Why Trump's loss is a golden opportunity for Republicans

Donald Trump wanted an election that was all about him, and he got it. But something tells me he didn’t envision it this way.

In most elections, presidential coattails help boost the fortunes of fellow partisans down the ballot.

That didn’t happen this time.

With a few exceptions, Republican House and Senate candidates actually did better than Trump did.

The incumbent has lost the White House. But, meanwhile, Republicans have closed the gap on the Democratic majority in the House and are likely to retain control of the Senate. (The best Democrats can do there is 50-50, and they’d need to win two runoffs in Georgia, where they’re underdogs, to do it.)

Georgia illustrates the disconnect: Joe Biden overtook Trump and appears headed to a narrow victory, and is likely to survive a recount. Republican Senate candidates in the state, however, will be favored to retain their seats in the runoff. GOP incumbent David Perdue ran a couple of points ahead of Jon Ossoff in one contest, while two Republican candidates split the vote but, taken together, outpolled Democrat Raphael Warnock in the other race.

The election’s message

Despite the sense that the GOP has become Trump’s party, a lot of voters apparently liked other Republicans better than they liked the guy in the White House.

Coattail effect? Not this time. In fact, the reverse happened: The success of down-ballot Republicans couldn’t save Trump.

This is the worst possible outcome for the self-obsessed one-term president. If Republicans had lost ground, too, he could have blamed negative attitudes toward the party as a whole, but he can’t do that now.

It’s all on him.

This is good news for Republicans, who now have an off-ramp from the off-the-rails Trump rollercoaster. They more safely distance themselves from Trump while pushing ahead on the party’s agenda. It’s an agenda they largely shared with Trump (even though he adopted it as an opportunistic power play), and the vote shows a large number of people support it.

The distinction GOP and right-leaning independents made between Trump and Republican candidates isn’t based on the issues, but on the personality, approach to governance, and competence.

Anyone who watched former GOP presidential candidate (and Pennsylvania senator) Rick Santorum squirm in his seat on CNN has witnessed this dichotomy firsthand. Santorum repeatedly defended Trump on the issues, but was hard-pressed to do so on his approach or demeanor. Instead, he tried to interpret what Trump was saying in more civil, coherent terms — which led Gloria Borger to label him “the Trump whisperer.”

Dichotomy

This is where most Republicans have found themselves: maintaining their loyalty to the issues they share with Trump, while couching it in the terms of the personal loyalty he demands. It’s been a delicate balance. But the results of the election show it may no longer be necessary — at least not to the same extent.

They may not be able to repudiate Trump altogether (he still has a rabid personal following), but they now have the ammunition they need to distance themselves from his toxic behavior. The clear role model on how to do this is Mitt Romney, who frequently shares Trump’s policy positions, supports his court nominees, etc., while refusing to tolerate his security breaches and would-be-authoritarian behavior.

And history is instructive: The Republicans not only survived Watergate, they reclaimed the White House six years later in the first of three straight winning presidential campaigns.

Trump isn’t Richard Nixon, but it’s worth noting that Nixon was far more broadly popular than Trump has ever been. If the Republicans could survive his downfall, they could certainly survive the flameout of a far less popular figure like Trump.

GOP opportunity

In fact, it can be argued that the 2020 election could not have gone better for Republicans. They will probably hold the Senate, make gains in the House, and purge themselves of the political albatross around their neck that Trump has become. If someone else emerges to lead the party, that person will be in the best position possible:

They’ll be facing either an octogenarian in Joe Biden or a non-incumbent successor in 2024. Moreover, they’ll be able to contrast themselves to Trump in much the same way Biden’s steady, nice-guy image contrasted with Hillary Clinton’s low approval figures — in fact, even more so.

Before Trump, critics of the GOP thought George W. Bush had been the worst possible president. But after a few months of the Trump presidency, billboards with Bush’s face began to emerge, accompanied by the phrase, “Miss me yet?” Suddenly, even Bush with his Great Recession, Gulf War II, and Katrina debacle looked good in comparison to Trump.

In similar fashion, anyone (even Ted Cruz!) will look good to the average voter in contrast to Trump. The Republicans have the chance to save their party’s relevance by repudiating the politics of hatred, division, and disunity that Trump has spent the past four years fostering.

In many ways, they’re in the catbird’s seat. All they have to do is show Trump the door.

Unfortunately, for their sake — and for the nation’s — that will be easier said than done.