{"id":2025495,"date":"2023-09-08T06:02:01","date_gmt":"2023-09-08T10:02:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-trump-cliff-can-anyone-pull-the-gop-back-from-the-ledge\/"},"modified":"2023-09-08T06:10:09","modified_gmt":"2023-09-08T10:10:09","slug":"the-trump-cliff-can-anyone-pull-the-gop-back-from-the-ledge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-trump-cliff-can-anyone-pull-the-gop-back-from-the-ledge\/","title":{"rendered":"Can anyone save the GOP from the Trump cliff?"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthe-trump-cliff-can-anyone-pull-the-gop-back-from-the-ledge%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2025495&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><h2>A Grueling Task: Running Against Trump in the Republican Primaries<\/h2>\n<p>A few months before the first ballots \u200care cast, Republican\u200d primary voters appear ready to assume an arduous \u200ctask: running \u2064a candidate battling multiple indictments in multiple jurisdictions and almost as many civil cases in what looks likely to be a\u200b competitive presidential \u200belection.<\/p>\n<p>Former \u2064President <strong>Donald Trump<\/strong> has a commanding lead in\u2062 the polls. He beats his GOP primary opponents by nearly 39 points \u2062in \u200dthe national \u200dRealClearPolitics average. The same aggregate shows him up 31 points in New Hampshire. The last two polls in that aggregate have him ahead by 40. He is winning by 30.7 \u2062in South Carolina and\u200c 26 in\u2063 Iowa.<\/p>\n<h3>Trump&#8217;s Strong Position<\/h3>\n<p>Trump is positioned to win all 169 California delegates to the 2024 Republican National Convention under new rules that make the state winner-take-all for a candidate who can win an absolute majority. A Los Angeles \u2064Times-University \u200bof California, Berkeley, Institute of\u2064 Governmental Studies poll shows the former president receiving 55% of the vote.<\/p>\n<p>Most polling shows that Republicans are not only undeterred by Trump\u2019s legal woes. They are so incensed\u200d by them that\u2062 they are prepared to nominate him\u2063 for the third time to strike a blow\u2064 against \u2063what they regard as the two-tiered system of justice.<\/p>\n<h3>The Challenge for Other Candidates<\/h3>\n<p>The central challenge\u2062 ahead of\u200b the other 2024 Republican presidential candidates is to convince their party\u2019s voters that\u2064 whatever they think of the legal \u200cmerits of the cases against Trump, this\u200d is an unnecessary risk that would handicap the party in its bid to \u2062defeat President Joe Biden.<\/p>\n<p>The\u2064 candidates making this \u200bargument will also have to behave as if\u200b they believe it.\u200b This means shuttering\u200b vanity campaigns and auditions for administration jobs \u200dranging from the vice presidency to postmaster general while there is still\u200b time to coalesce around a viable Trump alternative.<\/p>\n<p>Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former U.S. Ambassador to the United\u2064 Nations Nikki Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence, and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) all deserve an opportunity to make their case as to why they should be that alternative\u2064 \u2014 \u200dformer New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie likely has a ceiling on his support that would preclude him\u200d from winning \u200bthe nomination, and the other candidates \u200bhave had a negligible impact on the race\u2062 so far. But they should also each be realistic about their prospects and willing to \u2063bow out if a realistic path is not there.<\/p>\n<p>Does\u200c this sound\u200c unrealistic?\u200c To\u200c find a recent precedent for this type of coordination \u200bfor the good of the party, one need\u200d only go back to the 2020 Democratic primaries. Well after voting started, Democrats\u2064 looked like they were about to blunder into\u2062 nominating a socialist who few of \u2064them \u200dbelieved\u200b could win a general election.<\/p>\n<p>Biden\u2019s campaign wasn\u2019t just a polling disappointment. He actually finished fourth in \u200bIowa and fifth in New Hampshire, where he failed to\u2063 break \u2062into double digits. Biden managed to\u200d finish \u200csecond in Nevada, but even there he lost\u2062 to Sen. Bernie\u200d Sanders \u2063(I-VT)\u200b by nearly 23 points.<\/p>\n<p>The op-ed was headlined \u201cHere\u2019s\u200c why Joe Biden\u2019s campaign collapsed so quickly.\u201d Less than four months later, Biden clinched the Democratic nomination.