The whole country is surprised at the outcome of the midterm elections, and the GOP is struggling to make sense of the Party’s failure to perform as the polls suggested they would.
Expectations were high for retaking the House and even the Senate. But the Democrats are holding on to more power than anyone thought that they would.
Democrats will not only keep the Senate, but they may even increase their advantage depending on how Georgia’s runoff election between Herschel Walker and Sen. Raphael Warnock ends.
Officials on the right are trying to figure out just what went wrong, and the finger-pointing is increasing.
Many blame the failure of Republicans on former President Donald Trump and his endorsements of candidates. They say his choices when it comes to some of the candidates were wrong.
Other people are saying that the bad press around the former president had a negative effect on the whole party. They believe that all the news stories about the Capitol riot on January 6, as well as the FBI investigations, gave the left too much political ammo against Trump and his candidates.
Still others on the right think that former president Trump is being used as a scapegoat by those who are really to blame for the party’s failure. The members of the GOP establishment are the real culprits. This group is focusing on two people who are seen as the main power players in the old right guard: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) wrote a tweet saying that the old GOP is on its last legs and it is high time that the party moves forward without them. “The old party is dead. Time to bury it. Build something new,” he tweeted.
When looking at the GOP establishment against Donald Trump, many Republicans believe that the establishment is more to blame for the midterms. The former president certainly made some bad calls during the campaign process, but he was not in the driver’s seat of the Republican machine. The performance of the GOP candidates is directly under the direction of the party’s leadership. The established party leaders are the ones responsible for directing where the money is going to go to fuel the machine. They are the ones who are supposed to make sure the GOP won back Congress.
The quality of the candidate does matter, but messaging is more important. And Republicans have a record of failing here. In this last campaign, they let history repeat itself by criticizing Democratic policies but not offering a clear alternative.
Remember with McCarthy attempting to create the “Commitment to America,” McConnell stalled the process and made sure they stuck to the critical strategy.
McCarthy tried to roll out his strategy, but after announcing it we never heard about it again. It would have been effective for them to promote the agenda as an alternative to the crazy proposals coming from the left.
The same old story that has been repeated in the party for decades. People want to hear what they are voting for, not just what they are voting against. You just can’t blame Trump for this bad strategy.
Some have come up with a term for their discontent, “McLeadership,” referring to McCarthy, McConnell, and McDaniel.
J.R. Majewski, a Republican candidate who recently lost his chance in Ohio’s ninth congressional district, wrote an article about his lack of support for the GOP. He was told not to express support for Trump even though the former president was popular in his district.
“They simply did not want me talking about him. My staff would tell me the NRCC was angry, and that I needed to tighten it up on their messaging or lose campaign funds. They hung this threat over our necks like the sword of Damocles,” Majewski wrote.
It just seems like Republicans were more concerned with Trump than winning. Since there are no serious challengers to these established leaders, we probably have at least two more challenging years.
