Campaign Report — GOP faces hurdles ahead of 2024

Welcome to The Hill’s Campaign Report, tracking all things related to upcoming elections.

HOUSEKEEPING NOTE: Starting this week, the Campaign Report will go back to being a twice-a-week newsletter, arriving in your inboxes every Tuesday and Thursday.

I’m Madeleine Simon, The Hill’s deputy campaign editor. Someone forward this to you? Subscribe here.

2024 poses pitfalls for Republicans

On the heels of a disappointing midterm performance and rising tensions over party identity, Republicans are facing a number of quandaries as they gear up for the 2024 Senate and presidential elections.

The biggest specter hanging over the GOP is former President Trump, whose lasting presence on the campaign trail threatens to divide a vulnerable Republican party. 

The rising animosity between pro-Trump and anti-Trump forces is creating the prospect of a GOP civil war, The Hill’s Al Weaver reports, which could split the party and clear the path for Democrats to win big in 2024.

Key quote: “I can imagine a Trump-anti-Trump war over the next two years that just guarantees Biden’s re-election in a landslide and guarantees that Democrats control everything,” Former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) told The New York Times.

Gingrich says his “greatest fear” involves the possibility of a repeat of 1964, when the party split between Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller.

Other obstacles: November’s midterm elections show how Trump can drag on the GOP, but the former president isn’t the only challenge looming for Republicans.

For one, early voting skepticism — stoked by members of its own party — is working against them. Their reliance on Election Day turnout and attacks on mail voting came to a head in this year’s elections, prompting some Republican officials to do an about-face and call for the party to embrace early voting. It’s unclear if that will remedy voters’ hesitations, with 62 percent of Republicans saying early or absentee voting should only be allowed under limited circumstances.

You can read more about the challenges Republicans face ahead of 2024 – including on abortion access and voter turnout – in the latest piece from The Hill’s Julia Manchester. 

MTG fallout continues after Jan. 6 remarks   

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) created new headaches for Republicans hoping to distance themselves from their party’s extremist ranks after she said over the weekend that the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol “would’ve been armed” if she and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon had planned it.

“Then Jan. 6 happened. And next thing you know, I organized the whole thing, along with Steve Bannon here. And I will tell you something, if Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, it would’ve been armed,” Taylor Greene told the audience during a gala for the New York Young Republicans Club.

“See that’s the whole joke, isn’t it. They say that whole thing was planned and I’m like, are you kidding me? A bunch of conservatives, Second Amendment supporters, went in the Capitol without guns, and they think that we organized that?”

Many supporters of Trump who came to Washington on Jan. 6 did bring weapons, and leaders of the Oath Keepers militia group were found guilty last month for seditious conspiracy. Members of the group allegedly stockpiled suitcases full of weapons at a Virginia hotel as part of its planning around that day.

Greene responds: After drawing rebukes from the White House and Democratic leaders, Greene said on Monday that her comment, which appeared to hit back at claims that she and Bannon were involved in planning the insurrection, was sarcastic.

But Greene’s remarks have dragged Republicans like Rep. Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) into a new set of controversies, as Democrats move to link the GOP Speaker-hopeful to the controversial Trump ally, The Hill’s Mychael Schnell writes.

Greene has been a key supporter of McCarthy in the past and vice versa. The Georgian republican has said that the party would be making a mistake in not supporting McCarthy in the floor vote, and McCarthy has vowed to return Greene to the committees she was kicked out of last year if he became Speaker.

The controversy further complicates McCarthy’s uncertain bid for Speaker with just a few weeks before lawmakers go before the floor to vote.  

OP-EDS FROM THE HILL

Don’t bet against Trump and Fox News reuniting for 2024, by Thomas Gift of the Centre on US Politics at University College London

With new Twitter files, Musk forces a free-speech reckoning for politicians and pundits, by Jonathan Turley of George Washington University

The DeSantis secret weapon that Democrats — and Trump — should fear, by political adviser Douglas MacKinnon