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Are Trump Supporters Ready for Change?
Most food packages come with one of two expiration dates. One says “best if used by” a date after which the quality slowly declines. The second one says “use by” or “expires by,” after which the product may be hazardous to your health.
It appears that Donald Trump may have hit his expiration date. It is hazardous for Republicans to nominate him for another White House run.
A couple of days ago, this intrepid opinion journalist, an admitted GOP partisan, suggested it was time for a “family discussion” following the awful 2022 elections. It received twice the number of hits than my usual posts.
Since then, real journalists, such as Salena Zito (New York Post, Washington Examiner, etc.), have done the real work of talking to rank-and-file voters and grassroots party leaders, especially in her home state of Pennsylvania. The Keystone State was ground zero for much of the disaster that the GOP experienced on Tuesday and now politically resembles Hiroshima after August 9, 1945.
Hearing his bragging and big talk in the final days before the election, voters across the US feared certain Trump-backed candidates would be beholden to him or continue his rhetoric of election denial and either voted Democratic or left the top of the ticket blank despite their dislike of President Biden.
Another round of Trumpism was a bridge too far for them. They were exhausted.
JD Vance, who won a US Senate seat in Ohio, is the only high-profile Trump-backed candidate who prevailed Tuesday night. Meanwhile, Trump’s choice of candidates for Senate in Georgia, Arizona, and New Hampshire could cost the Republicans control of the upper chamber of Congress, which they were expected to clinch. Even his gubernatorial pick in Michigan, Tudor Dixon, lost to incumbent Democrat Gretchen Whitmer, who was unpopular for her lockdown policies during the pandemic, which was among the strictest in the US.
Trump’s gubernatorial pick in Michigan, Tudor Dixon, lost to incumbent Democrat Gretchen Whitmer, who was unpopular for her lockdown policies during the pandemic. (AP Photo)
It all adds up to a disaster for Trump. A Pennsylvania father of two grown men of voting age told me all three of them are done with him after years of loyal support.
“Trump needs to disappear,” said the voter, who asked not to be named. “He got us Oz over McCormick in the primary who would have won by at least by five points. In fact, most of the failures in last night’s midterms tie back to Trump.”
The communications professional said he still liked Trump’s policies and has long managed to overlook his crassness. “Then he made the DeSantis comment and we are all done in our family with him. It is becoming very clear it’s about Trump first, not the conservative movement.”
A couple of very smart Pennsylvania political operatives I know and respect, Matt Brouillette and Josh Novotny, among others, weighed in with the Philadelphia Inquirer this week.
“If anything should be taken away from this election, it’s that we should be over Trump. If you’re not a Never Trumper yet, you should be an Over-Trumper now,” said Matthew Brouillette, the head of Commonwealth Partners, an influential conservative group in the state. “He had his moment in the sun for four years, and it’s time for him to retire from politics.”
Josh Novotney, a Republican operative in Philadelphia, said there’s been widespread blame on Trump within GOP circles after the party lost marquee races for governor and U.S. Senate, all three of the state’s competitive U.S. House races, and possibly the state House.
Trump’s presence, several Republican leaders said, continues to motivate Democrats, and his endorsements have elevated flawed candidates who fit his personal piques.
“I’ve even heard in very Trump parts of the city and the state that he is an albatross, he is hurting us, and he needs to go,” Novotney said. “We can’t win races if he continues to be the head of the party.”
The party’s national committeeman in Pennsylvania, Andy Reilly, said Trump’s late rally in Westmoreland County and hints he would soon announce another run for president weren’t helpful.
“His presence, I think, helped the Democrats’ claims about a threat to democracy,” Reilly said, though he argued those claims were overblown. “It was not constructive for the president to be hinting about his announcement.”
All spoke after Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.) on Wednesday night laid his party’s weak midterm showing at Trump’s feet, saying his endorsements led the party to nominate candidates in his own mold — ones who underperformed.
