Fox News’ Karl Rove warned that the country’s malaise may doom the GOP’s House majority during a Sunday evening chat with Trey Gowdy.

After criticizing both parties for pushing aside “the business of the people” to carve up states’ congressional district maps ahead of November’s midterm elections and arguing that while “this is not a new phenomenon,” it’s also not “a particularly helpful phenomenon,” Rove was asked about the underlying politics.

“All right, Mr. Rove, there were more Democrats in Congress before Jim Clyburn’s seat was drawn. I actually worked for the federal judge that was on that three-judge panel,” mused Gowdy. “Is there a chance these new maps win the battle but lose the war? I mean, if you get too cute by half, is there a chance that it could backfire?”

“Oh, sure. You could in essence take, you know, like here in Texas, take big cities, which are typically Democrat, and split them up among several sort of suburban and rural Republicans and thereby reduce their margin and make them more vulnerable in an election year. Same thing could happen in the South, where you take these large, Blacks-dominated cities like New Orleans, or rural areas like in South Carolina that are dominated by Blacks, and who are traditionally Democrat voters, and split them up into several different Republican districts and make things more problematic in a swing year. You know, nothing ever plays out exactly in politics as we think it does,” replied Rove, who continued:

And take a look at this, think about this for just a minute. The Democrats think they’re gonna pick up between four and five seats in California and one in Utah, so they’re going to have five-to-six seat pickup because of redistricting. Republicans think in Texas, three-to-five, one in Missouri, one or two in Ohio, one in Louisiana if they go through with the redistricting there, and get rid of this abysmal district that runs from Shreveport to Baton Rouge, and looks like two birds drawing in every Black area they can in the state in order to create a district. Alabama, maybe one district if they get it done. Tennessee, as you talked about, maybe one. South Carolina, maybe, but I think it’s very difficult to do.

But that means  even if the Republicans pull it off, that means between eight-to-twelve offset by five-to-six. So the Republicans may pick up a net of three, or maybe of six. Now, maybe that’s enough to control the House, but maybe not, because that’d be a very small number of seats that would be lost otherwise. And with the president’s approval rating where it is, and with the normal malaise that we have, it’s hard to believe that the Republican losses are only going to be five or six seats.

Watch above via Fox News.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!