"I think the Republicans are in much better shape than what a lot of these media polls are showing, and look, we still got a long way to go between now and Election Day," pollster Jim McLaughlin said.
Page A12From§Eachthe sunrise edition — 31 August 2026
GOP trails in 8 Senate races, plans a hasty 'Trump-a-palooza,' as its own members trade insults.
As it ran on the front
Eight battleground Senate races, two months out, and the polling aggregate has Republicans behind in every one of them. That's not a rumor, that's an aggregate, which means somebody averaged a bunch of separate polls and the average still came out bad. So what's the plan? The plan, per this week's reporting, is a 'very hasty' convention in Texas, being called, out loud, 'Trump-a-palooza.'
You don't throw a hasty party when you're winning. Winning campaigns do the slow version — the scheduled version, the one with a year of planning and a theme picked in advance. A hasty one, thrown together two months before an election you're losing, is what you throw when you need footage of enthusiasm more than you need a strategy. That's not this reporter's read alone. That's just what 'hasty' means when it shows up next to 'trailing in eight races' in the same week.…
…(cont) Meanwhile, inside the party, one of its own members is on record condemning another member's rhetoric, saying flat out that it represents 'Trump's new MAGA and Republican Party.' That's a member of that party, naming the direction of that party, in public, while the polling says the party's losing the races that matter. You don't get a public break like that from a party that thinks it's fine. You get it from people who can see the numbers and are trying to get their names on the right side of them before November.
Put those three things next to each other — the polling, the hasty convention, the public condemnation from inside the tent — and you don't need a conspiracy to explain it. You need a calendar. Two months is not a long runway, and when a party spends part of it planning a rally and part of it publicly fighting itself, that's not strength. That's what running out of time looks like from the inside, and the eight-race number is the only part of this whole story that isn't a matter of opinion.
“Down in eight races two months out and the answer is a rally called 'Trump-a-palooza' — that's not a strategy, that's a distraction with balloons. When a member of your own party is publicly naming what your party's become, that's not strength, that's the exits getting crowded.”
“A hasty convention shows energy and enthusiasm heading into the midterms — the polling aggregate is just one data point among many, we don't put much stock in it, historically these things turn.”
The receipts
The Republican National Committee’s (RNC) first-of-its-kind midterm convention has been cloaked in mystery until a few weeks ago. Details are finally emerging about what’s expected to be a two-day pep rally to bolster hype and encourage…
Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Sunday slammed right-wing influencer Laura Loomer's remarks posted on social media, condemning them as President Trump's "new MAGA and Republican Party." Greene reacted to an inflammatory post…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.