Republicans reeling from their worst midterm defeat in half a century are finding out that breaking free of President Donald Trump may be harder than losing under his sway.
Calls to purge the 80-year-old from GOP politics are louder now than at any point since his first White House bid, the Washington Post reported, but after a decade spent remaking the party in his image, Republican leaders and activists are finding a post-Trump party far easier to imagine than to build.
“It’s like the event horizon of a black hole,” one Republican operative told the Post. “Trump exerts this huge amount of gravity, and beyond that, you know it’s going to be different, but you don’t know what it’s going to look like.”
The operative, who supports Trump’s agenda, said easing out of the president's grip will raise philosophical, political and even logistical problems, right down to the speaking lineup at a convention that’s still two years away.
“Is Trump going to tolerate not being the final speaker at the RNC? I think that’s an open question,” the operative said.
Tuesday’s results showed that Trump has become a serious liability. Republicans lost statewide races in Texas, Iowa and Kansas. In Mississippi, a Democrat was narrowly leading the Senate race Thursday night with votes still being counted. Voters were angry over the Iran war, stubborn inflation and questions about how Trump’s family and friends have gotten rich.
Longtime Trump frenemy Tucker Carlson declared “the end of the Trump era,” saying there was “no coming back for a generation.”
Yet Trump still holds the levers. His super PAC, MAGA Inc., has raised nearly $450 million this cycle and had more than $164 million on hand in mid-October. He keeps the backing of most right-wing media and still dominates primaries, and fewer and fewer Republicans are willing to cross him. Of the seven GOP senators who voted to convict him in 2021, only Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski will still be in office in January.
“Trump is the party. The party is Trump. Trump is the agenda. The agenda is Trump,” said former Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), who Trump helped oust after he backed Ron DeSantis in 2024. “I think it’s very difficult to say today, what does the party stand for?”
Outgoing Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), whose seat flipped to Democrats, floated Nikki Haley, Brian Kemp or Glenn Youngkin as 2028 standard-bearers for a return to Reagan-style conservatism.
Others say voters didn’t reject Trump’s agenda, just his detours from it.
“I think the rebuke here is that we asked for America First, and you gave us this oligarch-first, gold-filigree-in-the-Oval-Office b------t,” a former first-term official said.
Curt Mills of The American Conservative doubts Republicans will cut ties anytime soon.
“I don’t think Trump’s going to be dumped,” Mills said. “Trump is the girl we went to dance with.”