Challenging Donald Trump in a Republican primary may not be a fool’s errand after all. After years in which the Orange Autocrat’s command of the GOP was taken for granted as absolute, support for the man seems to be softening in key places as the country approaches midterms on which Trump has staked even more of his prestige. The proof for this comes both from polling and from the crucial chatter pitter-pattering back and forth on all-powerful Fox News. And the implications for the party, and the country as a whole, are immense.
A poll of Republican primary voters recently came out bearing striking results. In it, 55% percent of Republican voters expressed their desire to nominate a different candidate than Trump in 2024. As Thomas Mills has noted, poll respondents often opt for an imagined alternative regardless of what they really think, so this poll could be dismissed as an artifact of that trend. But other polling, too, has found a softening of Trump’s support led by college-educated Republicans. It’s logical to infer that more-educated Republicans may be losing patience with Trump’s interminable grievance-venting, and possible that their less-educated fellow partisans may eventually come around to this assessment.
Furthermore, there is an alternative Republican to whom these disenchanted Republicans could turn. Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, offers GOP voters much of what they adore about Trump while also seeming to be a personally functional human being, unlike the Orange Autocrat. If there are two through-lines in DeSantis’s political career, they are hardline fiscal conservatism and partisan nastiness. For many Republicans, it was Trump’s orthodox tax-cutting conservatism on policy–and his extreme viciousness toward their shared enemies–that bonded these voters to a man with whom many of them had actually had some qualms in the 2016 campaign. From minimizing taxes to deploying the power of the state to retaliate against cultural enemies, Ron DeSantis is a remarkably similar politician to Trump himself. And he comes with less of Trump’s tiresome baggage.
In the Republican Party, there are three primaries: the invisible primary, the voting primary, and the Fox News primary. The second is downstream from the third. If you aren’t part of the right-wing tribe, you may not appreciate the vast power of Fox News. One study found that when Fox News is simply placed lower on a market’s cable dial, support for the Republican Party goes up by 1%. Rupert Murdoch, it appears, is tiring of Trump and his madness, and Murdoch’s empire has turned its attention to experimenting with other options–including DeSantis. Being the Fox News candidate would immediately make DeSantis a viable challenger.
Donald Trump is still by far the first among equals in the GOP. Most GOP voters continue to adore him, and he would entire a 2024 primary as the favorite. But often lost amidst the fact that he beat Hillary Clinton is the reality that Donald Trump is a below-average politician. Twice he’s run behind Republican Congressional candidates, an indication that he’s less politically adept even than the mediocrities who make up much of his party’s House caucus. Running against a more talented–and, crucially, equally authoritarian–Republican in Ron DeSantis or someone else could indeed result in a defeat for this cancer on America, and open up a whole new kettle of fish.
Alexander Jones is an original contributor to PoliticsNC.
Trump was photographed at Bedminster yesterday, hanging out with some Saudis. His face was as bloated as ever and he appears to be tipping the scales these days at about 350 pounds. He’ll need a lot of luck to survive two more years.
Tangerine Cthulhu is viewed as either the MAGA Messiah or a useful idiot, depending upon which faction of the Republican Party you’re asking. The hardcore MAGAtts saw in him a guy that hated all the same people they did, with the pettiness to do anything — no matter how destructive — to “own the libs”. They are the proof of the old chestnut that you can always get 51% of the people to vote against their own interest. All you have to do is convince them that they’re voting against the interest of the other 49%.
The establishment Federalist Society types felt that they could use him as the instrument by which they could get what they wanted without having to do much more than hand him a pen. And to a degree, they were correct. All they had to do was sprinkle his name in the reading materials to keep his attention long enough to get his signature, and if the rest of the Republic collapsed, what concern was it of theirs?
Taken together, which is virtually a given in the GOP because it’s not a party that suffers dissent willingly, this makes for a formidable contingent. The fracture lines would have to break wide open for this to change. If the RNC does manage to wrest the nomination from Agent Orange, the MAGAs will fall in line behind DeSantis or whatever other lucky boy or girl manages to secure the nomination. If Mr Tangerine Man — as would be expected — vanquishes all comers, The Fed Soc Frat Boys will sigh heavily, and mutter to themselves all the way to the ballot box where they will fill in the bubble with the “R” next to it, because it doesn’t really matter to them what the name on that line is. The choice for them is a unary one once the primary is over. Because there is no Republican analog to the “Bernie Bro”.
In a way, as horrifying as it sounds, another Trump candidacy might be the best case scenario for the Democrats. They didn’t turn out in record numbers to vote for Joe Biden as much as they did to keep Donald Trump from having another 4 years living on the public dole. Trump probably drove at least as much Dem and Dem-Allied Independent turnout as Biden did — and arguably more. If he wins the nomination, there’s a good chance he repeats the performance. If he loses it? Will DeSantis spark the same reaction? Did Democratic voters take the lesson of 2016? I don’t see a lot of evidence to suggest that this is the case, but we had better hope they did. Because if we’re relying on defections by what passes for the “moderate” Republican voter (a creature which appears to have gone extinct somewhere around 1978) 2024 will be a bloodbath.