Steve Bannon won’t abandon his war against congressional Republican incumbents, not even after President Donald Trump publicly pleaded for a truce that could salvage the tax overhaul at the heart of his legislative agenda.
Trump’s ousted chief strategist will continue to back insurgent candidates who pledge to usurp Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a person familiar with Bannon’s plans said. His message was made plain on Monday on the Breitbart News website he once again runs: “Bitter Mitch! Triggered by Bannon,” one headline crowed.
Trump sought to unite Republicans with a public embrace of McConnell, who stood next to the president in the White House Rose Garden on Monday during an impromptu 40-minute news conference. Trump declared his party “very unified,” described himself as “closer than ever before” with McConnell and said he’d ask Bannon to back off a promised “season of war” against Republican incumbents.
There are deep fears in the White House and among Republicans that the tax overhaul, considered vital for next year’s midterms by the party’s strategists, will follow Obamacare repeal to the legislative ash heap. That would likely leave Trump without a substantive legislative accomplishment after a year in office.
Trump and Bannon have spoken in recent days, said someone familiar with the conversation. But the president’s former chief strategist hasn’t changed his outlook toward his party’s establishment.
The Bannon-allied Great America Political Action Committee on Monday endorsed in its “Trump Ticket” for Republican primaries Kelli Ward, who is challenging incumbent GOP Senator Jeff Flake in Arizona, and in Wisconsin, Kevin Nicholson, who has said he would vote against re-electing McConnell as majority leader.
In a sign of his increasing concern about the tax overhaul, Trump also sought to cover his bases with the opposition party, inviting Democratic senators Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Deborah Stabenow of Michigan to participate in a meeting at the White House on Wednesday. Both are members of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, and both face re-election next year in states Trump carried.
It will take more than a hastily arranged news conference with McConnell to salve ill feeling between the president and GOP lawmakers.
Twitter Foil
Barely two hours earlier, before a private lunch with McConnell, Trump publicly berated congressional Republicans that he said “are not getting the job done.” He launched repeated Twitter fusillades against McConnell as recently as August, blaming the Kentucky Republican for failing to win passage of an Obamacare repeal and making a “mess” of legislation to raise the nation’s borrowing limit.
Even as he committed to standing by Republican senators who Bannon eviscerated during an appearance at the Value Voters Summit on Saturday, the president expressed fondness for his former campaign chairman. He told reporters at a Cabinet meeting earlier Monday that some Republicans should be “ashamed” of their votes.
Trump is “frustrated” with Senate Republicans over the health-care failure and the challenges that have surfaced in the process of overhauling the tax code, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said Tuesday.
“Republicans need to start figuring out a way to pass stuff, and not look for reasons not to pass stuff,” Mulvaney said on Fox News. “They ran promising tax reform, and we’re sort of hitting a hurdle on that.”
Lawmakers—particularly those facing tough re-election battles—will watch closely to see if Bannon heeds Trump’s public call.
Republicans are defending just eight Senate seats next year, and only one—Nevada’s Dean Heller—is in a state won by Hillary Clinton. That means that for many GOP senators, their biggest risk of defeat comes from a well-financed and organized primary challenge from the right.
The recent primary loss of Senator Luther Strange, an Alabama Republican ousted by challenger Roy Moore, a Bannon-backed former judge who has said Muslims shouldn’t be allowed to serve in Congress and homosexual activity should be outlawed, has deepened incumbents’ anxieties.
Crucial Months
For Trump, keeping those senators in the fold will be crucial in the coming months.
The president is eager to overhaul the nation’s tax code to cut corporate rates, pass legislation to repeal Obamacare, and forge an immigration deal that strengthens border security and provides protection from deportation to those brought to the U.S. as children. He also must accomplish mundane but essential legislative tasks such as funding the government for another year and raising the legal debt ceiling, or risk shaking markets and depressing his popularity. In each case, success or failure could come down to a handful of senators.
Attempts to bully lawmakers on a vote to repeal and replace Obamacare led to dramatic embarrassment on the floor of the Senate. The president’s job approval rating—just 36 percent Oct. 13-15, according to Gallup—is lower than any other modern president at this point in his first term.
Trump’s appearance beside McConnell in the Rose Garden was an acknowledgment that his initial approach to Washington had failed and that Bannon’s threat of a party purge wouldn’t be sufficient to prevail in Congress.
Governing Majority
McConnell said his concern was maintaining a governing majority. He offered a pointed reminder of insurgent candidates who won party primaries in 2010 only to cost Republicans Senate seats in the election as their rhetoric repelled swing voters.
“The goal here is to win elections in November,” the Kentucky Republican said.
McConnell named four 2010 Republican Senate nominees: Todd Akin of Missouri, who repulsed voters with talk about “legitimate rape”; Richard Mourdock of Indiana, who said pregnancy from rape is “something that God intended to happen”; Christine O’Donnell of Delaware, who said she’d dabbled in witchcraft; and Sharron Angle of Nevada, who said Sharia law—Islamic religious law—had taken over several U.S. cities.
“They were not able to appeal to a broader electorate in a general election,” McConnell said. “The way you do that is not complicated. You have to nominate people who can actually win, because winners make policy and losers go home.”
Wrong Strategy
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump adviser, said Bannon was pursuing “exactly the wrong strategy” and should instead focus on defeating Democrats facing re-election. He said the decision to run far-right candidates in the 2010 election had likely prevented Republicans from building on their majority and achieving goals like the repeal of Obamacare.
“My whole career has been focused on, how do I elect more Republicans—not how do I cannibalize Republicans,” Gingrich said in an interview with Fox News. “I think Bannon is going to spend enormous amount of money on the wrong targets in the wrong way.”
Some Republicans on Capitol Hill downplayed Bannon’s threat.
Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said Bannon is helping the party in some instances, backing candidates for Democrat-held or open seats who have a good chance of prevailing in their general elections in states like West Virginia and Tennessee.
Despite the president’s public overtures on Monday, his ability to work in partnership with McConnell is unclear as they confront complicated legislative goals such as overhauling the tax code and acting on immigration.
During the news conference, Trump said that he was drafting an economic development bill—but hadn’t yet filled in the top Senate Republican.
“I haven’t even told Mitch because I want to focus on tax cuts and some other things right now,” Trump said.
—With assistance from Laura Litvan, Sahil Kapur and Toluse Olorunnipa
