Tom Hicks | November 5, 2026
Custom landscape Off Script cover: the aftermath of a political train wreck, with the Capitol in the background, a battered Republican elephant, and Trump and Johnson as recognizable figures. Clearly labeled editorial satire. OFF Script logo bottom-left, THM phoenix bottom-right. No repeated headline.
Well, that didn’t take long.
We barely finished counting Tuesday’s votes before the Republican Party started doing what political parties do when the voters hand them their asses: looking for somebody else to blame. The Democrats took both chambers of Congress, the finger-pointing started before the concession speeches were finished, and Mike Johnson apparently decided he’d rather spend more time with his family than spend the next two years getting kicked in the teeth by his own colleagues.
Can’t say I blame him for that last part.
Johnson announced Wednesday that he wouldn’t seek another Republican leadership position. His farewell letter talked about family sacrifices, accomplishments, and how proud he was of the work he’d done. Somehow, in all that heartfelt reflection, he managed to avoid mentioning the election that had just turned his speakership into a going-out-of-business sale.
That’s a hell of an omission. It’s like the captain of the Titanic writing his memoirs and forgetting to mention the iceberg.
Axios — Mike Johnson bows out of leadership after House GOP defeat
But Johnson’s departure is only the appetizer. The real meal is what happens next, because Republicans are about to discover whether they’ve been following Donald Trump out of genuine conviction, political convenience, or simple fear of what happens when you tell the man no.
And for the first time in a while, they have another political threat to consider.
The voters.
MIKE JOHNSON DISCOVERS THE EXIT
Mike Johnson spent months predicting Republicans could hold the House. Election night delivered a different answer.
I’ll give Johnson this much: running the House Republican conference was probably about as enjoyable as trying to herd feral cats through a revolving door while somebody periodically set the building on fire.
He had a razor-thin majority, a collection of hardliners who treated compromise like a communicable disease, and Donald Trump hovering over the whole operation. Johnson spent months defending the administration, pushing its legislation, and assuring the country that Republicans were going to hang on to the House.
Then the country voted.
Suddenly, Johnson was talking about how difficult it is for a president’s party to survive a midterm election. He pointed to history, explaining that the odds had been stacked against Republicans all along.
Well, isn’t that convenient?
Before the election, history was apparently something Republicans were going to defy through the sheer magnificence of their leadership. After the election, history became the explanation for why they got their asses handed to them.
One Republican told Axios the result was brutal. Others were already questioning the leadership team, and even Richard Hudson, the man responsible for helping Republicans retain the House majority, lost his own seat.
There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, but frankly, it’s already doing a pretty good job explaining itself. Axios — Republicans confront their election defeat
SCALISE OR JORDAN? WHAT A FUCKING CHOICE.
Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise
With Johnson leaving leadership, Republicans are preparing to choose between Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan, both of whom have launched campaigns for the job.
And I’ve been trying to decide whether there’s a meaningful difference between the two.
There is, although it’s not exactly the kind of choice that inspires confidence in a fresh direction.
Scalise is the experienced congressional operator. He knows how legislation works, understands the arithmetic of counting votes, and has spent years navigating the peculiar combination of ego, ambition, and occasional actual policy discussions that passes for congressional leadership.
Jordan, meanwhile, seems to approach politics as though every day is an opportunity to hold another hearing, yell at somebody, and produce a clip for conservative television. The man helped found the House Freedom Caucus, which has spent years demonstrating that making government function is considerably less entertaining than threatening to shut it down.
Both have been loyal to Trump. Both objected to certifying Biden’s 2020 election victory. Neither has established himself as the guy who’s going to stand up and tell Trump that perhaps the party needs to rethink a few things.
And Scalise has already opened his campaign by warning colleagues about the socialist agenda he says Democrats are bringing to Washington.
So much for a period of quiet reflection.
Republicans have just suffered a major electoral defeat, and one of the leading candidates to guide them through it is already reaching for the same political vocabulary.
