Can Republicans Beat the Midterm Odds? Sen. Hagerty Weighs In

Georgia Howe (0:00)

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Georgia Howe (1:42)

Midterms are quickly approaching and Republicans are hoping to buck historical trends to hold the Senate. Both parties are scrambling to respond to voters growing concerns about affordability.

John Bickley (1:52)

Tennessee Senator Bill Hagerty joins us in studio to discuss the upcoming midterms and why he thinks the old wisdom about the party in power losing seats no longer applies. I'm Daily Wire, executive editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe. This is a weekend edition of Morning Wire.

Georgia Howe (2:11)

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John Bickley (3:20)

Joining us now in studio is Republican Senator Bill Hagerty of our home state, Tennessee. Senator, great to have you in the studio.

Bill Hagerty (3:26)

It's good to be back. It's good to be back.

John Bickley (3:27)

So look, any party in power faces an uphill battle in these midterm elections. We also have fuel costs much higher than anybody wants them to be. Hormuz Strait is still more closed than we want it to be.

What reason do you have to believe that the Republicans can keep the Senate?

Bill Hagerty (3:46)

Well, people always cite history and say, this is typically the case, and you're right. But you don't have to go too far back, basically, to 2022 when Joe Biden was in office. The United States Senate was at 50-50 at that point in time. Joe Biden had driven inflation through the roof. Oil was much higher than it is now, $130 a barrel. Inflation running amok. The failure in Afghanistan, perhaps the worst national security failure, the worst foreign policy failure we've seen, and certainly in my lifetime. I would have certainly thought we would have seen a major shift at that point in time. In fact, I believe that. I thought we would probably be at 53, 54 seats in the United States Senate for Republicans. I thought we'd pick up three or four seats. We wound up losing a seat. So I think conventional wisdom has changed. It really gets down to resources, and it gets down to having a pragmatic ground game in place and really fighting to win. When we went back and analyzed what happened in 2022, it turned out that the Democrats had changed a lot of the rules.