Can the former president, headed for another acquittal in the Senate in his impeachment trial, continue to exert his influence on the American political scene?
“We will be back in some form.” Donald Trump’s final speech as president before departing for Mar-a-Lago Jan. 20 left little doubt about his intentions. Is the former leader, who is no stranger to the world of television, eyeing a second season of his political career? If such is the case, the road from now to the 2024 presidential campaign is strewn with obstacles.
The first, obviously, is the impeachment trial taking place right now in the Senate. If convicted, Trump could see himself barred from running again in any federal election. For the moment, however, it seems unlikely that enough Republican senators will decide to take action against Trump.* Even with an acquittal, could this impeachment trial nevertheless hurt his potential political ambitions? This seems to be the view of Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who maintains that she cannot see how he could be elected to the presidency again.
To be sure, Democrats, who suspect they will not have enough support for conviction, are focusing the core of their energy on associating the president and his party with the Capitol attackers, with the aim of damaging their image with members of the public. Incidentally, an analysis by The New York Times published this week revealed that, since the events of Jan. 6, the Republican Party has lost at least 140,000 members in 25 states, including 12,000 in the key state of Pennsylvania and 10,000 in Arizona, a former red stronghold now represented by Democrats in the Senate and in the Electoral College.
Beyond the impact of the impeachment trial, legal matters could catch up to the former president. On Wednesday, prosecutors in Georgia announced the beginning of a criminal inquiry on the efforts undertaken to influence the outcome of the election in that key state, including pressure by Trump on the secretary of state.
The Party Is His
A main player or not, it nevertheless seems clear that the 45th president will have a prominent role in Republican politics. A recent poll published for the CBS network revealed that, if 56% of all Americans are in favor of a Trump conviction, 71% of Republicans associate a vote in favor as a lack of loyalty. Certain elected members of the party have learned this the hard way. Liz Cheney, the third-ranking Republican in the House, and one of 10 in the House of Representatives to vote for Trump’s impeachment, was censured by party officials in her home state of Wyoming. Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, one of the rare Republicans who could support a conviction in the Senate, is facing a similar fate.
Republican voters still support Trump. “The party is his,” declared Marjorie Taylor Greene, whom the Democratic majority removed from House committees for her support of conspiracy theories, after Republican leaders refused to do so. Moreover, since this episode, her approval rating in Georgia grew by 11% among Republican voters, according to a Morning Consult poll.
The party of Abraham Lincoln, which in the 1980s became the party of fiscal conservatism under Ronald Reagan before the emergence decades later of the tea party movement, would see itself transformed again, becoming the party of Trump and his closest allies. By 2024, some centrist candidates will probably want to go against the tide and attempt to show that associating oneself with a president who lost the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate, twice, is perhaps not the best strategy. But other hopefuls will certainly try to recuperate a portion of Trump’s base by pushing a platform similar to his and even, perhaps, adopting a similar style.
Arkansas, a former stronghold of Bill Clinton, already offers a glimpse of the influence of pro-Trump forces within the Republican base. Just two weeks after the announcement by former White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee of her intent to run for governor, another Republican candidate in the running, the current No. 2 in the state, dropped out of the race.
A number of factors could still jeopardize any thought of the launch of a second season of Trump’s political career. But spin-offs are no doubt on the schedule in the years to come.
*Editor’s Note: On Feb. 13, the Senate failed to convict Trump.
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