Article snippet: Posted at 4:00 am on May 22, 2017 by Joe Cunningham Make no mistake about it, last week wasn’t just a bad week for Donald Trump, but a bad week for the Republican Party as a whole. And while there are many conservatives who would wash their hands of the GOP after its embrace of Trumpism, it remains the only major party really capable of advancing conservatism. So we have to look at what the GOP can do to recover its image ahead of the 2018 elections. That cycle is going to be a critically important one. It will determine if any party agenda items are going to make it to the finish line. There is a real danger here that they won’t. Off-year elections are usually rough on the party in power, and the current head of the party in power is not helping the situation at all. Every member of the House of Representatives is up for re-election, and there are plenty of those seats that could flip. The worry is that enough of those seats could flip, giving control to the Democrats. The Senate, however, could remain safe – there are many red-state Democrats up for re-election who will probably require the most resources to keep their seats. That means the bottom-line question is what can the Republicans (particularly, House Republicans) do to mitigate the damage, knowing as we do that there will be damage. The obvious answer seems to be to run against Trump in 2018. He has been an embarrassment as president, despite some bright spots, and there is no sign the tweet is ov... Link to the full article to read more