title:  Republicans Surrender To Trump, Fear Historic Loss Of Senate And House
text: The Washington Post reports that the Republicans and the billionaires that own them are more or less writing off the White House as a total loss and rushing to hold onto both the House and the Senate. They re afraid, and for good reason, that if when Donald Trump becomes the Republican nominee, he s going to be crushed so badly in the general election that he ll deliver both chambers of Congress to the Democratic Party:The efforts are being driven by major players such as the Koch brothers  political network, which has already begun laying groundwork in Colorado, Ohio and Pennsylvania, along with the Crossroads organizations and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.The behemoth Koch operation   which aims to spend almost $900 million before the November elections   is now considering abandoning Trump as a nominee and focusing its resources on behalf of GOP congressional candidates.My colleague Korie Beth Brown wrote about how Trump is putting the heavily gerrymandered House into play and this move by the GOP Donor Class confirms it: Trump is leading the Republican Party to electoral annihilation.Hooray!According to WaPo, instead of dumping a billion dollars into winning the White House, the Kochs and their fellow oligarchs are planning to spend all of that money just to keep what they already have:A key element of the strategy will be a springtime wave of television ads that slam Democratic contenders and tout Republican incumbents as attuned to hometown concerns. Strategists hope the efforts will help inoculate congressional candidates against association with Trump s incendiary remarks. If there are crosscurrents that are potentially harmful, the most important thing you can do is aggressively localize the race   the things that matter back home, the problems you re solving,  said Steven Law, a former top aide to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who leads the American Crossroads super PAC and a suite of related groups.While that sounds like a good idea, Republicans no longer actually SOLVE problems. Instead, they create them and then blame Obama and the Democrats. When your entire strategy has been unprecedented obstruction for 7 years, it s going to be hard to tout your accomplishments.Even with all of that advertising, it s going to be very difficult to get conservatives to be enthusiastic about voting with Donald Trump at the top of the ticket. Combine that with the abject horror that liberals and Independents will experience and you re looking at a huge turnout from the left matched against a depressed turnout from the right. And no, Hillary Clinton does not inspire the same kind of loathing no matter how loudly Bernie supporters insist she does.Republicans and their puppet masters have every right to be afraid of a blue tidal wave that will make the red wave of 2010 look like a drop in the bucket. The question then becomes: Will Democrats be able to hold on to both chambers for the midterm or will lazy Democratic voters throw away all of their gains again?Featured image via the laughably bigoted barbwire.com