The GOP Loss Is Not a Big Deal
The headlines were predictable.
In the wake of the 2025 election here’s a sampling:
The New York Times: “Republicans Point Fingers After Their Losses, but Not at Trump,” with the subtitle, “Casting around for culprits, leaders in the party blamed their candidates, the government shutdown and a weak economic message.”
Politico: “‘Not a great night’: Republicans point fingers after blowout off-year election losses”
The Hill: “GOP blame game begins after election rout.”
And on and on — and on and on and on — go the similar headlines of the dark ill-fortune of the GOP as a result of this week’s election.
Alas for the critics, they seem not to be familiar with American political history. Let’s take a spin through election history. Here are three examples:
1964: Democrat President Lyndon Johnson wiped the floor with GOP presidential nominee, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. The results:
- LBJ, Electoral Votes: 486
- Goldwater: 52
- LBJ Popular Vote: 43,129,040
- Goldwater Popular Vote: 27, 175, 754
1966: But a mere two years later? A serious GOP rebound. Republicans: + 47 House seats, + 3 Senate seats
And 14 years later?
1980: Reagan Electoral Votes: 489; Carter Electoral Votes: 49.
1982: But two years later? A serious Democrat rebound: Democrats: + 26 House seats; Republicans: – 26 House seats.
As noted, one could go on and on and on with similar examples, and what one sees is a decided historical pattern. That pattern being that when Democrats or Republicans get clobbered in an election, they can and frequently do rebound in the very next election — or, at a minimum, the election after that.
All of which is to say, the current liberal media headlines like those above of the GOP loss in the 2025 elections can and most likely, if the historical pattern of decades holds, will be reversed in the next elections. (RELATED: The Cold Civil War Is Now on Defrost, and the Right Still Isn’t Ready)
Why?
Because events of the day can — and most assuredly will — change. And frequently, history shows that change will benefit the losers of the last election.
There is nothing either new or mysterious about this. Nor is there any change in the headlines from the opposition media of the day. When the Democrats lose, the liberal media plays the loss down; the Republican-leaning media plays the loss up. And, of course, the reverse is true.
A classic example was Republican President Richard Nixon’s 49-state landslide in 1972.
A mere four years later, with Nixon both term-limited and then forced to resign as a result of Watergate, yielding the presidency to Vice President Gerald Ford, out of the blue on the national political scene came a barely known former Democrat governor of Georgia named Jimmy Carter.
Carter turned the political scene upside down. He first captured the Democratic nomination from a veritable flood of better-known and well-established Democrats with names like California Governor Jerry Brown, Alabama Governor George Wallace, Washington Senator Henry Jackson, Indiana Senator Birch Bayh … and more. Then Carter went on to defeat incumbent GOP President Gerald Ford.
All of which is to say, the headlines on this week’s 2025 elections that blare about a GOP loss are to be taken with a political grain of salt. Or, as in the vernacular? “Ya win some, ya lose some.”
But history — and the politics of the moment — keep moving.
And speaking of Lyndon Johnson, I began to learn this lesson when I was a literal kid with a love of reading up on politics. As I well recall, the media of the day, on one fine autumn day in November of 1963, was filled with stories about the political advantages that would make President John F. Kennedy unbeatable for re-election in 1964. And then…
And then there was that horrific, still very memorable day of the president’s fatal trip to Dallas. And the political world, not to mention the world at large, was changed forever.
All of which is a long way of saying that the GOP defeats this past week are most certainly not carved in stone and that, yes indeed, time and history are already moving on.
Stay tuned.
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