Not too long ago, Donald Trump looked finished. After the January 6 attack on the Capitol, the repeal of Roe v. Wade, and a poor Republican showing in the 2022 midterms, the GOP seemed eager to move on from the former president. The post-Trump era had supposedly begun.
Just one week after the midterms, he entered the 2024 race, announcing his candidacy to a room of bored-looking hangers-on. Even his children werent there. Security had to pen people in to keep them from leaving during his meandering speech.
Today, thanks to Trumps dominant performance in South Carolina, the Republican primary is all but over. Trumps margin was so comfortable that the Associated Press called the race as soon as polls closed. How did we get here? How did Trump go from historically weak to unassailable?
I talk with Republican-primary voters in focus groups every week, and through these conversations, Ive learned that the answer has as much to do with Trumps party and his would-be competitors as it does with Trump himself. Most Republican leaders have profoundly misread their base in this moment.
The other candidates hoped to be able to defeat Trump even as they accommodated his behavior and made excuses for his criminality. They even said they would support his reelection. By doing so, they established a permission structure for Republican voters to return to Trump, all but ensuring his rise.
My focus groups over the past few years can be seen as a travelogue through the GOPs journey back to Trump. Three key themes emerged that help explain why Trumps opponents failed to gain traction.
First, you cant beat something with nothing. The Republican field didnt offer voters anything new.
Nikki Haley and Mike Pence cast themselves as avatars of the pre-Trump GOP. Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy did their best to imitate Trump, presenting themselves as younger and more competent stewards of the same MAGA agenda. None of them offered a viable alternative to Trump; instead, they spent their resources trying not to anger his supporters.
But Republican voters dont want Reagan Republicanism. Old-school conservatives may pine for a return to balanced budgets, personal responsibility, and American leadership in the world (guilty). But a greater share of Republican voters prefer an isolationist foreign policy and candidates who promise to punish their domestic enemies.
Read: Nikki Haleys endgame
The feds, both parties, the elites want everything to go back to the way it was before Trump got elected, said Bret, a two-time Trump voter from Georgia. And that would be the wrong direction, in my opinion.
And voters arent interested in Trump-lite when they can have the real thing. Trumps supporters see in him a leader whos willing to fight for them. No other candidate proved they could do that better than Trump.
We need a man that is strong as hell, a brick house, said Fred, a two-time Trump voter from South Carolina, in May 2023. He is that man.
Larry, an Iowa Republican, called Trump a disrupter. In the business world, you bring in a disrupter when everybodys stuck in groupthink. Thats what I hired him to do: blow stuff up.
Contrast that with how Republican voters saw his opponents. If you want to be president, youve got to be hated by half the country, said Dakota, a two-time Trump voter from Iowa, adding, about Nikki Haley: I dont think she can do it.
Does it kind of feel in a sense that he just kind of gave up? Ashley, another Iowa Republican, asked about DeSantis before he dropped out of the race.
Pence, Chris Christie, and the other also-rans came in for much worse criticism. I dont know if anyone would vote for him, just his family at this point, Justin, a two-time Trump voter from Texas, said of Pence. I think hes alienated everyone.
The second theme: Trumps competitors declined to hit him on his 91 felony counts, despite the fact that voters say they have serious concerns about them. Instead, most of them (with the honorable exceptions of Christie and Asa Hutchinson) actively defended Trump.
DeSantis called the charges the criminalization of politics. Haley said the charges were more about revenge than about justice. And Ramaswamy promised to pardon Trump on day one.
By the time Haley started attacking Trump in recent weeks, it was already too late. She can call him diminished, unhinged, weak in the knees, and incredibly reckless, but voters saw her raise her hand six months ago when asked whether she would support him if he became the nominee.
If Trumps primary opponents werent going to hold his indictments against him, why should GOP voters? Its all a witch hunt, Dennis, a two-time Trump voter from Michigan, said of the charges. The Department of Justice and state prosecutors bringing the cases are terrified of Trump for whatever reason because theyre afraid he will run and theyre afraid he will win.
Read: Republicans are no longer a political party
Lastly, Trump started to be seen as electable. This represented a big shift from a year ago, when voters had concerns about Trumps ability to beat President Joe Biden in a rematch.
In February 2023, Isaac, a Pennsylvania Republican, said of Trump: I just feel he is unelectable. I think you could put him up there against fricking Donald Duck and Donald Duck will end up coming out ahead. He just ticks too many people off.
But as they got a better look at the alternativesand as they came to believe that Biden was too frail, weak, and senile to be competitive in the general electionGOP voters came around.
Im convinced that he is in the final stages of dementia, Clifton, an Iowa Republican, said of Biden. I mean, yeah, Trumps an asshole and he doesnt have a filter and he says stupid things, but it doesnt matter.
These voters have come to believe that the election is a choice between senility and recklessness. And theyve decided they prefer the latter.
DeSantiss rise and fall is the clearest demonstration of how we got here. For a time, he looked like the greatest threat to Trump, leveraging culture-war issues to gin up the base while projecting an image of being, as one voter put it to me, Trump not on steroids.
He sent refugees to Marthas Vineyard, went after Disney, banned booksand the base loved him for it. For the most part, from what I hear, hes doing a good job in Florida, said Chris, a Republican voter from Illinois, in March 2023. He stands for a lot of the same values that I think I do.
But over time, DeSantiss star began to fade. The more retail campaigning he did, and the more voters were exposed to him, the less they liked what they saw.
I think he was a strong candidate before he was actually a candidate, said Fred, a two-time Trump voter from New Hampshire, in December 2023. He cited things hes done in Florida and how big he won his last governors election. But now, he said, I think he got a little too into the social issues.
By the time DeSantis dropped out, skepticism had turned to contempt among the Republican voters I spoke with. Sean, a two-time Trump voter from New Hampshire, put it succinctly last month: He has a punchable face, and I just dont like him.
This time last year, DeSantis had a real shot at consolidating the move-on-from-Trump faction of the GOP while making inroads with the maybe-Trumperseach of which constitutes about a third of the party. Instead, he tried to wrestle the former president for his always-Trump base, a doomed effort. He couldnt get traction with the always-Trumpers and he alienated the move-on-from-Trumpers. It was a hopeless strategy for a flawed candidate.
Haley may hold out for a few more weeks, even though she has virtually no chance of beating Trump outright. Her only real incentive for remaining in the race is to be the last person standing in the event that he is imprisoned or suffers a major health event. Barring either of these scenarios, Trumps path to the nomination is clear.
This outcome wasnt inevitable; Trump was beatable. His opponents had real opportunities to cleave off his support, ut they squandered them.
The reason is simple: Republican elites dont understand their voters. They spent eight years making excuses for Trump and supporting him at every turn, sending the clear signal that this is his party. They spent nearly a decade saying that he was a persecuted martyrand the greatest president in history. Its frightening, but not surprising, that their voters think hes the only man for the job.
