The Memo: GOP mulls pros and cons of Trump on trail

President Trump’s allies are talking up his effectiveness on the campaign trail as he begins a final sprint of 11 rallies in six days leading up to next week’s midterm elections.

They say the president has engaged in an unprecedented effort to help his party and that it is up to GOP congressional candidates to close the deal with voters themselves.

But there are some whispers of discontent among more establishment-minded Republicans, who fear the president and his allies are seeking credit for any gains that might be made in the Senate while avoiding any blame for losses that could be incurred in the House.

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That, in turn, meets with strong pushback from Trump loyalists.

“The Republican establishment failed to nationalize this election with a sense of urgency,” Stephen Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist, told The Hill. “It is Trump’s full engagement on this since Labor Day that has closed the gap. … This is 100 percent Trump’s engagement.”

Bannon, fond of throwing barbs at the party establishment, nonetheless insists Trump has been seeking a “unity of purpose” in this election.

But the tensions are evident not far from the surface.

Trump loyalists complain behind the scenes about the number of GOP lawmakers who have chosen to retire, thus robbing the party of the advantages of incumbency in many districts.

“I think the threat of having to run a campaign scared a lot of people off. People who could have held their seats thought, ‘Do I really want to break my back campaigning when I could cash out and become a lobbyist?’ ” said one source close to the White House.

GOP voices more skeptical of Trump question the idea that the election should be seen as a referendum on the president.

“I think it should be a referendum on whatever the voters care about,” said one GOP operative working on the midterms who requested anonymity to speak candidly.

But White House political director Bill Stepien made a different argument.

“The president is not on the ballot,” Stepien said. “But the successes of the president’s policies are on the ballot. The Republican candidates who have had a strong hand in achieving those policy successes — they are on the ballot.”

Stepien added, “The president’s supporters are enthusiastic and strong. That is tremendously important in lower-turnout midterm elections.”

Even so, GOP tensions burst into the open with new vigor on Tuesday after the president suggested he could use an executive order to eliminate birthright citizenship.

“You obviously cannot do that,” Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said in an interview with a radio station in Lexington, Ky.

Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.), who faces a tough reelection fight in a heavily Hispanic district, tweeted: “Birthright citizenship is protected by the Constitution, so no @realDonaldTrump you can’t end it by executive order.”

The GOP operative, asked if Trump’s rhetoric on the issue was helpful, said, “Not at all. I get the need and desire to make immigration center stage, but the president needs to take it down a  notch.”

Still, the pro-Trump forces insist that the focus on immigration is important and will prove politically potent. Trump had already been emphasizing immigration during his rallies and in other comments to the media.

He has repeatedly criticized the caravan of people en route to the United States from Central America and has accused the Democratic Party of being lax on the issue. There is some speculation that he could make a major immigration address at one of his final rallies.

“The president won his campaign definitively on the issue of immigration,” said David Bossie, who served as deputy campaign manager on Trump’s 2016 campaign. “That included getting rid of the disastrous [diversity visa] lottery system, ending chain migration and building the wall. Unfortunately, he is still frustrated and trying to get those things done.”

Beyond the specifics of a hot-button topic like immigration, people close to the president argue that his prominence on the campaign trial is a net benefit for the GOP.

In their view, there was never any doubt that Trump would be the central issue in the campaign. That being so, he might as well make his own case rather than let his opponents define him, they say.

“It makes perfect sense for President Trump to engage as he has. It was the only strategy that could have worked,” said Andrew Surabian, a Republican strategist and former White House official. “The other option would be for him to sit on the sidelines and allow the other side to tear him and the entire party down.”

The evidence to date of Trump’s effectiveness has been mixed, and the situation remains volatile.

Some key Senate races do appear to have moved in the GOP’s direction recently and Trump’s own net approval rating has improved by about 5 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics (RCP) polling average since Labor Day.

But the RCP average of the so-called generic ballot — where voters are asked whether they would prefer Democrats or the GOP to control Congress — has shifted only marginally during the same period.

Democrats now have an edge of about 7.5 percentage points, having had a lead of approximately 9 points around Labor Day.

Data and prediction site FiveThirtyEight now gives Democrats an 86 percent chance of taking control of the House.

The Trump battalions, though, remember how wrong state-level polls were in 2016. And they insist Trump’s popularity with his base is critically important.

Bossie praised “the energy, the intensity” that Trump brings to the campaign trail.

Bannon, referring critically to a belief among some Republicans that last year’s tax cut would be a mobilizing issue in the midterms, said, “Voters don’t show up to say ‘thank you.’ They show up to back Trump.”

But will the results be a judgment on Trump or not? The president himself has at times seemed to have it both ways.

“I’m not on the ticket, but I am on the ticket because this is also a referendum about me,” he told a crowd in Mississippi on Oct 2.

For now, the hope among his supporters is that House losses can at least be held in a fairly modest range and be offset by gains in the Senate.

“It’s still a big deal if we lose the House, but if we lose 25-35 seats, that is within the historical average for the president’s party in their first midterm,” said the source close to the White House. “The left and the media will have a problem calling that a big anti-Trump blowout, which is what a lot of people were expecting. That really isn’t a blowout.”

Just about the only thing that everyone can agree on with Election Day less than a week away is the stakes.

“This feels, in the closing days, like a presidential campaign,” said Bannon. “It’s all on the line.”

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage, primarily focused on Donald Trump’s presidency.