There’s no way to sugarcoat it – Republicans were fooled in the midterms. All the polls we’ve seen showing GOP candidates rising in the final weeks of their campaigns, the racial ratings from the Cook Political Report, and the overconfident statements from GOP leaders were far too sanguine for what we all saw on Tuesday night.
There were victories for the Republican Party – Ron DeSantis and Marco Rubio in Florida, J.D. Vance in Ohio, Ted Budd in North Carolina, Brian Kemp in Georgia, Jen Kiggans in Virginia, to name a few – but conservatives were sold a false bill of goods from the leader they were tasked with is to secure a GOP majority. Those who promise great success in consolidating power in a curtain-measuring move, hoping to gain a leadership position in the novel Republican majority, may be the worst offenders who owe the most answers to the Republican electorate.
They include leaders of the Republican National Committee, including Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee – Republican Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) – and the National Republican Senatorial Committee – Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) and the leader of the House Republican Party Representatives – Republican Kevin McCarthy (California).
In an election year that favored Republicans solely due to its timing being in the first half of a Biden administration that should be helped by a president with chronically low approval ratings, inflation above eight percent, a growing crime and drug overdose crisis, a wide open border, and many other reasons , there is no reason why Republican candidates should perform as poorly as they did.
So what gives? The Republican National Committee has provided money and staff to communities to take the fight for Latino voters to the neighborhood level. But then Republicans like Congresswoman Mayra Flores, who made history with her special election victory earlier in 2022, lost the general election race.
House Republican leader McCarthy named himself the next Speaker of the House, campaigning to create a red tsunami, but that didn’t happen. NRCC Chairman Tom Emmer has positioned himself as House majority whip in a GOP-led Congress. However, he and the committee he chaired barely won enough seats to have someone to whip as the party in power.
It’s also impossible to separate the GOP’s national political apparatus from former President Donald Trump, who sent out a memo before the election listing the number of rallies, candidate endorsements, fundraisers and primaries he claimed credit for.
For Trump, his biggest win on Election Day was probably J.D. Vance’s win in Ohio. But the failures of his candidates, including Oz, Walker, Bolduc and many others, call into question his role in selecting candidates and getting them to the finish line – something he brags about constantly.
Ultimately, the rest of the GOP machine poured money and time into races in which Trump-backed primary candidates advanced to general, but it was all below Trump (and in some cases Democrats who currently endorsed those same candidates). proven theory that these candidates would be easier to defeat).
This isn’t just a matter of Trump’s fault or the GOP establishment’s fault – but the two cannot be separated. However, Trump will not be the one to take responsibility for what happened on Tuesday, especially since his announcement scheduled for next Tuesday will be considered a preview of the 2024 campaign. Take, for example, Don Bolduc’s defeat, for which Trump denied any responsibility for the outcome in New Hampshire, instead blaming himself for “losing tonight when, after his huge victory in the primary, he disavowed his long-standing position on voter fraud in the 2020 presidential primaries.”
So where will the real answers come from and who will be held accountable? Trump clearly has no intention of admitting any problems that may have resulted from his election, nor will he accept any responsibility for the outcome. Will the RNC produce an autopsy report, as it did after 2012, highlighting areas where the party felt it missed the mark? Will Tom Emmer explain what happened and why he didn’t deliver a clear GOP majority in a cycle that should have been about flipping Republican seats like taking candy from a child? Will Rick Scott explain why the Senate map didn’t look like the polls showed in recent weeks? Why didn’t the Republican Party candidates achieve the 52-seat majority he predicted a week before Election Day? Will Kevin McCarthy explain why his Gingrich-style “Commitment to America” didn’t sway voters as he claimed? Why didn’t his work as a House Republican leader and campaigner aid his party win a significant majority? His absence for many hours on election night suggests he is not ready to answer for what happened.
These are all the questions GOP voters should be asking after Tuesday’s deeply disappointing election results. No one believed that “democracy is on the ballot” was the winning argument presented by President Biden and the Democrats, and yet that argument apparently prevailed over what Republicans were presenting as their final argument. “Democracy” wasn’t even among the top issues mentioned by voters, who exit polls in key states showed were deeply dissatisfied with Biden’s policies. However, Republican proposals on the economy, national security and law and order have not led to victories.
Once the dust settles after Election Day, it’s time for GOP voters to get answers about what happened.
