'Pure, uncut Trumpism' now infects GOP so much there's 'nothing he can do to lose': report

Republican voters have already shown they overwhelmingly prefer to keep Donald Trump in control of their party.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis dropped out Sunday after falling short in Iowa, and Nikki Haley could be out of the race soon unless she surprises in New Hampshire, showing that GOP voters don't want Trump "lite" when the real deal is running for his third nomination, reported Wall Street Journal columnist Molly Ball.

"What the GOP’s most loyal voters want, it seems, is pure, uncut Trumpism — with all the baggage and ideological divergence from traditional conservatism that entails," Ball wrote.

"Between DeSantis’s withdrawal and Haley’s having little apparent path forward barring a major upset, the race could well be effectively over by Wednesday, the party having passed up yet another opportunity to turn the page on a polarizing, multiply-indicted fabulist who lost the last election and has never won the popular vote."

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Both Haley and DeSantis tried to appeal to voters who liked Trump but would prefer an alternative, but the Iowa results and polls in New Hampshire and elsewhere make clear Republicans have no interest in turning the page on the former president, Ball wrote.

“The Republican Party we knew isn’t coming back,” the anti-Trump Republican Sarah Longwell posted on X. “GOP voters don’t want it back. They don’t want limited government, free markets, and American leadership in the world. They want isolationism, an authoritarian crackpot president, and a big government that enforces their worldview.”

The party's Reaganites thought they might wait for the fever to break and reclaim the party, but anti-Trump Republicans think that will never happen, she wrote.

“I’m never surprised — that went out the window six or seven years ago — but I can’t lie, I’m still profoundly disappointed,” said former GOP congressman Joe Walsh, who launched a long-shot challenge against Trump in 2020. “The fact that Trump incited and led an insurrection and they didn’t throw him into Siberia proved there’s nothing he can do to lose the base.”