Republicans dazed by midterm election defeats grapple with what went wrong

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rep. Richard Hudson wanted a triumphant return to Capitol Hill this week after steering Republicans to another majority. Instead, the North Carolina Republican is facing the reality that he and dozens of colleagues will soon clear out their offices.

“It was really people coming out to send a message,” Hudson, the chair of the House GOP’s campaign arm, said in a brief interview. “They, rightly so, felt gas was too high, things were too expensive.”

“The mistake Republicans made,” he said, “is we didn’t convey to them that we cared about that and cared about them.”

Back in Washington this week for the first time since the GOP’s sweeping midterm losses, Republicans were in something of a daze. Even as they acknowledged the depth of their defeat, there was little appetite for a wholesale break from President Donald Trump.

Instead, they met behind closed doors to talk about what went wrong. And they scrutinized the calendar to figure out how to push through as much of their agenda as possible before Democrats assume control of the House and the Senate in January.

There’s little appetite for a full break with Trump

There was widespread frustration that Republicans who were awarded full control of the White House and Congress just two years earlier had lost touch with voters.

“You cut rural healthcare spending, when you abandon pro-lifers, when you abandon the poor, when you abandon the needy, when you abandon working people, you’re gonna get your butt kicked,” said Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who unsuccessfully sought to delay his party’s leadership elections in the Senate. “And you’re gonna deserve it.”

“We collectively failed,” said Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., who is trailing her Democratic challenger in a district that Republicans carried by more than 18 percentage points in 2024.

“It’s very clear,” she said. “The American people let us know we have failed in this governing experience for this Congress.”

The anger is sharp in part because of the rosy predictions from top Republicans ahead of the election. Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., who is also trailing a Democratic rival, said people kept telling her she couldn’t lose. But she knew otherwise.

“I couldn’t get anybody to listen to me,” she said. “People just didn’t think it could happen, but we knew it could.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson spent the final stretch of the campaign rejecting the historic headwinds that often befall a president’s party during a midterm. He toured the country, insisting the polls were wrong and Republicans would retain their majority even as some incumbents were skeptical.

Back on Capitol Hill this week, Johnson said voters made the “wrong choice” as Democrats flipped more than 40 Republican-held seats. That puts the Democrats on track to hold the most robust majority since the early years of Barack Obama’s presidency.

The House and the Senate take different approaches

Republicans, meanwhile, are weighing how to proceed, balancing calls for moderation against an impulse for hard-line positions that might reenergize the party’s base. Each chamber took different tracks, previewing divisions that may lie ahead.

In the House, the Republicans who will remain in Washington next year largely represent staunchly conservative districts where Trump remains popular. Their decision to elect Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan as their next leader reflected a fighting stance.

Jordan is a co-founder of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, currently chairs the Judiciary Committee and has previously chaired the Oversight Committee. From those positions, he’s waged heated fights against Democrats and become a top Trump ally.

“The way that Jim fights says a lot about where this conference is,” said Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla.

In the Senate, the desire for combat was less intense.

The question for Republicans there was less about whether they would stick with John Thune of South Dakota as their leader than when they would make that decision. Hawley and a small group of conservatives spent hours huddled with Republicans in the Old Senate Chamber arguing for a delay in leadership elections to allow the party to consider alternative candidates.

But the problem was that no one would come forward to offer themselves as an alternative to Thune, who has faced criticism from Trump at times for his refusal to abandon Senate rules to make it easier to pass conservative legislation.

“It’s a bad job,” Hawley said.

After hours of deliberation, Republicans ultimately backed Thune without so much as a voice vote.

“We’re going to let our leader be the leader,” said Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, who was also elected to lead the party’s effort to regain seats in the 2028 election.

GOP unites to protect Hegseth

Perhaps the biggest question for Republicans going forward is how to manage their relationship with Trump, whose policies on trade and the war in Iran helped contribute to their losses. He’s in the last two years of his second term, and the election defeats have raised stark questions about the durability of his Make America Great Again movement.

But there was no rush to distance themselves from the president as House Republicans, even those who have been critical of his administration, overwhelmingly blocked an effort to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Only Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, who led the push alongside Democrats, broke ranks.

“What I found out tonight is they still haven’t broken from the spell of Donald Trump,” Massie said after the vote. “He still controls this conference.”

When asked whether the election was a referendum on Trump, Thune said the results stemmed from “a combination of things,” refusing to directly blame the president for contributing to the party’s challenges.

Signs of Trump’s influence

But there were signs that Trump’s influence had limits.

Few echoed his argument in a social media post this week that there were problems with the election. In conceding a closely fought Senate contest in Mississippi, Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith said she would “respect the decision” of voters.

Several Republicans, including Sens. Joni Ernst of Iowa, Tim Scott of South Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas and Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, posted pictures of Democrats who will either succeed them or soon represent their states, harkening to an earlier era of postelection unity.

Rep. James Comer of Kentucky pushed back against White House warnings to congressional Democrats that planned probes of the Trump administration could amount to “blatant criminality.” Comer, who oversaw extensive investigations of Democratic President Joe Biden and his family as chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said lawmakers have a role in holding any White House accountable.

“Regardless of who is in the White House, there’s always going to be a strong desire for the Oversight Committee to be a check and balance on the executive branch, regardless of the political scenario,” Comer said.

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Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed.