View from London: “This was a referendum on a President who appears to be losing his capacities”

Photo: South China Morning Post

JD Vance is wrong to blame the Iran war alone for the Republicans’ shellacking in the midterms. The truth lies closer to home, The Telegraph notes.

This was a referendum on a president who appears to be losing his capacities, who is terrifyingly detached from reality, who has fallen foul to narcissism, megalomania, delusion, impetuousness and mood swings. This was a verdict on Donald Trump’s Emperor Nero tribute act, on his White House ballroom-sized ego, on his court of sycophants, on his increasing incompetence, erraticism, impulsiveness, irrationality and capriciousness.

This was a repudiation of Trump the man, his cultish movement, his penchant for rogues, his peculiar style of misgovernment, not an embrace of socialism, of wokery or of Left-wing nostra.

Above all, this was punishment for saying one thing, and doing another, and seemingly not caring. Trump promised lower prices; he delivered higher inflation. He pledged the end of illegal immigration; instead, he produced ICE vans, masked snatch squads and random deportations to South America. He promised manufacturing jobs; instead, he threatened to invade Greenland and Canada. He promised peace and waged war.

Trump notched up successes, from energy security to women’s rights to his confrontations with universities in breach of civil rights rules. But even when Trump was right – the war on Iran was to prevent an evil regime from obtaining nuclear weapons – he failed to explain himself, didn’t involve Congress and eventually botched everything.

Whatever a self-serving JD Vance might think, the Iran war was moral and necessary, but abysmally executed by a pathologically short-termist president who believes his own propaganda, doesn’t plan adequately, changes his mind incessantly, assumes he can take out a powerful regime costlessly, treats social media as a substitute for strategy and grit, and who, unbelievably, trusts Recep Erdoğan, the Pakistanis and the Qataris.

For conservatives, Trump’s shellacking will prove to be a short-term calamity, leading to a tsunami of state-level Leftist idiocy, threatening the tech-bubble and further debilitating the federal government; it will embolden Andy Burnham, the green lobby, the ICC, Brussels, the wokerati, DEI activists in big business and the rest of the global Left.

But it is also a longer-term opportunity: this election breaks the Maga spell and demonstrates Trump Inc has become the problem, not the solution. You don’t have to put up with its malicious, immoral ways to win; in fact, it will cost you. Conservative ideas remain popular. The billionaire tax was rejected in California, anti-woke proposals are ahead in Colorado and Florida’s anti-property tax motion triumphed.

A competent, radical but mainstream Republican could win in 2028. Trump’s defeat does not make the case for isolationism (pace JD Vance) or a Tucker Carlson-style woke Right.

Trump’s tragedy is that he showed what could have been. Two years ago, he assembled a pro-prosperity, pro-growth, anti-woke cross-racial coalition of suburbanites, hispanic and white, younger and older, working-class and middle-class voters, proving demographics needn’t be destiny, that it was possible to defeat progressivism.

It was all for nought. His coalition is unwound. Trump was meant to defeat wokery, to terminate net zero, to eliminate illegal immigration, to fight anti-Semitism and Islamism, to strengthen the military, to appoint conservative judges, to bolster capitalism, to fight global lawfare; instead he made the Democratic party great again, presided over a massive deficit, failed to boost defence readiness, handed Texas and Kansas to the Left, propelled the loathsome Abdul El-Sayed into the Senate, and has given critical theory, socialism and antizionism a new lease of life.

The war is a big reason for his failure, sadly, but Trump started to lose public support in his second term’s first 100 days. Many of his executive orders were popular, including his war on woke, but his obsession with tariffing friendly countries, especially Canada and Mexico, was the original sin. “Liberation Day”, the stock market volatility, the recession fears: all tanked support permanently.

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