Establishment Republicans wasted no time after Election Day attacking their own populist base, with one major Maryland outlet publishing commentary comparing Trump supporters to substance abusers needing intervention — even as a Republican judge in Brooklyn just proved that running explicitly conservative against the Democratic machine still wins.
The Baltimore Sun ran a staff commentary framing MAGA voters as addicts chasing a high and the party as a patient needing "recovery." The piece compared supporting Trump to a "dangerous addiction" and argued that "helping Maryland Republicans recover" requires "admitting the high was never free." The author acknowledged Democrats dismiss MAGA voters as "uneducated racist white supremacists" — then offered his own diagnosis: voters are simply wired for tribal defense, and Trump "ruthlessly exploited" their brain chemistry.
This is the uniparty playbook in real time. When have you ever seen establishment consultants lecture Democrats about their voters this way? The Sun's own commentary admits that "Stop Trump" messaging was the decisive factor that flipped Maryland's Question 3 — an Obama ad funded by Gov. Wes Moore's campaign turned a measure that was polling underwater into an astonishing victory for the left. The establishment GOP response? Attack the voters who showed up for them.
Meanwhile, in deep-blue Brooklyn, Republican Etan C. Harris won a Civil Court judgeship in the 8th Municipal District with 50.91% of the vote — the first Republican to win that seat in 105 years, according to the New York Post. Harris ran only on Republican and Conservative lines. Previous Republican judges in the borough only won when they also appeared on the Democratic line. Harris refused the cross-endorsement and campaigned as a "law and order candidate" promising "fairness, efficiency, and delivering justice for the people of Southern Brooklyn."
He won by roughly two points while nearly every other GOP candidate in Brooklyn lost their Assembly and Senate seats. Kings County Republican Party chairman Liam McCabe called Harris "the Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer flying through the storm." Harris was the only candidate in any Brooklyn race backed by Republican City Councilmember Inna Vernikov, who told the Post that Harris will bring a "non-biased, apolitical approach to the bench, as well as integrity and competence."
The contrast is the story. One path: apologize for your voters, call them addicts, and lose. The other: run on Republican lines, campaign on law and order, and flip a seat that hasn't been red since the Coolidge era. The Baltimore Sun piece even warns that Democrats will "deliberately trigger relapses" with taunts and pile-ons — then advises Republicans to respond with more self-criticism, not more fighting.
The question for ordinary Americans isn't whether the populist base will abandon the GOP. It's whether the party's consultant class will ever stop trying to push them out.
