Trump The “Loser”?

A Republican reckoning

(Photo by Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images)

Across the political press and pundit class, from cable news studios in New York to the see-and-be-seen hangouts of Washington, D.C., an urgent question is hovering in the air along with the aroma of Pumpkin Spice Latte: Is the Republican Party ready to break up with Trump?

Never mind that, over the years, this question has been asked as frequently as announcements of “Infrastructure Week.”

Never mind that, as of this writing, Trump is the only Republican who has announced he is running for president. 

Never mind that he remains highly popular within the Republican rank and file. 

Ask many big names in the GOP establishment these days about Trump and you’re likely to get a response of almost uniform choreography — the brow furrows, the head begins to shake solemnly, and a sad sigh of resignation emerges through pursed lips. They intimate that they are deeply concerned about their party’s future. And they hint at the man from Mar-a-Lago. 

Mind you, precious few have the courage to issue bold statements about Trump directly, at least on the record. They are smart enough to know doing so is likely to draw Trump’s wrath along with the wrath of his legions of followers (otherwise known as the Republican “base”). Instead, they say things like they are focused on the future. Or all this talk of voter fraud has cost them at the polls. Or they expect there will be many strong candidates running for president in 2024 (translation, please run Ron DeSantis, pretty please). 

So what has caused this belated and soft-spoken reckoning? Is it the fact he had dinner with white supremacists? The revelations from the January 6 committee? The stolen top secret documents? The calls to overthrow America’s constitutional order?

As the kids once said, as if. 

It boils down to one big and very simple truth: Donald Trump has come to be viewed in many Republican circles as a “loser” (never mind how he is viewed in the country at large). Of course the term “loser” has many connotations, but in terms of politics it’s not all that complicated: It means you lost an election. More people wanted to vote for the person (or people) who weren’t you. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, especially if you lost an election you had a chance at winning. In such cases, the “loser” crown is especially heavy. 

And that brings us, not surprisingly, back to Trump. It’s not just that he lost reelection in 2020; it’s also that in both 2018 and 2022, he pushed extremist candidates who lost elections in purple states where Republicans could have won. What strikes terror in the hearts of Republican leaders is a reality they cannot spin away. Donald Trump is costing them elections, and thus power. 

That is all this is about. The exercise and wielding of power. 

If Trump had won in 2020, or even if his hand-picked candidates had won in 2022 — instead of following him into loserdom — Republican leaders in Congress and their enablers in right-wing media would be heralding him as a political visionary suitable for Mt. Rushmore. It wouldn’t matter what he said, or with whom he met, or what he did. We don’t have to guess at this. All we have to do is look at his presidency. He made the Republican Party his own, and any who dared to question him either were excommunicated (see Liz Cheney) or crawled back in acquiescence — profiles in cowardice. 

One gets a sense that something disconcerting is dawning for Republican Party stalwarts — even though Trump, Trumpism, and the MAGA brand are toxic to large swaths of the American electorate, they’re still manna for the base. Of whom there are still many.

In some states and congressional districts, winning the Republican primary is tantamount to winning the general election. Thus Congress is full of mini Trumps. But we saw in 2020 that that wasn’t enough to win the presidency. And we just saw in 2022 that it wasn’t enough to win in swing states, including Georgia. 

A majority of Americans see Trump as a loser. At the same time, a majority of Republican voters see him as a winner. When party officials fret about Trump on and even off the record, it is because they know they are in danger of being stuck on the wrong end of this seesaw. 

They are finding out that it’s not so easy to get divorced when you’ve given up your identity, pride, and morality in a marriage of convenience.

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