Opinion: Republicans (Mostly Trump) Blew It
The GOP Must Listen to Moderates, Not MAGA World
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Tuesday’s midterm elections sent one clear message: The era of election-denying Trump Republicans is over, if the GOP ever wants to get back into the White House.
Most pundits, polls, and betting sites predicted a Republican tsunami, wave, or shellacking. Instead, we saw barely a ripple.
The blame must be put squarely on the shoulders of former President Trump and the weak-kneed GOP leaders who kowtowed to him.
Trump effectively put himself on the ballot, endorsing hundreds of candidates and publicizing everything he had done for Republicans during the campaign. The prematurely triumphant message was clear: He considered himself the leader of the GOP, and he was ready to be his party’s standard-bearer once again in the 2024 presidential election.
Then came Tuesday.
One report indicates that the former president is “livid” about the results, because he was counting on big wins in the midterms to serve as a launchpad for his candidacy. Instead, most of the air has been let out of Trump’s balloon.
To nobody’s surprise, he’s blaming the candidates themselves, while claiming that he helped many others win. Sorry, Mr. Trump, but candidates in deep-red states didn’t need your help to win their elections.
In the five crucial states that flipped between 2016 and 2020 to give Joe Biden the presidency -- Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin -- Trump’s involvement was borderline toxic. Exit polls in those swing states showed Trump’s approval further underwater than Biden’s, with 58% disapproving of the former president in Pennsylvania, 57% in Arizona, and 57% in Wisconsin.
There’s no doubt that GOP moves to restrict abortion rights also played a role, something made starkly evident in how conservative Kentucky shot down an anti-abortion constitutional amendment.
Still, the economy and history provided powerful fuel for what should have been a red wave in this midterm election. Let’s look at why that did not happen in congressional, senatorial, and gubernatorial races.
The House of Representatives
We are still awaiting final results, but the GOP will likely control the House of Representatives, albeit by a significantly smaller margin than expected.
At this writing, CNN has called 204 races for Republican candidates, and the GOP leads in some 20 competitive races, enough to exceed the 218 seats needed to control the lower chamber.
For perspective, the well-respected Sabato’s Crystal Ball from UVA’s Center for Politics expected Republicans to win 237 seats. They’re not going to even get close to that.
One race, that of Trump acolyte and Marjorie Taylor Greene pal Lauren Boebert. wasn’t even listed among those expected to be competitive. At this writing, the race is tight, but the conspiracy theorist is trailing.
In August, I wrote that the GOP’s purge of most of the so-called “Impeachment 10,” the Republican House members who voted for impeachment could hurt the GOP’s chances. It has.
The Senate
As I detailed on Sunday, the political betting sites strongly favored Republicans to take control of the Senate. Political prognosticators also gave the edge to Republicans, with Sabato projecting a 51-49 GOP advantage, and others suggesting 53-47.
Currently, Fox News has called 49 Senate seats for Republicans and 48 for Democrats. Republicans lead in Nevada, but the Democrats lead in Arizona and Georgia. The latter is going to a runoff in December, and Senate control will likely be determined then. However, if the Democrats pull off a comeback in Nevada and sustain their lead in Arizona, they will continue to control the upper chamber, no matter what happens in Georgia.
Here, Trump’s influence in candidate choice has been determinative. He backed election denier Dan Bolduc in New Hampshire and he was badly defeated by 9 percentage points in a state where the GOP candidate for governor won by 14 points.
Mehmet Oz tied his star to Trump in Pennsylvania, and he lost to a candidate who is still struggling to recover from a stroke.
In all-important Arizona, Trump backed another election denier, Blake Masters, who will have to overcome what’s currently a five-point deficit.
Screenshot of the lone debate between Georgia Senate candidates Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker on Oct. 14, 2022.
In similarly significant Georgia, Trump’s handpicked candidate, Herschel Walker, who has also questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election, received 48.5% of the vote, trailing his main opponent, incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock, who has 49.4%, They will advance to the runoff in December. Compare that to the race for governor, where the incumbent, fellow Republican Brian Kemp, easily beat Stacy Abrams. Kemp had defied Trump’s attempts to overturn the election.
The only bright spot for Trump was J.D. Vance in Ohio. Even then, Vance’s 53.2% of the vote hugely underperformed his fellow Republican, Gov. Mike DeWine, who was reelected with 62.5% of the vote.
Any objective analysis of these Senate races leads to an obvious conclusion: Trump hurt the GOP.
Governors’ Races
The expectation was that Republicans would expand their control of the executive mansions. That isn’t going to happen, and the swing states that flipped between 2016 and 2020 didn’t help. Again, Trump deserves lots of blame.
Republicans may end up with a net deficit of two governorships, according to Real Clear Politics. Four races remain uncalled. Even if you give Alaska to the GOP incumbent, races in Arizona, Nevada, and Oregon are still up in the air, with Democrats leading in two of them. If that remains the case, the GOP will have that net loss of two. The best Republicans can hope for, sweeping all three, would make the governors’ elections a wash (Arizona has a GOP governor).
Trump’s handpicked candidates in swing states may lose all their races for governor. Tim Michels lost Wisconsin, Tudor Dixon was defeated in Michigan, Doug Mastriano wasn’t even close in Pennsylvania, and Kari Lake is hanging on by a thread in Arizona. All have questioned the results of the 2020 election.
Finally, the biggest winner of the night was Florida Governor Ron DeSanctis, who’s Trump’s leading challenger for the 2024 nomination. He demolished his opponent by almost 20 percentage points, receiving almost 50% more votes than Charlie Crist.
Conservative media is already sending a message that Mar-a-Lago must be hearing loud and clear. Fox News shows were consistently talking about DeSantis as the future of the GOP. And the New York Post’s cover the day after the election speaks for itself:
Conclusion
Republicans, if they want to win the White House in 2024, need to wake up.
Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 and 2020. He was the first president since the Great Depression to lose the House, the Senate, and the White House within four years.
Now, his influence with the Republican base, which led to the selection of weak, Trump-friendly candidates, has led to what may be the worst performance in 20 years by an opposition party in a midterm election.
If Republican leaders remain beholden to Trump and keep pandering to the MAGA extremists in their base, one thing is guaranteed: Democrats will win in 2024.
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