Trump wasn't invited, but his presence was felt
The two-day Republican gathering in Atlanta was supposed to be something of a Trumpfree zone.
The host, conservative commentator Erick Erickson, did not include former President Donald Trump in the confab, and instead conducted 45-minute fireside chat interviews with six of his rivals for the Republican nomination. He told the crowd Friday that Trump, and the criminal indictment handed down against him Monday just 10 miles away, would not be a topic of discussion.
“We've got six presidential candidates — two governors, two senators, two members of Congress,” said Erickson, who is based in Georgia. “I want to ask them about policy questions.”
But even as the featured politicians tried to make their own cases without mentioning the former president, also the party's current front-runner for 2024, his influence — and stranglehold over the Republican primary race — were palpable.
Former Vice President Mike Pence sidestepped a question about how he would close the polling gap with Trump. Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina who served as United Nations ambassador under Trump, thinly complimented the former president even as she explained why she was running against her former boss. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Trump's closest rival, said he hoped that the party would focus more on the future than “some of the other static that is out there.”
On and offstage, participants and attendees alike said they believed that defeating President Joe Biden would not be possible as long as the party repeated Trump's assertions that the 2020 election was stolen.
Georgia will play a pivotal role in the outcome of the general election, both because of recent election outcomes and because the state has the jurisdiction in the most recent Trump indictment. It's why current and former state officials have been vocal about their belief that having Trump at the top of the ticket risks delivering a message that is more focused on 2020 election denialism than policy — one that could hurt their chances of winning in the key battleground state.
“It should be such an easy path for us to win the White House back,” said Gov. Brian Kemp, one of the few figures who was asked about and who directly addressed Trump. “We have to be focused on the future, not something that happened three years ago.”
Trump is expected to skip the first Republican debate this week and post an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that night instead. He still has a solid, doubledigit lead over his rivals, according to recent state and national polls.
At the weekend event, themed “Forward: Which Way,” attendees saw a chance to hear voices other than Trump's. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is in single digits in most national polls, vowed to give governors more power in federal decisions and stayed true to his positive, faith-based message. DeSantis gave highlights from his family's recent campaign trip to the Iowa State Fair while emphasizing the policies he has passed in Florida. Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and author who has received attention recently from voters and rivals alike, spoke of a “revolution” in changing how the federal government operates.
Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, Trump's most vocal critic, largely avoided mention of the former president but later railed against him to reporters outside the event, calling him “a coward” for not joining the debate Wednesday, adding, “He's afraid of me, and he's afraid of defending his record.”
Though many in the crowd expressed frustration over Trump's legal troubles, they also said that Monday's indictment was little more than a politically motivated sideshow that distracted from larger policy issues.
Electing a candidate who can defeat Biden in the general election remained their chief goal — one that many attendees said would be challenging if Trump's campaign message focused more on his 2020 grievances instead of policy.
“Honestly, we need a new generation,” said Lyn Murphy, a Republican activist who attended Friday's gathering. “We've got a great bench.”