Comment: Trump’s challengers show GOP can still be salvaged
Published 1:30 am Friday, August 11, 2023
By Francis Wilkinson / Bloomberg Opinion
The indictment of Donald Trump on charges that he attempted to defraud the U.S. of its democracy seems unlikely to have a significant impact on his standing in the Republican presidential field. Neither facts nor law are valued currencies in the contemporary GOP, while Trump’s core competencies — lies, rage, whataboutism — very much are.
A New York Times/Siena College poll released last week, before the latest indictment, highlighted that Republican voters have limited appetite for candidates embracing democratic norms and rule of law. A majority of GOP voters prefer another off-road adventure with the shady Sun King of Mar-a-Lago; most others remain open to supporting him even if they are uncommitted now.
If for some reason the wild ride is cut short, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s authoritarian jalopy looks to be the backup vehicle. (DeSantis last week sharpened his anti-democratic rhetoric, saying he would start “slitting throats” of federal civil servants if elected.)
Yet paradoxically, as Trump has become more dominant in the race, the presence of the also-rans has grown more important.
Added together, candidates Doug Burgum, Chris Christie, Will Hurd, Asa Hutchinson, Mike Pence and Tim Scott have at most a 10 percent share of the electorate. If we add the waffly former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley to the pro-democracy group, the collective share rises to a meager 13 percent. (The democratic affections of businessman Vivek Ramaswamy seem dubious.)
It’s hard to imagine any of these candidates catapulting into contention for the nomination. The tag team of Trump and DeSantis together have consistently attracted almost three-quarters of the GOP primary electorate. And as Trump’s former acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told Politico, Republican voters aren’t confused about Trump’s merits. “If they want a knife fighter who pays porn stars, they’re gonna get it,” Mulvaney said.
What Republicans clearly don’t want is someone like former congressman Will Hurd of Texas speaking the truth. Hurd was roundly booed in Iowa recently when he said that Trump was running for president expressly to “stay out of prison.” Like Fox News viewers who decamped for Newsmax when Fox briefly dabbled in truth after the 2020 election, GOP voters rebel when they aren’t served their preferred gospel.
Every Republican candidate understands that fact, which is why it’s significant that a few are telling the truth anyway. Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie called Trump’s post-election efforts a “stain” and a “disgrace.” Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson noted Trump is “morally responsible” for the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Even less confrontational rhetoric can still be useful in reminding Republican voters that not every conservative vision is a combustion of grift and white rage. When Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina announced his presidential campaign in May, he made a more subtle, but no less obvious, contrast with Trumpism.
The choice for America, Scott said, was between “victimhood or victory.” Then he said it again. “Victimhood or victory.” Then he said it once more. “Victimhood or victory.” In case you somehow missed the point, Scott recast the choice as “grievance or greatness.”
Scott has been a paragon of weakness in acquiescing to Trump’s corruption, but he has never traveled Trump’s low road. Similarly, former vice president Mike Pence was roused from political slumber to point out, in the wake of Trump’s most recent indictment, that no one who puts himself above the Constitution belonged in the White House. He followed up by confessing, in his clearest language yet, that Trump had unambiguously demanded that Pence defy the Constitution to subvert the 2020 election.
In a video previewing his own all-but-hopeless presidential candidacy, North Dakota governor and tech billionaire Doug Burgum said: “Anger, yelling, infighting, that’s not gonna cut it anymore. Let’s get things done. In North Dakota, we listen with respect and we talk things out.” Decency, competence and respectful democratic political give-and-take are all, of course, contrasts with Trumpism.
These democratic messages aren’t selling. But just as a largely powerless Charles de Gaulle placed in French minds an honorable alternative to Petainism in the 1940s, Republicans need a conceptual holding space for decency and democracy even as they descend deeper into the degradations of Trumpism.
For American democracy to continue, tens of millions of American conservatives must recommit themselves to democratic norms. No one knows if the GOP can still provide a vehicle for that.
Another round of damning, documented, criminal charges against Trump has already produced more GOP attacks on rule of law and more whataboutism about President Biden’s wayward and well-investigated son. But in a closely divided nation, a small shift away from Trumpism in just a few places could have profound consequences for republican government.
If the GOP is salvageable for democratic politics, it’s only because democratic Republicans — Burgum, Hurd and the rest — are still waging a fight for it. They offer a haven from QAnon and MAGA, and a fighting chance that today’s fellow travelers might one day be persuaded to join the Free French.
Francis Wilkinson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering U.S. politics and policy. Previously, he was an editor for the Week, a writer for Rolling Stone, a communications consultant and a political media strategist.
