The Republicans got pummeled on Tuesday. Democrats took the House and the Senate. Nobody should be surprised. This was a predictable backlash against the craziness of the Trump era.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s worth remembering how we got here. In the last two presidential elections, both Biden and Trump treated their wins as mandates. They weren\u2019t. Both elections were close, and each man drew many votes from people simply protesting the president he replaced. That isn\u2019t a mandate. It\u2019s a warning.<\/p>\n
Biden ignored the warning. He went overboard with woke policies, and he let immigration and the border get out of control. The response was Trump\u2019s victory.<\/p>\n
Then Trump made the same mistake, only bigger.<\/p>\n
Start with the economy. Trump\u2019s tariff policies had no economic basis. They caused major dislocations and lost efficiency across the economy. And here is the irony: Trump was elected in part because of the high inflation of the Biden years, and then his signature economic policy was tariffs, which led to more inflation. He went after Canada non-stop, killing Republican chances in Michigan and Maine and leading to more inflation. He just makes some terrible decisions.<\/p>\n
On immigration, Trump was right. He got the border under control, and he did a great job closing it. He was right to remove criminals who were here illegally. But then he went way overboard, going after illegal immigrants who were otherwise law-abiding. That was too much.<\/p>\n
On the rule of law, he was simply wrong. For years, Trump complained that he was being prosecuted for political reasons. Then he turned around and did the same thing to his opponents. Too much, and wrong. He pardoned or freed every one of the January 6th criminals. A terrible signal, and wrong.<\/p>\n
On Iran, Trump was right about the objective. Iran cannot be allowed to get a nuclear weapon. But he never clearly explained his strategy or why it mattered, and the facts would have been on his side. The war is now in its ninth month, and the execution has not been good. Hopefully it can still be resolved and the objective reached positively.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, he spent far too much time on nonsense. He tore down the East Wing to build a $400 million ballroom. He spent $16 million on a rushed, no-bid redo of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool that soon peeled and became full of algae. And there was a lot of questionable behavior, behavior that would appear to be unethical, around the business and crypto ventures his family got involved in. Those ventures made them billions.<\/p>\n
Trump also gave away races Republicans should have won. Again and again he backed candidates whose main qualification was 100% loyalty to him over really good incumbents. In Texas, he backed Ken Paxton over John Cornyn. Paxton won the primary and then lost to a Democrat, the first Democratic Senate win in Texas since 1988. In North Carolina, Thom Tillis retired after Trump threatened to back a primary challenger, and Trump\u2019s hand-picked replacement lost the seat. In Louisiana, Trump pushed out Bill Cassidy, and that seat was saved only because Louisiana is so deeply red. When Lindsey Graham passed, Trump threw his support behind Lindsey\u2019s sister, Darline Graham, for the South Carolina seat. She had never held elected office, and her main qualification was being Lindsey\u2019s sister. She lost.<\/p>\n
How Trump was elected, I will never understand. And I mean both times. The warning signs were everywhere from the very beginning. The Republicans would have been much better served by a traditional Republican: Nikki Haley, Marco Rubio, Mitt Romney, Ted Cruz, or many others.<\/p>\n
The bigger problem goes beyond one party. Both parties keep ignoring the deficit. We have been writing about this for years. Both parties continue to ignore the problems with Social Security. The fixes are no mystery:<\/p>\n
None of this is radical. A well-run business would do all of it. But we don\u2019t have adults running Washington. We have irresponsible leaders.<\/p>\n
Hopefully the rout of the Republicans puts an end to the Trump wing of the party, and the party can get back to its traditional values. Of course, the maniacs on the Democratic side are even worse. The country needs to be governed from the middle. By some miracle, maybe that can happen in the next few years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Republicans got pummeled on Tuesday. Democrats took the House and the Senate. Nobody should be surprised. This was a predictable backlash against the craziness of the Trump era. It\u2019s worth remembering how we got here. In the last two … Continue reading