Trump’s Grip on G.O.P. Faces New Strains
Shifts in polls of Republicans, disagreements on
endorsements and jeers over vaccines hint at daylight between the former
president and the right-wing movement he spawned.
Shane
Goldmacher
By Shane
Goldmacher
Jan. 31,
2022, 5:00 a.m. ET
About
halfway into his Texas rally on Saturday evening, Donald J. Trump pivoted
toward the teleprompter and away from a meandering set of grievances to rattle
off a tightly prepared list of President Biden’s failings and his own
achievements.
“Let’s
simply compare the records,” Mr. Trump said, as supporters in “Trump 2024”
shirts cheered behind him, framed perfectly in the television shot.
Mr. Trump,
who later went on to talk about “that beautiful, beautiful house that happens
to be white,” has left increasingly little doubt about his intentions, plotting
an influential role in the 2022 midterm elections and another potential White
House run. But a fresh round of skirmishes over his endorsements, fissures with
the Republican base over vaccines — a word Mr. Trump conspicuously left unsaid
at Saturday’s rally — and new polling all show how his longstanding vise grip
on the Republican Party is facing growing strains.
In Texas,
some grass-roots conservatives are vocally frustrated with Mr. Trump’s backing
of Gov. Greg Abbott, even booing Mr. Abbott when he took the stage. In North
Carolina, Mr. Trump’s behind-the-scenes efforts to shrink the Republican field
to help his preferred Senate candidate failed last week. And in Tennessee, a
recent Trump endorsement set off an unusually public backlash, even among his
most loyal allies, both in Congress and in conservative media.
The
Tennessee episode, in particular, showed how the Make America Great Again
movement that Mr. Trump birthed is maturing to the point where it can, at
times, exist separate and apart from — and even at odds with — Mr. Trump
himself.
Mr. Trump
remains, overwhelmingly, the most popular and powerful figure in the Republican
Party. He is the polling front-runner in 2024, an unmatched fund-raising force
and still able to fill fairgrounds with huge crowds. But after issuing roughly
100 endorsements in races nationwide, Mr. Trump will face a gantlet of proxy
tests of his political strength in the coming months, just as public polls show
his sway over the G.O.P. electorate is not what it once was.
“Things
feel like they’ve been shifting,” said Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster
who regularly surveys Mr. Trump’s standing in the party. “It’s a strong
attachment. It’s one that very likely would win a Republican primary today. But
is it the same ironclad, monolithic, Soviet-like attachment that we saw when
Donald Trump was the incumbent president? No, it is not.”
In a recent
Associated Press survey, 44 percent of Republicans said they did not want Mr.
Trump to run for president again, while a potential G.O.P. rival in 2024, Gov.
Ron DeSantis of Florida, has narrowed the gap in other way-too-early snapshots
of a hypothetical primary — new signs of potential vulnerability for the former
president.
In a
reversal from Mr. Trump’s White House days, an NBC News poll in late January
found that 56 percent of Republicans now define themselves more as supporters
of the Republican Party, compared to 36 percent who said they are supporters of
Mr. Trump first.
The
Trump-first faction had accounted for 54 percent of Republican voters in
October 2020. The erosion since then spanned every demographic: men and women,
moderates and conservatives, people of every age.
Among the
biggest swings was in a group widely seen as Mr. Trump’s most loyal
constituency: white Republicans without college degrees, who went from 62
percent identifying first with Mr. Trump to 36 percent.
Frank
Luntz, a prominent G.O.P. pollster, said Republican support for the former
president is moving in complex ways — simultaneously both intensifying and
diminishing.
“The Trump
group is smaller today than it has been in five years, but it is even more
intense, more passionate and more unforgiving of his critics,” Mr. Luntz said.
“As people slowly drift away — which they are — those who are still with him
are even stronger in their support.”
Mr. Trump
faces further complications to a comeback, including an ongoing investigation
in Georgia over his attempt to pressure state officials to overturn the
election and an inquiry in New York into his business practices.
Betting
against Mr. Trump’s hold on the G.O.P. has been a losing proposition, both for
pundits and Republican rivals, for the better part of a decade, and he retains
broad support in the party apparatus itself. As the Republican National
Committee holds its winter meeting in the coming days in Salt Lake City, the
party’s executive committee is expected to discuss behind closed doors whether
to continue paying some of the former president’s personal legal bills.
Even some
Trump-skeptical Republican strategists note that any softening of support has
come after a year in which Mr. Trump did not seek to command public attention
as thoroughly as he can.
He was back
in the spotlight at Saturday’s Texas rally, an event that had the feel of a
music festival, with anti-Biden chants of “Let’s go Brandon!” breaking out
spontaneously. Amid the “Trump Won” flags, however, some conservative activists
grumbled about the endorsement of Mr. Abbott, criticizing the governor’s early
Covid-19 lockdowns and management of the border.
On stage,
Mr. Abbott himself faced shouts of “RINO” — for “Republican in name only” — and
some boos, which he overwhelmed by leading the crowd in a chant of “Let’s go
Trump!”
