Trump: the Main Obstacle to a Republican Revival

Republicans continue to wail about their poor showing in the mid-term electios,   Their problem in the main, Donald Trump who more and more news outlets and pundits are belatedly describing as a loser and an albatross around the neck of the GOP.  Will the reality begin to finally sink in that Trump needs to be shown the door?   That remains the big question and as a piece in the Washington Post lays out Republicans have always had a choice and sadly they have chosen time and time again to take the low road  and sold their souls in the hope of personal advanage.  No one forced any of them to take this path: 

Our choices are shaped, and even bound, by the histories and institutions we inhabit. And yet they’re still our choices. We are moral agents, responsible for our decisions, even if we can’t fully escape the matrix in which we make them.

And yet so much of the conversation about the modern Republican Party assumes the opposite: that Republican politicians are impossibly bound to the needs and desires of their coalition and unable to resist its demands. Many — too many — political observers speak as if Republican leaders and officials had no choice but to accept Donald Trump into the fold, no choice but to apologize for his every transgression, no choice but to humor his attempt to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election and now no choice but to embrace election-denying candidates around the country.

But that’s nonsense. For all the pressures of the base, for all the fear of Trump and his gift for ridicule, for all the demands of the donor class, it is also true that at every turn, Republicans in Washington and elsewhere have made an active and affirmative choice to embrace the worst elements of their party — and jettison the norms and values that make democracy work — for the sake of their narrow political and ideological objectives.

Choices come with consequences and the GOP's failure to achieve their fantasy "red wave" is their own fault and that of the malignant individual to whom theywere  willing in most case to sell their souls.  A piece in The Economist - which has been in business since 1843 - looks at Trump's record as a loser:

After this week’s vote the suspicion that Mr Trump is, in fact, just a loser will be much harder for him to overcome. And that is what his record points to. In 2020 he was the first incumbent since Jimmy Carter to follow a president from the other party and then lose. In 2018 the Republicans lost 41 seats in the House under the Trump banner (Democrats may have lost only a handful this week). Even at his moment of greatest triumph, in 2016, he lost the popular vote and only narrowly beat a candidate who was trying to follow a two-term president from her own party, something which rarely happens. Now 2022 can be added to this less-than-stellar streak.

His handpicked candidates turned winnable Senate races into nail-biters in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Meanwhile in Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis, a probable rival, won by roughly 20 points. Two Republican candidates for governor closely associated with Trumpism—Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Tim Michels in Wisconsin—both repeated the lost-cause story about 2020 and vowed to use their influence over election administration to make sure no Republican presidential candidate would lose again in their state. It was they who lost. In Michigan and Nevada Republican candidates who swore the 2020 election was stolen ran for secretary of state so that they might oversee the next one. They lost, too. In Colorado Lauren Boebert, who has flirted with the QAnon conspiracy, may lose the safest of seats.

How does the GOP begin to regain some sense of sanity?   The first step is to jettison Trump - not an easy task.  After that, the Christofascist and white supremacists (who are increasingly toxic in the eyes of a majority of Americans) need to be shown the door.   As long as Trump remains a force in the GOP these ugly elements of the base will continue to be pandered to. A column in Washington Post looks at the GOP's Trump problem.  Here are highlights:

The final votes have yet to be counted, but so far the 2022 midterm campaign bears a striking resemblance to the midterm elections of 1998. A quarter century ago, Republicans were convinced that historical precedent and the manifest flaws of the incumbent Democratic president would bring them a landslide victory.

Instead, the party found itself losing ground in the House of Representatives and gaining nothing in the Senate. Conservatives felt demoralized and diminished. Within a week, Speaker Newt Gingrich announced his resignation from Congress.

The setback led to renewal. The Republicans turned to one of the big winners of the 1998 election, Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, to redefine the party and restore it to power. Its strategy worked two years later (with help from the Supreme Court).

The party may be in a similar position today. A disappointing election has rattled conservatives. The nation’s most influential Republican, Donald Trump, is implicated in the unsatisfying result. But a dazzling performance in one state has presented the party with an opportunity to think again about renewal — and to embrace a popular alternative to Mr. Trump’s abrasive style and divisive leadership.

Of course, even if a new standard-bearer has more widespread appeal, the party must still move beyond Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump will have a say in that, too: He may not allow the Republican Party to disenthrall itself from him without a costly fight.

For conservatives, this is a fight worth having. Since his takeover of the party in 2016, Mr. Trump’s G.O.P. has lost the House, the White House and the Senate. If Republicans do end up taking both houses of Congress this year, it won’t be because of Mr. Trump, but despite him.

There may be a silent majority of “normie” Americans open to Republican leadership — but those voters run in the other direction at the first sight of Mr. Trump and his most devoted supporters. Mr. Gingrich saw that the party’s interests were best served under different leadership. Mr. Trump sees no interest but his own. He is the chief obstacle to a Republican revival.

Decades later, America and the Republicans have changed, but the party’s problems — among them, the perception that it is beholden to extremists — have not.

Republicans have taken the popular vote in a presidential election just once in 34 years. The last time they won independent voters at the national level was 2016, and it was a plurality (48 percent). They went from losing moderate voters by nine points in 2016 to 15 points in 2022. . . . .To win a national majority, Republicans must rack up big margins among independents and suburbanites and narrow their differences with moderates.

After Tuesday, it is obvious to all but his most blinkered fans that Mr. Trump has made the task more difficult.

If Mr. DeSantis enters the presidential stakes, then, he will have to win over conservative media and wrest control of the G.O.P. from Mr. Trump. It might even come at the risk of driving Mr. Trump to start an independent candidacy. But only then will the party have a chance to purge some of the poison that is in the system.