Republicans have had a tough stretch. They were defeated in elections in the fall and find themselves at risk of losing control of one or maybe both chambers of Congress later this year. Their standard-bearer, President Trump, has tumbled in the polls and finds himself underwater on his two signature issues, the economy and immigration. There has been unrest in a major American city, and blood shed by Trump’s federal agents. Republicans’ whispers have grown louder in recent weeks: Trump is distracted; he’s focused on the wrong things; the chaos is hurting us. And then a thunderclap from deep-red Texas: a state-Senate race in a district that Trump won by 17 points just over a year ago flipped by more than 30 points over the weekend and elected a Democrat for the first time since 1978.
Now, that is a bad sign for a party in a midterm year. Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick deemed it “a wake-up call,” and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a possible presidential hopeful, acknowledged that “a swing of this magnitude is not something that can be dismissed.” And then, hours later, Trump took to social media with an urgent call to action.
“I have determined,” the president wrote, “that the fastest way to bring The Trump Kennedy Center to the highest level of Success, Beauty, and Grandeur” is to close it for about two years before a “Grand Reopening that will rival and surpass anything that has taken place with respect to such a Facility before.”
Trump has never been much for resets. But right now, despite the political peril his party faces, instead of recalibrating he is doubling dow
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