Anybody who thought that the stinging defeats Republicans suffered in Tuesday’s election would lead to some introspection or perhaps even a course correction on the part of the GOP has not been paying attention.

After all, acknowledging that voters are blaming them for a faltering economy, higher prices, the government shutdown, and the country having veered off track would mean that they would have to do the unthinkable and question Donald Trump and his policies.

And that is why GOP leaders simply forged ahead as though their punishing losses were something completely normal and nothing to be worried about.

However, they weren’t all on the same page when it came to explaining away why their gubernatorial candidates in New Jersey and Virginia had gotten pummeled or why down-ballot Republicans across the country lost.

While Trump himself was trying to gaslight Americans into believing him that they are paying less for groceries now, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) noted in his daily festival of lies press conference that “food prices always go up.”

That may surprise Republican voters, who were promised before the election that Trump would make everything cheaper.

Speaking of promises and not keeping them, Johnson predicted that Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist who was elected to be the next mayor of New York City, would not be able to deliver on his affordability platform.

“If you run as a socialist, you run on a big list of false claims,” Johnson said. “You promise everything to everyone and you can’t deliver.”

Of course, that essentially describes Trump, who is the undisputed champion of making false claims and failing to deliver on his promises (apart from those related to launching the largest deportation effort in US history, sealing the border, and becoming a dictator on day one of his second term).

But Johnson’s statement wasn’t just unintentionally funny due to his total lack of self-awareness, it also showed how the GOP will try to weather this storm.

Even though moderate Democrats like Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill trounced their opponents in the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey, Republicans are going to try to convince Americans that Mamdani is the new leader of the Democratic Party and will try to turn the US into a socialist hellhole.

You will see a lot of that in the coming days, and we will have more to say on this topic in the Sunday editorial.

For now, we will leave you with what was perhaps the most creative justification for the GOP’s losses across the country.

It was offered by Lisa McClain (R-MI), a member of the House leadership team, who suggested that Trump supporters were so content with how things were going that they didn’t bother showing up at the polls.

“Voter turnout from Republicans was not high. Not high at all,” she said during an appearance on CNN. “But I think part of that reason is because Republicans, for the most part, are happy with what’s happening.”

That’s one way of looking at it.

Of course, if that’s what Republican politicians believe, and if they therefore fail to change course, they shouldn’t be surprised if all those happy voters will also stay home for the midterms next year and return control of Congress to the Democrats.