The question isn’t whether Scalise or Jordan has a different personality. Of course they do. The question is whether either intends to lead a party capable of functioning in a divided government, or whether the next two years will be an extended audition for the role of Trump’s favorite congressional attack dog. Associated Press — Johnson’s departure and the Republican leadership race
JD VANCE HAS FIGURED IT ALL OUT. IT WAS THE WAR.
Vice President JD Vance has apparently solved the mystery of Tuesday’s Republican defeat.
Iran.
There you go. Months of campaigning, millions of voters, a national economy, immigration policy, government corruption, inflation, the cost of living, and everything else Americans have been arguing about for the past two years, and Vance has managed to boil the whole damn thing down to one explanation.
The war.
Now, I’m not going to pretend the war didn’t matter. It absolutely did. Americans have watched gasoline prices climb, worried about the consequences of another military conflict, and questioned whether this country needed to get itself involved in yet another Middle Eastern war.
But blaming the entire election on Iran is like blaming your divorce on the fact that you forgot to take out the garbage last Tuesday.
Maybe that was the last straw. But I suspect there were a few other things going on in the marriage.
Preliminary ABC News voter polling identified government corruption, the cost of living, and the war among the issues voters considered crucial. And those concerns aren’t mutually exclusive. A person can be furious about the price of groceries, angry about government misconduct, and sick of watching American money disappear into another military conflict.
We’re remarkably talented at being pissed off about several things simultaneously.
What bothers me about the war explanation is how neatly it lets everybody else off the hook. If the election was lost because of Iran, Republicans don’t have to ask whether their domestic policies alienated voters, whether their candidates defended things they shouldn’t have defended, or whether the administration’s behavior had become an electoral liability.
Just blame the war, promise to do better next time, and hope everybody forgets the rest.
That’s an awfully convenient explanation for a party that just got a very inconvenient message. ABC News — Election results and voter polling
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TRUMP WOULD DO IT AGAIN. WELL, THERE’S A SHOCKER.
Trump acknowledged the war’s political consequences but defended his decision to launch it.
Trump himself acknowledged that the war contributed to the Republican defeat. But he also made it clear that he doesn’t regret the decision to launch it.
He said he’d do it again.
Now, I can understand a president defending a military decision he believes was necessary. That’s his argument, and he’s entitled to make it. But acknowledging that the war hurt your party politically while refusing to reconsider the decision doesn’t explain the rest of the election.
And that’s where this gets interesting.
Trump has also suggested that Republicans would have performed much better if he’d personally been on the ballot.
Of course he has.
In Trump’s political universe, victory is evidence of his extraordinary popularity, while defeat is usually evidence that somebody else screwed up. It’s a remarkably durable system of accounting in which the man at the top never seems to be responsible for the red ink.
But voters weren’t being asked whether they wanted another four years of Donald Trump. They were deciding who should control Congress during the final two years of his presidency.
And some of them clearly weren’t thrilled with what they’d been seeing. Reuters — Trump acknowledges Iran’s role in Republican losses
MR. VETO HAS ENTERED THE BUILDING
Trump has already offered a preview of his relationship with the incoming Democratic Congress, and it involves a word he’s apparently become rather fond of.
Veto.
He told Fox News that Democrats would send him legislation he considered unacceptable; he’d veto it, and eventually they’d come looking to negotiate.
There’s nothing constitutionally mysterious about that. Presidents have veto power. Congress can override a veto with two-thirds of both chambers, although assembling those majorities is no small undertaking.
But Trump seems to be approaching the next two years as though the central question is how much legislation he can stop.
Which is certainly one way to run a government.
The trouble is that Americans aren’t particularly interested in watching their elected officials spend two years measuring one another’s political anatomy. They want lower prices, functioning government services, and some evidence that the people collecting congressional salaries remember who pays them.
Democrats will have the power to conduct investigations, hold hearings, and advance legislation. Trump can veto bills, negotiate, and continue exercising executive authority within constitutional limits.
There are plenty of opportunities for both sides to accomplish something useful.
There are also plenty of opportunities to turn Washington into a taxpayer-funded kindergarten with considerably better retirement benefits.
