Republicans continue to lack any strategy for winning the November elections beyond avoiding mistakes and hoping that President Obama’s unpopularity, especially in key states, delivers control of the Senate to them. It must be said that the party has executed this passive count-on-a-wave strategy fairly well, selecting presentable and sometimes admirable candidates. The strategy could even work. But it will not maximize the Republican opportunity, because it does nothing to dispel the public’s justifiable doubts about whether Republican rule would be good for the country.

Too many Republicans are running on the promise that they will “check” the president in some unspecified way. They are running as people who dislike Obamacare but have no plans to replace or alter it. But there are persuadable voters who worry that they will lose their health coverage if Republicans get their way, and ones who worry that Republicans will settle for Obamacare Lite. By keeping their plans on health care (and everything else) vague, Republicans are asking these voters to trust them. Yet the polls consistently show that the party does not have a lot of trust on which to rely.