It’s simple, really. He’s a loser, dragging them down with him.
Trump may live in a fantasy land (see story here), but people making their living from election returns deal with things like this:
“The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta … made an astonishing discovery: 25% to 30% of voters said that they had cast votes against Trump.
“The American Enterprise Institute’s Philip Wallach crunched the numbers in the 114 closest House districts, finding that ‘candidates bearing Trump endorsements underperformed their baseline by a whopping five points, while Republicans … without Trump’s blessing overperformed their baseline by 2.2 points — a remarkable difference of more than seven points.’”
The fundamental rule of politics is, “He who has the voters wins.” Capturing the White House and Congress bought Trump a pass for all his lawlessness, lying, and immorality. But that “Get Out of Jail Free” card was good for only as long as he was a winner.
The Republican Party, of course, is unpopular — it’s lost the popular vote in 7 of the last 8 presidential elections — and following Trump made it vastly and intensely more unpopular; it’s now considered a threat to democracy.
How does the GOP survive? Journalist and author Robert Schlesinger says, “Rather than reshape its policies to better suit voters’ needs and desires, the party of the free market relies on … radical gerrymandering, lifetime judicial appointments, voter suppression laws and, now, wanting to raise the voting age.” In other words, narrowing the voting base, and manipulating voters.
But they still need the most counted votes; and in the 2022 midterms, even all of the above wasn’t enough to save Trump’s preferred candidates. Is it surprising that some Republicans are doing soul-searching? The only surprise is that it took them this long. That should’ve happened immediately after Jan. 6, 2021.