It was a terrible, wonderful election for conservatives like me.
It was a terrible election for my preferred policy outcomes. The Democratic Party is generally hostile to individual liberty, economic growth, wealth creation, innovation, to families and to the cause of life. Antisemites who refused to denounce the murderous Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel were popularly elected to Congress, including to the formerly august Senate. There are more in Congress than ever who won’t give straight answers to simple questions like “what is a woman?” and “is it okay to surgically sterilize pre-adolescents?” And if we need to replace a sitting Supreme Court justice, it won’t be easy to put another nominee committed to the original meaning and text of the Constitution on the bench.
The crew in charge of Congress for the next two years will want to raise taxes, obliterate the senate filibuster, pack the Supreme Court, and maybe even add Democratic-leaning U.S. territories to our list of states. For certain they will prevent the passage of any legislation contributing to freedom, innovation and growth.
For the next two years, folks like me will be fighting to oppose new regulation on AI, data centers, energy abundance, financial privacy, individual liberty — the list goes on and on.
About these things, I am concerned but not worried. It’s harder to make major changes in our system than people think, even when one party holds healthy majorities. There will be a lot of forces pushing back. But if some do happen, that’s the price you pay for political malpractice. Which is what Republicans have been guilty of for the past two years.
That’s why it was a wonderful election for our constitutional system, if not for my preferred policy outcomes.
In our political system, there are no mandates. The people give you an opportunity to govern the country reasonably and prudently — to steward political power well. If you fail, the people get to throw you out. If you don’t like that, blame the politicians who squandered their duty, not the people who judged them for it. Throwing out people who are abject failures at their jobs is the healthy response of a self-governing people.
In 2024, in full knowledge of his many incompetencies, vices and transgressions, voters nonetheless elected Trump and Republicans to return the country to its pre-Covid robust economy. Somewhere in there they assumed that congressional Republicans would deter Trump from his worst impulses, as often happened during Trump’s first term. Instead, congressional Republicans became his catamites — enabling, defending and praising his many abuses. Worst still, the speaker of the House exchanged his role as steward of the constitutional duties of the House for chief catamite, and undertook to protect Trump from any and all attempts at congressional oversight. As one of the worst House speakers in American history, Rep. Mike Johnson rightly finds himself speaker no more.
Someone needed to check Donald Trump’s promiscuous exercise of power. The Republicans in Congress refused to do it. So instead, the people have done it.
And the new Congress will do it — likely to excess. They’ll investigate every reported corruption by every one of the president’s family members and cronies. They’ll pursue every sin, and likely put the president on the rack for an extended impeachment trial. They will do what the previous Congress refused to do, turned up to 11. Will they overdo it? Of course they will. They always do. But that’s what you get.
It’s like a cascading antibody response to an infection, and it’s very healthy.
The solution to these pendulum swings is for one of the parties to decide to act sane. If they can pull it off, there is a 60% governing majority sitting there for the taking. I hope it’s the Republican Party that figures it out. Regardless, let the learnings begin.
Which reminds me: The people who run the Texas Republican Party, the elected leadership and those who vote at the county and state conventions, have proven to be so utterly out-of-touch that it’s time for them to go away and let someone else have a go at it.
Tom Giovanetti is the president of the Institute for Policy Innovation.