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It was uncharted territory. This past week, Donald Trump became the first former president in history to be arraigned on criminal charges. So why didn’t his Republican primary rivals make hay over it? Moreover, why did even non-Trumpy Republicans go out of their way to defend him?
Yes, other Republicans have thrown their hats into the 2024 presidential campaign. At the same time, it’s technically fair to say that Trump is running unopposed. What I mean is that nobody in the Republican primary top-tier is running against him.
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How else do you explain the fact that Trump’s indictment hasn’t been weaponized into campaign fodder?
“I would be saying, ‘Maybe what he did doesn’t amount to a felony… that’s for a jury to decide,” liberal columnist Bill Scher told me recently. Imagining what he would say if he were running in a Republican primary, Scher continued: “All I know is that with this guy, it is one thing after another. He is a walking liability. He has dragged us down cycle after cycle. And I don’t care if he’s funny sometimes, or [if] he ‘owns the libs’ sometimes; he’s going to make it impossible for us to win elections.”
This is not exactly the stuff that takes the bark off of trees, because Republicans can’t get away with directly criticizing Trump over his behavior. But maybe they can get away with pointing out that his behavior opens the door for Democrats to win.
New York Times columnist Ross Douthat suggested a similar line of attack for Ron DeSantis to use against Trump: “Yes, I condemn the partisan witch hunt that led to this indictment. But the pattern with my opponent is that he makes it too easy for the liberals. If you’re paying hush money to a porn star, you’re giving the other side what it wants,” Douthat’s hypothetical DeSantis might say, continuing: “It was the same way all through his presidency—all the drama, all the chaos, just played into the Democrats’ hands… He didn’t finish the Wall because he was always distracted…”
As Douthat imagines it, DeSantis’ salvo—one that admittedly pulls some punches to make it palatable for the GOP electorate—would be launched from a Republican primary debate stage.
That’s right, even the fantasy version has DeSantis keeping his powder dry until at least… August.
The temptation to procrastinate is merely one symptom of the problem. As noted above, Republicans are also going out of their way to defend Trump from the indictment.
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Truth be told, the indictment was underwhelming. I can say that because I’m a conservative columnist whose priority is telling the truth as I see it. Someone running against Donald Trump, however, should have every incentive to ding The Donald over it. Hard.
In a recent episode of The Remnant podcast, non-Trumpy conservative Jonah Goldberg suggested that criticizing the Manhattan DA’s indictment might preserve a given Republican’s credibility to criticize Trump over future indictments (which, admittedly, look to be more damning for Trump).
If that’s the calculus, Trump’s rivals are ignoring the lessons of Trump. Trump seizes every possible opportunity to exploit an opponent's weakness. He doesn’t worry about preserving credibility for something that might happen tomorrow.
Refusing to play by Trump’s skeevy rules might be admirable, but this sort of asymmetric warfare has always, within the GOP, redounded to Trump’s benefit.
Now, it is certainly plausible that the rally-around-the-flag phenomenon will naturally dissipate over time—particularly if subsequent indictments have more sting. Patience is a virtue, but Republicans have spent years waiting in vain for the world to turn against Trump—without them having to dirty their own hands.
Another theory holds that Trump’s primary rivals will gain confidence once it becomes clear that—rather than obsessing over legal technicalities—voters view the Manhattan DAs indictment as the natural consequence of a lifetime of sketchy behavior. “Most voters will regard it as a ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ and may not know or care about the specific charges,” FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver predicts.
That may or may not happen, but an aggressive campaign doesn’t wait forever before seizing a golden opportunity to attack a vulnerable frontrunner.
No matter how you slice it, the way Trump’s ostensible GOP rivals have greeted this indictment is very telling—and leaves us with a fundamental head-scratcher: How can anyone expect to defeat a frontrunner while simultaneously defending him?
The answer is that you can’t.
The treatment of Trump by his rivals only makes sense if you assume that (a) the primary electorate loves Donald Trump and will punish whoever attacks him, and/or (b) Trump’s adversaries are spineless and/or have good reason to believe they cannot stand up to Trump. Any of these options (or a combination thereof) points to the fact that Donald Trump will be the 2024 GOP nominee.
The only other way this passive behavior makes sense is if their real goal is to raise their status and be in a position to replace Trump if he dies or goes to jail (and even then, he might still win) or—maybe even less likely—if one of Trump’s other rivals does the dirty work of taking him down for them. This is to say that it is plausible for someone else to be the Republican nominee, but to put it in sports terms, Trump’s rivals “do not control their own destiny.”
Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence et al. are not proactively running against Trump. They are running on a wing and a prayer… just in case something magical happens.
The 2024 Republican primary race, such as it is, isn’t even really a contest. And I mean that literally, not figuratively.
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