The RNC Is Probing Whether Trump Is to Blame for Midterm Disaster
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The Republican National Committee is considering whether to blame Donald Trump for the party’s midterm losses as it creates a report examining why the predicted “red wave” never came to fruition.
“Looking at President Trump, what has he gotten right? And what has he gotten wrong? And how do we learn from that to win elections going forward?” Henry Barbour, an RNC committeeman from Mississippi told NBC News in an interview. RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel has charged Barbour, along with Harmeet Dhillon, a Trump attorney and RNC committeewoman from California, with co-authoring the RNC’s post-election review. Three dozen additional RNC members will also contribute to the report.
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The Republican Party showed a lackluster performance this past November compared to predictions that the GOP would gain control of both chambers of Congress. But even with President Biden’s low popularity and high inflation, the party only managed to gain control of the House by a small margin (leading to its current issues electing a speaker), while the Senate remained under Democratic control, thanks in part to Trump-endorsed candidates losing key races in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania.
“What we intend to do is get into the weeds, to have data to confirm or certainly to give weight to the assessments that we make,” Barbour said. “This has got to be a candid effort. We can’t gloss over things. Or it’s just not worth doing.”
Meanwhile, not pleased by some Republicans looking to lay the GOP’s losses at his feet, Trump has tried to escape blame. “It wasn’t my fault that the Republicans didn’t live up to expectations in the MidTerms,” Trump wrote on Truth Social this past weekend. “I was 233-20! It was the ‘abortion issue,’ poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions, even in the case of Rape, Incest, or Life of the Mother, that lost large numbers of Voters.”
The former president went on to criticize anti-abortion leaders, as well as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “Also, the people that pushed so hard, for decades, against abortion, got their wish from the U.S. Supreme Court, & just plain disappeared, not to be seen again. Plus, Mitch stupid $’s!” he added, seemingly implying that McConnell did not properly spend campaign funds.
McConnell, however, has blamed “candidate quality” as the reason for the losses, naming three states — Arizona, New Hampshire, and Georgia — where Trump endorsed unsuccessful Senate candidates. “Our ability to control primary outcomes was quite limited in ’22 because the support of the former president proved to be very decisive in these primaries,” McConnell said.
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