In his
remarks, Mr. Trump seemed to be guarding his far-right flank when he declared
that, “if I run and I win,” he would consider pardoning people who participated
in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol last year.
One key
split that has emerged between Mr. Trump and his base is over vaccines. He has
been jeered at past appearances — both when urging supporters to get vaccinated
and after he said he got a booster shot himself — and he now focuses on
opposing federal mandates, while simultaneously trying to take credit for the
speed of the vaccines’ arrival.
Mr. Trump
notably avoided the word “vaccine” on Saturday, referring only to “Operation
Warp Speed” — his administration’s effort to produce a vaccine.
Jennifer
Winterbauer, who has “We the People” tattooed on her forearm, got to the Trump
rally — her sixth — days in advance, sleeping in her truck to be among the
first in line. She said she believed Mr. Trump was “sent by God to save this
country.” Still, she disagrees with him on the vaccine.
“I don’t
think he should be promoting it at all,” she said. “I’ve had Covid and I’ve had
the flu, and the flu was much worse.”
Vaccine and
Covid policies have also been the subject of simmering tensions with Mr.
DeSantis, who has declined to say if he received a vaccine booster. Mr. Trump
said “gutless” politicians dodge such questions.
Mr. Ruffini
polled Mr. Trump vs. Mr. DeSantis last October and again this month. Then, Mr.
Trump led by 40 percentage points; now, the margin is 25. But among Republicans
familiar with both men, the gap was just 16 points, and narrower still, only
nine points, among those who liked them both.
“His voters
are looking at alternatives,” Mr. Ruffini said of Mr. Trump. While there is
scant evidence of any desire for an anti-Trump Republican, Mr. Ruffini said,
there is openness to what he called a “next-generation Trump candidate.”
At the
Texas rally, David Merritt, a 56-year-old private contractor in a cowboy hat,
described himself as “more of a Trump guy” than a Republican. But if he were
not to run in 2024?
“Probably
Ron DeSantis would be my next choice,” Mr. Merritt said. Because he was the
most like Mr. Trump of the Republican candidates.
In
Washington, Republican congressional leaders have diverged sharply in their
approaches to Mr. Trump.
Representative
Kevin McCarthy of California, the House minority leader, has been solicitous,
huddling with Mr. Trump for roughly an hour last Tuesday at Mar-a-Lago to talk
over House races and the political landscape, according to people familiar with
the meeting. Mr. McCarthy is seen as keeping Mr. Trump close as he seeks to win
the majority for his party this fall and the speakership for himself.
In the
Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, is not on speaking
terms with Mr. Trump, and his allies continue to court Gov. Larry Hogan of
Maryland, an outspoken anti-Trump Republican, to run for Senate.
Beyond
polling, Mr. Trump has repeatedly held up his “almost unblemished record” of
primary endorsements as a barometer of his power. When Lou Dobbs, the pro-Trump
media personality, asked Mr. Trump last week if the G.O.P. was still united
behind him, he replied, “Well, I think so. Everybody I endorse just about
wins.”
In North
Carolina, Mr. Trump has promoted the Senate candidate he endorsed,
Representative Ted Budd, by trying to convince Representative Mark Walker to
abandon the primary and run for the House again. Mr. Walker threatens to divide
the pro-Trump vote and help a third candidate, former Gov. Pat McCrory, a more
traditional Republican.
On
Thursday, Mr. Walker announced he was staying in the Senate race anyway.
Though Mr.
Trump’s endorsements have sometimes been haphazard, despite ongoing efforts to
formalize the process, few have drawn pushback more swiftly than his backing of
Morgan Ortagus, who was an aide to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and
was once floated as a possible White House press secretary.
Ms.
Ortagus, with her family in tow, met with Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago last Monday
and discussed a Tennessee House seat for which she is not even an official
candidate yet, according to three people familiar with the meeting; by the next
evening, Mr. Trump had endorsed her unannounced run.
“Trump has
this completely wrong,” Candace Owens, a prominent figure in pro-Trump media,
wrote on Twitter.
Ms. Owens
threw her support to Robby Starbuck, a rival candidate with ties to the Trump
activist movement. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia quickly
endorsed Mr. Starbuck, too, and Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, typically
a staunch Trump ally, promoted one of Mr. Starbuck’s videos.
Gavin Wax,
an outspoken pro-Trump activist and president of the New York Young Republican
Club, who criticized the Ortagus and Abbott endorsements, said the political
environment now made it possible to air such grievances. “It’s a lot easier to
have these divisions begin to brew when he’s out of office,” Mr. Wax said of
Mr. Trump.
“He still
remains the top dog by a long shot, but who knows,” Mr. Wax said. “It’s one of
those things where, a million cuts — it will eventually start to do damage.”
J. David
Goodman contributed reporting from Conroe, Texas.
Shane
Goldmacher is a national political reporter and was previously the chief
political correspondent for the Metro desk. Before joining The Times, he worked
at Politico, where he covered national Republican politics and the 2016
presidential campaign. @ShaneGoldmacher
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