“It’s the morning after the night before,
And I swear to God I’ll never do this anymore.”
After Tuesday’s nationwide electoral rout, Republicans face a choice. They can steer towards becoming a credible conservative alternative again, or remain a personality cult bobbing about in a self-created bubble of chaos and bombast. With a shrinking electorate.
About a year ago, I discovered Nathan Carter, the popular Irish country singer who scored in the charts with The Morning After. I was listening to Pandora, and I smiled today at the serendipity, given the political events dominating every newscast.
No one can claim that what happened was an ordinary midterm correction. It was a complete, unvarnished repudiation of a political party. And the GOP must now decide whether it has the courage to learn from it. First, the party must accept that Donald Trump is no longer its greatest electoral asset. He is its greatest liability.
Second, Trump’s enablers and inside yes-men were a mere fraction of the problem. The truth is that elected leaders can only go as far as their supporters allow them to go, and for the better part of a decade too many MAGA Republican voters across the nation chose blind, stupefying loyalty over any shred of accountability, and cheered on loathsome conduct and ridiculous overreach in policymaking (ICE gunning down American citizens on public streets) they would have condemned in anyone else, and thereby were a major reason severe backlash occurred Tuesday. The GOP base must carry their share of what happened Tuesday to their party.
The lesson is not that Republicans should find a more efficient way of flattering Trump. It is that they must stop confusing loyalty to one man with loyalty to conservative principles. After all, Trump is no more a conservative than President Howard Taft was a vegetarian. From red ink in Washington, to smashing free trade, to ripping up alliances, and cozying up to Russia and international despots, the Republican Party today is not even a whisper of what it was when Ronald Reagan was in the Oval Office.
Given Trump’s mental state, it is impossible to say clearly what direction he’ll take as he faces becoming a diminished player in our nation’s political future. He will have to face the fact that Republican contenders for 2028 are starting to spread their wings, and they will not be looking to include him in their plans. He is toxic. He may try to assert the role of being ‘under attack’ from the Democratic congressional majority, and seek to revive street cred among the base of the party, the very base who must be held accountable for having fallen for his cheap stunts and politics over the past decade. The GOP can no longer pretend that every utterance from Trump is a pronouncement that must be obeyed.
If the Republican Party is to find any footing again, it must jettison grievance politics as a substitute for governing. The party has spent too much time creating culture wars and cruel policies that run counter to the growing diversity in our land. Conservatives can talk about immigration reform, school choice, and public safety, but they cannot be excuses for attacking institutions, demonizing opponents, overt racism, or treating political power as a license for personal revenge.
The Republican Party should be able to say plainly that it made mistakes and how it has learned from them. Because the party has been given clear warning. The nation has demonstrated that it is not obliged to remain loyal to a party that has forgotten how to govern.
And as Nathan Carter would sing (if there were another verse), the next morning may be even worse.
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