Experienced sportswriters know that the drama is often richer in the losing team’s locker room, but no matter how dire the loss, shortstops usually try to hit second base. The same cannot be said about the mood within the Republican Party after the midterm elections. Within hours of the Republican Party’s dismal failure to produce a “red wave,” the blade was turned on the party’s presumed leader. “Republicans have followed Donald Trump over the edge,” said David Urban, one of the former president’s former advisers. TimesOn Twitter, Fox News’ White House correspondent Jackie Heinrich quoted a Republican source. We have a Trump problem. ”
The particular grievances these Republicans have against Trump are not of a moral or legal nature. In effect, the candidates were carefully selected. Many of these duds had Mr. Trump’s support for just one reason: his. It’s loyalty over lies.As Chris Christie said, “The only animated element is [for Trump] Do you think the 2020 election was stolen?” This loyalty test prompted Trump to endorse a huckster doctor (Mehmet Oz, Pennsylvania). A foggy ex-football star (Hershel Walker, Georgia), who is said to have urged former Paramores to undergo surgery, although he supported a nationwide ban on abortion. And young venture capitalists found it easy to ponder the wisdom of the Unabomber in their dorm room (Blake Masters, Arizona). The morning after the election, Trump reportedly lashed out at people in his circle. What a man he is
Democrats have had enough of these cycles and are a little fed up. Republicans are walking around forever, claiming they’ve had enough of Trump’s excesses, but they’ve gotten over it and are lining up behind him again. The number one reason I think it will, which is actually the only reason, is that now there is an alternative. “Defuturewas the giant headline on Rupert Murdoch’s New York front page Position on wednesday. Of course, it was posted with a photo of a smiling Ron DeSantis. Position The next day, a caricature of Trump stumbling on a wall ran across the page.Trumpty DumptyFrom Fox News to Trumpworld itself, supporters were fleeing. When the results aired on CBS, Trump’s former chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said, “DeSantis won tonight and Trump isn’t doing very well.”
Post-mortem analyzes are still accumulating, but already suggest patterns. The Republicans had no trouble finding their base. Their struggle was to win independent voters who customarily rejected the party in power. And this time, Republicans had a huge advantage, from high inflation to low approval ratings for incumbent presidents. According to Nate Cohn, TimesRepublican candidates did not fare where abortion rights were on the ballot, and where Republican candidates backed Trump’s challenge to the election. It emphasized the Republican plan to undermine it.) The election question was simple.
DeSantis’ rise on the national stage mirrored his political success in Florida. He won nearly 33,000 votes in the 2018 gubernatorial election, and on Tuesday he was re-elected by more than a million votes, making the state’s population about the same. From purple to persuasive red, like in Australia. He made big gains among Hispanic voters and, perhaps most surprisingly to Democrats, won Miami-Dade County, traditionally the stronghold of the Democratic Party. But I don’t know what solution he offers to the extremism problem. DeSantis, like the former president, is a staunch culture warrior and shares Trump’s willingness to use brutality as a political weapon. After all, it was DeSantis who tricked Texas immigrants into boarding the plane and sending them out to Martha’s Vineyard. What appears to be a shift in enthusiasm from the former president to DeSantis is that many Republicans have replaced one personality cult with another in order to move away from Trump and his particular obsessions without changing the nature of Trumpism. This suggests that we are trying to replace the
It’s a cynical choice. But in one important respect, it can also be a small sign of progress. A glimmer of hope in this election lies in scattered signs that the era of Stop the Steal and the Republican Party’s blatant challenge to democracy may be receding. Even the critics were quick to concede defeat. DeSantis isn’t much different from Trump politically, but he didn’t say the 2020 election was stolen.
By observing who is acting relaxed and who is feeling anxious, we can trace the impact of the midterm elections on presidential politics. At Wednesday’s press conference, Joe Biden, who turns 80 this month, was positively exuberant. DeSantis simply soaked in what he called a “timeless triumph.” Trump, on the other hand, showed an enthusiastic urgency. Republican officials, including likely-to-be House Speaker-elect Kevin McCarthy, reportedly persuaded Trump out of announcing his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election on the eve of the midterm elections. . Instead, Trump announced his announcement: a major speech he says he will give at Mar-a-Lago on Nov. 15. Later that week, when Hurricane Nicole threatened Palm Beach County, Trump posted on Truth Social, the platform he founded after being banned from Twitter, saying, “All power to Governor Ron DeSanctimonias. He targeted a Murdoch-owned outlet that was believed to be “doing its best.” He’s an average Republican governor with good public relations. ”
It makes sense that DeSantis has become a Trump obsession. One political truism is that he thinks only two people really matter in politics at any given time. It’s the president and the person the president is arguing with. For more than five years, Trump has been one of those two. Now he has a challenger. ♦
