Republicans in Washington are biting their fingernails in worry that Democrats could retake the majority in the House of Representatives in 2018, according to multiple jubilant mainstream media reports.

Axios even reported that enough losses for Democrats to retake the House in November are already “baked in” to projections, according to an unnamed Republican consultant.

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The suggestion is that President Donald Trump, with his eccentric tweeting and reported cursing, is stepping on what should be a good shot for the GOP to keep the House.

While the Senate is projected to stay in GOP hands despite the narrow two-seat majority, the growing sentiment about a change in speakers is rattling the GOP. The Axios report was the latest media prophecy of an allegedly approaching “bloodbath” for the GOP in the midterms, as Politico put it in its December 21 report.

But regarding the prediction, at least two things bother the Republican consultants who spoke to LifeZette on Monday.

One: The apocalyptic predictions don’t factor in the coming campaign against Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the House Democratic minority leader, whose two-term speakership ended with a resounding defeat in the 2010 midterm elections.

Pelosi became so unpopular after helping to ramrod through Obamacare and the so-called economic stimulus programs in 2009 that she and the Democrats lost 63 House seats, the worst midterm showing in 72 years. Despite the historic losses, Pelosi has kept her job as House Democratic leader.

“There’s no greater gift than Nancy Pelosi as minority leader,” said Ron Bonjean, a GOP strategist and former spokesman for the House Republican speaker. “She cannot help but say the wrong thing.”

Still, Democrats stuck with her after their 2010 rout. Pelosi is reportedly eager to be the first re-elected speaker in decades and expects to unseat House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).

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Two: It’s all about the general election campaign itself. While the party in the White House tends to lose 32 seats in the first midterm, there is no sign that many GOP seats are in danger. Democrats need to grab 24 Republican-held seats in November while losing none of their own.

But conventional wisdom about congressional elections in the middle of a president’s first term have often been off the mark.

“I think [tax reform] is actually going to be enough to continue the Trump experiment.”

Obama lost 63 seats in 2010, 11 more than former President Bill Clinton’s first-term loss of 52 House seats. Both men lost the House to Republicans.

To find a major Republican loss of consequence in the first midterm, one has to go back to 1982, when President Ronald Reagan lost 26 seats. But the nation was then in the midst of the second-worst recession since the Great Depression.

Former President George W. Bush and the House GOP lost 32 seats in 2006, and lost House control, but that was a second midterm and followed six long years of war and rising oil prices.

“This is not a 2006 midterm,” said Noel Fritsch, a conservative campaign consultant based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. “It’s not a 2010 midterm, either.”

Not all presidents lose big in the first term. President George W. Bush gained eight GOP House seats in 2002, a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. His father, President George H.W. Bush, lost only nine seats. Former President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, lost 12 seats in 1978, although economic warning signs were growing.

One factor not baked into the cake is the effect of the tax cuts on the economy and, thus, on voters’ moods. Changes in paycheck withholding should be effective by mid-February. It will be a potent reminder, Fritsch said, of Republican delivery of at least one big agenda item. And it’s a reminder in an already booming first-year economy.

Related: Trump and GOP Triumph as Historic Tax Cuts Approved

“I think that is actually going to be enough to continue the Trump experiment,” said Fritsch.

Money is also a factor that favors Trump and the GOP. The Republican National Committee is setting records, raising $8.2 million in November and breaking $100 million for the first nine months of 2017 alone.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP’s campaign fundraising arm, brought in a record $85 million in 2017.

PoliZette White House writer Jim Stinson can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter.

(photo credit, article image: Health Care Witness Hearing, cut out and colored, CC BY 2.0, by Medill DC)