Mini-Trumps Are a Midterm Disaster
The GOP is already pointing fingers over their Senate candidates' underperformance in the midterms—and it's only August.
Donald Trump may no longer have the death grip on the GOP that he had while in office, but when it comes to the party’s base, his power remains unmatched. Nowhere has Trump’s sway been clearer than in the success of his GOP Senate endorsements: Eight out of nine Trump-handpicked candidates in competitive races have won their primaries.
Alas, the former president has crafted a slate of Senate hopefuls that each reflect some aspect of Trump back to their Dr. Frankenstein—and to everyone else. Mehmet Oz, J. D. Vance, and Herschel Walker are all, like Trump, semi-celebrities. Both Walker and Oz have their own histories of making sketchy business-related claims, while Vance—who was, up until the past few years, a Never Trumper—has proved he shares Trump’s mercenary willingness to shift allegiances to get elected. Then there’s Blake Masters, who, like Trump, has gone on the record with a wildly racist claim.
Trump and his Senate picks also share the same electoral liability. The nationalistic rhetoric that delights Trump’s base—which, at this point, is also the base of the Republican Party—turns off the people you need to win elections in tighter races. That is, everyone else.
Republicans can’t win purple states merely as mini-Trumps. The GOP establishment knows this; in purple state Virginia, Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin strenuously avoided campaigning with the former president. Trump’s purple state Senate candidates like Ron Johnson and Adam Laxalt, in addition to Oz, Vance, Masters, and Walker, are beginning to figure out for themselves that going full MAGA spooks the electorate. But the bigger problem these candidates have is that they are just terrible candidates—a reality that’s only becoming more obvious as the campaign season continues.
Oz might be the perfect case in point. Once a reasonably likable, if medically unreliable, television celebrity, the Pennsylvania Senate candidate has ended up looking pretentious, spiteful, and petty under the scrutiny of campaign coverage. His campaign has been a parade of gaffes, from the controversy over how many residential properties he reportedly owns (10) to his video complaining over the price of vegetables for a crudités plate. Perhaps most damaging is how Oz’s team has responded to a hilarious social-media campaign unleashed by his opponent, Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman. Fetterman’s teasing response to the crudités debacle (“In PA we call this a … veggie tray,” he tweeted) seems to have gotten under the skin of Oz and his team, whose senior communications adviser told Insider in an article published Tuesday that if Fetterman “had ever eaten a vegetable in his life,” he might have avoided a major stroke this past May—a stance that, unsurprisingly, has not made Oz any more appealing to the public. (It’s telling that even Trump seems to have lost faith in Oz, reportedly lamenting, according to two sources that spoke with Rolling Stone, that the TV doctor was going to “fucking lose” his race. Oz is polling on average around 10 points below Fetterman, according to FiveThirtyEight.)
The sorry outlook for Trump’s Senate candidates has not escaped the notice of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who reportedly said in an event last week, “I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate. Senate races are just different, they’re statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.” While McConnell didn’t specify by name which candidates he found lacking, many read between the lines—including Trump, who went on the offensive in a Truth Social post, dismissing McConnell as a “broken down hack politician.” (Although I’m no fan of McConnell, he did help get Trump three Supreme Court seats; I’m not sure that’s the definition of a “broken down hack.”) But it’s clear McConnell’s criticism hit a nerve. Last night, Trump released another anti-McConnell statement, saying, “Mitch McConnell is not an Opposition Leader, he is a pawn for the Democrats to get whatever they want.”
In the remaining weeks leading up to November 8, Republicans are hoping a last-minute infusion of cash manages to obscure their candidates’ terribleness. And maybe it will. In April, the McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC, announced $141 million in fall advertising reservations. But I’m not convinced that money can solve an electability problem. The problem with a party being ruled by one figure is that, sooner or later, every vote tends to become a referendum on that one person, who in this case happens to repulse more people than he inspires. And Trump would rather burn the GOP to the ground than surrender his control over it.