And if history has taught us anything, it’s that politicians are rarely embarrassed by the second option. Reuters — Trump’s veto plans and negotiations with Democrats
If somebody you know thinks the election ended the political circus, you might want to send them this.
SO WHO ARE REPUBLICANS AFRAID OF NOW?
This is the part of the story I find most fascinating.
For years, Republican members of Congress have had to calculate what might happen if they crossed Trump. Would he attack them publicly? Endorse a primary challenger? Turn his supporters against them? Make their political lives so miserable that they’d eventually decide retirement sounded better than another election?
Those concerns haven’t magically disappeared. Trump is still president, still influential with Republican primary voters, and still perfectly capable of making trouble for politicians who refuse to fall in line.
But Tuesday introduced another consideration.
What happens when the voters in your district start holding you responsible for the administration you’ve spent two years defending?
That’s a different kind of political headache, and unlike a nasty presidential social media post, it can cost you your job without giving you an opportunity to respond.
Now, I don’t expect every Republican to wake up tomorrow morning, discover a previously unknown backbone, and announce that Donald Trump can go fuck himself.
That would require a political transformation considerably more dramatic than anything we’ve seen so far.
But I do wonder whether some of them will begin remembering that they were elected to represent actual people, rather than serve as supporting characters in one man’s never-ending political reality show.
A Republican doesn’t have to abandon conservative principles to negotiate with Democrats. A lawmaker can disagree with the president on immigration, spending, or foreign policy without suddenly becoming a socialist. And voting for legislation that benefits your constituents shouldn’t require written permission from Mar-a-Lago.
Somewhere along the way, we’ve managed to turn ordinary political independence into an act of extraordinary courage.
Which says something pretty depressing about the state of American government.
AND DEMOCRATS, WIPE THOSE SMILES OFF YOUR FACES FOR A MINUTE
Democrats have won control of Congress. Now comes the less glamorous business of doing something with it.
Before Democrats start throwing themselves a two-year victory party, I’d like to remind them of something.
Winning an election is the easy part compared with delivering on the expectations that helped put you in office.
Voters didn’t hand Democrats control of Congress so they could spend the next two years holding press conferences about how terrible Donald Trump is. A lot of Americans have already reached their own conclusions about that. They’d also like somebody to do something about the cost of living, government accountability, and the problems that affect their daily lives.
Yes, Trump can veto legislation. Yes, Republicans can make governing difficult. And yes, congressional investigations may uncover things the public has every right to know.
But Democrats still have to put serious proposals on the table.
If Trump vetoes a measure intended to address a genuine problem, explain what the legislation would have done and why it mattered. If Republicans refuse to negotiate, make them explain their objections. And if Democrats propose something stupid, they should expect to get called on it.
I’ve been a registered Independent since 1974. I’ve voted for candidates from both parties, and I’ve watched enough elections to know that giving politicians power doesn’t automatically give them good judgment.
Democrats have been handed an opportunity to demonstrate that Congress can function differently.
They’d better not piss it away.
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY HAS A CHOICE. WHETHER IT REALIZES THAT IS ANOTHER MATTER.
I keep coming back to the same question.
For years, Republicans have behaved as though getting on Donald Trump’s bad side was the worst thing that could happen to them politically.
Tuesday reminded them that there’s another group capable of ending political careers.
The voters.
And the voters don’t need an endorsement from Trump, permission from party leadership, or a cable news appearance to make their feelings known. They just need to show up.
Republicans can blame the war. They can blame Johnson. They can blame bad candidates, bad polling, bad messaging, or the alignment of Jupiter and Mars if that makes them feel better.
Some of those explanations may even contain elements of truth.
But none of them answers the question of what Republicans intend to do differently.
Will they start behaving like an independent branch of government? Will they negotiate when compromise serves their constituents? Will they challenge administration policies they privately disagree with, or will they keep their heads down and hope Trump’s approval remains enough to protect them?
I don’t know.
But I’m damn sure interested in finding out.
