Republicans are headed for a rough reckoning next month. Persistent inflation, record fuel prices, and widespread disapproval of the war with Iran have soured the outlook for the GOP. According to the latest Wall Street Journal poll, President Donald Trump’s 37% approval rating is the lowest for any president since 1990.
That comparison rang alarm bells with me. I was the National Republican Congressional Committee’s communications director in 1990, responsible for media and television advertising strategy in President George H.W. Bush’s first midterm elections. We started the year optimistic about chipping away at the Democratic majority in the House. Early that year, our polling revealed a budding anti-tax, anti-incumbent mood. It was driven by a recession, a financial crisis in the savings-and-loan industry, and perceptions of corruption in the Democratic leadership.
By focusing on the Democrats’ woes, we hoped to defy the history of midterm losses for the party holding the White House. With luck, we might even expand on the GOP’s 175 seats in the House. JFK and Ronald Reagan had both picked up House seats in midterm elections. Why not Bush, too?
Bush’s 1988 campaign promise not to raise taxes positioned him to benefit from the anti-tax mood. I was at the Republican National Convention in New Orleans when he made his famous, “Read my lips, no new taxes!” pledge to the delegates. But in the spring of 1990, Bush broke that promise and joined congressional Democrats to support a tax increase. Bush’s flip-flop badly demoralized the GOP base. For the NRCC, it was a disaster. We had 17 open GOP seats to defend and another 23 incumbents we ranked vulnerable. In 1990, the average postwar midterm loss for the party in the White House was 24 to 26 seats. Without warning, Bush made losing most of our vulnerable incumbents and open GOP seats highly probable.
The only way to curb GOP losses was to put distance between Republicans on the midterm ballot and the White House. I put together a five-page strategy paper titled “The Tax Revolt of 1990.” I argued that the GOP’s congressional wing should spearhead the anti-incumbent, anti-tax public mood by openly opposing Bush’s tax increase. Cautioning that it might require “a near Civil War within the Republican Party’s divergent governing coalitions,” I argued that we should “focus populist resentment” against “Harvard… the country club, the elite, intellectuals, the bankers and Wall Street.”
My eye was on the long-term possibilities of the simmering anti-incumbent mood. If we could position GOP House members as anti-tax and hold down our 1990 losses, we might be able to flip the House in a future election if the mood turned into a wave. The memo concluded with a warning that “if we fall in line with the Senate, the House Democrats, and the White House, we sideline ourselves for the rest of the century.” NRCC co-chairman Edward J. Rollins, Jr., sent a memo to all GOP congressional candidates encouraging them to distance themselves from Bush’s tax increase. Predictably, the White House was furious.
But our results spoke for themselves. That November, the GOP lost a mere eight House races, one of the lowest midterm losses for a party in the White House. As the anti-tax and anti-incumbent wave grew, the GOP picked up nine seats in 1992 and finally took control of the House in 1994 for the first time in fifty years.
The lesson for today’s Republican candidates is clear. When the president becomes political kryptonite in all but the safest GOP strongholds, create distance. Establish your independence. Take control of the messaging in your campaign. Don’t let groups operating inside the Beltway define your candidacy with their advertising and social media messaging, especially if it ties you too closely to Trump. Campaign on a pledge to represent your constituents in Washington and address the pocketbook issues that matter most to them right now. Allowing yourself to be positioned as a foot-soldier for Trump will only galvanize voters against you.
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That doesn’t mean you can’t support the president at all. Many of Trump’s accomplishments are widely popular and positive for the country. Embrace those, but not at the cost of staking out an independent identity and addressing issues that matter in your district. So also draw a strong contrast with your Democratic opponent. Let voters know what you stand for, but also remind them what happens if the Democrats take the House: open borders, woke excesses, and more inflation from their blow-out spending.
Your goal is to make the election a choice between you and your Democratic opponent, not between Trump and the Democratic Party. If you are running in a competitive race and it becomes a referendum on Trump, you’ll be the loser.
John B. Roberts II served in the Reagan White House and was an international political strategist and executive producer of The McLaughlin Group. He is an author and artist.