Clap along to the oldies
Donald Trump’s weekend rally in Wellington, Ohio, shows the former president still has drawing power. But so do old rock bands whose nostalgia tours pack stadiums while their new releases don’t chart.
Trump won’t really face the music until next summer, when the Republican incumbents he is trying to unseat are up for re-election. He went to Ohio for this purpose—specifically, to bash Republican Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, who voted for impeachment, and tout Gonzalez’ primary challenger, former Trump aide Max Miller. If you were to look solely at crowd size, you’d think Gonzalez is toast.
Look closer, though, and you can start to see the shopworn elements to Trump’s shtick. Trump’s speech fixated on his lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen rather than on any current issues. He continues to emphasize his old positions and grievances rather than lead or even comment on what’s going on today. It’s always a bad sign when a politician has nothing new to say.
Polling also shows Trump’s influence is eroding among Republicans. The GOP polling firm Echelon Insights conducts a monthly national poll and has tracked since mid-2020 whether Republican voters say they are more of a Trump supporter or more of a party backer.
In October of last year, 59 percent of Republicans said they were more of a Trump supporter, while only 30 percent said they were primarily a
Republican. That’s flipped: This month, 53 percent of respondents said they were primarily a Republican, while only 38 percent said they were more of a Trump backer.
This steady erosion in the intensity of Trump’s support is a problem for him. The fall news will likely be dominated by Republican opposition to President Joe Biden’s agenda. Trump’s constant replaying of his golden oldies adds nothing meaningful to that, ceding the field to others. Each of the people he has targeted will almost certainly be vocal in their opposition to Biden and the progressives.
By next year’s primaries, they will have shown conservatives in their districts that they can be counted on to fight for their priorities. It’s going to be much harder for Trump to unseat them when the only reason to do so is their past apostasy on impeachment.
Trump’s decision to seek vengeance on these members, then, means he has chosen to risk his political capital on fights he can’t fully control or influence. He has to win most of these challenges to remain the undisputed top dog in the GOP. It’s not good enough to bat .500—Republicans would correctly interpret that as meaning they can challenge him and survive. It’s going to be very hard for him to do what he needs to do with increasingly out-of-date appeals.
The Rolling Stones sold 500,000 tickets on their last tour in 2019, but they haven’t topped the charts since 1978. Republicans banking on Trump’s support for their political future might just find they can’t get no satisfaction.