The Republicans in Congress would still like to pursue a right-wing conservative agenda. They want to give more tax cuts to the rich (above what they've already done), build a border wall, cut social programs (including Social Security and Medicare), sell off our public lands, allow corporations to pollute the environment, kill off labor unions, keep the minimum wage low (or nonexistent), outlaw all abortions. and finish overturning Obamacare.Why then, do we not see any Republicans running for Congress campaigning on those issues? The reason is that they can read the polls -- and they know that they American people don't want those things. They can't campaign on what they really want to do, because in most districts that would be political suicide. Their agenda might have been popular a couple of decades ago, but the voting public is waking up.
Here's part of an article by Jonathan Chait on this subject in New York Magazine:
Republican leaders have been insisting that their policy agenda is widely loved by the public. For weeks, they have been planting the excuse that the only reason they might lose the midterm elections is Donald Trump’s erratic personality. “The decline in unemployment and soaring gross domestic product, along with the tax overhaul Republicans argue is fueling the growth,” reported the New York Times recently, “have been obscured by the president’s inflammatory moves on immigration, Vladimir V. Putin and other fronts, party leaders say …” “If we had to fight this campaign on what we accomplished in Congress and on the state of the economy, I think we’d almost certainly keep our majority …” a Republican involved in running the midterms told Axios. “If there was any way to reduce the noise (unlikely!!) we could survive. [There’s] so much noise [that it doesn’t] allow people to realize economy/life is good.” Americans would remember how much they love and cherish the accomplishments of the Republican Congress, if the president would just pipe down. Of course, if voters like the Republican policy agenda, there is nothing stopping candidates from trying to remind them of all their good works. If you recall, during the debate over the tax cut, Republican leaders continually insisted the tax cuts would be popular, and if enacted into law would provide the basis for their candidates to campaign. But the tax cuts remain unpopular, and Republicans have stopped talking about them. In fact, the Republicans’ own polling confirms this. Josh Green has obtained internal Republican survey data, which includes the hilarious finding that Republican voters refuse to believe Democrats might win Congress. More pertinently, it reveals that voters are not actually onboard with the party agenda. The survey found “increasing funding for veterans’ mental health services, strengthening and preserving Medicare and Social Security, and reforming the student loan system all scored higher than Trump’s favored subjects of tax cuts, border security, and preserving the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.” The popular ideas, in other words, all involve higher domestic spending. The Republican survey also warns that a “challenge for GOP candidates is that most voters believe that the GOP wants to cut back on these programs in order to provide tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy.” Probably because they do! In any case, this explains why Republicans have stopped touting their tax cuts. And while Trump’s constant scandals — or “noise,” as his co-partisans euphemistically put it — may not be helping, they are not obscuring some kind of underlying winning message. That’s why Republican candidates are not trying to focus on domestic policy, but instead running as mini-Trumps of their own, emphasizing symbolic cultural fights designed to whip up ethno-nationalist fervor.
