CAN GOP ESTABLISHMENT BEAT TRUMP?
For decades, the iron rule of Republican presidential politics was this: The party establishment always wins.
Republicans long favored an orderly process in which an unseen hand would clear the way for whoever was deemed to be standing at the front of the line.
Then came the 2016 campaign. When Donald Trump entered what became a 17-candidate GOP primary, most figured he would be just another brief distraction in the serious business of picking a standardbearer from among a cast of mostly governors and senators, past and present, that filled their debate stages. Party elders, organizers and big donors didn’t take the reality-show celebrity seriously — or try to stop him — until it was too late.
In that crowded field, Trump was able to romp to the nomination, picking up more than 60 percent of the delegates despite the fact that most Republican voters cast their primary ballots for someone else.
Now, facing the prospect that the GOP’s 2024 primary could put Trump at the top of the ballot for the third time in a row — a likely formula for disaster — the empire is trying to strike back.
In the past week, the vast network of financial contributors and political foot soldiers led by billionaire Charles Koch has announced plans to get involved early and aggressively in the GOP primaries “to support a candidate in the Republican presidential primary who can lead our country forward, and who can win,” Emily Seidel, chief executive of Koch’s flagship organization, Americans for Prosperity (AFP), wrote in a memo to the group’s staff and activists.
Though she didn’t say so specifically, Seidel made it clear that candidate will not be named Trump.
A day later, the anti-tax powerhouse group Club for Growth announced a lineup of potential presidential contenders who will appear at its annual donor retreat next month. Trump, the only candidate who has formally declared that he is running, was not among the group.
Nor will Trump be among the talkedabout presidential possibilities who will be appearing Feb. 24 at a “donor appreciation” event organized in Austin by leading Texas Republicans, including George W. Bush strategist Karl Rove. Who will appear? Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, along with Mike Pence, Tim Scott and Nikki Haley.
These Republicans are facing the reality that the only way to stop Trump — and it is far from certain that it will work — is for the party establishment to pick a favorite early and rally behind him or her. Beyond that, they must put their considerable resources into anti-Trump messaging in the key primary states. That step would relieve their candidate of having to go negative on a former president who still has a devoted following among GOP voters.
But who might the anointed champion be? Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis would seem to have the early edge.
There is also a fair amount of buzz lately around Kemp, a solid conservative who won a second term easily last year in what has become a swing state despite being targeted by Trump for resisting the defeated president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 Georgia results.
This is hardly a fail-safe strategy for fending off Trump and his MAGA forces, and given how many candidates are mulling a race, it might be impossible to pull off. But what has finally dawned on the Republican establishment is that continuing to appease Trump while hoping for the best is a ticket to electoral oblivion.