<\/p>\n<p>We \u2063are\u200c already reading similar \u200dcommentary about the 2024 Republican race based on polling data before a single vote is cast. It is easy to consign Novak\u2019s analysis \u2064to a\u200b place in history\u2063 alongside the \u200cChicago Tribune\u2019s infamous \u201cDewey Defeats Truman\u201d\u200d headline. But based on the historical precedents\u2064 at the time, it was sound. Democrats merely found themselves in \u200ba situation without \u2063precedent \u2014 or if there was one, it was\u200d nominating George McGovern in 1972 and losing\u2064 in a 49-state landslide.<\/p>\n<h3>Lessons from the Democrats<\/h3>\n<p>Two \u2062things saved Democrats from risking a \u2064winnable presidential election that Republicans can learn from next year. The first is that South Carolina Democrats,\u200b especially the state\u2019s black\u2062 primary voters, pulled the party back from the ledge. They\u200d salvaged the campaign of their safest general election candidate and set him on a path to the nomination, reducing the rest of the field to also-rans.<\/p>\n<p>The second is that other Democratic candidates who did not want Sanders to be the nominee dropped out and mostly endorsed Biden. South Carolina suggested that only Biden could \u200bassemble \u2064the coalition of black \u2062and centrist Democrats necessary to beat Sanders. Pete Buttigieg,\u200d Michael Bloomberg, and\u200b Amy Klobuchar\u200b heeded \u2064that verdict.<\/p>\n<p>In February, the Democratic field was crowded. By early March, it was not. Biden had a fairly clean \u2062shot at a race that weeks before looked unwinnable. If \u2063DeSantis and company \u2064wish \u200dto emulate Biden on \u2064nothing else, this\u200d is \u200cthe \u200btrajectory each of them must hope for \u2014 and make happen for \u2064the candidate best positioned \u200dto take on Trump when it matters most.<\/p>\n<h3>The Challenge for Republicans<\/h3>\n<p>Yet the Republicans\u2019\u200c job will be\u2064 much more \u2063difficult than the Democrats of yesteryear. Sanders was only going to be able to win the nomination with a plurality. Many have long \u2064harbored similar hopes about Trump, \u200bpointing to polls that suggest his hardcore base maxes out at around 35% or 40% of the GOP primary electorate.<\/p>\n<p>The problem is that Trump has the capacity to win majority support. The most recent CNN poll has him winning \u200b52% of the Republican vote nationally. The Wall Street Journal has Trump at 59%. There is exactly one poll in the RealClearPolitics average that has Trump below 50% nationally, and even \u200cit shows the former president leading \u200dby 27 points.<\/p>\n<p>There is no national primary, of\u2063 course. But these numbers are suggestive of what might happen once the race heads to multiple states and media markets simultaneously if nothing happens to alter \u2064its dynamics before then.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s why the early states are critical. They allow other candidates to compete with the front-runner on something closer to even terms. And Trump is below 50% in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, \u200cTrump\u2019s leads in\u2062 those states \u2064are nearly as big as\u200c in the \u200dnational polls. That\u2019s because DeSantis\u200c is hovering around 20% in Iowa, half that in New Hampshire, and somewhere in between in South Carolina. Scott \u2063is inching closer to \u200dhim in Iowa,\u2063 at least in some polls. Christie is not far behind DeSantis in New Hampshire. Native son \u2062and daughter Scott and Haley are close to DeSantis in South Carolina, where \u200ball three combined are \u2063averaging \u200b36.3% support to Trump\u2019s 45.7%.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, while winnowing the Republican field increases the chances of \u2064a non-Trump candidate winning, it does not guarantee it. Moreover, the failure of any candidate to be truly competitive keeps more of them in the race.<\/p>\n<p>DeSantis \u200cis \u2064best positioned against Trump when you look at his favorability ratings among Republicans and the percentage of primary voters\u200d willing to consider\u200b him for president. The Florida governor also has\u200d the money\u2062 to wage \u200ba competitive campaign. But in the polls\u200c that \u2063test the \u2062question that matters most\u200b \u2014 who would you vote for today in \u2063your state\u2019s nominating contest \u2014 he has failed to narrow \u2063the gap. (DeSantis\u2019s allies, it should be noted,\u2062 have done polling that shows \u200chim doing better against both Trump and Biden than most of the \u2063public polls.)<\/p>\n<p>A big \u200dpart\u2063 of the theory of the DeSantis campaign \u2064is that he could peel off the soft Trump\u200c supporters from the former president \u2062while consolidating other Republicans who want fresher options. After he came out of the midterm elections a big winner while many Trump-endorsed candidates flatlined, it looked like a no-brainer.