随着11月3日惨淡的结果出炉，华盛顿特区国会山咫尺之遥的MAGA聚集地巴特沃斯（Butterworth's）酒吧里，年轻的共和党人们沮丧地抿着“参议院多数党马提尼”和“红色浪潮”等鸡尾酒。他们飞速经历了悲伤的几个阶段：否认、愤怒，然后是接受。“这是历史性的，”其中一人指出，“就像兴登堡号空难具有历史性一样。”
AS THE DIRE results came in on November 3rd, young Republicans at Butterworth’s, a MAGA haunt a stone’s throw from the Capitol in Washington, DC, sipped glumly on cocktails such as the “Senate Majority Martini” and “The Red Wave”. They accelerated through the stages of grief: denial, anger, then acceptance. “This is historic”, noted one, “in the same way the Hindenburg was historic.”
党内目前正在展开一场充满怨恨的复盘。大多数人承认，对伊朗的战争造成了严重的选举损失；一个声音很大的派别也将矛头指向了以色列。人们普遍认为选民对腐败感到愤怒，但许多人不愿将矛头指向唐纳德·特朗普。甚至在民粹主义继续高涨之际，一些人仍抱有一线希望，认为该党可能会重回自由市场和小政府的早期信条。多年来，特朗普对该党的主导地位掩盖了其裂痕。现在，这些裂痕彻底暴露出来了。
An acrimonious post mortem is now under way within the party. Most concede that the Iran war did grave electoral damage; a loud faction blames Israel, too. There is widespread agreement that voters were angered by corruption, but many are reluctant to point the finger at Donald Trump. And even as populism continues to swell, some hold out hope that the party might return to earlier precepts of free markets and small government. Mr Trump’s dominance of the party has for years papered over its fissures. They are now laid bare.
在MAGA内部，总统的忠实支持者依然存在。阿肯色州州长萨拉·赫卡比·桑德斯附和了特朗普关于他并未出现在选票上的说法，她是持这种观点的人之一：“我认为这不能划为针对他的界限。”少数MAGA媒体人物，即马克·莱文和劳拉·鲁默，继续支持对伊朗的战争以及美国与以色列的关系。
Within MAGA, loyalists to the president remain. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the governor of Arkansas, was among those to parrot Mr Trump’s line that he was not on the ballot: “I don’t think that this can be a line drawn against him.”A few MAGA media figures, namely Mark Levin and Laura Loomer, continue to support the Iran war and America’s relationship with Israel.
但一大群喧闹的MAGA纯粹主义者认为特朗普让运动失望了。11月4日，特朗普的副总统J·D·万斯没有点名指责特朗普，却采取了令人震惊的举措，指责他老板的政策，包括这场战争、未能降低成本以及与以色列的关系。
But a noisy group of MAGA purists contend that Mr Trump has let the movement down. On November 4th J.D. Vance, Mr Trump’s vice-president, did not blame Mr Trump by name, but took the stunning step of blaming his boss’s policies, including the war, a failure to bring down costs and the relationship with Israel.
MAGA阵营的纯粹派网络播客主持人塔克·卡尔森、乔·罗根和史蒂夫·班农在选举前就已经与特朗普先生决裂，他们在选举后更是言辞尖锐。11月5日，班农的《战争房间》节目联合主持人娜塔莉·温特斯指责白宫官员——如商务部长霍华德·卢特尼克——进行了“不可告人的交易”，并称“政府中真正的骗子”正在玷污“整个MAGA运动”。她没有直接将特朗普本人牵连其中。
MAGA-purist vodcasters such as Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan and Steve Bannon had already broken with Mr Trump before the election; they were scathing after it. On November 5th Natalie Winters, the co-host of Mr Bannon’s War Room show, alleged that White House officials such as Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, had made “shady deals” and that “the actual grifters in the administration” were tarnishing “the entire MAGA movement”. She stopped short of implicating Mr Trump himself.
