Nine months remain until what may be the most crucial midterm elections in our history.  If Democrats prevail, the rabidly unhinged Nancy Pelosi returns as speaker of the House, third in the presidential line of succession behind Bush and Cheney (at least in her addled mind), and Chuck Schumer, increasingly a creature of the hard left, consummates his pact with the Devil to become majority leader.  Assuming committee memberships look much as they do now, it's bad news down ticket, too.

In the Senate, think Pat Leahy as appropriations chair and Dick Durbin heading up the Subcommittee on Defense.

In the House, Adam Schiff, one of the slimiest characters on the Democratic roster, takes the gavel of the House Intelligence Committee from Devin Nunes.  Forget the committee's charge.  Expect Schiff to target America's real enemies: President Trump, Republicans, and anyone who threatens to expose the rot in his party.

Other ranking House Democrats poised to become committee chairs next January, apparatchiks whose fealty to party supersedes all else: Elijah Cummings, Oversight and Government Reform; Jerrold Nadler, Judiciary; Mad Maxine Waters, Financial Services; Sheila Jackson Lee, Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations; and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Military Construction.  I could go on.

I'm not talking just gridlock if Democrats control the House and block the president's agenda.  Pelosi means to impeach Trump, precipitating a constitutional crisis unlike anything in our history.  The aims: paralyze the administration, weakening Trump in the run-up to 2020, and shut down investigations into burgeoning Obama scandals that might be too big for even the Dems' media familiars to ignore.

Job One for Republican strategists, then: Keep the House.  Democrats need a net gain of 24 seats to take control.  They are reportedly targeting almost 100 GOP-held districts, recruiting attractive candidates, including veterans.  No doubt the DNC is coaching these folks to appeal to independents, particularly women, by shaping their message to their communities and appearing moderate and open-minded.

With the public tiring of ad hominem campaigns, GOPers who take that tack risk blowback.  If I were a Republican strategist, I'd counsel House candidates to push, and push hard, a simple message when a Democrat declares, and not let up until the election.

• Whatever a Democrat says about what he believes or what he'll do in Washington doesn't matter.  If elected, whatever independence he has or thinks he has disappears the moment he takes the oath of office.  He becomes Nancy Pelosi's pawn, moved about the board as she pleases, conditioned to shut up and do as he's told.
• House Democrats are automatons, marching in lockstep with their leader because they know, or will learn, that if you break party ranks, you will be shunned and likely gone next time around.  Ask yourself why every Democratic congressman – every last one – voted for Obamacare back in 2010, though some had serious misgivings about this turkey.
• Two years of political guerrilla warfare await us if Democrats successfully conceal from the electorate their real motivation: not policy, but the acquisition of power through policy.  Two years of national peril await as a besieged president tries to protect us with the "loyal opposition" nipping at his heels.

If this message resonates with the general public in flyover country, the GOP keeps the House.

Steve Grammatico is the author of You Hear Me, Barack? P. C. Free Conservative Satire.  He blogs at youhearmebarack.blogspot.com.