Woo boy—Donald Trump spent two weekends ago declaring himself a "stable genius" in response to snowballing questions about his mental fitness and he followed up last weekend with denials that he's a stone cold racist.
After nipping those rumors in the bud, he's moved on to solving the GOP's looming midterm crisis, writes the Washington Post:
The concern has grown so acute that Trump received what one congressional aide described as a “sobering” slide presentation about the difficult midterm landscape at Camp David last weekend, leading the president to pledge a robust schedule of fundraising and campaign travel in the coming months, White House officials said.
Absolutely! He’s the least popular pr*sident entering year two in polling history, but let's get that guy out on the road—he can deny his racism and play up his mental stability while leading chants of "build the wall!" and skewering "little rocket man" North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
But it's not just Trump himself who's bought into the notion that he "alone can fix it." Here's an unnamed GOP consultant:
“The big question is: Is everything different with Trump? Because the major metrics point to us losing at least one house of Congress.”
That sliver of optimism extends to the top of the Republican leadership who are hopeful that Trump’s disruptive effect on the political landscape can once again surprise the nation this fall.
“Who knows what 2018 will be like? Nobody called 2016, right?” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), the second-ranking Republican in that chamber. “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was going to get elected and that Chuck Schumer was going to be the majority leader. And none of that turned out to be true.”
Will you help kill that GOP “sliver of optimism” by donating $3 to the slate of Daily Kos endorsed candidates?
Sure, you keep fighting the battle of 2016, John. Meanwhile, Republicans are bleeding candidates because no sane person wants to throw their hat in the ring for a party that thinks Trump is an asset on the campaign trail. And it's not just the record number of retirements, it's also recruitment.
But the trends have continued, and perhaps worsened, since that briefing, with two more prominent Republican House members announcing plans to retire from vulnerable seats and a would-be recruit begging off a Senate challenge to Democrat Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota despite pressure from Trump to run.
Republicans pulled a rabbit out of a hat in 2016, to be sure. It's an unaccounted for rabbit—an anomaly that still doesn't totally make sense. But that doesn't mean that you base your game plan on another miracle, which is exactly what Republicans are doing.