Republicans still expect a historic midterm wipeout, but the fight to assign responsibility and inherit President Donald Trump’s political movement is already underway.
Vice President JD Vance criticizes the war in Iran. Secretary of State Marco Rubio defends him. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says Republicans fought bad battles. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, says the party has lost touch with voters’ economic woes.
The competing visions of potential presidential candidates offer a first glimpse of Republican infighting heading into 2028. But all face the same dilemma: how to convince voters that the party can change course without alienating Trump or the MAGA base they need to win the nomination.
The main obstacle could be Trump himself, who has shown little inclination toward a political retreat.
On Monday, Trump made a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room, declaring that the war in Iran was “militarily over” while asserting that the United States remained ready to resume strikes. Earlier in the day, he questioned the legitimacy of the Republicans’ midterm defeat, suggesting without evidence that voting machines were to blame, days after declaring that after years of rejecting elections, he would accept the 2026 results.
Since the election, Trump has also replaced chief of staff Susie Wiles with Stephen Miller, an immigration hardliner, and backed Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters against a challenger demanding accountability for the party’s losses.
Trump is also keeping his potential successors guessing. In an interview with CBS on Sunday, he praised Rubio alongside Vance, but suggested he might stay out of the 2028 Republican primary.
“Maybe I’d be better off not getting involved,” he said, while emphasizing the weight his support could have.
This dynamic leaves Vance in a precarious position. Heading into the midterm elections as the obvious political heir, Vance now faces a crucial question: Can he inherit MAGA without inheriting the responsibility of Trump’s presidency?
In a lengthy article published Wednesday, as election results were still coming in, Vance disputed Trump’s initial explanation for the Republican defeat.
“The reason we lost was the war,” Vance wrote, saying voters who supported the Trump-Vance ticket in 2024 abandoned Republicans in 2026 because of Iran.
Invoking foreign policy allows Vance to criticize a defining administrative decision without repudiating the MAGA movement as a whole, while echoing his long-standing opposition to foreign interventions. Vance also has national profile and connections to donors to help with his potential candidacy.
But the election results complicate Vance’s argument.
Just 34% of House voters called the war crucial to their vote, compared with 49% citing the cost of living and 55% citing government corruption, according to the CNBC poll of voters — suggesting a broader backlash against the Trump administration that Vance spent nearly two years defending.
“You can’t campaign against a war in an administration you serve,” conservative commentator Joel Pollak wrote on X, wondering how Vance could distance himself from a conflict he had publicly defended.
In his CBS interview, Trump said he did not disagree with Vance’s assessment and acknowledged that the vice president had discussed the position with him beforehand. But he insisted the decision to attack Iran was the right one and suggested Vance also had his own losses to explain.
After Vance spent months fundraising and campaigning as finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, Democrats won both bellwether races in his home state of Ohio. Amy Acton defeated Vance ally Vivek Ramaswamy for governor after the vice president defended a controversial ad featuring Acton’s ex-mother. Former Sen. Sherrod Brown claimed Vance’s old Senate seat, defeating incumbent Republican Jon Husted.
Rep. Randy Fine, Republican of Florida, said Sunday he would not support Vance in 2028 because of his war criticism, calling it a betrayal by Trump. “You have to be loyal to those people who brought you to dance,” Fine said in an interview with FOX’s LiveNOW on Sunday, naming Rubio and Cruz as alternatives.
Rubio is making a different bet: defending the war in Iran while distancing himself from the Republican defeat.
“Sometimes when you do the right thing, you don’t know if it’s popular or not, but it’s still the right thing to do,” Rubio told reporters Sunday before leaving for France.
Rubio, who has denied plans to run in 2028, has largely avoided the campaign trail and stayed out of the immediate blame game. But his dual role as secretary of state and national security adviser ties him directly to Trump’s foreign policy record, which could come under renewed scrutiny when Democrats take control of the House. The House could vote on articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth this week, in a rebuke of the Trump administration’s foreign policy.
DeSantis, who is not part of the Trump administration, calls into question the entire party playbook.
Florida’s outgoing governor called the midterm elections “near an extinction-level event” for Republicans during a news conference Wednesday in Tallahassee, Fla., accusing Washington of failing to keep its promises while waging culture wars that no longer resonated with voters.
“The Republicans … were really fighting the battle yesterday,” DeSantis said at the news conference.
It was a striking criticism from a governor who has built his national profile on these very struggles.
DeSantis can point to Republicans’ ability to maintain control of Florida even as Democrats toppled longtime GOP strongholds elsewhere. But Republican Byron Donalds won the governor’s race by just 1.3 points, while Democrats gained ground in the Legislature.
Yet Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., credited DeSantis for building a “massive seawall against the blue tsunami” in an X-rated article.
The fight to succeed Trump extends well beyond Vance, Rubio and DeSantis.
Cruz called the midterm elections a “Watergate-level repudiation” in an article published Wednesday, blaming Trump’s tariffs and the protracted war in Iran. Other potential 2028 contenders include Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who face the same challenge: overtaking Trump without alienating his base.
Some wealthy Republican donors are already looking beyond Vance, weighing DeSantis and other alternatives, fearing that a Trump administration nominee would inherit the political baggage of his second term and low voter approval ratings.
The divisions extend to Trump’s own coalition. Among voters who supported Republican candidates for the House of Representatives, about two-thirds of those under 30 approved of Trump’s performance, far fewer than nearly nine in 10 voters aged 65 and older, according to the CNBC poll of voters. Young Republicans were also more skeptical of the war in Iran and U.S. support for Israel, according to exit poll data.
“If you want to argue that it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next six years was worth it, then do it,” Vance said Wednesday. “Agree or disagree, it’s at least honest. But everyone knows why we lost.”
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