Trump’s penchant for insulting-but-catchy monikers hit a low point before the election when he pegged Florida’s Governor, Ron DeSantis, as “Ron DeSanctimonious,” at his rally in western Pennsylvania. It didn’t play well with many conservative pundits who have largely defended Trump in the past.
Conservative columnist and author Kurt Schlichter also criticized Trump’s latest name-calling. “The biggest favor you can do Donald Trump is to tell him he stepped on his crank yesterday and to stop being undisciplined and saying stupid things,” he tweeted.
More from Business Insider:
Tim Young, a conservative author, radio host, and critic, chimed in as well. “There was no good reason for Trump to attack DeSantis last night,” he tweeted.
“What has Ron DeSantis done to earn Trump’s scorn here right before an election?” tweeted Scott Morefield, a writer for Townhall. “It’s inexcusable and just shows this has always been about him.”
“Needs work,” Ben Domenech, the editor at large for The Spectator and a Fox News contributor, tweeted about the nickname.
“Nothing like trashing a Republican Governor 4 days before Election Day when his name is on the ballot. #team,” wrote Josh Holmes, a Republican strategist who formerly ran Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s campaign.
These are not “Never Trumpers” from The Dispatch, The Bulwark, the Lincoln Project, or the National Review. Far from it.
This isn’t new, by the way. An interesting bipartisan poll conducted by Democrats at Hart Research and Republicans at Public Opinion Strategies for NBC last May was a warning sign that Trump’s appeal among Republicans was waning.
“…a poll released by NBC News/Hart Research Associates/Public Opinion Strategies showed that a significant chunk of Republican primary voters actually prefer that someone else would take the reins of leading their party. The survey found that a third (33 percent) of Republican primary voters believe Trump was a good president, but that it’s time for new leaders. An additional 10 percent said Trump was a bad president and it is now time for their party to move on.”
That closely mirrors the poll results I published from Florida the other day, conducted just before the election. That survey showed that 43 percent of voters were “much less likely” to support candidates seen as favoring Trump. Four percent more were somewhat less likely to support Trumpian candidates.
Especially telling were comments yesterday from Virginia’s Lt. Gov., Winsome Sears, a conservative firebrand popular with the rank and file and who campaigned for Trump in 2020.
Virginia’s Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears (R) joined the growing list of Republicans on Thursday who say they won’t support a 2024 presidential run by Donald Trump.
Sears made the comments in a Fox Business interview, where she lauded Trump’s Oval Office accomplishments related to black unemployment, education, and public safety, but said that the results of the 2022 midterm elections indicate that voters “want a different leader.”
“I could not support him. I just couldn’t,” Sears told host Neil Cavuto.
“The voters have spoken, and they’ve said they want a different leader,” Sears, a former US Marine, told Cavuto.
Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears (R) on election night, November 2021.
In all candor, this will not encourage Trump to exit the stage. If anything, it will egg him on. Perhaps more persuasive are the comments made by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a strong supporter and advisor to the former President. The Washington Examiner:
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said Wednesday that he believes former President Donald Trump may be reconsidering his plans for another presidential run.
Gingrich’s suspicions come after the Republican Party experienced disappointing results in the 2022 midterm elections, with many Trump-endorsed Republican candidates, such as Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz and Michigan gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon, falling short of victory on Tuesday night.
“I mean, just in my own emails today, [with] the number of people who want somebody other than Trump who have decided, literally overnight, that person is going to be DeSantis, he’s going to find it almost impossible to avoid running,” Gingrich told Just the News. “I think Trump’s got to look at the results and be troubled.”
The former Speaker of the House gave this thoughts on former President Donald Trump on Wednesday, Nov. 9, the day after the midterm elections. (File and AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
The former speaker said he knows Trump is a “very, very smart man” who worked “very hard” leading up to the election by attending multiple rallies. However, in light of the outcome of the midterm elections, many Republicans have shifted their focus to Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) as the front-runner for 2024.
Trump is supposed to announce his 2024 presidential campaign on Tuesday. Of less importance than what Trump thinks is how his ardent supporters are feeling and thinking these days.
