There are two basic theories about how Donald J. Trump could be defeated in a Republican primary. It is possible that neither, both, or a combination of both can work in practice. But thinking about it thoroughly makes it easier to think about and judge the various attempts to beat him – and why so many failed.
In our next article, we’ll take a look at whether and how Ron DeSantis fits the bill — and why his campaign has struggled to meet the very real challenge of defeating a former president.
Theory one: Trumpism without Trump
This kind of candidacy assumes that Mr. Trump’s populist conservatism has reoriented the Republican Party in irreversible and beneficial ways, but that his personal conduct has been a disaster for conservatives.
In this view, his poor hiring and lack of experience and focus prevented him from being an effective president. His crude remarks, tweets, election denial, and ultimately January 6th cost Republicans not only the White House and Senate, but the chance of a truly decisive victory — like Mr. DeSantis’s in 2022 in Florida.
According to this theory, the same personal weaknesses are his vulnerability in a 2024 Republican primary. A challenger to Mr. Trump should therefore get as close as possible to him on the issues, while distinguishing himself or herself on electability, competence and character.
If you picture yourself in a hypothetical brainstorming session for the Trumpism Without Trump campaign, you can imagine the kind of attacks that could lead to criticism of a hapless, weak president who was unable to make America great again. In this view, Mr. Trump presided over rising crime, a strengthening China, increasing trade deficits, rising drug overdose deaths and a stronger Democratic Party. He talked a big game, but didn’t accomplish much. He failed to build a wall. He lost to sleepy Joe Biden. He sold. The election was stolen from under his nose. He let himself get carried away by the Deep State and did nothing to dismantle it. He let Dr. Fauci in our lives and the vaccine in our bodies. He failed to command the respect of the military and hired numerous people whom he now considers disloyal. Not all of these attacks are ready for prime time, but a combination could work, and you could no doubt come up with other examples.
The logic of Trumpism Without Trump has merit, but it’s not as simple as it sounds. Indeed, it suffers from a clear and fundamental problem: It won’t work if the Republicans still want Mr. Trump.
There is another, less obvious problem: It is difficult for this type of candidate to unite Trump’s various skeptical factions. After all, many of Mr. Trump’s most outspoken opponents oppose both Trumpism and the man himself. This creates routine clashes between a Trumpism Without Trump candidate and his or her most likely own supporters. It could even lead many of those supporters to look for an explicitly anti-Trump candidate.
Theory Two: An Alternative to Trumpism
This theory is a bit more complicated. It describes something that does not yet exist. But the case for this theory continues with the latest critique of Trumpism Without Trump.
An anti-Trump candidate will probably have to be more than Trumpism Without Trump: It would take a revived conservatism to accomplish the challenging task of uniting everyone from the Trumpist types to the supporters of Mitt Romney’s Reaganism to the Ted Cruz Tea Partiers.
Needless to say this would be challenging. To do this, a conservative would need to find a message that instantly ticks the boxes and wins the hearts of several factions – without alienating the rest. That is not easy, given the many differences of opinion between the different factions of the Republican Party. But something like this has happened before under conditions that are in some ways similar to today’s.
Consider the circumstances that led to the last major renewal of conservatism, in the 1970s. The parallels with today are striking. In both 1979 and 2023, conservatives could say that inflation and crime were high; the Kremlin had decided to invade a neighbor; and a new class of young, highly educated activists immediately drove some old-school liberals to the right, sparking an outright conservative backlash. In any case, it was 15 years after a groundbreaking breakthrough for black Americans (the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the election of Barack Obama in 2008).
Just like today, the right one was broken. The politicians embodying the various wings of a possible Republican coalition—Barry Goldwater, George Wallace, and Gerald Ford—were as diverse ideologically as Mr. Cruz, Mr. Trump, and Mr. Romney. But the events of the 1960s and 1970s created the conditions that allowed these groups to unite around a revived conservatism that dominated the Republican Party for the next 30 years.
