Comment on this story
comment
Five days after a disappointing midterm election result and two days before former President Donald Trump is expected to announce a 2024 presidential bid, Republicans face an almost existential dilemma: Who can lead the party to a post-Trump future?
In private talks between donors, operatives and other 2024 presidential hopefuls, a growing number of Republicans are trying to seize what they believe may be their best chance to oust Trump and usher in a new generation of party leaders.
Many blame Tuesday’s midterm results — Republicans made smaller-than-expected gains in the House and fell short of control of the Senate — on the former president, who during the primaries elevated extremist candidates who came out badly in the general election. The dismal election results, combined with Trump’s 2020 loss to Biden, have increased public and private talk of considering a post-Trump world.
Many of the party’s top donors are actively trying to support other candidates and are weary of Trump, according to Republican officials and operatives in contact with them, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose private conversations.
Many donors and lobbyists are already excited about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who has cast himself as a Trump Republican and scored a nearly 20-point victory over Democrat Charlie Crist on Tuesday night, circling Miami-Dade County. a heavily Hispanic, densely populated county that hasn’t been won by a Republican gubernatorial candidate in two decades.
Other potential Republican candidates, from former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to former Vice President Mike Pence to Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, are also taking stock of what their own presidential bids might look like.
“The issue at hand was clearly in our favor (on inflation, on the border, on crime) and yet we fell short of expectations,” said Marc Short, Pence’s former chief of staff. “The question is, are there different candidates where the issue still works, but with a different style that is also more in our favor?”
A Trump spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
Uncertainty also hangs over Republicans eager to move beyond Trump. After all, Trump’s poor performance on Tuesday and calls for him to retire echo earlier moments when Trump seemed politically doomed, only to resurrect himself: the early days of his first presidential bid, when he ousted the the late Sen. John McCain (R). -Ariz.), a Vietnam POW, as “not a real war hero.” In the final days of his 2016 campaign, when an “Access Hollywood” tape surfaced showing Trump crudely bragging about groping women. In the wake of the deadly attack on January 6, 2021, when Trump, having lost the presidency, encouraged his supporters to march on the US Capitol.
Now, with Trump indicating he plans to announce his 2024 campaign on Tuesday, some Trump skeptics worry that getting a message of success to defeat him in his party’s primary will be almost Sisyphean.
But others, like Christie, who unsuccessfully challenged Trump in the 2016 Republican primary, say that while the former president’s policies are generally popular, the case for defeating him is also simple: Trump is a loser who drags the rest of the game. he
“How about this? When Donald Trump won in 2016, he said we’re going to get so tired of winning that we’re going to ask him to stop winning so much,” Christie said. “In 2018, we will lose the Chamber. In 2020, we lose the Senate and the White House. In 2021, we lose two winners [Senate] seats in Georgia. And in 2022, we’re far below historical norms when factoring in inflation and gas prices and crime and a 40 percent president. I’m tired of losing.”
“The only victory that has been won since Donald Trump has been president is for Donald Trump,” Christie concluded. “That’s what you tell people.”
Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, says the party’s electorate can be divided into three key groups. A small group, about 10 percent, are “never Trumpers,” Republicans who have long and vocally opposed Trump. A much larger group, about 40 percent, are “Always Trumpers,” his hardcore base that will never leave him.
The remaining 50 percent or so, Ayres said, are “maybe Tumpers” — Republicans who voted for him twice, who generally like his policies but are now eager to escape the chaos that accompanies him .
“So they’re open to supporting someone who’s going to do a lot of what they want without all the baggage,” Ayres said. “So the question is: who?”
In addition to DeSantis—the current Republican crush—the list of hopefuls is growing. Pence’s new book, “So Help Me God,” will be released Tuesday, the same day as Trump’s expected announcement, and Pence aides have said the former vice president plans to make a decision on whether to run in sometime in the spring and won’t be swayed by what Trump does.
Hogan, the outgoing governor of Maryland, has said he is interested in exploring a run in 2024 and is hosting a Nov. 30 meeting in Annapolis to discuss both his accomplishments and his future.
And Youngkin, whose 2021 victory in a state Biden had won by 10 points the year before put him on the radar of donors, spent the midterms traveling the country campaigning for Republicans and growing his base of support In late September, he hosted a “Red Arm Retreat” for donors at a luxury resort outside Charlottesville, which was widely seen as a prelude to Youngkin’s announcement of a presidential campaign.
At the retreat, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich told the crowd that three potential 2024 candidates had broken away from the pack: Trump, DeSantis and Youngkin.
“There are a lot of talented people out there, but if you look at people who are sending the important signals, you’d have to say it’s Trump, and then by a considerable distance less is DeSantis, and then by a considerable distance less is Youngkin,” Gingrich said later.
Other Republicans generating some speculation in 2024 include Christie; Nikki Haley, former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador under Trump; Mike Pompeo, former CIA director and secretary of state under Trump; and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who hinted at his loftier aspirations during his victory speech Tuesday night.
Scott, who is Black, talked about how his grandfather voted for former President Barack Obama’s re-election. “I wish I had lived long enough to see maybe another black man elected president of the United States,” Scott said. “But this time he’s a Republican.”
Pence and Pompeo in particular have met with Trump donors non-stop, said one Republican in contact with many potential 2024 candidates.
Several advisers to Trump said the former president considered DeSantis and Youngkin, both of whom he has railed against publicly in recent days, as among his most formidable political rivals, and for more than a year he has raved about what considers Youngkin’s media too positive. coverage Trump believes his support for both helped propel them to victory and they have not been thanked enough, a person close to Trump said.
Bobbie Kilberg, a top Republican donor in Virginia, said she would support a number of non-Trump candidates, with Christie and Hogan among her favorites.
“Donald Trump has to go, period,” Kilberg said. “He has shown once again that he basically only cares about himself and not about the future of the Republican Party. If it doesn’t change, we will have a very sad situation.”
She added that after midterms, she has been inundated with emails from fellow Republicans who say now is DeSantis’ time. And, he said, “I’m hearing people say they no longer have faith in Trump that he can lead the Republican Party because he can’t win and he shouldn’t win.”
Later this week, Christie, Sen. Tex Cruz (R-Tex.), DeSantis, Haley, Hogan, Pence, Pompeo, Scott and Youngkin will address the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual meeting in Las Vegas, the first great opportunity after the midterms for them to present themselves as alternatives to Trump.
“There’s no question that Trump has a core set of die-hard supporters who will be with him no matter what, but there’s a group of people who may end up with Trump but are looking at what other options there are,” he said. Matt Brooks, executive director of the coalition, referring to the party’s main donors. “There are a lot of people in the store browsing right now.”
Some of the frustration with the poor Republican Party on Tuesday erupted after a call Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel had with committee members Wednesday afternoon. McDaniel, who spoke for about 10 minutes, claimed the election had been a success because the party was on track to take back the House and did not take any questions because he was scheduled to make a television appearance on Fox News, according to participants.
In an email that Bill Palatucci, a member of the New Jersey Republican National Committee, sent to McDaniel after the call, he called his remarks “disappointing” and warned that he would be “unwilling to address the reality of the situation it does no one any good.”
“You’ve worked hard over the last two years, and we all appreciate the time you took from your family to work yesterday to get the win,” Palatucci wrote in the email, obtained by The Washington Post. “But we have to face the fact that most of our candidates and the party as a whole underperformed by any objective measure.”
In an interview, Palatucci, a longtime critic of Trump, was equally critical.
“I think we have to be honest with…