After Mid-Terms, GOPers Done With 45; Trump Monster Says ‘Not So Fast’

GOP spent years enabling former president, don’t expect him to step aside

Manny Otiko
Democracy Guardian
Published in
5 min readNov 11, 2022

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‘MAGA mutant’ Kari Lake and former President Donald Trump. (Gage Skidmore/Wikipedia)

Several years ago, at the beginning of former President Donald Trump’s tragic-comic political odyssey, I told a friend that the Republicans would keep playing along with him until he was no longer useful. Then, they would drop him like a hot potato. Has that time come?

Maybe so. After the GOP failed to capitalize on President Joe Biden’s low favorability and a sluggish economy and failed to win sweeping victories in the Mid-Term elections, Republicans are looking for a scapegoat. Many are looking at Trump.

Usually, the party that won the presidency suffers heavy losses in the Mid-Terms, but the Democrats defied more than 80 years of precedent, to escape with minor losses. The GOP looks like they are going to win the House, but the Senate is still in play.

And one reason the Republicans failed to make political hay is that many of the Trump-backed candidates fared miserably at the polls. And it wasn’t surprising because many were MAGA mutants hopped up on Trump juice. Their bombastic rhetoric and conspiracy mongering may have played well at Trump cult fests, but the public recoiled in horror.

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Manny Otiko writes about race, politics and sports. He has been published in Salon and LA Weekly. Follow him on Twitter @mannyotiko.