Barack Obama’s Tuesday speech on climate change puts Democrats on defense in coal country.

Republicans see the president’s forthcoming announcement of new regulations to cut carbon emissions as an early gift going into the midterm elections, making a tough map for the other side that much tougher.

The planned carbon emissions crackdown could make the president even more of an anchor on Democrats in deep-red states like West Virginia and Kentucky, where Senate candidates will have no choice but to distance themselves from unpopular policies pushed by the national party. And the new regulations pose a messaging challenge for vulnerable Democratic incumbents already facing competitive Senate races in other energy-rich states, including Alaska, North Carolina and Louisiana.

Republicans fondly remember the gains they made in 2010 after the failed Democratic push for cap-and-trade legislation. It’s unclear at this stage whether the president’s use of executive power to combat climate change will pack similar punch in the 2014 midterms.

“This issue is going to be at the very forefront, particularly in our federal races,” said West Virginia GOP Chairman Conrad Lucas. “Any Democrat is going to have to have some form of allegiance to the Democratic establishment to receive support. The carbon issue will be the first question anyone is asked here in the Senate race. … This issue is yet another one that backs them into a corner.”

Democrats in Washington note that a host of their candidates in 2012 — in states from Ohio to Virginia and Montana — survived onslaughts of energy-focused attacks.

But Kentucky Democratic consultant Jim Cauley, who managed Steve Beshear’s successful campaign for governor, said he is “absolutely worried” about Obama’s new push. He stressed that Ohio and Virginia are less economically dependent on coal than Kentucky, where Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell faces reelection next year.

“There’s a perception here that coal’s just taking it on the chin every day,” said Cauley. “We don’t have the luxury of big large urban centers to change our vote makeup. I think it’d be problematic.”

West Virginia Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican running for Senate, said Obama’s speech is “an exclamation point” on his 2008 suggestion that he wanted to bankrupt companies that tried to build new coal-fired plants.

“He can’t get congressional approval for this agenda so he’s going to forge ahead like he has on a lot of other things, ignoring the will of the people to satisfy his environmental friends,” she said in an interview.

Capito has no declared Democratic opponent yet, but she said the announcement Tuesday will become a big issue no matter what position he or she stakes out.

“Certainly on a national level any Democrat is going to have this anti-coal, environmental agenda all around their neck because their leader is the president,” she said. “I don’t think I can overdramatize how difficult this agenda is for states like ours.”

West Virginia Democratic Chairman Larry Puccio noted that Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin successfully distanced himself from Obama on coal in both 2010 and 2012. In one ad during the first race, he famously used a gun to shoot a copy of the cap-and-trade bill. Manchin, who was easily reelected, has already gone on record criticizing Obama’s planned executive actions.

“It didn’t work before, and I don’t know why anyone would believe that it would work this time,” said Puccio.

Republicans believed last year that the coal attack would be more potent than it ended up being. But Democrats aggressively responded and in several states neutralized the attack. In Virginia, Tim Kaine ran an ad of himself in a helicopter above a coal plant talking about his support for clean coal. In North Dakota, Heidi Heitkamp touted her support for building the Keystone Pipeline. In Missouri, Claire McCaskill talked about taking on the Obama administration over the EPA.

Democrats say that candidates up next year can create separation from the president by outlining their own energy agenda. Someone like Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) can tell voters that she is in line to chair a powerful energy committee if reelected, for example.

In Kentucky, the likely Democratic challenger to McConnell is Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes. She would no doubt take pains to disagree with Obama on the EPA regulations.

“If President Obama’s coal agenda is on the ballot, we’re gonna lose 70-30 in coal country,” said a Democratic strategist. “But that’s not how this plays out in campaigns. These issues are fought state by state.”

Republican strategists acknowledge that their biggest challenge is to prevent Democrats from separating themselves from Obama.

“If you have a ‘D’ after your name in 2014, you own this agenda,” said National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman Brad Dayspring. “Simple as that.”

The NSRC attacked red-state senators individually Monday ahead of the speech, and it plans to press the issue further this week depending on what exactly he proposes. It’s a theme the party intends to return to over the next 17 months.

A big open question is how hard Obama pushes on the climate issue. If it’s just one token speech to placate environmentalists frustrated by his failures to follow through on old campaign promises, the issue is unlikely to become central next year. But if the president puts real political capital behind the effort, the possibility of a backlash grows.

“Obama may have just handed Mitch McConnell his best chance at a reelection victory,” said Benjamin Cole, spokesman for the American Energy Alliance, a 501(c)(4) advocacy group funded in part by the fossil fuel industry. “There is real, animated and palpable fear in coal country that the administration’s all-of-the-above energy policy doesn’t include them.”

The situation is different in House campaigns, largely because Republicans have already picked up many of the seats in regions where energy issues are most important.

GOP strategists believe Obama climate change-themed attacks could be particularly potent against Democratic Reps. Nick Rahall in West Virginia and Collin Peterson in Minnesota, two veteran members who have managed to survive reelection bids despite occupying conservative and rural districts.

Some Republicans argue that the president’s climate change push could resonate broadly in House elections, giving the GOP an issue to use against Democrats in economically hard-hit moderate-to-conservative districts where voters are anxious about electricity rates.

“Either the President does not remember or does not care about the cap-and-trade body count of 2010,” said GOP pollster Brock McLeary, and former top official at the National Republican Congressional Committee. “A second term of full-throated ideological politics of this sort will keep congressional Democrats on their heels for a long four years. It fits perfectly with the central rationale for this Republican Congress: Keep Obama inside the guard rails of mainstream politics.”

“It will work all across the House map,” said Brad Todd, a GOP media consultant. “The voters sent them some adult supervision in the form of a Republican House and they have decided that the voters’ instructions do not matter at all.”

League of Conservation Voters senior vice president for campaigns Navin Nayak said the victories of Democrats last November show that Republicans are fighting a losing battle on coal. He said Democrats in places like Alaska and North Carolina are experiencing the effects of climate change and new regulations will have a minimal economic impact.

“Overplaying that hand, as was done in 2012, is a real risk,” he said.