Donald Trump hoped to surf a “red wave” – the color of the Republicans -, with an eye on a new presidential candidacy in 2024 after the mid-term elections in the United States, but with limited achievements and a prominent result from his main opponent within the party, the former -president seems to have died on the beach
The former White House tenant (2017-2021), who has hinted he will announce his new presidential candidacy on November 15, has served in Republican primaries and held rallies across the country, in which he repeated his baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 election. , who lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
But several of the handpicked candidates did not do well at the polls on Tuesday. Some even lost seats previously held by Republicans to Democrats. Analysts and some in his party blame him for the result, despite the chance to win back the House of Representatives by a narrow margin. Senate control is uncertain.
“While in some ways yesterday’s election was a little disappointing, from my personal perspective it was a great victory,” Trump said Wednesday on his social network, Truth Social.
But without a doubt, the most prominent victory for the Conservative side was that of Ron DeSantis, who was re-elected governor of Florida and established himself as a rising Republican star and Donald Trump’s strongest opponent for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
A conservative Fox News editorial proclaimed DeSantis “the new leader of the Republican Party.”
Asked Wednesday about the Trump-DeSantis rivalry, President Biden said “it would be fun to see them duel.”
Although there are still no complete final results, the political map that was drawn this morning (9) clearly does not look like what had been projected.
“It shouldn’t have been so difficult for Republicans” to regain control of the House of Representatives and the Senate, Jon Rogowski, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, told AFP. Above all, if we add the contexts of high inflation and low popularity of President Joe Biden.
“Many candidates (that Donald Trump supported) underperformed and cost their party the opportunity to win seats that should have been achievable” for Republicans, Rogowski said.
“Meanwhile, other Republican candidates with whom he has publicly quarreled easily won their seats,” he added. One example was Brian Kemp, who was openly opposed to Trump, who kept the governorship of Georgia.
Candidate “Quality”
The results show that “you can be conservative, be principled, oppose Trump and win,” Peter Loge, a professor at George Washington University, told AFP.
“It’s really a tipping point for the Republican Party,” Geoff Duncan, the Republican lieutenant governor of Georgia, who has long been openly critical of the former president, told CNN on Wednesday morning. “It’s time to move on,” he added.
Before the election, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was already concerned about the “quality” of candidates supported by Trump.
In view of the results, the former president could have lost his “king-making” aura. The celebrated surgeon Mehmet Oz, supported by Donald Trump, did not take the key senator seat in the disputed state of Pennsylvania.
Also in this state, the ultraconservative and anti-abortion candidate Doug Mastriano, who was in the occupation of the Capitol, was defeated in his candidacy for the government.
A notable exception was that of the trumpist J.D. Vance, elected senator from Ohio. According to media projections, more than 100 Republican candidates who do not recognize the outcome of the 2020 presidential election were elected on Tuesday to local and national offices.
Road to the Presidency
As of Wednesday morning, the former president was “furious” and “yelling at everybody,” admitted one of his aides, quoted on condition of anonymity by renowned CNN journalist Jim Acosta.
Trump rejected these claims in an interview with Fox News and reaffirmed that the speech scheduled for November 15 at his Florida residence still stands. “Why would I change?”, replied the former president when asked about a possible change of plans.
On that day, if Republicans get a majority in the House, Trump won’t mind “taking the credit,” predicts Rogowski.
According to the expert, with a presidential candidacy announced two years before the deadline, the former tenant of the White House would seek, above all, to take his opponents by surprise.
On that same November 15, another rival of Trump, his former vice president Mike Pence, will publish his memoirs, the best excerpts of which were opportunely published this Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal. In the text, Pence recounts the pressure suffered to annul the results of the 2020
