The Republican Party is not finished, but after Tuesday’s sweeping losses, it’s hard to look at the results and feel otherwise.
There’s a familiar legend about Rasputin surviving poison, stabbing, gunshots and a beating before being tossed into a river. He supposedly pulled himself out and lived. He didn’t, of course. Some stories are better left to the movies.
One film that comes to mind is Snatch, with its improbable characters and miraculous escapes. Republicans who are feeling low after Tuesday’s losses might find it a useful distraction. If you or your preferred candidate took a hit, a laugh may help. Politics can be brutal, but one bad night doesn’t mean the party is about to disappear into the Potomac.
The GOP is badly bruised, not dead. Repairing the damage will take time, and there won’t be a quick fix. The Cleveland Browns’ long rebuilding efforts offer a familiar lesson: patience matters, and a team has to develop talent rather than expect an instant turnaround.
Every state has promising political figures. Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno now has a chance to rally his Senate colleagues and begin recruiting strong Republican candidates for 2028. House Republicans will need to do similar work, though their conference is considerably smaller.
President Trump also has a role to play. He should see that the Republican National Committee runs an open, serious process to choose his successor as the party’s presidential nominee. Early debates in 2027, ahead of the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary in 2028, would give prospective candidates a chance to test their ideas with voters across the country.
Trump remains the leader of a battered party. He has often been an effective cheerleader for Republicans, and they will need that from him again.
But Tuesday’s defeat was no superficial scrape. Trump should examine the results closely. A major loss can make the underlying problems easier to see, even if the causes are numerous. His 2027 State of the Union address could set out an agenda that emerging Republican leaders can either support or challenge. The work on that should begin soon.
One strength of the republic is its resilience. The Constitution has endured, and political parties written off as finished have recovered before. Republicans do not need to look back only to the distant past: after Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential defeat, the party was left with just 32 senators and 140 members of the House.
Under President Reagan, Republicans lost their Senate majority in 1986 and fell to 45 seats. It took eight years to regain control of the chamber.
The party lost the Senate again in 2006, then suffered further losses during the financial crisis. When President Obama took office in 2009 after a decisive election victory, Republicans had 41 senators and 178 House members.
There is a possible bright spot, though it may take work to find it. Conservatives and center-right voters have three election cycles before the next round of national redistricting following the 2030 Census. If the remaining vote counts confirm the current picture, Democrats will control both legislative chambers and the governorship in 21 states, Republicans in 19, while 10 states will have divided government. States with unified control may redraw their maps, followed by the nationwide redistricting process in 2032. American politics never really stops moving.
Recovering from a political collapse is painful, and it begins with an honest look at what went wrong. Anyone offering a quick cure or blaming a single person is missing the scale of the rebuke. The result is not as severe as the party’s losses in 2008, but another deep recession could make the situation worse.
For Trump, one pressing question is whether the conflict with Iran can be brought to a clear and swift conclusion. The Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait should be open to commercial traffic without interference from the remnants of Iran’s regime. Vague or poorly conceived agreements would not resolve the problem.
The decision about how to proceed rests with Trump. If new Democratic majorities take office in January before the conflict ends, they are likely to challenge his use of constitutional authority as commander in chief.
So, while Trump helps his party regroup, he should also pursue a successful end to the conflict. And Republicans reeling from Tuesday’s defeat should remember that, if forced to choose between control of Congress and the presidency, the White House is by far the more valuable prize.
