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The Editorial Board, USA TODAY Published 5:51 p.m. ET July 12, 2020 | Updated 6:05 p.m. ET July 12, 2020

Both elegant and eviscerating, the anti-incumbency attack Ronald Reagan unleashed against Jimmy Carter in a 1980 debate was a simple question: Are you better off now than you were four years ago?With the country then struggling with stagnant economic growth, high inflation and a debilitatinghostage crisis in Iran,the question answered itself in the minds of most Americans.

Put aside for the moment how devastating that same question could be for Donald Trump amid more than 135,000 Americans dead in a pandemic, a related economic crisis andsweeping protests over racial injustice.

Imagine the querycast in a slightly different context: Is the president's Republican Partybetter off than it was four years ago?The answer has to be a resounding no.

OPPOSING VIEW: How the Trump campaign can get back on track

Start at the ballot box.Democrats capturedthe House of Representatives in 2018 with their largest gain (41 seats) since Watergate,captured a Senate seat in deeply red Alabama ina special election,and drastically slashed the GOP's historic lead in governorships from 33-16 to 26-24. The Republican majority in the Senate is at serious risk in November, and Trump's racial rhetoric hurts the party with minority groups that will become increasingly important in the years to come.

Then there's the growing number of GOPfigures publicly declaring they won't vote for Trump (Mitt Romney, John Boltonand CarlyFiorina)or contemplating as much (Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, George W. Bush, Jeb Bush and Cindy McCain). A small but vehement groupof Republican "Never Trumpers" hasbanded together to launch caustic political ads against the president.

Protesters greet President Donald Trump as his motorcade leaves the Trump National Golf Club in Northern Virginia on July 11, 2020.(Photo: Alex Edelman/AFP via Getty Images)

For much of Trump's first termhis party has stood steadfastly by him in part because of his commitment toappointingconservative judges, lowering taxes and reducing regulations, and in part because they fear the ire of the president and his base.But during this year of crises and sinking poll numbers, Trump has become consumed with deflecting blame for the coronavirus response and fueling the culture wars. The presidentcan't even articulate a second-term agenda when asked.

"He's causing a brand problem for Republicans," former Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich told CNN lastweek. "That base he has the edges of that base are beginning to fray, (it's) getting smaller and smaller."

The nation has long benefited from having two vibrant competing parties, one of them a GOP that traditionally advocatedfor smaller government, ethical conduct, fiscal responsibility, free trade, international alliances and standing up to dictators abroad. Yet today's GOP is more like a cult of personality. Onissue after issue, Trump is out of sync with public sentiment and the Republican Party's traditional values:

COVID.Republican governors of Texas and the swing states Floridaand Arizona heeded the president's call to reopen quickly, even whennone met White House coronavirus task force criteria for doing so. The states' infections, hospitalizations and deathshave since soared, even as Trump has downplayed the outbreak, sidelined scientists, pulled the United Statesout of the World Health Organizationand refused until this weekend to wear a mask in public.

Confederates.A national reexamination of race finds Trump defending Confederate names, monuments and symbols, even as theRepublican-led Senate Armed Services Committee voted to stripnames of Confederate generals from military installations, anoverwhelmingly Republican Mississippi government voted to erase a Confederate symbol from the state flag, and NASCAR bannedConfederate symbols.

Corruption.After vowing to "drain the swamp" in Washington, Trump has presided over a cesspool ofcronyism and corruption.On Friday night, hecommuted the prison sentence of longtime friend and political operative Roger Stone, who hadbeen convicted of seven felonies, including obstruction of Congress, witness tampering and perjury.

The reaction to this blatant abuse of presidential clemency power? Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, called it "unprecedented, historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president." Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said it was a "mistake." Beyond that:the usual silence from Trump's GOP enablers.

Republican senators had the chance to rid themselves and the nation of the Trump millstone at theimpeachment trial this year, but only Romney voted to convict and remove. Now their fortunes are tied to Trump's, even as the president recklessly tacksin a direction most of the nation doesn't want to go.

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Under Donald Trump, is the Republican Party better off than it was four years ago? No. - USA TODAY