Some Trump supporters are buying the spin that the vast majority of candidates Trump endorsed – over 200 – won on Tuesday. But that is weak sauce compared to the flawed candidates his endorsement pushed over the top in GOP primaries and who infamously crashed on election day, even losing to genuinely flawed Democratic candidates like mentally impaired stroke victim John Fetterman and Arizona’s horrifically incompetent Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (that may change, since votes are still being counted there). From Market Watch:
This cycle, Trump did not widely endorse candidates in highly competitive races. Of the 187 congressional candidates he endorsed in the general election, only eight Senate and 16 House districts were rated as lean or tossup by CPR.
Among those 16 House endorsees, only two have so far won election, according to AP race calls: Republicans Anna Paulina Luna in Florida and incumbent Ashley Hinson in Iowa, both of whose races leaned Republican. Eight others lost their elections, six of which were in tossup races and the other two of which leaned Democratic.
Of the remaining six Trump-backed congressional candidates whose races have not yet been called by the AP, only two — Zach Nunn in Iowa and Ryan Zinke in Montana — are currently in the lead. Both seats were rated as lean Republican by CPR.
The other five House candidates endorsed by Trump trail by an average of 10 points, with the furthest behind being Alaska Republican Sarah Palin, who is trailing Peltola by 20 points. That race is likely headed to a ranked-choice second-round tabulation. The closest race is that of five-term Rep. David Schweikert in Arizona, who trails Democrat Jevin Hodge by 2 points.
That means Trump’s general-election endorsement rate in competitive House races this cycle would be, at best, 50%. If all the candidates who are currently leading in their races were to win, that rate would drop to 25%. (Emphasis added)
Another retort from Trump loyalists is that Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) failed to support MAGA candidates or hit their opponents through his independent leadership political action committee, the Senate Leadership Fund. But that is wrong. Conservative Atlanta radio host and blogger Erick Erickson:
Over the past year, Mitch McConnell funded the races of men who had pledged to throw him out of the Republican leader’s slot. Lindsey Graham campaigned with America First MAGA candidates who had used him as a punchline. And Republican donors who hate Trump wrote big checks to help Trump’s candidates get elected.
The only people attacking the GOP from inside the GOP right now are Donald Trump, Liz Cheney, and Adam Kinzinger. The latter two are finished in politics. The former wants back in.
I respect Trump and his supporters. I voted for him twice before and would be willing to do so again as our party’s nominee in 2024. But his strongest supporters need to ponder why Democrats are salivating for him to run again, even more so than them. The reality is there for all to see. It’s time to embrace the late William F. Buckley’s sage advice: vote for the most conservative candidate who can win.
Complaining as many do about Trump, it is essential to remember that many grassroots Republicans take him, his advice, and his endorsements to heart. And Trump-endorsed candidates won a lot of GOP primaries this year. Those votes came from a lot of people. He’s still the 800-pound gorilla within the GOP.
As one blogger opined at Ricochet.com:
There is an expiration date on politicians. This is less so for legislative politicians since they can blend back into the mass group of other legislators, but not so for the executive leaders, and especially the President of the United States or whether one wants to be President. Like it or not, and it may be unfortunate, Donald Trump has passed his expiration. I take no glee in it. I will vote for him again if he wins the primary, but I sure hope he doesn’t.
Trump has earned a moniker of his own: Toxic Trump.
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Never mind.
I have responded to very few of those 47 posts because they were saying more-or-less the same thing (ditto the comments).
However, I will add that anyone who voted for John Fetterman is a stark, raving, idiot who should have their citizenship revoked.
End of Rant…
I don’t get why nobody is blaming Mehmet Oz for his own loss.
When he was nominated I seem to remember a whole heck of a lot of people saying, “him? Really?”
I would think that those people would now be saying “I told you so”, but instead all I hear is Trump Trump Trump.
