What kind of criticism works against a notoriously touchy ex-president whose fans are equally notorious for their defensiveness?
Someone who used to be someone has taken to trolling National Review on Twitter, a web medium that perhaps coincidentally also used to be something.
The particular provocation this time is that we here are apparently craven shills for Trump, afraid to call his lawlessness and unacceptability what it is. While it is true that we have varying opinions around here — we do not force rigid conformity to an editorial line among our writers, as other outlets are reputed to do — I, for one, have no difficulty stating that Donald Trump should never be president again. Moreover, I am certain that he never will be president again, which is why I am particularly interested in seeing him denied the Republican nomination.
Instead of wasting further time on an old man yelling at clouds, I thought I would write a few brief notes on how a Republican primary candidate can successfully run against Trump, if it can be managed at all. This will necessarily be a messy, cynical affair, so put on your wading boots and let’s have an adult discussion as we stroll through the political muck.
How does one run against Trump — not to Make A Statement, not to curry his favor or raise one’s “brand awareness” for later political adventures, but to win with some remaining hope of also triumphing in the general election? It won’t be easy. Trump starts from a position of polling preeminence, with a locked-in base and his enduring ability to drive news cycles. (Welcome back to CNN, Donald Trump! Welcome back to Donald Trump, CNN!) However, if one takes the most recent CBS News Poll at face value, there is a needle that can be threaded here. The GOP primary electorate, as of May 2023, apparently shakes out to 24 percent “always Trump,” 27 percent “never Trump,” and 49 percent “Trump or someone else.”
How you interpret this poll is a bit like a Rorschach ink-blot: You can posit that Trump will end up hoovering up most or enough of that 49 percent middle ground and win the primary with yet another plurality, just as in 2016. Or perhaps those people will instead coalesce around another candidate who also secures the lion’s share of the “never Trump” base, reversing this effect. The Trumpist and Never Trump bases aren’t going anywhere (and neither is “gettable” by the other) so, pace recent punditry, nothing about this dynamic suggests a quickly decided race. Serious candidates (the race does not need unserious ones) are going to have time to refine their pitch to the GOP primary electorate. It will have to involve serious and surgically executed criticism of Trump to field any chance of triumphing against him. Banking on the deus ex machina of a sudden stroke is not going to solve this problem for them. (Even then, I remind readers that John Fetterman is now a U.S. senator.)
What kind of criticism works against a notoriously touchy ex-president whose fans are equally notorious for their defensiveness? I can start by saying that I know how any non-Trump candidate will lose: by relitigating January 6. That’s a shame; it is far more important for the present purposes to note that it is also a reality. January 6 was an enormity, primary among the list of reasons why Trump should never be president again. But it doesn’t matter. Nobody wants to hear about it right now. A politician who even raises it in the context of a race for the GOP nomination will code to many primary voters — and not just Trumpists — as being more interested in mouthing pieties for the benefit of the Washington Post (and in tacitly insulting Trump’s most devoted supporters) than making a point of principle. In the minds of millions of Trump voters, denial of the disaster of January 6 is hopelessly, psychologically folded in grievances about Russiagate (with regard to which, to be frank, they have a point). You are not going to patiently explain to them why they are mistakenly conflating things: Successful politicians run campaigns, not mid-level graduate seminars.
By the same token and for exactly the same reasons, any candidate who wants to make hay of Trump’s various indictments — some current, some yet to come, some entirely spurious, and some quite justified indeed — might just as well save themselves the trouble and self-immolate like a protesting Vietnamese monk instead. Stay away from it unless you wish to traumatize unpaid interns who never thought they would witness in person an act of spontaneous human political combustion (the veteran staffers have seen it before). Those hoping the 2024 Republican primary campaign will be fought on the issue of Trump’s election lies or various legal liabilities are either spinning out absinthe-drunk fantasias in their minds or simply do not care about who wins the nomination. The GOP electorate doesn’t want to look back and will punish any candidate who makes the past a focus of their campaign just as surely as Trump will. Touching any of this stuff is like sticking your arm up to the elbow in a barrel of pitch: You’re going to spend the rest of your campaign trying to wash it off.
Instead, Trump must be hit on the failures of his administration that most obviously resonate with — and stick in the craws of — his own voters. Argue that Trump ran as a purported tribune of the forgotten man, a defender of the average Joe, and when the chips were really down and a leader with a spine was needed to make the tough calls, he turned his pandemic policy over to Anthony Fauci and his crime policy over to Kim Kardashian. (For the populists, one could also add “and his economic policy over to Paul Ryan.”) Trump stood meekly in a corner and let Fauci lead America down a primrose path to the hell of lockdowns, shuttered playgrounds, remote schooling, and massive social and learning loss for an entire generation of children. Instead of worrying about America’s increasing under-incarceration problem, Trump was so desperate for celebrity validation that he let himself be hornswoggled into signing Kardashian’s bill. Any skilled politician can draw a connection between that and the Floyd riots and continuing urban decay. (There’s a T-shirt in this somewhere: “I helped millions of criminals get out of prison, and all I got was a lousy Thanksgiving meal with Kanye.”)
Do not say that Trump looks weak; as the old saying goes, “show, don’t tell.” Demonstrate that he is weak: He got the tough calls wrong, and now won’t even take credit for the ones he got right. If Trump wants to criticize Dobbs and the overturning of Roe v. Wade (as it seems he is making moves toward doing), then point out that he’s attacking his own Supreme Court appointments. Was that a mistake because they’re bad judges and America would be better off with a more liberal Supreme Court? Or was it bad because Trump wasn’t really paying much attention to the names that were being given to him as nominees, and so he screwed up something as important as a lifetime appointment to the bench? Which is it, Donald? Is Andrew Cuomo’s Covid-19 policy superior to Ron DeSantis’s Covid-19 policy? Which is it, Donald? Those are clean hits.
Perhaps the single most important piece of advice I can offer to any candidate is that you cannot hope to defeat Trump either by sucking up to him (“dragging in his tailwind,” so to speak) or by trying to just be him, i.e. imitating his style. As to the former, all you are doing is auditioning for your eventual public humiliation once you are of no further use to Trump — you will not inherit his mantle, toadies never do — or for a cabinet appointment in a presidential administration that will only occur on Earth 2. As to the latter, everyone immediately can sense a fraud, and little repels voters more on a gut level.
This was in fact the secret to Trump’s success in 2016: He was, shockingly and unprecedentedly, himself in the context of a real presidential campaign, and nobody else could keep up. What’s worse is that his opponents felt the need to, and the obvious shift was itself an act of quiet submission. (Few things make veteran GOP campaign observers cringe more than the memory of Marco Rubio attempting to “work blue” during the final days of his campaign.) Nobody who seems either too eager to be the “next Trump” or too uncomfortable in their own skin will make any headway in a race in which voters, though they may be persuaded to settle for a non-Trump candidate, will not accept softness and uncertainty.