With Trump trailing, should down-ballot Republicans ready a 'no blank check' strategy?

[brooklynite]

Roll Call

ANALYSIS — Weeks before the 1996 general election, operatives at the Republican National Committee and National Republican Congressional Committee urged GOP campaigns to adopt a last-minute, new strategy.

As New York Times reporter Adam Clymer wrote, they urged “their party’s Congressional candidates to cut loose from Bob Dole and press voters to maintain a Republican majority and deny a re-elected (Bill) Clinton a ‘blank check.’”

“If Clinton is re-elected, heaven forbid, the last thing the American people want is for him to have a blank check in the form of a liberal Democrat Congress,” RNC Chairman Haley Barbour said in the article.

To the dismay of Dole campaign strategists (who understood the new message amounted to an admission that their candidate had no chance), Republican operatives did embrace that “no blank check” message, even investing what one longtime operative now calls “a lot of money pushing that message in the mail.”

[Laelth]

1. If they try that this year, I think it will backfire.

The way things are to now, many Americans are going to want to give Joe Biden a blank check so that he can make it out, payable to the American people.

-Laelth

[hlthe2b]

2. Keep heading over the cliff, REPUBs.... It won't hurt (much)

[Phoenix61]

3. But Dole wasn't an amoral vindictive, little man

with a Twitter account. If the party turns on him, Twitler will burn them to the ground. In second thought, I hope they go for it.

[PRETZEL]

4. That'll be the only strategy they'll have left

They're goal is 51, and right now it isn't looking good.

They're going to have to find a way for people like Tillis, Daines, Ernst (maybe) survive and then be able to flip Jones to have any shot at keeping the 51.

It'll be everyone for themselves by the end of the month.