Party elites don’t get to give orders to the voters, and shouldn’t try. But they owe it to the voters to present them with a real choice.
As Phil notes in regard to the disaster of Trump-promoted candidates on Tuesday and Donald Trump’s ill-considered rants against Ron DeSantis and Glenn Youngkin, the reality of Republican politics remains the same as it has been since 2015: Trump will lose his predominant influence within the party when, and only when, a sufficient number of the party’s voters decide they’ve had enough of him and move on to a new leader. His fate, and his power, will continue to rest primarily in the hands of voters. It cannot be controlled by party leaders and unofficial party elites and whatever remains of the pre-2015 party establishment — i.e., prominent elected officials, major donors, conservative-media and think-tank figures, people in the professional campaign business, etc. That is all the more true given how many of those slots have been filled since 2015 by Trump loyalists.
Since the rise of Trump, there have been two great delusions held by both Never Trump Republicans and critics outside the party about the role of party leaders and elites. One is the idea that those forces could band together and persuade the party’s voters away from Trump, if only they would stand up and make a public show of disdaining Trump and having nothing to do with him. The most important reason why Trump attracted support within the party in the first place was that its voters had lost trust in the entire class of party leadership. As Andy McCarthy has noted, the necessary, corresponding loss of faith in Trump — at least enough for voters to be willing to retire him and pick a new top dog — was never going to be a quick process and wasn’t going to be accomplished by the whole party following the Liz Cheney route.
The other delusion is the deus ex machina: that the party or the law could simply remove Trump from seeking further office. I argued against the first impeachment and have argued against most of the theories floated thus far because they were not a clean-enough shot that everyone could see the nonpolitical legitimacy of such tactics being wielded against Trump, especially after the abuse of power of the Russiagate investigation. Senate Republicans should, as I argued at the time, have chosen the unique moment of the aftermath of January 6 to convict Trump on the second impeachment, but that moment passed, and won’t return. Worse in some ways would be if the party leadership tried to rig the rules to keep Trump off ballots or off debate stages, or keep the voters from picking the next presidential nominee.
The fact that they (and we in conservative media) cannot do very much to persuade voters away from Trump at this late date and cannot and should not try to bar him from running again does not, however, mean that party leaders and elites can do nothing at all. What needs to be done is everything possible to ensure that voters have a clear, head-to-head choice between Trump and a candidate whose stance on issues and approach to governance can be acceptable to a decisive number of long-time Trump voters. So long as he is willing and able to step up to the task, the obvious choice is Ron DeSantis. DeSantis may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but if you think DeSantis would be an improvement over Trump, you have an obligation to use whatever power and influence you have to offer that choice to the voters. If a majority of them, in state after state, prefer Trump anyway even at age 78, that at least will be their choice.
One immediate way that party leaders and elites can do this is by persuading one another to settle on a single alternative. Big donors in particular can be influential in this process. Another is to persuade and pressure people to stay out of the field if they would be in the way. Consider Tom Cotton. Cotton is a serious guy, and an entirely plausible but unexciting presidential prospect. He’d be a good running mate for the right candidate, and it is possible to picture him winning the nomination in a weak field. But he’d get trampled on a stage with Trump and DeSantis. Cotton has been openly mulling a 2024 presidential bid, but he announced just before the midterms that he has decided to pass on one. Maybe that was solely a decision he made with his family, but it would not be surprising if he got the message from donors or Senate colleagues that it would be counterproductive to have him in the race. After Trump went after DeSantis and Glenn Youngkin, Cotton tweeted this morning, “Look at @GovRonDeSantis and @BrianKempGA ‘s huge victories—when Republicans are focused on success and delivering for the American people, we win.” He didn’t even have to mention Trump — whom Cotton has backed enthusiastically for years — to send the obvious signal. Whether or not others had that conversation with Cotton, there needs to be a similar conversation with Youngkin, Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley, Larry Hogan, Chris Christie, and a number of others who may be pondering vanity campaigns. (For now, I exempt from that Mike Pence, who might be able to do unique damage to Trump if he runs a kamikaze campaign; but he, too, will at some point need to get out of the way.)
There may also be rules changes to the primary system that are worth exploring, but only changes to ensure that the next nominee is truly the choice of a majority of its voters, rather than rules changes designed to rig the system against the voters’ choices. For example, the party bigwigs spent years conspiring against conservative insurgencies by stacking the beginning of the calendar with states where the top vote-getter could claim all the delegates, even with a third or less of the vote. That was designed to help establishment favorites (such as Mitt Romney) dispatch their opponents quickly. Early states that haven’t fully settled their rules for 2024 should consider a proportional model, in order to ensure that the contest isn’t decided before it narrows to a two-man race.
Standing against Trump, even behind the scenes and even in these modest fashions, requires courage. There will always be those who say that the party’s voter base will not tolerate even being asked to choose a new leader. But 2022 vividly illustrated, for the third election cycle in a row, the costs of giving in without a fight. Party elites don’t get to give orders to the voters, and shouldn’t try. But they owe it to the voters to present them with a real choice. That is what leadership in a democracy is all about. Declining to unite behind the strongest alternative to Trump would not be respecting Republican voters — it would be failing them.