15PHOTO:
JAYME
GERSHEN
a MittRomney.Trump’sapprovalrating
withGOPvotershoversaround90%,and
themoderatesand#NeverTrumpcon-
servativeswhoopposehimhaveeither
leftorbeendrivenoutofthe party.
Thereisn’tanobviouscandidatetosteer
theGOPbacktothecenter.
Recenthistoryalreadyincludesone
attemptatbroad-scalerehabilitation
thatfailed.AfterRomney’slossinthe
2012 presidentialrace,theRepublican
National Committee conducted an
“autopsy” of what had driven the
lossandhowthepartycouldrecover.
Itsconclusion—that the GOP should
embrace immigration reform and pres-
ent a softer, more welcoming image
to attract minorities, millennials, and
LGBTQ people—was roundly ignored.
Instead, Trump emerged as the galva-
nizing figure, yanking the party in the
opposite direction. It’s a role he seems
unlikely to yield, regardless of this year’s
outcome.
“I don’t see any appetite for an
autopsy, not for the old one or for a
new one,” says Tim Miller, a former
top strategist for Jeb Bush. “I think
there’ll be a very slim minority ofpencil-headsinD.C.anda handfulof
peopleinCongresswhowanttolookat
howthepartycanrevampandbroaden
itsappeal. Butalltheincentivesin
thesmall-dollar donor world, on Fox
News, and on Twitter still point toward
Trump’s formula of doubling down on
white grievance, ‘owning the libs,’ and
pushing anti-elite populist nonsense.
There’s just no appetite for reform.”
A party that remains in thrall to
Trump’s peculiar obsessions (antipa-
thy to masks; Hunter Biden’s laptop;
Kamala Harris’s alleged socialism) isn’t
likely to have an easy time coaxing back
the voters it’s driven away. Whether
Republicans can correct course and
appeal to suburban women and others
who’ve switched over to the Democrats
will depend on how the party comes to
understand its plight.
Even a Trump loss doesn’t ensure
that the GOP will embark on the process
of making the necessary adjustments.
“When a party loses, especially when it
loses big, the question is what becomes
the dominant interpretation within
the party of why they lost,” says David
Hopkins, a professor of political scienceat Boston College. “When Democrats
lost four years ago, the dominant inter-
pretation they took away was ‘Don’t
nominate a woman.’ With Trump, I
think the question will become, was it a
personal disaster particular to the can-
didate? Or will the interpretation be
that Trump was a martyr to the Left—
destroyed by the media, the deep state,
the phony mail-in ballots, China, and
so on—and the lesson is to fight even
harder and go further than he did?”
The biggest wild card in the GOP’s
future is Trump himself and what path
he chooses next. If he loses, he stands
to be robbed of the spotlight he’s com-
manded with punishing consistency
since he became a candidate five years
ago. For someone who craves attention
and relevancy the way Trump does,
that has to be a painful thought. But
there’s a simple way to avoid oblivion:
He could turn around and immediately
file to run for president again, in 2024.
(Back in 2017, he filed to run for reelec-
tion on the day he was inaugurated.)
Doing that would guarantee him a plat-
form, since he has enough support to
credibly pursue the nomination and▶ Trump supporters in Miami on Nov. 3