Many blame President Donald Trump for the way coverage of the tax cuts has played out, saying he failed to use his power to set the public agenda to focus voters’ attention on the law. | AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster Finance & Tax Tax cuts a bust for Republicans in midterms

Republicans thought their massive tax overhaul would be the centerpiece of their midterm strategy. But it turns out they were so wrong they’ve been barely mentioning the $1.5 trillion tax cut on the campaign trail.

With polls showing Americans are more likely to disapprove of the tax law than to approve of it, GOP candidates have been changing the subject to other issues like immigration and health care. Some of the lawmakers who wrote the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act are even struggling to hang onto their seats.


“I would have bet you a lot of money going into this year that, if you cut people’s taxes by thousands of dollars per year, that would be politically popular,” said Ryan Ellis, a prominent Republican consultant. “But it has not worked out that way.”

President Donald Trump tried to steer the conversation back to tax cuts on Saturday, telling reporters that the White House and congressional leaders are working on "a very major tax cut for middle-income people. And if we do that it would be some time I would say just prior to November."

But, if anything, his remarks sparked confusion, since Congress is out of session until after the November election and can’t act before then.

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Meanwhile, there’s a lot of frustration and second-guessing among Republicans over how they failed to sell the tax law to voters.



"It's Republicans once again proving the old adage that they are the stupid party," said David McIntosh, head of the Club for Growth. "They've got a really good issue that they're not using."

Many blame Trump, saying he failed to use his power to set the public agenda to focus voters’ attention on the law, instead allowing a parade of controversies — on everything from immigration to tariffs to Vladimir Putin — to push the tax cuts off the front pages.

Grover Norquist, an antitax activist, blames reporters for the lack of GOP political leverage on the issue, saying many news organizations lost interest once the tax cuts were signed into law back in December.

“CNN hasn’t had me on in months, unless it’s to talk about tariffs,” he said. “They had zero interest in the effects of the tax cuts once they passed.”

Some point a finger at congressional Republicans. Large chunks of the public still don’t understand what was in the legislation, said David Winston, a longtime Republican pollster who advises GOP lawmakers.

The bill was pushed through Congress so quickly, and the debate was so circumscribed, that he says many voters never learned how the cuts affect them. Many have heard the law cut corporate taxes, but Winston says his polling indicates that only 35 percent are aware the law also cut individual tax rates at every income level.

“I have people in focus groups saying, ‘How come I never heard of this before?'” said Winston. “What didn’t happen here was people didn’t go out and, on a sustained basis, lay out what was in the bill.”

“It’s hard for people to get excited about something they don’t know anything about,” he said.

The design of the cuts was also an issue.

The main way millions of taxpayers have seen the most direct impact of the law is through changes in their withholding that produces bumps in their paychecks. It’s a roughly $30 increase for the average person paid biweekly and earning between $50,000 and $75,000, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

Republicans believed voters would appreciate any increase, even if it wasn’t eye-popping, but polls show most didn’t even notice a change. Sixty-four percent said they have not seen an increase in take-home pay, according to the Gallup poll.



Some say the administration should have stolen a page from President George W. Bush’s playbook. When he was trying to highlight his 2001 tax cuts, he had the IRS send taxpayers big flashy checks as a down payment on the coming cuts.

“Had they done what the Bush guys did by making it advance-able and giving everybody a ‘Trump check,’ then maybe people would have had something a little more tangible,” said one Republican on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, it’s like, ‘Take a look at the third line down on your paycheck every other week.'”

And Democrats, to the surprise of some, remained unified against the law.

They’ve pilloried the cuts as a gift to the rich and to corporations. Even an internal Republican National Committee poll leaked last month to Bloomberg News conceded has been effective at shaping perceptions of the law as a giveaway to the rich.

In some districts, particularly where the law’s new cap on the state and local tax deduction is an important issue, Democrats have gone on the attack, seemingly more eager to talk about the law than their Republican opponents. And tax writers like Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) are finding themselves running neck-and-neck with their Democratic opponents.

“There’s no disputing Peter Roskam’s link to Donald Trump as the author of Trump’s tax plan,” says one recent Democratic ad.

It's all a long way from December, when jubilant Republicans expected their newly-passed legislation to carry them through the midterm elections. “If we can’t sell this to the American people, we ought to go into another line of work,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

They had plenty of reasons to be confident, not least of which were the promises of a phalanx of outside groups to spend tens of millions in support of the new law. Among them: The Chamber of Commerce, the American Action Network, Americans for Prosperity, Freedom Partners and the 45Committee.

When Republicans were writing the tax plan, they skipped the custom of having a transitional period before their changes took effect — usually offered to give people time to adjust — because they wanted voters to see a difference as quickly as possible.

Once the withholding changes took hold in March, and people began to see bigger paychecks, Republicans predicted public support for the law would only grow.

The high point may have been in the early months of the year, when a cascade of businesses said they were handing out bonuses to their workers because of the new law — which Republicans eagerly trumpeted to the public, while Democrats seemed eager to change the subject. Polls at the time showed public support for the law cresting, with a majority backing the cuts.

“From November to February, attitudes about the tax bill significantly improved,” said Winston.

But even then there were ominous signs for Republicans.

They quietly abandoned their emphasis on the new law in a March special election outside Pittsburgh in favor of issues like so-called sanctuary cities — a change that now looks like a harbinger.

Health care, jobs and immigration were all cited more often in pro-Republican television campaign ads in September than the tax cuts, according to the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks political advertising.

In battleground districts, the party's National Republican Congressional Committee and the Congressional Leadership Fund — a super PAC aligned with Speaker Paul Ryan — are running last-minute ads denouncing Pelosi and accusing Democrats of backing a government takeover of the health care system.

Groups like the Chamber of Commerce say they continue to promote the tax law regardless of what candidates do. And Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips said Republicans are referring to the tax cuts in the broader context of touting the strong economy.

"Whenever a Republican says the economy is doing way better — the next thing they say is 'we cut taxes,'" he said.

And Republicans are talking plenty about taxes more generally. They’re just talking more about other types of tax issues in their campaign ads, like accusing Democrats of plotting tax increases should they win power in November, said Michael Franz, a director of the Wesleyan Media Project.

“Taxes are featured a lot but tax reform itself is not,” he said. “What Republicans are doing is focusing more on concerns about what Democrats could do to your taxes if they’re elected, as opposed to ‘Give us the bona fides for reducing your taxes.”

