Donald Trump offered Republican candidates a remarkable arrangement before the 2022 midterm results were in. Their victories would belong to him, and their defeats would belong to someone else. According to CBS News, he told NewsNation he deserved all the credit if Republicans won and none of the blame if they lost.
Democrats are heavily favored to win the House in the November 3 midterms, according to Cook Political Report’s October forecast, as reported by The Washington Post. The Post also reported that Cook’s Senate forecasts put a Democratic majority within reach. With Republicans facing the likely loss of the House and possibly both chambers, Trump’s past reactions give us a good idea of whom he will blame.
His likely response is to shift the discussion from what voters rejected to who failed him. He will probably accuse the media of misleading the public, question the election results and fault Republicans for failing to follow his lead.
The greater danger is not simply that Trump will refuse responsibility for a Republican defeat. It is that he could use that defeat to consolidate even more power over the party. Rather than questioning his choices, certain Republican leaders could respond by demanding greater loyalty to him and punishing those who challenged his judgment.
A defeat that should force the party to reconsider its direction could instead become another demand for loyalty to the man who helped determine its direction. If that happens, November 3 will not mark a turning point for the Republican Party. It will mark the next stage of a transformation that has been underway for years.
A Party Already Transformed
Earlier this month, I gave that transformation a name: POTER®, the Party of the Extreme Right. It describes what remains of the organization that still calls itself the Republican Party. The party of Dwight Eisenhower, which once held Northeastern moderates, Midwestern conservatives and Wall Street free traders under one roof, is gone.
Congressional voting data from Voteview show that about 40 percent of Republican senators in 1951 voted in the moderate middle. By 2024, that share had fallen to about 4 percent. Donald Trump did not build POTER, but he has taken command of it, and a midterm defeat could give him the opening to finish removing whatever independence remains.
The Primaries Tell the Story
Candidate quality cannot serve as an excuse for Trump when he helped choose the candidates. The Washington Examiner reported on October 7 that his backing was instrumental in Ken Paxton’s defeat of incumbent Senator John Cornyn in the Texas Republican primary runoff. The same report described Trump defending his endorsement while Paxton faced a competitive general election.
In Louisiana, The Associated Press reported that Trump backed Julia Letlow to replace Senator Bill Cassidy, who had voted to convict him in his 2021 impeachment trial. AP reported that Letlow won the Republican nomination after promising to advance Trump’s agenda.
These races follow a pattern that defines POTER. Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming lost her 2022 primary by 37 points after breaking with Trump over January 6. In May, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky lost his primary to a challenger the president handpicked, NPR reported. Cornyn lost his runoff by 28 points, a result Elaine Kamarck of the Brookings Institution said signals the end of the Bush-era Texas GOP.
Trump was exercising political power in those primaries, and voters have every reason to judge how he used it. If a candidate he promoted loses support beyond the Republican base, his recommendation belongs in the explanation.
Blaming a weak nominee would raise an obvious question: Why did the president back that nominee in the first place? Trump will almost certainly claim credit for his judgment when his candidate wins and deflect responsibility when they lose by blaming the candidate or others for the outcome.
Loyalty Over Judgment
Ohio shows how quickly a disagreement over campaign judgment can become an accusation of disloyalty. The Associated Press reported that Governor Mike DeWine urged Republican gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy to withdraw an advertisement featuring Democratic opponent Amy Acton’s estranged mother.
According to The Associated Press, Trump defended Ramaswamy’s ad and questioned DeWine’s loyalty, even though the governor still endorsed Ramaswamy. Supporting the Republican nominee was apparently not enough, because DeWine was expected to accept his conduct, too.
If Ramaswamy loses, Trump could turn that objection into an accusation that DeWine helped cause the defeat, protecting his ally while targeting a Republican who challenged him.
The Buckeye Bulletin, a website presenting itself as an independent Ohio news source, also promoted the Ramaswamy ad, according to Los Angeles Times reporter Clara Harter. Harter traced management of its Facebook and Instagram accounts to the Lincoln Media Foundation, which is affiliated with California’s conservative Lincoln Club.
That finding does not prove Trump was behind the website. It does, however, undercut any claim that the media is stacked against Republican candidates. If Trump wants to talk about unfair coverage, the conversation should include pro-Republican stories dressed up as independent news, not just the stories he dislikes.
If blaming the press and disloyal Republicans is not enough, Trump may question the vote count, as he did in 2020. A slow count is a reason to wait for the results, not a license to invent new ones.
Built to Outlast Him
Many Americans assume that a bad midterm, followed by Trump’s departure in January 2029, will bring the old Republican Party back. That assumption overlooks the groundwork already laid. Project 2025 was a 920-page plan written by more than 400 conservative scholars and former officials, backed by a database of pre-screened loyalists ready to fill 50,000 federal jobs. Independent trackers found this summer that more than half of its proposals had been started or completed.
When polling in late 2025 showed the Project 2025 name had just 7 percent favorability among Republican voters, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts did not abandon the agenda. As The Independent reported, he renamed it Heritage 2.0. A movement that rebrands its plan rather than dropping it is not preparing to fade away after one election.
The departures tell the same story. The New York Times reported in March that the number of Republicans leaving the House this cycle is among the highest since 1930, surpassed only by 2018. Every moderate who retires or loses a primary leaves POTER more uniform, and a midterm defeat blamed on disloyalty would speed that process.
Two Losses on November 4
On November 4, Republicans will most likely face two losses. The first is their majority in Congress. The second is what remains of their independence, because Trump could blame the defeat on Republicans who questioned him and then push them out of the party. The irony is that voters who want to weaken Trump could end up completing the work to fully transform the Republican Party into the Party of the Extreme Right.
Moderate Republicans who once found a home in the party of Eisenhower would have even less reason to believe that home is coming back.
If Republican leaders respond to defeat by demanding greater loyalty to Trump rather than questioning his leadership, November 4 could leave him with even more control over the party. And POTER could emerge from an electoral defeat more firmly entrenched than ever.
Now that POTER is here to stay, what does that mean for 2028?