Dem
54
Ties
2
GOP
44
Often after a devastating loss, a losing party performs an autopsy to see what went wrong so it can fix it next time. Will the RNC hire a political pathologist to do the surgery this week? Or next week? Or any week? Don't bet on it. No, the knives are out and everybody is about to stab everybody else in the back to solve the problem.
It is increasingly obvious to many Republicans, at least those in the Senate, that the core problem is Donald Trump.
His policies are extremely unpopular and his candidate choices were disastrous. But how do you tell a tyrant that the
best thing he could do for the party is to announce his resignation and go back to Florida to plan his presidential
library hotel and condo complex? Besides, he does not give a hoot about the future of the Republican Party. His only
hoots are for Donald J. Trump and how he can milk the office of president for every cent it is worth—and how he
can hide his ill-gotten gains from the team of forensic accountants a possible future Democratic AG might hire.
As the results started dribbling in Tuesday and then came in as a stream and finally as a torrent, Trump got into deflection mode. His first reaction is that the problem was that he wasn't on the ballot, so nobody voted. Whose fault was it that he wasn't on the ballot? After all, he could have resigned as president and run for governor of Florida.
Almost as quickly, top Republicans began pointing their fingers back at him. They said (truthfully) that he was the problem, on account of his wildly unpopular policies (wars, both shooting and trade), his choice of dreadful candidates, and his insistence of traveling all over the country to hold rallies, which energized Democrats much more than it energized Republicans.
J.D. Vance dared to speak the unspeakable. As early as Wednesday morning, he said the problem was the war in Iran and its consequences. He is surely going to try to subtly or maybe not so subtly suggest that he was against the war from the start and if Trump had listened to him, none of this would have happened, the country would not have wasted $50 billion and counting, the Strait of Hormuz would be open, and the Republicans would have won the midterms. But this analysis comes dangerously close to blaming the king directly. Kings don't like that. This one in particular.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Blue Dot), who didn't run for reelection, said Trump's analysis is "nonsense." Then he said the quiet part out loud: "The No. 1 reason for Republicans' showing was the president's unpopularity." Second, according to Bacon, was the president's decision to back what he called "feeble candidates" in key Senate races. Of course he meant Ken Paxton, who is more malign than feeble, and Darline Graham, who is probably a nice and kind person, but not Senate material. Soon-to-be-no-longer-the-Majority-Leader John Thune (R-SD) skirted the issue of responsibility entirely and issued a brief 177-word statement praising Trump's successes in his second term.
Dick Wadhams, a long-time Republican consultant in Colorado, noted that most of the candidates who lost key Senate races in conservative states were recruited by or endorsed by the president. He said: "This was not a pro-Democratic vote. This was an anti-Trump vote." The Republican mayor of Oklahoma City, David Holt, said that his party was "morally and intellectually bankrupt." Then he went on to say: "I can't think of a midterm that is more directly tied to a single person and their utter failure."
This is not the end of the "autopsy." It will go on for quite a while, as more and more Republicans find their long-lost... spines and blame Trump directly in an attempt to salvage the future of the Republican Party, something Trump cares not a whit for. (V)