Despite the best efforts of the president and the Republican National Committee, voters in Alabama didn’t elect a man credibly accused of sexual predation to the U.S. Senate.
It isn’t much to celebrate, particularly as the candidate who won, while undoubtedly the better man, is a progressive Democrat. But for conservatives who have worried about the corruption of their movement and wondered whether each new low was, finally, the nadir, the fact that Roy Moore is not headed to Capitol Hill counts as good news. Republicans won’t have to answer for his everyday ignorance and open bigotry in Washington. And Democrats lose the opportunity to portray Moore as the face of an intolerant and amoral Republican party, an effort that would have been amplified by unending coverage of his every kooky utterance.
It is good news, but it won’t last.
If Democrats don’t have Roy Moore to paint as the face of the GOP, they will have the man most responsible for the party’s embrace of him: Donald Trump. And at this moment—not quite a year after his inauguration and not quite a year before the 2018 midterms—that’s a grim prospect for Republicans.
Smart analysts are warning against predicting a Democratic wave next November, particularly with a Republican-friendly Senate map. They may be right. Eleven months is a long time in politics. There will be issues of consequence that no one can anticipate.
Trump’s inside-the-beltway enthusiasts understandably highlight his accomplishments. Deregulation. Fewer illegal border crossings. Reversing Obama’s failures against jihadism. Leaving the Paris Accord. A cascade of strong judicial appointments led, most importantly, by Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. These achievements prove the doubters wrong, they say, and show Trump on the path to a successful presidency. And this list doesn’t include the likely passage of tax reform, a prospective big policy win that Republicans hope to ride through November. These are achievements, we agree. But they don’t camouflage the electoral problem.
The tax plan is unpopular. So is Donald Trump. And so are Republicans.
Just 29 percent of Americans support the tax-reform proposal, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll. In a Monmouth poll released on December 13, one day after Moore’s defeat, just 32 percent of voters approved of Trump’s job as president. On the generic ballot test that asked voters whether they’re likely to vote for a Republican or Democrat in next year’s midterms, Democrats had a 15-point advantage: 51-36.
In strictly electoral terms, Republicans face a dilemma. Trump is wildly popular with the party’s base. He is intensely disliked by everyone else. To win primaries, Republicans think they have to run as Trump acolytes. Doing so makes them considerably less appealing in the general election.
Ed Gillespie discovered this running for Virginia’s governorship. Gillespie, a mainstream conservative, didn’t embrace Trump personally, but he ran on unmistakably Trumpy themes. The result is that he barely survived a primary challenge from a clown-show Trumper and then lost the general by nearly double-digits. When David Axelrod recently asked Gillespie if he’d recommend other Republicans run for office in this environment, Gillespie responded, “I don’t think I would.”
Too many Republicans on the Hill have come to precisely the same conclusion, opting for retirement rather than fighting to keep seats in competitive districts and states. Those who remain seem determined to bind themselves ever more tightly to an unpopular president.
House Freedom Caucus members, who came into office as the most ideologically pure of conservatives, now speak of the anti-ideological Trump in reverential terms. Senator Lindsey Graham isn’t up for reelection until 2020, but his efforts to stave off a primary challenge in South Carolina have started early. Not long ago, Graham was warning his fellow Republicans about the perils of embracing the “kooky” Donald Trump, whom he declared “unfit for office.” Lately, he has preferred to ingratiate himself with the president, praising Trump’s political instincts and offering tributes to his golf courses and his golf game.
What many Republicans on the Hill fail to understand, and what the debacles in Virginia and Alabama ought to have taught them, is that what works for Donald Trump doesn’t work for others. Trump’s aims are primarily personal. You don’t have to be part of the “resistance” to acknowledge that Trump seeks personal adulation over everything else. His self-regard may lead him to make a wise decision or a stupid one. But it is what drives him, not any particular set of principles or ideals. For Republicans to emulate him or embrace his brand will bring about nothing but the party’s ruin.
We don’t pretend to have a solution to this dilemma. We’re heartened by the willingness of some Republicans to defy Trump’s awful judgment on Roy Moore. It was the right thing to do and, in the long term, the smart thing to do. This emperor has no coattails.
