A Requiem for the Midterms |
A Requiem for the Midterms
Defeats often turn into victories.
J.B. Shurk | November 7, 2026
As an enthusiastic supporter of President Trump, I found the midterms about as enjoyable as listening to the screeching harpies of The View while getting a root canal without any anesthetic. They weren’t pleasant.
I didn’t anticipate the election to be as bad as it turned out. I assumed that lame-duck-Senator John Cornyn, Karl Rove, and the Bush clan would work to elect Democrats in Texas (including the strange, little boi-toy-turned-senator-elect James Talarico), but I still expected my barbecue bros and fellow rednecks to cowboy up and get Governor Abbott and Attorney General Paxton across the finish line.
I also thought Establishment Washington would make sure that Mike Rogers and Susan Collins won their Senate races in Michigan and Maine, respectively. Rogers is well liked in the national security community, and Collins gave Obama and Biden more support for their administration and judicial nominees than she has given Trump. I figured they’d get a Deep State bounce propelling them to victory. I also didn’t believe Michiganders would vote for the Muslim Brotherhood-supporting Islamist Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed.
Before the midterm dust had even settled, the anti-Trump Republicans were out in full force. New Jersey whale Chris Christie belched, “The Trump era is over.” Mitt Romney clone, Senator John Curtis of Utah, pontificated that Republicans must “return to the principled conservative values that once defined us — and that we’ve steadily abandoned over the last decade.” I’m sure Bill Kristol and The Bulwark cuckservatives were all smiles as they imagined how pleasurable it will be to have Islamists, communists, and foreign invaders humiliate them into submission.
What all these anti-Trumpers want is a return to Bush-McCain-Romney Republicanism. That’s what they seem to believe will rise again after the Democrats’ dominant performance. Does that seem likely? Outside of the Fox News green room, the country club dining hall, the Chamber of Commerce cocktail party circuit, and the RINO cloakroom in the Senate, is........