The Republican Party’s 2024 Soul Search
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The Republican Party has a decade of deferred maintenance when the Trump era ends. Some of it dates back to 2013, when it published its 100-page “Growth & Opportunity Project,” commonly known as the GOP Autopsy. On the heels of a second consecutive White House defeat, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus formed a committee to analyze Mitt Romney’s 2012 shortcomings and help chart a path to victory for future Republican candidates. Donald Trump’s subsequent campaign contradicted almost all of the report’s recommendations, chiefly its call for outreach to Hispanic communities, young people, and women. Unfortunately for the members of the GOP establishment, Trump’s one-fingered salute to the autopsy and the party elite worked. The GOP seemed to have reached a consensus that it would pass the baton to a new generation of heirs featuring rising stars like Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Paul Ryan. Eight years later, their potential courses of action radically differ from one another. The Republican Party of 2024 will have three choices: a Trump double down, a 2016 reset, and a permanent populist shift.
The Trump Double Down
Potential Candidates: Vice President Mike Pence, Governor Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump Jr.
While some Republicans and most Americans might not like Trump’s demeanor, his antics undeniably provided an electoral advantage in the Rust Belt battleground states. After all, Trump outpaced Hillary Clinton by 68% among the plurality of 2016 voters in Pennsylvania who said that the most important quality in their candidate was the ability to “bring change.” There’s no question that Trump’s personality was a major change from what Americans were used to in their politicians.
Each of the three potential candidates named above is similar to the President in some way. Donald Trump Jr. has become a fan favorite of Trump diehards. He has 5.7 million Twitter followers and attracts large crowds at rallies anytime he hits the trail to speak on his father’s behalf. Another natural Trump successor, Mike Pence has the unique quality of being able to cater to the President’s well-established base as well as to Trump converts and the religious right within the party. Ron DeSantis, however, might be the most interesting candidate to occupy the President’s lane in the GOP. The Congressman-turned-Governor of Florida rose to national prominence in 2018 during a bitterly contested gubernatorial race against Andrew Gillum. DeSantis, much like the President, does not care for the conventional and ran an ad during the governor’s race in which he used blocks to “build the wall” with his two young children. He is anything but a conventional politician and embodies the same distaste for duplicity that the President does.
This fall’s election will be critical in deciding the long-term viability of Trumpism within the Republican Party. In the event that Trump loses--and especially if his deficits in traditional strongholds such as Arizona and Georgia turn into statewide losses--it would make the electoral math for a DeSantis, Pence, or Trump Jr. campaign look bleak come 2024. Even if Trump wins, there is an equal risk that the Trump coalition needs Donald Trump himself on the ticket just as much as the Obama coalition needed Barack Obama to stay together in 2016.
The 2016 Time Machine
Potential Candidates: Senator Ted Cruz, Senator Marco Rubio
Cruz or Rubio succeeding on a follow-up effort for the Republican nomination would be the least dramatic outcome four years from now, but it would still make sense. Rubio’s native Florida will more than likely be the most important swing state again in 2024, and Cruz’s Texas has flirted with flipping blue in recent years. Since Trump took office, the two have embraced the President and supported his policies but could turn to their vociferous opposition to him in 2016 to lure voters who never quite warmed up to Trump. Their much more professional, polished demeanor headlining the Republican ticket could do wonders to repair the party’s image in the post-Trump world.
Although both southern senators are relatively young at age 49 right now, there’s a chance they might lose some of their youthful fire four years from now. In 2016, they were both still in their first term in the Senate and could credibly distance themselves from the establishment as a “new generation” of conservative leadership. Now, they are firmly baked into the political scene. If there is a cry for change from the right during the 2024 primary, neither Cruz nor Rubio can effectively carry the torch for that movement. The most obvious flaw for both prospective candidates is their 2016 primary defeat. If a Trump acolyte ends up in the field, he could easily follow the same playbook that Trump himself used to torpedo his rivals from the senate in 2016.
The New Wave Populists
Potential Candidates: Senator Tom Cotton, Senator Josh Hawley
The most unexpected candidates in the unofficial 2024 field right now are Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri and Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas. Negotiations for one of the recent coronavirus relief packages, according to The Hill, were testy within Republican circles of the Senate because 2024 hopefuls Rubio, Cruz, Hawley, and Cotton each wanted to make pieces of the bill their pet signature issue. Hawley hoped to attach himself “a fully refundable tax credit for home-schooling expenses,” a proposal consistent with his populist call in April to “cover 80 percent of wages for workers at any U.S. business.” Cotton, meanwhile, has tried to play party elder this summer, encouraging Republican colleagues to make their legislation helpful to “listen to the needs of vulnerable Senate Republicans in tough races.”
Cotton made waves earlier this summer when he wrote a fiery op-ed in The New York Times calling upon the President to send in the military to handle protests in response to police brutality. He is somewhat of a unicorn in the GOP, according to former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, who noted Cotton’s ability to appeal to the Republican elite and Trump devotees. Bannon posed, “How many guys in town can give a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations and also get kudos in the pages of Breitbart?” Cotton has also been outspoken in his criticism of China for contributing to the spread of COVID-19, going as far as claiming that it was created by the Chinese government. Hawley has declared a similarly populist war on big tech companies. Stances like these would help both of them with voters skeptical of big government, big business, and globalism.
The biggest drawbacks are in their foreign policy, particularly that of Hawley, who advised the President against withdrawing troops from Syria. Interventionism seems to be losing its luster in conservative circles. Hawley and Cotton also might be too conservative, should the party try to nominate a moderate in 2024. Their staunch conservatism, coupled with the geographic disadvantage of not being from swing states, could inhibit their ability to mount an effective general election campaign.
The Republican Party has no lack of options at its disposal come 2024. While sticking with Trumpism or kicking it back to 2016 are different choices in temperament, they are similar at their core in that they opt out of a dramatic party makeover. At this point, it’s a matter of either driving the Trump train forward on the same rail or taking it backward and getting a new, less divisive paint job. The Hawley/Cotton move, though, would represent a significant shift toward populism in the GOP. It would involve gutting the Trump train down to nuts and bolts, giving it a never before seen paint job, and getting it on an entirely different track with different passengers with different values.
If the American conservative movement wants to remain a formidable force, it has to continue energizing the right. In some circles, there persists this idea that Republicans win general election campaigns by tacking to the middle. Considering that the Democratic Party seems to be on a leftward lurch, this “run to the center” argument makes sense, at least conceptually. But the data paints a much different picture. Voters identifying as “moderate” have broken for Democrats in each of the past four national elections. In 2012, Barack Obama won this group by 15%, in 2016 Hillary Clinton carried it by 12%, and in the 2018 midterms, Democratic candidates defeated Republicans by 26%. Instead of trying to convince the moderate demographic to change its mind, the party would have a much better chance of trying to turn more conservatives out to the polls. Establishment heavyweights Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio would not spur that kind of turnout among the non-voters-turned-Trump voters in the Rust Belt. Candidates like Ron DeSantis or Josh Hawley would. Running to the right might not be the best for America’s strained civil discourse, but it would be the best for the GOP’s sustainability. Only time, the 2020 election, and soul searching will tell where the party decides to go.