In Donald Trump’s campaign to retain his grip on the Republican Party, his claim that the 2020 victory was stolen has been a crucial talisman, something that has endowed him with powers that previous defeated presidential candidates have not had access to.
In insisting that victory was fraudulently denied him, Trump has positioned himself not as a loser but as a king in exile — like a King Arthur betrayed by the mordreds of his party, waiting in the Avalon of Mar-a-Lago for the moment to make his move. prophesied return.
But, as is the case with many Trumpist strategies both bright and dark, the former president is not exactly in conscious control of this one. More than calculating, he sensed her effectiveness. And he seems to be too invested in his fundamental precept — that his “Stop the Steal” campaign is absolutely fair — to modulate strategy when his returns start to wane.
This is a major reason why 2022 has not been an especially good year for Trump’s 2024 ambitions. Throughout 2021 he has imposed his will on key sections of the Republican Party, but his power has been waning in recent months — and at least same reason, his speech about being the victim of a robbery.
While Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Trump’s strongest potential rival, has taken a stand on virtually every issue that concerns Republican primary voters, Trump has wallowed in a quagmire of grievances and grievances, has narrowed his circle of closest advisers. and continues to pester Republican officials to ask them to revoke the validity of the past election.
While DeSantis has been promoting himself as the scourge of liberalism, the former president has primarily positioned himself as the scourge of Brian Kemp, Liz Cheney and Mike Pence.
Judging by early primary polls, DeSantis’s strategy is working at the expense of Trump’s strategy. The governor is practically tied with the former president in recent polls in New Hampshire and Michigan, not to mention he easily outranks him in Florida — which is DeSantis state, yes, but now also Trump.
These initial numbers do not prove that Trump can be beaten. But they strongly suggest that if his argument for 2024 is just that victory in 2020 has been stolen from him, that will not be enough to restore him to power.
Not because the January 6 committee caused most Republicans to change their minds, nor because they suddenly decided that Joe Biden actually won the election fairly and undeniably.
But the committee likely played some role in weakening Trump, by keeping him tied to the 2020 election and what happened after it, giving the former president one more reason to rail against enemies and traitors, allowing his supporters more moderate Republicans are constantly reminded of how the Trumpian experiment ended.
When I speak of moderate supporters, I am referring to Republicans who would tend to answer “no” if a pollster asked them whether the 2020 election was fairly won, but who would also reject — as most Republicans did in a Quinnipiac poll. this year—the idea that Mike Pence could have legitimately done what Trump wanted him to do on January 6th.
It’s a crucial distinction, because in my experience, and in public polls as well, there are many conservatives who still generally think that Biden’s victory was unfair, but don’t condone John Eastman’s foolish plans to force a crisis. constitutional.
Equally, there are many conservatives who generally sympathize with the January 6 protests, while believing that they were essentially peaceful and that any riots were the work of undercover FBI agents or outside agitators — an idea that is an illusion, but it is still very different from actively rooting for a coup d’état led by an insurgent mob.
So as Trump continues to litigate his own shameful conduct before and during the insurgency, a rival like DeSantis doesn’t need a moderate Trump supporter to believe everything the House committee denounces. It just needs the supporter to see January 6 as an embarrassing episode and consider Trump’s behavior unwise — while he, DeSantis, positions himself as the candidate who can defeat progressives and turn the page of history.
A counter-argument raised by Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine is that as long as these moderate supporters continue to believe that the 2020 election was unfair, Trump will have a trump card that will put him ahead of any rival. “Because if you believe that electoral fraud has occurred, it is entirely rational for you to choose a candidate who is willing to recognize the crime and do everything possible to prevent it from happening again.”
But it seems equally possible that the moderate partisan will decide that if Trump’s response to being ripped off was to first let it happen and then ask Vice to wave a magic wand in his name, he might not be the best fit to face the machine. Democrat next time.
That is, there is more than one way for Republican voters to decide that the former president is a loser. The narrative of the stolen election shielded him from the simplest consequence of his defeat. But it doesn’t stop the stench of failure from emanating from his worn-out grievances.
