The Republican Party in the US has two huge questions hanging over it. Forgive me if this sounds like something out of Game of Thrones, but the GOP and GoT are not all that dissimilar.
The first question that the GOP needs to ask is whether someone should kill the king. The second question is, if so, who should do it. The king, of course, being Donald Trump. As the former president returned to British screens the other night in his interview with Nigel Farage on GB News, the problem was once again right there in bright, bold lights.
On the one hand Trump is a fighter – an ugly, brutal bruiser, for sure. But then so are his Democrat opposites. Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and all the other high-ups of the Democratic Party make Angela Rayner look like one of the Sisters of Mercy. There is nothing the Democrats will not lie about to retain power wherever they get it.
In that scenario (and you might equally blame the Republican Party for escalating this situation in the 1990s), US politics is no longer a gentleman’s game, if it ever was. At every level today, American politics is a contact sport in which both sides attempt to obliterate their opponents and destroy their lives completely.
In this game, Trump is a master. Indeed he gained the GOP nomination in 2016 because he insulted and otherwise bullied all of his more likely rivals out of the way in typically playground fashion.
The argument for keeping him as the party’s candidate in 2024 is that he has the ugly fighting instincts, including the vengefulness, required to take on a party that wasted the American public’s time for four years with made-up stories of Russian collusion.
But the downsides are equally obvious, and again they were there in bright lights. Asked by Farage about the last election, Trump still claims that the whole thing was rigged and the fact that he won a lot of votes means that he won the election. This remains an issue of serious contention on the American Right.
Most Republican voters agree with Trump that the election was stolen, but Trump and his team have failed to prove this beyond reasonable doubt. Certainly they have failed to prove that, rather than there being fraud around the edges, there was such a fraud that Trump actually won.
Trump’s attempts to change the verdict after the November election were a constitutional disgrace. His attempts to make his loyal and honourable vice-president Mike Pence effectively overturn the vote were a further outrage. And the way in which Trump (and people in his immediate circle) incited the crowd to attack the Capitol on January 6 is something which should not normally be survivable by any party or party leader.
Someone in Washington said to me recently that you have to go into an election with “your best fighter”. But while Trump may be tough, with the baggage he now has, can he really be said to be the GOP’s best fighter?
The question today is how the Republicans might run a candidate who is Trumpish without all the Trump baggage. Someone who accepts that the GOP cannot go back to offering the yawneroo candidates of third-press Bushes that they seemed to think they could until Trump elbowed his way onto the scene. A number of figures fit this bill.
One is Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida. Still only 43 (which makes him a baby in the gerontocratic politics of DC), DeSantis has many of the same popular policy stances that brought Trump to power.
He has kept his state as open as possible through the Covid era, with notable success, and anybody who has seen him speak to a stadium crowd can see straight away that he has what it takes, this time round if not another. Trump’s former ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley is clearly positioning herself to be a candidate for the second-to-top job, if not the top job itself. And there are other figures, such as Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state. Pompeo was one of the stand-out stars of the Trump administration. He has an impressive track record and was loyal to Trump but is his own man. He would without doubt be one of the most impressive contenders in 2024 if he decided to put himself into the race.
But the problem is still lurking in Mar-a-Lago, nursing his wounds among the gilt. Upcoming Republican politicians and others currently have to perform a courtly dance around the ex-president. On the one hand, they want his blessing. On the other hand, they know that Trump can kill those he thinks he owns.
A Republican contender recently showed me a photo of themselves with Trump at Mar-a-Lago with a combination of pride and palpable shame.
That is why Glenn Youngkin’s recent win to become Governor of Virginia was watched with such interest. Youngkin ran on a number of Trumpish policies – including culture-war issues such as the teaching of Critical Race Theory in Virginia schools. But he did not seek Trump’s approval.
Trump realised this, and afterwards tried to claim Youngkin’s victory as his own. But Youngkin’s deft handling of The Donald made people immediately (and somewhat implausibly) suggest that perhaps this newly elected governor could become a newly elected president come 2024.
Timorous though it may still be, what all of this demonstrates is that the GOP have to address the Trump issue at some stage. Even if Trump decides not to run in 2024 (at which point he will be the same age Joe Biden was in 2020) he knows he retains his relevancy so long as he keeps everyone guessing. And the only thing Trump loves more than fealty is relevancy. The current situation allows him to have both and so it is perfectly possible that he will hold off for another two years before announcing that he will or will not run.
That would hobble the rest of the field for an intolerable amount of time, effectively keeping every other serious contender hostage until the very last minute. Even if he doesn’t run it would be a typically selfish move by Trump. But that would not bother him. If he damages the GOP, so what? He never had any special love for it. It was his vehicle (and often his enemy), never his friend.
And so we come back to the central question. Unless he declares himself soon then someone, at some point, needs to kill the king. The problem, as every potential contender knows, is that whoever does so will be immediately killed by Trump, who will direct the full force of his fire and fury against them.
The attempt on the king can be done decently. The person could stress all the achievements of the Trump presidency, thank him for his service, and stress that the party wants to build on the significant achievements he brought to the US and her allies.
But the flattery will not be enough. Trump will kill the person anyway. But – and here is the crucial thing – after the first person is out of the starting blocks and is shot by Trump, all the other contenders can start to come out too. Even Trump will not be able to shoot them all. Indeed, after the second-onwards contenders are out of firing range the real competition to be the Republican contender in 2024 can begin. As it should.
The Democrats presently have an absolutely dire bench of talent. So much so that they are seriously trying to push the bland and unliked Pete Buttigieg as a potential runner in 2024.
The Republicans, by contrast, have an exceptionally strong bench. But they have to start to run them. This requires one person to be a human sacrifice. Someone will have to volunteer. But who?
