When lapdogs attack. From Politico:
Everyone is bracing for President Donald Trump’s ire if the party loses big in November. House Republicans are planning to accuse the Senate side. Trump political aides have taken to directly calling campaigns they feel aren’t performing well enough. National GOP operatives are quietly furious at lackluster candidates who didn’t do enough to prepare for a tough year despite early warnings. And some GOP candidates are pointing the finger back at their own party committees.
Along with the predictable parade of preemptive recriminations—our candidates suck, our party officials suck, gas prices are killing us, we're tripping over the big bags of dark money lying around, everything sucks—there's some rustling below decks as rats are scoping out routes to the nearest ratlines.
A growing group of Hill Republicans argue the blame rests with Trump, and his decisions to get the U.S. into an open-ended war with Iran that has driven up fuel prices, while enacting a slew of tariffs and other policy moves that have riled farmers.
“I’ve talked to some who are making these decisions: The biggest problem is the president’s polling numbers and unfavorables,” retiring Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) recently told Politico.
The piece, alas, doesn't mention any of the other members of this "growing group" of Hill Republicans. (Bacon got off the Trump Train months ago.) But it's not surprising that the group would be "growing." The president is wandering all over the landscape—in some cases, literally—and saying nakedly insane things, mumbling through what seems to be some kind of mental haze in which he makes up entire episodes and, on occasion, entire words. Somehow, it's dawning on the Republicans that the October Surprise this time around is going to be the president's enthusiasm for Jon Husted's ass.
And this, of course, is not even to mention the fact that the president is in the process of cutting Ukraine loose out of increasingly obvious subservience to Vladimir Putin, and meddling like a Temu Corleone in Israeli politics. It is possible that the Republicans may yet fulfill Churchill's assessment of Germany, that it is "at your throat or at your feet."
Maybe.