On today’s somber edition of The Editors, Rich and the other panelists discuss last night’s rough run for the GOP.
On today’s somber edition of The Editors, Rich and the other panelists discuss last night’s rough run for the GOP. All of them are rightly upset at Republicans for blowing an election through a combination of poor candidate choices and inadequate messaging. The real problem, though, seems to be Donald Trump. Michael and Charlie, however, disagree about the influence Trump had on the party’s chances, and what it means for the GOP going forward.
As MBD forthrightly states, “So, we were wrong, and the earlier Editors podcast this week will go down in the annals as one of our most misguided. . . . I will say my big mistake comes from the fact that I assumed that the fundamentals were driving the election entirely. The fundamentals being: 10 percent inflation, right-track/wrong-track numbers that show basically 70 percent of the country thinks the country’s in a bad way and going in a wrong direction. A lot of those numbers were confirmed in the exit polling, along with [a] super-low approval rating for Biden.”
But there was something he says he missed when making his calculations: “Donald J. Trump. I think if there’s a message from this election, it’s that independent-leaning voters — the few that are left — and a lot of Republican voters want stability, normality, and competence, and there were far too many Republican candidates who looked like very unstable geniuses.” He listed the various candidates upon whom the GOP rested their hopes, pointing out that the American people just want a respite. “After 18 months or two years or two and a half years of a national emergency . . . about six and a half years from Donald Trump coming down the escalator, people want a frickin’ breather.”
He offers some serious caveats, though, for how far Trump’s influence actually reaches, saying, “I think the dominant focus . . . [of] everyone that’s in professional conservative politics or the GOP is going to look at these results and say, ‘That’s it. Trump and his influence have to go.’ I think that is true . . . but there was some bad candidate selection and recruitment that is not blamable entirely on Trump. Dana Perino asked a very sharp but uncomfortable question last night about McCarthy’s recruiting in the House. . . . He was recruiting on the basis of skin color rather than winnability. . . . You have to recruit winning candidates.”
In a nutshell, Charlie’s main takeaway is: “This was a catastrophe.” He and Michael tussle, however, over Trump’s degree of responsibility for this catastrophe. Listen below to hear what, if any, agreement is reached, and if Jim carves out a middle position for himself on this issue.