Beyond debate: Schism in the Republican Party
Hugo Gurdon
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There were too many Republicans running in 2015 to fit on one presidential debate stage. In consequence, the weakest of them were relegated to what news media, with wounding aptness, dubbed the “kids’ table.” Those sitting at it were humiliated.
Former President Donald Trump, who has never tasted humble pie, was in the grown-ups’ debate, which itself is ironic, and he dominated it not despite his name calling and other puerile tactics but partly because of them. His antics mocked old-school pomposity and self-regard. He made people laugh derisively at the targets of his uncouth, comic disdain.
THE BIDEN BORDER CRISIS RAGES ON
Eight years later, he is dominating again and wants to rub it in by not debating at all. His decision to skip Wisconsin on Wednesday night is calculated to make the venue in Milwaukee a kids’ table for every candidate not named Trump. It’s a characteristic act of contempt directed not just at rivals, some of whom were in his first administration, but at Republican voters, whom he denies the chance to assess candidates against each other, and at the normal way of doing things, the “establishment” way. Sadly, it may work, as does so much of what Trump does.
His cynical thought is that he’ll make it even harder for straggling rivals to catch him if he deepens the split cleaving his party. For Trump and his base, the kids’ table is the establishment table, so by not joining it, he emphasizes that the race is him against all others — “us” against “them.”
Many on the Right support Trump because his technique is an expression of, and relief for, their frustration at the way Washington works, especially against them. They have a good case to make it, but supporting Trump is not a good way of making it, not least because he has proved himself a repeat loser in the last three elections. If they want their concerns addressed, they need to win the general election, and Republicans other than Trump have a better chance than he does of doing that.
Conversely, his most ardent supporters detest everyone and everything associated with the “establishment” norms he has blown to smithereens. Since all those debating in Milwaukee are vying to be the non-Trump champion, it makes them, in the Manichean world Trump commands, establishment candidates.
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has been framed as the leading establishment candidate, and it is true that his success running Florida and his quick intelligence attract Republicans who repudiate Trump. He seemed to them, more in the past than now, to combine level-headed executive efficiency with an impressive pugilism toward federal oligarchs and left-biased media.
But those Trumpy qualities are drained of their potency because of DeSantis’s very acceptability in “establishment” circles. Those on each side of the Republican schism operate on a basis of mutual exclusion. Anyone acceptable to the old party is, ipso facto, unacceptable to the Trumpian revolutionaries. DeSantis’s Trumpy qualities make him suspect to at least some of those in the old party, although his clumsy, unfocused campaigning is also to blame.
There is talk of Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) arriving like a deus ex machina to save the party from the fate that seems to await it. This is probably wishful thinking. He’d be an attractive candidate but might not get in until November, if he gets in at all, and by then, it will almost certainly be too late. Even if he does jump, there’s a good chance he’d face the same problem DeSantis has, which is that he’d be the champion of the non-Trump faction, which would make him anathema to half the party.
The former president is telling primary voters and the nation that no Republican except himself has anything interesting to say, which isn’t true. But he is saying this also to convey the idea that the race is over, which might be.
Trump is 41 points ahead of DeSantis in the RealClearPolitics polling average and further ahead of everyone else. He has widened that lead with each of four indictments for alleged federal and state crimes. That at least some of these are clearly motivated by political animus is solidifying outrage among many Republicans. This draws GOP voters to Trump who might originally have preferred someone else and who may, one hopes, do so again. But they are drawn for tribal and principled reasons that are likely to be stoked continuously by Democrats and by prosecutions and that look certain to blossom into court dramas in the run-up to Election Day 2024.