卡尔森在11月4日的节目中将选举结果称为“一场灾难”。他补充道：“你可以在日历上做个记号：‘特朗普主义已死’。”他将原因归咎于战争、腐败（他称特朗普“虚荣而贪婪”）以及总统决定在南卡罗来纳州支持有缺陷的候选人达琳·格雷厄姆——已故强硬派参议员林赛·格雷厄姆的妹妹。他认为，政府过于专注于反犹太主义，他将这种立场称为“犹太人的命也是命”。莱文则猛烈抨击了卡尔森，形容他是一个“令人厌恶的生物”，一直致力于“破坏总统、共和党和中期选举”。
Mr Carlson called the results a “disaster, on his show on November 4th. “You could mark it on your calendar,” he added: “Trumpism gone”. He blames war, corruption (Mr Trump was “vain and venal”) and the president’s decision to endorse flawed candidates such as Darline Graham, sister of the late, hawkish Lindsey Graham, in South Carolina. The administration had been too focused on fighting antisemitism, he argued, a stance he dubbed “Jewish lives matter”. Mr Levin, for his part, skewered Mr Carlson, describing him a “loathsome creature” who had worked to “sabotage the president, the GOP, and the midterm elections”.
随着MAGA内部的争斗持续，严重缩减但依然不屈的共和党老派势力正期盼着复兴。特朗普2017至2021年任内的副总统迈克·彭斯在《华尔街日报》的一篇专栏文章中断言：“美国人民已经拒绝了我们党向经济民粹主义的转向”，他刻意避而不谈许多民主党候选人所拥护的民粹主义。2011至2023年担任共和党参议员的帕特·图米在X平台上发帖暗示，共和党在采纳国家主义产业政策方面也误入歧途，他指出政府持有半导体和稀土矿业公司的股权就是明证。
As brawls continue within MAGA, Republicans’ old guard, severely diminished but still defiant, is hoping for a resurrection. “The American people have rejected our party’s shift toward economic populism,” asserted Mike Pence, Mr Trump’s vice-president in 2017-21, in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, glossing over the populism espoused by many Democratic candidates. Pat Toomey, a Republican senator from 2011-23, suggested in a post on X that Republicans had also gone astray in adopting statist industrial policy, pointing to the government’s equity stakes in semiconductor and rare-earth mining firms.
米特·罗姆尼（Mitt Romney）——这位2012年参选总统的特朗普时代之前最后一位共和党总统候选人——在X平台上对特朗普提出了更为全面且尖锐的批评，直指战争与腐败，以及特朗普在内政上的过度行为、财政挥霍和外交上的“纵火”（“武器化司法、移民及海关执法局的残酷行径、如山的赤字、掩盖爱泼斯坦丑闻、抛弃盟友以及纵容敌人”）。他辩称，特朗普不仅有“糟糕的政策”，还有“糟糕的品格”。许多传统共和党人在私下里对此表示赞同；但即便在现在，极少有人会公开这么说。
Mitt Romney, the last pre-Trump Republican to have run for president, in 2012, offered a more sweeping and scathing critique of Mr Trump on X, pointing to the war and corruption, as well as his domestic excesses, fiscal profligacy and diplomatic arson (“weaponised justice, ICE brutality, mountainous deficits, hiding Epstein, abandoning allies and coddling enemies”). Mr Trump has not only “bad policy”, he argued, but “bad character”. Many traditional Republicans privately agree; vanishingly few will say so, even now.
在“让美国再次伟大”（MAGA）纯粹主义者与老派保守派之间，存在着一类立场更不固定的共和党人。仁慈一点说，他们可以被称为务利主义者；更愤世嫉俗一点说，则是机会主义者。以特德·克鲁兹（Ted Cruz）为例，在周二的选举大获全胜之后，他即将成为得克萨斯州仅存的最后一位共和党籍全州公职人员。在他的播客节目中，他在对自身选举结果进行的剖析中，表面上迎合了重建一个“真正的蓝领政党”的需求，却指向了一个特朗普时代之前的解决方案：共和党人必须成为“真正的自由市场保守派”。
Between the MAGA purists and the old guard is a more fluid category of Republican, who could be charitably called pragmatists or, more cynically, opportunists. Consider Ted Cruz, who after Tuesday’s sweep is poised to be the last remaining Republican statewide office-holder standing in Texas. In his own election autopsy on his podcast, he paid lip service to the need to rebuild as a “true blue-collar party”, but pointed to a pre-Trump solution: Republicans had to be “real free-market conservatives”.
