Republicans show Mayorkas what’s coming if GOP wins control of the House in November
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PHILADELPHIA (CNN) — One of the first things the new Republican majority will have to do is to learn what to expect under a divided government.
That realization is one of the most powerful lessons the new GOP majority will read from its first year in the House
Democrats are certain that they have a year-long lead on the American people. And they’re not sure they won’t use it.
They believe that to retake the House they’ll need to make President Barack Obama and Democrats look bad in the public eye.
That means they’ll need to spend much more time and resources fighting each other than fighting with the president, says Rep. John Barrow, a member of the Republican majority.
“They believe they will win the argument but will have to spend a tremendous amount of time talking past each other, which I think they do believe they can do,” said Barrow.
Democrats believe that, in the long run, the public will remember what happens in November.
Democrats also think that if they can get their message out through TV commercials and public debates that they can use their momentum to win on Election Day.
“The reality is there are only a limited number of months left where we can run television commercials and run all the ads that we want to run,” said Joe Trippi, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “And if you look at the last four presidential elections, they’ve all been over in the next 16 months, so we think we can’t afford to campaign beyond that. So all of that is going to be weighed very carefully by a lot of people.”
Democrats also believe Republican House members will have the chance to debate issues, even if GOP members don’t agree to take part in the debates.
“I think we can debate, I’m sure, issues we might disagree on, but there’ll also be debates where we’ll find out what we think and learn from each other that way,” said Tripp
