National Review senior writer Noah Rothman said Republicans appear to be resigned to “a drubbing in next year’s midterm elections” by blindly following President Donald Trump.
Public opinion on Trump’s economy and his tariffs is crashing, “and that’s just the pro-Trump right,” warned Rothman, citing pro-Trump Republican National Committee chairman Joe Gruters.
“There’s no sugarcoating it,” said Gruters. “It’s a pending, looming disaster heading our way.”
But Rothman complained Gruters was acquiescent to that outcome, arguing “no matter what party is in power, they usually get crushed in the midterms.”
“Gruters is wrong about that,” Rothman insisted. “The GOP’s fate is not written in the stars. The party in control of all the levers of power in Washington has agency and purpose — it is the master of its own destiny. Republicans are simply choosing not to do anything to better their political circumstances.”
Rothman called the downward trend in the president’s numbers “consistent and alarming.”
“And Republicans are alarmed. But that’s about it,” Rothman said. “If the sentiment abroad within the GOP ecosystem is any indication, that sense of trepidation is translating not into resolve but resignation.”
While Trump has few tools to shape the economic landscape, Rothman said he could at least indicate that he has “heard the public’s disquiet and is attempting to meet them in the middle by abandoning his mulish affinity for tariffs.”
“Even if he only telegraphed his willingness to pare most of them back, it would send a signal to the public that would at least boost consumer confidence. But Trump is not doing that. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine Trump giving up on a policy in which he evinces near-religious faith. So, with Trump presumably immovable, Republicans are sauntering languidly into a historic buzzsaw,” Rothman said.
But it doesn’t have to be this way, he said.
“Republicans are not destined for disaster. But so long as they regard the president’s bizarre predilections as forces of nature that they must make peace with, they will traipse into an electoral disaster that could set the tone for the remainder of the decade — handing the reins over to a Democratic Party that is increasingly favorably inclined toward socialism,” Rothman said.
“What the GOP can do — what it must do — is evince some basic political survival instincts,” he continued. “If self-preservation is too much to ask, the GOP and its voters deserve the disaster that is now visible on the horizon.”
Read Rothman's National Review article at this link (subscription required).
