Ditch ‘weak’ Trump, warns GOP megadonor group
Republican group divides party by putting weight behind DeSantis ahead of primary campaign
AN INFLUENTIAL Republican super PAC has labelled Donald Trump the party’s “weakest presidential candidate”.
David McIntosh, the president of Club for Growth – an anti-tax group of megadonors – said the party should move on from the former president if it stands any chance of winning in 2024.
The top-spending political action committee has come to rival the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which is aligned with Mr Trump’s “Make American Great Again” campaign. Club for Growth has begun pouring millions into rival campaigns, to stop the former president winning the GOP nomination.
Mr McIntosh’s intervention widens the divide in the party in the run-up to what threatens to be an ugly primary campaign. He believes Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, will have a better shot at beating the Democrats, and says Republicans need a new face to win back the White House.
Although Mr DeSantis has not yet formally declared a 2024 run, he is widely expected to do so this summer.
“I’m convinced our weakest candidate for winning the White House is Trump,” Mr McIntosh told The Sunday Telegraph. “And that’s because we lost in 2018, lost in 2020, and lost in 2022.” Mr Trump was snubbed from a Club for Growth retreat this month at the same time as CPAC, which he headlined.
Mr McIntosh estimated the club, which has proved highly influential in primaries and races for Congress, will end up spending an eight-figure sum in the presidential primaries.
The battle for the GOP’s future is a clash between the interests of its big donors and grassroots voters. While a survey of CPAC activists put Mr Trump ahead, a Club for Growth poll found Mr DeSantis leading 49 per cent to 40 per cent. It means the 76-year-old former president may need to woo high earners in a way he did not in previous runs.
While he maintains a strong network of small donors, his fundraising slowed in late 2022. Several big names have already distanced themselves from him.
Mr McIntosh, a former congressman, said Republicans had underperformed during November’s midterms in part because of abortion, but also because Mr Trump was effectively on the ballot.
“Republicans saw DeSantis win decisively (by double digits) and felt that Trump had been a hindrance for Republicans winning,” he told the Washington Examiner.
Mr DeSantis has captured the attention of the party’s activist base by leaning into polarising social issues from his position in a key battleground state.
In his prime slot at the club’s closeddoors donors’ retreat held on Mr Trump’s doorstep in Palm Beach, he criticised company chief executives as being “weak” for giving into the “woke mob” that pushes environmental, social and corporate governance policies.