There’s a spring in Republican steps, a revived interest among conservatives in politics. For they can see a path to victory in 2022 and 2024.
This is a turnaround. After losing the presidency to Joe Biden and needlessly tossing away the Senate with Donald Trump’s wince-inducing interventions in Georgia’s runoff races, people on the Right shielded their eyes from the unpleasant glare of an all-blue Washington landscape.
But now, as they dare to peek between their fingers at this spectacle, things don’t look so bad. Democrats have damaged themselves by the embrace of intersectional lunacies, especially critical race theory, by Biden’s radical administration, by massive government spending and inflation, by efforts to steal states’ rights with electoral “reform,” and by threats to end Republican “obstruction” — it used to be called “opposition” — by nuking the Senate filibuster.
Republican contenders have also started the sorting process for the 2024 presidential nomination. Moving to the forefront are several, notably Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, but also Sen. Tim Scott, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and maybe Sen. Tom Cotton, who’ve cracked the code of how to be Trumpy in policy and blue-collar appeal without gross excesses that alienate suburban independents. Another name to emerge recently in this bracket is that of Gov. Greg Abbott, whom we feature in our cover story this week. He’s going to “build the wall” in Texas, adopting Trump’s signature policy in a concrete (and steel) manner.
What’s more, DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who is stumping in Iowa already, have let it be known they will not run if Trump gets into the race. This declaration has several benefits. To Trump’s ardent supporters, it will look like a sort of appealing deference. But it probably indicates that DeSantis and Haley expect Trump not to try and recover his former seat in the Oval Office. And the same word is also heard from senior members of Congress who make it their business to know.
Trump, and those dependent on him for prestige and prosperity, will keep speculation alive about another run. But Trump, who in 2024 will be as old as Biden is now, is already fading from the scene, and fewer and fewer Republican voters desire his comeback.
That is exactly what the party needs — a future that includes the best elements of Trumpism but without Trump himself. If he ran, the former president could prove unbeatable in the primary but unelectable in the general, as I’ve written before. This would be disastrous for the GOP and would inflict further Democratic damage on the country.
Republicans need a candidate tough enough to withstand the sustained venom of an oppositional news media, the blue-collar appeal that no Democrat other than Biden has, and the knowledge, experience, and civilization to appeal beyond the die-hard base.
That would be very good for the country. It would also mend the Republican Party. And it might, just might, be what we’re shaping up to get.
