Republicans Got Wiped Out. Now What?

Yeah, I think that my biggest shocker tonight was probably that.

Susan Collins was huge, again, partially.

I mean, there was...

Yeah, it was a little bit divorced from the data, but it was also just that's what she does, and it was hard to think that such a strange candidate as Troy Jackson would come back from such a... weird false start in a messy primary and cruise to victory.

I also, I said this on Morning Wire the other day.

This is obviously, you know, with all due respect to Congressman Mike Lawler, who's a great guy.

Mike Lawler losing his race, I don't think is something, it's not really cracking the top 10 races of things that have Republican consultants buzzing and freaking out, but Uh, he's also just, he was an incredibly popular incumbent, uh, you know, very, one of the more centrist bipartisan Republicans.

And the fact that even he went down, uh, was, was another one where, when I saw that again, just partially just because I'm from New York and have family who lives in Lawler's district.

So he looms largely in my mind.

I was like, oh man, that's, that's pretty crazy.

But I want to wrap on this because one thing that I feel like we, uh, we all talked a lot about, uh, Kind of right when the midterm races were really starting to pick up steam and then stopped talking about as, you know, things got more granular as we got closer.

But you did just kind of reference it is this was a very, very national midterm election.

Now, all politics has been getting more nationalized for decades.

30 years and you know the 22 midterms were more national than the 2018 midterms and you know blah blah blah blah blah uh you know so on and so forth but this really was one where from the beginning uh it wasn't just messaging right it wasn't just that obviously in every midterm election you have democrat candidates are going to say you know you're not just running against i'm not just running against my republican opponent i'm running against the republican party and vice versa but this year we really had, you know, Donald Trump said, this is a national election.

The RNC had that, had a midterm convention in Dallas.

Like everything was, or Trump at the end as out of desperation said, you know, pretend that I'm on the ballot.

Do you think that, I mean, I think we agree that the kind of nationalization of this midterm election certainly helped Democrats.

I guess my question is, Do you think Republicans did this to themselves, or do you think this was just inevitably how this cycle was going to play out given Trump's popularity, the war in Iran, the emerging Democratic consensus around these radical candidates, and just kind of the way that politics and the media works these days?

I mean, I think the question of did Republicans do this to themselves just depends on how far back do you want to go.

I mean, I would argue that you did this to yourself when in the 2024 presidential primary you chose to nominate Trump.

And regardless of what things people like and don't like about Trump, His first term kind of ended rather unceremoniously, let's say.

And now in his second term, he's not – in my opinion – here's the thing.

People say that Trump has broken a lot of promises or that he pissed off the base because he did the Iran War, all these things, whatever.

And yes and no.

I mean I think the Iran War – The fact that he campaigned on no foreign adventurism and then turned around and did that, yes, is a pretty, whether you want to call it a broken promise or not, it is jarring to people and people did not like that.