Republicans after the midterms: fear and obedience

For the US Republican Party, November 3rd was a political bloodbath. Donald Trump's party lost the majorities in both chambers of Congress. Even in regions that had only sent Republicans to Washington for many decades, Democrats were suddenly winning, most recently even in deeply red-Republican Mississippi.

For the remaining two years of the Trump administration, this means: Nominations for judges and cabinet positions will no longer go through unchallenged, the Democrats may initiate various parliamentary investigations to investigate the massive corruption of the government and the Trump family, and the Epstein files are also likely to receive new attention.

But for the Republican Party, the crushing defeat means much more. Because if the election was a referendum on Trump, what does that mean for the future of a party that has become the Trump Party since 2018 at the latest? In which any dissidence was punished with the end of a political career?

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Those in the Republican Party hoping to assume political leadership roles in a post-Trump era are looking for reasons for defeat and strategic paths to a new beginning. This raises the question of what “new beginnings” exactly means. Trumpism without Trump? End of Trumpism? A post-Trump reinvention of the MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) movement? A breakaway of the party from MAGA? What's the point anyway? And how? And how much power does Trump currently have?

The signs from the first ten days after the election are mixed. The Trump administration itself sees absolutely no reason for a more moderate course. Of all people, Susie Wiles, Trump's chief of staff and long-time personal advisor, had to resign and was replaced by the hard-right ideologue Stephen Miller.

While Trump suggested in an interview that perhaps the practice of the ICE deportation police was too harsh and affected too many honest, working and tax-paying people, Miller's promotion speaks exactly the opposite language. Miller, along with “Border Czar” Tom Homan, is considered the architect of the millions of deportations. And at least in Republican publications, right-wing commentators see no fault in the deportations.

Jason Killmeyer, chief of staff at ICE, writes in the publication The American Mind that we now have 26 months to get millions more "illegals" out of the country, and now it's time not to hesitate, but to push hard. And John Daniel Davidson, a writer at the right-wing magazine The Federalist, criticizes Trump's insightful statements. The president is completely wrong in his interpretation; Rather, immigration and deportation policy were almost the only issue areas in which the Republicans could still have scored points over the Democrats. None of this suggests that the masked secret police can be expected to moderate their raids and arrests in the coming months.

On the contrary, there are many indications that a change of course is not to be expected in any single policy area - at least not in the direction of more moderate policies. In the Republican faction in the House of Representatives, which will become smaller and even more right-wing from January, Jim Jordan has just been elected as the new group leader. Jordan is a co-founder of the Freedom Caucus, a hard-right group within the faction.

Jordan had made several attempts to become Speaker of the House of Representatives, but had always failed. Now that outgoing Speaker Mike Johnson announced he was not interested in the minority leader position, the path was clear for Jordan. Johnson gave the party some truly profound food for thought when analyzing the election results: “The voters made the wrong decision.”

Such narrow-mindedness also suits Donald Trump himself. He is known for being twice as hard when faced with headwinds. However: Can he really still determine Republican policy in the long term? In post-election polls commissioned by Politico magazine, more than half of Republican voters say Trump has lost power over the party. And 38 percent of those voters who voted for Trump in 2024 also say it is time for the party to separate from Trump. But can a party that has only learned fear and obedience for ten years do that?

After all, Vice President J. D. Vance and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, both candidates for the 2028 presidential nomination, have ventured out a little by blaming the Iran war and its consequences for energy prices and the cost of living for the election defeat. This is backed up by polls: both issues were particularly important to voters, and Republicans did particularly poorly on both. The Iran War as the only mistake – that sounds like a welcome, simple explanation.

There are at least some voices in the conservative echo chambers that are calling for a rethink. “If Republicans don’t come up with better solutions to the cost of living crisis than Democrats,” conservative analyst Jon Schweppe warns in “The American Mind,” “they will never win a major federal election again.”

It will also be up to the Democrats in the future Congress whether the cracks and dissociation movements that a new beginning would require can openly become apparent within the thinned Republican ranks. However, it is quite possible that the more the party is cornered by investigations and investigations, the more it will come together. And away from the spotlight, those strategists like Russ Vought - key author of Project 2025 and now head of the powerful Office of Management and Budget - will use the next two years to continue their work of destruction. If you let them.