The conflicts that contributed to the Republican Party’s midterm losses go beyond disputes about Iran, foreign policy, or the latest political controversy. Auron MacIntyre, Nick Freitas, and John Doyle argue that a deeper fight is underway over who will shape the party’s future—and how Americans make sense of a political system that has been shaken in recent years.
“Will JD Vance be the future of the party?” MacIntyre asks, wondering whether Ted Cruz or another challenger might step into the spotlight. He says that focusing only on visible disagreements can obscure the power struggles beneath them, making it harder to understand why the same conflicts keep returning.
Freitas says any effort to understand what comes next has to account for something distinctive about this period: COVID. In his view, the pandemic damaged public trust in institutions that many people had once relied on.
Once people began to doubt those institutions, Freitas says, they were left trying to work out what was true. Some responded by becoming more skeptical of institutions they believed had been influenced by the left—a reaction he considers reasonable. Others came to believe that whatever those institutions said must be false, which he sees as a dangerous conclusion. Without the pandemic and the response to it, he says, the country might not be in its current position.
Doyle agrees, describing the lasting damage to how parts of the right decide what to believe as “long COVID.” He says some commentators built reputations by making countless predictions and conspiracy claims, then gained credibility when they warned that powerful people might exploit the pandemic. In his view, their followers began to treat them as authorities who seemed to have been right all along.
MacIntyre says the transformation of media has also mattered. With traditional outlets like Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC no longer acting as the only major gatekeepers, information can spread through many more channels. That shift helped Donald Trump and the right, he says, by giving conservative and MAGA voices room to grow. But the same openness can make it difficult for the party to stay focused on a shared message.
MacIntyre calls it a double-edged sword: a change that helped conservatives gain influence can also make message discipline much harder.
