Bad candidates. Bad message. Price. Prices. Iran. Corruption. Data centers. Republicans dissecting the party’s worst midterm defeat in decades are blaming almost everyone except Donald Trump.
At a two-day post-mortem conducted this week by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation near Washington, dozens of speakers criticized the president’s “agenda,” the White House’s “message” or the “operations” of the party, but almost none rebuked the man who asked voters to make the election about him.
Republicans who have flooded the airwaves since the midterm elections have also largely refrained from directly criticizing Trump.
While acknowledging that the president was “not perfect” when it came to communicating Republicans’ achievements, “what he still does uniquely is understand where the average American is coming from,” heritage director Kevin Roberts, who co-wrote the 2025 blueprint on which much of Trump’s agenda was based, told the FT.
Democrats’ triumph, he suggested, was in part because they borrowed from Trump’s playbook and focused on the cost-of-living issues that Republicans managed to pin on Joe Biden’s administration in 2024. “What some of these left-wing candidates did well was co-opt some of Maga’s language,” Roberts said.
Others at the event criticized Republican candidates, including Ken Paxton, whom Trump supported over incumbent Texas Sen. John Cornyn, and Cindy Hyde-Smith, who lost to a Democrat in deep-red Mississippi after a low-key campaign that included some errors in television interviews.
“In some cases, we just didn’t have candidates talented enough to (engage in debates),” said Republican pundit Scott Jennings.
Spencer Pratt, who lost the Los Angeles mayoral race, said Democrats succeeded because they lied to an electorate ready to believe they would be able to solve the affordability crisis. “They’re telling them exactly what they want to hear, and the message from the Republican Party was basically: These people are so stupid,” he said.
The most vocal direct criticism of the president came from Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson. “On the eve of the election…rather than standing up and giving a speech about ‘here’s my plan to improve the economy over the next two years,’ the president gave a press conference about the reflecting pool. That’s just a completely false message.”
Some strategists are already saying the lesson of the election is that Republicans haven’t relied enough on Trump’s America First agenda.
“Running from Trump is a fool’s errand,” said Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist in the president’s adopted state of Florida. “Because what the base of the Republican Party and voters in general are saying is that we agree … with these positions.”
Rather than chastise the president, party faithful, unenthusiastic about the Republican candidates, stayed home, O’Connell added. “If (Trump) had been on the ballot, the outcome would have been different because rural voters would have walked out.”
But even if they concluded privately that Trump had influenced this month’s vote, there would be a cost to saying so publicly.
“Ultimately, Donald Trump was the one who stepped up and said, ‘Pretend I’m on the ballot,’ and people responded accordingly,” conservative commentator Erick Erickson told the FT. But he said the many Republicans who agreed with his assessment “will continue to circle around the issue.”
“If they criticized the president…then they would lose access to the White House,” he said.
Even though the president “has some responsibility here,” Republicans “have to toe the line if you’re an elected official,” another GOP strategist said. “In 14 months, it will be primary season and it will be a great opportunity for someone to come and challenge you.”
Vice President JD Vance, who before the midterm elections was considered the front-runner for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, last week blamed the party’s losses on the war in Iran, but not on the country’s commander in chief.
Other Republicans who are rumored to be considering a run for president have been more outspoken in their criticism. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told Fox News the election was “a rebuke to the president,” while Texas Sen. Ted Cruz cited Trump’s “focus on monuments” as voters’ top concern.
Meanwhile, Trump himself is attacking Republicans in Congress.
In an article published Thursday on Truth Social, he said the Senate, which was controlled by his party, “can no longer be the place where things are sent to die.” He added that his party’s failure to pass a bill requiring voters to provide identification and proof of citizenship “was devastating” to their midterm hopes.
