The historic underperformance of extreme, anti-choice Republican candidates backed by Donald Trump in the 2022 midterms should have been a wake-up call for the Republican Party. Yet, two major developments suggest that the GOP is ignoring these warnings at its own peril, and is inching closer to becoming a marginal party that only appeals to its most extreme, far-right faction.
First and foremost, Donald Trump became the first U.S. president to be indicted, which produced an all-too-familiar political response: The GOP base rallied around him, and most elected Republicans followed suit. Faced with yet another opportunity to break from Trump, who has had a corrosive influence on the party and the country, Republican officials chose to embrace him and echo his divisive rhetoric.
Second, in the hotly-contested Wisconsin state Supreme Court race, where abortion access emerged as the top campaign issue, conservatives faced a crushing 11 point defeat, and control of the court flipped to liberals for the first time in 15 years. Both Democrats and Republicans invested heavily in the high-stakes race, and overall spending shattered national records.
Ultimately, the Republican Party is doing itself a great disservice by doubling down on Trump’s toxic, extreme brand of politics instead of breaking from the former president and pivoting to a more moderate social agenda.
Democrats overperformed in the last three national elections — 2018, 2020 and 2022 — by turning each into a referendum on Trump and Trumpism when the party otherwise lacked a more cohesive message. Absent a major course correction by Republicans, the Democrats’ 2024 campaign will likely follow a similar trajectory.
It is important to note that the legal case against Trump in New York is somewhat tenuous, as prosecutors are using an untested theory to bring felony charges against the former president for falsifying business records. Even liberal observers are describing this case as “the hardest to prove” among “all the legal cases facing Trump,” which is in reference to the multiple ongoing investigations into his potential criminal conduct.
Even so, the majority of Americans (60 percent), including 62 percent of independents, still approve of this decision to indict Trump. Further, 57 percent of the public, and a similar majority of independents (55 percent), believe criminal charges should disqualify Trump from running for president again.
While the indictment comes at the expense of Trump’s standing with the broader electorate, it has only helped him shore up support within the Republican Party. Trump, who is positioning himself as a martyr and decrying the indictment as a “witch hunt,” has raised over $8 million and nearly doubled his lead in presidential primary polls since the news broke.
Before the full details of the New York indictment were even revealed, House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) pledged to turn his chamber into a courtroom to punish Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, while Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene urged Republicans to retaliate by impeaching President Biden.
To be sure, the continued focus on Trump’s personal corruption risks turning the 2024 general election into a referendum on Trump — rather than on President Biden, whose low approval ratings would otherwise make him a weak incumbent — especially if the former president is facing multiple indictments for more serious charges by the time of the election.
Trump is also under investigation for attempting to steal the 2020 election in Georgia, for trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after he lost the election, which included inciting the Jan. 6th storming of the Capitol, and obstructing justice by refusing to turn over classified documents that were uncovered by the FBI at his Mar-a-Lago home.
Even if Trump is indicted in one or more of these cases, this likely won’t shake his core base of support among Republican primary voters, and there is no indication that elected Republicans like McCarthy will break from him, either. More likely, additional Trump indictments will hasten the radicalization of the Republican Party and make it more difficult in 2024 for the GOP to court independents and moderate suburban voters who have defected from the Republican Party in recent elections.
House Republicans have already suggested that their primary goal of this term is to impeach President Biden for whatever they can make stick, and calls on the far-right to do so will likely only grow louder as Trump’s legal troubles metastasize.
While Trump’s name on the general election ballot in 2024 would likely sink Republicans, a GOP candidate who supports many of the extreme positions as Trump does could be just as damaging. The current second-place contender for the GOP nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), is actively digging his own political grave with his aggressive efforts to court the Trump wing of the party.
Despite the backlash that anti-choice conservatives faced in the midterms, and recently in Wisconsin, DeSantis is charging ahead on a restrictive six-week abortion ban in Florida, which 75 percent of his constituents oppose. DeSantis’ policies put him completely out-of-step with American public opinion, as there is broad-based national support for abortion being legal and accessible.
Based on recent elections history and polling, DeSantis and other Republicans who continue to either emulate or embrace Donald Trump and his brand of far-right populist politics are actively threatening the Republican Party’s future viability.
If his affronts to the Constitution, criminal conduct and peddling of conspiracy theories aren’t enough to convince Republicans of this, maybe losing a fourth national election at the hands of Donald Trump will finally be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
Douglas E. Schoen is a political consultant who served as an advisor to President Clinton and to the 2020 presidential campaign of Michael Bloomberg. His new book is: “The End of Democracy? Russia and China on the Rise and America in Retreat.”