Republicans are poised to take back the House in the new year. Here’s what could stop them

A common theme of liberal political punditry over the past five years has been that the Republican Party must die as a consequence of its acquiescence to former President Donald Trump.

Well, how’s that going so far?

Heading into 2022, the GOP is ascendant. Republicans had strong showings in last fall’s elections in Virginia and New Jersey, and they lead in most polls of congressional party preference for the coming midterms.

The idea of GOP extinction was always absurd, but it made for good MSNBC fodder and fundraising appeals from the Lincoln Project. The reality is that the United States is lashed to the mast of a political ship of state with two parties, alternately tacking between port and starboard since before the Civil War. Each party exists because of the other.

Less than a year ahead of the midterms, Republicans appear to be a virtual lock to retake a majority in the House of Representatives for a few reasons.

▪ They started their comeback in 2020, gaining 13 House seats even as Trump lost the White House and Republicans lost the Senate majority.

▪ History suggests that unless President Joe Biden’s approval ratings recover, Democrats are likely to suffer a midterm shellacking across the board.

▪ In the states where partisan gerrymandering still exists, Republicans are gaining friendlier districts than Democrats.

What’s the agenda that House Republicans will promote with a majority? According to the House Republican Conference, which is in charge of developing policy for the caucus, the elevator pitch is “We’ll stop Joe Biden.” Stop him from what? According to House Republicans, they aim to stop him from worsening the messes he has created around energy, crime, the border and culture.

This strategy is exploiting Biden’s poor approval ratings, fueled by voter perceptions that he is a weak leader, as well as the excesses of progressives who are outside the American mainstream. (Think defunding the police.)

As a practical matter, a House GOP majority will mean more gridlock. Many Americans actually consider this winning.

But Republicans will be able to provide substantive legislative rebuttals to Biden on his border policies, domestic energy production and crime. If Republican rebuttals score with voters, they can set the stage for putting a Republican back in the White House in 2024.

One could argue that there isn’t much substance to a Republican policy agenda focused on taking advantage of Biden’s political weaknesses and progressive overreach. But it often doesn’t take grand policy platforms to win elections. When voters are insecure, focus on their security.

Democrats have spent the past year squandering Biden’s honeymoon and their narrow majorities by trying to do far more than what many Americans wanted. Just as past GOP internal strife led to ineffectiveness (e.g., repealing Obamacare without a replacement), the Democrats have found their governing coalition to be inadequate. As they continue to bicker over how many trillions of dollars to spend on new programs, Americans want to know what’s being done about gas prices, food inflation and rising violence on their streets.

Republicans are saying Democrats created those problems and the GOP can fix them. Voters seem poised to agree.

However, what imperils the path to a majority for House Republicans are the truly dangerous crazies within their ranks who fetishize violence. Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia have all appeared to endorse violence against Democrats. Others such as Rep. Mo Brooks encourage conservatives to “fight for America” like Revolutionary War soldiers.

Such rhetoric, which arguably amounts to terroristic threats against federal officials, apparently passes for American politics as usual today. But Republicans’ path to a majority could narrow if the horror of actual violence reemerges with the GOP’s looniest cheering it on.

The oxygen for this imperiling extremism is of course supplied by Trump, particularly his insistence that he is a president in exile at Mar-a-Lago, denying the validity of the past election. And the evidence being unearthed that Trump wanted to effectively conduct a coup d’état is staggering but not shocking.

Would a GOP House majority perpetuate Trump’s attempts to win in ‘24 by any means, including tampering with certification of the Electoral College vote? It’s too soon to know for sure. Certain Trump sycophants in Congress would be eager to go all-in on such treason, but it’s too early to assume the same of the caucus as a whole.

Some Republican members of Congress privately pray that Trump will not run in 2024. Their shameful retreat from linking him to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack shows they fear him, not that they are devoted to him.

For the moment, however, it appears Trump’s fascist tendencies are not dominating voters’ concerns. They’re more focused on what impacts their daily lives, including inflation, COVID weariness, unsettling spikes in crime and a supposed superpower stumbling through supply chain woes.

If not much changes, Republicans should have a successful 2022 election cycle. But the malignancy of those spoiling for political violence could still prove fatal to GOP gains.