Constructive Losing
As long as the Republican party is defined by reactionary politics, it will permanently alienate generations of young voters
I'd like to address a term that may be useful in the months ahead as we try to make sense of the Republican nomination process. The term is "constructive losing"—which I define as losing elections in the pursuit of party building.
Paradoxically, Donald Trump’s indictments have bolstered the former president's standing within his party while hurting his chances in a general election. In the fake reality of MAGA politics, Trump supporters stand to be galvanized by an indictment of their leader, which they will see as an attack that needs to be defended. However, in the hard reality of the general election campaign, nominating a candidate who's under indictment does this to your party:
Put another way, what works to rally the Republican base also works to undermine the party's general election prospects. We saw this happen across the country in 2022 when primary voters nominated MAGA candidates running on reactionary platforms only to see them squashed by the broader electorate in November.
This is self-destructive party behavior. The more Republicans align with Donald Trump's brand of reactionary politics, the more they motivate voters outside the MAGA base to oppose them. And if we've seen anything in the last three election cycles, it's that the anti-MAGA coalition when mobilized is larger than the Trump coalition.
More importantly, every election where Republicans elevate reactionary candidates is an election where they further damage their position with voters under 40 who move a little closer each year to becoming a robust majority. This group feels the Republican party has nothing to offer them, largely because the Republican party has nothing to offer them.
Let's take a step back and look at what's happening. Republicans need MAGA voters because they form a decisive share of the party base and no party can be competitive unless its base is unified. But MAGA voters produce MAGA nominees. That may be fine in Idaho or Wyoming, where the party base makes up a large share of the general electorate, but it's poison in closely divided swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Arizona, where MAGA nominees repel independents and mobilize Democrats.
As long as the Republican party is defined by reactionary politics, it is setting itself up to lose elections and permanently alienate generations of young voters. This is self-defeating behavior. It is destructive losing because it does nothing to reposition the party for a competitive future.
But MAGA voters aren't attuned to the fine points of party competition. They are loyal to an individual and don't really care if he's undermining Republican chances of returning to power. Because they will follow Trump anywhere, so must the rest of the party if they want to avoid fracturing. That's why party leaders are so afraid to criticize Donald Trump and why they repeatedly defend the indefensible.
If those leaders decided to oppose Trump, denounce his actions, and reject Trumpism, they would make enemies of their core voters and condemn themselves to defeat. But they would also grant themselves the space they need to reorient the party away from the politics of grievance to a more traditional center-right posture.
This is what constructive losing is all about.
Republican leadership is getting tired of losing, but they haven't yet begun the arduous work of re-inventing themselves for a new era. In the absence of doing this work, Republicans continue to lose destructively, alienating more voters with each lost electoral cycle.
As things stand, the only remaining quick fix for Republicans is putting an end to democratic choice and seizing power by fiat—a prospect that becomes more enticing as the ability to win elections diminishes. I suspect that only when that option is finally and emphatically taken away will we see the reckoning necessary for Republicans to condemn Trump and Trumpism, abandon reactionary politics, reject the MAGA base, blow up the party—and begin constructively losing elections in order to win again one day.
It will take at least one more resounding rejection to make that possible, which is why so much is riding on the results in 2024.
An earlier version of this article was published on 3/27/2023