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Politico: Just how big is the Always Trump component of the Republican Party?
Despite his difficulties since he left office, about a third of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters still consider themselves supporters more of Trump than the Republican Party, according to a recent NBC News poll. Many of them aren’t going anywhere. Fully 28 percent of Republican primary voters are so devoted to the former president that they said they’d support him even if he ran as an independent, according to a national survey last month from The Bulwark and longtime Republican pollster Whit Ayres. Indeed, the “Always Trump” component of the party is so pronounced that it’s affecting how Trump’s opponents operate around him.
“All these folks are just hoping that Trump’s going to have a heart attack on a golf course one day, and that’s going to solve this problem for them,” said Fergus Cullen, a former New Hampshire Republican Party chair. “Not much of a strategy.”
It’s hard to fault them. Republican campaigns have calculated that they can’t afford to offend an entire swath of the GOP electorate still sympathetic to Trump. Instead, they’ve chosen to chip away at them through non-aggressive means.
In her announcement speech, Haley did not directly criticize Trump but called for “mandatory mental competency tests for politicians over 75 years old” — an age that would include both President Joe Biden, 80, and Trump, 76. Meanwhile DeSantis has either ignored or brushed aside Trump’s attacks, choosing to contrast himself by his 2022 results and Trump’s 2020 ones.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/28/trump-voters-republican-primary-00084652
“All these folks are just hoping that Trump’s going to have a heart attack on a golf course one day, and that’s going to solve this problem for them,” said Fergus Cullen, a former New Hampshire Republican Party chair. “Not much of a strategy.”
It’s hard to fault them. Republican campaigns have calculated that they can’t afford to offend an entire swath of the GOP electorate still sympathetic to Trump. Instead, they’ve chosen to chip away at them through non-aggressive means.
In her announcement speech, Haley did not directly criticize Trump but called for “mandatory mental competency tests for politicians over 75 years old” — an age that would include both President Joe Biden, 80, and Trump, 76. Meanwhile DeSantis has either ignored or brushed aside Trump’s attacks, choosing to contrast himself by his 2022 results and Trump’s 2020 ones.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/28/trump-voters-republican-primary-00084652
9 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
He'll never be elected to anything again. For all we know he'll hop on a plane and leave the country in the middle of the night. Or maybe he'll be doing a prime-time perp walk real soon.
Either way, he'll never be a candidate and the whole grifting bonanza will be over. Doesn't matter what the MAGAts think, they'll just have to go on living, one way or another.
I'm rooting for Jack Smith and Fani Willis.
