After the Republican Party suffered a surprising (well, to Republicans) defeat in the 2012 election, the Republican National Committee famously commissioned an autopsy that tried to analyze how the party had fallen short. It made a range of recommendations, but they were distilled by the headlines — and the wishful thinking of certain party elites — into a plan for the G.O.P. to win back the presidency mostly by shifting left on immigration.
Then, of course, Donald Trump came along and put that particular vision to the torch.
After Trump went down to his own defeat, it was clear that there wouldn’t be a repeat of the autopsy. Not only because the last experience ended badly, but because Trump’s narrative would not allow it: To publicly analyze what went wrong for Republicans in 2020 would be to concede that the incumbent president had somehow failed (impossible!), that Joe Biden’s victory was totally legitimate (unlikely!) and that the party somehow might need to move on from Trump himself (unthinkable!).
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