The schizophrenic nature of today’s Republican Party is leading to failure. If the party wants to win again, they have to pick a direction and stick with it.
In Kentucky, Daniel Cameron, a top-notch recruit endorsed by both Trump and Mitch McConnell, lost to a Democratic incumbent. And in Virginia, instead of delivering what many expected to be a trifecta to Governor Glenn Youngkin, Republicans lost both houses.
What is going on? In an era of an incredibly unpopular Democratic president, why do Republicans keep losing off year elections?
Some say that it’s all Trump’s fault. But it’s less about Trump and more about his voters and the failure of the Republican Party to translate voter support for the former president into support for other Republicans.
Republicans have been failing to convert Trump voters into regular GOP voters because the GOP fundamentally doesn’t understand the nature of the Trump voter. Many of them are not traditional Republicans. In fact, some of them are not Republicans at all.
As many as 15 percent of supporters of Trump in 2016 also voted for former President Obama four years prior. In 2020, Trump won an even larger share of traditional Democratic voters. This group largely comprises of minorities and the white working class. Many of them still harbor the same distrust of the Republican Party as an institution that they’ve always had. Philosophically, they are more John F. Kennedy than William F. Buckley: They view Trump’s brand as separate from the Republican brand. They do not respond to traditional Republican messaging on issues or candidates.
The GOP does not know how to properly communicate with these voters, so these voters are not motivated by the party’s arguments.
We have seen Republican candidates who cling to Trump lose while candidates who distance themselves from him also suffer the same fate.
