OPINION:
The Pennsylvania 18th Congressional District was more than a wakeup call for House Republicans. Unless the GOP changes its posture on achieving fairness as well as growth in the economy and its relationship with President Trump, it’s doomed to a terrible shellacking in November — the kind Democrats endured in the midterm elections of 1994 and 2010.
In the seven special House elections since Mr. Trump took office, Republicans held onto five seats but the Democrats garnered significantly larger shares of the vote than did Mrs. Clinton in 2016 in all but two contests.
In the Pennsylvania 18th, Conor Lamb out-performed them all by overcoming a 20-point Trump edge to win in formerly staunchly Republican stronghold. In some 97 currently Republican-held districts, Mr. Trump’s margin of victory was less than 20 percent.
Granted, Mr. Lamb was the most attractive and Republican-looking candidate Democrats could possibly field.
A youthful campaigner, energetic fund-raiser and former Marine and federal prosecutor, he vows to vote against Nancy Pelosi for Speaker, criticizes Obamacare and opposes Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for everyone, opposes stricter gun regulations beyond stronger background checks, and supports Mr. Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs. Although he personally opposes abortion, he backs the Supreme Court decision legalizing it.
He did not bear scars from a primary battle against at least one standard issue liberal Democratic — a food co-op progressive with credentials promoting women, minority and LBGT issues, who would have pulled him to the left. And he did not have the burden of aligning himself with the president or carrying on his back the large corporate tax cuts necessary to make U.S.-based businesses competitive.
Essentially, Mr. Lamb was able to turn the special election into a Republican primary.
He could be one of Paul Ryan’s whips but for his pro-union stance. Remember, the Pennsylvania 18th is in the heart of UAW and United Steelworkers country, where a candidate would be better advised to favor the Redskins over the Steelers than to eschew unions.
Still, a 20-plus percentage point swing is an enormous accomplishment — considering it’s the mother’s milk of American politics that a strong economy should reward the incumbent party. Look outside, the Republican agenda is creating more jobs and growth than Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi would ever admit possible a few years ago.
Mr. Lamb charged the tax cut favors the wealthy — that’s patently wrong as ordinary working folks are getting big reductions — but it is really a proxy for other economic issues.
The trade deficit continues to get worse, and it is not clear how steel and aluminum tariffs will provide a solution to this broader $650 billion problem. Those products account for only $30 billion of the trade gap, and conditions have hardly improved in most rural communities and small cities decimated by import competition.
The GOP got rid of the Obamacare individual mandate but recent annual increases in health insurance premiums, co-pays and deductibles overwhelm in size the tax cuts most families are receiving.
And the GOP has demonstrated its ideologically opposition to taking action on the monopoly pricing practices of drug companies, hospital associations, specialist physicians groups and the like that make health care much more expensive here than in prosperous northern European countries that also have private insurance systems.
Many women are convinced an economy that pays men better than women — even if they take long periods out of the workforce to rear children or often choose lower paying professions — is rigged. Democrats may have bad solutions — for example, Hillary Clinton wanted to generalize to the national level the California Fair Pay Act — but Republicans have no answers at all.
Finally, the continuing personnel shuffle, dysfunction and drama in the Trump White House is starting to make the heretofore most disorganized administration in recent history — Jimmy Carter’s star-crossed gang — look pretty competent.
Mr. Lamb had the advantage of disassociating himself from Mrs. Pelosi, while embracing only as much of Mr. Trump as suited him.
Come November, Republicans won’t so easily have the latter luxury — not if they want to tout the Trump economy. And that economy simply won’t be good enough to compensate for rising health costs, women’s issues and the soap opera in the White House.
• Peter Morici is an economist and business professor at the University of Maryland, and a national columnist.
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