poses a huge problem for the GOP.  He may be welcomed at rallies in red states, but his vitriol may well be turning alienation voters from the GOP and motivating even larger numbers of voters to turn out in November to vote against Republicans as the sole means to contain Trump.  A piece in the New York  Times based on audio from a GOP confab looks at the hopefully worsening prospects for the GOP and Ted Cruz.  Here are article excerpts:

A pair of top Republicans acknowledged in a private meeting on Saturday that the party was battling serious vulnerabilities in the midterm elections, including what one described as widespread “hate” for President Trump, and raised the prospect that Senator Ted Cruz of Texas could lose his bid for re-election because he is not seen as “likable” enough.

The two Republican leaders, Mick Mulvaney, the federal budget director, and Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman, . . . . But Mr. Mulvaney and Ms. McDaniel also offered an unusually raw assessment of their own party’s strengths and weaknesses in the midterm elections. They pointed to the burning energy among Democratic voters and the dozens of open House seats, where Republican incumbents decided not to seek re-election, as fearsome obstacles to retaining control of Congress. And Mr. Mulvaney suggested Republicans would fare better if they could “subtract” [Trump] the president’s divisive persona from voters’ minds, and stress instead that the country is in a “pretty good” condition.

Their comments were captured in an audio recording that was obtained by The New York Times from a person who attended the party meeting.

Even as Mr. Mulvaney conceded that Mr. Trump’s personal unpopularity was a problem for the party, he predicted it would not ultimately be a decisive factor for most voters. He also alluded to Mr. Cruz, without mentioning his name, as a lawmaker who might lack the charm to win a contested race this year.

Mr. Mulvaney said, Democrats were putting forward a “movement of hate,” and asked rhetorically: “What is the signature piece of legislation they’re against? The tax bill?”

Ms. McDaniel, a former chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party, alluded more delicately in her remarks to the explosive Democratic turnout in the midterm primary elections that Mr. Trump had helped stir, telling the meeting, which included many major donors, that Republicans were spending money aggressively to build a voter-turnout machine to block a Democratic takeover.

She framed the election as an asymmetrical contest — Republican organizing prowess and financial supremacy versus raw Democratic energy.

Spokesmen for the R.N.C. and Mr. Mulvaney declined to comment.

The suggestion, by Mr. Mulvaney, that Republicans might fare better without Mr. Trump as the dominant factor in voters’ minds is a far cry from [Trump's] the president’s personal approach to the campaign. He has held rallies across the country in recent days, focusing on red states where Democratic senators are seeking re-election, and warning conservative voters in intensely personal terms that a victorious Democratic Party would try to hound him from office.

And Mr. Mulvaney’s comments came at the end of a week that dramatized just how difficult it might be to nudge any particular issue, aside from Mr. Trump, to the center of the campaign.

The budget chief, who has been seen at points as a potential White House chief of staff, acknowledged that Republicans had nominated poor candidates in some important races and might struggle to defend a huge number of open seats in the House, where dozens of Republican lawmakers decided not to run for re-election.

Democrats must gain 23 seats in the House to take control of the chamber. Senior Republican strategists have grown sharply concerned about a collection of open seats where they have put forward flawed nominees, including in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and North Carolina. Mirroring in some respects the Republican campaigns of 2010, Democratic candidates have been running on a message of blocking Republican health care and economic policies, and reining in an unpopular White House.

The Senate appears more secure for Republicans at this point. Even though they hold only a slim, 51-seat majority, Democrats are defending far more seats than Republicans, and many of the Democratic incumbents up for re-election are running in conservative states.

Still, there is a path for Democrats to capture the Senate, and Mr. Mulvaney pointed to crucial Senate races in Texas and Florida as places where candidate quality could be decisive.

“There’s a very real possibility we will win a race for Senate in Florida and lose a race in Texas for Senate, O.K.?” Mr. Mulvaney said. “I don’t think it’s likely, but it’s a possibility. How likable is a candidate? That still counts.”

Mr. Mulvaney’s comments about the Texas Senate race represent perhaps the most candid admission by a senior Republican that Mr. Cruz, a first-term lawmaker who battled Mr. Trump for the presidential nomination in 2016, is actually facing a fight for his political life. He is being challenged by Representative Beto O’Rourke, a maverick Democrat who has raised enormous sums of money online.At the same conclave of Republicans on Saturday, one of the party’s key Senate candidates, Mike Braun, a wealthy former Indiana state legislator who is running against Senator Joe Donnelly, a Democrat, framed the stakes of the election in grimmer terms.

At a forum for Senate candidates, Mr. Braun pleaded with party donors to put up the money needed for Republicans to defend their control of the Senate, warning that if the party did not govern successfully under Mr. Trump it could face a long political winter.

“We’ve got four to six years to get this right, and if we don’t, it’ll go the other direction, demographically and all those other things that point negatively for us,” Mr. Braun said, in comments captured on a second recording. “We’ll be miserable for 15 to 20 years.”

It is actually shocking that Braun admitted that the GOP is committing political suicide by its alienation of all but white Christian extremists and white supremacists.