American conservatives, largely synonymous these days with MAGA save for a few lonely voices of courage and dissent, have plenty to lament.

Their domination of the political landscape is waning. Various special elections hither and yon have presented bright, flashing caution signs. A very difficult, perhaps devastating, off-year election beckons. Major fractures have surfaced within the movement. A Middle Eastern war that had divided the base is not going well. A Wall Street executive noted that a recession could be “only one tweet away.” The only thing stopping analysts from making a big deal of the President’s plummeting approval numbers is that they were already so low.

Against that backdrop, the election a couple of weeks ago in faraway Hungary constituted the biggest yellow flag.

It is no exaggeration to say that the MAGA project has been all-in on Hungary. Budapest became a major outpost. Between 2022 and 2026, the American Conservative Union and the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held not one, but five major gatherings in the Hungarian capital.

Forget New York or Washington or Palm Beach – or key political targets like Charlotte, Pittsburgh, Grand Rapids or Milwaukee. CPAC was going to Budapest time and again.

The attraction, of course, was Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who controlled the country’s reins for the last 16 years. Orbán was a MAGA-like figure before MAGA, touting Hungary as an “illiberal democracy” and presenting himself as an only-I-can-fix-it strongman of authoritarian bent with a nationalist agenda, a distaste for immigrants, a mingling of the state and business sectors, and an all-too-willing acceptance of the corruption that inevitably followed.

The Trump administration invested as deeply in Orbán’s reelection as it would in a hotly contested Senate race in North Carolina or Michigan. The President lent his full-throated endorsement. Secretary of State Marco Rubio made a February pilgrimage to give Orban a pat on the back.

With but five days left in the Hungary campaign and with the Iranian war at a delicate moment, and again defying standard American practice of avoiding such public involvement in a foreign election, Vice President JD Vance was airborne to Budapest for a final embrace.

Despite widespread discontent across the country, Orbán had long been considered unassailable due to his control of much of the Hungarian media and many mechanisms of the electoral process. The European Union had branded Hungary an “electoral autocracy.”

When the votes were counted on April 12^th, Orbán had been rejected by a resounding margin in favor of challenger Peter Magyar. Orban’s autocratic stronghold was only invulnerable until it was not.

If the defeat was crushing for Orbán and his Fidesz Party cronies, it had to be received as almost equally alarming in the White House and throughout the MAGA ranks.

But this is not simply the story of the fall of our president’s favorite foreign role model. It is also a tale of what it took to dislodge him.

What Magyar, soon to be Hungary’s new leader, did not do throughout the campaign is just as important as what he did. Most of all, he did not counter Orban’s nationalistic conservatism with any kind of left-leaning orientation. If anything, Magyar ran as a center-right candidate with a pledge to revive democratic institutions, clean up the rot and give his country a fresh start.

In Hungarian, “Magyar” literally means “Hungarian,” referring to the country and its people. The corollary would be an opposition figure in our country named Joe American. That is quite the political calling card.

Given that antipathy to immigrants was at the core of Orbán’s long rule, Magyar did not run on an open-borders, pro-immigrant platform. In fact, Magyar avoided making immigration a central issue in the campaign.

Moreover, Magyar carefully stayed far away from the usual list of divisive, hot-button social issues. His message was one of cleansing, revitalization and economic opportunity, not some kind of marked turn to the left.

In short form, Magyar did not take the political bait. Nor did he let Orbán dictate the terms of debate.

An analysis in The Atlantic summed it well. Orbán’s “political demise was hardly inevitable. It had to be shrewdly engineered by politicians and voters who put aside their ideological differences to defeat him. In politics, there is no natural law of self-correction.”

Here is suggesting that there may well be some lessons in the Hungarian experience for those in America most incensed by the corruption of our politics, real, procedural and ideological.

And a final observation: When his defeat became clear on election night, contrary to what seems the MAGA ethos, Orbán phoned his opponent to congratulate him and then made a public statement of concession. There goes his invitation to Mar-a-Lago.

Eric Sondermann is a Colorado-based independent political commentator. He writes regularly for Colorado Politics and The Gazette. Reach him at EWS@EricSondermann.com; follow him at @EricSondermann