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, \u2062if the public polls are to be believed, Trump has held on to most of his soft supporters, rallying the base after his first indictment.\u200b Anti-Trump Republicans \u2063have split between\u200d those who are \u2063more orthodox \u200dconservatives than the former president and those\u200c who are \u200dmore centrist, with the \u200dlatter gravitating to candidates \u200dlike Christie. Others want candidates who are more overtly \u2062opposed to Trump than DeSantis has positioned himself to \u200bbe, opening\u2064 lanes for Pence, Christie, and possibly Haley.<\/p>\n<p>While only Trump and DeSantis are consistently polling in the double digits, Ramaswamy, Haley, Pence, Christie, and Scott combined add up to 22.7% in \u200bthe national RealClearPolitics average. That\u2019s a nontrivial slice of the\u2062 primary electorate and one that as\u200d a matter of\u2063 pure arithmetic could return DeSantis to his peak poll numbers.<\/p>\n<p>DeSantis\u2019s failure to launch has the\u200d effect of convincing other <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/pence-boasts-30000-donors-expects-to-qualify-for-debate-by-the-end-of-next-week\/\" title=\"Pence has 30k donors, aims to qualify for debate 'next week'.\">lower-polling candidates<\/a>\u2062 to stay in the race because he has failed \u200dto threaten Trump seriously, and they\u2064 should be given the chance to do so. At some point, however, they \u200ctoo must be able to show \u200dthey can actually compete with Trump.<\/p>\n<p>In the immediate aftermath of the first Republican debate, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-trump-cliff-can-anyone-pull-the-gop-back-from-the-ledge\/\" title=\"Can anyone save the GOP from the Trump cliff?\">multiple candidates received favorable publicity<\/a>, and some got polling\u200d bumps. \u201cPoll after poll \u2014 in the\u2063 early states and nationally \u2014 show Nikki gaining ground,\u201d Haley campaign manager Betsy Ankney wrote \u2062in a \u2063post-debate memo. \u201cShe\u2019s the only candidate who has consistently\u2064 gained.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps\u2063 another candidate can bypass DeSantis. The risk, however, is that the\u200b non-Trump vote further fractures as multiple candidates gain meaningful pockets of support but\u200b none approach the former president.<\/p>\n<p>Trump has the \u2064top tier all to himself, with DeSantis in \u200bsole possession \u2063of the second\u200d tier. Third-tier candidates moving into the \u200dsecond tier won\u2019t move the needle unless that is \u2062the beginning rather than the end of their momentum.<\/p>\n<h3>Republican Voters&#8217; Perspective<\/h3>\n<p>A final obstacle is that \u2063Republican voters do not broadly share the same electability concerns about Trump that some Democrats had about Sanders four years ago. A recent Monmouth University poll found 69% of them thought Trump was probably or definitely the GOP\u2019s strongest\u200c candidate against\u2063 Biden. Indeed, most \u200dlikely Iowa caucusgoers\u200d believe Trump beat Biden in 2020, according to last month\u2019s NBC News-Des Moines Register-Mediacom\u200b poll. And Trump is doing\u2064 better against Biden in \u200cthe public polling averages right now\u200b than at any \u200bpoint in the last cycle, after outperforming his final poll numbers\u200d in the last two presidential elections.<\/p>\n<p>Republicans running against Trump have a lot working against them. The question is how effectively they can\u2064 make the argument that dragging Trump across the\u2064 general election finish line under the cumulative weight of all his\u200b legal predicaments will require an even\u2062 greater exertion.<\/p>\n<p>Trump and his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/amid-threats-of-corporate-donation-withdrawals-gop-senate-fund-hauls-in-8-3-million\/\" title=\"Amid Threats Of Corporate Donation Withdrawals, GOP Senate Fund Hauls In .3 Million\">political action committees<\/a> have already diverted tens of millions of dollars\u200c that could be \u200cspent trying to beat \u200bBiden to paying the former \u2062president\u2019s growing legal bills. These \u2062expenses are only going to mount in the coming months.<\/p>\n<p>Myriad legal challenges against Trump \u2062threaten his availability to campaign. The E. \u2063Jean Carroll defamation case trial date is the same day as the\u2063 Iowa caucuses. One\u2062 federal trial is scheduled to begin\u2063 the day before Super Tuesday. Another commences two months before the convention.<\/p>\n<p>Precious days on \u2064the campaign \u2064trail will instead be spent inside a \u200dcourtroom. Trump will of course still dominate the headlines. A single conviction\u2064 will intensify attempts to disqualify Trump from state \u2064ballots, forcing the \u2064former president\u2019s campaign to fight like a third-party candidate for ballot access amid all \u200dthe other legal battles.