Local Republicans caught in Trump's crossfire in a high-stakes panic

In analyzing a landslide midterm election, most of the focus has rightly been on the American South. However, there are lessons to be learned elsewhere. After Democrat Troy Jackson defeated Susan Collins in Maine, there will be no Republican senators from New England next year.

In fact, no state in the region – Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut – will send any Republicans to the US Congress, either to the Senate or the House of Representatives. There is only one exception. Maine is sending former Governor Paul LePage to the House to represent its 2nd Congressional district.

The Boston Globe called that fact “supremely ironic.” Though the midterms were a wholesale rebuke of the president and what he stands for, “LePage claims he was Donald Trump before there was Donald Trump. LePage likes to threaten people and routinely says outrageous, bigoted things. He and his hero are like peas and carrots.”

New England and the South are inverse reflections. The South used to be home of the slavers. The Democrats were their primary vehicle. New England used to be home of the abolitionists. The Republicans were theirs. (The GOP arose from the ashes of the Whig Party to gain power with Abraham Lincoln’s victory in 1865.) Each region flipped over time as the country fought over the role of minority rights and freedoms in national politics, especially those of Black Americans. The South moved from blue to red. There were zero Democratic senators by 2015. New England moved from red to blue. There will be zero Republican senators by 2027, completing a process begun over 160 years ago.

The bluing of New England didn’t stop at the federal level. While Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Nevada saw their state governments flip from partial control to total control by the Democrats, here in Connecticut, for instance, the Democratic Party was already the majority. Thanks to Donald Trump, however, state and local Republicans are being driven to despair.

Next year, the state Senate will have the largest Democratic majority in 140 years, the Register said. For the party, that’s more than at any time in state history. Of the 36 seats in the state Senate, either 32 or 33 will be Democrats (one election is pending). There will be either three or four GOP Senators. Meanwhile, the state House will have the biggest Democratic majority since 1975 – since Watergate. Of the 151 state House seats, as many as 118 will be Democrats.

Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont did more than become the second to win three consecutive terms. He won with the largest margins by a Democrat since Watergate. His first margin was three points. His second, 13. His third, 18.

You could argue that Ned Lamont has been touched by an angel. Every time he campaigned for governor, Donald Trump was in the background. Just 10 years ago the Connecticut Senate was tied, 18-18. In 2016, the state House had 79 Democrats and 72 Republicans (then out of a total of 150). What happened during that decade-plus? Trump happened. He destroyed the Connecticut GOP.

Connecticut Republicans are going to be in the same pickle that Republicans in other states will be in – between a past chained to Trump and a hoped-for future unchained from him. One big problem is rightwing media and rightwing organizations. Despite Tuesday’s crushing defeat, they continue to punish Republicans office holders for disloyalty while making it impossible for them to distance themselves from the most unpopular president since Herbert Hoover.

A leading Republican in Arizona called Turning Point USA, the group founded by the late demagogue Charlie Kirk, “a destructive force” that’s “driving us to extinction,” comparing it to a parasite that is slowly killing its host. A leading Republican in the New York State Assembly, after watching GOP-held offices turn blue and the number of US congresspeople erode from seven to six (out of 26), said that the New York Republican Party needs “an enema.”

Of course, the main problem is Trump. The Republicans were routed in part by a Hispanic backlash against his murderous deportation program. Yet Friday, he promoted Stephen Miller, the architect of the purge. Meanwhile, the president is trying to hold his fracturing coalition together by threatening its component parts. In a memo last week to more than 3,000 rightwing groups, the White House attacked Republicans who blamed Trump for the midterm wipeout, adding that “we are monitoring statements, press releases, and media engagements from your organizations.”

At some point you would expect self-preservation to kick in, and perhaps we are seeing something like that from Ron Johnson. Earlier this year, after the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, he opposed Democratic efforts to put limits on ICE. After the midterms, however, the senator from Wisconsin said there is corruption “within the Trump administration.” He didn’t call out Trump, only unnamed White House aides allegedly catering to corporate interests, not the people’s interests. Johnson is up for reelection in 2028. He said his party must “embrace the enduring principles of our founders, limited government.”

If Johnson is going to win reelection in a state that’s gone totally Democratic, he has to convince Wisconsinites that he was never the authoritarian he really did make himself out to be, but instead a “constitutional conservative” the whole time. To do that, however, he has to walk the same tightrope every Republican in every blue state must walk. He must persuade Republican voters that he’s still loyal to Trump and everyone else that he doesn’t carry his stink.

The midterms completed a long process in New England. We used to be solid red. One hundred and sixty-one years later, we are solid blue (with one “supremely ironic” exception). Meanwhile, the midterms seem to have begun a new phase in the politics of the south, where there has not been a Democratic US senator in eight years. Now there’s going to four (presuming Mississippi goes Scott Colom’s way). Trump broke the Solid South. Meanwhile, New England is closed. Other regions are closing. In 2012, Barack Obama talked about a future in which the fever that gripped the GOP after his 2008 election would break. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but maybe it’s breaking.