Republicans have been hoping that Hunter Biden's shady overseas business dealings would give them a willing issue to take to voters, but Politico reports that the issue has "fallen flat" even among much of the GOP primary electorate.
The report notes that Hunter Biden was barely even a topic of discussion at the most recent 2024 Republican primary debate, and that this reflects a limited interest among voters despite the fact that Fox News has spent months hyping up every new twist and turn in what Politico describes as "red meat Hunter Biden drama."
“There is a consistent majority belief that Hunter Biden behaved unethically, inappropriately — doesn’t really matter how you ask it — wrong,” Chris Jackson, head of public polling for Ipsos, tells Politico. “But it doesn’t look like people outside the Republican base are blaming Joe Biden for that or saying that it indicates some kind of problem with Joe Biden.”
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Additionally, Politico reports that many GOP candidates have calculated that going all-in on Hunter Biden only helps former President Donald Trump's narrative that he is being wrongly persecuted by a "corrupt" justice system that has charged him with dozens of felonies all while leaving President Joe Biden's son relatively unscathed.
Chuck Coughlin, a former Republican political strategist from Arizona, tells Politico that making Hunter Biden the central focus of the GOP's 2024 pitch to voters would be courting disaster.
"The last cycle was a debacle enough, and this would only add to that, to the narrative that they’re out of touch and they’re not interested in governing," he said.