1. United States
2. Ohio
3. Letter

Republicans got walloped in the midterms. And like anyone who’s suffered a big loss, the party is now working through its grief. The five stages of MAGA grief: •Denial •Anger •Bargaining •Depression •Acceptance They don’t always arrive in order, but the framework has stuck around because they describe something real. Since the midterms, the Republican Party has hit every one of those stages, practically on schedule. Denial: Three days after the elections, Donald Trump named Stephen Miller his new White House chief of staff. If you wanted to send voters a message that said “we heard nothing,” you’d be hard pressed to find a better messenger. Miller is the architect of this administration’s immigration crackdown, which happens to be one of the biggest reasons Republicans just got crushed. For years, immigration was the GOP’s home-field advantage. Then America got a good look at what Miller’s version of enforcement actually looked like, and recoiled. It didn’t just cost them independents. It cost them their own people. Anger: Recently, 60 Minutes aired Trump’s first sit-down since the election. Ross Douthat asked whether immigration had hurt Republicans, and Trump, to the surprise of just about everyone watching, didn’t dodge. His deportation push “might be too tough,” he said. He floated an immigration deal with the new Democratic majority. He even pinned part of the blame on “a group of people that I would say on the sort of pretty far right that would like everybody taken out.” For Donald Trump, that’s practically a therapy session. His own movement did not take it well. The results are too painful to accept, so maybe, just maybe, they aren’t real. Bargaining: On election night, Trump told The New York Times he was “absolutely willing” to accept the results and was looking forward to working with Democrats. That lasted six days. None of this is new, of course. In Trump’s world, every loss is fraud and every win is proof of how great he is. That’s the bargain MAGA made with him years ago: you never have to admit you lost, no matter how many voters tell you that you did. Depression: Here’s the problem. It isn’t working, and they know it. In 2020, the stolen-election lie spread like wildfire. This time, it’s barely a birthday candle. None of it real, anyway. Acceptance: Republicans chose Jim Jordan for leadership. He’s the man expected to lead the charge defending Donald Trump against the new Democratic Congress. So Republicans did reach acceptance after all. Just not the kind where you learn anything. They didn’t accept that voters rejected them, or that they need to change. They accepted that they can’t. They looked at the worst midterm defeat in half a century and chose more of the same.