Republicans Know The Party Will Be Better Off Without Trump— The Problem Is That The MAGAts Disagree

Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers is a Trump-backed MAGA spokesmodel, so extreme that even the GOP-controlled Arizona state Senate formally censured her. She’ll be on the ballot in a district where just 22.7% of voters are Democrats and is virtually guaranteed reelection in a district that includes sections of Coconino, Gila, Navajo and Pinal counties. People who want to give her the benefit of the doubt, refer to her as a white nationalist. Everyone else calls her what she is: a Nazi (as much as Nazi as Tucker Carlson). Over the weekend she was “singing” the Nazi anthem “Deutschland über alles” on Twitter to celebrate the Nazi win in Thuringia. Laurie Roberts wrote in the Arizona Republic “We in Arizona are shocked … not at all… Rogers is, hands down, the biggest kook ever elected to the Arizona Legislature. She is a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump and a proud member of the Oath Keepers, the far-right militia group that figured prominently in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the nation’s Capitol. She’s built a national following as she rants about election conspiracies and George Soros and the cabal of Jews, journalists, political elites and other nefarious characters who plot to create a New World Order.”

Rogers openly pines for Joe McCarthy and Robert E Lee and has only good things to say about Putin and Hitler.The Arizona GOP has put the censure behind them and appointed her chair of the Senate Elections Committee. And speaking of the Oath Keepers, the big J-6 party Trump was throwing for the insurrectionists at his country club in Bedminster today was suddenly postponed. 

Mark Robinson, Republican gubernatorial candidate (NC)

And on the other side of the country, there’s a gubernatorial candidate in North Carolina, Mark Robinson, the state’s Lt. Governor— currently down in the Fox News poll by 11 points, but still whole-heartedly backed by Trump— whose brand is far right extremism melded with pious Christianity. He was just exposed for being the top customer at a Greensboro pornography shop and a frequent visitor to other porn establishments in town as well.

And, back in Arizona again, how could we have forgotten to mention Kari Lake, the MAGA Senate candidate currently dragging Trump and the whole GOP— except Wendy Rogers apparently— down the drain with her. Thanks, in part to Lake’s reverse coattails, Kamala is going to win Arizona’s 11 elector votes and the GOP is likely to lose 2 of its 6 congressional seats.

I’m so old, I remember when for Senator Pat Toomey was the most far right Pennsylvanian in Congress. Yesterday on Squawk Box he said he won’t be voting for Trump in November, though he voted for him in 2016 and 2020. Many conservative Republicans don’t like going on TV and admitting it— especially not the ones who are running for office— but Toomey isn’t the only one who hopes Trump loses. Exceptions to that, Republican senators Susan Collins (ME) and Lisa Murkowski (AK), have both announced that they won't be voting for Trump. Early yesterday, Jonathan Martin made the case for why the GOP would be better off if Kamala wins— and wins big.

“The best possible outcome in November for the future of the Republican Party is for former President Donald Trump to lose and lose soundly,” he wrote. “GOP leaders won’t tell you that on the record. I just did. Trump will never concede defeat, no matter how thorough his loss. Yet the more decisively Vice President Kamala Harris wins the popular vote and electoral college the less political oxygen he’ll have to reprise his 2020 antics; and, importantly, the faster Republicans can begin building a post-Trump party. Harris is less a doctrinaire progressive than she is up for grabs on policy, but any liberal course she takes would be constrained by a GOP-held Senate. No, that’s not a sure thing, but it’s the safest electoral bet in this turbulent election. What is virtually certain come January is that conservatives will have a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court, which will also serve as a check on the law and rulemaking coming out of a Democratic White House.”

He soothed his Republican readers— and does anyone other than Republicans take him seriously?— by noting that “2026 would represent the sixth year of one party holding the presidency, always a promising midterm for the opposition. Those conditions, along with a diminished, twice-defeated Trump, would make it easier for Republicans to recruit Senate candidates. Consider just the governors: Virginia’s Glenn Youngkin, Georgia’s Brian Kemp and New Hampshire’s Chris Sununu would all be prime targets for Senate Republicans. As one GOP senator put it to me in hoping for Trump’s defeat: Who do you think would have a tougher 2026 reelection, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) under Harris or Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) under Trump? A Democratic House majority would also be far easier for Republicans to reverse under Harris than Trump. And the GOP would almost certainly find more success in the 36 governors’ races taking place that year if they were running against the so-called six-year-itch.”

