'Like a desperate boyfriend': CNN's Jake Tapper has bad news for the GOP

CNN anchor Jake Tapper reports Republican policies have raised health care subsidies for Obamacare and escalated the trade war. Add to that the Iran war driving fertilizer prices and diesel prices to historic levels, and you can see why Republican Senate hopeful Ashley Hinson of Iowa is proposing to “reach across the aisle” to Democrats if elected.

“I'm Ashley Hinson, and I approve this message because working across the aisle isn't always easy, but it's how you get results,” said Hinson in her new ad.

But Tapper said Vice President JD Vance has a different kind of message as the U.SA. economy drags down the GOP with 48 days to go until the midterms.

“Don't give power to the people who caused the problems that we're fixing,” Vance told a recent audience. “Give us another chance or give us another couple of years to continue to work on the amazing things that we've been doing for the past two years.”

“Well, there's a bumper sticker for you: Give us another chance,” said Tapper Wednesday night, turning to Republican strategists Shermichael Singleton and Kristen Soltis Anderson. “… It sounds like a desperate boyfriend, frankly.”

“If I'm advising the president and you're going out on the campaign trail, you cannot deny the very real pain points for the American people,” said Singleton.

But strategist and pollster Anderson said Republicans’ biggest problem will not be reaching centrist voters that swing one way or another. It’s getting committed Republicans to polls at this point.

“For many Republicans, their big problem is going to be reminding their own voters, Republican voters, what is it that you sent us to Washington to do? Because if those voters are looking at DC and they're going, ‘oh, you renamed the Lake of America, uh, you renamed the Kennedy center.’ Like, that is not what voters are looking for. They're looking for things that they can feel. And even if you can't turn the titanic around in a couple of weeks and make people think the economy is wonderful, you have to at least be able to say, ‘here are the things concretely that we have done to try to make it better. Keep us here. We'll keep trying to do more.’”

Tapper then turned to Singleton and asked “what do you think Republicans are doing right?”

“You’re going to put me on the spot like that?” Singleton said jokingly.

“Hey, you said there are Republicans out there [doing it right.]” Tapper countered.

At that Singleton pointed to GOP senatorial candidate Mike Rogers in Michigan, for endorsing Trump yet straddling the line by being ‘hyper focused on statewide issues.”

“I think he and his campaign recognizes what propelled Trump and Republicans to victory in 2024 was nontraditional voters, low propensity voters,” he said, but Singelton added that getting these same voters to the polls this year “is an uphill battle.”

Anderson advised Republicans to deftly prove they’re ‘not a clone of Donald Trump,’ but she warned that daring to be a Republican who opposes Trump or his agenda “is perilous, depending upon the geography of where you sit.”

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