MEGHAN MCCAIN: Last night was the final nail in Trump’s political coffin – because too many of his suck-up duds lost an unlosable election. Now is the moment for DeSantis to take charge of the ship
What the hell happened last night? The highly anticipated ‘red wave’ turned into a light pink ripple… at best.
The nation is still waiting for all the election results to come in, but enough has happened to start to understand why so many Republicans are waking up this morning outraged and confused.
According to the exit polls, President Biden’s favorable rating is underwater, a majority of voters are angry and dissatisfied with the direction of the country, and more voters think Biden’s policies are hurting instead of helping them.
We have the highest inflation rate in decades. Crime is up everywhere. The Southern border is a lawless mess, and the American public is less optimistic about the future than we’ve seen in modern times.
The Biden presidency, to put it mildly, is not going well.
There was an expectation among Republicans, as well as many Democrats, that all of the polling laying bare Americans’ fears and frustrations would translate into huge GOP wins.
That just didn’t happen.
The expectations before last night were that Republicans would pick-up somewhere between 20-35 House seats and potentially capture control of the U.S. Senate in an historic wave election rivaling the Republican Revolution in 1994 and the midterm thrashing dealt to President Obama in 2010.
Too many Republicans lost in an unloseable election last night, and they have no one to blame but themselves.
Pundits, analysts and pollsters have been speculating about this for months now.
But this morning, Republicans are white-knuckling it to the end and a GOP House majority, while still likely, is not even a sure thing.
Congressman Kevin McCarthy’s future as Speaker of the House, once thought to be guaranteed, is now officially in play.
The ‘red wave’ was a mirage and nothing of the ‘historic win’ Republicans were anticipating. Nothing.
This will go down as a giant warning sign and, hopefully, a convincing argument against the delusion that President Donald Trump is the future of the GOP.
Too many Republicans lost in an unloseable election last night, and they have no one to blame but themselves.
Trump’s influence in selecting and endorsing candidates is undeniable. And those candidates did not deliver.
Senate candidates like Trump-endorsed Dr. Mehmet Oz fell to John Fetterman, who delivered one of the most stunning debate performances in American history.
Dr. Oz cozied up to Trump early and embraced the MAGA platform. He ended up losing to a man still recovering from a nearly-deadly stroke about whom there are serious questions on his fitness for office.
In fact, nearly every major MAGA candidate and Trump-disciple lost or is likely to lose, with the exception of JD Vance in the Ohio Senate race.
In Arizona, Democrat Mark Kelly is currently leading against Trump-endorsed Blake Masters.
In New Hampshire, Democrat Maggie Hassan defeated conspiracy-spouting Don Boluc.
All the results in Georgia are still unclear, but Trump-backed Senate candidate Hershel Walker is trailing Democrat Rapheal Warnock, while Republican Governor Brian Kemp, who was insulted and belittled by Trump, sailed to easy victory.
There is a simple and easy conclusion to draw from this.
Trump’s MAGA is cancer and it is killing my party. And this should be the final nail in his coffin.
President Trump is no kingmaker, in fact, he is the opposite. He seems to have a knack for picking losing candidates.
That may be because it is more important to Trump, the narcissist, that candidates suck up to him, kiss his ring and vomit up his talking points, instead of running sincere campaigns that connect with voters in an authentic way.
There is one glimmer of hope emerging from this night of disappointment, of course. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida delivered a clean win and he delivered it big last night.
Our electoral process is his vanity project and the Republican primary voters have been happy and willing to placate him. But it’s a different story in a general election.
There is one glimmer of hope emerging from this night of disappointment, of course.
Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida delivered a clean win and he delivered it big last night.
He ran on his record, policy issues and the culture war.
He governed his state so effectively during the Covid years that Florida became a safe haven of sorts for Americans who were sick of draconian lockdowns and the absurdity of wokeness in school and in our culture.
Last night, DeSantis flipped the historically Democratic Miami-Dade county from blue to red for the first time in decades.
Miami-Dade hasn’t voted for a Republican for governor since 2002 or for a Republican for president since 1988.
His appeal among Hispanic voters is undeniable. He carried roughly 65% of the vote in majority Hispanic precincts, that’s 16 percentage points better than he performed just 4 years ago.
It has poured rocket fuel on his presidential ambitions.
But as of Wednesday morning, President Trump is mere days away from an expected announcement of his third run for the White House.
We can see two clear pathways ahead. One leads to success and the other to failure for the GOP.
It is a very clear and easy decision, but never underestimate the Republican Party’s capacity to screw things up.
The GOP is not a Trump cult. The party must give the voters what they want and they’ve made it obvious.
All the results in Georgia are still unclear, but Trump-backed Senate candidate Hershel Walker is trailing Democrat Rapheal Warnock, while Republican Governor Brian Kemp (above), who was insulted and belittled by Trump, sailed to easy victory.
Along with President Trump, every single person in Republican leadership who enabled this embarrassing midterm loss should be held accountable, and that includes Senator Mitch McConnell and Congressman Kevin McCarthy.
Too often, they look the other way, only taking cues from Trump, and expelling people, like Congresswoman Liz Cheney, from her role in leadership.
Not having diversity of opinions in the caucus alienates voters. And now, we see the result.
The Republican Party has a choice this morning.
Remain in the Trump cult and continue to underperform or start supporting serious candidates who care about policy issues, solving actual problems and, most importantly, winning.
To put it in jargon that Trump-land can understand: they’re a bunch of losers.
I hope we can right the ship before it’s too late – and I hope that ship is steered by Ron DeSantis
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