Make no mistake about it. Last week’s midterm trouncing was a categorical rejection of Donald Trump and Trumpism — the dominating force in GOP politics for the last decade.
Democrats swept the House and Senate. They gained a majority of state governorships for the first time in 16 years. They picked up over 500 state legislative seats, which, as the Wall Street Journal points out, has put “a generation of conservative reform” in peril.
Deep-red states turned blue, seemingly overnight, and it didn’t seem to matter if the winning Democratic candidates were moderates or even socialists. They won regardless, despite poll after poll maintaining that the Democratic party is viewed unfavorably by a solid majority of Americans.
In other words, it wasn’t their ideas that broke through and resonated with voters. All that mattered was that the Democrats oppose President Trump, who’s spent the first half of his second term in office antagonizing millions of Americans — many of whom voted for him.
A lot of voters took a big chance on Trump in 2024. They hadn’t forgotten that he tried to overturn an election he lost to stay in power, nor that he provoked a deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol. But they also hadn’t forgotten the pre-pandemic U.S. economy under his watch. It was quite strong. And after years of painfully high inflation under President Biden (not to mention the revelation of his mental unfitness), many voters wanted a clean break from the administration.
It ultimately came down to — as it often does — “the economy, stupid.” Americans decided that they missed the economy they had under Trump. And in hopes of getting it back, they were willing to overlook a whole lot of things that they likely wouldn’t have in a different political era — first and foremost Trump’s undermining of our Constitutional order.
What many of those voters didn’t understand was that the economic minds behind Trump’s previous successes — people like Paul Ryan and Gary Cohn, who created the policies that facilitated that first-term economy — had effectively been driven out of politics… by Donald Trump. They wouldn’t be returning with him, nor would their sensibilities.
During the campaign, Trump was saying what a lot of people wanted to hear: that he would bring down prices, cut their taxes, and usher in a “Golden Age.” But his tariff ideas, which he promoted in very broad terms, were destined by their very design to do just the opposite. Nearly every professional economist understood this, and many warned about it, but Trump didn’t care. Unlike the last time, when Trump deferred to the GOP establishment on a number of major policy issues, he was going to do whatever he instinctively felt like doing in the second term… including surrounding himself with loyal sycophants who would only ever tell him how brilliant he and his ideas were.
Americans put their economic faith in Donald Trump. And through his disastrous tariff policies, which he began unilaterally imposing early in his second term, he’s made them pay the price for it — literally.
But that hasn’t been the only betrayal. Trump has also instituted an unprecedented level of self-dealing political corruption, an illegal immigration enforcement strategy that most Americans find abhorrent, the needless alienation and double-crossing of longtime global allies, an ill-conceived and very costly plan to go to war in the Middle East, and an avalanche of petty drama, obligatory cruelty, and gold-plated self-aggrandizement.
Professional water-carriers have put in a lot overtime over the last two years trying to whatabout it all away, but election night proved it was a wasted effort. Voters expressed their anger loud and clear, sending a message to both Trump and a Republican Congress that has not only refused to stand in his way, but enabled and defended his worst instincts.
Voters got their reckoning (or perhaps revenge), and Republicans are now left to try and pick up the pieces of a shattered coalition, and figure out how to move forward. Sure, they could just sit back, as the minority party in Congress, and wait for the Democrats to self-implode (the Dem are more than capable of it). But it’s going to be difficult for the pendulum to swing back toward the Republicans with Donald Trump, the leader of the GOP, remaining in office for another two years. Fair or not, most Americans view the party that holds the White House as the party in power.
What Republicans need to be thinking about, if they want to be taken seriously again, is how to rebuild their party. And that can’t happen until they come to terms with what led it to ruin in the first place — something that requires the proper assignment of responsibility, rather than deflecting blame at convenient targets.
It’s not the liberal media that caused this epic defeat. Yes, their anti-Right bias is real and prevalent, and it should continue to be called out, but that sector of the media is weaker and less influential than it’s ever been. Case in point, Trump won twice, and the Republicans have won multiple congressional majorities, despite the media landscape.
“Stolen elections” aren’t to blame. Nor was one to blame in 2020, when Biden defeated Trump. It’s time to grow up, accept this, and get back to making serious political arguments.
Principled conservatives aren’t to blame. They’ve taken all kinds of slings and arrows over the last decade for refusing to surrender their pre-Trump policy decisions, moral standards, and mindfulness of the U.S. Constitution — the price of admission for good tribal standing on the New Right. Their criticisms of Trump and the party he shaped in his image was never done in service to the Democrats, but rather for the benefit of the GOP, the conservative movement, and the country. Had their warnings been listened to, rather than treated as acts of treason, Republicans wouldn’t be in this terrible predicament.
Trump and Trumpism is what got us here, and those who pretend otherwise, whatever their motivations, can no longer be taken seriously. Seriousness is something we desperately need in our politics right now, because the times we live in call for it. Our country is racing toward $41 trillion in national debt, and the insolvency of our major entitlement programs, in large part because we no longer have a fiscally conservative political party. America is losing its standing and influence on the world stage, because allies no longer trust us, and opponents no longer respect us. Americans have lost a tremendous amount of confidence in our institutions and free markets. They’ve lost respect for the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law. Far too many people have made their political tribe their very identity — even their religion. Brazen bigotry is on the rise in America, in part because both parties are afraid to call out the most extreme people on their side of the aisle.
I have little confidence in either party to right the ship over night. But after their resounding defeat, Republicans have a solid opportunity to confront their demons, own up to and learn from their mistakes, and rebuild a party based on principles rather than anger, grievance, and theatrics.
I hope they’ll take that opportunity.