It’s not enough that Donald Trump lose reelection, say some Republicans and former Republicans. His party has to lose big, too, to exorcise his spirit from it. My new Bloomberg Opinion column says the tactical argument for burning down the Republican Party is based on a mistaken premise.

[I]t’s not at all clear that the Republican Party can be burned down or Trumpism extinguished.
Let’s say that the November elections lead to Republicans losing the White House, 20 House seats, 12 Senate seats and five governorships: a result considerably worse for the Republicans than most observers expect. That would leave them with roughly the same amount of power they had in 2009, after George W. Bush’s disastrous second term. Eight years later, they had a majority of everything. . . .