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Our most consistent failure of perception is the tendency to project the realities or trends of the present indefinitely out into the future — like with ex-President Trump. Most of us assume that the 2024 GOP nomination is Trump’s for the taking if he decides to run and that he will run. That’s still the best assumption and it’s my assumption. But over recent weeks and with a burst of commentary in recent days it’s no longer the only assumption. There are at least some cracks — seeming cracks? — in Trump’s hold and they center for now on Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.
There was this Times article about the DeSantis-Trump quasi-feud, this Michelle Cottle piece about Ann Coulter egging it on, and this report from Amy Walter of The Cook Report. The most interesting prism for this is Walter’s piece since it captures an essential reality: This isn’t any fatigue with Trumpism. It’s not a retreat from the illegality or the ideology. The Republican voters who seem newly ambivalent about third Trump presidential campaign are themselves big advocates of Trumpism. Indeed they’re big fans of Trump himself. What she finds is more a general fatigue with the drama or a sense that maybe it’s time for someone new — even if it’s someone who is new but entirely in the Trumpist mold. They would support Trump and they continue to take his lead on down-ballot endorsements. They’re just not sure about a 2024 run. Specifically some fear that he’s just too tainted by his first term to win a national election.
It’s worth being skeptical about how much Republican wishful thinking is bound up in these murmurs. There is a kind of along-for-the-ride Republican who is particularly open to this kind of chatter. They don’t oppose Trump. Certainly not openly. But they’re always the most game for any sign that his iron rule may be loosening. For these folks, it’s not about ideology, usually. It’s not even about antics and drama. It’s just that if you’re a Republican politico, Trump makes things boring since he’s the only game in town. Choosing candidates, building money operations, going to work for candidates — this is the stuff professional Republicans do and they like doing it. But that gets boring or frustrating as long as everything and anything only happens or works based on Trump’s whim.
Two points are worth noting here. The first is that to the extent DeSantis is challenging Trump he’s doing so from the right and specifically the Trumpist right. DeSantis most cutting recent criticism toward Trump was that he was too pro-lockdown in the early months of 2020.
The second point is more essential. In a crime family the boss is either boss or dead. Leadership is total but it’s brittle. We haven’t seen anyone challenge Trump and survive it politically. Mitt Romney is the possible exception that proves the rule. The members of Congress who’ve done so have all been run out of politics. Trump chortles every time a member who voted for his second impeachment announces he won’t run for reelection. Trump’s whole style of leadership can’t brook a true challenge. By which I mean one where a significant part of the party, even if not a majority, mobilizes against him. Even an unsuccessful challenger represents a rival power base within the party if they’re not crushed. It would seem beneath him to have to fight for control of the GOP. That’s how strongmanism works. Given Trump’s fear of a real fight, if he sees one on the horizon there’s a good chance he’ll choose not to run at all.