Because the most revealing part of this election may not be what happened Tuesday night. It may be what Republicans do when the next difficult vote comes along and they have to decide whose anger frightens them more.
Donald Trump’s?
Or the people who can actually vote them out of office?
And if the answer is still Trump, then perhaps Tuesday’s election didn’t teach them a goddamn thing.
ONE QUESTION
Do you think Republican lawmakers will become more independent now that Democrats control Congress, or will they continue treating disagreement with Trump as political suicide?
THE BULLSHIT DETECTOR 💩
Three fresh examples of people putting things on the internet that apparently sounded perfectly reasonable right up until somebody checked.
THE STINK SCALE — KNOW YOUR BULLSHIT
💩 A Little Whiff — Something seems a little off. Keep sniffing.
💩💩 Something Smells — The facts are getting suspiciously flexible.
💩💩💩 Steaming Pile — A substantial load of misleading garbage.
💩💩💩💩 Full-Blown Bullshit — The evidence has left the building.
💩💩💩💩💩 Weapons-Grade Bullshit — So spectacularly divorced from reality that it deserves its own warning label.
1. APPARENTLY, FISHING IS NOW A CRIME
CLAIM: A viral video shows police arresting a young boy simply because he was fishing.
BULLSHIT: The police weren’t there about fishing, and nobody was arrested.
💩💩💩💩 FULL-BLOWN BULLSHIT
WHY: Cumbria Police in England told Full Fact that officers were responding to a report of a child possibly carrying a knife. No knife was found, and nobody was arrested.
But why let those pesky details interfere with a perfectly good outrage video? Apparently, all you need these days is a child, a police officer, and somebody willing to invent the rest of the goddamn story. Full Fact — Viral video does not show boy being arrested for fishing
2. EVEN THE BOOKSTORE SCAMS ARE GETTING CREATIVE
CLAIM: Waterstones is offering incredibly cheap boxes of bestselling books through Facebook promotions.
BULLSHIT: The offers are fraudulent.
💩💩💩 STEAMING PILE
WHY: Facebook posts advertised bargain boxes of books, sometimes with touching little stories about relatives working at the bookstore. All shoppers supposedly had to do was complete a questionnaire.
Waterstones wasn’t running the promotion.
I remember when buying a book involved walking into a store, handing somebody money, and leaving with a book. Now apparently you need to conduct a background investigation to make sure the bargain isn’t being offered by some asshole running a scam from his basement. Full Fact — Waterstones isn’t offering cheap Bestsellers Boxes
3. KANYE WEST APPARENTLY TELEPORTED TO POLAND
CLAIM: Kanye West appeared outside Poland’s Constitutional Court in Warsaw and commented on the country’s political situation.
BULLSHIT: The supposed television report was fabricated.
💩💩💩💩 FULL-BLOWN BULLSHIT
WHY: Lead Stories found no corresponding report from the television station supposedly responsible for the interview. Analysis also identified evidence that the circulating screenshot was AI-generated.
Which means somebody decided the world desperately needed Kanye West’s commentary on Polish constitutional politics and, rather than wait for him to provide it, simply manufactured the whole fucking thing.
We’ve reached a fascinating stage of human civilization. People can now invent celebrity appearances faster than the celebrities themselves can get into trouble. Lead Stories — Fake Kanye West interview in Poland
MORE FROM TOM HICKS MEDIA
If the election left you wondering how American politics became such a magnificent clusterfuck, Blind Spot, our Sunday edition of Off Script, digs into the machinery behind the headlines, including the money, rules, and institutions that shape elections.
If you’d prefer commentary from somebody who makes no secret of her contempt for human stupidity, Lotus Purrspective features daily observations from a cat who believes civilization would improve considerably if humans simply followed instructions.
And What the Hell? explores the stranger corners of history, where reality has repeatedly demonstrated that it doesn’t need help from fiction writers to make absolutely no sense.
You’ll find those and the rest of the family at Tom Hicks Media — The Complete Collection.
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ONE LAST QUESTION
Which Republican will be the first to publicly break with Trump on something that actually matters? And will anybody else have the balls to follow?
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