FIRST ON FOX: Some Senate Republicans worry that their secret weapon on the campaign trail, President Donald Trump, isn’t making a strong enough case to voters that there needs to be more Republicans in the upper chamber. There are only a handful of primary races left between now and November, when the balance of power in the Senate could slip from the GOP’s grasp, with several seats on the line and Senate Democrats hungry to regain control. And there’s a major issue bogging Republicans down that has spurred internal animosity: the SAVE America Act.
Trump’s pressure to pass the election integrity measure and his tendency to bash Republicans for not getting it done has placed vulnerable incumbents in between a rock and a hard place. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told Fox News Digital in an interview that while some Republicans are making promises to voters that the bill could pass right now, the better tact would be to push why more Republicans are needed in the Senate. INSIDE THE SENATE'S CHAOTIC ALL-NIGHTER THAT LEFT TRUMP'S SAVE AMERICA ACT ON THE SHELF "The president made the argument, ‘Well, pass the Save America Act, it will motivate our base,’" Thune said.
"Yeah, but I think the base can be plenty motivated by other issues, and particularly by the president getting out there on the campaign trail and telling them why it's important that they elect Republicans to the Senate." "Everybody has their own ideas about how best to communicate our message, but I think our message between now and November ought to be why the Democrats are completely out of step with the American people and why we need to elect more Republicans so we can do things like the SAVE America Act," he continued. Anxious Republicans hope to see a shift in messaging from shooting inward at their own to turning their fire on Democrats, who themselves are undergoing a messy ideological change on the campaign trail. Republicans see prime messaging targets with candidates like Dr.
Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Lt. Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota pushing left-leaning policies. SCHUMER SAID ‘DEMOCRATS SUPPORT VOTER ID’ — THEN EVERY SENATE DEMOCRAT VOTED AGAINST GOP BILL But the SAVE America Act has consumed much of the oxygen heading into the penultimate stretch of the election cycle.
The legislation has produced an online dogma that punishes any Republican, including Thune, who tries to convey the political reality in the Senate that Democrats continue to block the bill, and there just aren’t enough Republican votes to pass it as is. It’s caused private disagreements to take a new life on social media, where proponents, like Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, are sniping at their colleagues for the bill’s failure to launch, despite five attempts at trying to pass it throughout the year in various iterations.
Tim Scott, R-S.C., who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee (NRSC), warned that division would sow disaster for the GOP heading into November. "There's no doubt that the road to socialism runs right through a divided Republican Party," Scott told Fox News Digital. "I hope every American understands that, remembers that, and hears it several times between now and Election Day." And with a Senate midterm map with more vulnerable Republicans in play than Democrats, it will be a difficult task for the GOP to maintain and grow their thin, 53-seat majority in the upper chamber.
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