A Republican group working to preserve the GOP's House majority this fall announced on Tuesday that it is rebranding their candidate development program, removing its "Young Guns" name and changing it to the "MAGA Majority.”
The program, run by the National Republican Congressional Committee, supports GOP candidates in competitive districts by providing them with resources to aid in fundraising and strategic planning.
"This is the MAGA MAJORITY," the NRCC wrote in a post on X, along with a video that included the committee's slate of nine Republicans they say can flip Democratic-held seats. "The 1st of our team of America First Patriots running to Grow the Republican House Majority and Win Big this November!"
Proudly declaring GOP candidates in the nation’s most competitive districts to be "MAGA" is probably one of the dumbest strategies I have ever seen.
An Economist/YouGov poll released Tuesday—the same day the NRCC announced its rebrand—found that just 24% of Americans consider themselves MAGA supporters. So to lump your supposed best swing-district recruits in with a minority political ideology is head-scratching.
What’s more, MAGA is deeply associated with President Donald Trump, whom Americans starkly disapprove of. Just 41% of Americans on average approve of the job he’s doing as president, according to The New York Times. That’s one reason why Republicans are forecasted to lose their House majority in November.
Of the nine "MAGA Majority" members in the NRCC’s announcement, four are in districts that are rated “Lean Democratic” contests by The Cook Political Report—including three in New York and California, where Trump is immensely unpopular. A recent Siena University poll found Trump with just a 33% favorable rating in New York, while a recent Emerson College survey found Trump at an even lower 28% job-approval rating in California.
A third "MAGA Majority" maker is in Arizona’s 1st District, a toss-up seat in Arizona that Trump carried by just 3 percentage points in 2024 but which Democratic candidates carried at the Senate level.
Why these candidates running as underdogs would want the albatross of Trump around their necks is hard to understand. But who are we to dissuade them from hurting their own chances this fall?
Indeed, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee—the NRCC’s counterpart that seeks to elect Democrats to the House—mocked the rebrand.
Supporters of Donald Trump wait for his arrival at a campaign rally in Oklahoma in 2020.
“The NRCC should definitely continue to call their loser recruits ‘MAGA.’ It’ll play perfectly with swing-district voters in November,” DCCC spokesperson Justin Chermol said in a statement.
The new rebrand isn't even the only idiotic thing the NRCC did this week.
The Republican committee's chair, North Carolina Rep. Richard Hudson, told CNN on Monday that he “absolutely” hopes Trump will campaign with Republican candidates all across the country, even in battleground districts.
“He’s a net positive for us everywhere," Hudson absurdly declared.
As someone who is dying to see Republicans kicked from their majority, I, too, think Republicans should campaign with Trump all across the country.
Ultimately, Trump is the reason why Republicans are likely to lose their House majority this fall. His unpopular tariffs, immigration enforcement, and warmongering have put the economy on a downward trajectory and ticked off Democrats and independent voters who are chomping at the bit to punish Trump and his party this fall.
A normal party would allow its candidates in the most competitive seats to distance themselves from their unpopular president in an attempt to defy headwinds. It’s what Democrats did in 2022, helping them to defy historical trends in former President Joe Biden’s sole midterm election.
But the GOP is not a normal party. It's the cult of Trump. And that's exactly why Republicans are in for a world of hurt this fall.
