The Republican Party suffered a generational defeat in the recent Midterm Elections.
It lost control of both chambers of Congress and states like Texas that Democrats didn’t even consider competitive.
President Donald J. Trump signs an Executive Order regarding childhood vaccines in the Oval Office, Monday, August 10, 2026. (Official White House Photo by Molly Riley)
President Donald J. Trump attends a Rose Garden Lunch for first responders Thursday, October 15, 2026. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)
Republicans lost so badly that some say this defeat is not just a setback for the GOP, which believed it would at most have lost the House, but that it might be a decade before the GOP is truly competitive again.
In fact, the defeat was painful, and many questions are now being raised about the future of the “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement within the GOP and President Donald Trump’s legacy.
A Reuters investigation found that the Republican defeat mattered because it triggered a wide-ranging, bitter debate among Trump supporters over whether President Trump is a political liability rather than an electoral asset for the party.
That’s a stunning development, considering how firm Trump’s grip on the Republican Party has been since the 2016 presidential election.
The Background
Over the last decade, prospective GOP contenders at any level of the race were viewed favorably based on how Trump viewed or supported them; in this last election (and likely going forward), Trump’s approval matters less. Indeed, it’s toxic.
That’s why in the closing weeks of the 2026 Midterm campaign, Tex. Gov. Greg Abbott avoided appearing at Trump rallies the Trump team designed to rally weary GOP voters in Texas.
Abbott knew well before November 3 that the president was becoming toxic. Abbott, of course, lost the governorship.
Texas went blue in basically every statewide office save for Sen. Ted Cruz, who astonishingly remains in office.
As for the president’s approval rating, it was already cratering before the November 3 vote. Now, it is at record lows.
It won’t be getting any better.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis says that the defeat was so great that the GOP might not regain control over the Senate until 2032.
And the reason had nothing to do with voter anger about the issues that Trump and the GOP won on two years prior, in the 2024 presidential election.
They were simply because voters were rightly upset over the way in which Trump and the Republicans took this country to war against Iran on February 28; the voters were overwhelmingly angry about the way in which Trump failed to come through on any of his campaign promises.
They were also tired of the constant drama that Trump generated.
Trump Became the Albatross
“Trump has cost us,” Michael Little, a 59-year-old Texas businessman who voted for Trump three times, told Reuters. Many other Republicans echo that sentiment across a variety of once solidly Republican-dominated states. The data backs it up, too.
More than 20 percent of MAGA supporters questioned the movement’s direction under Trump.
More than half of those self-identified MAGA voters inside the Republican Party stated that they would continue voting for MAGA candidates, but that they no longer supported Trump as the leader of their party.
When he ran for office as the outsider candidate in the GOP a decade ago, Trump’s message resonated with voters both because it was simple and because voters were tired of the usual politics that had long dominated the discourse.
Before Trump came along, the Republican and Democratic Parties were essentially dominated by the neoconservative (in the GOP) Bush dynasty and the neoliberal (in the Democratic Party) Clinton dynasty.
Other factions existed, too, but they agreed on far more issues than they disagreed on.
Voters were tired ot that.
Trump’s message was caustic and unique. He called it “American Carnage” in his divisive first inauguration address in January 2017.
But that term best describes the entire MAGA movement. Per the dictates of MAGA, both the Republican and Democratic Parties had betrayed America over the decades since the Second World War.
The two parties had betrayed the American worker by sending their jobs overseas to places like China, which now threatened America economically and militarily.
The two parties had betrayed American sovereignty by effectively opening the floodgates to waves of illegal immigration, many of whom now took American jobs.
Trump proposed protectionist policies and hawkish immigration policies as a solution to these ongoing betrayals.
Trump’s biggest vow to the American people in 2016 (and beyond) was that he was the one candidate who vehemently opposed what he referred to as “stupid” Middle East wars of choice.
He was the one candidate who dared to support diplomacy with both Russia and China rather than constant conflict.
He said this at the time when the United States had just been humiliated in the Iraq War, and the country was stuck in a series of unpopular conflicts across the Middle East and in Afghanistan.
Americans heard this, and many rallied to Trump.
Of course, Trump barely won in 2016. He lost in 2020. But then Trump came back to power in a unique way in 2024, winning over voters who hadn’t originally been MAGA supporters or Republican voters, because of Trump’s strong message on affordability.
An Epic Betrayal
But once in power, Trump betrayed all these promises.
Most notably, Trump consistently pledged not to start new wars of choice in the Middle East.
But then Trump turned around and started multiple new foreign conflicts, notably the war in Iran.
That conflict is ongoing and has caused massive economic damage worldwide and, specifically, to average Americans, largely through rising fuel and other goods costs.
MAGA remains a powerful presence on the American Right.
But this Midterm proves that it has been weakened. And the future of that movement, as well as Trump’s place within it, is now in question after Trump has so thoroughly failed to deliver on his most basic campaign promises from just two years ago.
A movement among younger former MAGA supporters is also emerging to separate Trump’s original “America First” agenda from the Trump administration’s foreign policy decisions and its failure to deliver on its economic populist message.
Regardless, the defeat was so bad for the GOP that there will be some variation of internecine fighting between establishment Republicans, Trump loyalists, and the true nationalist-populists.
MAGA is a Zombie Movement
The MAGA movement that Trump started fundamentally transformed the Republican Party by making it more populist and bringing in working-class voters who did not share the GOP’s orthodoxy about either the economy or foreign policy.
With the massive defeat of the GOP in the Midterm election, primarily because of dissatisfaction with Trump and his policies that appear to have abandoned the MAGA platform, the president who created the MAGA movement has now become the greatest impediment to the survival of that movement.
About the Author: Brandon J. Weichert
Brandon J. Weichert is the Senior National Security Editor. He also manages The Weichert Brief on Substack. Weichert is the co-host of The Mario Nawfal Show on Twitter/X. He is the author of four bestselling national security books, most recently A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine (Encounter Books). His next book, Fortress Americas: A New Monroe Doctrine (Tucker Carlson Books), is due out December 8. Follow him via Twitter/X @WeTheBrandon.
