A top GOP senator says the party is setting itself up for disaster in this year’s midterm elections by focusing solely on President Trump’s agenda and ignoring ordinary Americans.
“What you’re basically arguing to people is: don’t believe your own lying checkbooks,” Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy told The Hill Monday. “It’s their checkbooks. They’re looking at it. They don’t like what they see, so you’ve got to deal with it.”
“I really think that that’s what we ought to be focused on right now,” he went on. “I just want to do something. Doing nothing is very hard.”
“We’re not gonna win the midterm by going to the American people and saying, Look, we passed 11 out of 12 appropriations bills and we confirmed all of President Trump’s nominees,” he said, adding that “moms and dads” lie awake at night worrying “about the cost of living.”
“In their minds, they’re tired of selling blood plasma to go grocery shopping,” he added.
His comments fly in the face of Trump’s claims that he established the “greatest economy in history.” The president’s assessment has so far failed to find evidence of that from any established metric of fiscal performance.
At 2.4 percent, inflation remains persistently high, with the consumer price index disproportionately affecting lower- and middle-income families in the form of higher costs on groceries, energy, and utilities.
At $1.1 trillion, U.S. households are currently carrying record levels of credit debt, indicating widespread financial stress and an overreliance on borrowing to make ends meet.
Credit interest rates also hover at around 23 percent, making those debts significantly expensive and harder to repay, while mortgage rates of 6-7 percent have put buying a home out of reach for even middle-income earners.
Voter polls have increasingly reflected these and other figures. A December survey by The Harris Poll found that 45 percent of Americans believe their financial security is getting worse, that 57 percent believe the country has been hit with a recession, and that more than half of even Republican voters think it’s Trump’s fault.
A November poll by NBC found those anxieties have further translated into voter intentions ahead of this year’s battle for the House and the Senate. The numbers suggest Democrats hold an eight-point lead on the GOP, marking the largest pre-poll advantage for either party since 2018.
Kennedy wasn’t the only top Republican to raise the alarm over MAGA’s message on the economy in comments to The Hill. Sen. Tommy Tuberville told the outlet: “Are we doing enough? We’re not doing anything.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment on this story.
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