There was a moment in Barack Obama’s 2015 State of the Union address when he said, “I have no more campaigns to run.” Republicans in the audience responded to the statement with a cheeky round of applause.

While they would never admit it, I believe many of them are now feeling that same sense of relief about Donald Trump.

As the president free-associates through hourslong rallies exalting men’s posteriors, embraces long-debunked election lies, obsesses over ballrooms and triumphal archs and tells supporters to pretend he’s on the ballot, many Republicans are consoling themselves with the knowledge that this era will be coming to an end soon.

But while Trump himself may go away in two years, he’s leaving behind a long list of troubled Republican nominees who either lost winnable races or put typically safe states at risk. Republicans need to figure out how to solve that problem or it will outlast him.

Look at Texas, where Republicans have pumped at least $268 million into propping up embattled state Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Senate race against Democrat James Talarico. The seat had been held since 2002 by Sen. John Cornyn, a stalwart conservative who debased himself several times to prove his loyalty to Trump. It was not enough and the president endorsed Paxton in the primary.

Talarico has a good shot to become the first Democrat elected senator in Texas in nearly 40 years. Even if Paxton wins, it will have taken valuable resources from other states and saddled the Republican Senate conference with a six-year migraine in the form of continuing ethics problems, scandals and other controversies.

It’s tempting for Republicans to cast the blame for this state of affairs at Trump’s feet. But a functioning party would not have let a candidate as poor as Paxton get anywhere near this far.

In the old days, political parties chose the nominees themselves in a smoke-filled backroom. That gave way to a more open primary system, but something called the “invisible primary” still took place as party leaders, major donors and political action committees vetted candidates. While they didn’t necessarily pick the nominee any more, they were often able to strategize enough to keep a particularly poor choice from gaining ground.

Then came Trump. In 2016, the winner of the invisible primary was pretty clearly former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who had the name, the connections and the money, but ended up going down in flames to a real estate developer turned reality TV star with multiple marks against him.

Since then, the party has largely abandoned its traditional role of vetting candidates, while Trump has backed troubled candidates like a gambler chasing losses at the track: Herschel Walker, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Kari Lake, Doug Mastriano, Blake Masters, Roy Moore and Mark Robinson, among others.

When Trump leaves office, the political system is not going to suddenly snap back to the old days. He has trained Republican primary voters to ignore glaring political scandals, vile rhetoric and incompetently run campaigns when choosing nominees. Even seasoned Republicans will end up going head-to-head with far-right conspiracy theorists in courting the party’s most dedicated voters during the primaries, only to damage their own reputation in the general election.

I’ve long given up expecting my party to have a widespread come-to-Jesus moment that snaps it out of its Trump-induced stupor, but if decency isn’t enough to reclaim the party’s influence on which candidates advance to general elections, maybe lust for power is.

If the Republican Party wants to win, it needs to act like it. Party elders need to find a way to start enforcing some minimum standards on candidate quality. They don’t need to do any heavy-handed endorsements, either. The state parties or the Republican National Committee could simply announce some bare-minimum benchmarks for a candidate deserving of voters’ time and consideration: things like releasing tax returns, agreeing to a debate and assembling a capable campaign staff.

Notably, at varying points in his campaigns, Trump failed each of those benchmarks.

Here’s the bottom line: In all likelihood, Tuesday night will mark the beginning of the end of Trump’s stranglehold on what’s left of the Republican Party.

If there’s any hope of revival for the soul of the party of Lincoln, it exists in the willingness of party members to grow spines and take an active role in wrestling its remains from the scavengers hoping to revive Trump’s political ghost. The long dark night of the Republican soul is just beginning.

Evan Brechtel contributed to this report.

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