We’ve reached the stage of the 2018 election cycle in which there’s a debate over whether conservatives critical of President Trump should be actively rooting for Democratic win in this November’s midterm elections. Whatever the reasoning for voting Democratic, nobody should be kidding themselves into thinking that a massive GOP defeat would teach a lesson to Republicans and make them less likely to support Trumpism.
It’s worth cautioning that we should not read too much into the latest wave of people described as Republicans or conservatives coming out in favor of Democrats. Many of the names that have come out, such as David Frum, have spent the past decade as critics of the GOP and conservatism, and still more were Never Trump in 2016. The vast pile of missives written against Trump by these folks in 2016 did nothing to alter the outcome of the primary or general elections.
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Now, it’s one thing for George Will, more ideologically conservative than most Trump critics, to make a more narrow argument that divided government would be the only way for Congress to reassert its constitutional prerogative and provide a check on Trump’s worst impulses.
But Matt Lewis, in a recent piece, described the belief that “electoral defeat might be the last best chance for purging the part of Reagan from its newfound Trumpist impulses.” He observed that “The goal is to force an awakening — a sort of defibrillation treatment — that might shock the GOP back to its senses.”
This is, simply put, a pipe dream. There’s always this fantasy that a defeat will not only send a message to a party, but that they’ll learn the exact message that any given person wants. The reality is that just as everybody can make different calculations about who to support in a given election, people can come to drastically different explanations for defeat. And people are much more likely to rely on explanations for a loss that bolster their own positions and blame their opponents.
After Republicans were defeated in 2006 largely in the face of a massive backlash against the Iraq War, far from moving in a less hawkish direction, Republicans in 2008 nominated Sen. John McCain, who was if anything more interventionist that George W. Bush. After 2012, Republicans infamously put out an autopsy saying that they needed to moderate on the immigration issue to win over Hispanics, and voters’ response four years later was to elect Trump. Post 2016, is there any evidence that Democrats have been trying to move away from identity politics and make a greater effort to reach out to white working class voters?
Practically speaking, if Republicans lose the House in 2018, the anti-Trump backlash will be most intense in certain suburban districts where his support is the softest. That means that the Republican voices most critical of Trump will be the most likely to lose, and the remaining Republicans will be representing the most Trump-supporting districts in the country. In short, a theoretically Republican minority would likely be more Trumpian rather than less.
Sure, Trump critical Republicans will write about how GOP can no longer win in the suburbs because of Trump. But what Trump supporters will see is that the candidates who defended Trump were more likely to win than his critics. And as Lewis alluded to, many Trump supporters will see any loss as a result of the betrayal by Never Trump dead-enders.
Also, it’s worth noting that there isn’t even a unified message among Trump critics as to where the Republican Party should go. For instance, I’d love for Republicans to become a more consistent limited government party, whereas somebody like Pete Wehner has consistently argued for Republicans to embrace a greater role for the state.
So, vote for Democrats if you must. Just abandon this fantasy that it’s going to teach Republicans a lesson.
