By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com
November 9, 2026
The 2026 election left Republicans in Indiana and across America with a mess to clean up.
Their callow and callous disregard for the law and for most standards of honesty and decency prompted many Hoosiers and most Americans to turn against them. The years they spent under the direction of their false prophet in the White House and his acolytes here in the state and across the nation telling people who didn’t agree with every single one of President Donald Trump’s policy zigs and zags and his constant evasions of principle that they no longer had a home in the GOP proved disastrous.
Across the country, the party lost control of both houses of Congress and many governors’ races by overwhelming margins, along with majorities of state legislative chambers previously thought inviolably Republican.
Here in Indiana, until Nov. 3 considered one of the securest GOP bastions in the nation, Republicans lost the secretary of state’s race, the comptroller’s race, a congressional seat in the Fifth District, 16 seats in the Indiana House of Representatives and five in the Indiana Senate.
Worse, from the GOP’s perspective, it could be that the shellacking is just beginning.
At a national level, if Texas has turned blue—and Democrats won every statewide race in the Lone Star State this time around—it will be a long, long time before any other Republican is elected president. Democratic presidential nominees already start every national race with more than 170 electoral votes from reliably blue enclaves such as California, New York, Massachusetts and Illinois in the bank.
If Texas’ 40 electoral votes are added to that count, then any Republican presidential candidate would almost have to run the rest of the board just to be competitive.
And here in Indiana, when Secretary of State-elect Beau Bayh launches his inevitable campaign for governor, Republicans will face a well-funded, well-organized and disciplined opponent for control of the state’s highest office for the first time in years. This will happen at a time when the state’s most prominent GOP statewide officeholders—particularly Gov. Mike Braun, Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith, U.S. Sen. Jim Banks and Attorney General Todd Rokita—have public approval ratings that normally only communicable diseases record.
There are some Republicans who are trying to dismiss the cataclysm that befell them in this election as something inconsequential—a momentary aberration.
They shouldn’t.
People don’t leave political parties that have been their ideological and in ways tribal homes on a whim. Deciding to leave one’s party is an act almost as wrenching as parting company with one’s family.
It’s an act that no serious person takes lightly.
Yet thousands of people here in Indiana and millions of others across America did just that in this election.
They made the hard, hard decision to leave the party that had been their home and vote for Democrats instead.
What should Republicans do about it?
Well, they can start by getting serious.
Some of that will involve refusing to advance self-interested con artists, hucksters and scalawags such as Beckwith, Rokita and current Secretary of State Diego Morales as their candidates. Those three hustlers have different personal goals in mind, but they share Trump’s approach to public service.
Rather than asking how a policy or position will help the citizenry, they each first ask, “What’s in it for me?”
But getting serious means more than showing moral and intellectual lightweights the door.
It will involve generating and putting forth ideas that help all citizens rather than nurturing and fanning grudges, real or imagined, as the party’s mission.
Neither Republicans nor Democrats like to admit this, but both conservatives and progressives can offer viable solutions to pressing public problems.
Wherever it comes from, though, any proposed solution will carry with it both benefits and costs. The task of all mature and sensible people is to choose which benefits they prefer and which costs they can bear.
Republicans have all but abandoned this debate over the past dozen years. Instead, they’ve focused on scapegoating and finger-pointing, attempting to isolate and further victimize already marginalized citizens.
Painting bullseyes on the backs of Muslim and transgender Americans won’t lead the GOP back to power.
The public spoke loudly on that point.
Most Americans and most Hoosiers are tired of the culture-war politics of division and distraction. They want us to live and work together.
But were Republicans listening?
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College. Also, the views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
