March 4, 2008, 12:57 pm
Blunt Sees GOP Gains in November
Sarah Lueck reports on Congress.
Senior Republican Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri says he’s optimistic his party can regain a majority this November.
Blunt, the House Minority Whip, said the presidential contest could play to the favor of Republican congressional candidates. “There’s every reason to believe it could break to our advantage,” Blunt told The Wall Street Journal today. Arizona Sen. John McCain stands to lock up the 1,191 delegates needed to secure the Republican nomination when the polls close later today in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont.
McCain
“I think we’ll gain seats. We could easily gain 16 depending on how the dynamic of the election works,” he said. A net gain of 16 seats is the number Republicans need to win a majority in the House, which will be no easy task in the face of more than two dozen Republican retirements and a considerable cash advantage for Democrats.
However, Blunt argued that in 2004, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry carried 180 districts, compared with 255 for President Bush. For congressional candidates allied McCain, this would translate to an advantage, Blunt said. “Do you want to be on the side of the guy who is going to carry 180 of those? Or do you want to be on side of guy who’s going to carry 250-plus of those?” he said.
Blunt predicted that McCain would carry the right-leaning congressional districts Democrats nabbed in 2006, boosting Republican candidates in those races. And Republicans running in districts that Democrat John Kerry won in 2004 “all got re-elected in 2006,” Blunt said. “They’ve been to one really bad dance and figured out how to get home.”
Blunt said that this year, unlike two years ago when voters shifted control of Congress to Democrats, voters will be more focused on what Democratic rule of Congress and the White House would mean. Republicans already are arguing that congressional Democrats want to “meddle” in the Iraq war and that Democratic rule in Washington would mean higher taxes for individuals and businesses.
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