Republicans shrug off Trump '24 bid: 'The excitement's just not there' - POLITICO
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The former president is not bending the GOP to his will like he used to.
Former President Donald Trump mingles with supporters during an election night event at Mar-a-Lago on November 08, 2022, in Palm Beach, Florida. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Donald Trump's lackluster campaign announcement was one thing. His real problem is fast becoming the collective shrug Republicans have given him in the week-plus since.
Far from freezing out potential competitors, Trump's announcement was followed by a raft of potential 2024 contenders appearing at the Republican Jewish Coalition conference in Las Vegas over the weekend, where at least one Republican who had previously said she would defer to Trump if he ran — former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley — now said she is considering running in a "serious way."
A super PAC supporting Trump's chief rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, plans to begin airing TV ads in Iowa on Friday. And even the news that Elon Musk was lifting Trump's ban on Twitter wasn't breaking through.
The morning after his account was reinstated — a development once viewed as a significant lift to Trump's candidacy — Fox News Sunday spent more time talking about the ticketing debacle surrounding Taylor Swift's upcoming tour.
"The people talking about [Trump's campaign announcement] in my circles, it's almost like it didn't happen," said Bob Vander Plaats, the evangelical leader in Iowa who is influential in primary politics in the first-in-the-nation caucus state and who was a national co-chair of Sen. Ted Cruz's campaign in 2016. "That, to me, is what is telling, where people believe we probably need to move forward, not look in the rear view mirror."
Ever since he steamrolled through the 2016 presidential primary, and even after his defeat four years later, Trump had bent the GOP to his will — reshaping the party's infrastructure in Washington and the states to serve his interests, tearing down Republican dynasties and hand-picking congressional and statewide nominees.
Now, leading Republicans are no longer cowering before Trump, and for the first time since he rode down the escalator in 2015, many aren't listening to him at all. They are dodging questions about Trump's candidacy, or openly defying him by rallying around DeSantis. Even if the Florida governor is not yet, as Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming declared, the "leader of the Republican Party."
"There's a significant number of people out there who really are opposed to him, and I don't think will change their minds over the course of the next two years," said Tom Tancredo, a former Republican congressman and anti-illegal immigration crusader from Colorado who called Trump "one of the best presidents we've ever had."
He added, "You can't deny that that's a problem for him … I'm worried about his electability, surely."
Trump may still be the frontrunner to win the GOP nomination. In a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll this week, Trump was still running 15 percentage points ahead of DeSantis with Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. If a wide field of more traditionalist Republicans split the primary vote in early nominating states, as they did in 2016, Trump could still cut through his competitors with less-than-majority support.
He benefited in the 2016 primary from open conflict with more traditionalist Republicans, and he will have them to belittle again in 2024. In a preview of the unfolding campaign, he cast DeSantis this month as "Ron DeSanctimonious," and, in a racist outburst at Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, asserted his name "sounds Chinese." Neither DeSantis nor Youngkin — nor most of Trump's other rivals — have been tested on the national stage. And no Republican in the field, of course, has been president before.
"His unique selling point is, 'I did this, I fixed the economy, I gave you the Abraham Accords, I kept peace, I fixed the border with no help from the Washington politicians,'" said one Republican strategist close to Trump.
Trump's path, the strategist said, is to remind Republicans what they liked about his presidency, and to emphasize that, unlike his competitors, he has "done it before."
What Trump has also done, however, is lose — and drag the GOP down with him. Following a midterm election in which Republicans failed to retake the Senate, the GOP is desperate for a win in 2024. And while presidential primaries are always colored to some degree by concerns about electability, the earliest stages of the 2024 contest, as one longtime GOP operative in Iowa put it, are "just about winning."
More than anything, what the first week of Trump's 2024 campaign has laid bare is that the former president is no longer in a separate league from other potential presidential contenders. He is a dominant — but not the singular — force in the GOP, and his candidacy is starting at a time when Republicans are still digesting his contribution to the party's shortcomings this year.
It isn't only the underperformance of Trump's favored candidates in the midterm elections weighing on Republicans, but exit polling in which more than a quarter of voters said their vote in U.S. House contests was meant to oppose Trump — in an election where he was not on the ballot.
"It's shocking, in the sense that I think he felt that he could scare everybody out of the field and become the presumptive nominee, and it just didn't work," said Saul Anuzis, a former chair of the Michigan Republican Party. "It's not like 20 congressmen came on board. It's not like 100 members of the RNC came on board."
While calling Trump "still the guy to beat," Anuzis said, "My perception was that there would be a larger enthusiasm for his candidacy from those who were supportive of him. Instead, it's been more like a thud. … The excitement's just not there."
The hits may still be coming. In Georgia, where Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker are locked in a runoff, Republicans have been keeping a careful distance from Trump, a reminder of his liability in a swing state. Warnock, meanwhile, has begun airing an ad in the state attacking Walker for his ties to the former president featuring only footage of Trump praising him.
Normally, as the first declared candidate in the presidential primary, said John Watson, a former chair of the Georgia Republican Party, "any time you're the only person in the marketplace, it enables people to be focused on you."
But with Trump, he said, "It's becoming increasingly noise that is being ignored by people as they position and think how we win the next election."
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A good trend. Hopefully this ripple will eventually turn into a wave and prevent Trump from pulling out his 'I will run third party' card (his threat) without a roar of laughter from the GoP.
The question will be how he manages to bow out while saving face.
Best case scenario for Republicans, he's convicted of something that keeps him from running... but convicted dubiously in a fit of Democratic Party bias that energizes his core supporters to vote for whoever the actual candidate is.
More likely scenario, he pouts, runs as an independent, and then blames Republicans for not supporting him.
I predict a health situation.
Certainly fits his behavior patterns.
Trump running as an independent is currently a real threat. A smart GoP strategy would be to work to mitigate that threat so that when it comes time to vote in the primary, few will factor that in. This should be coupled with a strategy that seeks to at least allow Trump to tank by natural forces; easy to do, I believe, by simply not providing excuses for him. In short, the GoP would be acting on a philosophy of: "Trump, you are on your own".
Yeah. I agree.
I don't think Democrats will see it that way. Which may be why he hasn't been charged.
There are reports that this is already happening. Specifically many of the major donors are not interested in Trump v2.0.
A threat for the GoP is a gift for the Ds.
Never understood the 'excitement' about Trump in the first place. His biggest asset was namecalling and his alleged 'big assets' of financial wealth and success he always ran to the courts to prevent anyone from seeing them.
Seems to me the excitement was that Trump was seen as a political outsider who was not afraid to speak his mind. He was seen as a person who did not care about political correctness and was determined to clean up Washington. He was also seen as credible due to his popularized 'wealth' and name-recognition.
A lot of that gold is now tarnished. The GoP is best served by not doing any polishing.
Except it was all fake.
And I am suggesting by 'tarnish' that the GoP is starting to publicly acknowledge that given this beginning trend away from Trump.
There is a serious catch-22 involved with the idea that Trump is fading. The so-called fade will inspire the Nikki Haleys and Ted Cruzs of the world to believe they have a shot. The more Republicans that run the better it is for Trump. His alleged weakness could very well be his secret weapon.
Yes because he needs only a plurality to win the nomination.
Trump's ignorant loyal "base" will probably give him a plurality if there are multiple opponents in the primaries.
If Trump doesn't think he can get the Republican nomination he will claim the primaries are "rigged" and Trump will run as a "turd party candidate".
Spot on.
Oh, great two more years of listening to unlimited BS polluting the airways.