“In the end,” wrote Goethe, in the single most depressing line in European literature, “we are all King Lear.”
President Donald Trump has been at it for longer than most, spending his second term raging impotently at domestic and foreign enemies. “I shall do such things, what they are yet I know not, but they shall be the terrors of the Earth!”
For the second time, Americans have turned against a mad monarch. It was not, as Vice President JD Vance claimed, a vote against the Iran war. Nor was it, as the leader of the House Democrats, Hakeem Jeffries, claimed, an endorsement of his party’s program. No, it was a straightforward vote against the craziness of the past two years.
Voters turned against Trump’s tariffs, which had heaped needless costs on American businesses and workers. I forecast in these pages before the poll that Republicans would be walloped in the most affected states, especially those along the Mexican and Canadian borders. Don’t take my word for it, though. Look at the exit polls.
Sixty-six percent of voters told the NBC exit poll that Trump’s tariff policies had hurt the economy, and the economy was the top issue for 39% of voters – ahead of the state of democracy (33%), immigration (14%), and foreign policy, including Iran (4%).
In another set of questions, 49% of the electorate said the living concerns were “crucial” in determining their vote — again above immigration, foreign policy, and the rest. The only other issue that matched it was corruption, which 55% of voters flagged as crucial.
At the same time, Associated Press/NORC asked: “Do you think higher than usual prices are because of President Trump’s policies or more because of factors outside Trump’s control?” Sixty-five percent of voters correctly blamed Trump.
That’s the thing about tariffs. The idea of making foreigners pay your taxes has a certain demotic appeal; but the real-world experience of price rises is never popular. Almost all the officials around Trump understand this. They grasp the insanity of wanting to be simultaneously in surplus with every country in the world. Yet, rather than say so, they debase themselves by publicly endorsing and applauding the president. None of them is prepared, as Kent to Lear, to tell the monarch that his actions will bring him down.
This collective responsibility is what made voters punish the party as a whole, including plenty of good, patriotic Republicans who had nothing to do with the Madness of King Donald. By enabling Trump, the GOP made itself complicit.
The party of Reagan now has an opportunity, indeed an obligation, to undo the damage it has inflicted on itself and on America. The Democrats have drawn all the wrong lessons from the poll, seeing it as an endorsement of their new-breed socialist candidates. They will double down on many of the things that the country resented in Trump: the intrusiveness, the bellicosity, the disregard for constitutional proprieties.
A possible electoral majority is still waiting for a party that will act as the two parties used to, until the 2010s, respecting precedent, treating their opponents as rivals rather than enemies, acknowledging that some spheres of life should remain beyond politics. Waiting, in other words, for candidates who are, yes, perhaps a little boring, but who stick to their oaths of office, try not to do too much damage, and recognize that, in a dangerous and divided world, the liberal democracies are the good guys.
I know that there are plenty of Republicans in that mold, especially in state legislatures. There are governors running their states along Reaganite rather than Trumpian lines, keeping their budgets balanced. There are even a few genuine conservatives in Congress. Some make a point of standing up and being counted (thank you, Rep. Don Bacon); others stick quietly and politely to their principles (thank you, Sen. Roger Wicker).
WHY DID ANYONE THINK TRUMP’S TARIFFS WOULD BE POPULAR?
The question now is whether the men and women who stood aside from the madness will be acknowledged and given the chance to rescue their party, or whether they are frozen out by those who went along with the MAGA insanity, and who now regard those who stuck to the old creed as their bad consciences.
For MAGA, as an electoral proposition, has been rejected. It took a while for people to see its full implications: the cultism, the loss of national honor, the enrichment of the presidential entourage, the coarsening of public life, the chaos. Still, they got there in the end. What was it Churchill was supposed to have said about counting on Americans to do the right thing?