Red flags raised for GOP that  Trump will 'act up and remind voters why they ousted him'

Late Wednesday the editors of the Wall Street Editorial page cautioned the Republican Party that it is on the road to ruin if Donald Trump heads the top of the ticket in the November general election.

While stating the WSJ opinion page would not make any endorsement for the 2024 election, the editors wrote that they believe President Joe Biden is beatable — but that Trump will be goaded into being his own worst enemy and voters will notice.

With both Biden and Trump likely facing off at the end of the year, the editors suggested that, while the current president shows weakness according to a Fox News poll showing high unfavorability numbers, Trump suffers a worse fate.

"That’s the gamble the GOP is taking by elevating Mr. Trump one more time. Republicans are nominating a candidate the public knows well—and who most Americans say they don’t like. Mr. Trump never reached 50% approval in the Gallup survey across his Presidency. His unfavorable ratings today are exceeded only by Mr. Biden’s—57% to 59% in the recent Fox News survey," they wrote before predicting how the Biden campaign will take advantage of those numbers.

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Pointing out that the former president is weighed down by "his own negative baggage," the editors wrote Biden may have the upper hand.

"Mr. Biden will poke at him like a dancing bear, hoping he’ll act up and remind voters why they ousted him four years ago," they predicted. "His Covid and other first-term outbursts will return in TV ads, as will his disgraceful post-election behavior leading to and including Jan. 6. GOP voters may have come to discount the events of that day, but we’ll find out if that’s true about swing voters in the swing states that have turned against the GOP in the Trump era."

More to the point, they reminded readers, "Every time voters have gone to the polls since Mr. Trump’s first victory in 2016, Republicans have lost or underperformed: 2018, 2020, 2021 in Georgia Senate races, 2022, and 2023 in special elections."

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