Even before Donald Trump announced he was seeking the presidency again, last week’s election results showed Republicans how difficult it will be to escape the former president’s gravitational pull.
Widespread voter resistance to a Republican Party refashioned in Trump’s image offset disenchantment with the economy and President Joe Biden’s performance and allowed Democrats to post one of the best first-midterm showings for the sitting president’s party in more than a century. In almost all the key battleground states, the same powerful coalition of voters who opposed Trump in the 2018 and 2020 elections delivered stunning rebukes to GOP candidates running with the former president’s endorsement or in his polarizing style, or both.
The results were much better for Republicans running in red states and districts. But for party strategists operating anywhere outside the most reliably conservative terrain, the election’s message was unequivocal. In those contested areas, “there is no road back to relevance if Donald Trump continues to be the dominant figure in the Republican Party and especially if he is our nominee in 2024,” Dick Wadhams, the former GOP chair in Colorado, told me.
Trump’s unusually early presidential announcement, though, made clear that he will not surrender his grip on the GOP without a fight. CONTINUED
Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic
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