For most Republicans who’ve not converted to the Church of MAGA, this scenario is barely even provocative. In fact, asking around with Republicans last week, the most fervent private debate I came across in the party was how best to accelerate Trump’s exit to the 19th Hole.

One high-level Republican, conceding it may only be “wishful thinking,” even floated the idea of a Harris victory followed by Biden pardons of both his son, Hunter, and Trump. That would take the issue of both cases off Harris’ plate and, more to the point, drain the energy behind Trump’s persecution complex so that Republicans can get on with the business of winning elections.

The broader question among Republicans: Would it be best to endure a Harris presidency to keep Trump out of power, likely for good? Or is the better way to hasten his departure from the scene for him to win so that he could only serve one more term and be done for certain in 2028?

The argument for the second of these cases being that, should he lose this year, he would once again insist he was cheated and hold out the possibility of a fourth consecutive bid, prolonging the party’s capture.

Now, this is the point to acknowledge that none of these scenarios will prove tidy, or perhaps even feasible.

As they’ve demonstrated for going on a decade now, Republican leaders will repeatedly bow to the preference of their base over their own judgment when it comes to Trump.

And if their voters aren’t looking for a reformation, well, the would-be Martin Luthers of the GOP will fare about as well as John Boehner, who liked to say: “A leader without followers is simply a guy taking a walk.” 

“You’re assuming Republicans have a top of the ticket problem and not a voter base problem,” said Terry Sullivan, a former GOP strategist. “It’s not like our leaders have been leading the voters to the wilderness against the voters’ judgment.”

Would the vast majority of Republican activists suddenly embrace their own version of the Democratic Leadership Council, which pushed Democrats toward the center after their repeated losses in the 1980s? Probably not.

Many would stew in fetid waters, believing their nominee was somehow cheated when the Democrats swapped in Harris for President Joe Biden. Those conspiracies would be nourished by, well, Trump himself and surely flourish in the closed-off information channels in which so many on the right confine themselves.

So, yes, moving past Trump in the aftermath of another defeat will hardly be easy.

But it’s essential if Republicans want to become a viable national party once more.

…It’s not just Trump, though, it’s also the down-ballot candidates he’s foisted upon the party. Republicans vastly underperformed a promising midterm in 2022 in part because of below-replacement-level figures he elevated. And they may lose winnable races again this year— think the Senate race in Arizona and governor’s race in North Carolina— because Republicans have become overly captive to candidates in his image.

This is not all to say things are hunky-dory for Democrats. But that’s the point. Their precarious coalition is entirely dependent on sharing a common enemy, Trump, and has been for nearly a decade. Why do Republicans want to keep propping up their opposition?

The day after Trump leaves the scene, Democrats will lose their best force for unity, fundraising and enthusiasm. But they’ll have the same challenges they do today with the Electoral College, the Senate and the House and the distribution of voters therein.

Of course, it won’t be easy to kick the habit. Millions of Republican voters don’t want to go to rehab. And GOP leaders, as former Representative Thomas Davis (R-VA) put it, “live in fear that their base is going to desert them.”

But the Republican who forges a hybrid coalition— a modern-day conservative fusionism— between the pre-Trump party and his enthusiasts will be rewarded. No, it can’t be anti-Trump. But it must be post-Trump.

The best case for Trump’s defeat may, predictably, be Trump himself. He’s incoherent on abortion rights, unable even to appear at a cemetery without creating a political mess and is so bothered by those who’ve suffered the wounds of war that he slights Medal of Honor recipients. And, running against a female opponent, he’s pushing blowjob jokes about her and his last female opponent.

And that’s just the last two weeks.

This is to say nothing of Trump’s routine self-sabotage, mocking his advisers’ attempt to keep him on message, refusing to learn the basics of issues over nine years after he entered politics and making little effort to appeal to those in his own party who are uneasy with him.

To repurpose another resonant political line from yesteryear, Republicans should ask themselves: Had Enough?

This is a fine attack ad from George Conway's organization, PsychoPAC. Watch it— and pass it along to your friends: