Republicans seek culprits for midterms debacle but fall short of pointing to Trump

Republicans woke up this Wednesday — the first day of a new era in Washington — reeling from a historic defeat that they had seen coming in slow motion over the past few months, unable to do anything to wrest the helm from the man who was steering them toward catastrophe: Donald Trump.Hours earlier, the president of the United States had done what he usually does: examine the wreckage and pretend he had nothing to do with it. It was the end of an extravagant campaign focused on the obsessions of an 80-year-old man — as powerful as he is at odds with reality — during which he repeatedly asked voters to act as if he were heading the Republican tickets across the country in the midterm elections.Around midnight, Trump revived another old habit: randomly calling several journalists to tell them that he accepted the results, and that if they had been bad, it was because he, after all, hadn’t run. It was yet another tribute to his mentor, the sinister lawyer Roy Cohn, from whom he learned three rules: “attack, attack, attack,” “admit nothing, deny everything at all times,” and “claim victory, never give up, no matter what happens.”And the Republicans? The one who dared go furthest in the early hours was J. D. Vance, perhaps with an eye on a 2028 White House bid.He did so in a post on X in which he blamed the defeat on “the [Iran] war” rather than on turnout levels among Republican voters. Some interpreted the message as a rebuke of his boss, but the text itself — another masterpiece of intellectual contortion — states that it was Trump who first pointed to Tehran’s responsibility for the price of gasoline, which convinced voters to punish the ruling party. Shortly afterward, the president himself reiterated that idea during a press conference to boast about the progress of the renovations to the White House ballroom — yet another example of just how inscrutable the paths of his obsessions are.In the second part of his muddled post, Vance addressed an ethereal second person, like a pop songwriter: “If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that’s at least honest. But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.”The post had Trump’s approval, he confirmed himself. Earlier, other White House propaganda organs coordinated to push a single message that sounded like those unsolicited excuses that read as explicit accusations: despite the slap at the ballot box, Trump remains the president.Those in the party who did not have his blessing rushed to find culprits in private — “before breakfast,” The Washington Post wrote dramatically — while House Speaker Mike Johnson announced he would not seek to lead them in the new Congress. In public, Republicans once again held their tongues and avoided pointing the finger at the only possible culprit, still afraid to contradict the president, even in his darkest hours.Assault on the CapitolIt is an art they have refined over the years. They practiced it with mastery in 2021, when Trump incited a mob of his supporters to storm the Capitol and put the lives of hundreds of conservative lawmakers at risk. They could have condemned him in an impeachment that would have ended his political career, but a handful of senators decided he did not deserve to be taught a lesson, because why bother if he was already finished?The next misdiagnosis came in the last midterm elections. Then, Trump also hurt the Republican outcome. It was 2022 and everything — a deeply unpopular president in Joe Biden, a fierce culture war, and runaway inflation — seemed to bode well for the opposition party to reclaim the Capitol. The Republicans had to settle for a narrow victory and watch as Trump returned to lead the party, buoyed by the four trials in which he was charged in the months that followed.Since the Lyndon B. Johnson years in the White House (1963–1969), the party in power had lost an average of 45 House seats and five Senate seats in midterm elections up to 2022. In this cycle, the Republican rout, still to be fully tallied given that 67 House seats remain to be assigned, is flirting with that record. In the upper chamber, they have lost seven seats and could end up losing nine if defeats in Mississippi (suddenly blue) and Alaska are confirmed, the latter of which could take weeks to finish counting.The new composition of Congress spells two years of irrelevance on Capitol Hill for Republicans, following the previous two years, during which they effectively put themselves into a coma to give Trump and his allies free rein to govern. The latter took advantage of this inaction to expand the boundaries of executive power and set the country on an authoritarian path.It will also mean 48 months (between the convening of the new Congress on January 3 and the inauguration of whoever wins the 2028 presidential election) in which the contours of Trumpism without Trump will be defined, if anything like that is possible. The United States will also have a lame-duck president, an image in Washington used to describe a politician with limited time and limited power who urgently needs a successor.The question with Trump — arguably the hardest politician to succeed in the history of American conservatism — is also whether that lame duck will act with the ferocity of an wounded animal.On domestic policy he faces merciless Democratic pressure, but on foreign policy he will have more room to maneuver, as many foreign ministries around the world already fear.The electoral results, which could leave up to 30 states out of 50 governed by Democrats, carry more worrying signs for American conservatism, such as the fact that Texas has turned blue for the first time in decades. If that state ceases to be reliably red, it is hard to imagine a future with a Republican in the White House.Before the American left — immersed in its own identity crisis (centrists versus progressives and socialists) — lets its imagination run wild, it’s worth remembering that Washington, which is not only a city but also a state of mind, is just as passionate about the business of political speculation as it is about rushing to predict trends that turn out to be wrong.Also, this Friday will mark just two years since the Democrats had a rough start to the day following an election night as devastating as the one this Tuesday. Back then, Kamala Harris lost to Trump. And the party that needed to be autopsied at the time was on the other side.Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition