Karl Rove Warns GOP It Has to Worry About Losing the Senate in Midterms — And ‘Real Mess’ in Texas

Legendary Republican operative Karl Rove warned the GOP that it is in danger of losing the Senate in the upcoming midterm elections during a weekend hit on Fox News.

Rove’s comments followed a query from Journal Editorial Report host Paul Gigot.

“I’m beginning to hear, Karl that there’s real concern among senators that the Republicans are now going to have to fight much harder than they thought to retain control of the Senate in November,” Gigot began. “I mean, there’s already a certain, you know, negativity about the House given the normal midterm sway. But the Senate, I don’t know, how vulnerable are Republicans here?”

Rove replied: “Well, it could be close. I mean, first of all, remember, we have Maine is critical to us. The reelection of Susan Collins, she ran-, she won by nine points while Trump was losing the state by nine. That’s-, think about that, one out of-, nearly one out every five Maine voters six years ago voted for the Democrat for president and the Republican for the U.S. Senate. That’s really unusual, that’s going to be a tough race.”

Rove continued:

We need to-, North Carolina is going to a tough race. Thom Tillis is retiring. The Republicans have got a nice guy named Michael Whatley running. The Democrats have got the former two-term Democratic governor, and before that he was the state attorney general. Not going to be an easy race. We’ve got to try and knock off Georgia. We got an opportunity in Michigan. The Democrats have now got the only person who might have a shot at Alaska. And then we got Texas, where if John Cornyn is the nominee, the Republicans will have an easy race, but if they have a guy who’s got all kinds of problems, including three girlfriends, Ken Paxton, the attorney general, it could be a really-, it could be a real mess. So yes, the Republicans cannot take the Senate for granted, they’ve got to worry about it, and again, the economic messaging cannot only be from the White House. The Republican candidates themselves, whether they’re in office or trying to get in office, have to have a concerted attention to this and they have to the right messaging and the right attitude.

One new University of Houston survey suggests that Paxton, the scandal-bedeviled attorney general, currently boasts a healthy, 7-point lead over Cornyn, the incumbent senator, in the Lone Star State’s Republican primary.

Watch above via Fox News.

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