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Posted on 11/06/2026 11:06:41 AM PST by Responsibility2nd
Tuesday's election wasn't a blue wave or even a blue tsunami: It was a blue apocalypse.
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), who leads the one notable bright spot on the map, referred to the wipeout as "close to an extinction-level event" for the GOP. It was the worst midterm defeat for one party in over a half-century.
Much of the postmortem conversation has focused on why this massacre happened. Was it the Iran war? Was it the tariffs? Was it corruption? Was it the "Epstein files" mess?
The answer is both simpler and more sweeping: The MAGA movement, which has defined the GOP during the Trump era, has forgotten what populism means in practice and requires in governance.
When Donald Trump rode down the Trump Tower escalator in 2015, he launched a populist revolution. His message was simple: An elite ruling class has sold out the country, and the MAGA movement is here to finally listen to the people.
Trump largely delivered during his first term.
Trump cut taxes, tamed inflation, and oversaw a booming job market and a surging stock market. He became the first president since Richard Nixon to begin to reset our relationship with communist China.
In exile during the Joe Biden interregnum, Trump promised to return and close the border, get inflation under control, and bring back general sanity and stability.
To be sure, Trump's second term has had its successes.
The southern border is airtight. Violent crime has fallen to the lowest rate in 125 years. Prescription drug prices are the lowest since the 1960s. The Justice Department's fights with the Ivy League yielded real concessions. The raid to extract Nicolas Maduro from Caracas was bold and masterful.
But somewhere along the way, the MAGA movement forgot what it was.
Some in and around the administration have engaged in the most brazen corruption — pardons, access, illicit cryptocurrency enrichment, real estate side deals — in a century or more of Washington life.
When Americans see "special envoys" Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner negotiate with wealthy Arab states while padding their bank accounts from those same states, they understand what's going on.
There's nothing more anti-populist than such elite self-dealing.
On economic policy, the administration dramatically expanded its tariffs, including its "universal tariff" policy. Strategic, focused tariffs can work. But this was something else entirely.
Fact is, Joe and Jane in flyover country didn't vote for a trade war with Canada.
Even more to the point: Why did Trump's economists assume tariffing everything that moves is "populist" in the first place?
Reshoring supply chains is important. But the tradeoff between production and lowering prices is real. Higher tariffs and more supply-chain reshoring means higher prices.
Maybe that tradeoff is worth it. Maybe it isn't. But the American people have spoken, and they want lower prices over anything else. So populism means winding the tariffs down.
The story on the Iran war is similar.
Many isolationists complain that Trump reneged on his promise not to start any new Middle East wars. That's not quite fair. Trump already proved himself an Iran hawk when he withdrew from Barack Obama's calamitous nuclear deal, and the U.S. and Iran have technically been at war since 1979.
But the administration never actually made the case for the war to the American people. At times, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth alluded to war aims. But the people never heard the case from the commander in chief himself.
Populism means governing of, by and for the people. How could a purportedly populist president not even bother to try to sell the war to the public?
It was astonishing political malpractice.
Finally, a true populist movement needs to focus on real-world concerns, not the conspiratorial rabbit holes of social media.
The obsession with the "Epstein files" was always bogus and lame. And when White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles reportedly told the terminally online Vice President JD Vance to take a break from the internet, she was onto something.
Real populism means boosting wages and lowering inflation — not staying up to the wee hours of the night trying to crack the Charlie Kirk murder case (news flash: it was Tyler Robinson) or blaming the Jews for stabbing the GOP in the back.
The good news is that most of the necessary changes are easy.
End the corruption. Wind down the global tariffs. Save face in Iran. Stop indulging brain-rotted conspiracists. Stop with the asinine lake name-change gimmicks. And get working quickly to lower gas and food prices.
Above all, make life easier, not harder, for ordinary Americans.
If this happens, the GOP will have a chance in 2028.
The MAGA movement died on Tuesday. But Trump's final two White House years should still reflect the original MAGA spirit: governance for the people.
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I knew back in 2016 that Trump was not a true conservatism, but rather was (and still is) a Populist, but I knew then his vision for America was far greater than any RINO.
BS. Trump broke promises and told people who noticed it that they weren't MAGA. Mission accomplished.
Not enough Whites in America to really allow Republicans to win
But the administration never actually made the case for the war to the American people.
Some people keep their blinders on 24/7 and pour wax in their ears not to know what the hell is going on due to TDS.
Ignorance is bliss for some.
Ones like Thune have a lot to say for with their doing very little for we the people but continuing on with business as usual for their friends and friends of those friends.
That is akin to how I felt about Trump.
I don’t identify as a conservative exactly, and I used to call myself a libertarian, but even 10-20 years ago, I used to tell people that I prefer republicans to democrats because many democrats are closet socialists and I believe socialism is a much bigger threat to America than (neo)conservatism is, and I’ve been voting mostly republican for many decades.
The thing about Trump is that many of his positions were divergent to neoconservatism, particularly in regards to foreign policy, but also even social conservatism on some levels. So even though he was running as a republican, that made him different than many republicans that came before him. He wasn’t more to the “middle”, because politics is more complex than just a left and right ‘spectrum’, but he wasn’t anything like a democrat, EXCEPT that he appealed to blue collar, middle america (traditionally democrat) with his trade policies, which is apart of the populism that I think this article is alluding to.
Trumps platform could have worked as democrat 30 or 40 years ago, much like JFK would be rejected but the democrats of today.
The MAGA movement didn’t forget. They showed up in 2024 and sat out 2026. Trump’s problem is they didn’t forget.
Trump left the MAGA movement.
Good news is the worst Rinos got the boot.
He got rid of 400,000 DC parasites.
The house speakers refusal to pass the “SAVE AMERICA ACT” allowed the Democrats to bring an additional 20 million votes to the counting tables.
Decades of open borders, fraudulent votes and high prices due to the war with Iran. Thanks, RINOs... and unfortunately Trump too for breaking his “no new wars” promise. Imagine how much better off we’d be if Trump had stuck to his promises.
The MAGA movement died on Tuesday.
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Hogwash! What happened was the theft of an election. Only extreme TDS will keep one from seeing the truth.
It was a real RINO slaughter.
It was a real RINO slaughter.
THE END.
Trump decided he was Likud instead of MAGA. The Iran war was the final betrayal.
IMHO, MAGA was primarily a rebranding of the tea party by Trump. The tea party had been highjacked by establishment individuals claiming to be tea party.
The feminists, communists, socialists, LGBTs, freeloaders, and Muslims will eventually reap the whirlwind. One sure thing is they will never accept responsibility.
Each of those people have family and friends who are now motivated to vote for Dems
Same with the 3 million Hispanics got deported
Add that up and that’s enough to flip a red state to blue
The same MALE Hispanic vote that won Texas for him two years ago voted against him on Tuesday.
Republican turnout was also a problem.
The Dems were MORE motivated to get out and vote.
The WAR was the biggest issue for those under 30.
Plus the cost to rent an apartment, gas, etc.
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