GOP warned new midterm lifeline is actually a ticking time bomb

Republican chances of holding on to their House majority have gotten a major boost this month with a pair of court rulings, but an analyst warned that might set the stage for new problems down the road.

Two weeks ago, the outlook was dim for GOP chances for keeping the House and not much better for the Senate, with President Donald Trump's poll numbers sinking to new depths and fractures appearing in his MAGA coalition, but that forecast improved since the start of May, wrote MS NOW columnist Hayes Brown.

"The redistricting war Trump had begun, which had been looking like Napoleon’s doomed invasion of Russia, suddenly swung back in Republicans’ favor," Brown wrote. "The U.S. Supreme Court opened the door to a rush of racial redistricting across the South, and Virginia’s Supreme Court reversed Democrats’ gains in Virginia. The resulting Republican gerrymandering is acting as a superglue binding the GOP’s splintering hopes for surviving the midterms, but that gerrymandering leaves the party as fragile as ever in the long-term and destined to fall apart once Democrats can fully respond in kind."

The MAGA coalition remains riled up about each faction's key issue, from Iran to mass deportations to weed killer, and so-called "normie" Republicans are unhappy about rising fuel costs and other economic issues, and Brown said the court-sanctioned GOP gerrymanders might be the only thing saving them from a walloping in November.

"But in putting off any reckoning of how Trump’s policies have hurt their constituents, lawmakers are putting a larger target on their backs for further down the road," Brown argued. "If they manage to retain the House in the face of the growing backlash, then they likely won’t have enough new seats to move past the infighting and backbiting that’s currently denying them legislative momentum."

Other newly redrawn districts might not be as red as they once were, and dissatisfied Democrats might turn out in droves to vent their anger, he added, and blue-state Democrats are already hoping to tip the balance back in their favor with their own mid-cycle redistricting.

"In following Trump’s lead, the Republican Party has chosen short-term gratification over long-term growth and stability," Brown wrote. "By seeking to silence all but their most fervent supporters, they have essentially told the rest of their voters that their priorities don’t matter. It’s hard to see that message drawing huge turnout this fall or convincing voters to hold their nose and support their incumbent. The fault lines that gerrymandering have temporarily fused together are still there, and still vulnerable to cracking apart."