Foreword: There will be the accompanying critique of the modern Democratic Party coming next week.

In the race for the Texas Senate seat up for grabs this November, former Republican Presidential candidate Ted Cruz, has apparently called on his old campaign trail nemesis  Donald Trump to help him campaign in the Lone Star state.

With a strong Democratic challenger in the form of Beto O’Rourke, some recent polls have put the prospective Senator as little as 1 point behind Ted Cruz.

Some analysts in the mainstream media put Cruz’s poor showing in the polls down to the “Blue wave”, that according to some pollsters is going to cost the Republicans the house and seats in the Senate.

That may well be a contributing factor, but there is arguably a far greater one that will more seriously affect the outcome on Election Day.

The coverage of contemporary politics by much of the news media has degenerated to the point where the Republicans are portrayed in an almost sitcom fashion, as “Donald Trump and friends”.

This lack of “clean air” in which other Republicans can share and promote their message is forcing Republicans from across the country to increasingly lean on the President for political firepower in the run up to November.

This has only intensified the identity crisis the Republican Party has been suffering from ever since Donald Trump won the party’s nomination for President.

Other than Trump’s huge political presence there is no real cohesive message coming out of the Republican Party as a whole, it is a scattered jumble of idea’s from all over their side of the political spectrum. As a result Trump remains front and centre going into November, as he likely will going into the future.

However, in order to remain competitive the Republican Party must show that it has an identity of its own, something that extends outside of President Trump’s immense political shadow.

Trump may have great appeal to the Republican base, the polls well and truly reflect that. But Republicans need to appeal to independents and even right leaning Democrats should the candidate have that type of character.

Meanwhile the Democrats have rebuilt their policy platform in the wake of their shock 2016 election defeat. The Democratic Socialist ideology is front and centre, with its standard bearers Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren spearheading the charge toward November.

The Democrats are showing a level of unity that should be coming naturally to a Republican Party that controls Congress, the Senate and the White House.

Instead the Republicans are currently a party that struggles with its own internal divisions, with battles over the correct level of conservatism the party should embrace constantly raging in the background.

These internal divisions have already inadvertently or otherwise effectively torpedoed the Speakerships of two of their own in recent years, John Boehner and Paul Ryan.

If the Republicans are to have their own vision for the future that extends beyond that of President Trump’s, they must unify their party behind a cohesive message they can all agree on, no matter how begrudgingly.

Arguably the greatest Republican President Abraham Lincoln once said “A house divided against itself, cannot stand”. He was talking about the unity of the United States, but it applies just as well to the Republican Party.