Canaries in the coal mine: GOP growing anxious about Dem victories as midterms near

[babylonsister]

‘Canaries in the coal mine:’ GOP growing anxious about Dem victories as midterms near

By Katie Glueck
March 12, 2018 05:00 AM

Updated 1 hour 56 minutes ago
WASHINGTON

snip//

But well ahead of Tuesday’s special election, Republicans were already seeing fresh warning signs at the hyper-local level elsewhere in the country, especially in suburban areas that have long formed the backbone of the GOP but that are now drifting from the Trump brand at the local and state legislative level—from Warren County to the suburbs of Philadelphia, St. Louis and Sarasota, Fla.

“There are local cases you could write off to weird circumstances, but it would be a mistake for Republicans to write off, ignore, the movement going on in the suburbs,” said Scott Jennings, a veteran GOP strategist.

Previously sleepy Democratic parties are revving up, with each small local victory stoking enthusiasm for the next bigger contest.

Certainly, few people expect Warren County, which backed Trump with 66.5 percent of the vote in 2016, to turn blue in the 2018 elections. Democrats have historically been so beleaguered there that in both 2012 and 2016, they confronted piles of manure dumped in front of their headquarters.

But the startling results from last fall have remained top of mind for some operatives in the area who took the outcome as evidence of space for more Democratic pick-up opportunities in the midterms, especially in the suburbs. And for some Republicans, it’s served as an urgent alarm bell.

“If Republicans don’t look at this and take it as a warning sign, they’re burying their heads in the sand,” said one Ohio Republican operative familiar with the county, granted anonymity to candidly assess the GOP’s landscape. "You cannot look at that many Democratic victories in that much of a reliably Republican area and conclude anything other than, there’s an overall problem for Republicans.”

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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article204576189.html#cardLink=shortRow1_card2

[Wellstone ruled]

1. Has anyone heard from the Rethugs

message man Frank Luntz lately? Or have we heard form Grover Nordquist lately.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Anything that scares the Republicans makes me very happy!

[MFM008]

3. Hope they get an ulcer

This time.

[Hortensis]

4. The Repubs are starting to lose their hold on suburbs!

But well ahead of Tuesday’s special election, Republicans were already seeing fresh warning signs at the hyper-local level elsewhere in the country, especially in suburban areas that have long formed the backbone of the GOP but that are now drifting from the Trump brand at the local and state legislative level—from Warren County to the suburbs of Philadelphia, St. Louis and Sarasota, Fla.

“There are local cases you could write off to weird circumstances, but it would be a mistake for Republicans to write off, ignore, the movement going on in the suburbs,” said Scott Jennings, a veteran GOP strategist.

Previously sleepy Democratic parties are revving up, with each small local victory stoking enthusiasm for the next bigger contest.

As an adult I've always lived in conservative towns, even in California, and I know that some conservatives probably are more liberal than they had any idea of, even liberal. Back in the 1980s-90s the Newts and Luntzes redefined Democrats as "radical liberal Democrats," irresponsible, immoral idiots who were destroying the nation. Even people who knew absolutely nothing else about politics knew they didn't want to be one of those.

Thing is, I suspect a fair number of liberals in traditionally red areas, like here in the rural south, don't know that about themselves and have identified and voted Republican all their lives because that's what people like them do. So, could some of these Republicans possibly be becoming disaffected in the Trump era?