(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . It's just now dawning on the GOP that Trump holds their entire future hostage [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-05 By all rights the Nov. 2022 midterm elections should have been a blowout in favor of the Republican Party. With inflation then running higher than most voters had ever experienced in living memory, with gas prices still quite high (if trending downward), and with the historical near-certainty of the party in power losing Congressional seats in midterm elections, there was little reason to suspect that Republicans would end up losing ground in the Senate, lose control of four state houses and barely achieve a fractious House majority. The reason this happened can (and has) been boiled down almost ad nauseum to two words: Donald Trump. The Supreme Court’s evisceration of abortion rights played a role, certainly, particularly with young people who ended up tilting the scales towards Democrats despite the latter sustaining an overall defeat in the popular vote numbers. Democrats also ran unusually strong candidates in many races. But the primary cause for the GOP’s dismal showing in 2022 was the party’s embrace of Trump and (more importantly) Trumpism, a seemingly irresistible fixation that manifested itself in appalling candidates loudly mouthing equally appalling and repulsive views and attitudes, mostly because they believed that is what their Trump-addled base wanted to hear. David Frum, writing for The Atlantic, isn’t off the mark when he characterizes the party’s overall posture and comportment as “obnoxious,” a fitting description of the party’s performative callousness and reflexive cruelty that shows no signs of abating. As reported by Sahil Kapur, writing for NBC News: “It was a Trump problem,” a Republican operative involved in the 2022 election told NBC News, speaking candidly about the de facto leader of the GOP on condition of anonymity to avoid retribution. “Independents didn’t vote for candidates they viewed as extreme and too closely linked with Donald J. Trump.” Independent voters made up 31% of the electorate and they favored Democrats over Republicans by a margin of 49% to 47%, a stark break from the past four midterms in which they voted by double digits for the party out of power, according to exit polls. We saw this play out in the Republicans’ pathetic “success” in actually electing a House Speaker, an achievement that only happened because the most pro-Trump hardliners were able to extract humiliating concessions from Rep. Kevin McCarthy, concessions which effectively ceded control of that chamber to the whims of its most nihilistic, conspiracy-spewing and election-denying members. And while that may buttress the individual prospects of those folks with the pitiful constituents who will continue to vote for them in their districts, all it does is reinforce the notion that Trump’s presence remains the singular, undiluted dominating force in Republican politics. Many Republicans get this, but what they are now being forced to grapple with is the fact that it is not only Trump’s presence, but his absence — and more specifically, his potential rejection, criticism or disavowal of the party or its candidates -- which could drastically alter the GOP’s prospects in 2024. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/5/2151227/-It-s-just-now-dawning-on-the-GOP-that-Trump-holds-their-entire-future-hostage Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/