US midterms: Republicans rush to DeSanctum Sanctorum to escape Trump

WASHINGTON: Political bloodletting has erupted in the Republican Party following its underwhelming performance in the midterm polls. A spectacular win by incumbent Florida governor Ron DeSantis that saw him defeat his Democratic rival Charlie Crist by nearly 20 percent catapulted him centerstage as a putative challenger to Donald Trump for the 2024 Presidential election, enraging the former President who was already seething at his growing national profile.

After dubbing him "DeSanctimonious" Trump responded to talk of being challenged in typical fashion, warning that he would expose secrets about the Florida governor who is now attracting many Republicans uneasy about Trump and his MAGA forces. “If he did run, I will tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering. I know more about him than anybody other than perhaps his wife, who is really running his campaign," Trump said on Tuesday, even as several of Trump's own candidates lost or underperformed in the election.

Many Republicans rallied behind DeSantis even as Trump surrogates warned that former President remained the party's best crowd-puller and vote-getter, and it would be a mistake for the party to change course. Some Trump supporters suggested DeSantis could be a vice-presidential nominee on the Trump ticket and bide his time till 2028 since Trump, if he wins, can serve only one more term.

"Get real. If Ron is smart he runs as VP. Then slides in smoothly in ‘28. Only way. ANYONE running against President Trump will crushed," tweeted Trump acolyte Sebastian Gorka.

But many in the Republican leadership pantheon have chafed at Trump style, his petulant name-calling, and his humiliation of all those to who have opposed him within the party, some of whom were hounded out by the former President's MAGA mob. Now that moderate GOP members realize that MAGA may not be all that potent electorally, or that Trump's political fortunes or equity is waning, the knives are coming out.

"The 'red wave' was a mirage and nothing of the 'historic win' Republicans were anticipating. Nothing. This will go down as a giant warning sign and, hopefully, a convincing argument against the delusion that President Donald Trump is the future of the GOP," Republican commentator Meghan McCain, daughter of former Senator John McCain wrote, adding, "Trump's MAGA is cancer and it is killing my party. And this should be the final nail in his coffin."

"This is a pivot point for the Republican party. Donald Trump is no doubt in the rearview mirror. It is time to move on with the party," Geoff Duncan, the Republican Lt. Governor of Georgia, told CNN.

Trump is reported to have had a hissy fit at the defeat of many of his candidates and talk of the GOP jettisoning him. Political pundits have long warned that he will adopt a scorched earth policy and burn the party down if he is disdained.

Among prominent Trump-endorsed candidates who lost or were on track to lose on Tuesday was TV star Mehmet Oz for an open senate seat in Pennsylvania, Kari Lake, a former journalist who hates journalists, and MAGA poster child Lauren Boebert, widely seen as one of the most toxic lawmakers in the MAGA line-up- although none of the results have been officially confirmed.

Among winner backed by Trump is former anti-Trumper JD Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy, whose wife Usha Chilukuri is a litigator with a Washington DC law firm.