'Not a great feeling': GOP insiders fear Trump is 'blowing their chances' of flipping Senate

Republicans will need a net gain of only two seats to retake the U.S. Senate in November. Democratic strategists know they are likely to lose the U.S. Senate seat presently held by West Virginia centrist Sen. Joe Manchin, who isn't seeking reelection. In that race, Republican Jim Justice is way ahead of Democrat Glenn Elliott — which makes it all the more important for Democrats to maintain the seats they are defending in Montana, Ohio and other states.

But according to The Hill's Alexander Bolton, some Republican strategists fear that GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump "could be blowing their chances" of flipping the Senate.

Many prominent Republicans, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-Georgia), former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), have been urging Trump to stick to a policy-driven campaign against Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and avoid personal attacks — advice that so far, Trump has ignored. And Bolton emphasizes that GOP strategists fear Trump is not only endangering his own campaign, but the campaigns of Republican U.S. Senate candidates as well.

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Ron Bonjean warns fellow Republicans, including Senate candidates, that they are "running into rougher terrain" now that Harris, not Joe Biden, is their 2024 presidential nominee.

Bonjean told The Hill, "Trump is trying to get on message. In the last couple of press conferences, he's started to talk about her policies, but he just can't help getting the crowd responses by going after her personally. He can't get away from it. It may get a great reaction from the crowd, but it's doing nothing for independent voters that are looking for the contrast."

Bonjean added that "independent voters" are the ones who "count for actually getting over the finish line."

"It's going to be a very tight election," Bonjean told The Hill. "The polls are tightening up. If Trump wants to win, he's going to have to get way more on message and way less showmanship for his crowds because they don't matter."

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A Senate GOP aide, interviewed on condition of anonymity, told The Hill that Republicans are growing more worried about Senate races in key swing states like Arizona and Nevada.

According to the aide, "You can start to feel trepidation like with Arizona. You get a sense, in talking to folks, that it's not going as well as we hoped. In Nevada, it's not going as well as we hoped…. He's going to run the way he's always run his campaign, and it's not a great feeling."

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Read The Hill's full article at this link.