Donald Trump cannot repeat his 2016 victory in the GOP primary

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Christopher Nicholas

Those who fear that the 2024 GOP presidential contest will be a repeat of 2016 need not worry. The race is really different this year. It won’t play the same.

First, former President Donald Trump is greatly reduced compared to 2015, when he first descended his escalator at Trump Tower in New York City to announce his campaign.

Second, the rest of next years budding GOP candidates will know the former president’s playbook very well and will know how to fight him.

Third, Trump’s once-unstoppable brilliance has faded after defeats in every primary election since 2018. He must now labor under the worst label any politician can have: a loser.

Rather than a repeat of 2016, 2024 looks more like a continuation of what we saw in 2020: Trump can’t compete anywhere new, and he can’t put any new voters or states into play. In other words, he is playing a losing game that will only attract voters who previously supported him.

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While he may still be able to persuade many GOP donors to send their hard-earned dollars to his campaign, his political message is now draining more than it is inspiring. Plus, the party has produced several non-Trump candidates in the grievance, so voters still attracted to that style of messaging now have options they didn’t have in 2016.

More GOP primary voters will cast strategic votes in the 2024 primary because they know we need a stronger general election candidate than Trump. And now the balance of the Republican field is irreplaceable, as many of them returned in 2016.

Trump is a one-trick pony. His trick was good, but his opponents knew what was coming.

(A word of advice to them: Don’t rush Trump for fear that his voters won’t come back to you in the fall. None of them voted in the end for President Joe Biden.)

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Finally, Trump’s opponents know that the American people have rejected him, not once but three times:

In 2018, when the GOP lost the House. In 2020, when Republicans lost the presidency and the Senate twice (on Election Night and again on the day of the Georgia runoff). In 2022, when Republicans failed to take the Senate and narrowly took the House. during a midterm election when the party out of power historically does better.

Trumps cloak of invincibility is tattered, tattered and useless.

This is driving the entry of so many new candidates and so many new funds.

And don’t forget the myriad legal issues Trump is facing in multiple jurisdictions from local, state and federal prosecutors. Unlike the civil trial he legally skipped recently in New York, he would have to actually attend any criminal trial, say in Fulton County, Georgia, or in federal court. Besides wasting his time, it will forcefully tell the country in general, and Republican primary voters in particular, that Trump is damaged goods, on the decline and most importantly the only GOP nominee who can beat Biden.

Clinton

AP

In 2016, Trump narrowly defeated Hillary Clinton, the most compromised Democratic nominee in modern history. In 2020, he was decisively defeated by the Democratic Party’s second most compromised nominee. Hopefully the other candidates in the Republican field will follow suit and GOP voters will realize that our 2024 nomination needs to be stronger and more decisive.

Nicholas is president of Eagle Consulting Group Inc. and for the past six years has appeared as a conservative commentator on “This Week In Pennsylvania,” a TV show focusing on Pennsylvania politics. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.

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