Politico is reporting the Vice President Pence is taking a confident view of the upcoming mid-terms – he thinks the GOP can expand its majority in both chambers of Congress:
“Elections are about choices,” he said in the interview in which he discussed his midterm outlook in detail for the first time. “If we frame that choice, I think we’re going to re-elect majorities in the House and the Senate and I actually think we’re going to, when all the dust settles after 2018, I think we’re going to have more Republicans in Congress in Washington, D.C., than where we started.”
How so?
The vice president’s team has devised a unique ancillary strategy to support his cross-country campaigning: partnering with America First Policies — a Trump-backed public-policy non-profit group designed to boost the president’s agenda — to hold public events designed specifically to discuss legislative achievements like the tax bill.
The goal is to have the group set up events to help voters understand what the White House sees as the upside of the Republicans’ legislative agenda. A senior administration official said Pence’s message at the events will provide a “blueprint for how to be successful in midterms.”
Out in reality, the legislative record of the GOP is dismal. A tax reform package, hastily assembled, which in all probability will do nothing for the economy – and may break it. That’s the only major achievement, written in secret and hurried through by the terrified rats who feared their donors. The rest of it is trivia or just major failures.
BUT Voters are all about perception, no? So I suspect this will be another Big Lie campaign. Their won’t be any mention of the recent AND imminent contretemps regarding the budget ceiling. No mention of how the party is being ripped apart by the Tea Party’s Freedom Caucus. No mention of the mostly supine position of the Senate GOP regarding Trump’s poor choices for the Federal judiciary.
But they will be public events. Will the Democrats setup booths outside the venues and label them as Truth, or Here’s Their Record, or How They Do Things? They’ll need to counter-message, that’s for sure, because marketing is where the GOP really excels.