Dana Rohrabacher gets the rug pulled out from under him

| 9:05 am EDT October 14, 2018
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Even as the investigation into Donald Trump’s Russia scandal continues to put people in prison, the scandal further threatens to ensnare the Republican leaders who played various roles in it. Throughout the process, one of the most cartoonish aspects of the whole thing has been the mere existence of GOP Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, who is such an unabashed mouthpiece for Vladimir Putin, even GOP House leader Kevin McCarthy accused him of being on Putin’s payroll. But now it appears the party is finally giving up on Rohrabacher, in the only way that matters.

That’s right, with just three and a half weeks before election day, the Republican Party donor network has decided not to bother funding Dana Rohrabacher’s campaign, according to a new Los Angeles Times report. To be clear, dozens of House GOP incumbents are in serious danger of losing their seats next month, so the party’s donors have to make some difficult decisions about which of them to try to save. But what stands out here is that Rohrabacher doesn’t appear to be out of contention.

There has been scant polling in the California 48th race between Rohrabacher and his upstart Democratic opponent Harley Rouda, as evidenced by the fact that the last major poll in that race was conducted three weeks ago; it said the race was tied. The poll before that also said the race was tied, and before that, another poll showed Rouda up by two points. FiveThirtyEight gives Rohrabacher a three-in-seven chance of winning. Does this sound like the kind of race the GOP would give up on? There are other House GOP incumbents who appear to be in more trouble. So why is Rohrabacher getting the axe?

There are two distinct possibilities here. One would be that recent internal Republican polling has Dana Rohrabacher far worse off than last month’s publicly available polls suggested, and the GOP has decided that he can’t win. The other would be that the GOP knows something we don’t about Rohrabacher’s role in the Trump-Russia scandal, and worries that he’ll end up going down for it even if he is reelected. In any case, something is afoot here. It’s newsworthy for a party to give up on an incumbent who’s supposedly in a very close race just a few weeks before election day.