The Tea Party revolt in 2010 gave Republicans a chance to block Barack Obama’s radical agenda, at which the GOP House majority largely succeeded. After failing to win the White House in 2012, however, Republicans overpromised what a 2014 midterm win could deliver. As a result, they set themselves up for failure: A budget filibuster unsurprisingly failed to convince President Obama to repeal his own Obamacare law, and Congress had to compromise on other budget items to garner Obama’s signature – even though anyone with a basic education in civics could have predicted both outcomes.
But that’s only part of the problem. Republicans have gotten trapped into defending the interests of a narrow band of the wealthy rather than focus on the real concerns and decline of working-class Americans. In 2008, the financial-sector meltdown had Republicans grudgingly arguing for the bailout of “too big to fail” bankers. In 2012, Mitt Romney dismissed the “47 percent” while the GOP tried to defend venture capital operations – certainly defensible, but hardly an issue to which most voters relate.
Small wonder that Trump struck a chord with working-class Americans in the GOP primaries when he ripped free trade deals for their impact on jobs and communities. Had Republicans made those issues the centerpiece of their economic initiatives while they had the chance in 2002-6, or even in the last four years of partial or complete control of Congress, they might have had a very different nominee in place now – and could have looked at a very different outcome in three weeks.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member