House Majority Leader Cheered by Tuesday’s Big GOP Turnouts

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) challenged the conventional wisdom that the GOP is destined to suffer massive losses in November’s midterm elections, during a wide-ranging interview Wednesday on “The Laura Ingraham Show.”

McCarthy (pictured above) said he is well aware of the history that the party in the White House almost always loses sets in off-year elections. But he said the results of primaries in four states on Tuesday provide evidence that Republicans can beat those odds.

“Let’s put it in perspective here,” he said. “If you look at the turnout yesterday in Ohio, Republican turnout was higher than expected.”

McCarthy cited a recent CNN poll indicating that 57 percent of Americans believe the country is heading in the right direction — the highest figure since 2007.

“I know what [House Minority Leader] Nancy Pelosi says. She says she’s going to be speaker,” he said. “She says the only policy she really has is to raise your taxes. At the end of the day, this is where all the press is saying one thing, just like they said against President [Donald] Trump and his race for the presidency. And the turnout’s gonna be different.”

McCarthy said an economy that boasts an unemployment rate of less than 4 percent has turned around opportunities for young adults who just a few years ago faced the prospect of moving back home with their parents after graduating college.

“When have you had an economy like this?” he said. “The millennials — the polls say the millennials — they have left the Democrats over the economics.”

Tuesday’s primaries included warnings for incumbent Republicans, however. A pair of congressmen from Indiana lost a Senate primary to a businessman whose political experience consisted of less than one term in the state legislature.

And in North Carolina, Rep. Robert Pittenger lost to Baptist preacher Mark Harris despite outspending him by a large margin.

McCarthy was nonplussed. “I think that’s the grass roots working,” he said.

The majority leader also addressed the Iran nuclear deal, immigration, and congressional efforts to obtain documents from the Department of Justice (DOJ).

On Iran, he said Trump was right to withdraw from the agreement negotiated by former President Barack Obama.

“That Iran agreement made the world less safe,” he said. “It gave Iran billions of dollars. And what did they do with it? They spent it on terrorism. Yemen. Syria. Lebanon. They’ve got a bridge now. They’re closer to the Golan Heights. Because of that Iran agreement.”

McCarthy said he believes Trump’s announcement Tuesday makes a meaningful deal with North Korea on its nuclear program more likely.

“This has become a pattern that these agencies — and remember, we’re separate but coequal — that they’re withholding information to Congress, which has a right to oversee.”

McCarthy said Congress needs to “fundamentally change” the asylum system, which has invited a crush of foreigners trying exploit loopholes.

“They are gaming the system,” he said. “They are going against the rule of law.”

But McCarthy did not volunteer details or back specific legislation. He also did not explain how immigration legislation could get past the roadblock in the Senate, where Democrats frequently can block Republican bills with filibusters.

McCarthy supported efforts by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, to gain documents from the Justice Department related to the FBI investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information and the counterintelligence probe into possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign.

Related: GOP Insiders Breathe Sigh of Relief After West Virginia Results

But McCarthy sidestepped questions about whether Attorney General Jeff Sessions should be held in contempt of Congress.

“This goes not just to this case but others as well,” he said. “This has become a pattern that these agencies — and remember, we’re separate but coequal — that they’re withholding information to Congress, which has a right to oversee.”

Some restless members of Congress have called for holding Sessions in contempt.

“You’ve gotta put everything on the table,” he said. “The idea that these agencies have waited so long for all this information … What Devin is doing is raising the issue, that people can see what’s been going on for way too long.”

PoliZette senior writer Brendan Kirby can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter.

(photo credit, homepage image: Kevin McCarthy, Darkened, CC BY-SA 2.0, by Lorie Shaull)