Rout of GOP Leaves Political Survivors Adrift

The old saying is that success has many fathers and failure is an orphan, but many GOP survivors of Tuesday’s midterms are attributing parentage of the rout to President Trump. While it’s an understandable first reaction, regaining the consent of the governed will require an honest conversation about the squandering of the mandate of 2024.“I wasn’t on the ballot,” Mr. Trump posted late Tuesday on Truth Social, “and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” Yet he had urged Americans to “pretend” he was running and got just that. Americans bought the Democratic argument that he needed to be reined in, thanks to a meek GOP letting him be made the focus of the electorate’s anger.Governor Ronald DeSantis of Florida, who opposed Mr. Trump in the 2024 GOP primaries, criticized him on Tuesday’s “Straight Shooter” podcast. The governor told the host, Stephen A. Smith, that the president had worsened the stiff midterm “headwinds” that the party holding the White House always faces.Such rationalizations run the risk of manufacturing logical reasons and excuses to justify one’s preferred actions. In this case, many Republicans never liked Mr. Trump’s combative style, and they see the election results as confirmation.“You can’t insult your way to the presidency,” Governor Jeb Bush of Florida told Mr. Trump in the 2016 GOP primaries, as if his brother, President George W. Bush, hadn’t weathered just as many Democratic broadsides despite being far more genteel. Although Mr. Trump won, many of those traditional Republicans recoiled at the job of advocating for his agenda.After Mr. Trump led Republicans to victory in 2024, their majorities in the House and Senate did little to deliver on his mandate. The president resorted to executive orders, and bypassing the messy work of legislating missed one opportunity after another to maintain public support.The One Big Beautiful Bill contained what an economic journalist, Steven Moore, called “hidden gems” in a July 2025 column in The New York Sun. Yet voters don’t go sifting for nuggets like “No Tax on Tips.” When some Democratic governors restored the tax, the public didn’t notice because they hadn’t been primed to expect the windfall.This columnist suggested, in a May 2025 column for the Sun, following a better congressional strategist, Speaker Henry Clay. Seeing that the Compromise of 1850 wasn’t viable as a single bill, Clay broke it up into five, putting opponents on the spot and educating voters on the issues at stake. His five to zero legislative sweep postponed the Civil War.This Congress, I wrote, began “ceding governing” to Mr. Trump from day one. A syndicated radio host, Erick Erickson, remarked at the time that things like the “DOGE rescission package” and “tax cuts” hadn’t been passed, leaving this “the least effective Congress in the last 200 years,” which their lack of production validated.Congress also acquiesced on Iran, which Mr. DeSantis called “a big, big drag” on Republicans. Had the GOP majorities sought a declaration of war, it would have documented that hostilities began with the Iranian seizure of America’s embassy at Tehran in 1979. Instead, that and Iran’s subsequent American death toll was buried in White House press releases.Successful passage of the first declaration of war since 1942 could have cemented public support and demonstrated respect for the Constitution that Democrats allege Mr. Trump ignores. It also could have pressured future presidents to follow suit and put action behind the president’s popular pledge to avoid “forever wars.”Mr. Trump imposed tariffs with yet more powers that Congress ceded, leaving him to make that case amidst a flurry of others, gifting Democrats another issue which their candidates could define for the public as an economic evil. Enforcement of immigration law followed the same pattern. Republicans thought they could claim paternity of successes and leave Mr. Trump to raise orphaned failures. Now, they’ll be tempted to spin rationalizations that hold them blameless for the results. Yet the path to a 2028 comeback begins with getting off the hamster wheel and being honest about the folly of expecting the president to fill the voids that they left on the ballot.

Rout of GOP Leaves Political Survivors Adrift

Rout of GOP Leaves Political Survivors Adrift

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