According to a report from Politico, Republicans are casting a wary eye at the 2024 election already, hoping to avoid being saddled with unelectable candidates handpicked by putative "kingmaker" Donald Trump as they were in the 2022 midterms.
Still licking their wounds after the 2022 "red wave" failed to materialize -- leaving them losing a seat in the Senate and only taking over the House by the slimmest of margins -- the GOP leadership is looking to get ahead of the curve and line up candidates they think can win before the former president gums up the works.
As Politco's Ally Mutnick wrote, "The GOP gained control of Congress thanks to wins by some of their strongest recruits in years, a cohort that included decorated military veterans and a first-generation American. But far-right, inexperienced and Donald Trump-endorsed candidates lost other winnable seats across the country from Ohio to Michigan to Washington State."
According to one current House Republican, if the GOP hopes to make any gains in 2024, they need to avoid letting Trump dictate the future of the party.
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“We lost some seats that we should have won because we had bad candidates,” lamented Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL), who lost a member-versus-member primary after redistricting. “[Democrat] Marcy [Kaptur] is tough to beat because she’s a great candidate, and she’s somebody who works hard. But our candidate in that race was a fricking disaster.”
Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) was even more critical about the 2022 Republican Party flop.
“We lost races we easily should have won. We elected two 25-year-olds to be our nominees. That’s batshit crazy,” the lawmaker complained. “I’m sure they’re nice people, but they have two years work experience at most. So in a general election, people are like, ‘No, we’re not electing that.’”
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