A sudden spate of conservative or Republican warnings against a primary challenge to President Trump merits serious pushback.
This week alone, columnists Rich Lowry, in addition to our own Byron York and Eddie Scarry, and Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, have all taken time to make the argument that nobody should challenge Trump for renomination.
I could not disagree more. Let’s set aside, for now, the suspicion that if multiple sources apparently feel a need to issue such warnings, it may indicate that Trump is not quite so invulnerable after all. Nobody wastes one’s breath warning against sharks in a sharkless swimming pool. Instead, let’s consider the thoughtful, yet mistaken, assumptions behind the arguments.
The first assumption, shared by York and Lowry, is that a primary challenge will probably hurt the eventual nominee’s chances to defeat a Democrat. The second, shared by all four, is that a primary challenge is almost certain to fail. The third, advanced by Lowry, is that a challenge is only likely to come from Trump’s political left. The fourth, apparently shared by all four, is that there’s nothing good to be gained from a challenge, whether it succeeds in defeating Trump or not.
Only the second of those assumptions is probably true, and even that comes with a caveat.
[Related: 2020 GOP poll: Trump 64 percent, Romney 9 percent, Flake 1 percent, primary challenge unlikely]
Yes, only a fool would look at Trump’s 80 percent approval ratings among Republicans and think him anything other than a solid bet for renomination. Yet, for the very reason York argues that Trump’s bad general election polling right now should be ignored — namely, that polling this early is apt to prove wrong in the long run — there’s a real possibility that by next winter, Trump’s act will finally be wearing thin even with his base.
This is especially true because Trump is Trump, and none of the old rules of politics apply. Just as he is wildly unpredictable in behavior, so too is it possible that reactions and support to and for him will prove suddenly volatile. A sudden shift in Republican opinion could occur or a new and this time truly devastating scandal, or new front on a prior scandal, could erupt. A challenger should be poised to take advantage.
This isn’t asking somebody to run with the deliberate intention of becoming a political martyr; it’s asking somebody to join an uphill battle that may not look winnable, but that may unexpectedly become so.
The other arguments are easier to dismiss. First, even if a few presidential intraparty contests in the past 50 years have preceded defeat for the parties’ eventual nominees, that doesn’t necessarily mean some hard and fast rule is at play. The sample size is too small. Not only that, but it is arguable that Gerald Ford’s long shot re-election bid in 1976 was actually helped by Ronald Reagan’s challenge. Ford, running for a Watergate-tarred party, somehow made up a 32-point deficit against Jimmy Carter, and might have actually won had he not ludicrously declared that Eastern Europe was free from Soviet domination.
The third assumption, that a Republican challenge to Trump must necessarily come from the Left, is absurd. A challenge to Trump would likely not be a clearly defined ideological battle. Opposition to Trump, where it exists, spans the usual right-to-center Republican spectrum. More active Never Trumpers, for whatever that is worth, are conservatives than centrists. A successful challenge will be based not on ideology, but on integrity, in the fullest sense of that word.
Finally, as to the fourth assumption above, it is always wrong to posit that a constructive campaign of ideas and solid principles is necessarily all but useless if it doesn’t achieve victory. And no, this isn’t a call for an obviously quixotic but philosophically useful campaign like William F. Buckley’s run for the New York mayoralty. This is a call for a campaign that does hope to pull an upset, but that meanwhile is run in such a way as to build up, not tear down. A positive campaign, “this is what we believe in, and why,” rather than one focused on attacking Trump could create a foundation for a post-Trump GOP and conservative movement, with the candidate who properly runs such a campaign as its titular head.
In sum, a reformist conservative can run with hopes of winning, in a style not intended to make it easier for Democrats to win in the fall regardless, but with the goal of creating a better, nobler post-Trump movement either way.
Now we just need the right candidate to embrace the challenge.
