Let them eat capital gains: Trump’s ‘Marie Antoinette’ presidency

The Constitution is not a suicide pact. Donald Trump most certainly isn’t one. After Tuesday’s electoral massacre, the right faces a choice: Ride or die with this man through 2028, or declare independence and rebuild a movement capable of winning power and actually using it.

On Tuesday, we held an election between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks won. When do conservatives get on the ballot under our own banner? When do we get an at-bat? We won’t if we keep running on the same hamster wheel and calling it progress.

Tuesday proved how much the status quo can cost. We have nothing left to gain by pretending it’s working.

Name the conservative issue that lost Tuesday night. Voters in states that overwhelmingly backed Trump in 2024 didn’t suddenly embrace woke radicalism. They rejected Trump and a corporatist, corrupt, listless, and hypocritical Republican Party. Democrats even borrowed issues that conservatives like me have been pushing for two years.

Look at the wreckage: Democratic Senate victories in Texas, Kansas, South Carolina, and Ohio; the loss of the Texas governorship; and a sweep through places Republicans had come to regard as safe territory. Democrats took control of the Senate and picked up at least 31 House seats. The full down-ballot damage will take time to assess, but the partisan realignment we were promised has been torn apart.

Everyone will manufacture an excuse based on his favorite issue. Some will blame the economy, others the Iran war, tariffs, bad candidates, or the usual midterm curse. Most of the conservative influencer class will perform amazing contortions to avoid uttering the name Donald Trump.

But it was all of the above, bound together by a Marie Antoinette presidency. Voters worried about paying their bills got a president boasting about a “golden economy,” stock portfolios, and a ballroom. Let them eat capital gains!

It was the tariffs. It was the war with Iran, launched with enormous fanfare and left without a convincing account of what victory means. It was the aimless legislative agenda, the Greenland fantasies, the narcissism, the Big Tech courtship, and the enthusiasm for data centers and the surveillance state. It was the endless spectacle of family business interests and questions about conflicts of interest.

This was the antithesis of Trump’s 2016 message. That message was directed at people who believed their country had been sold to the highest bidder. Now the White House seems astonished that those same people don’t celebrate every new accommodation with powerful interests.

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Of course, some good has been done. Border enforcement and other executive actions deserve credit. Nor can every Republican defeat be laid at Trump’s feet. But too many accomplishments remain vulnerable because the administration has failed to build lasting legislative victories. Worse, nothing resembling a fresh conservative movement can take shape while one man monopolizes its message, candidates, strategy, and imagination.

The party has become a personality cult with a fundraising operation attached. Trump endorses one dreary candidate after another, and the rest of the right is instructed to applaud. If you question the candidate, you are accused of betraying the cause. Which cause, exactly?

Tuesday also offered an answer to the claim that conservative principles themselves have become unelectable. Florida voters approved a DeSantis-backed property-tax amendment with about 62% of the vote, even as Republicans elsewhere suffered crushing defeats. Voters were also asked to decide 41 local data-center measures in 10 states, 28 of which would restrict development. These fights reflect genuine public hostility to political favoritism and unchecked corporate power.

Florida, for all its narrow margins, at least held its Republican governorship. The state has a governor with an identifiable record, a clear set of priorities, and an agenda he spent years putting into practice. Ron DeSantis didn’t build that record by changing the subject every time a shiny object appeared. Florida supplied the one-state wave in 2022. This year, it offered a one-state save.

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Instead of learning from that contrast, the GOP base and the Conservatism Inc. influencer class will be tempted to spend the next two years defending everything Trump says, excusing every failure, and hunting for a new reason to attack anyone who asks for results.

Here is the question every so-called conservative must answer: How do we rebuild for 2028 while Trump remains the godlike leader of the right for another 26 months? How do we recruit candidates with convictions of their own when he insists on anointing his favorites? How do we talk about a serious governing agenda when every day brings a new diversion?

We cannot spend the next two years defending corruption allegations, praising a “golden economy” voters do not recognize, and explaining away policies that benefit special interests. The president will remain the most visible Republican in America, and no amount of spin will change that. Believe me, he will remind the public of that fact every day The rest of the party must decide whether it has a voice independent of his.

For how much longer will we be a conservative soul trapped in the contaminated body of the gay old party? Tuesday proved how much the status quo can cost. We have nothing left to gain by pretending it’s working.