It is heartening to see some important
Republican figures
come out against Donald Trump,
but it's worth
noting that many of them embraced him
when he proposed a Muslim ban.
Strong armed Ukraine's
president was impeached
and then tried to overturn an election.
His real sin in their eyes is that
now he is losing popularity.
However, Trump's slump among Republicans
could change.
Imagine that during the 2024 campaign,
the Republican Party runs
a large and varied field.
Ron DeSantis,
Mike Pence, Mike
Pompeo, Nikki Haley, Larry Hogan
and Liz Cheney,
among other possible candidates,
Trump would start with a shrunken base,
but would generate enormous publicity
and would likely win
the single largest vote share
in the early primaries.
He might not get best
50% of the vote in any state,
but most Republican state primary systems
favor the front runner.
And in state after state,
he would just do better than anyone else.
As Ron Brownstein reminds us, that is
how Trump became the presumptive
nominee in 2016.
While only garnering around 40% of
total votes,
voters did deliver
a powerful rebuke to the Republicans
in the midterm elections.
And clearly it was centered around
two issues election denial and abortion.
But those who shifted appear
to have been independents
and a sliver of moderate Republicans.
These are not the voters
who will determine
the results of Republican primaries.
The results also don't tell us enough
about a possible matchup between Trump
and DeSantis.
DeSantis victory
in the Florida
gubernatorial race was impressive,
but in the early stages
of a presidential campaign,
DeSantis would not be facing
Trump mano a mano,
but rather as one choice among many.
A New York Times
Siena poll from October found
that almost half of likely primary voters
still prefer Trump,
with about a quarter
favoring DeSantis
and only 6% favoring Pence.
DeSantis is popularity
will probably have increased
in recent weeks,
but in a possible 20,
24 presidential campaign,
he will be fighting for not Trump voters
and the not Trump
lane of the Republican Party
is going to get very crowded
with Trump
to have a revival of his fortunes.
Many would jump back on his bandwagon.
Ted Cruz has already reserved
a spot there,
promising that if Trump
were to get the nomination,
he would enthusiastically support him
Republican officials seem to be hoping
that their voters
will do their dirty work
for them and deliver them from Trump.
Reversing the usual roles of leaders
and followers.
But it won't work.
The party must put an end
to its moral cowardice.
And finally, and frontally confront
the cancer within.
Republican leaders
need to explain to their voters
that Trump is a demagog
who tried to undermine
American democracy,
which should make him
an unacceptable
nominee for the Republican Party.
In a fascinating essay
in Foreign
Affairs,
Barnard College scholar Sheri
Berman points out
that America
is something of an outlier
among well-established democracies.
She notes that in many Western
European countries,
right wing
populist parties have been forced
to retreat
from their most extreme positions
and accept mainstream stances on issues
such as the European Union,
the euro and the war in Ukraine.
But in the US, the Republican Party,
having opted
for extremism
in the wake of the Trump revolution,
has been far more willing
to go along with his dictates.
With a slate of almost 300
election deniers
as candidates in the midterms,
the reason Berman points out
both in the essay
and an economist session with me,
is that the institutions
and norms of liberal democracy
are strong in Western Europe.
The political parties act responsibly.
European
and national institutions maintain
their independence,
and leaders call out bad behavior.
So from Sweden to Italy,
when radical right
wing parties come to power,
they are rarely able to change policy
along the dramatic lines
that they had once called for.
She notes that in Sweden and Italy,
the far right
parties have had to moderate
their rhetoric and policies
significantly to attract support
and be seen as serious enough to govern.
The United States,
unfortunately, has a weaker, more open
political system to begin with,
defined nowadays
by primaries, money,
social media and celebrity,
all of which enable
an entrepreneurial politician
like Trump
to take over a major political party
and turn it into something
resembling a personality cult.
At the last
Republican National Convention,
not one of the former presidents
or presidential
nominees of the party spoke,
but six members of Trump's family
were given prominence rights,
something unthinkable
in a European country.
Bowman writes
that Freedom House
and other groups
that track Democratic development,
such as V Dem have noted
a marked decline
in the strength of American democracy,
but have found
no similar decline in Western Europe.
In countries
where democratic institutions
are weaker,
such as Hungary,
Turkey and alas, nowadays
the United States demagogs change parties
rather than the other way around
to fend off this threat.
Republican leaders
must act to purge their party and country
of extremism even after the midterms.
Trump and Trumpism
will not magically vanish.