This upcoming election cycle should be one the GOP wants and would love to exploit. Joe Biden is wildly unpopular, the southern border is as wide open as it has been at any point this century, two major wars are resulting in civilian casualties, including Americans, and families are still struggling to feed their kids. However, with all of this going on, House Republicans are fighting with each other over who their leader should be and presidential hopefuls are participating in debates that only turn into jokes for former president Trump’s campaign rallies. That does not seem like the party of conservative values to me. 

Where does this problem start? Like most problems, it starts from the top. Yes, Donald Trump holds overwhelming leads in the GOP primary, polling over 50% in almost every poll. But let’s take a look at his track record. He won the 2016 election against disliked and overconfident Hillary Clinton, but still lost the popular vote. He lost control of the House in 2018 and lost both chambers of Congress in 2020. No need to get into the 2020 presidential election results, but he lost that too. Even out of office, Trump harmed the Republican party in the 2022 midterms. Look at the state of New Hampshire, a state where Republicans should’ve, at the very least, been competitive. Instead, Trump endorsed the inexperienced MAGA extremist Don Bolduc for Senate, and Saint Anselm College alumna, Karoline Leavitt, for the House. To very little surprise, both lost by wide margins. The coveted “Trump endorsement” flopped throughout the country. That’s what happens when you endorse a TV star doctor in Pennsylvania and a college football star in Georgia. 

In any event, the past is the past and all eyes should be on 2024. This should be the easiest election for Republicans to win this century. How hard can it really be to defeat an 80-year-old unpopular president? The answer is pretty hard. Donald Trump leads the pack. But how many elections does he have to lose before conservatives realize they caught lightning in a bottle in 2016? I guess one more. Although the MAGA supporters are the loudest, there are still many conservative voters out there looking for another option, including myself. The remaining choices aren’t much to look at. The early front-runner behind Trump, Ron DeSantis, has run one of the worst campaigns of the group. He launched his bid on a poorly broadcasted Twitter livestream and has been nothing short of awkward with the voters. Vivek Ramaswamy’s two week moment in the sun quickly burned out when voters realized he didn’t really have a clue, and Chris Christie’s “Donald Duck” jokes will only get him so far. With all this added up, what do we get? A 2020 rematch with an even older Biden and an indicted and angry Donald Trump. Not ideal. 

So, while Donald Trump watches from afar to see who his VP candidate will be, the GOP House should be working on fixing some of the Biden-era policies, right? One could only dream. Instead, Kevin McCarthy bought himself 8 months of speakership, the shortest tenure of any Speaker. The federal government has enough money for another month. If I was running a business with trillions of dollars in debt who is responsible for over 300 million people, I’d strive for my budget to operate on a better than month-to-month basis. So why can’t they pass a budget? The problem is, there is no one in charge. The speakership has been vacated for weeks with no resolution in sight. That in itself is a whole separate issue, but simply put, Americans are struggling and looking for answers and Matt Gaetz is trying to make as many FOX headlines as possible. 

All in all, the state of the Republican party is not strong. They cannot get their own ducks in a row, let alone try to sway voters in Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Donald Trump is poised to lose his fourth straight election and the Democratic alternative is no better. In a cycle where the Republicans should win up and down the ballot, the 2024 election season is one that I am surely not looking forward to.