If so, they would hardly be alone this week — although evidence of Donald Trump’s political death is still in short supply. How many times have pundits declared his goose cooked in the past, only to watch Trump soar again?
After the weak performance of the candidates Trump promoted in the primaries this year, though, the support that sustained Trump may be fading. LA Times Doyle McManus notes that one Trump redoubt in particular — the Murdoch media empire — has decided to amplify criticism and blame for Trump across all of its platforms.
This the real “red wave,” he quipped:
The real Red Wave: When the entire Murdoch empire — Fox News, the N.Y. Post, and the WSJ Opinion section — turns simultaneously on Trump pic.twitter.com/mFY41KqgDp
— Doyle McManus (@DoyleMcManus) November 10, 2022
McManus isn’t kidding about the WSJ’s opinion section. Their front-page widget this morning was all about the midterm disappointment, and almost all about Trump’s role in it:
The editorial board provides the harshest commentary on this point. Not only do they blame Trump for the disappointment this week, they argue that Trump’s presence led the GOP to underperform in three previous election cycles as well — one of which seems suddenly relevant this week:
Trumpy Republican candidates failed at the ballot box in states that were clearly winnable. This can’t be what Mr. Trump was envisioning ahead of his “very big announcement” next week. Yet maybe the defeats are what the party needs to hear before 2024. …
Since his unlikely victory in 2016 against the widely disliked Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump has a perfect record of electoral defeat. The GOP was pounded in the 2018 midterms owing to his low approval rating. Mr. Trump himself lost in 2020. He then sabotaged Georgia’s 2021 runoffs by blaming party leaders for not somehow overturning his defeat. That gave Democrats control of the Senate, letting President Biden pump up inflation with a $1.9 trillion Covid bill, appoint a liberal Supreme Court Justice, and pass a $700 billion climate spending hash.
Now Mr. Trump has botched the 2022 elections, and it could hand Democrats the Senate for two more years. Mr. Trump had policy successes as President, including tax cuts and deregulation, but he has led Republicans into one political fiasco after another.
“We’re going to win so much,” Mr. Trump once said, “that you’re going to get sick and tired of winning.” Maybe by now Republicans are sick and tired of losing.
They’re right that there hasn’t been much #winning in the years since 2016. Whether that’s entirely due to Trump is another question, as is what role Trump’s unpopularity does play in it. The 2018 midterms, for instance, were a largely normal response to both an unpopular president but also to a party that had botched its major health-care policy initiative (repealing ObamaCare), had no answer for what would follow it, and then ran on border security rather than the economic boom. Some of that was also Trump, but hardly all of it. It’s fair to put 2020 and then especially the Georgia runoff losses in 2021 on Trump though, given that he underperformed the House GOP in that cycle and then actively discouraged Georgia voters in his fit of pique after losing to Joe Biden.
Mark Levin pushed back this morning at this avalanche of criticism for the midterm disappointment aimed at Trump. Levin specifically referenced Karl Rove’s analysis, which was more focused on Trump’s actual midterm choices for primary candidates, but more broadly rebutted the thrust of blame coming at Trump:
3. And the funds McConnell, et al, spent in Republican primaries smearing MAGA or non-establishment candidates was very destructive. Too many in the establishment put their own lust for power ahead of the best interests of the GOP and, ultimately, the country.
— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) November 10, 2022
6. They blamed the Tea Party for choosing poor candidates in the GOP Senate primaries; otherwise, it was contended, the GOP would have picked more Senate seats. Truth be told, this crowd was also anti-Reagan decades ago, and supported Gerald Ford, another electoral disaster.
— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) November 10, 2022
Levin makes some good points here, but it’s not convincing. When party players promote candidates in primaries — especially to challenge others who might have appealed more to a broader range of voters — they open themselves up to accountability for those choices. That’s not personal, as Michael Corleone might have said; it’s just business. Trump chose candidates who reflected his own hard-populist identity, and those candidates lost races that might otherwise have been won.
Regardless of whether you like Trump or not, that indicates something about the party player’s connection to the electorate, as well as his judgment. That’s not unfair — it’s part of the reason Trump made those choices in the first place. He planned to argue that the country and the party had moved significantly in Trump’s direction had they succeeded, and he would have had a legit case to do so in that instance.
After seeing them lose, however, everyone else has a rational and legit argument that the country and electorate don’t want more Trump. That’s the gamble players take in this business, and in this case, the house has called in its markers with Trump.
Even so, I agree with Levin on the point that the midterm disappointment had other contributing factors. To some extent, the GOP had blinders on some issue sets, especially abortion, and didn’t account for that. Candidate quality mattered too, and not all of the disappointments were Trump-endorsed in the primaries, although most of the winnable-race disappointments were.
Still, Trump is and has been the elephant in the room, largely because he makes everything about himself. Lots of people are concluding that it’s time for fresh and effective leadership without the electoral baggage that Trump carries. Is that fair? That’s not relevant — what matters in politics is what works, and Trump hasn’t worked in favor of Republicans in two straight national elections.
What will be interesting to see is whether this apparent decision in MurdochWorld translates to on-air commentary in Fox News’ prime-time lineup. Stay tuned, literally, I suppose. Adam Baldwin and I will have more on this question in today’s episode of The Amiable Skeptics so tune in too!
Update: It’s already started on daytime Fox. Michelle Tafoya talked about her open letter to Trump, imploring him not to run again:
“Some of the Trump backed candidates struggled and some of it had to do with the election denialism. I wrote an open letter to Donald Trump. It says please Mr. President, don’t run again.” pic.twitter.com/DOToXPMKlt
— Acyn (@Acyn) November 10, 2022
Tafoya was on Outnumbered Thursday when the show held a segment on the right–wing media outlets that held Trump responsible for the Republican Party’s failure to live up to the expected red wave. While #OneLuckyGuy Sean Duffy disagreed with the premise, Kennedy offered her take that voters want what Trump delivered on policy as president, but “without the distraction of his personality.” She also acknowledged those who see Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as “the future” of the GOP. …
When Tafoya got into the mix, she pointed out “some of the Trump-backed candidates really struggled, and some of that had to do with the election-denialism.” Tafoya then apologized to McEnany while referring to an open letter she posted on Substack to implore Trump not to run again.
“It says ‘Please Mr. President, don’t run again,’” Tafoya said. McEnany told Tafoya she didn’t owe her an apology, so the latter continued to remark on how abortion factored into the election.
McEnany hopped back in the conversation after this to say that the conservative movement behind Trump is “not tied to any one person.”
