A new kind of GOP race
It’s often said that military leaders fight the last war: They assume their current enemy is just like the previous one so they misjudge their foe.
The Republican establishment is making that exact mistake in the 2024 presidential primary.
According to multiple recent reports, high-ranking Republicans don’t want Donald Trump to be their 2024 nominee. But they’re afraid he’ll win by recycling his 2016 strategy: carving out a populist base, keeping the anti-Trump majority divided between multiple opponents, and emerging as the winner.
These GOP leaders don’t realize that Trump has changed over the past eight years, and so have his opponents. They’re wading into a completely new race, yet they’re still preparing themselves for 2016. Trump 2016 and Trump 2024 couldn’t be more different.
Trump’s 2016 campaign was an insurgency. He found his base by blasting his message through cable TV. He shunned the establishment and flouted conservative doctrine. And he seemed to love being hated by much of his party. Trump’s 2024 campaign is, at least by comparison, traditional.
He hasn’t held a big arena rally yet and isn’t dominating cable airwaves like he did at the peak of the 2016 primary. Instead, he’s hosting small events in early primary states and courting the state and local establishments, just like a more typical front-runner would. He’s no longer running against conservative dogma.
Trump is no longer an outsider who needs to throw elbows, rely on a thin plurality, or hope his opposition stays divided. He’s a former president—the ultimate party insider—with a path to an outright majority.
Trump might be a stronger candidate than he was eight years ago, but he faces tougher competition, too.
He is no longer ideologically unique within the GOP. Potential competitors, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former vice president Mike Pence, match Trump’s hard-line position on immigration and share his enthusiasm for culture wars. Trump will have to defend himself as other conservative populists try to eat into his base.
And, at this early phase, Trump-skeptical voters are more willing to unite than they were in 2016.
In February 2015—before the primary season opened and campaigning began in earnest—no candidate claimed more than 20 percent in national polls. “Undecided” led the pack. By contrast, DeSantis already has 31 percent in the national polls, more than any of Trump’s prior foes amassed in the early going.
It’s unclear what will happen if DeSantis falters. But anti-Trump voters have already proved they’re more capable of coalescing now than they were in 2016.
Normal Republican candidates might again splinter the vote and allow Trump to win the nomination with a plurality of the primary votes.
But there are so many other possibilities. And there are numerous differences between 2016 and 2024. Trump is running a different kind of race. His competitors have learned from him, and are stronger for it.
And, at least at this early point, GOP voters aren’t processing this election the same way.
Until top Republicans can see that, they’ll keep expecting 2016 to repeat itself, unable to see that they might be heading into a new kind of war.