Republicans Can’t Seem to Fathom Why They Were Beaten

By Dick Polman

Fresh from their failures in
the 2022 midterm elections,
Republicans have created an
“advisory council” to help
craft their “2024 vision and
beyond.”
Cue the hysterical laugh
track.
Vision. That’s a hoot. By
all accounts,
their plan to
curb inflation
is to focus
on Hunter

Biden’s lap-
top.

The show-
runners on

“Seinfeld” had a slogan for
their self-absorbed characters:
“No learning.” That’s perfect
for the MAGA-infested GOP,
which seems incapable of
learning anything. In fact, it
was perfect for the GOP long
before the MAGA metastasis.

After losing the 2012 pres-
idential race, Republicans

warned in an autopsy report
that the overwhelmingly white
party needed to modernize by

reaching out to people of col-
or, because otherwise it was

“driving around in circles on
an ideological cul de sac.”
Guess what happened next.
In 2016 they ignored their
own advice and tripled down
on circling the cul de sac by
nominating Donald Trump,
who proceeded to market
white grievance and malign
people of color. Then Trump
led the party to defeat in three
straight elections – the 2018

midterms, the 2020 presiden-
tial, and the 2022 midterms.

So now Republican chair-
woman Ronna McDaniel

thinks an “advisory council”
can help determine what’s
gone wrong and how to make
things right. And to further
that effort, here are three of
the advisors she has chosen to
contribute wisdom:
Kellyanne Conway, the
Trump propagandist who told

Fox News this week that Her-
schel Walker lost in Georgia

because not enough Republi-
can bigwigs came to help him.

Blake Masters, the defeat-
ed Arizona Senate candidate,

who insisted that Joe Biden
stole the 2020 election, that
America was wrong to enter

World War II, and that Amer-
ica’s gun violence should be

blamed on “Black people,
frankly.”

Tony Perkins, the right-
wing religious zealot who

has devoted his career to op-
posing legal abortion and gay

equality.

“Our party needs to mod-
ernize,” said Blake Masters,

who drew lots of support from
white extremists whose idea
of modernization was turning
back the clock on people of
color.
The prize for magical

thinking goes to the Repub-
lican National Committee,

which said that the advisory

council members would ad-
vise “on continuing the suc-
cess we saw in 2022 such as

growing the party with His-
panic, Asian, and Black vot-
ers.”

That’s an odd definition of
“success.”
Black voters basically
clinched Democratic control
of the Senate; more than 90
percent cast ballots for John
Fetterman in Pennsylvania

(as did 68 percent of Pennsyl-
vania’s Hispanics), and more

than 90 percent voted for Ra-
fael Warnock in this week’s

Georgia runoff. According to
the nationwide midterm exit

polls, only 30 percent of non-
whites voted for Republicans

(other estimates put the share
at 27).
And imagine taking advice
from anti-abortion extremist
Tony Perkins, in the wake of

exit poll evidence that 59 per-
cent of midterm voters sup-
ported legal abortion in all

or most cases; that abortion
was cited as the second most
important issue – and that 76
percent of those who named

abortion as the most import-
ant issue voted for Democrats.

The funniest recent line in
The New York Times was a
reporter’s prediction that the
GOP’s lousy midterm results
“will almost certainly lead to
soul-searching.” Yeah, right.

Charlie Sykes, a for-
mer conservative talk show

host, had the best rejoinder:
“Somehow we doubt that the
GOP will spend much time
rummaging through the soul
they mislaid years ago.”