Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) should be digging into the congressional budget to see if there is any money left over from former President Donald Trump’s southern border wall project. Whatever remains should be used to encase Mar-a-Lago in a mile-high wall of structural integrity not seen since the Ming Dynasty.
Republicans’ disappointing performance in Tuesday’s midterm elections proves Trump is an anchor on the party. For whatever reason, voters who are dissatisfied with the Democratic Party and inclined to vote for the GOP will not do so as long as it’s still taking marching orders from Trump.
But Trump and his insufferable ego just don’t care. The former president is expected to announce another run at the Republican nomination for president next week, even though his doing so would almost certainly return control of the Senate to Democrats for the remainder of Biden’s first term. With Georgia’s Senate race heading for a runoff this December, Trump is poised to once again put his own interests ahead of the party’s and sink the whole ship. (Did anyone catch Trump cheering Democrat Michael Bennet’s senate victory in Colorado on Tuesday?)
Trump already gifted an election win to Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in 2020, when he refused to accept the results of the presidential election in Georgia and made Georgia Republican voters believe that it didn’t matter whether they showed up at the polls. Trump couldn’t accept that Georgia voters rejected him and chose President Joe Biden instead. But they did. And if Trump announces yet another presidential run, it will further galvanize and solidify the considerable bloc of voters who decided against him once before.
Reports indicate that Trump is apoplectic about Tuesday’s Senate results. He should be, and particularly about Pennsylvania, where Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz got trounced by someone who couldn’t speak coherently in their debate. The Keystone State debacle is all on Trump. He picked Oz out of the clown-car choir, a move that demonstrated the political savvy of a lamppost. It was his idea to pick this pearly-toothed, crudite-munching multi-millionaire to win a Rust Belt state.
Heckuva job, Brownie!
Trump is also responsible for Republican Herschel Walker’s flailing candidacy in Georgia. For a former president who claims to have boundless intel on political rivals, Walker’s personal affinity for Planned Parenthood would have been useful information for Georgia’s Republican primary electorate. The choice of such a preposterously unsuitable candidate will likely cost Republicans the Senate, but that will only account for a fraction of the damage it’s already done. In a year that saw the overturning of Roe v. Wade, it would be hard to imagine anything more destructive for the pro-life movement than Walker’s high-profile hypocrisy. He has been a gift to Democrats in their efforts to broaden and strengthen pro-abortion laws nationwide.
It beggars belief how Trump could maintain even the scantest level of support among Republicans following the MAGA midterm debacle. But the fact is that he will continue to enjoy the backing of a certain subset within the conservative ranks until the bitter end.
It is the responsibility of Republicans everywhere to excise this electoral cancer now. As I wrote recently, the only path to defeat for the GOP in 2024 runs through Mar-a-Lago. The best case for Trump was as a disruptor within a deeply corroded political system. And arguments for his political acuity were always unpersuasive. He only won in 2016 because Democrats, incredibly, nominated someone even less appealing. And let’s not forget, he lost to a doddering geriatric only a few years ago.
Republican voters no longer need to rely on Trump’s cynical stagecraft in order to shape the narrative and push the conservative agenda. He has outlived his usefulness to the movement, and there are better options moving forward.
Did anyone catch that Florida governor who turned the Sunshine State blood-red on Tuesday? He even won the Latino vote outright.
It’s time for the MAGA crowd to prove that the GOP isn’t just a personality cult, but a strong arm of the broader conservative movement. The time to shift allegiances is now. Otherwise, the critics will have been right all along.
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Peter Laffin is a writer in New England. Follow him on Twitter at @Laffin_Out_Loud.
