Republicans Are Stuck With Trump's Obsessions

This digital ad released by Republican Senate candidate Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania, about a week before Biden ultimately withdrew his candidacy, was the blueprint. It was a compilation of Democratic Sen. Bob Casey’s comments defending Biden’s ability to serve another four years, as well as drawing close ties between Casey and the then-very unpopular Biden.

Incumbent Democrats were bracing for more ads like the one above to appear across the House and Senate battlegrounds.

In the absence of a broad and devoted political base, Biden understood that he was a man on an island. Even if he thought anti-Trump sentiment was enough to propel him to victory, if the other Democratic candidates shunned him and presented themselves as a check on Trump before the GOP won, it would have been self-fulfilling for voters to decide to turn against him.

So Biden chose the most rational way out of the dilemma he had placed his party in: he left the stage.

Democrats saw an immediate surge in support, mostly from disillusioned Democratic voters. And that renewed relief among the base was reflected in polls not only in the presidential race but also in local election campaigns.

So far, Vice President Kamala Harris has parlayed that expression of relief into a real surge of money and resources, which has also been redistributed in the ballot.

Nearly a month into this new democratic reality, the question of who has the weakest presidential candidate among the runoff candidates is once again at the heart of the debate. As I write this, it is now Republicans in key states and districts who are begging their candidate to change course. And so far, former President Donald Trump is not listening.

A good example of this gentle public nudge to change approach comes from Vivek Ramaswamy, the former presidential candidate who has been making the media rounds calling for a more focused and even moderate Trump campaign. Here is his latest public appearance, via NPR, in response to the question of how Trump should pivot:

Who's going to secure the border, who's going to grow the economy, who's going to stay out of World War III? And more intangibly… who's going to restore national pride in this country? I think Donald Trump has a good case on all of those points, and I think he and the Republican Party would do well to focus on the policy contrasts.

And yet, in nearly every public forum Trump has been involved in since Harris took office, he has been unable to pivot to a message that comes close to heeding Ramaswamy's advice.

This would not be difficult for a normal candidate. And yet, for Trump, it has been very difficult. Speaking with people who know him well, it is clear that he cannot recover from his loss to Biden in 2020. His only personal hope of overcoming Biden’s defeat in 2020 was to beat him in 2024. Today, Biden has denied him that opportunity.

He also doesn’t seem to respect Harris as an opponent, and voters are noticing. Disdain for a candidate can turn swing voters away from this campaign and toward the target. The best example? Hillary Clinton, who clearly never saw Trump as a worthy opponent in 2016. The woeful comment only reinforced that view.

Well, Trump is falling into the same trap. It is possible that the less respect he shows Harris, the less the public will be afraid to give her a chance.

Some might argue that if he can’t overcome this situation and change course, he might have to drop out of the nomination like Biden. Leaving aside the fact that the Republicans have already held their convention, it’s pretty obvious that if the Republican Party’s sole goal was to deprive the Democrats of the White House, the best solution would be to persuade Trump to step aside and nominate the primary’s runner-up, Nikki Haley.

But as obvious as this may seem to a political scientist, the reality of the Republican Party is quite different. Since Trump’s surprise election in 2016, the Democratic Party has organized itself around a core principle: stopping Trump. This has allowed the party to mask many ideological differences for nearly a decade.

As for the Republican Party, Trump and his allies have done everything they can to mold it in his image, and anyone who doesn’t share that view has been virtually eliminated. Even if the Republican candidates wanted to oust Trump from the party, rank-and-file Republican voters wouldn’t accept it the way Democrats just did. In fact, they did more than just accept it: Rank-and-file Democrats joined Democratic elites in a primal cry for Biden to step aside. (See the polls that showed fewer than half of Democrats were satisfied or enthusiastic about Biden’s nomination well before the debate.)

All of which explains why Republicans, especially those seeking to flip the Senate or retain the House of Representatives, are publicly pleading with Trump to shift from a grievance-focused campaign to a policy-focused one. These Republicans know they would be in a better position if they had a candidate who looked to the future rather than fixated on the past.

But what happens if Trump never changes course? What will the second-tier Republicans do then?

In 2016, many second-tier Republicans felt comfortable running against Trump or simply ignoring him, both because they (and many Republican voters) were skeptical of him and because most Republicans, not to mention Democrats and the media, believed he wouldn’t win. All of this created a permission structure that allowed Republicans like Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey to run his own campaign. He won reelection without having to endorse Trump or appear with him.

No swing-state Republican could do what Toomey did in 2016 and win in 2024. Toomey felt no pressure to appear with Trump at any rally in Pennsylvania in 2016, but the same can’t be said for McCormick, the Republican Senate candidate in that state this year. If you doubt me, let me remind you of what Trump did in Georgia just a few weeks ago, when he attacked Republican Gov. Brian Kemp for refusing to use (or abuse) his gubernatorial powers to help him in his efforts to challenge the 2020 results.

The last thing Republican candidates in key Senate races want in 2024 is for Trump to publicly harass them (which he would) for not showing up to his rallies. The only Republicans who might get a pass on that are perhaps former Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland or perhaps Nella Domenici, the Republican Senate candidate from New Mexico, where her name is synonymous with Republican politics.

The fact is, while Democratic base voters wouldn't punish a Democrat for fleeing their presidential candidate (have you noticed how well Sherrod Brown is doing in Ohio while pretending not to attend the Democratic convention?), there is ample evidence that GOP base voters would do just that.

All of which brings me back to the question: What do the Republican candidates do if Trump never fully reverses course? At some point, the obvious answer would be to run a campaign based on counterbalancing a Harris presidency, similar to what Republicans did against Clinton in 2016. But running that campaign wouldn’t be easy. All it takes is one errant public comment from an anonymous campaign staffer who is starting to distance himself from Trump, and he could rain you-know-what on the campaign.

Of all the Senate campaigns that are locked in a tough fight, I would say that McCormick in Pennsylvania and former Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan are in the most precarious positions when it comes to the need for Trump to change course. So keep an eye on the messages that both of these campaigns are developing. The swing voters who don’t like Trump personally are the voters that Rogers and McCormick need. Can they find a way to get a message to them without alienating Trump, especially if Trump himself doesn’t seem capable of making the obvious change of course that any generic candidate in his place would make?

Of course, the real challenge for both Republicans will be how to handle Trump’s appearances in their respective states. If Trump’s numbers continue to decline, it will be tempting for these candidates to distance themselves from him. Ultimately, that may be a fool’s errand, even if the reality is clear to the campaign. After all, there’s little a runner-up can do if the front-runner is unpopular or undisciplined.

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