Judging from a distance, the image of the Penn election always looked to me like a diminutive Hollywood celebrity soy-boy against a great big down-home blue-collar labour guy (the actual facts of Fetterman’s background notwithstanding). The imagery of their juxtaposition always struck me as favouring Fetterman. Fetterman was the “Hillbilly Elegy candidate”, and Mehmet Oz represented the coastal elite. The parties flipped the script in that race, and it favoured the Democrats.
Furthermore, whenever one side says to itself, “ha! We’ve got it made! Nobody’s gonna vote for that guy!” then I tend to be inclined to bet on that guy. After all, remember how much the Democrats said they were hoping that Trump would be nominated in 2016?
The people who keep yelling that we need to move on from Trump seem unable to move on from Trump.
I believe there’s some weird unconscious fear that without Trump we’d have nothing to talk about.
And the people who always whined about a Trump “cult of personality” sure did latch onto the new shiny object, Ron DeSantis, in cult-like fashion, didn’t they? I dare someone to write a post extrapolating where the GOP goes from here without using the names Trump or DeSantis. There is a real lack imagination out there. Republicans seem locked into a narrow way of thinking about the future.
You mean talk about policy, polity, ideas? Not likely. Remember JFK or LBJ or Reagan? Trump is at least as huuuge. And the media, whether left or right, has plenty of motive to keep him in the limelight.
I do wonder what led Trump to make the specific endorsements he did. In his recent attack on De Santis he implied that he endorsed him for governor because De Santis asked and because Trump didn’t really know the other guy. Kinda feudal.
The GOP seems to avoid those subjects deliberately.
Not so. There’s covid, and the 2020 election, and Jan 6, and vaccies, and Ukraine, and 2022 election, and DeSantis, and the latest hurricane.
Come to think of it, unfortunately, Trump is responsible for them all.
I think a lot of people use Trump as an excuse for their failures. The Democrats on two things: “abortion good” and MAGA bad”. It turns out those two things resonated with enough people to get a lot of wins–especially in the Midwest. Trump did not cause the GOP to have no message, but that guy will fill any absence of messaging.
I would prefer to hold off on the Trump blaming and 2024 stuff, while we should be working on replacing McConnell and McCarthy.
McConnell and McCarthy would prefer that we waste energy scapegoating Trump for their own failures.
So the GOP pols blame Trump. Typical. How dare he endorse anyone who isn’t from GOPe!
https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/1591112183945269251
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/mccarthys-speakership-hopes-complicated-restless-freedom-caucus
More hopeful signs.
According to this, 219 out of 235 Trump endorsements were winners. 93% success. Ooh yeah he stinks. That was sarcasm.
Also from that link:
Indeed, or to distinguish major political differences between the two without referring to personality.
I like DeSantis but at this point I’d be happy with any number of Republicans. Just not Trump. Trump can’t win. People voted for Frankenstein over Trump’s Oz. They would vote for Biden or Harris or Buttigieg or even Newsome over Trump in 2024.
DeSantis is very popular and is seen as a winner. He would make a good President and has the best chance, IMO, of defeating the Democrats.
That is what matters. Trump needs to retire … finally.
I am inherently suspicious of groupthink such as is surrounding the matter of Trump.
He is no where near the lying buffoon who heads the opposing party. If voters prefer that party to Republicans because of Trump, that is a much larger discussion than just Trump
Doesn’t that remind you of 2010, when the Tea Party worked hard to hand Congress to Republicans and as a thank you, the GOP immediately worked with Democrats to destroy them?
See #13:
Yeah, what a loser picking so many loser candidates!
Trump can’t win. That’s a fact.
Dupe!
News from 2016.
Interesting that this guy didn’t go there…not a journalist, though.
His proposed agenda sounds familiar, too.
Thank you for the hat tip!
Trump needs to stick around so we can use him as a bogeyman in bedtime stories to the GOPe. Scare them into better behavior.
To answer the question: Nah. Stick with a winner unless you have another winner to replace him with.
