Trump's Not Just Poison For America-- He's Also Poison For The Republican Party

If this is the best America can do, we're in bad shape

I don’t know a single person who wants Biden to run for reelection. I don’t know anyone excited about voting for him. But virtually everyone I know is eager to vote against Trump. That fits right in with the modern Democratic Party’s theory of elections. Forget finding a great or inspiring candidate; just pray the GOP nominates someone unpalatable— like Trump or DeSantis. The three most recent nonpartisan national polls— NBC News, Emerson and Yahoo News-- all show Biden beating Trump, albeit narrowly, respectively by 4,1 and 4.

Voters don’t feel especially positive about anyone or anything to do with the country’s politicians. This is from the NBC News poll that was released yesterday:

• Biden (39% positive, 48% negative)

• Trump (33% positive, 56% negative)

• Kamala (32% positive, 49% negative)

• DeSantis (30% positive, 46% negative)

• Pence (20% positive, 52% negative)

• Nikki Haley (19% positive, 25% negative)

• Tim Scott (18% positive, 18% negative)

• Chris Christe (13% positive, 43% negative)

• Supreme Court (31% positive, 40% negative)

• FBI (37% positive, 35% negative)

• Department of Justice (35% positive, 36% negative)

That poll shows Biden beating Trump 49-45% and Biden and DeSantis tied 47-47%. Obviously, Democrats are worried about third party challengers— either Cornel West from the left as a Green candidate or Joe Manchin from the right as a No Labels candidate. Rich Lowry, editor in chief of the National Review, wrote that Republicans also have something very serious to worry about: Señor Trumpanzee. The divide between Republicans see Trump as opposed to the way normal people see him is, wrote Lowry, “deep and abiding… [T]here’s a built-in resistance to his candidacy that it will require considerable luck to overcome.”

Not only that, the indictments of Trump are making him stronger in the Republican nomination fight— generating GOP sympathy and making him the center of attention— while he’s taking on more baggage for a prospective general election. This push-and-pull, yin-and-yang dynamic, with Republicans growing more attached to a candidate harder to elect, may yet prove decisive in both contests.

It’s not unusual that, in the course of winning a nomination, politicians create electoral vulnerabilities for themselves by moving too far right or left. Hence, the conventional trajectory of a nominee trying to readjust by coming back to the center in a general.

This is different. What adjustments can Trump make? He can’t get un-indicted for the general election, or jettison his claims about the 2020 election, or reverse all the water that passed under the bridge since 2015. He’s not going to become more polite or give up ALL CAPS TRUTH SOCIAL POSTS.

What Republicans find alluring about Trump is, with some exceptions, what the rest of the electorate finds noxious, and vice versa.

It’s not so much Trump’s positions as his persona— in other words, the GOP isn’t potentially taking an electoral risk to advance an ideological goal or a set of policies, but to associate itself with a political figure it likes and almost no one else does.

Republicans view Trump as a victim, the broader electorate a malefactor; GOP voters find him charming and entertaining, other voters needlessly insulting and controversial; for Republicans, he’s a bold truth-teller, for everyone else, he’s not trustworthy.

…If the GOP had set out to identify the least popular candidate it could find that could still win the Republican nomination (usually, broad unpopularity isn’t much of a political calling card), it’s hard to see how it could do any better than Trump.

…Just like in 2016 and 2020, Trump could be propped up by the weakness of his opponent, although he’ll need more help than ever. The new CNN poll shows Trump’s favorable rating dipping a little among GOP-aligned voters. Maybe that’s a blip; maybe it’s a trend. But the way it’s been working to this point is, as Trump becomes a heavier lift, Republican voters are more inclined to pick him up and try to get him over the finish line in November 2024.

What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger, Nietzsche famously wrote. In this case, what might really kill Trump in a general makes him stronger with Republican primary voters.

Despite the RNC pledge, many of the other candidates have no intention of supporting Trump in the general. Nor would Trump support DeSantis (or anyone else not named Trump). DeSantis refuses to say if he would support Trump or not. Christie, Hutchinson and Hurd have explicitly said they won’t vote for Trump in the general. The two most vapid candidates running-- Haley and Ramaswarmy-- say they are both perfectly fine voting for Trump if he wins the primary.