Erick Erickson: GOP ignores Trump’s deepening unpopularity at its own peril

Speaking at The New York Times, their actually conservative columnist Ross Douthat said, “I want to tell you a secret. One that most conservatives on the internet don’t want you to know. A year into his second presidency, Donald Trump has lost the country.” You might not want to hear this, but Douthat is right.

Perhaps he is not right on the specific issues, but generally, he is right. Ignore the polls. The polling average is a better indication of where things are and the president is deeply unpopular. The generic ballot continues to show Democrats gaining. In 2018, the generic ballot had Democrats at over eight points. Right now, they are at five and going up.

Republicans have presumed that because Democrats are more unpopular than President Donald Trump, they would be able to keep Congress. But the GOP has forgotten about the majority of Americans willing to throw a middle finger at both parties. Americans may not want to give the Democrats the presidency, but they will gladly sit home and let the Democrats turn out in November to take back legislative power.

Republicans keep making excuses. The Texas State Senate special election was about local issues, a bad candidate and infighting. The Georgia State House special election was about local issues, a bad candidate, infighting and state party incompetence. That is eight state legislative elections the GOP lost in Republican seats. Republicans have lost Republican seats in Texas, Mississippi, Georgia and other reliably Republican states.

To tell Republicans this is to be an apostate. They simply do not want to hear it. Like the Democrats before them, Republicans’ dreams of a majority are built now on lies they tell themselves. Did you know, for example, that American steel production has, for the first time in years, surpassed Japanese steel production? It is proof the tariffs are working and American manufacturing capacity is returning. Peter Navarro, the president’s tariff Rasputin, made a big push on this point just last week.

What Navarro did not mention is that American steel production just surpassed Japanese steel production because Japan had to take multiple steel facilities offline for repair. In truth, American manufacturing continues to decline and Americans are now paying most of the tariffs. The president’s team cheered the tariffs on aluminum and steel, but domestic producers then raised their prices. More Americans are in industries directly, negatively impacted by the tariffs than benefit from them.

On immigration, it is increasingly the case that the Department of Homeland Security is regularly lying to Americans, regurgitated by social media fans. One American citizen got detained by immigration authorities twice. After the first time, Homeland Security personnel said the man was detained because he tried to block agents from seizing illegal aliens and was obstructing justice. Then a video came out showing that the man had actually tried to stop agents from entering a construction zone to protect their safety. The man got arrested again at another site.

Every time an American citizen is arrested, Homeland Security gives an excuse. Some of them are legitimate. Increasingly, they appear to be fictions designed to make it through a news cycle. Americans got fed up with former President Joe Biden gaslighting them. Now, Democrats are ahead in the polling average on which party is better able to handle inflation. That the Republicans are losing that question is a damning indictment of the present operation.

Trump has always had impulse control issues and loves to be the center of attention. In his first term, his team provided a better economy, more consistent and principled leadership and policies Americans benefited from. It took the 2018 drubbing for the president’s team to get that coherence and, but for COVID, he probably would have won re-election in 2020.

Now, the president has time to reset, be honest and focus on the issues that get Americans to vote Republican, instead of giving them the middle finger. The denials and protests and gaslighting need to end. Twenty-nine Republicans are leaving Congress this year. They know where this is headed. There is still time for a course correction, but not if the truth is drowned out with bullying and lies.

Erick Erickson is a syndicated columnist.