An identity crisis. A brutal power struggle. Years in the wilderness.

• If Trump is defeated in next month's election, the Republican Party will face a reckoning unprecedented in modern political history.

Why it matters: Never before has a party's identity been so deeply entwined with the fate, fortunes and flaws of one man.

• Four consecutive poor election cycles would unleash a wave of sustained scrutiny that the GOP, as it currently exists, may not survive.

The big picture: Right now, it's difficult to see through the November fog.

• As we told you last week, Trump is laying the groundwork to deny the results of the election, again spreading a litany of baseless fraud claims in anticipation of his potential defeat.
• Election challenges are inevitable — Republicans already have filed over 100 lawsuits. Voting results may not be finalized for weeks, if not months.

Now put that to one side.

• If Vice President Kamala Harris ultimately is inaugurated in January, a rudderless Republican Party will be forced — for the first time — to move on from Trump, who has said he won't seek the 2028 nomination.
• At last week's VP debate, Sen. JD Vance gave us a window of what MAGA sans Trump could look like — presenting a polished case for economic populism without the cult of personality.
• But any ideological successor would face challenges: Even the Trumpiest candidates have historically underperformed the former president, whose unique appeal to disaffected voters has proven hard to replicate.

What to watch: Anti-Trump Republicans — a cohort that swelled in the aftermath of Jan. 6 — are salivating at the prospect of reclaiming their party.

• Former Rep. Liz Cheney, who campaigned for Harris last week, would be among the conservative leaders seeking to restore democracy as a core Republican value.
• So would Nikki Haley, the former UN ambassador and presidential candidate who has been a harsh critic of Trump's isolationist foreign policy (though she says she'll vote for him).
• But given the years of hostility toward establishment Republicans — and the probable entrenchment of pro-MAGA forces, even if Trump fades away — the most likely outcome is a deeply fractured party.

Flashback: We saw glimpses of that after the 2022 midterms, when Republicans' underwhelming performance led to recriminations and a fleeting push to abandon Trump.

• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a conservative culture warrior who had won re-election in a landslide, appeared set to inherit the MAGA throne, backed by the Murdoch media empire.
• Then it all came crashing down: Republicans rallied around Trump after his indictments, and DeSantis' presidential campaign imploded under a vengeful onslaught from the former president and his allies.

Reality check: Trump could still win. Every battleground state is polling within the margin of error. Harris so far is failing to match President Biden's 2020 support among key demographic groups.

• Even if he loses, Trump's criminal trials will hang over the nation for potentially years to come — making it extremely difficult for the GOP to fully move on.

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🔮 Stay tuned for an in-depth look at the future of the Democratic Party if Harris loses.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz kicked off an October media blitz for the Harris campaign with an adversarial interview on "Fox News Sunday," where he was grilled on his history of embellishments.

• "I will own up when I misspeak. I will own up when I make a mistake," Walz said, before downplaying misleading statements about using in-vitro fertilization to have a child.

"Let's be very clear: On that debate stage the other night, I asked one very simple question, and Sen. Vance would not acknowledge that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election," Walz said.

• "I think [voters are] probably far more concerned with that than my wife and I used [intrauterine insemination] to have our child, and that Donald Trump would restrict that," he argued.

📺 What to watch: Harris and Walz both taped interviews with "60 Minutes," airing tomorrow night.

• Harris also sat for an interview with the hit podcast "Call Her Daddy," out today, and will appear this week on "The View," "The Howard Stern Show" and "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert."