[The GOP’s old guard is pinning their hopes on a Ron DeSantis
renaissance. But Donald Trump’s counterestablishment has beaten them
once before. ]
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A NEW REPUBLICAN CIVIL WAR IS ABOUT TO BEGIN  
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Alex Shephard
November 14, 2022
The New Republic
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_ The GOP’s old guard is pinning their hopes on a Ron DeSantis
renaissance. But Donald Trump’s counterestablishment has beaten them
once before. _

President Donald J. Trump Meets with Governors-Elect, photo: The
White House (Public Domain Mark 1.0)

 

On Wednesday, the Republican establishment—or at least what’s left
of it—finally made its move
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Donald Trump. The disappointing midterm results, in which many of
Trump’s handpicked candidates flopped—largely because they were
2020 election truthers running in swing states—opened opportunity
up. The Murdoch empire struck hard and fast
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anointing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis—who mimics Trump in
both style and substance
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is seen as being more palatable and less erratic—as the former
president’s natural successor.

Trump, meanwhile, took a battering from others in the party.
“Republicans have followed Donald Trump off the side of a cliff,”
former adviser David Urban told
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York Times._ The anti-anti-Trump _National Review_ has posted
a series
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for an alternative
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one in which it offered Republicans a stark choice
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Pick Donald Trump or pick winning elections. “Almost every one of
these Trump-endorsed candidates that you see in competitive states has
lost,” former New Jersey governor and Trump frenemy Chris
Christie said
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ABC after the election. “It’s a huge loss for Trump. And, again,
it shows that his political instincts are not about the party,
they’re not about the country—they’re about him.” That just
about summed up the conventional wisdom—at least among Trump’s
opponents.

Trump, meanwhile, has spent the days after the election seething
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wife and other allies for failed endorsements like Dr. Oz, who lost in
Pennsylvania’s Senate race. He has also been posting
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potential 2024 primary opponents, like DeSantis and Virginia Governor
Glenn Youngkin, on his dreary platform Truth Social, where he has
strained to regain his 2016 form.

But Trump has also started throwing his weight around. On Thursday,
Representative Elise Stefanik, an upstate New York Republican who was
a moderate
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least by recent GOP standards—before remaking herself as a Trumpist
to rise within the House leadership, endorsed
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for president, despite the fact that he is at least five days away
from announcing that he will run.

“I am proud to endorse Donald Trump for president in 2024,”
Stefanik said in a statement. “It is time for Republicans to unite
around the most popular Republican in America who has a proven track
record of conservative governance.” J.D. Vance, an anti Trumper
turned sycophant
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won Ohio’s senate race on Tuesday thanks in part to Trump’s
endorsement during the primary, was similarly effusive
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“Every year, the media writes Donald Trump’s political obituary.
And every year, we’re quickly reminded that Trump remains the most
popular figure in the Republican Party,” he said. And on Friday
Trump began to meddle in the Republican House leadership race,
suggesting that he would only back current Minority Leader Kevin
McCarthy’s bid to become speaker if he kissed the ring (again):
Appearing on Steve Bannon’s podcast, Trump ally Jason Miller said
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McCarthy “must be much more declarative that he supports President
Trump in 2024” if he wants to win.

It marked the beginning of what looks to be the GOP’s second civil
war in six years.

In 2016, the Republican establishment took on Donald Trump and lost
badly
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That was partly because it didn’t ever really have a Trump
alternative and instead hopscotched between flawed, smarmy candidates
like Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz. In 2022, it has seemingly learned some
important lessons. For one, it has anointed a successor who is
Trump-like, in many ways: DeSantis is an ardent culture warrior who
first rose to prominence by opening his state up
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the Covid-19 pandemic, has sparred with Disney
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wokeness, and recently flew a bunch of helpless migrants to Martha’s
Vineyard as part of a sociopathic, Trump-like political stunt
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The establishment has another benefit: Trump is not the candidate he
was in 2016. He is increasingly myopic and erratic, even by his own
standards. His political program has contracted significantly and now
revolves ever more around the personage of Donald Trump, the
legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election, and increasingly baroque
loyalty tests. Trump is a diminished figure
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Unlike in 2016, when he effortlessly cast aside a host of goons, he
also appears to be genuinely rattled by DeSantis. He should still be
considered the favorite for the Republican presidential nomination,
but it is, for the first time in six years, possible to imagine other
scenarios. He seems beatable.

But Trump has one asset that he didn’t in 2016. Over the last six
years he has built his own political establishment and situated
himself as the Republican Party’s most important power broker.
Stefanik’s endorsement is a case in point. Fifteen years ago,
Stefanik would have made a career as a moderate Republican; in 2018,
she saw the writing on the wall, and became one of Trump’s most
vociferous backers. She is far from the only one.

Trump has allies in leadership positions
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the Republican Party: from local and state level organizations to the
Republican National Committee. The most important test for Trump as he
has built this network is loyalty. Over the coming weeks and month, he
will force his allies to bend the knee, or at least try to. He will
also use them to attempt to create a firewall between himself and
DeSantis, and to make him appear to be the party’s inevitable 2024
nominee. The GOP has been Trump’s party for a long time but, even
after Tuesday’s defeats, he has more allies in powerful positions
than ever.

If 2016 looked like one man against the remnants of a party, 2022 is
far different. The older Republican establishment is working to anoint
DeSantis. But it has less power than it did six years ago, when Trump
easily brushed it aside. Trump is a broken, erratic figure, but he has
more institutional power than ever—the question is whether he knows
how to use it.

_Alex Shephard
[[link removed]] @alex_shephard
[[link removed]] is a staff writer at The New
Republic._

_Support independent political journalism. Donate to The New
Republic today._ [[link removed]]

* Republican Party
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* Donald Trump
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* Ron DeSantis
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