A sense of deja vu is likely washing over Republican lawmakers. Many of the struggles GOP candidates are facing in 2026 eerily mirror their plight in 2018. Ahead of that year’s midterms, voters were similarly unhappy with President Donald Trump and unimpressed by the massive tax cuts passed the previous year. The conditions this time around, however, are much more dire, emphasizing how few lessons Republicans learned from their last midterm defeat.

Eight years ago, GOP candidates under House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., had hoped to campaign hard on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, also known as the Trump tax cuts. The $1.5 trillion bill was the biggest legislative package passed by that Congress, with the GOP trifecta having failed to repeal and replace Obamacare as promised. But voters weren’t very interested in hearing about the bill once it passed, and its popularity cratered as 2018 continued.

Many of the struggles GOP candidates are facing in 2026 eerily mirror their plight in 2018.

Things aren’t faring much better this time around. As previously mentioned, lawmakers have been having a tough time selling the megabill that Trump dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill. The White House briefed House Republicans last year on rebranding the package as the “working families tax cut.” A new poll from Politico released Wednesday confirmed that while respondents prefer the new name, taxes are near the bottom of voters’ list of top issues.

The congressional Republicans of yesteryear originally planned to follow up their tax cuts with another round in 2018. (Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who insisted that a third reconciliation bill was possible long after it seemed plausible, must relate.) Those goals swiftly fell apart in the face of a fractured caucus and no real vision for what a new middle-class tax cut would look like. By September, the GOP was far behind in the general ballot against Democrats and looking for a way to catch up.

As The Washington Post reported at the time, Trump led the way in Republicans making “a hard pivot away from economics and into nationalism, a debate with heavy racial overtones meant to energize the conservative base.” In the weeks leading up to the midterms, the president, Fox News and many GOP candidates flooded the airwaves with warnings about a caravan of migrants making its way from Central America to Mexico. But the GOP’s caravan-forward strategy didn’t work. Democrats still gained a net of 40 seats, more than a dozen more than needed to win the majority. Republicans held control of the Senate, but the odds of that happening again are less certain.

Which brings us to the biggest differences weighing down the GOP this time around, presaging what could be an even more brutal potential loss. In short, the party’s lack of interest in any policy beyond tax cuts and nationalism has caught up with it. MAGA has hollowed out the Republican Party to place Trump at its center, leaving it intensely vulnerable without his coattails support its candidates. But Trump was already a hindrance in 2018 to more moderate Republicans trying to brace themselves against the oncoming blue wave. Today, he’s an anchor dragging down everyone with an “R” next to their name, prompting the “red undertow” effect that has conservatives prepared to stay home on Election Day.

It is only right that in failing to learn from the past, Republicans seem doomed to repeat it.

The president already wasn’t very keen on selling the 2017 tax cuts to voters himself. At a May 2018 tax roundtable, Trump instead spent time talking about “China, North Korea, Syria, immigration, the mayor of Oakland, Calif., Congress’s budget deal, his own poll numbers and the media’s coverage of his presidency.” He’s grown much worse at staying on topic in the intervening years, preventing him from providing a coherent message for rank-and-file members to rally around.

A repeat of the anti-immigrant play would also likely backfire in 2026. Democrats have mobilized heavily around Trump’s detention strategy and Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s tactics. Conservative voters poised to stay home are unlikely to find a sudden burst of enthusiasm, not when more pressing matters are weighing on them.

Rising prices, inflation and other economic concerns have become the focal point of this year’s midterms. There is no avoiding how much the blame for each falls at Trump’s feat, try as candidates might to split the difference. And blame for Trump’s return to the White House — a choice the GOP had every opportunity to avoid — falls at the feet of all those who backed him when his stock was higher. It is only right that in failing to learn from the past, Republicans seem doomed to repeat it.

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