These conservative luminaries are among several prominent members of the right who have criticized former President Donald Trump in the wake of the GOP’s historically overwhelming performance in the midterm elections. They are right to do so: voters not only rejected many of Trump’s handpicked candidates, they also rejected his attacks on democracy and his claims of a stolen election. If there was a red wave in the foreground, Trump acted as a sea wall defending a blue shore. These protests are not just a dollar less and a few years late. They are also unlikely to amount to much. The traditional conservative establishment did not make Trump and cannot break him. If his political career ends, it will be because the voters who put him in office decide to end it. David A. Graham: America has a majority against MAGA “Trump is a bust for Republicans,” declared Lowry, the editor-in-chief of National Review, in a Politico column. Murdoch’s media empire has also laid blame at Trump’s feet, notably with a New York Post cover story on Thursday that portrayed the former president as “TRUMPTY DUMPTY” and added: “Don (who couldn’t build a wall) had a big fall – can All the men of the Republican Party come back to the party?’ Party officials across the country are pointing the finger at Trump, including in Michigan, where Democrats won up and down the ballot over Trump-backed candidates. “We lost in ’18. We lost in ’20. We lost ’21 to Georgia. And now in ’22 we’re going to lose governors outright, we’re not going to pick up the number of seats in the House that we thought we would, and we may not win the Senate despite a president who has a 40 percent approval rating,” said Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor. who reconciled with Trump but defected (after Trump buried a dagger in his back); “There is only one person responsible for this, and that is Donald Trump.” Trump responded with a series of typically inflammatory social media posts, but even former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has made sure to remain committed to Trump publicly, responded aptly on Twitter: “Conservatives get elected when we do. Not when we’re just railroading social media. That’s how we can win. We are fighting for families and a strong America.” Peter Wehner: More MAGA than ever The temptation to make fun of many of these late arrivals is strong and I won’t resist it. Too many Republicans were willing to stand with Trump when he meddled with the Justice Department, ingratiated himself with Vladimir Putin, blackmailed Ukraine, and tried to steal the 2020 election. Many of them didn’t like Trump personally, but they were willing to hold their noses at the expected political payoff. But now that they’ve recognized (like many other people a long time ago) that Trump is also an electoral loser, they’ve caught up. This attitude takes courage—the courage to know that you will be rightly mocked. Still, anyone worried about the danger that Trump’s return would pose should welcome allies, however hypocritical or belated. The bigger problem is that the backlash against Trump is coming too late to make much of a difference. One theory about the Republican Party and Trump is that if enough of his movers and shakers had turned on him at once, they could have ousted him. But going back to the 2016 GOP primaries, the establishment never liked or wanted him. They worried that he couldn’t win, and they worried that he didn’t agree with their core beliefs on issues like trade and foreign policy. The problem was that voters liked Trump—although there were a lot of them in the primaries—and they didn’t like his opponents. One reason the establishment couldn’t effectively rally around one of its other opponents is that Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and Scott Walker and the rest all had weaknesses that a united media front couldn’t erase. David Frum: Trump lost the midterms. Ron DeSantis won. But they tried. The highlight was the January 2016 “Against Trump” issue of National Review, the movement’s flagship magazine, which brought together a host of writers from the right to try to stave off the inevitable. Did not work. (Some of the contributors were ever Trumpers, others embraced him, and a third group settled on anti-Trumpism as a compromise.) The collective action theory received another test in October 2016, when the Washington Post published a recording of Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women. Many Republicans and conservative pundits abandoned him, but once it became clear that there was no alternative and that GOP voters were still on board, many of them quietly retreated as well. This pattern has held over and over again. After the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017; after the 2018 Helsinki summit; after the attempted blackmail of Ukraine; after losing the 2020 election; and then again after the January 6 uprising, sections of conservatives prepared to make a dramatic split and then either change their minds or hold back when they realized voters were still with Trump. After the election loss, Murdoch’s properties briefly hurt Trump, but when their competitors began to gain market share, Fox and friends had second thoughts. Read: Trumpism is toxic. Perhaps after January 6th, a concerted establishment push could actually have finished off Trump. The audience was horrified. Trump was weak. many Republicans in Congress were ready to act. A united front of the conservative media may have given Senate Republicans the bulwark they needed to vote to impeach Trump in an impeachment trial and prevent him from running against him. Instead, as the moment passed, many of the players blinked and opened their eyes again to a Trump still in control of the party. The 2022 midterm elections show how this has harmed not only democracy, but the prospects of the Republican Party. Stopping Trump is arguably more difficult now. Unlike January 2021, he has no official position to remove himself from and no mechanism to ban him from office. Donors have abandoned him, but he doesn’t need them to win. None of this means Trump is unstoppable in the 2024 Republican presidential primary. Florida’s Ron DeSandis before it got out of hand.) But if Trump declines, it will be because Republican voters decide it’s over. There are tentative signs that some of them are fed up with his antics, are worried he just can’t win, or are attracted to the prospect of a younger, fresher face like DeSantis. The base made Trump, and only they can break him. Whatever they decide, the establishment will be a step or two behind, desperately trying to catch up to the people it claims to lead.
