Where Will The Trump Train Take the GOP?
Hello Hackaroos,
Well, apologies in advance because this edition of the newsletter is going to focus a lot on the Orange Menace. AKA the election-denying, Big Mac-chomping, paper-shredding, grievance-flinging former President Donald J. Trump. That’s because his large shadow is very much going to shape the GOP’s fate this November, which will then affect what happens in 2024. We start there and end with breaking news about a coveted award one of us Hacks finally received!
Let’s begin…
Will The GOP Ever “Just Say No”?
GIBBS: All right, Murphy, since we’re talking your people in this edition, I’ll pose some big questions to you and see if you have the answers. First up, as the funeral horns for Liz Cheney now fade out, can you prove to me that Donald Trump does not completely control the GOP as the front runner for 2024?
MURPHY: Well Gibbsie, I think Trump’s grip is a matter of degrees. First, there's no doubt in the eyes of about 2/3 of GOP primary voters that if you voted to impeach the Orange Leader, you're a traitor to the party, plain and simple and you are done. They see (both) impeachment votes as totally partisan and how you voted defines which tribal team you are on: team GOP or team Democrat/NYT/AOC/Gibbs! Of the original Brave Ten, only Reps Dan Newhouse and David Valadao have survived the primary process (and Valadao has a very tough district to win in November where base Trump voters could still do him in if they show up). All that being said, primaries where Trump just endorses and tells Republicans who to vote for show a very mixed record; the primaries in Georgia and Nebraska both come to mind. So, it’s not a matter of Trump giving orders and they are then slavishly followed by the GOP. In general, Trump has enough voters to help candidates in GOP primaries, but not enough sway to guarantee outcomes. The last factor is how much party may evolve going forward, especially if the Republicans underperform in the looming midterm elections. Trump is heavy, heavy baggage to general election voters and a few of the cement heads he has helped nominate (in key races like Pennsylvania) are looking like losers. (Even Mitch McConnell is starting to hedge his bets on the “candidate quality” thanks to Trump). Parties hate losing and if the Trump factor makes the GOP lose more key races – in what should be a huge GOP year – then his grip on the party will loosen even more. Parties don’t exist to lose, and Trump’s losing record for the GOP (in the 2018 midterms and more) is world class. Essentially, he has the election winning record of Jimmy Carter. So, while the bulk of the GOP primary electorate has become drunk with dumb-ass Trumpian populism, I still believe there is a strong chance he will never be the GOP Presidential nominee again.
GIBBS: Yeah, Trump to me feels a little bit like smoking. The GOP knows he's bad for them, but they can't quit saying yes to him. Frankly, as I sit here, I think he’s still the king of the GOP and the odds on favorite to capture the nomination all over again and nothing I see in this week’s primary races dissuades me from that thinking. But Murphy, if they do ever dump Trump, walk me through what Liz Cheney's real 2024 play is. I may not be a card-carrying member of the RNC…
MURPHY: No, you're not. I've seen the dartboard with your face on it in the RNC press office!
GIBBS: I’m sure you had nothing to do with that! But, anyway, I'm fairly sure that the Republican Party is not going to provide a podium for her to show up at ten televised debates in 2023 and 2024 with the express job of literally sabotaging Donald Trump and the Republican Party. And, given her standing with GOP voters, I’m not sure I get the play even as she’s been amazing on the January 6th Committee.
MURPHY: That’s true. I think the media is rushing into this 2024 candidacy thing way too fast, but I’m not surprised as trying to start a GOP primary race now accurately reflects their two worst biases: simplicity and impatience. The real Cheney strategy is more nuanced. Her main goal and, God bless her for it, is to deny the traitorous Donald Trump access to the Oval Office ever again. That does not necessarily require a successful race for the GOP Presidential nomination. She can harass and hurt Trump as a national figure for years. She can keep doing an excellent job with the Jan 6 committee. She can raise real money and establish a political organization to help anti-Trump conservatives and hurt election-denying Trump zombies in smaller, but still important, local races (including vital “plumbing and wiring” contests like Secretary of State races). A Cheney Presidential campaign only becomes viable if the mood of the Republican primary electorate dramatically changes. Possible, but it will take a real 2024 parade of Trump-driven losses to even start that evolution. And while I deeply appreciated the remarks in her powerful concession speech about General U.S. Grant fighting on instead of retreating after early Civil War defeats, observers need to remember that unlike Cheney, Grant has a large army. I’d cast my GOP primary vote for a Cheney in a minute, but the other 22 million plus primary voters are a different story. The bottom line is she can unite the anti-Trump conservative money and make Trump’s life an even worse Hell for years. Godspeed Liz!
