Another Trump Presidential Bid is the Worst Scenario for Republicans
By: Yash Rajpal
Tags: Politics, Congress, Election 2020, Trump, Republican Party

According to one Morning Consult poll, a majority of Republican voters would support Donald Trump if he ran again for the presidency. As the president continuously fails to overturn the results of this election, he’s already looking ahead — evidently to 2024.

According to some Trump insiders, the president is now looking seriously at another election bid in four years. Dome have even floated the idea of him announcing the campaign on the day of Biden’s inauguration; that’s not great for Democrats encouraging unity around their new president.

But for Republican strategists, I don’t think another Trump bid is quite in their interests. There’s a reason why so many Republicans, including prominent figures like John Kasich, Mitt Romney, and the late John McCain, have turned on their party. They’ve realized what’s inevitable: Trump cannot be the future of the Republican party.

Here’s a look at John Kasich’s endorsement.

Why Republicans Can’t Nominate Him Again

I feel that there’s one factor pro-Trump Republicans seem to forget: Donald Trump has already lost the election. And whether or not you think he’s a good president for the country, he’s the only president in the history of the United States to lose the plurality of the Americans twice. It’s clear that that’s not exactly a formula for success.

But what I think stands out even more is that Joe Biden’s candidacy wasn’t exactly the strongest. Democrats have struggled to bring the coalition around Biden that they had hoped, and as a result, they lost a number of seats in the House. That presents an opportunity to other Republicans vying for the nomination.

And that brings me to the problem Republicans have: Trump has already alienated a majority of Americans. They need new blood to repair that alienation by both exposing any flaws they see in the Biden administration and fixing the platform mistakes of Trump’s; they can’t do that unless they abandon the soon-to-be former president.

Furthermore, if Biden runs again, Republicans have a number of candidates that would pose a stronger candidacy that Trump ever could. Rising stars like Marco Rubio and Nikki Haley, while not perfect candidates, stand a much better position to garner the votes of more moderate voters. And for a party that’s lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections, that must be their goal.

Plus, if Republicans want to win again, they need to change their platform from the party of Trump to the party of American values. A twitter president shouldn’t be the one to lead that charge.

Republicans Need to Reconsider Their Strategy

While it seems likely that Republicans will reclaim the house in 2022 and hold the Senate, the fact is that Republicans haven’t routinely won the popular vote over the past thirty years.

Traditionally, when a candidate loses, he or she concedes the election, and the party goes back to reconsider what went wrong. In 2004, John Kerry was simply another Northeast Democrat. In 2008, John McCain lost because of George Bush’s legacy and Sarah Palin. In 2012, Romney lost because he couldn’t appeal to minorities. In 2016, Hillary Clinton lost because of a failure to turnout voters in the figurative Blue Wall.

But this year, despite having lost the election, we don’t see Republicans looking for the problems in their election strategy. Rather, they’re trying to contest the election itself. That’s not what a party poised for power typically does.

Republicans Have Fractured Under Donald Trump

Furthermore, the growth of the divide within the Republican party has been stark, and Republicans need to find a way to fix it. Throughout his presidency, Trump denigrated a number of notable Republican lawmakers, former Cabinet officials, and aides simply for what he views as a lack of loyalty, just has he does for the number of Republicans who have previously voted against him.

If he runs again, that alienation could hurt more moderate Republicans down the ballot, including those up for election in what are trending to be more liberal states. It’s a tough balancing game for those Republicans: side with Trump and face his fury or go against him and alienate the Republican base. Republicans shouldn’t have to decide between the leader of their party and electoral success.

The dilemma I see for Republican leaders, though, is that Trump holds a lot of power among the Republican base — whether they like it or not. If the Republican establishment holds up against him, it could lead to more substantive fractioning in the Republican party, which is certainly the opposite of what they’re trying to accomplish. In short, if the president runs again, it could potentially be an uphill battle for Republicans against a strong anti-Trump opposition, while standing up to him would break the Republican party in two.

It’s why another Trump bid would be so divisive.

What’s more intriguing is whether or not Republicans will stand up to the president if he decides to run again. While I’m not exactly arguing that another Trump bid is a lost cause, I think it’s worth the question: why should the Republicans elect him as the leader of the party again?