The Republican presidential primary field is finally taking shape.
Former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, wealthy businessman Vivek Ramaswamy and talk show host Larry Elder have announced their candidacies. Meanwhile, former vice president Mike Pence, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum are waiting in the wings.
Today, Donald Trump is the overwhelming favorite. Since last March, Trump’s lead over his main rival, Ron DeSantis, has more than doubled from 16 points to 33 points. Trump’s criminal indictment in New York and the likelihood of pending indictments by the U.S. Justice Department and in Georgia have only served to widen his lead.
Republicans are angry. Sixty-nine percent of them believe Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. But the sources for their rage also include immigrants who they believe are invading the country, fear that Christianity is on the decline, anger that transgender kids use public bathrooms, library books that explicitly discuss sexual matters and others deemed controversial, any reference to critical race theory, believing that their right to own guns is under siege and that abortion is being enshrined as right in blue states.
The rage within the Republican primary electorate is the reason why Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis are the party’s leading contenders. DeSantis casts himself as effectively using the powers of state government to express the party’s anger by targeting the Walt Disney Corporation, forbidding abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, allowing anyone to carry concealed guns without a permit, exerting control over the content of textbooks and banning the teaching of critical race theory. Both the NAACP and the Human Rights Campaign have issued travel advisories warning African Americans and gays to stay away from the state. But DeSantis has made the culture wars his calling card and is running on the slogan “Never Back Down.”
Donald Trump’s list of grievances is even longer than DeSantis’s. It includes the “deep state,” the Justice Department, the FBI and intelligence community, RINOS (Republicans in Name Only), China, illegal aliens, President Joe Biden, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), former Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), former President Barack Obama, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney (R), former Rep. Liz Cheney and Hillary Clinton, among many others. Trump’s inventory of rivals makes Richard Nixon’s “enemies list” seem paltry by comparison.
At a rally in Waco, Texas, earlier this year, Trump declared: “I am your warrior. I am your justice. I am your retribution.” These words resonate with angry Republicans who are determined to stick with Trump no matter what.
Rather than alienating Trump’s supporters or, like Trump and DeSantis, basing their candidacies on populist grievances, other Republican contenders are emphasizing their positive messages.
Tim Scott put it this way: “Our party and our nation are standing at a time of choosing: Victimhood or victory? Grievance or greatness? I choose freedom and hope and opportunity.”
Except for DeSantis, the rest of Trump’s competitors appear to be very nice people with whom one might want to grab a beer or have as a neighbor. But they do not excite an angry GOP base that remains animated by the rage that Trump arouses.
In many ways, history is repeating itself. In 1936, Republicans were outraged at the New Deal policies instituted by Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Addressing the 1936 Republican Convention former president Herbert Hoover asked, “Will you, for expediency’s sake offer will-o’-the wisps which beguile the people? Or have you determined to enter into a holy crusade for liberty which shall determine the future and the perpetuity of a nation of free men?” to shouts of “NO!” and “YES!”
Republicans nominated Kansas Gov. Alf Landon and assailed the “folly” and “boondoggle” of Roosevelt’s New Deal, saying that its continuation “would lead to the guillotine.” The Republican platform captured the party’s anger, noting that individual liberties “are threatened by government itself.” A 1936 Gallup poll found 83 percent of Republicans believed that “the acts and policies of the Roosevelt administration may lead to a dictatorship.”
Landon lost in a landslide, winning just two states: Maine and Vermont. It took Republicans three more elections to decide that logic, not anger, should prevail. In 1952, the party nominated Dwight D. Eisenhower believing that only he could win the presidency and unlock the White House doors that kept Republicans out for two decades.
Before 1952, Eisenhower eschewed politics, and even his party identification was something of a mystery. Conservative Republicans who were animated by passion pinned their hopes on Sen. Robert Taft (R-Ohio) to wrest the nomination from Eisenhower. They were disconsolate when Taft lost. Actor John Wayne, an ardent Taft supporter, confronted one Eisenhower supporter and yelled, “Why don’t you get a red flag?” Only the nomination of Barry Goldwater in 1964 briefly assuaged the repressed passions of Republican conservatives. And, like Landon, Goldwater succumbed to a landslide loss.
Because Republicans have accepted Trump’s argument that the 2020 election was stolen, the party has been prevented from analyzing what went wrong and making adjustments to win more votes. The result is that passion, not logic, continues to dominate. So, forget the polls.
Republicans are angry. And the best measure of who will win the party’s nomination is who is the angriest candidate of them all. Today, Donald Trump is that person. As Trump told Bob Woodward in 2016, “I bring out rage in people.”
John Kenneth White is a professor of Politics at The Catholic University of America. His latest book, co-authored with Matthew Kerbel, is titled, “American Political Parties: Why They Formed, How They Function, and Where They’re Headed.” He can be reached at johnkennethwhite.com.