Despairing Republicans Secretly Admit Painful Truth

Elizabeth Frantz / REUTERS Republicans are privately bracing for a devastating midterm defeat, with senior party figures increasingly convinced they are on course to lose control of the House.

Five senior Republican lawmakers have told Politico that the party’s prospects of holding the chamber have deteriorated sharply, as Democrats pull ahead in the polls and GOP campaign groups retreat from increasingly difficult races.

One senior House Republican said the priority was now to “save as many Republican seats as we can”—a task made harder, the lawmaker argued, by Trump’s attempts to put himself front and center of the party’s campaign.

“President Trump has made this election all about himself,” the Republican said.

“Now we have to survive that political storm.” Polls show a difficult road lies ahead for the GOP, with several House districts Trump won by double digits in 2024 now considered vulnerable.

At-risk seats stretch across Ohio, Maine, Iowa, North Carolina and Nevada, as well as a Kentucky district Trump carried by 15 points.

Pollster Angus Reid has Democrats 16 points ahead on the generic congressional ballot, their biggest advantage yet, adding to a string of surveys showing Republicans struggling to keep pace.

Former Republican congressman Carlos Curbelo, who lost his competitive Florida seat during Trump’s first midterm elections in 2018, said the political climate had become exceptionally hostile.

“The environment is about as tough as one could expect,” Curbelo said.

“There is no one who has privately stated that they believe Republicans can hold the House — not in recent weeks, anyway.” With polling turning increasingly bleak, Republicans are already pulling advertising money from House races they fear are slipping beyond reach.

The Congressional Leadership Fund, the party’s leading House super PAC, has canceled ads for key candidates in Nebraska and Iowa.

MAGA Inc. and a major House Republican super PAC have also withdrawn funding from Michigan’s 8th District, a GOP official familiar with the strategy told Politico.

Trump carried the district by roughly 50 percent to 48 percent in 2024, making it one of 13 House seats where voters backed him for president but elected a Democrat to Congress.

The Cook Political Report now rates the seat “Likely Democrat.” “These are not the moves of a party that’s going to keep the House,” one Republican lawmaker said.