Don’t look now, but the political sands are shifting in the Republican Party — and faster than anyone thought possible. When the 2022 election cycle started, a blessing from former President Donald Trump brought an automatic ticket to ride out of a competitive GOP primary. A year later, Trump’s touch is proving far less than Midas.
Consider my home state of Georgia. After refusing to endorse unproven claims of election fraud, incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp became the top target for retribution from the former president. Trump’s venom toward Kemp knows no bounds. He went so far as coaxing former Sen. David Perdue, a fellow 2020 loser, out of retirement to launch a quixotic primary challenge.
The results have been borderline humiliating for Perdue. His fundraising has lagged badly — he had less than a million dollars banked at the end of the latest reporting period compared to $12.7 million for Kemp. He has struggled to articulate a rationale for his candidacy beyond a prolonged relitigation of the last election. Public polling shows Kemp with a double-digit lead, a margin poised to grow as Perdue’s campaign runs on financial fumes.
Never one to learn from mistakes, Trump has continued to meddle in Georgia primaries, even throwing his support behind a challenger, Patrick Witt, best known as a member of the post-election legal team in Georgia, for state insurance and fire safety commissioner.
With a Twitter account declaring, “Patrick Witt — Endorsed by President Trump,” the playbook is not subtle. The incumbent Trump and Witt are vying to unseat, John King, is a native of Mexico and Georgia’s first Hispanic statewide official. A former detective in the Atlanta Police Department and onetime chief of police of the city of Doraville, Georgia, King is also a major general in the Army National Guard.
In other words, he’s exactly the type of candidate Republican leaders should be promoting for the future. His only “sin” was receiving the support of Kemp.
This trend is playing out beyond Georgia. In the North Carolina Senate race, the Trump-blessed Rep. Ted Budd has consistently trailed in his primary. In Alabama, Rep. Mo Brooks has fallen so flat that even Trump labeled him “disappointing” and is mulling pulling his support.
There are three main factors driving this trend. First, every day that passes is a day removed from the Trump presidency. Voters’ memories are short, and they live in the future, not the past. Trump deserves credit for his legitimate conservative accomplishments: tax cuts, conservative judges, rolled-back regulations. They were the right policies for the country but are fading from public view.
Second, each moment brings a fresh reminder of the failures of the Biden presidency. From the chaos at the southern border to 40-year-high inflation to gas prices hitting new records: The Biden era has not been kind to America. The performance of the current president has been so underwhelming that one cannot help but wonder how Trump ever lost to him in the first place.
Finally, Trump’s mixed messaging toward Russian President Vladimir Putin, combined with the horrifying scenes of war playing out in real-time, has been a political loser. The country may not want to engage in a war 5,000 miles away, but its residents also would not label the man responsible for the heinous killing and suffering as a person with “savvy” or “genius.”
To be sure, Trump continues to have clout with rank-and-file Republicans. He dominates early and hypothetical horse race polling for the GOP nomination. But a look beyond the head-to-head numbers offers more useful data points.
An NBC News poll from January showed 56% of Republicans identifying as bigger supporters of the GOP than Trump; 36% said their loyalty lay more with Trump. Just before the 2020 election, the numbers were almost exactly the opposite: 54% called themselves more supportive of Trump, compared to 38% who were more loyal to the party.
The legacy media will always strive to link the GOP inextricably to Trump, but our party is about more than any one individual or personality. It’s an open question of how long the process will take, but the early signs indicate new lanes are opening for a fresh crop of leaders to help the party rise from the ashes of the 2020 election.
Republican Geoff Duncan is the 12th lieutenant governor of Georgia.
