The notion that the GOP must now renominate Trump to the presidency if only to remedy the injustice of his indictment has become a common refrain.
While the details of the sealed indictment against Donald Trump are unknown, extensive reporting fueled by a cascade of leaks out of Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s office suggests their “novel” prosecutorial strategy won’t be altered by the introduction of new evidence purportedly substantiating the charges. It’s that experimental approach to the unprecedented prosecution of a former president that has compelled Republicans and conservatives across the board, present company included, to take a dim view of what most Americans agree is a political initiative dressed up as the conduct of justice.
That revulsion has given way to a sentiment on the right similar to the outpouring that followed the FBI’s search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property last year. “We need to rally around him and simply say, ‘He is the candidate,’” former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee declared, channeling a fashionable outrage that was equal parts incandescent and incoherent.
Huckabee crawled out on a limb last summer, but he’s in voluminous company today. The notion that the GOP must now renominate Trump to the presidency if only to remedy this injustice has become a common refrain. Indeed, by this way of thinking, Trump’s ascension to once again lead the Republican Party has become an inevitability, and it’s incumbent on all of us to accept that reality.
“Everyone is lining up behind Trump,” Arizona Republican consultant Barrett Marson told reporter Josh Kraushaar. “Let the coronation begin.” Appearing on Fox News Channel’s Hannity, Fox Nation personality Tomi Lahren agreed. “Thanks to Alvin Bragg, you just looked at our 2024 Republican presidential nominee,” she averred. “I think 100 million Americans probably became ultra MAGA tonight.”
“This guarantees his nomination,” Fox’s Greg Gutfeld predicted. “Alvin Bragg is the MAGA Republican of the year. He just got Trump’s nomination.” That’s inarguable, writes podcaster Jeff Charles for RedState. “Unless something radical occurs, this indictment will ensure that the former president secures the GOP presidential nomination,” he wrote.
Citing their survey of “Republican lawmakers and strategists” and polling showing overwhelming hostility toward the prospect of a Trump indictment among Republican voters, the Washington Post affirmed that this development has “set up Trump for short-term gains in his quest for the nomination.”
Okay. But why?
It’s not hard to wrap your arms around the emotional reasoning that serves as the rationale for Trump’s renomination. It would communicate to Bragg — and Democrats, generally — that Republicans will not be intimidated or manipulated. Sending Trump back into the arena in 2024 would stick it to all the right people, even though those same people don’t seem all that put off by the prospect. But to apply a moment’s reasoning to this calculation is to be utterly perplexed by it.
What does it gain Republican voters in material terms to renominate Trump merely as a response to his many, many legal troubles (of which this incitement is probably the flimsiest)? Does it chasten progressive prosecutors? Will it restore some sense of propriety among elected district attorneys, right and left, who might be similarly tempted to litigate their political grievances in a courtroom? Probably not.
Is it that Trump’s nomination would put him within striking distance of the White House, where he might exact satisfying revenge against his political adversaries? Anyone who secures a major party’s presidential nomination has a shot at winning the White House if events bounce the right way, but Trump’s legal headaches haven’t endeared him to the voters who make electoral majorities.
Lahren’s quantification of the MAGA vote notwithstanding, a Quinnipiac University survey released this week showed that while almost eight in ten Republican voters “consider themselves members of the MAGA movement,” only 36 percent of the overall pool of registered voters say the same. And while most of the respondents in that poll believe the grand jury’s verdict represents a political power play, 57 percent of voters in that same poll “think criminal charges should disqualify former President Donald Trump from running for president again.”
Likewise, an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist College Poll published this week found that only 41 percent of respondents agreed with Trump’s framing of the investigations into his conduct as a “witch hunt.” Fifty-six percent called the investigations “fair.” And while that poll also found that voters were split on the legitimacy of the charges brought by Bragg’s office, that had no impact on their assessment of the former president’s fitness for office. “More than six in ten Americans (61%) do not want Trump to be President, again,” Marist’s release read. By contrast, just “38% want him to be elected to another term.”
The American Right is justified in its view that the morally compromised behavior Bragg’s office has tortured into allegations of tangentially related criminal misconduct is dirty pool. Why they also think that they would be well-served by Trump’s renomination as a response to this affront is, however, a mystery.
Maybe the Republicans experiencing a heightened sense of persecution today on the former president’s behalf think most American voters can be convinced or cajoled into forgetting their misgivings about the Trump years. Maybe they believe that Bragg’s conduct is the sort that stole a rightful second term from Trump, and the rest of the country will see it that way, too. Maybe they think he can be imposed on the country, stuffed down the throats of everyone who looks down on them and their preferences.
If this is what they believe, the question isn’t “why.” It’s “how?”