<\/p>\n<p>If Trump is incarcerated, \u200dit will threaten his availability to govern as much as\u200b his ability\u2064 to campaign. There\u200c are conflicting poll numbers about how forgiving Republican primary voters will be if Trump is in\u200b prison. But there\u2019s ample reason to doubt the broader electorate will be inclined to support \u200ba candidate in a\u2062 cell.<\/p>\n<p>This reflects a problem that existed before Trump was in so much legal trouble: His popularity with Republicans vastly exceeds his support among voters \u2064as a whole in\u200c a way that \u200calready\u2062 made \u2064him\u200c a risky general election\u200b candidate.<\/p>\n<p>A Trump-Biden rematch would pit two unpopular senior citizens against each other, each \u200bwith an established track record as president. Other Republicans could more easily make the election a referendum on Biden or more \u200ceffectively capitalize on concerns about the oldest president\u2019s age,\u200c shared even by many Democrats.<\/p>\n<p>The most recent CNN poll testing Biden against Republican \u200bcandidates shows all the \u2063candidates being competitive, but several do better than Trump. Haley does best of all, beating Biden\u2064 49% to\u200d 43%.<\/p>\n<p>All of this would seem to be a powerful argument for some other Republican candidate to make against nominating Trump. It isn\u2019t landing with GOP primary voters yet for\u2063 two reasons.<\/p>\n<p>One is that Trump has \u2064been effective at making his problems the GOP primary voters\u2019 problems. He has not only successfully framed the various criminal and civil cases against him as a form of Democratic election interference. He maintains similar problems will befall other Republican candidates once he is out of the way and that rank-and-file Republican voters themselves could be victims of legal double standards and the belief that acting on views many of\u2062 them personally\u200c hold about the 2020 election amounts to a criminal conspiracy.<\/p>\n<p>If Trump succeeds in making this case to Republican\u2064 voters, there \u200bis not much his primary opponents can \u2062do about it. The\u200c second reason the\u200c contention Trump is a problematic nominee\u2063 isn\u2019t breaking through is entirely within their control: No Republican with a real shot at the nomination is willing to \u200dforcefully make it.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the candidates\u200b other than Ramaswamy have made this argument at various points, including DeSantis. None have stuck with \u2062it as\u2064 a day-to-day part of their messaging other than the \u2063single-digit Never Trumpers.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps once you beat the drum \u200dabout Trump\u2019s electability and suitability too loudly or too often, you inevitably become one \u200bof those single-digit Never Trump candidates. Such forthrightness \u2063carries \u200bthe risk of failure. It\u2019s also all but certain that if Trump is nominated and does lose next November, he will blame Republicans who said he couldn\u2019t win. Either way, there is an unavoidable downside\u2064 to telling Republican voters they got the Trump question wrong twice and are about to do \u2064so a third time.<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless,\u2063 everyone in the 2024 GOP presidential race has chosen to run against Trump. What every\u2063 one of them is doing is already failing. At some point, it calls to mind Trump\u2019s 2016 question\u2064 to black voters: \u201cWhat the hell do you have to lose?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Except the answer is clear: the 2024 election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few months before the first ballots, Republican primary voters seem prepared to face a challenging task: supporting a candidate with numerous indictments and civil cases in a competitive presidential election. Former President Donald Trump holds a strong lead in the polls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2025496,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[538],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2025495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-washington-examiner"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2025495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2025495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2025495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2025496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2025495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2025495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2025495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}