ANALYSIS/OPINION:
I think we can stipulate that no one was predicting that Virginia Democratic Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam would cruise to a 9-point victory in the Virginia gubernatorial race Tuesday.
And while that election was exactly one year before the 2018 midterm elections take place, the results can be at least somewhat illuminating about the political environment one year into this new presidency.
Tuesday’s election results, from Virginia and New Jersey to districts across the country, were almost universally positive for Democrats. They were celebrating on an election night for the first time in at least three years after significant losses in 2014, 2015 and 2016.
Republicans should listen to what the voters are telling them — and correct their course — or risk another humiliating defeat in November 2018. The stakes could not be higher. Lose the House and President Trump is likely impeached there. Lose the Senate and no more conservative judges get confirmed.
Let’s all agree that Virginia is not a microcosm of the U.S. The truth is that it is a state that has been trending Democratic in recent years.
Perhaps, most importantly, the Northern Virginia region is heavily dependent on the bureaucracy of the federal government, which the Trump administration is systematically dismantling. If you have a government job and you live in Loudoun or Prince William County, you wanted to send Mr. Trump a message. Steve Kornacki of NBC News called the Virginia results the “Revenge of the Suburbs.”
Suburban counties went Democratic, and that could soon pose an urgent threat to the GOP. You cannot win a majority by conceding both urban areas and suburban areas. Republicans must find ways to target the suburbs for the midterms or they will lose dozens of House seats and return the speaker’s gavel to Nancy Pelosi.
Ed Gillespie is a fine man and would have been a very able governor. But the Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate was ill suited to the current political environment.
In politics you try to control your timing and your opponent.
In 2014 Mr. Gillespie had the right timing in his razor-close Senate bid, and it was a good year for Republicans. But he faced the wrong opponent in incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark R. Warner. Even facing a popular former governor, Mr. Gillespie nearly pulled off a tremendous upset.
This year, Mr. Gillespie chose the right opponent — an uninspiring, mediocre Democrat in Mr. Northam, but the timing was off. The Gillespie team believes this was a “wave” election and that nothing they did or did not do would have mattered. They are probably right.
There are two other significant causes behind the GOP losses.
Congressional Republicans have failed to deliver important legislative victories. While the House Republicans have around 300 bills awaiting Senate consideration, voters do not generally view the House and Senate as individual legislative bodies. The failure of Capitol Hill Republicans to deliver a major legislative victory is a failure that every Republican owns. Republican voters need to be convinced that the GOP majority is worth something, and we are now more than 10 months into the year awaiting that evidence.
Undoubtedly, President Trump deserves blame as well. He has approached his presidency caring most about his loyal political base, which has delivered him strong Republican support (generally around 80 percent) but has left him nowhere with independents and Democrats. This explains an approval rating that hovers around 37 percent, a historical low for the modern era.
Where do Republicans go from here?
I’d suggest the following simple advice: “Don’t just stand there, do something.”
This is not the time to retire. Quitters do not make history.
Republicans have worked for eight years to secure unified control of Washington — now they must deliver. They cannot change the past, but they can control what they do today and tomorrow.
A path back to political good health would mean passing pro-growth tax reform that increases middle-class spending power, raises wages, leads to higher private sector employment and ushers in a sustained period of 3 percent to 4 percent economic growth. This needs to be accomplished by year’s end so paychecks are larger beginning in January.
From there, Republicans need to rein in federal spending, rebuild the military, enforce our laws, control the borders, ensure the security of the country and confirm as many conservative federal judges as possible.
Virginia need not bring the GOP to utter despair. But they must start producing serious legislative accomplishments that improve people’s lives. If they don’t, Virginia will have been the canary in a coal mine.
— Matt Mackowiak is the president of Austin, Texas, and Washington, D.C.-based Potomac Strategy Group, a Republican consultant, a Bush administration and Bush-Cheney re-election campaign veteran and former press secretary to two U.S. senators. His national politics podcast, “Mack on Politics,” may be found on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher and on the web at MackOnPolitics.com.
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