Electoral disaster sets off new war over populism in the GOP

Top Republicans have joined a battle over the populism that the Republican Party has embraced under President Donald Trump following Democrats’ overwhelming midterm victory.The party’s decisive disadvantage on the economy has created an opening for some conservatives, including presumed challengers to Vice President JD Vance for the GOP nomination in 2028, to call for a return to pre-Trump Republican orthodoxy, when tariffs and other populist economic policies were generally disfavored by the GOP.“I think we’re going to have a debate about Republican economic policy for the first time in a decade,” Alex Conant, a Republican strategist and a partner at Firehouse Strategies, told the Washington Examiner. Many voters punished Republicans for the state of the economy, which has been buffeted by higher inflation and spiking gas prices. Some two-thirds of voters in the midterm elections said that Trump’s policies have worsened economic conditions, according to an Associated Press poll.Some conservatives argued that the results were a repudiation of Trump’s populist economic agenda.Marc Short, chairman of Advancing American Freedom and former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, said that it is time for Republicans to “do some soul searching.”“This happened in 2006,” Short said on X. “We regrouped and came back in 2010. Why? Because we returned to our roots of promising limited government, free markets – the things that voters wanted. Right now – GOP sounds too much like Democrats when it comes to the economy. So many of these are things that Bernie Sanders applauds.”But populists were quick to brush aside the notion that populism and tariffs drove voters away from Republicans. Most notably, Vance wrote a lengthy post placing the blame on discontent with the war with Iran, the U.S. relationship with Israel, and a lack of focus on cost-of-living issues from the GOP.Vance didn’t mention tariffs or populism at all in the post.On the other side, Pence wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the midterm results showed that voters “rejected our party’s shift toward economic populism,” and specifically mentioned tariffs.“As we saw Tuesday night, many Americans will still vote conservative, but some will stay home,” Pence wrote. “Worse yet, some will become so repulsed by populism and corruption that they will vote for the other side.”Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a possible 2028 contender, blasted the outcome as an “extinction-level event for Republicans” and pointed out that Republicans did better in his state of Florida.Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who is seen as closer to the traditional free-market side of the party, wasn’t shy about mentioning tariffs.“Tariffs have made everything too expensive and the Iran war has dragged on too long,” Cruz said on his podcast.Conant predicted that this debate will most prominently play out within the GOP in the lead-up to the 2028 presidential election, during the primary process. He said the race might be much more competitive now given this week’s results.Jason Roe, a veteran Republican political consultant, told the Washington Examiner that he thinks tariffs, in particular, will be a focus in 2028.“As we talk about what you know the Republican coalition looks like moving into the future, I think it’s very much going to be one of the top three or four issues that we are debating,” Roe said.Exit polling showed that 66% of voters said that Trump’s tariff policies have hurt the economy. Just 21% said that tariffs have provided a boost for the economy.Some on the populist Right have pointed to the higher gas prices resulting from the war in Iran as the reason why people were dissatisfied with Republicans and voted for Democrats. But the polling shows those policies aren’t popular.“One of the things underreported, I think, so far is it seems from exit polls that tariffs were a big driver for the vote against Republicans,” Roe added.And the GOP can’t blame Trump alone for the tariffs. Republicans in the House worked to safeguard Trump’s tariffs and prevent Congress from batting them down. They took unusual procedural steps to disable Democrats’ ability to force votes on tariffs.In April of last year, after the announcement of Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, GOP leaders inserted language into unrelated legislation that prevented members from circumventing leadership and voting to rescind the tariffs.Then, in September 2025, the GOP House Rules Committee further extended the blockade until earlier this year. But then in February, Reps. Kevin Kiley (R-CA), Thomas Massie (R-KY), and Don Bacon (R-NE) broke with the party and joined Democrats to sink a procedural vote that would have extended it further.Still, some Republicans support Trump’s tariff agenda as a way to reshore manufacturing.Nick Iacovella, executive vice president at the pro-tariff Coalition for a Prosperous America, told the Washington Examiner that he thinks populism will remain a “permanent fixture” of the Republican Party.“To think that these guys are gonna say that we’re gonna go back to globalism and free trade, they’re not reading the tea leaves properly, and they’re not going to win an election,” Iacovella said.He also drew the distinction between different types of tariffs. For instance, Iacovella said some of the tariffs targeting specific products, for instance, the Section 232 tariffs, have been more successful and popular than some retaliatory tariffs, such as those targeting Canada.Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 gives the president broad power to levy tariffs when there is a threat to national security.“Our advice to the administration has always been: use tariffs to either raise revenue or to reshore industry,” Iacovella said.Still, some on the Right think that the debate over populism will land the party back closer to where it was before Trump and others transformed the GOP.Brian Darling, a Republican strategist and former Senate aide, told the Washington Examiner that tariffs were a “huge issue” in the midterm elections, and that the scale of Democrats’ gains could force Republicans to reassess and return to more traditional views.“I do think the Republican Party will shift towards more of a free market view, the traditional view of the Republican Party with low tariffs or no tariffs, and a view to getting inflation under control by using market forces instead of using government power,” Darling said.DEMOCRATS PLAN TO USE MAJORITIES TO FORCE GOP TO TAKE TOUGH VOTES ON TRUMP TARIFFSBut the elephant in the room is Trump.“Frankly, the Republican primary is going to look very much like the reality show The Apprentice, with Trump kind of lording over the contestants and probably inserting himself here and there,” Roe said.