# The Midterms Message for Republicans ![rw-book-cover](https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/static/images/article2.74d541386bbf.png) ## Metadata - Author:: [[theatlantic.com]] - Full Title:: The Midterms Message for Republicans - Category: #articles - URL: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/lesson-republicans-their-midterms-maga-debacle/672108/ ## Highlights > Through the Trump years, the Republican Party has organized itself as an anti-learning entity. Unwelcome information has been ignored or denied. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1553150263/21263503)) > Trump got swamped by a margin of 8 million votes in 2020? Joe Biden won the second-highest share of the popular vote than any presidential candidate since 1988, next only to Barack Obama’s blowout win in 2008? ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1553150263/21263505)) > Trump never rose above 50 percent approval (in any credible poll) on any single day of his presidency? Not interested: All that matters is what his base thinks. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1553150263/21263511)) > Republicans were crushed in 2018 in the highest midterm turnout of eligible voters since before the First World War? Not interested: The result showed only that voters wanted more Trump and more Trumpiness. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1553150263/21263513)) > Should conservatives start noticing that they lag among unmarried women and the young? No, instead: Ridicule and insult unmarried women, especially the young. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1553150263/21263522)) > Trump lost the popular vote in 2016, and by a worse margin than Mitt Romney had in 2012? Not interested: It was a historic landslide victory. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1553150263/21263577)) > Next time” is now. In every way you can measure, 2022 was a crushing repudiation—not only of Trump personally or of Trump’s allegations that the 2020 election was corrupted, but of the larger Republican Party. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1553150263/21263591)) > For the first time since 1934, the party of the president lost not a single state legislature in a midterm year—and actually made gains in the Midwest: Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Every last one of the candidates running for offices to control elections who endorsed Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election went down in defeat, as did up-ballot election deniers such as Blake Masters in the Arizona Senate contest and Lee Zeldin, who ran for governor in an otherwise good Republican year in New York. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1553150263/21263600)) > So you’d think the time would be right for Fox News to organize some safaris of its own. Maybe the podcast hosts and newsletter writers who argued that “woke” politics was alienating former Democrats will ask why Republican authoritarianism and reactionary culture warring has even more offensively alienated their former voters. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1553150263/21263606)) > In their anti-learning culture, conservatives have come to view everything that happens, however unwelcome, as proof simply that the most extreme people were the most correct. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1553150263/21263615)) > This year was one in which all the indicators seemed negative for the party of the president: right-track/wrong-track numbers, presidential approval ratings, and optimism about the future. Yet Biden’s party won and won and won again despite the negative indicators. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1553150263/21263626)) > The American electorate has been administering that lesson over and over. Republicans need at long last to open their ears to hear it, their mind to absorb it, and their heart to accept it. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1553150263/21263631)) # The Midterms Message for Republicans ![rw-book-cover](https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/static/images/article2.74d541386bbf.png) ## Metadata - Author:: [[theatlantic.com]] - Full Title:: The Midterms Message for Republicans - Category: #articles - URL: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/lesson-republicans-their-midterms-maga-debacle/672108/ ## Highlights > Through the Trump years, the Republican Party has organized itself as an anti-learning entity. Unwelcome information has been ignored or denied. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1553150263/21263503)) > Trump got swamped by a margin of 8 million votes in 2020? Joe Biden won the second-highest share of the popular vote than any presidential candidate since 1988, next only to Barack Obama’s blowout win in 2008? ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1553150263/21263505)) > Trump never rose above 50 percent approval (in any credible poll) on any single day of his presidency? Not interested: All that matters is what his base thinks. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1553150263/21263511)) > Republicans were crushed in 2018 in the highest midterm turnout of eligible voters since before the First World War? Not interested: The result showed only that voters wanted more Trump and more Trumpiness. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1553150263/21263513)) > Should conservatives start noticing that they lag among unmarried women and the young? No, instead: Ridicule and insult unmarried women, especially the young. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1553150263/21263522)) > Trump lost the popular vote in 2016, and by a worse margin than Mitt Romney had in 2012? Not interested: It was a historic landslide victory. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1553150263/21263577)) > Next time” is now. In every way you can measure, 2022 was a crushing repudiation—not only of Trump personally or of Trump’s allegations that the 2020 election was corrupted, but of the larger Republican Party. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1553150263/21263591)) > For the first time since 1934, the party of the president lost not a single state legislature in a midterm year—and actually made gains in the Midwest: Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Every last one of the candidates running for offices to control elections who endorsed Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election went down in defeat, as did up-ballot election deniers such as Blake Masters in the Arizona Senate contest and Lee Zeldin, who ran for governor in an otherwise good Republican year in New York. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1553150263/21263600)) > So you’d think the time would be right for Fox News to organize some safaris of its own. Maybe the podcast hosts and newsletter writers who argued that “woke” politics was alienating former Democrats will ask why Republican authoritarianism and reactionary culture warring has even more offensively alienated their former voters. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1553150263/21263606)) > In their anti-learning culture, conservatives have come to view everything that happens, however unwelcome, as proof simply that the most extreme people were the most correct. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1553150263/21263615)) > This year was one in which all the indicators seemed negative for the party of the president: right-track/wrong-track numbers, presidential approval ratings, and optimism about the future. Yet Biden’s party won and won and won again despite the negative indicators. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1553150263/21263626)) > The American electorate has been administering that lesson over and over. Republicans need at long last to open their ears to hear it, their mind to absorb it, and their heart to accept it. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1553150263/21263631))