CNN anchor Jake Tapper offered a blunt assessment of the Republican Party’s midterm messaging on Wednesday night, comparing Vice President JD Vance’s appeal to voters to “a desperate boyfriend” as economic pressures weigh on the GOP with 48 days to go until the midterms.

Tapper noted that Republican policies have raised health care subsidies for Obamacare and escalated the trade war. He also pointed to the Iran war driving fertilizer prices and diesel prices to historic levels.

That backdrop helps explain why Republican Senate hopeful Ashley Hinson of Iowa is proposing to “reach across the aisle” to Democrats if elected.

“I’m Ashley Hinson, and I approve this message because working across the aisle isn’t always easy, but it’s how you get results,” Hinson said in her new ad.

Vance, however, has delivered a different kind of message as the U.S. economy drags down the GOP.

“Don’t give power to the people who caused the problems that we’re fixing,” Vance told a recent audience. “Give us another chance or give us another couple of years to continue to work on the amazing things that we’ve been doing for the past two years.”

“Well, there’s a bumper sticker for you: Give us another chance,” Tapper said Wednesday night, turning to Republican strategists Shermichael Singleton and Kristen Soltis Anderson. “… It sounds like a desperate boyfriend, frankly.”

“If I’m advising the president and you’re going out on the campaign trail, you cannot deny the very real pain points for the American people,” Singleton said.

Anderson, a strategist and pollster, argued that Republicans’ biggest problem will not be reaching centrist voters who swing one way or another, but getting committed Republicans to the polls at this point.

“For many Republicans, their big problem is going to be reminding their own voters, Republican voters, what is it that you sent us to Washington to do? Because if those voters are looking at DC and they’re going, ‘oh, you renamed the Lake of America, uh, you renamed the Kennedy center.’ Like, that is not what voters are looking for. They’re looking for things that they can feel. And even if you can’t turn the titanic around in a couple of weeks and make people think the economy is wonderful, you have to at least be able to say, ‘here are the things concretely that we have done to try to make it better. Keep us here. We’ll keep trying to do more.’”

The strategists’ comments identified two immediate campaign tasks for Republicans: acknowledge voters’ economic concerns while also giving supporters concrete accomplishments and reasons to turn out. The discussion therefore centered less on a single message than on the balance between persuading swing voters and re-engaging the party’s own base.

Tapper then turned to Singleton and asked what he thought Republicans were doing right.

“You’re going to put me on the spot like that?” Singleton said jokingly.

“Hey, you said there Republicans out there [doing it right],” Tapper countered.

Singleton pointed to GOP Senate candidate Mike Rogers in Michigan, who has endorsed Trump while straddling the line by staying “hyper focused on statewide issues.”

“I think he and his campaign recognizes what propelled Trump and Republicans to victory in 2024 was nontraditional voters, low propensity voters,” he said, adding that getting those same voters to the polls this year “is an uphill battle.”

Anderson advised Republicans to deftly prove they are “not a clone of Donald Trump,” while warning that daring to be a Republican who opposes Trump or his agenda “is perilous, depending upon the geography of where you sit.”

As the midterm campaign continues, the issues raised in the exchange leave turnout among low-propensity Republican voters, the party’s handling of economic pain points, and candidates’ ability to distinguish themselves on statewide concerns as central campaign tests.

The exchange aired during Tapper’s Wednesday night CNN broadcast; the segment is available on YouTube.