Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) is urging Republican leadership to step aside after the midterm bloodbath for the party, which resulted in Democrats taking back both the House and the Senate for President Donald Trump’s final two years in office.
Democrats outperformed Republicans in most major races across the country, taking Senate seats in Michigan, Texas, South Carolina, Maine, Iowa, Ohio, and Kansas. It could possibly be two more than that, as the results are still pending in Mississippi and Alaska as of Wednesday morning. With that, Democrats will be going into the upper chamber with at least 54 seats – a very clear majority.
Many have attributed the Republicans’ midterm loss to high prices and the war in Iran. Even President Donald Trump admitted Iran played a part in the tough loss for the GOP across the country.
While Republicans begin to look inward, some are calling for swift action. Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) has called out Republican leadership for being “embarrassingly weak” and urged them to hang up their hats.
“Dear Republican Senate and House ‘Leadership,’” he began in a social media post. “No, the polls were not wrong. You were. Even with record amounts of money at your disposal, you managed to get absolutely annihilated,” the Republican said, criticizing them for disappointing their voter base.
He continued:
You have been embarrassingly weak and more afraid of governing conservatively than of disappointing the voters who put us in office. Instead of standing firm on our principles, you have governed out of fear, continually knelt to the moderates in our conference (who all got crushed last night anyway), and discarded conservatives like me who warned of last night’s results.
Please do us all a favor and step aside so new leadership can take a truly conservative direction, with the courage to do the things we were elected to do.
He concluded with Trump’s famous line, “Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
House Minority Leader Mike Johnson (R-LA) has already indicated he will step down by not pursuing the House minority leadership position. However, reports indicate that Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) still intends to run for minority leader.
Steube’s stance coincides with Vice President JD Vance’s brief election autopsy, tying the GOP’s loss to the war, high prices, and Americans feeling like they have not been put first.
“But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone,” Vance wrote:
Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were:
1) End the war
2) Focus on cost of living/inflation
3) Put America First
4) Change our relationship to IsraelOur voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.)
“The reason we lost is the war,” Vance said. “The president himself said so last night.”
