Republicans Might Be Swinging at Trump — But They’re Still Striking Out

If the GOP wants to break up with Trump, they should should stop talking about it and actually do it. The party has squandered six years’ worth of opportunities to ditch Donald Trump — including two impeachments and an insurrection — because they were too afraid of him and his base to take a firm stand. And now, as the former president prepares to launch a third bid for the White House, the Republican Party seems destined to repeat the same mistake.

While the GOP is expected to gain back the House, the party’s underwhelming midterm performance has forced members fringe and establishment to take stock of their allegiance to Trump, whose deep unpopularity has weighed them down in three straight elections now. Such soul-searching has brought about some unusually frank rhetoric about the former president: “He’s been on the mound and lost three straight games,” Utah Senator Mitt Romney told the Associated Press. “If we want to start winning, we need someone else on the mound.” Some have already turned their gaze toward potential 2024 successors: “Let me tell you something,” Republican Representative Maria Elvira Salazar told reporters. “I do know the next Republican presidential contender is coming from Florida” — a reference, it seemed, not to the man in the gilded golf club in Palm Beach, but to the guy in the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee: Ron DeSantis.

Still, all this talk of moving past Trump feels notably passive. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who has been teasing a run of his own, finally found the courage to admit that he was “angered” when Trump sicced an armed mob on him on January 6. But in that same primetime interview with ABC News’ David Muir, Pence still couldn’t bring himself to say that Trump shouldn’t be president again.

“Given all you witnessed in the Capitol that day, this is a pretty straightforward question, a yes or a no — do you believe that Donald Trump should ever be president again?” Muir asked.

“David, I think that’s up to the American people,” Pence replied, not giving a yes or a no, but assuring him that voters may have “better choices in the future.”

Other Republicans have been similarly coy. “Looking forward is always a better campaign strategy,” West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito told Politico. “We ought to look forward.” “I’m sure I’ll support the nominee of the Republican Party,” Texas Senator John Cornyn added. “But I think there’s likely to be a competitive primary election.”

It’s not nothing that Republicans seem to be moving away from Trump, especially when they’re making their name known in the process. And the drift away from the former president extends beyond just elected officials: Party benefactors — like the right-wing Club for Growth and billionaire megadonor Ken Griffin — also seem ready to hop off the Trump Train, putting the president in perhaps his weakest political standing since the aftermath of the insurrection.

Which is precisely why the timid disavowals are so maddening. We’re talking here about a man who managed to be the biggest loser in an election he wasn’t even on the ballot for. So what are they afraid of? The bullying act he’s used to keep his party in line — i.e., mean nicknames on social media, often with a vague jab about the target’s spouse — has never felt more played out. (“Ron DeSanctimonious?” Come on, man.) And while Trump and his supporters will attack anyone who hits out at him, they’ve made clear they won’t distinguish between a love tap and an uppercut to the jaw — so if you’re going to take a swing, you might as well put some muscle behind it, right? The former president does still command a loyal base, including on Capitol Hill. (Senator-elect J.D. Vance, one of the few Trump gambles to pay off this cycle, has already penned a defense of the former president.) But his brand of extremism has been fundamentally absorbed into the fabric of the party, making his actual presence in it less necessary.

This isn’t only about Republicans’ humiliating lack of self-respect, as evidenced in Pence’s apparent inability to offer anything but the blandest condemnation of the way his old boss put his life — and democracy — in peril. It’s about how these meek calls to move on from him — almost always framed through the lens of politics, not principle — have fallen short time and again. Trump is in a shaky political position, but he has bounced back before. If Republicans are more serious about moving on this time, they need to actually back up their words with some action.