Republicans hoping to salvage what remains of President Donald Trump's MAGA agenda — or to advance it without the chaos — are pursuing a fool's errand, according to a scathing new column in The New Republic.

Tuesday's midterm wipeout, which some are calling the effective end of Trump's presidency, handed Democrats control of both chambers of Congress and effectively opened the GOP's scramble for a 2028 presidential candidate. With Trump constitutionally barred from another term under the 22nd Amendment — the two-term limit ratified in 1951 — Republicans must find a new standard-bearer for the MAGA legacy.

Columnist Matt Ford predicts the party will be tempted to pitch voters on a cleaner version of Trumpism — one that delivers the movement's goals without the blunders of Trump's second term. He argues such a move is doomed from the start, an argument that turns the party's wide-open 2028 primary into a test of whether the movement can stand apart from the man who defined it.

“Trump's mistakes were not a deviation from Trumpism; they were Trumpism,” Ford wrote, continuing: “His political movement is, at its core, based on a rejection of knowledge and expertise. As a result, it is inherently self-destructive.”

Ford pointed to Trump's first term, when GOP veterans could restrain his worst instincts to an extent. In 2019, for example, Trump threatened to shut the U.S.-Mexico border to all trade, only to back down after advisers warned of the economic fallout. He likewise retreated from tariff war threats at the urging of his aides, and he did not follow through on his threat to “obliterate” Iran after it shot down an unmanned U.S. drone, having been warned of the economic consequences.

In Trump's second term, those guardrails are gone, Ford writes, with a Cabinet filled with loyalists who will not dare challenge him. The result, he argues, is the Iran war — which bears all the hallmarks of another prolonged Middle Eastern conflict that yields no results — alongside rising oil prices that have pushed up the cost of living.

Voters who hoped Trump would bring down grocery bills instead got sweeping tariffs that he repeatedly claimed foreign governments would pay, when in reality American businesses and consumers have footed the bill.

Ford also argued that the administration's biggest wins backfired, pointing to January's raid that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, who had faced U.S. federal narcotics-trafficking charges since 2020. In his view, the raid's success led the Trump administration to underestimate Iran, believing it would produce another quick victory.

Ford warned that a Republican presidential hopeful who eventually campaigns on keeping the supposedly good parts of Trumpism without the flaws would be lying to voters — a warning the party's 2028 field will now have to confront as the primary campaign takes shape.

“All of this damage flows naturally from an exaltation of ignorance and the demonization of expertise,” he wrote. “They will merely be promising easy solutions to make a quick buck and hoping to outrun the harms they cause.”