Diminished Trump leaves a vacuum for 2024 hopefuls

President Donald Trump’s would-be Republican successors see an opening.

As the politically diminished president prepares to leave office following a deadly pro-Trump riot at the Capitol and an impeachment vote backed by 10 GOP House members, ambitious Republicans are taking steps to burnish their own profiles and present themselves as future leaders of the party.

While some are gradually separating themselves from the president, others are publicizing plans to bolster the party as it heads into the post-Trump era. Some are even sparring with other potential 2024 rivals in plain sight, marking a strikingly early start to public presidential maneuvering.

In the last week, Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse said that Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley’s objection to certifying the Electoral College was “dumbass.” Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton went after Hawley and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for fundraising at the same moment the insurrection was happening. And Secretary of State Mike Pompeo upbraided former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley for criticizing the president.

The jockeying illustrates how potential future candidates are beginning to look past Trump, who’s been banned by Twitter, has seen his approval numbers drop and faces the prospect of a Senate conviction process that would legally bar him from running again. After operating in a Trump-owned-and-operated GOP for the past four years, Republicans are calculating that the outgoing president is leaving a vacuum — and that there’s room to fill it without waiting to see if Trump mounts a 2024 comeback.

“While President Trump is likely to remain the most influential voice in the GOP for the foreseeable future, the events of the last week could provide more running room and potentially open the door to more candidates in 2024,” said Phil Cox, a former Republican Governors Association executive director.

There is little question that Trump remains a force, particularly among Republican loyalists. Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel earlier in the week sent an email to around 5,000 of the organization’s biggest donors in which she condemned the Capitol siege. The message elicited between 400 and 500 responses, with the vast majority expressing criticism of the event but also insisting the party shouldn’t back down in its support of the president, according to a person familiar with the matter.

But after four years of marching in lockstep with Trump, ambitious Republicans have begun seeking out distance from him. Haley delivered a speech at the RNC last week in which she praised parts of Trump’s agenda but said that his recent actions “will be judged harshly by history.”

Cotton, who spoke at Trump’s summertime convention and ran TV ads supporting his 2020 campaign, broke with the president by refusing to support his effort to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, meanwhile, delivered an implicit rebuke of Trump on Thursday, writing in a statement and on Twitter that he would attend Biden’s inauguration because, “in America, we believe in the peaceful transition of power,” and that “once the election is over, we put country before party.”

Former Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, a Republican who retired in 2018 after an avalanche of Trump-led attacks, said that by attacking prospective candidates Trump had liberated them to begin running. No longer, Corker contended, did they owe him their loyalty. Cotton and Ducey are among those who’ve recently come under withering attack from the president.

“There are a few people who are pretty prominent that he’s significantly criticized. And I think from their perspective, they’ve got nothing to lose, by getting out there and going. I mean, nothing to lose whatsoever,” said Corker.

Republicans note that without the threat of Trump’s Twitter feed, candidates are freer to separate themselves from him without fear of reprisals. The president used the account as his primary tool of imposing discipline on the party.

Part of the willingness to break with Trump also reflects a calculation that Trump’s once iron-like grip on the party has loosened. According to a POLITICO/Morning Consult survey released Wednesday, Trump’s approval rating among Republicans is 75 percent, down from 83 percent in December. The same poll found that just 40 percent of Republicans would support Trump in a 2024 primary — still in first place, but with a majority saying they’d prefer someone else.

“Trump’s ability to further influence GOP politics has been severely diminished over the last week by all measures, and we still have a week to go,” said Scott Reed, a former senior political adviser at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Now, with no clear line of succession in the party, open warfare has broken out. During an speech to conservative lawmakers last week, Pompeo implicitly pushed back on Haley’s criticism of the president, saying that “I think history will remember us very well.”

Cotton took to Fox News to flay “senators who for political advantage were giving false hope to their supporters and misleading them into thinking” the election could be overturned. Cotton also said that “these senators, as insurrectionists literally stormed the capitol, were sending out fundraising emails. That shouldn’t have happened and it’s got to stop now.”

The comments were an apparent reference to Hawley and Cruz, who sent out fundraising messages to supporters during the insurrection highlighting their efforts to object to the certification of the Electoral College.

And then there’s Sasse, another potential future presidential hopeful, who went on National Public Radio to declare that Hawley’s move was “really dumbass.”

“Some candidates have already started the process of running, and the debate has started. So this is a good and healthy beginning for the Republican Party,” said Jonathan Barnett, an Arkansas RNC committeeman.

Each of the candidates are seeking out different lanes. With their objections, Cruz and Hawley are aligning themselves with Trump. Sasse and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who’ve savaged the president over the riot, has staked out the opposite turf. Cotton, who opposed the Electoral College objection but has said he’ll vote against convicting Trump after he was impeached by the House on Wednesday, is taking a middle-ground approach.

Florida Sen. Rick Scott is trying out another avenue to set him apart from the pack, casting himself the man who will lead Republicans out of the wilderness. Scott released a direct-to-camera video this week promoting his new position as chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, a position in which he’ll try to reclaim the party’s majority in 2022.

But even if he’s shrunken, Trump retains far more influence in the party than any other Republican. The president is leaving the White House with the support of a political action committee that’s raised well into the nine figures, giving him a massive treasury to promote himself, support favored candidates, and back primary challenges to perceived enemies. Trump aides expect to clarify their plans to develop a post-White House political apparatus following Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration.

“His stature has diminished,” said former George W. Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, “but it's anyone's guess by how much.”