Republicans are heading into the midterms on Tuesday with the prospect of “utter defeat,” and the blame goes to President Donald Trump, according to a new Washington Post analysis.
Charles Lane, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, argues that while outcomes are rarely attributable to a single factor, 2026 could be the exception because of Trump’s “dysfunctional one-man rule” of both the government and his party.
The GOP was in good enough shape when the year began, the column observes. With most of the Senate action in states Trump won in 2024, Republicans were well placed to keep or add to their 53-47 majority. In January, Trump had an approval rating of some 44 percent, and the party could cite low unemployment, gas prices, and crime as evidence of solid growth.
Then, as Lane puts it, Trump made war on Iran with Israel and without approval from Congress or his advisers. He says the president may have had a worthy goal in ridding the world of Iran’s nuclear threat, but he did little to make the case to the public.
Iran did not go down and set about disrupting energy markets instead; the resulting rise in the cost of gas and diesel is felt most in rural red states like Iowa, Kansas and Alaska, where Democrats have a shot at Senate and gubernatorial seats.
Trump has also seen to it that the trade war takes its toll. A 50 percent charge on $20 billion of Canadian imports is hurting in Maine and Michigan, two Senate battlegrounds.
Lane is particularly hard on Trump for how he has gone about picking candidates, comparing him to Caligula, who wanted to put his horse in the consulship.
In North Carolina, Sen. Thom Tillis will not run after Trump put the word out he would support a primary opponent; Democrat Roy Cooper is now ahead of Trump’s nominee Michael Whatley.
In Texas, Trump threw his weight behind Ken Paxton, who has been in the news for scandals, over Sen. John Cornyn, and Paxton is having trouble with James Talarico. And in Georgia, Trump’s man Rep. Mike Collins is being soundly beaten by Sen. Jon Ossoff in the polls.
With Trump’s approval numbers at the lowest of his political career, Lane says it's only a matter of how big the Democrats' House majority is, and they are in a position to take the Senate. The column concedes Republicans got a late reprieve from a scandal involving alleged ballot-stacking by Democrats in Alaska, but even so the GOP would have to count on a big polling mistake to hang on to 50 seats.
Lane does not let the congressional Republicans off easy, writing:
“Trump owns this potential debacle. But it’s also on the ever-subservient Republicans in Congress themselves. They had the power to counter his most misguided policies, or at least to try — just not the guts.”
