A Politico Magazine article suggests Republicans are starting to "plot" about how to defeat Donald Trump, but throughout the piece, their grand scheme amounts to little more than a wing and a prayer.
To be sure, the angst harbored by Republican strategists, donors, and activists comes through loud and clear—they are desperate not to a see a three-time loser (2018, 2020, and 2022) run away with the nomination again due to a split field where Trump's roughly 30% of diehard loyalists proves as decisive as it was in 2016. But one question arises repeatedly throughout the piece: Who exactly has the power to stop him?
As one anonymous former Trump supporter observed, it's “a five-alarm fire. And there is nobody coming to put it out.”
The writer, David Freedlander, talked to dozens of Republicans, some on the record and some on background (i.e. anonymously quoted) or off the record (i.e. not quotable). They are palpably angry about Trump's impact on the party and freaked out that they have no surefire strategy to stop him.
“I wouldn’t give Trump a fucking nickel," said high-dollar donor Andy Sabin, who has donated roughly $100,000 to Trump over the years. Sabin is part of a donor network that hopes to coalesce around one not-Trump candidate early enough to whittle down the field and defeat Trump. But who that candidate will be and at what point the donors might reach agreement is an open question. Timing is of the essence because Trump could mount an unbeatable lead after the first several winner-take-all contests. One thing Sabin is clear on, "I don’t know any donor that wants to give a red nickel to Trump.”
The problem is, the advent of grassroots fundraising means a candidate like Trump can get pretty far without necessarily dominating the donor class. Bottom line: High-dollar donors no longer hold the sway they once did in contested primaries.
So the other big plan is to depend on the foresight, wisdom, and good will of a bunch of egomaniacal politicians running for president. What could go wrong?
“My hope is that those exploring a race [for president] right now are asking themselves what is best for the party," said Scott Jennings, a Republican strategist and adviser to Senator Mitch McConnell.
“Does Mike Pence really want his legacy to be that he got four percent of the vote and helped elected Donald Trump?” asked one adviser to a major GOP donor. “Same goes for [Mike] Pompeo, same goes for [Nikki] Haley. They want to get traction, of course, but there is a higher motivation to pull out more quickly based on what it would mean for the country and the party.”
Oh, definitely—elevating country and party over personal ambition is a hallmark of the Republican Party these days.
In Iowa, Bob Vander Plaats—a sought-after endorser and president of the anti-LGBTQ group The Family Leader—is having earnest conversations with potential candidates about deciding when there's no path left and it's time to throw in the towel.
Vander Plaats said he tells them, “Do not listen to your consultants, who have a vested interest in you staying in. I can help you decide if you should stay in or not.”
“They all agree right away,” he added.
Fool proof.
Finally, the article included intermittent chatter about GOP voters showing the same discipline that the Democratic base did in 2020 when the party settled on an electable Joe Biden over several flashier candidates on the left.
That should work. Republican voters are nothing if not level-headed.
All of which leads to this passage:
The question is how [to stop Trump], and on this, even some of the Republican rich are at a loss on how to proceed. No more are there party bosses with the power to clear the field. The rise of online fundraising means that even the effect of the donor class can be limited. And while leaders of religious and grassroots groups hold sway, they have their own politics to think about, and can’t very well step much beyond where their members want to go.
“I don’t even know who would be having these kinds of conversations,” said Jennings. “There is no convening authority. You just hope the candidates figure it out and we don’t come in to next January with another John Kasich running around dividing the field.”
As far the plot goes, “hope” is about it in a nutshell.
How can you tell when a poll is actually high quality? Natalie Jackson, research director at PRRI, joins us on this week's episode of The Downballot to discuss that and more. Jackson tells us the indicators she looks for to determine whether a survey is worth taking seriously, what she thinks the future of polling aggregation ought to look like, and why white evangelical Christians are the real outliers when it comes to religious groups' views on abortion.
Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard also break down Democrats' big special election victories in Pennsylvania; new efforts by progressives to pick their preferred GOP opponents in two key Wisconsin races; the first true retirement from the House this cycle; and a proposal to increase the size of the House, which has been capped at 435 members for more than a century.
