April could prove the cruelest of months for the GOP. There's trump with his low approval rating. There's Trumpcare with its almost universal rejection, accompanied by anger at the GOP on almost every side. There are two special elections both parties are treating as bellwether tests.

GOP runs scared

A leaked tape of talk at a GOP retreat reported by PolitocusUSA suggests the Republicans are running scared over their conspicuous healthcare bungling. Trumpcare is poison but it's the "market we've created," says Tom McClintock, a Representative from California.

He is looking to the 2017 elections.

Will April tell the tale for 2017?

There are two special elections in April that should be safe for the GOP. The most embarrassing defeat could come in Newt Gingrich's old district north of Atlanta where JonOssoff, a 30-year-old Democrat, could win the open primary there. In Kansas, the GOP holds a paper thin lead and there could be an upset. That election is today.

Trump up or down

If these races hold for the GOP it will show that the Democrats offer no attractive alternative to what is happening now. It will give Trump room to breathe. If Trump is clobbered by even narrow defeats, the implication could be seismic, because of the iffiness surrounding the entire Trump operation.

Literally, no one knows what he thinks from day to day. Few honor his tweets anymore. There is a growing sense of angst because of an unresolved foreign policy provocation that Trump had a major hand in creating.

Two vacuums

There are two vacuums in American politics.

One is the GOP. The other is the Democrats. This may be because there is an elephant in the room that no party wants to deal with. That elephant is the actual condition of America which is characterized by rampant personal debt, major continuing justice malfunction and gridlock almost everywhere on steroids. The elephant is not on a diet.

The elephant grows day by day.

See no evil

The two parties remain blind. The GOP insists on not looking forward at all. The Democrats see the general problem but offer no solutions. There is a good reason for that. There is no solution. There is honesty about the pickle we are in. But that does not win votes. This is why the politics of fear will hold the winning cards until leadership that will grapple with the elephant emerges. The deadline for leadership to emerge is the 2020 election. Today's races will merely tell us the direction we need to take as history plays itself out under Trump.
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