Obituary for the GOP: How Trump killed the Republican Party

On Tuesday, a prominent conservative political journalist asserted that “Trumpism is exhausted” and the GOP is poised to pay the price for President Donald Trump’s “erratic” leadership in November. This is according to National Review Senior Political Correspondent Jim Geraghty, who took to the Washington Post to warn his fellow Republicans that time is short for the GOP to unglue itself from Trump.

“The indicators of a blue wave in the 2026 midterms are adding up,” admits Geraghty. “In South Florida, GOP Rep. María Elvira Salazar is running a commercial criticizing President Donald Trump’s deportation campaign. ‘Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,’ Salazar says in the ad. ‘The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.’ Note that her Miami-based district scores an R+6 in the Cook Partisan Voting Index — not exactly a classic swing seat. Democrats look headed for easy wins in Senate races in North Carolina and Georgia, two of last year’s key swing states. Senate contests in Iowa and Ohio, two states that have leaned heavily toward Republicans in recent years, look to be neck and neck. And down in Texas, you’d have to search far and wide to find a poll that has Republican Ken Paxton leading Democrat James Talarico.”

In light of all this, Geraghty argues, the Republican Party needs to make “serious decisions” with 2028 just around the corner. “For nearly a decade,” he writes, “the typical Republican Party voter has generally wanted what Donald Trump wants. As a result, the GOP doesn’t look at all like it did even in 2012, never mind in the days of Ronald Reagan.” Geraghty points to a number of dramatic GOP policy shifts, like its retreat from free trade and embrace of adversaries like Russia and China. What’s more, asserts Geraghty, “once derided as prudes, Republicans are now comfortable with vice. The Trump administration is an enthusiastic supporter of cryptocurrency, gambling and legalized marijuana.” And contradictorily, “at a time when Republicans regularly denounce Democrats for embracing socialism, the administration has taken an ownership share in 30 private companies.”

Geraghty also sees “little sign of a Republican Party identity separate from Trump.” The Republican midterm convention in Dallas was directly tied to him, widely called “Trumpapalooza.” But while the Party may be reluctant to move away from him, Geraghty wonders, “if the country rejects the GOP this November, then what identity and agenda will replace the ones shaped by the larger-than-life central figure of Trump?” According to Geraghty, this line of thinking prompts further questions: “Do Republicans want to be the party of tariffs when the issue is hurting their Senate candidates in Michigan and Maine? Do they want to be the party that is friendlier to Russia than to Canada? Americans like a secure border and deporting violent illegal immigrants, but do they feel it is necessary to deport every single illegal entrant, down to the last agricultural worker, hotel maid and restaurant busboy?”

For a while, notes Geraghty, MAGA diehards could argue that this extreme agenda, “erratic as it was,” is what Americans voted for in 2024. But “the electorate is about to send a clear signal that they’re sick and tired of this version of Trump.” In Geraghty’s estimation, “Trumpism is exhausted,” and if the GOP wants to salvage itself before electoral disaster, “the clock is ticking.”