GIBBS: Yeah, if you read the great Grant biography by Ron Chernow, you'll not only know that Grant had an army, he had a lot more people in his army than the other guys did. Despite my opinion that he’s still the likeliest nominee for the GOP in 2024, there’s lots of new polling out showing Trump’s strain on the party in states where the GOP has to do well in 2022 and has to recapture in the 2024 Presidential race. In Wisconsin this week, we saw a new Marquette University Law School poll showing Mandela Barnes with a 7-point lead against incumbent Ron Johnson. The Governor’s race is closer with incumbent Gov. Tony Evers leading by just two points, 45% to 43%. And to finish my smoking analogy from above, while 60% of Republicans want him to run again, only 38% of all voters have a favorable opinion of Trump with 57% unfavorable. In Pennsylvania, a new poll done by Public Opinion Strategies, a very prominent GOP polling firm, has John Fetterman up 18 points against Trump’s favored-Dr. Oz and Josh Shapiro up 15 points against the crazy Mastriano (no, those numbers are not typos!). And, the Cook Political Report is moving the PA Senate race from toss up to lean Democrat. The implications are obvious: if Democrats win that race, they can lose another race and still control the Senate and that’s a big shift in the political map. A FOX News poll in Wisconsin has things a tad closer with Barnes up 4 and Evers up 3, but their Arizona poll shows incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly up 8 and Katie Hobs leading in the Governor’s race by 4. For all the worry about Biden as a drag, Trump is viewed more negatively than an unpopular President.
MURPHY: Republican hacks are deeply worried about Pennsylvania and they should be. GOP candidates in any swing state are discovering that after the primary is over, they are immediately saddled with a huge and onerous “Trump Tax” on their political standings. Wisconsin is another example; Johnson is a weak candidate and in trouble. But GOP hopes rose when the aggressively liberal Barnes was nominated. Barnes, the CW went (and I believed it too) is the one Democratic candidate in Wisconsin that even Ron Johnson could beat. Now the data shows a post-primary, post-Roe bounce for Barnes against the hapless Johnson. Still, I’d caution my Democratic friends not to get too cocky. Barnes is in for a very, very tough “second look” (as is Fetterman in PA) and if the anti-Biden wave still exists in October, my bet today is that Barnes will still lose
GIBBS: One other race that got somewhat overlooked this week by the Cheney results was what happened in Alaska – another GOP stronghold. We saw pro-impeachment Lisa Murkowski advance to the general again using their new voting system, but she’ll face off against the Trump-endorsed GOP candidate in November, so she’s not out of the woods just yet. The fascinating race is the Congressional seat. Right now, the Democrat leads the race (!!) and just 5,000 votes separate Sarah Palin in second place from Nick Begich III in third place. We’ve got a ways to go in this race as just 82% of the votes have been counted and more ballots will arrive by mail over the next couple of weeks and be added to the total. If Palin can hang on to her second place slot, she has a chance at winning this race. If she slips to 3rd, she’ll eventually get eliminated and her votes will be redistributed, likely making Begich the winner. There’s also a scenario where Begich remains in 3rd and given how much he ran his race against Palin, the Dem gets enough votes to win the race. Fret not, we’ll be watching this one!
MURPHY: We still have votes to count, but my best guess is that Murkowski will win another term in November (with a helpful assist from ranked choice voting, where second and third choices are recorded on the ballot and can be very helpful to candidates with a wide appeal) and that Palin (for the same reason) will fail. My guess is the special election, held Tuesday, will also result in a Palin loss once the ranked choice calculation is done, but that race maybe be closer.
Meanwhile, our regular check in on the Hacks on Tap Midterms Meter...
Finally, the big news out of our New Hampshire vacation bureau this week, Murphy was given prestigious journalism award of 10/10 on Room Rater…
MURPHY: I’d like to thank the Academy…
Finally, if you missed this week’s episode of Hacks, where Axe and I talked Trump with ace reporter and Trump Inspector Javier Maggie Haberman. Among other tidbits Maggie mentioned something I didn’t know, which helped me come to a realization about the aliens in the freezer at top-secret Area 51. Check it out on Spotify or iTunes to find out what.
See you next week!
Murphy and Gibbs