Budowsky: Why Trump indictments could doom GOP in 2024
After former President Donald Trump’s stunning victory in the 2016 presidential election, the Republican Party underperformed in three consecutive elections.
The powerful indictments from special counsel Jack Smith in the classified documents case will draw massive media attention for many months to come. With the highly visible and aggressive support for Trump from so many House Republicans, the GOP is making the same mistake it made in 2018, 2020 and 2022.
The odds are high that Smith will proceed with another set of indictments involving the crimes committed on Jan. 6, 2021, crimes that have already led to many convictions.
The odds are also high that Fulton County (Ga.) District Attorney Fani Willis will initiate a major case against Trump in August that could well lead to indictments under state law.
This is on top of the indictments by the district attorney in Manhattan, Alvin Bragg, involving alleged payoffs to Stormy Daniels. Trump’s actions today follow the formula he has adopted in earlier cases, except he has doubled down, and tripled down, on his aggressive rhetoric and tactics.
These attacks involve rhetoric so extreme and hostile that many law enforcement experts now fear that they are provoking similar extreme and hostile rhetoric and tactics from some of his more visible supporters — creating a fear that they could provoke violence.
Most House Republican leaders continue to support Trump vehemently, and Senate Republican leaders have been timid in their criticism of Trump. Most Republican presidential candidates have defended Trump on the classified documents case and thus have positioned the GOP in the weakest possible position for 2024.
It is widely said, probably correctly, that Trump’s aggressive and hostile tactics have helped him secure the Republican nomination for president in 2024 by locking many Republicans into supporting him on the indictments, but hurt him, and Republicans, in the 2024 general election by alienating them from the larger mainstream of America. The politically disastrous problem Trump creates for Republicans is threefold.
First, he could well be nominated and propel President Biden and Democrats to a landslide victory.
Second, he could be defeated for the nomination and become even more bitter and angry and lead his supporters to refuse to support Republicans they believe betrayed them, or even run as a third-party candidate, which would likely hand Biden and Democrats a huge victory.
Third, his dominance of the media prohibits any major Republican candidate or nominee from making a winning appeal to the public.
And in the case of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, it has already led him to be portrayed as a mini-Trump with factional policies that are unpopular with the nation as a whole.
Trump has many Republicans attacking almost every agency of justice and law enforcement. He attacks the FBI, Justice Department and attorney general. He attacks U.S. attorneys, many district attorneys, special counsels and their families. He attacks military leaders, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley and patriotic Americans who count votes.
It is ironic: Trump has created a political curse on Republicans that gravely damages them with those outside the party but has so far forced many of them to support him on the indictments.
Budowsky served as an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Texas) and former Rep. Bill Alexander (D-Ark.), who was chief deputy majority whip of the House of Representatives.