克鲁兹长期支持强硬的外交政策，曾为特朗普的战争欢呼，但在选举结束后，他感到有必要改变策略，称那场战争本应“短暂、果断并迅速结束”。
Mr Cruz, a longstanding proponent of muscular foreign policy who once cheered on Mr Trump’s war, felt compelled to change tack after the election, saying that the war should have been “brief, decisive, and over”.
佛罗里达州长罗恩·德桑蒂斯（Ron DeSantis）受任期限制无法再次连任，他在2024年未能赢得共和党总统候选人提名，如今他希望MAGA（让美国再次伟大）运动能重新审视他。和克鲁兹先生一样，他曾是一名突出的强硬派。然而，在大选前的日子里，他对伊朗战争的态度已经变坏。在自己的大选后复盘中，他指出共和党人未能兑现公布杰弗里·爱泼斯坦（Jeffrey Epstein）相关档案的承诺。
Ron DeSantis, the term-limited governor of Florida who failed to win the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, is now hoping the MAGA movement might give him a second look. Like Mr Cruz, he has been a prominent hawk. In the days before the election, however, he had soured on the Iran war. In his own post-election critique, he noted that Republicans had failed to deliver on their pledge to release files pertaining to Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted paedophile, a passionate issue within MAGA.
爱泼斯坦是一名已被定罪的恋童癖者，而解密档案是MAGA内部一个充满热情的话题。他还争辩说，在俄亥俄州落败的共和党州长候选人维韦克·拉马斯瓦米（Vivek Ramaswamy）之所以落败，是因为“他想引进人员，即持签证的外籍工人”。并且，他敦促禁止国会议员进行股票交易——尽管他没有直接点名特朗普，自上任以来，特朗普进行的股票交易比所有议员加起来还要多。
He also contended that Vivek Ramaswamy, the defeated Republican candidate for governor in Ohio, had lost because “he wants to bring in people, foreign workers on visas”. And he urged a ban on stock trading by members of Congress—though without naming Mr Trump directly, who has made more stock trades since coming to office than all lawmakers combined.
更多的争斗可能会爆发。正当万斯（Mr Vance）向MAGA纯粹主义者发出呼吁时，MAGA圈内的许多人却鄙视他，这很大程度上是因为他与硅谷的联系，他在竞选参议员之前曾在那里工作。MAGA纯粹主义者强烈反对由战争部长皮特·海格塞斯（Pete Hegseth）倡导的伊朗冲突，然而海格塞斯对五角大楼中所谓觉醒将军们的清洗，为他在右翼“硬汉网民圈”中赢得了狂热的粉丝。
More fights will probably break out. Even as Mr Vance appeals to the MAGA purists, many within the MAGAverse despise him, not least for his ties to Silicon Valley, where he worked before running for Senate. MAGA purists are vehemently opposed to the conflict in Iran, championed by Pete Hegseth, the secretary of war, yet Mr Hegseth’s purge of supposedly woke generals from the Pentagon has earned him ardent fans within the right-wing “manosphere”.
在探讨大选结果的一次活动上，智库美国企业研究所（American Enterprise Institute）的肖恩·特伦德（Sean Trende）预测，如果他被赶下台，“MAGA将要发疯”。
Should he be ousted, “MAGA is going to lose its mind,” predicted Sean Trende of the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank, at an event dissecting the election’s results.
在一旁注视着这些小冲突的是特朗普本人，他一向以出手毫不留情而著称。11月6日，白宫宣布将任命民族主义者兼移民强硬派斯蒂芬·米勒为幕僚长，此举宛如在宣告自己才是最坚定的“让美国再次伟大”（MAGA）支持者。特朗普手中仍握有一笔巨额竞选资金。共和党战略家道格·海耶指出，他初选时的背书仍然能确保候选人获得30%的选票，这往往足以取得胜利。“我认为，只要他还活着，我们就永远不会进入后特朗普时期。”■
Observing these skirmishes is Mr Trump himself, not known for pulling his punches. As if to declare himself the most MAGA of all, on November 6th the White House announced that Stephen Miller, a nationalist and immigration hardliner, would be named chief of staff. Mr Trump retains a huge war chest. His primary endorsements can still guarantee a candidate 30% of the vote, notes Douglas Heye, a Republican strategist, which is often enough to carry the day. “I don’t think that we’re ever in a post-Trump period until he’s no longer alive.” ■