While Republicans are still contemplating a historic midterm election wipeout, the fight to hold accountable and inherit President Donald Trump’s political movement has already begun.
Vice President J.D. Vance takes responsibility for the Iran war. Secretary of State Marco Rubio defends this. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said Republicans fought the wrong fight. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) claims his party has lost touch with voters’ economic struggles.
The conflicting visions of potential presidential candidates are an early sign of internal conflict in the Republican Party heading into 2028. But all candidates face the same dilemma. The challenge is how to convince voters that the party can change direction without alienating Trump or the MAGA base he needs to win the nomination.
The biggest obstacle may be Mr. Trump himself, who has shown little appetite for political retreat.
On Monday, President Trump made a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room and declared that the Iran war was “effectively over militarily,” although he said the United States remained prepared to resume attacks. Earlier in the day, he questioned the legitimacy of Republicans’ midterm election losses and suggested without evidence that voting machines were to blame, days after saying he would accept the 2026 results after years of rejecting elections.
After the election, Trump also replaced Chief of Staff Susie Wiles with immigration hardliner Stephen Miller and backed Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters against a challenger seeking to account for the party’s losses.
Mr. Trump also continues to cause speculation about potential successors. In an interview with CBS on Sunday, he joined Vance in praising Rubio, but suggested he might not participate in the 2028 Republican primary.
“Maybe I shouldn’t get involved,” he said, underscoring the weight of his support.
This dynamic puts Vance in a precarious position. Vance, who heads into the midterm elections as the clear-cut political successor, now faces a critical question: Can he take over MAGA without taking over President Trump’s responsibilities?
As the election results were still trickling in, Mr. Vance challenged Mr. Trump’s initial explanation for the Republican loss in a lengthy post on X Wednesday.
“The war is the reason we lost,” Vance wrote, arguing that voters who supported the Trump-Vance ticket in 2024 have abandoned the Republican Party on Iran in 2026.
Referring to foreign policy, Vance is able to reiterate his longstanding opposition to foreign intervention while criticizing the administration’s decisive decisions without negating the broader MAGA movement. Mr. Vance also has national recognition and connections with donors, which are supporting his candidacy.
But the election results complicate Vance’s argument.
According to the CNBC Voter Poll, only 34% of House voters said the war was important to their vote, compared to 49% who cited the cost of living and 55% who cited government corruption. This signals a broader backlash against the Trump administration, which Vance has spent nearly two years championing.
“You can’t campaign against a war from within the administration you serve,” conservative commentator Joel Pollack wrote of X, questioning how Vance could distance himself from a conflict he had openly championed.
In an interview with CBS, President Trump said he did not dispute Vance’s assessment and acknowledged that the vice president had discussed Vance’s position in advance. But he maintained that the decision to attack Iran was the right one, suggesting that Vance himself had losses to account for.
Democrats won both races in his home state of Ohio after Vance spent months fundraising and campaigning as the Republican National Committee’s finance chairman. Amy Acton won the governor’s race over Vance ally Vivek Ramaswamy after the vice president defended a controversial ad featuring Acton’s estranged mother. Former Sen. Sherrod Brown defeated incumbent Republican Jon Husted to win Vance’s former Senate seat.
Rep. Randy Fine, R-Florida, said Sunday he would not support Trump in 2028 because of Vance’s criticism of the war, calling it a betrayal of Trump. “You have to be true to the people who took you to the dance,” Fine said in an interview with Fox’s LiveNOW on Sunday, naming Rubio and Cruz as potential replacements.
Mr. Rubio is making a different bet. The idea is to protect the Iran war while distancing itself from Republican defeat.
“Sometimes when you do the right thing, you don’t know if it’s popular or not, but it’s still the right thing to do,” Rubio told reporters before leaving for France on Sunday.
Mr. Rubio has denied plans to run in 2028, but has largely avoided campaigning and is not involved in any immediate accountability. But his dual role as secretary of state and national security adviser is directly tied to Trump’s foreign policy record, which could come under new scrutiny if Democrats take control of the House of Representatives. The House could vote this week on articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has criticized the Trump administration’s foreign policy.
DeSantis is not a member of the Trump administration, but he questions the party’s overall strategy.
The outgoing Florida governor called the midterm elections “near an extinction-level event” for Republicans at a news conference Wednesday in Tallahassee, Fla., and criticized Washington for falling short on promises while fighting a culture war that doesn’t resonate with voters.
“Republicans … were really fighting a battle yesterday,” DeSantis said at a news conference.
It was a shocking critique from a governor who built national prominence in the same fight.
Mr. DeSantis could point to Republicans’ ability to maintain control of Florida even as Democrats have moved longtime Republican strongholds elsewhere. However, Republican Byron Donald won the gubernatorial election by a margin of only 1.3 percentage points, and Democrats gained strength in Congress.
Still, Rep. Greg Steube, R-Florida, praised DeSantis in the X-Post for building “a giant sea wall against the blue tsunami.”
The race to succeed President Trump extends far beyond Vance, Rubio and DeSantis.
In a post on Wednesday, Cruz called the midterm elections a “Watergate-level denial” and criticized President Trump’s tariffs and the protracted war with Iran. Other 2028 candidates, including Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, face the same challenge of moving beyond Trump without alienating his base.
Some wealthy Republican donors are already looking beyond Mr. Vance, weighing Mr. DeSantis and other alternatives amid concerns that Trump’s nominees will inherit political baggage and low voter approval ratings for a second term.
The divisions extend to Trump’s own coalition. Among voters who supported Republican House candidates, about two-thirds of voters under 30 approve of Trump’s performance, far fewer than nearly nine in 10 voters over 65, according to a CNBC voter poll. Young Republicans were also more skeptical of the Iran war and U.S. support for Israel, according to exit poll data.
“If you want to argue that it was worth losing the Senate for the next six years, so be it,” Vance said Wednesday. “Whether you agree or not, that’s at least the honest truth. But we all know why we lost.”
