Trump indictment lays out clear choice for GOP voters: Should 2024 be all about him? | Opinion
The accusations in Tuesday’s indictment that Donald Trump led a criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election clarifies the choices for Republican voters in the months ahead:
Do they want the 2024 election to be mostly about this, over and above all the issues that matter to themselves and their neighbors? And do they think a man facing this court case and at least two others can possibly be elected?
If the GOP re-nominates Trump, the entire campaign will be about the former president and his legal fate. If Republicans want to talk about high gas or food prices that are hurting middle-class Americans; dangers lurking abroad; or even Joe Biden’s fitness to remain in office, where will they find any oxygen? The top of their ticket will be focused entirely on saving his own skin.
Trump will fight even harder now for himself rather than for his voters or the country. We’ve already learned that a staggering share of donations to his campaign committees are being used to pay his legal costs, rather than the work of defeating Democrats. That will only increase — Trump may have at least one more indictment to come, in Georgia.
And all this will not affect just Trump. Any Republican on a ballot with him at the top could suffer if independent voters decide, firmly and finally, to make a statement against Trump’s ways. Our nation is firmly divided, and Biden will be a weak candidate. But the electorate could be roused to say, reasonably and overwhelmingly, that their concerns must carry the day over those of one man. Republicans could lose seats they never imagined. At a minimum, they’ll squander their best chance to control the Senate in years.
Special prosecutor Jack Smith makes a comprehensive case that Trump and those who did his bidding knew their claims of election fraud were bogus. Any reasonable person who reads the full indictment should come away with a firm conviction that none of these people, least of all Trump, should be allowed anywhere near power again. Their willingness to make things up on the fly, flout the law and well-established election procedures, and raise the temperature in the body politic to dangerous levels — it’s all offensive and immoral.
Less convincing, though, is labeling it a criminal conspiracy. Americans are blessed with broad speech and political rights. It will alarm many voters that these disputes, even over these heinous actions, would be charged as crimes — especially when an administration just happens to be prosecuting the chief political rival of its leader. As much as possible, we should strive to let our political systems handle political disputes.
A recent New York Times poll showing Trump with a commanding lead over any possible rival for the GOP nomination has rippled through the political world this week. The takeaway, reasonably, is that Trump starts from a position of such strength, with voters who will almost certainly never abandon him, that there is almost no path for any other Republican.
Largely overlooked, however, was this: Trump, while out of office, is essentially an incumbent within his own party. Nearly half of voters want someone else, and more are open to the possibility of abandoning him.
If the GOP voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, who dial into the details of elections more than those in other states, become concerned about how the party will fare if a campaign is largely about Trump’s misdeeds, his support could gradually unravel. It’s up to those early-state voters to truly evaluate whether their party can survive another ride with Trump.
Biden’s growing political weakness, his frailty on daily display, the increasingly damaging revelations about his son’s business dealings: It all shapes up into a president who cannot win re-election. In an environment in which more than half the country disapproves of his performance and two-thirds believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, the out-of-power party should sweep in 2024.
One thing can save Biden: facing Trump. Republicans have about five months to chart a new course away from an entirely avoidable and predictable fate.
They just have to choose principles over devotion to one politician.
This story was originally published August 1, 2023 at 7:40 PM with the headline "Trump indictment lays out clear choice for GOP voters: Should 2024 be all about him? | Opinion."
