The main election strategy of vulnerable House Republicans: Prove they're not Trump
By Michael Scherer
June 23 at 10:42 AM
Soft-spoken and always dignified, Rep. Leonard Lance (N.J.) exists about as far away from a sold-out MAGA rally as you can get in the Republican Party.
At town halls in tony bedroom communities a river-jump from Manhattan, he regularly finds himself trying to soothe voters who shout into microphones about President Trump’s latest antics. Lance voted against his party’s tax cut, opposed efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and spent the past week steadily, repeatedly, pleading with the president to end the “zero tolerance” policy on the border that separated thousands of children from their parents.
“I would prefer civility in all aspects of public policy, and that includes President Trump,” he said in an interview this week, as his effort to force a vote that would provide a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants crumbled in Congress. “I believe the Republican Party is multifaceted.”
In Trump’s America — a nonstop torrent of shock, spectacle and confrontation — it is sometimes hard to remember that folk like Lance still exist. But it is people like him, moderate Republicans fighting for their survival in suburban House districts, who are set to decide whether Republicans can avoid losing 23 seats and control of Congress this fall.
That is a contradiction with which Trump has not fully grappled, at least in public, where he has begun to declare that his brand of fire-and-brimstone politics is certain to expand Republican legislative ranks this November. With a tweet on Friday, he essentially killed off a months-long effort by a dozen endangered Republican moderates, including Lance, to force a vote on immigration this summer. They had hoped to gainpolitical cover in their own districts.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-main-election-strategy-of-vulnerable-house-republicans-prove-theyre-not-trump/2018/06/23/34396ea0-7628-11e8-805c-4b67019fcfe4_story.html
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