OPINION:
Former President Donald Trump wanted this year’s midterms to be all about him and he got his wish. He selected several flawed candidates and then trashed them or refused to provide the funding they needed, hogged the spotlight in the last week of the campaign, and diverted public attention from his party’s issues narrative while enhancing the credibility of the wild claims of Democrats that democracy was on the line in this year’s elections.
Although Mr. Trump was advised to focus on the candidates, their message and 2022 rather than on himself and his plans for 2024, he couldn’t resist grabbing the spotlight for himself. Ignoring the warning to be careful of what you wish for, Mr. Trump managed to make Nov. 8 more about him than about inflation, crime, or gas prices and in the process took ownership of both of the elections and their results.
Trump worshippers like the man himself are working overtime to lay the blame elsewhere. Reports on Wednesday morning claimed the former president even blamed his wife for somehow sweet-talking him into recruiting and endorsing Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania against his own better judgment. He endorsed candidates in half a dozen high-profile races in primaries.
Dr. Oz improved during the campaign but still lost to a candidate who was far too liberal for Pennsylvania and was forced to campaign after suffering a stroke that made him an embarrassment on the campaign trail. Add Mr. Trump’s early championing of a gubernatorial candidate who couldn’t get off the ground or raise any money and helped drag down candidates across the Keystone State.
Mr. Trump proved last week what his critics have maintained all along; He’s all about himself and no one or nothing else. His post-election pouting cost his party two Georgia runoff elections and control of the Senate. This year, his meddling and abysmal judgment mean that New York’s Chuck Schumer will run the Senate for another two years and enable an extremely unpopular president to continue his destruction of the American economy and energy future.
In the final days of a campaign that should have been decided on issues like inflation, crime and energy policy, Mr. Trump helped President Biden and his buddies to successfully change the subject.
Democrats knew they couldn’t win on the issues or on their accomplishments since their takeover of the White House and both houses of Congress two years ago. To win or at least minimize their losses, they had to make the election about something, anything else. That’s what “democracy is on the ballot” was all about. Democratic strategists figured correctly that if they could make the election more about Mr. Trump than the issues, they could persuade their base voters who liked him even less than Mr. Biden to turn out, and Mr. Trump couldn’t resist playing into their hands.
Mr. Trump’s October rallies held in targeted states and supposedly designed to help Republican candidates were not about those candidates, but about Mr. Trump himself, and helped energize Democratic rather than Republicans and independents to vote. At the rallies, Mr. Trump took swipes at other Republicans and as in Ohio belittled J.D. Vance, whom he was supposedly there to help. To further keep the spotlight on himself, he kept hinting that he might announce for president before Election Day.
Perhaps as damaging to the candidates he was supposedly helping in his campaign appearances was his failure to back even the candidates he endorsed to raise the money they needed to win.
He raised more than $160 million, but as columnist Marc Thiessen pointed out in the final weeks of the campaign, Mr. Trump contributed less than $15 million to embattled Trump-endorsed candidates like Dr. Oz and Ohio’s Mr. Vance. That leaves some $145 million raised this cycle but not used to help Republicans. In contrast, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell managed to raise and spend some $248 million in seven states… often in support of Republican Senate candidates Mr. Trump backed but who were not committed to supporting Mr. McConnell should they win.
Mr. Thiessen correctly pointed out before the election that “if Republicans fall short, it will be because Trump chose weak candidates who needed massive outside support … and failed to support them.”
In 2016, Mr. Trump energized voters and performed a service for which he can never be given sufficient credit by denying Hillary Clinton the presidency, and as president, he managed despite the enmity of the Washington establishment to deliver on many more of his campaign promises than even his supporters believed possible, but even then, there were signs that his personal weaknesses were a growing problem.
Since fairly or unfairly losing his bid for a second term, the man doesn’t seem capable of focusing on anything other than his own anger and sense of loss to the detriment of his party and the agenda he championed as president.
His performance over the last few weeks should convince even Mr. Trump’s most ardent admirers that it’s time to thank him for his past service and move on.
• David Keene is editor-at-large for The Washington Times.
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