Kennesaw State students should understand that the Republican Party continues to take losses like in the 2022 midterm elections because of former president Donald Trump.
“The Republican Party had the winning combination of factors going into the midterm elections and completely fumbled the golden opportunity,” the New York Post said. “The GOP is the minority party in Congress, with a Democratic President whose approval rating is within the mid-40s. They also were winning on most of the relevant issues of this year, including immigration, crime and inflation.”
Despite the Republican Party containing these factors in their favor leading into Election Day, Donald Trump is to blame with his endorsed candidates and the state of the GOP while he is in power.
The former president, Trump has stayed in the spotlight of American politics for the past two years. He is not only a one-term president but a defeated one. Trump was never a popular president, and that became more apparent after he spread false claims of mass voter fraud. In fact, nearly all of his endorsed candidates made “election integrity” a central issue of their campaigns, and they were defeated. The Michigan GOP’s Chief of Staff Paul Cordes said in a post-election memo that “at the end of the day, high quality, substantive candidates and well-funded campaigns are still critical to winning elections,” Cordes said.
Republicans were counting on big wins in the U.S. Senate to deliver them the majority including New Hampshire, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia. Republicans needed a net gain of one in an evenly split chamber to win back the Senate and they lost three of those four races and a seat in Pennsylvania that they already held.
Georgia’s U.S. Senate race will be decided by a Dec. 6 runoff after Democrat Senator Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker failed to reach 50% on election night. Regardless of the outcome, however, it will not affect the outcome of the Senate majority.
The grim results were predicted by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell months earlier though, stating “Senate races are just different. They are statewide. Candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.”
The GOP also underperformed greatly in gubernatorial races all across the country hoping to knock off popular Democratic governors in states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Kansas.
Democrats also celebrated big victories in open Governor seats, as both Trump-aligned GOP nominees from Pennsylvania and Arizona both lost. Republicans held their own in states like Georgia and Florida while defeating one Democratic incumbent in Nevada. The gubernatorial races were seen as a major disappointment.
Despite Republicans failing to take back the Senate and win key governorships, they managed to take control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Though it will be a slim majority for the GOP, it will be a major obstacle for President Joe Biden.
The redistricting and the Dobbs decision over the summer had a great impact, but Trump and his relevance within the GOP spotlight is what ultimately cost them this year. America is ready to move on from Trump.
