Now it is clear that the ex-president repels more voters than he attracts, the future belongs to DeSantis
What is wrong with conservative politics? It’s not just in Britain that the centre-Right is in disarray, consumed by a debilitating drive to tax its core supporters into oblivion: in America, the Republicans have just suffered a devastating setback of their own.
Encouraged by pathetically flawed polls, they were hoping to pull off a historic victory in the midterms by capitalising on Joe Biden’s increasingly fragile grip on reality, his hard-Left drift, his blundering foreign and domestic policy and the devastating impact of inflation on living standards.
Scenting a landslide, Donald Trump, ever the narcissist, overshadowed the last day of campaigning by promising to make “a very big announcement on Tuesday” at Mar-a-Lago, a not-so-subtle hint that he would be announcing his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination.
Yet the much-hyped Republican “red wave” never materialised, and the party must now face up to the reality that Trump poses an existential threat to its conservative vision for America. Far from providing The Donald with a launchpad, these elections mark the end of the Trump era. He is finished, even if he is too egotistical to admit it, and will take the Republicans down with him if they allow him to.