By Jim
Geraghty
Monday,
November 14, 2022
Since we
last spoke on Wednesday morning, the 2022 midterms have somehow gotten worse
for the Republican Party:
·
The
GOP blew a golden opportunity to win control of the Senate when it split 50–50.
It’s more than fair to wonder if Georgia Republicans will be quite as motivated
on December 6, now that control of the Senate is no longer a stake.
·
Control
of the House is no guarantee, and even if the GOP does win, a majority if
218-220 seats is barely a functioning majority at all.
·
Republicans
will begin 2023 with fewer governors than this year. They essentially forfeited
gubernatorial races in Massachusetts, Maryland, Illinois, and Pennsylvania by
running fringe candidates completely unsuited to those states’ electorates.
They didn’t come all that close to dislodging Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan —
Tudor Dixon lost by almost eleven percentage points! — and fell considerably
short in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and New Mexico. We’re still waiting for the
final call in Arizona, but right now it looks like Katie Hobbs — the woman who
wouldn’t debate! — is going to be the state’s next governor.
·
Traditionally,
the president’s party loses a lot of state-legislature seats in the midterm
elections — around 400! — but this year, Democrats are
on course to gain seats. Democrats took control of the Minnesota Senate, both chambers of the
Michigan legislature, and the Pennsylvania House.
Considering
the national political environment, Biden’s approval rating, the inflation
rate, and all the rest, the midterms amount to a debacle for the Republican
Party and the cause of limited government. Yes, divided government is likely
arriving, but the
wide-ranging House GOP agenda is likely to be dramatically curtailed, with the presumptive next speaker
of the House, Kevin McCarthy, having exceptionally limited leverage in
negotiations.
Already,
the usual suspects are concocting a narrative where their preferred lousy candidates
don’t have to change anything; it’s everybody else’s fault but the candidates.
Losing
GOP Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters blames Mitch
McConnell. Losing
GOP Michigan gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon blames the
Michigan Republican Party. Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado is in a neck-and-neck race,
and she blames the
GOP’s Colorado candidates for U.S. Senate and governor.
So much
for being the party of personal responsibility.
Masters,
Dixon, Doug Mastriano, Mehmet Oz, Kari Lake, Don Bolduc, Herschel Walker, Dan
Cox . . . in this narrative, those were all terrific candidates, it’s just that
everyone else around them failed. Sure, sure.
(Note
that Oz, Lake, Masters, Walker, and Dixon had never run for any office before.
Bolduc had never won a race before, and Mastriano and Cox had only been elected
to state legislative seats. This means they didn’t have much experience at
running a campaign, and not much of a fundraising or get-out-the-vote network
in place. Winning a competitive Senate race is a really tall order for any
first-time candidate, even a good one.)
For
those who are inclined to blame vast conspiracies guaranteeing Democratic
victories in statewide races, I find it a little odd that the conspiracy forgot
to rig the statewide
vote for Arizona’s state treasurer, which Republican Kimberly Yee is leading, 55.5 percent to 45.5
percent. The conspiracy forgot to rig the Nevada governor, lieutenant governor,
and state controller’s elections, all won by the GOP. The conspiracy forgot to
rig the Wisconsin treasurer’s race, won by Republican John Lieber. Honestly, if
there was a vast shadowy conspiracy to rig the elections in favor of the
Democrats, it is the sloppiest and least-effective one since 2020, where the
conspiracy forgot to prevent the GOP from winning a bunch of House seats.
The next
complaint is that Democratic victories are attributable to “vote harvesting.”
If by “vote harvesting,” you mean that Democrats did everything possible to get
their voters to cast ballots early, then yes, you’re right. The irony is that
in the pre-Trump era, state and local Republican parties embraced early
voting. Every
person who cast a ballot ahead of that key Tuesday in early November was one
less person you had to worry about on Election Day. Certain states saw GOP
leads in early voting in 2010 and in 2014.
But in
2016, even after Donald Trump had won the presidential election, he bashed early
voting as somehow unreliable. He continued this
stance into 2020, calling vote-by-mail “corrupt,” contradicting the message from certain
state and local Republican parties and grassroots organizers.
Republicans
who ignored the denunciations of early voting, and saw it as an opportunity,
tended to thrive. Early voting helped Glenn Youngkin
win Virginia in 2021. This
year, while Trump continued to express his opposition to early voting and imply
that it wasn’t a trustworthy way of casting votes, Florida governor Ron
DeSantis was urging
supporters to cast ballots early. “If you wait till Election Day, you get a flat tire, you can’t take a
mulligan,” DeSantis said. “Whereas if you vote early, you do it, you’re in the
can. If something happens [while you’re on your way], you got another shot at
it. We can’t be complacent about this.” Republicans won the early
vote in Florida this year.
