Republicans may have become too radical to take control

Joe Biden knows he’s unlikely to keep the cushy deal he has now, but it’s looking increasingly likely that the opposition has become its own worst enemy, Holly Baxter writes

Marjorie Taylor Greene is hoping to continue winning big off anger and paranoia (Getty)

The midterm elections – held two years into a presidency, during which a number of House and Senate seats and governorships are up for grabs – usually go a certain way. The party that has a president in the White House is all but guaranteed to lose either the House or the Senate. Indeed, it’s not unusual for them to lose both.

Joe Biden knows he’s unlikely to keep the cushy deal he has right now: a Democratic Senate, House and president. Indeed, the Democrat majority in the House is wafer-thin, with 220 voting Democrats to 212 Republicans. For a while, Republicans have been crowing about how they’ll “take back Congress” – but in the past couple of months, Mitch McConnell got a little quieter about the possibility of a GOP-led Senate.

It seems that a lot of female and more moderate voters in the Republican demographic turned away from the right-wingers after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, thus paving the way for numerous effective abortion bans across the country. As radically right-wing Republican politicians publicly celebrated, a lot of their voters expressed their distaste. A referendum on the issue in deep-red Kansas showed a majority of voters did not want to see a state-wide ban. After that, many GOP politicians started playing down the Roe overturn as a “victory” and instead attempted messaging that blamed Joe Biden for inflation and high gas prices.

All of this means that Republicans may have become too radical to take both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Democrats are crossing their fingers that they’ll be able to hold on to the upper chamber, despite a struggling economy and a Biden approval rating of around 42 per cent. Political analysis website FiveThirtyEight thinks they shouldn’t be too optimistic. Rarely is the lay of the land so difficult to decipher just a few days out from the elections.

And then there’s the politically adjacent news outside of electoral wrangling. Paul Pelosi, the husband of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, was attacked by a home invader wielding a hammer a few days ago at his San Francisco home. The man who fractured Pelosi’s skull was reported to have shouted, “Where’s Nancy?” when he stormed into the residence. The answer to that question is that Nancy was in another state at the time, campaigning for Democratic candidates ahead of the midterms. Paul Pelosi was able to alert police during the attack by surreptitiously calling 911 on his phone – but it’s frightening to think what might have unfolded if the invader had found his initial target.

Republicans have struggled with how to respond to this attack. They often use Nancy Pelosi in their own electoral campaigning as a kind of bogeyman

Republicans have struggled with how to respond to this attack. They often use Nancy Pelosi in their own electoral campaigning as a kind of bogeyman; Trump called her “Crazy Nancy” and repeatedly brought her up during rallies. And though some senior GOP members – such as Mitch McConnell and Mike Pence – have unequivocally condemned the actions of Paul Pelosi’s attacker, others reacted in a way that left a collectively bad taste in the mouth. “No one deserves to be assaulted. Unlike Nancy Pelosi’s daughter who celebrated my assault, I condemn this attack and wish Mr Pelosi a speedy recovery,” tweeted Rand Paul, who was injured a few years ago during a dispute with his neighbour. Many pointed out that their experiences were very clearly different, not least because Paul’s neighbour had no political motivations.

Always willing to be a firebrand, Marjorie Taylor Greene also drew people’s ire when her response to the attack was to say that violence is “rampant in Joe Biden’s America”. Greene is hoping to continue winning big off anger and paranoia whipped up in Republican voters being fed stories about ultra-violent Democratic cities. This, despite the fact that recent research shows Americans die younger in Republican-led areas.

Next Tuesday promises to be a long night for those of us reporting on what’s happening in America’s latest elections. But what will be a lot harder to deal with is what comes afterwards, if Republicans manage to take both houses of Congress and obstruct Biden’s agenda for the latter two years of his presidency.