The GOP’s Warholian campaign and the inevitability of Trump

Let me paint a picture for you about the immediate future of the Republican presidential primaries. It’s a picture based not on interest in a single campaign or party but on experience, knowledge, judgment and a close reading of American political history.

For more than a year, the race remained relatively static. People expressed their intentions, and some even entered the field, but there were only two big centers of gravity throughout 2022 and into this summer.

The first is former President Donald Trump, the glistening, seething singularity of resentment, mania, greed, ego and paranoia that informs and shapes every aspect of today’s Republican Party. Lawless, shameless and nervous in equal measure, he’s running for protection, redemption and the raw power he craves like the most potent drug imaginable.

Before his legal troubles accelerated, he was hovering in the low 50s in polls of Republican voters, a strong position, to be sure. Still, there was at least an argument that the voters of the law-and-order party would seek an exit from a candidate noted for lawlessness and disorder. 

Today, he’s in the mid to high 50s of Republican voters and climbing, slowly but surely. The inevitable gravity of Trump and the party is reasserting itself.

The other figure in the race was the golden child, the blessed one, the savior, the great hope of the post-Trump era, Ron DeSantis.

The Florida governor had it all, red state at his back, a big win and tidal waves of money from establishment Republican donors in Wall Street, Silicon Valley and beyond. There wasn’t a hedge fund bro or private equity guy in America who didn’t think Ivy League Ron could deliver the tax cuts and regulatory advantages without all the drama and noise of Donald Trump.

But DeSantis was like a Tinder date gone very, very wrong. Instead of some handsome suitor showing up at their door, DeSantis was politically inept, personally off-putting and deep in the embrace of the fringiest (and cringiest) elements of the nationalist-populist fringe.

No one who wrote Ron DeSantis a check with six or seven figures on it expected their golden boy would hire a claque of barely disguised alt-right cranks for his campaign. No one sitting in a board room off Sand Hill Road thought DeSantis would float naming conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., as head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or Food and Drug Administration.

They believed all that money and the talented people surrounding DeSantis would mold him into the candidate they needed to defeat Trump. 

But some things can’t be trained. Even if DeSantis had been willing (and he most certainly was not) to be trained, it would’ve been an uphill battle. He’s not good with humans, he’s terrible in the room and he bleats out the word “woke” as if he’s suffering from culture war Tourette’s syndrome.

Those donors were also shocked to learn that Ron and his wife, Casey, were spending their money in a way that would make drunken sailors blush. The private jet fleet, the imperial-sized staff and the ludicrous burn rate of both the campaign and the SuperPAC all came home to roost as donors and supporters cooled.

When you drop, as DeSantis did, from the mid-30s to the low teens in GOP primary polling, you can forget your Camelot dream house.

This should’ve surprised no one who observed DeSantis. But now Republican elite circles are in a frenzy to find the next substitute to take on Trump…and the next and the next.

The nomination was always Trump’s to lose, and with the former president polling at over 50 percent in Iowa, their chances are narrowing by the day. 

Iowa was the state where DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence and many others hoped to land a sharp blow with a victory against Trump to set the tone and narrative of the race. That’s a fading hope.

So as DeSantis fades, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) will have his moment in the sun. The money will flow, and the expectations will rise. Scott, an affable, sometimes bordering on an inspirational man who, in ordinary circumstances would be highly competitive, will fade. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, the establishment’s Hamlet in a sweater vest, will similarly peer into the void of the Republican base vote, and slowly step away.

In a Warholian way, expect almost every candidate in the field to have their 15 minutes as the new best hope and then, as has always been inevitable, Trump will win the nomination. 

Not one of the candidates can win over Trump’s party and Trump’s base without cost and consequence. They know that if Trump loses the primaries by some unlikely and improbable miracle, he will retreat to Mar-A-Lago and issue endless pronouncements of a stolen Republican primary, peeling off two or three or 10 or 15 percent of the Republican base vote in the general election.

I’ve sat with dozens of donors and operatives in the last year, almost all of whom engaged in the fervent wishcasting that Trump will just die or somehow be instantly convicted for his crimes. They genuinely believe the charges against Trump hit the MAGA base like they hit people in the real world. They’re wrong.

Little evidence indicates this is the case. The evidence, in fact, points to a hardening of base support in his favor. Moral suasion or countervailing information will never change the hearts and minds of Trump supporters. The Republican Party is stuck with him, and so are we.

The election of 2024, saving some wild externality, will still be Donald Trump and Joseph Biden. You don’t have to like it, but you do have to accept it.

Preparing for any other fight is preparing for no fight at all.

Rick Wilson is a former Republican strategist and co-founder of The Lincoln Project