Beware
of anyone who gives you an all-too-easy “the problem with the Republican Party
is people like you, the solution is people like me” answer. I think Trump was a
big factor in GOP underperformance this cycle, but he wasn’t the only factor.
In
Colorado, where I spent the past few days, the distinctly non-Trumpy and arguably
anti-Trump GOP
Senate nominee Joe O’Dea lost by almost 14 points to incumbent Democrat Michael
Bennet. Meanwhile, the GOP gubernatorial candidate, Heidi Ganahl, described
herself as “the MAGA
candidate” and
picked an election denier as a running mate. Ganahl lost by almost 19 points.
And as mentioned above, Lauren Boebert is hanging on by the skin of her teeth
in the state’s most conservative and pro-Trump district, encompassing much of
the Western half of the state.
Colorado’s
a pretty blue state — this year, it looked ultramarine — but just eight years
ago, Republicans won a bunch of statewide races there, including the U.S.
Senate race. A non-Trump identity didn’t work for O’Dea, but the MAGA label
worked even worse for Ganahl, and Boebert’s in-your-face, Trump-esque style
appears to have alienated a small but potentially decisive percentage of
Republicans in her culturally conservative district.
To win
in once-purple, now-blue places such as Colorado, Republicans will need to shed
the albatross of Trump and broaden their appeal even further. The national
exit-poll numbers tell
a story of a minority party that was poised to win big if it could just not be
perceived as insane:
About half of voters say inflation factored significantly in their vote,
as groceries, gasoline, housing, food and other costs have shot up in the past
year and raised the specter of inflation. The economy was an overarching
concern for voters, about 8 in 10 of whom say it was in bad shape. A slim
majority of voters say Biden’s policies caused inflation to be near 40-year
highs, while just under half are blaming factors beyond his control, such as
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Yet
independents — 31 percent of the electorate this year — narrowly split
in favor of Democrats, 49 percent to 47 percent.
Who
Should Lead Congressional Republicans?
There
are three principles House and Senate Republicans should use to select their
next leaders, after this most disappointing of midterm elections:
·
The
GOP should not hold its leadership elections until there are declared winners
in all House and Senate races. (There are still 20 House seats without declared
winners.) This may require some patience on the part of senators than
representatives. How would you like to be Herschel Walker, win the runoff, and
then learn that you don’t get a say on GOP Senate leader because the rest of
the caucus already held the vote before you won your race?
·
Disgruntlement
with Mitch McConnell or Kevin McCarthy is only half of what’s needed for a
leadership change. If you don’t want McConnell to lead the Republicans in the
Senate, then you need another Republican senator who both wants the job and can
defeat McConnell. “Down with Mitch!” must be followed by “Up with [somebody
else]!” Otherwise, you’re just venting frustration. At least in the House,
Republicans disgruntled with McCarthy have a declared alternative, House
Freedom Caucus chairman Andy Biggs of Arizona. But the type of leadership
preferred by the Freedom Caucus is not necessarily the type of leadership
preferred by the caucus as a whole.
·
The
leaders of Republicans in the House and Senate ought to be in their jobs
because they’ve got good potential as leaders of their caucuses — and
preferably a strong record of leading their party in previous battles over
legislation. If a team wants to change coaches, the new guy has to be better
than the old guy to get better results. A key question is: What do
congressional Republicans want their leaders to do? It’s not enough to just to
go on Fox News and say things that other Republicans like hearing. Ideally, the
next GOP congressional leaders would be shrewd strategists and tacticians,
understand the needs of every corner of their caucus, and have exceptional
skills at keeping a small majority or minority unified. McConnell and McCarthy
have their flaws, but I don’t see a lot of figures in Congress who seem like
obvious improvements on them — and who, again, both want the job and can win it.
ADDENDA: Thanks to Isaac Schorr for pinch-hitting for me on
Thursday and Friday.
Over in
the Washington Post, some guy — okay, it’s me — lays out the case for how
the GOP nominating Ron DeSantis for president would represent a welcome return
to normalcy and sanity in American politics. Even if you’re a nationalist-populist,
it is fair to wonder if the increasingly erratic and vindictive Donald Trump
gets you where you want to go. If you’re a conservative, you’ve got good reason
to want a president who actually cares about policy, governance, and running
the executive branch. And even if you’re liberal, DeSantis would represent an
improvement because he isn’t inclined to burn down the country in a tantrum if
he thinks someone is being unfair to him.
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