Trump conquered the Republican Party. What a waste of a victory.

In September, Donald Trump asked Republicans gathered in Dallas to pretend he was on the ballot in November. “Because in a way, I am on the ballot,” he told them.I was at the American Airlines Center for the Republican midterm convention. It was a handsome production. Speaker after speaker praised Trump, invoked “common sense” over “crazy,” and celebrated his conquest of a party whose leaders once regarded him as an intruder. The crowd loved it. The old establishment had learned its lines.Trump won over Republican voters. He never quite won over the lukewarm Republicans they sent to Washington.On Tuesday, voters took Trump at his word. Oh, boy, did they ever.Democrats seized commanding majorities in the House and Senate, winning seats in Republican strongholds including Texas, Kansas, and South Carolina. Trump had promised a political realignment on the scale of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal or Ronald Reagan’s revolution. What he achieved looks increasingly like a temporary rearrangement of loyalties.It didn’t have to be this way.In 2016, Trump spoke for Americans tired of a Republican establishment devoted to free trade, foreign adventures, and its donors. In 2024, he promised to protect workers, revive manufacturing, secure the border, and put American interests first. He won the White House twice with an argument that the old GOP had failed to understand — and still does.He won over Republican voters. He never quite won over the lukewarm Republicans they sent to Washington.Trump returned to office with majorities in both houses. On paper, he commanded a governing party. In practice, House and Senate leaders accommodated him when his agenda suited theirs and balked when it didn’t. As often as not, they seemed more interested in managing Trump than in carrying out the political transformation their own voters had endorsed.The One Big Beautiful Bill Act was a genuine achievement. It extended tax provisions and committed billions to border enforcement and ICE. Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn voted for it. But tax cuts have been Republican doctrine for generations, and border enforcement was hardly alien to the party. Their votes proved a willingness to cooperate, not a conversion to Trump’s governing philosophy.Trade was the harder test. Trump’s tariffs collided with the party’s old free-trade commitments. McConnell joined Democrats in opposing emergency tariffs on Canada. House Republicans broke ranks, too. Under the red caps, old convictions survived.The SAVE America Act offered a different kind of failure. The House passed it; the Senate would not muster the 60 votes to advance it. Democrats supplied the decisive opposition, but Republican leaders still could not get a major priority across the finish line. Not that they tried very hard.A congressional majority is an opportunity, not a magic wand. Turning one into legislation takes more than issuing demands.The same problem dogged Trump’s reliance on executive orders. A few policies found their way into legislation; others remain vulnerable to the next president’s pen. If the promised transformation could be reversed with a signature, how much had Republicans really built?RELATED: Republicans need to be honest about why we lost Adam Gray/Getty ImagesCongressional leaders failed their own voters. But Trump hardly made their job easier. He could dominate headlines, threaten political careers, and extract declarations of loyalty. He mistook intimidation for leadership and obedience for conviction. He knew how to make Republicans fall in line. Getting them to march toward a common destination was another proposition altogether.He also squandered political capital on spectacles his allies were left to defend. The Kennedy Center needed repairs; Trump decided it needed his name. Then came the proposed triumphal arch near Arlington. Then Lake America. Republicans defended monuments to presidential vanity while voters worried about groceries and gasoline.And what about the Iran war?The case against the Iranian regime is not difficult: its nuclear ambitions, support for international jihad, and more than 40 years’ worth of threats to U.S. forces and allies. Trump had arguments that deserved a serious hearing. If only he had made them. He offered a perfunctory explanation of the campaign’s objectives in April. But announcing a war and celebrating its progress are no substitute for persuading Americans that its costs are necessary and its ends attainable.The political consequences were plain. An NBC exit poll found that 63% of voters considered military action against Iran the wrong decision, while 74% said the war was a major or crucial factor in their congressional vote. CBS found opposition among about a quarter of Republican voters. Pew Research Center identified rising fuel prices as a leading concern about the conflict. Those figures do not explain every lost seat. They do expose the limits of commanding loyalty without earning consent.RELATED: Trump’s 2024 coalition was a loan. The bill just came due. Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg/Getty ImagesTrump once boasted he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue without losing voters. Perhaps personal devotion could survive that imaginary crime. An expensive war in the Middle East was another test entirely. A president who promised to end futile foreign adventures owed Americans more than bluster and assurances that all was going splendidly.And the economic promise? Trump said life would get cheaper. Americans went to the polls worried about food, fuel, and the future. Having insisted that he was on the ballot, he cannot credibly disown the result after the election went sideways.Trump changed the Republican electorate and shook some exhausted orthodoxies. Those changes may endure. But a realignment must also change what politicians do when their leader is absent, or when following him becomes inconvenient. It must be enacted, defended, and handed on.In Dallas, Republicans knew how to celebrate Trump. Their leaders never demonstrated that they knew how to make his revolution stick. Trump, for his part, never demonstrated that he could lead them there.He conquered the Republican Party. Neither he nor its leaders quite knew what to do with the conquest. What a waste.