Republican lawmakers decry a lack of 'introspection' in the party after midterm losses

It's typical for a party that suffers losses in a midterm election to subsequently reflect upon what went wrong, as when former President Barack Obama acknowledged a "shellacking" in 2010. But Republicans this year have not done much of that.

The New York Times reports that there has been "little self-examination among Republicans" following the party's loss of nearly 40 seats in the House of Representatives. This fact is frustrating some lawmakers. "There has been close to no introspection in the GOP conference," Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) told the Times, "and really no coming to grips with the shifting demographics that get to why we lost those seats."

Another GOP lawmaker, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), said there hasn't been "any party lookback or leadership lookback and it does worry some of us." Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.) argued that Republicans must "learn some lessons from this election," with one being that their caucus needs to be more diverse and look "more like America."

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One retiring Republican, Rep. Ryan Costello (R-Pa.), suggested he knows the reason for the lack of self-reflection: he says it's because the midterms were a referendum on President Trump, but the GOP can't conclude that publicly out of fear of inciting the president's wrath. Trump himself asserted that the midterms were a "big victory" for Republicans, but as Democrats in the following weeks continued to rack up House seats, that assessment has not exactly aged well.