A new dispatch from Politico suggests that elites within the Republican Party desperately don't want to see former President Donald Trump to be their 2024 presidential nominee, but also seemingly have no plan to do anything about it.
During the Republican National Committee's big gathering this weekend in Nashville, Tennessee, many politicians and right-wing donors argued that something needed to happen to get GOP voters to realize Trump would most likely lose again in 2024, especially given the poor performances of so many of his hand-picked candidates in swing states during the 2022 midterm elections.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp singled out Trump's obsession with falsely claiming he lost the 2020 presidential election as a particularly toxic position.
“Voters wanted to hear about what Republicans were doing to help them fight through 40-year high inflation,” he said. “Not months and months of debate over whether the 2020 election was stolen.”
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The underlying belief among Republicans at the gathering was this: Trump won't be able to win in 2024, especially given his fixation with relitigating the 2020 election.
"I don’t think he can win in 2024,” said New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu. “You don’t have to be angry about it. You don’t have to be negative about it. I think you just have to be willing to talk about it and bring real solutions to the table.”
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson similarly said that Republicans needed to hammer home that Trump was electoral poison, although Republican primary polls currently show him easily besting his closest rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
"They’ve got to hear that message, and it’s like realism is coming to the party," he said. "And it takes people actually having the courage to say it before people will face that reality.”
