This year’s election cycle proved to be difficult for the Republican Party, having just lost another key Senate seat in Nevada after Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto won reelection, causing Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, to say on Saturday that the old GOP is dead, and that it’s “time to bury it.”
Hawley also took to Twitter last week to call out GOP candidates for not appealing to independent voters.
“When your ‘agenda’ is cave to Big Pharma on insulin, cave to Schumer on gun control & Green New Deal (“infrastructure”), and tease changes to Social Security and Medicare, you lose,” the senator said last Thursday. “What are Republicans actually going to do for working people? How about, to start: tougher tariffs on China, reshore American jobs, open up American energy full throttle, 100k new cops on the street. Unrig the system.”
The old party is dead. Time to bury it. Build something new
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) November 13, 2022
The following day, the Republican tweeted: “You can’t expect independent voters to vote Republican unless you give them an agenda they care about.”
Former President Donald Trump is also facing a lot of heat from people within his own party after several of his candidates were defeated by Democrats in their tight midterm races. Georgia Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan told CNN last week that Trump is “in the rearview mirror” of the Republican Party.
Meanwhile, Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, Winsome Earle-Sears, told The Washington Post on Friday that it seems like voters want to move on from Trump.
“What we saw was, even though he wasn’t on the ballot, he was, because he stepped in and endorsed candidates.” Earle-Sears said. “And yet, it turns out that those he did not endorse on the same ticket did better than the ones he did endorse. That gives you a clue that the voters want to move on. And a true leader knows when they have become a liability to the mission.”
Political analyst Craig Agranoff told Newsweek on Sunday that “Republicans are starting to observe that if they actually want to win their elections, they might need to move more to the middle.” Agranoff added that the “marginalized moderate majority” is the most powerful.
Agranoff also pointed out that if Trump does win the 2024 presidential election, the outspoken GOP candidates may regret their words. “This could backfire on Republicans if he wins since the former president has been known to hold a grudge,” he said.
Trump is reportedly planning to announce a 2024 presidential run on Tuesday at Mar-a-Lago after he teased a “major announcement” on the eve of the midterm elections.
“Two years ago, we were a great nation, and we will be a great nation again. Not to detract from tomorrow’s very important even critical election…I’m going to be making a very big announcement on Tuesday Nov. 15 at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach,” he said on Truth Social.
