Distancing from Trump is political suicide

American Thinker 

The midterm results were barely final when Republicans began drafting their escape plans.  Democrats took both houses of Congress, flipping Senate seats in Texas, Kansas, and South Carolina, and Vice President J.D. Vance soon wrote that the central reason Republicans lost was the war with Iran.  Many read it as a first step away from the president.

Vance has company.  Some Republicans have decided that Donald Trump is now a liability and that the smart road to 2028 is to agree with him on some issues and quietly step away on others.

That strategy sounds clever.  I believe it is political suicide.

The defeat was real.  Losing a Texas Senate seat by almost ten points is no routine setback.  But the cause matters more than the size.  On Election Day, 87 percent of voters said fuel costs worried them.  After Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, gasoline that cost under $3 in February reached $4.48 by late September, a record for the season.  As I argued recently, the deeper root was an intelligence estimate that assumed that Tehran would never wreck its own oil revenue.  The sign at the gas station became the war’s daily scoreboard.

Midterms punish the party in power anyway.  Since 1946, the president’s party has gained House seats in only two midterms.  Trump’s own first midterm, in 2018, cost Republicans 42 seats and the House.  He won the White House again six years later.  A midterm loss, however painful, is a weak guide to where a movement is headed.

In my years in diagnostics R&D, quality control taught me to tell a flawed process from a bad batch of raw material.  Redesigning a sound product because one shipment was contaminated creates new problems without solving the old one.  The gas spike is a bad batch.  Starting in January, with Democrats running Congress, high prices will belong to both parties.  Voters who blamed one party alone will soon have two to blame, and that kind of anger rarely stays pointed in one direction for long.

What lasts is Trump’s base.  Among MAGA Republicans, his approval stands at 93 percent, and those voters show up: 75 percent of them said they were certain to vote against 57 percent of other Republicans.  Their loyalty rests on tariffs that protect American work, a firm line on illegal immigration, and a president who speaks without a consultant’s filter.  Trump’s approval among all Republicans has slipped to 74 percent, and a 2028 nominee will have to win back the doubters.  He will never get the chance if he first loses the voters who choose the nominee.

Those voters follow Trump’s lead.  In May, his endorsed challenger defeated Rep. Thomas Massie.  Sen. Bill Cassidy, who voted to convict Trump in 2021, failed even to reach the runoff in Louisiana.  In Indiana, Republican state senators who broke with Trump on a single issue, congressional redistricting, nearly all lost their primaries to his endorsed challengers.  They were reliable conservatives otherwise.  They tried exactly the pick-and-choose approach now in fashion, and it ended their careers.

Trump’s record is not perfect. Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger beat his chosen challengers in Georgia in 2022.  Those were state races, where deep local standing can outweigh an endorsement.  A national nomination is a different contest.

History points the same way.  Liz Cheney lost her Wyoming primary by more than 30 points.  Nikki Haley won only Vermont and the District of Columbia in 2024.  Chris Christie quit before New Hampshire voted.  Meanwhile, Marco Rubio, who fought Trump bitterly in 2016, made peace with him and is now secretary of state and a possible successor.  Vance himself was a sharp Trump critic in 2016 before becoming his running mate.  The Republicans who reconciled rose, and those who kept their distance faded.

The arithmetic is unforgiving.  A half-loyal candidate loses the base in the primary, and if he somehow survives, the base stays home in November.  Either way, the clever strategy yields nothing.  Gas prices change with the wind.  The movement that elected Trump twice has not gone anywhere, and the Republicans who remember that will still be standing in 2028.