Opinion by Karen Tumulty: The GOP establishment is going all in to beat Trump. Will it work?
The Club for Growth was once a close Trump ally — and, like AFP, was once at the conservative, anti-establishment vanguard. But it found itself on opposite sides of the former president in high-profile primary contests during the 2022 midterms, and it has been publicly skeptical of his chances of winning in 2024. “The party should be open to another candidate,” Club for Growth President David McIntosh told reporters.
Nor will Trump be among the talked-about presidential possibilities who will be appearing Feb. 24 at a “donor appreciation” event organized in Austin by leading Texas Republicans, including George W. Bush strategist Karl Rove. Who will appear? Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, along with Pence, Scott and Haley.
“There’s not a day that passes that I don’t have this conversation,” one leading GOP strategist told me. “In fact, I’ve had this conversation twice today.” But who might the anointed champion be? Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis would seem to have the early edge, by virtue of his sizable 2022 reelection victory and the fact that he is doing well against Trump in the early polling.There is also a fair amount of buzz lately around Kemp, a solid conservative who won a second term easily last year in what has become a swing state despite being targeted by Trump for resisting the defeated president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 Georgia results.
The top of the ticket is not the only place where Republican elders are looking to remove unelectable candidates from the ballot. With a 2024 Senate map that favors his party, National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Steve Daines he will be working to weed out the kind of fringe characters who blew what should have been easy wins for the GOP in 2022. Intervening in primary contests is something Daines’s predecessor, Sen.
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