For all the talk of his waning influence, the former president still wields considerable control over the direction of the GOP.
For all the talk of his waning influence, the former president still wields considerable control over the direction of the GOP.
D onald Trump’s conservative critics have been desperately looking for signs that his sway within the Republican Party is waning, and that even his once-loyal voters are ready to move on. But they are deluding themselves. Like it or not, Trump is still the dominant force within the party and will remain so until somebody defeats him.
There is evidence to support the idea that Trump has passed his peak level of popularity among Republicans. Some polls have shown Florida governor Ron DeSantis ahead of or competitive with Trump in a number of states in a hypothetical 2024 primary. A recent national poll found that nearly half of likely primary voters support somebody other than Trump, which is not a positive sign for a former president with universal name recognition.
Having said that, if we look beyond polls and toward what’s happening on the ground, it’s hard to deny Trump’s presence. His endorsed candidates have racked up wins while many of his enemies have been defeated or are in danger.
This Tuesday brought another wave of Republican primary victories for Trump-endorsed candidates. In Arizona, this included Blake Masters in the Senate race and Mark Finchem in the secretary of state contest. Election conspiracist Kari Lake leads in the governor’s race, which remains too close to call as of this writing. In Michigan, John Gibbs knocked off pro-impeachment Representative Peter Meijer.
This follows a string of wins in Senate primaries (J. D. Vance in Ohio, Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania, and Herschel Walker in Georgia) as well as gubernatorial contests (Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Dan Cox in Maryland).
Trump’s record is by no means perfect. Prominently, one of his top targets, Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia (ground zero for stolen-election claims), coasted to a primary win over Trump’s chosen candidate, former senator David Perdue. Additionally, there have been many cases in which Trump sat back and waited for the primary to play out before backing the front-runner late in the process — or in which he played games and left unclear whom he supported, as in Missouri’s Senate primary.
While nobody has a perfect track record on endorsements, it’s undeniable that many Republicans who were nominated this year could not have had a chance without Trump’s intervention.
It is also true that Democrats, despite their solemn warnings about American democracy being on the brink of elimination, have spent millions boosting the most radical MAGA candidates in hopes of facing easier general-election opponents.
Yet that does not particularly reflect poorly on Trump’s influence within the party. Democrats have been meddling in GOP primaries, sure. But such meddling only works to the extent that there is a demand among the Republican primary electorate for the kind of candidates who brandish their loyalty to Trump and perpetuate the “stolen election” narrative.
Furthermore, while many elected Republicans may fret privately about the way Trump is wreaking havoc in the primaries and jeopardizing the party’s chances of taking over the Senate in an awful midterm environment for Democrats, few are willing to publicly criticize him because they are worried the water is not quite safe yet. The fact that it’s so hard for Republicans to criticize him even though they think he is damaging the party is an indicator of influence by itself. This was not, for instance, the case with George W. Bush after 2006.
None of this means that Trump is unstoppable. Though he clearly has loyal fans within the party, as evidenced by the polls, there is reason to believe a contingent of Republicans is willing to get behind a viable alternative. There is also a sentiment even among those who were generally supportive of Trump and unlikely to speak ill of him that he already served his purpose as a disruptive force in American politics, and now it’s time to give somebody else a chance.
This is why, as I have written previously, it could actually be better in terms of reducing Trump’s influence within the party if he were to run again and lose to a conservative in a primary. Until then, his presence will dominate the party, and those who do not recognize this fact are engaging in wishful thinking.