House Republicans struggle with what to do about Trump

POLITICO's Off Message

POLITICO

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4.5 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 30 January 2018

⏱️ 45 minutes

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Summary

Congressman Steve Stivers heads up the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP's campaign arm. And that means that, among other things, he's faced with figuring out where—and how—President Trump can be helpful to Republican candidates. Here, he sits down with Isaac to talk about whether he'd send the president to campaign in a swing seat, how he convinces incumbents to run for reelection, and whether President Trump makes him proud to be a Republican. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Off Message. I'm Isaac Dover. Today's guest, Steve Stivers, who, in addition to being a
0:06.7	congressman from Ohio, is the head this cycle of the National Republican Congressional Committee,
0:12.7	which is in charge of helping Republicans try to keep control of the House. That's not a simple
0:17.5	assignment, and the evening that I sat down with him in his office at NRCC, he was coming off of a day's work and at a full night ahead in strategy
0:25.2	meetings with House Speaker Paul Ryan.
0:28.7	As of right now, 20 Republicans have said they're retiring outright, with another 14
0:33.4	leaving their seats behind to run for other offices, like governor and Senate.
0:38.1	Lots of people, and certainly lots of Democrats, believe there's a wave coming.
0:42.5	So what's it like to stand in the middle of that?
0:44.9	And it all seems to be coming down to how people feel about President Trump.
0:49.4	Even more so than is usually the case in midterms.
0:52.4	Stivers, at least in what he said to me, isn't as concerned as you might think.
0:56.1	But when I asked the NRC to share its district-by-district poll numbers on President Trump
0:59.9	with me to use, they wouldn't.
1:02.2	When I asked the House Democrats to, they were happy to.
1:05.1	And when we ran our own poll numbers through a partnership we have here at Politico with a company called
1:09.2	Morning Consult, maybe it
1:11.2	gets at why. Just 27% of registered voters think Trump will have a positive impact on Republicans
1:17.5	running for Congress, while 40% think he'll have a negative impact. But among Republicans,
1:23.1	we found 44% of registered voters said they'd be more likely to vote for a candidate if Trump campaigned for that person.
1:31.2	So hit the political homepage and check that out.
1:33.8	You can see how they wrangled through it and more on the poll numbers involved here that are driving a lot of the thinking.
	...

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