Mitt Romney has won several elected positions. Poor little Mittens never stood a chance at winning the White House. “I went to a number of women’s groups and said, ‘Can you help us find folks?’ And they brought us whole binders full of women.” Way to speak to the American people, Mitt; let’s get this man a round of golf claps, a tweed jacket, a few crowns for convoy, and a very neatly printed itinerary home.
And remember all those “winners” we thought we had in 2016? Christie! The pancake-loving Jersey brawler! He knows how to bring Paul Ryan’s policy to Frankie and Sally. Rubio! Boyish charm, free of back hair! What a speaker for our cause! Put all those winners in a ring, and the über-winner will claim victory!
Well, they were all beaten, soundly, by Trump, the man who, like the alcoholic Ulysses S. Grant before him, simply “fights.” To take just one example, Golden Boy Rubio flat out embarrassed himself on the big stage when the brain upload to that charming face scrambled, and later got owned by Trump because he thought that winning over voters meant promising some sort of sophisticated “plan.” Back to the Senate, kiddo, where you can sit around crafting intricate immigration plans with Chuck Schumer!
All these people thought Trump was a joke. That was because they forgot what’s at the core of American politics: Appealing to the American people. Those hoping Trump will leave now are making the same mistake.
All this debate about “whether Trump” is theater; none of the chattering classes had any say in the man’s ascension in 2016, and they’ll have no say in his return or abdication, or failure in the election of 2024. That question will be settled by the silent majority that supplies our energy, builds our infrastructure, repairs our engines, and in general sees right through all the pretentious nitwits that the GOPe has been foisting on us for years. Given the choice of standing in line to vote for someone with “binders!” full of “plans!” and living and working they will find something better to do with their time.
My thoughts exactly, is it that we had bad candidates, or is our weak link our voters where we lost? I think the latter.
If the voters choose Democrat leadership over Trump, then they deserve what they get. I refuse to blame Trump. His mistake was running for office in the “stupid party.” Had he run as a Democrat, he would he lauded by the media as the second coming of FDR and the Democrat voters who hate him would have plastered their bumpers with pro Trump stickers.
I think this post and all the other after election posts on Trump are saying just that.
LOL!
Yes, I had forgotten about Rubio’s plans. The thing is that every politician, just about, thinks that more regulation and “planning” is good — because that’s all they do. But when Trump won, what did they do? They could have simply repealed 0bamacare. But all of a sudden they (the Republicans) all said, “What are we going to do to replace it?” Replace?! They didn’t have to replace it with anything.
People said, “Oh, but the people insist that no one be turned down for medical insurance due to their medical conditions!” Fine, so write that into law and see what the ramifications of that new regulation will be. Trump was right that there were lots of things that could have been done, a la carte, so to speak, but when the time finally came, after five years of spouting about it, both houses of congress refused.
No matter what you all say, or how weary you all are of the Battle of Trump, he had the right answers. Trump didn’t make the world a worse place. Congress did. In fact, looking back on it, Trump made the world a better place. Russia was contained. China’s hegemonic desires were thwarted. Kim Jong-un was quiescent. The Abraham accords. High employment. Energy independence and low gas prices.
And he did this all despite the “resistance” (to put it mildly) of the FBI, the DOJ, the State Department, and the CIA (which can get 12 ways from Sunday — and can even now).
Someone recently justified dumping Trump for being terrible his staff. I don’t know. But Steve Jobs was, too, and invented the i-phone, the i-pad and the i-pod (podcasts, anyone?).
And now that he’s been out office for two years, everything is still Trump’s fault, and this view is spreading even within heretofore conservative circles.
And you all want to throw him away, like cucumber that’s past its sell-by date. “He was good, but his time is past and it’s time to move on,” you say. “He served his purpose. Now throw him out back into the dumpster.”
The piling onto Trump isn’t just the willful blindness, and unseemly from former supporters (no matter how tenuously the support turns out to have been) — it’s counter productive. It is a de facto repudiation of the MAGA agenda and purpose. This is what the progressives want.
You want Rubio, or DeSantis? Go for it.