Sunshine, optimism and a few crossed fingers as Republican Party leaders gather in California to plan for 2018 election
Across the country in Washington, fresh trouble was breaking out by the hour, enveloping a Republican president and stalling a raft of campaign promises in his young presidency. But here, at a gathering of Republican Party leaders, the mood was upbeat.
On Wednesday, the second day in which President Trump’s administration was buried in fallout from his decision to fire FBI Director James B. Comey, Republican National Committee members and guests gathered under festive white lights on the lawn of the elegant Hotel del Coronado, serenaded by a guitarist who played “Hotel California” as the sun set.
“Desserts, more beverages and … fine cigars” were waiting at the RNC’s next private party stop, a host told the happy and relaxed crowd.
On Thursday, RNC members heard optimistic assessments of the party’s financial standing, listened to an invitation-only speech by the president’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump and talked up strategies for the 2018 election.
For a few days, the members of the RNC are happily in a bubble.
Members of Congress might be growing a bit wobbly on Trump and the media atmospherics may be cloudy and getting darker, but little of that negativity was visible at this sun-splashed resort.
“I’m the chairman of the California Republican Party,” Jim Brulte pointed out, making reference to the GOP’s fading registration numbers in the state: “By definition I’m optimistic.”
Party activists here seemed confident not only of securing the three congressional seats up for grabs in special elections this spring, he said, but also of making a strong showing in House and Senate races in 2018, despite Democratic glee at Trump’s current problems.“If you want an optimistic bubble, you ought to be talking to congressional Democrats — because they’re in an optimistic bubble,” he said.
Some RNC members quietly hinted at concerns about the president, given that the Republican healthcare bill — an answer to years of promises that the GOP would repeal and replace Obamacare — faces weeks of work, at a minimum, after a narrow win in the House.
Even before the healthcare debate, the Comey controversy and the continuing investigation into whether Trump allies colluded with Russia to affect the 2016 election, the president suffered from historically low approval ratings.
“I’d like to see him get some stuff done,” said one RNC member, who requested anonymity to preserve relations within the party.
To some extent, the president’s troubles are helping to energize the party, conversations here made clear.
Little cements support for an elected official more than criticism from the enemy, and the raft of insults leveled at Trump by Democrats over recent weeks and months have only buffed his image in the minds of some here.
As RNC member Steve Scheffler of Iowa put it: “The mood of Republican activists is that they’re thrilled to have a president and an administration going to basically try to fulfill the promises Donald Trump made, and also to push back against what I would call the shrill, unhinged, socialist left that just never seems to accept the fact that Donald Trump was elected president.”
Scheffler cited ruckuses at recent town halls, where Republican officeholders have faced angry crowds worried about losing healthcare benefits — or, he suggested, bent on causing trouble in a way that will boomerang in the next elections.
GOP Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, he recalled, was “shouted down and called a liar” before she’d even said her piece at one recent event.“The American people see that for what it is,” he said. “It’s not really a civil discourse.”
The party could suffer, however, if the president remains under siege as the midterm election arrives. Midterm votes usually play out as referendums on the sitting chief executive.
Several RNC members said the overwhelming view among them of the Comey matter was that the FBI director should have been fired long ago, and that Democrats were hypocrites for defending him now after blaming him for Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016. (They avoided noting that late in his campaign, Trump had fiercely defended the man he fired this week.)
As for healthcare, the controversial House bill was “a glitch in the road,”as Scheffler put it, which Republicans here hope will prove less dangerous once Senate Republicans craft their version. (Several nonpartisan congressional handicappers have moved their forecasts for nearly two dozen House seats toward Democrats in recent weeks — a figure perilously close to the number of seats that would give them control of the chamber.)
Some RNC members expressed more open concern. Steve Duprey, the Republican committeeman from New Hampshire and a veteran of that state’s political races, said Democrats were being hypocritical about Comey. But he added that an errant signal may have been sent when Trump met with two high-ranking Russian officials a day after firing the FBI director in apparent pique over the investigation into Russia and the Trump campaign.
“There are some of us who wish the optics were a little different, and the timing,” he said. “It wouldn’t have been how I scheduled it.”
Few of the party’s major activists backed Trump when his campaign began in 2015, but Duprey and others say members appreciate him now. They specifically cited his appointment of Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch and Trump’s pursuit of a foreign policy more aggressive than President Obama’s.
“This a president who is trying to make things happen,” Duprey said. “While some of us would like him to shut down his Twitter account and perhaps change his comportment a little bit, it’s part of who he is. Yes, he has to deliver on some things, but I think the perception is he’s doing a good job.”
Although no one was indiscreet enough to say so, another possibility seemed to be in the air among Republicans in Coronado. If Trump could actually pull off a presidential victory despite all the odds, who’s to say that Republicans can’t succeed just as well in 2018?
“I think anybody that will suggest that in May of 2017 they can tell you with certainty what’s going to happen in November of 2018 is either a prophet or a charlatan,” said California party chief Brulte. “And we haven’t had any prophets that were 100% accurate since Old Testament times.”
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