Republicans’ electoral prospects for the impending midterm elections have grown so grim that even one of the party’s chief proponents and former torchbearers is predicting disaster for the GOP at the ballot box.
“If the election were in May, Republicans would lose,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a prominent Republican leader whose influence on the party remains evident today, speaking with The New York Times in its report Tuesday. “The war, the sense of affordability and gasoline – some of that has to be cleared up in order to win. If it doesn’t change, I’ll start tearing my hair out.”
President Donald Trump’s favorability has plummeted to the lowest point of his political career, reaching levels below those of any past president at this point in their term since the 1940s. The president’s tariffs, mass deportation policies and unpopular war against Iran have all contributed to his historically low approval ratings, dragging the GOP down with him, analysts have said.
As a staunch conservative, Gingrich still held out hope that the Republican Party could turn things around, but to do so, he said, GOP leadership would have to “get reality a little better – and get communications a hell of a lot better."
Gingrich wasn’t the only conservative who spoke with the Times to sound the alarm over the impending midterm elections. Longtime GOP strategist Mike Murphy told the outlet that his party was in a moment of “panic,” and joked about a “spike in liquor sales to Republicans.”
“I can’t imagine a worse scenario than the one he is in right now,” Murphy told the Times, speaking of Trump. “The Democrats – not because they’ve done anything, but because they’re not Trump – have surged.”