Let the Republican Recriminations Begin!

The American political world is still attempting to grapple with the largest midterm victory since 1974. It very well might be a realignment election; one of those results that go on to define the next political era, like 1932 or 1980. In addition to Democrats easily sweeping every statewide race in Texas—hitherto the most important conservative political power base—they won stunning surprise victories in the Senate races in South Carolina, and just possibly Mississippi.

It’s quite obvious why Republicans lost: their own behavior. Specifically, it was the disastrous decisions of Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert Kennedy Jr., plus sundry lower officials. The Trump administration’s tariff war is jacking up prices to no benefit for anyone, they started the dumbest war in American history, and all manner of vital government infrastructure is in shambles or being stolen outright.

Incumbent officials who commit this kind of catastrophic bungling have two options. They can square their shoulders, admit fault, and accept responsibility for their actions. Or they can squirm desperately to pin blame on somebody, anybody, else. No points for guessing which one Republicans are choosing.

The first scapegoat looks likely to be Hegseth. As an obvious nincompoop with no relevant experience, plus a history of heavy drinking and credible sexual assault allegations, and numerous shocking scandals during his tenure—remember Signalgate?—who is centrally implicated in the decision to start the war with Iran, Hegseth makes a convenient patsy for a war for which most of the GOP had been pining for decades. That is the move being mooted among congressional Republicans, reports CNN, with a vote to repudiate or even impeach him afoot. Trump is also reportedly considering sacking him.

I would expect that many Republicans will blame Kennedy as well. With measles running rampant and the national food supply full of diarrhea parasites, it would be very convenient to pretend once more that anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and alternative medicine woo-woo are solely the province of Hollywood liberals.

As yet, however, there has not been much of an attempt to lay the blame where it mostly belongs—at the feet of Donald Trump. He is the president, the commander in chief of the military, and the leader of the GOP. The 2026 vote was quite obviously a turn against Trump. Voters wanted to punish him specifically for screwing everything up.

But Trump is also a cult leader, and he still has a death grip on the MAGA faithful. Any conservative who goes against him risks excommunication, if not violence. So Trump’s various scheming viziers are as yet dancing around the issue. In a Twitter/X post, Vance pinned the blame for the election loss on the war with Iran, while carefully not mentioning Trump’s culpability. Other Republican officials will blame Trump directly, but only while speaking anonymously to reporters.

Rubio, for his part, is reportedly considering resigning from the administration—and before he gets his cherished war on Cuba, no less. I would expect some sad stories in future about how he tried to stop all the bad decisions from the inside.

The truth, of course, is that the catastrophic disaster of Trump’s second term, just like the catastrophic disaster of George W. Bush’s presidency, is entirely a product of the conservative movement itself. It shaped and molded Trump’s behavior through primaries and conservative media, and conservative voters put him into office, twice. It doesn’t matter how many of their own Republicans throw under the bus. If you vote for Republicans, this is what you get: a pointless war in the Middle East, tax cuts for the rich, and eventually, an economic crisis.