President Trump is down in the polls. The Republican National Convention is mostly canceled. And now, some Republicans are contemplating the unthinkable: Would they be better off losing in November and rebuilding for 2024?
“The thought is starting to cross people’s minds,” said a Republican strategist who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “One way or the other, there will be life after Trump.”
This remains a small minority position among Republicans. Trump’s popularity with rank-and-file party members endures. Even a recent Fox News poll that contained mostly bad news for Trump showed 73% of his supporters were happy with their choices, compared to 62% of presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s. But Trump has never been particularly strong with the GOP’s governing and consultant class, dating back to 2016, and his relationship with them has waxed and waned with his political fortunes.
The theory is that if Trump is defeated, Democrats led by an aging and diminished Biden will pursue an unpopular left-wing political agenda and inherit the pandemic, economic downturn, and civil unrest. Republicans would likely recover in the midterm elections in 2022, possibly regaining a chamber or two of Congress. This could put the party in a strong position to turn the page on Trump in 2024.
This is roughly how it played out for the GOP in the midterm elections of 1994, 2010, and 2014 in response to the Democratic presidencies of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. But they failed to defeat Clinton and Obama for reelection, so both Democrats served eight years despite their party’s down-ballot losses.
Obama secured Obamacare and put two liberals on the Supreme Court, though the Senate GOP blocked a third. Clinton won a tax increase Republicans later partially repealed, a crime bill with a since-expired assault weapons ban, and also added two liberals to the Supreme Court. Even so, his welfare reform, a capital gains tax cut, and the balanced budget were more to Republicans’ liking. The Clinton healthcare bill was defeated before Republicans won their first House majority in 40 years. If Biden wins, the question would be whether something like Medicare for All or two additional liberal justices would happen before the next GOP electoral triumph.
“The argument is basically whether the country could withstand the Left’s agenda for two years, especially if Schumer gets rid of the filibuster, if Biden wins, and the Senate goes down,” said a second Republican strategist. “Versus, can we wait another four years for the party to start to recover from Trump.”
One fear Republicans had of Trump’s 2016 candidacy was that he would reduce the party’s share of the Hispanic vote to something approximating its frequently single-digit percentage of the black vote. While Trump receives poor marks in most polls for his handling of race relations, that hasn’t happened. Trump slightly improved on Mitt Romney’s 2012 performance with minority voters, and Republican candidates continued to win between a quarter and a third of Latinos, even in the otherwise disappointing 2018 midterm elections.
But Republicans have taken a beating with college-educated, suburban white voters, once a reliable GOP constituency, since Trump became the face of the party. That was more than offset in 2016 by gains among working-class white voters, who were better distributed in the states needed for an Electoral College majority, yet not in 2018 nor the polls so far in 2020. If the Rust Belt turns blue again, Trump would be a one-term president, and some party operatives would view that single term as a Pyrrhic victory.
Some are skeptical the party can quickly recover under either scenario. “Just how do eunuchs grow back their balls?” asked Republican strategist Rick Tyler, a frequent Trump critic. “No, this will be a post-Watergate-scale wipeout of the formerly Grand Old Party.”
Congressional Republicans and possible 2024 contenders are already jockeying for position regardless. “The handful of Louie Gohmerts and Jim Jordans of the party are always complaining at the mics about something when conference meets, so this week was no surprise,” said strategist Rory Cooper, a former communications director for then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. “Certainly when and if Trump loses, they will want to reassert their typical antagonism of leadership because that sums up their governing philosophy, which has been temporarily displaced by defending anything Trump says or does.”
Still, the overwhelming majority of Republicans support Trump, and neither the campaign nor the candidate have given up. The president resumed regular coronavirus briefings, celebrated the return of baseball on the White House lawn, and raised $20 million in a virtual fundraiser this week.