The anti-New Left reaction of the 1960s and 1970s was strong enough to bring some once-liberal intellectuals and the religious right together against the excesses of the counterculture. Resistance to the civil rights era, rising crime, and the failure of the Great Society brought working class, urban, white ethnic Reagan Democrats together with Sun Belt suburbs. High inflation and a growing tax burden provided neoliberal economics with a way to reconcile big business, working-class economic interests, and white resentment.
The conditions for rejuvenated conservatism are nowhere near as favorable today as they were in 1979. They don’t even seem as favorable as they were in 2021. But it’s not 2015 anymore either. Many of the conditions that led to Trumpian populism have disappeared. Fears of economic stagnation, high unemployment and low interest rates have given way to inflation and high interest rates. Globalization is undeniably on the wane. The Forever Wars are over and the politics of the great powers are back. Meanwhile, the emergence of a newly “awakened” left and lingering resentment over coronavirus restrictions have spawned a new set of problems that did not exist a decade ago.
If you look in the right corners of the internet, you’ll see these changes clumping into new kinds of conservatives. You can see neo-neocons on Substack, where Obama-era liberals who insist they aren’t conservatives rant against “waking up” and forge unusual alliances with old conservatives. There is even a kind of neo-neoliberalism, such as a small corner on the right is considering deregulation to control costs, and even progressives are thinking about “supply-side” policies. Many of the people working on these ideas were also skeptics about the restrictions of the coronavirus, especially the closure of schools. The growing concern about Russia and China needs no explanation.
If you put all these different pieces together, you can imagine the contours of a revived conservatism related to the challenges of 2023, not 2015 or 1979. Compared to 2015, it would be distinguished by anti-woke cultural politics, a stronger approach to Russia or China, and deregulation to tackle inflation and promote ‘freedom’. It also fulfills the key element for the Alternative to Trumpism theory: Moderate elites and Obama-era tea parties can agree on all of these issues or at least tolerate the other side.
But like Trumpism Without Trump, this approach runs into a fundamental problem: It’s not clear whether these new issues are strong enough to hold together the disparate elements of the anti-Trump coalition through a campaign primary.
In the past year or so, new developments tend to weaken the power of the new problems. The pandemic is over, at least politically. “Wake up” can fade a bit as a problem. Meanwhile, the old problems are making a comeback. Inflation is declining, but the end of pandemic-era restrictions has renewed focus on the border. The end of Roe v. Wade has put abortion back at the center of American life. Nothing comparable could be said in 1979, when older divisive battles over civil rights or Medicare had clearly given way to a new set of more acute challenges. Imagine how much harder it would have been for Ronald Reagan to strike a balance between winning the South and the rest of the country in the Republican primary if Brown v. Board had been overturned by conservative judges in 1978.
There’s another reason why the new issues may not be enough: they don’t always provide easy avenues for attacking Mr. Trump. There are some obvious but fundamentally limited opportunities, such as Russia and China. But after that it gets harder. Inflation could be a plausible path: The argument would be that Mr. Trump’s tariffs, the push for lower interest rates, immigration restrictions, government spending, stimulus measures and major tax cuts have all contributed to supply chain problems, labor shortages and excessive ask. This would even allow for a natural comparison, lumping him in with Mr. Biden. But this attack is complicated to execute, and it doesn’t seem to be political gold.
Importantly, it’s hard to attack Mr. Trump on “Wake Up,” which is probably still the one new issue with the most resonance in the Republican Party, even if it’s not as high profile as it was a year or two ago. The attack on Wake provides some opportunity for a contrast to Mr. Trump, embracing American Greatness as an explicit critique of Wake’s anti-Americanism and an implicit critique of dystopian MAGAism. Nikki Haley has taken this tack. But it’s not at all clear whether this sunnier brand has any resonance with conservative voters.
Realistically, a successful campaign needs the hallmarks of both Trumpism without Trump and an alternative to Trumpism. Only, neither seems enough. The strongest candidacy will benefit a little from some aspects of the others. If done right, maybe no one knows exactly what category it falls into.
Next, we’ll take a look at why Mr. DeSantis is a distinct candidate who comes close to both but has so far failed to do so – with poll numbers to show.