Veteran Republican strategist Karl Rove, who served as a senior adviser to President George W. Bush, warned on Wednesday that his party is “in trouble” if President Donald Trump continues to believe flattering assessments from his advisers. Rove said there is a “real possibility” that Trump thinks he is winning despite the GOP’s historic midterm defeat.

In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Rove outlined what he believes Republicans must do for the party to survive the Trump era.

Stephen Miller, appointed the new White House chief of staff last Friday, credited Trump with having “saved the Republican Party from the ash heap of history.” Miller said Trump had “made it stronger, more popular, and more resilient than ever before.”

Rove offered a sharply different assessment of the midterm results. “Come again? The GOP has just lost seven, probably eight and maybe nine Senate seats, at least 44 House seats, and five to seven governorships,” he wrote. “Mr. Miller’s comments baffled many Republicans and probably angered some. Perhaps he felt he had to flatter Mr. Trump. Worse — and a real possibility — is that he and the president actually believe it.”

With Democratic majorities expected to take office, Rove said the administration could face further damage from investigations into some of Trump’s least popular actions. Majority control on Capitol Hill would place congressional committees — and their investigative powers, including subpoenas — in Democratic hands. “Investigations into grift and self-dealing could hurt,” he wrote. “So could hearings on the administration’s moving beyond targeting violent criminal aliens by sending poorly trained, armed ICE agents after construction workers, waiters and farmhands. Images of their children being swept up too cost the GOP, especially with suburban voters.”

To “recover its standing with voters,” Rove urged Republicans to reject what he described as poor strategic direction from the administration. GOP lawmakers, he warned, “make a mistake if they play follow-the-leader and wait for direction from the West Wing.” He added that the same advisers promoted a plan to lower the cost of living by promising every adult a $5,000 check if Republicans won the midterms.

Rove also noted that although the White House has signaled it will pursue its agenda through executive orders, courts have repeatedly struck down such actions. “Trump has only two years left in office. He’s unlikely to grow more popular in that time,” Rove wrote. With Congress passing into opposition control, executive orders stand as the administration’s stated route for advancing its agenda — one that has already produced repeated judicial setbacks and is set to remain a point of friction with the courts.

As Trump’s political era approaches its end, Rove argued that “Republicans must recover a neglected political habit: treating governing as serious work rather than performance art.” He said that should mean addressing issues such as lowering prices, making healthcare more affordable, expanding the housing supply and responding to voters’ actual concerns instead of focusing on “expensive remodeling plans.”

The question now hanging over the party is whether its lawmakers take Rove’s advice to act independently, or keep waiting for direction from a West Wing where Miller has just taken charge.

“Failing that, the Republican Party’s time in the wilderness could last far longer,” Rove concluded. “The GOP can’t return to some past bright era. It has to chart a course for the future. Republicans should draw on timeless conservative principles to meet America’s challenges. As Lincoln said, ‘as our case is new, so must we think anew, and act anew.’ The party of Lincoln should heed this sage advice.”