Tornado Alley (PROG)

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PegVA, Does The GOP Belong To Trump?

"Does Mitt Romney know?...
HOUSE REPUBLICANS TARGET MORE TAX CUTS AS MIDTERM ELECTIONS NEAR
-cnbc.com, 09/10/18 "

I think you will find this chat interesting.

We partner with The Weekly Standard to find an answer.

A FiveThirtyEight Chat

[...]

micah: ?? (Oh, and I’m FiveThirtyEight’s managing editor.)

OK, now to the meat of things. We’ll break this down into two main parts:

1. Why are so many people obsessed with asking whether it’s Trump’s party? (I don’t remember people asking this about Democrats when Barack Obama was president.)

2. How do we tell if it’s Trump’s party? What voters think? What Congress does? What elected Republicans say? Something else?

First, thoughts on No. 1?

[...]

David_Byler: So my approach would probably be to break the GOP down into parts and see how much Trump “owns” each part.

micah: Give us the parts.

David_Byler: The electorate.

Elected officials.

Sort of the intellectual parts of the party. (I’m thinking think tanks and such.)

We could include media, too, though I think sometimes the lines between conservative media and the sort of think tank-y parts can get blurry.

[...]

OK, next!

Does Trump own the Republican Party’s elected-officials wing?

David_Byler: The answer to this one is complicated because the ownership sort of seems to run both ways. Like, you see GOP politicians generally voting for stuff that Trump proposes. And you see a lot of loyalty in public statements and such. But what you also see is Trump proposing and passing a lot of stuff that’s more conventionally GOP-ish than people might have expected from the campaign.

julia_azari: Part of the answer is that there was an expectation that fewer elected officials would go along with Trump on stuff given the elite reaction to him during the election — in both the primary and, like, after the “Access Hollywood” tape.

I also think it’s pretty important that a lot of the prominent people to push back are either retiring (Jeff Flake) or not elected officials, like George Will (media) or Steve Schmidt (I am not sure where he fits in our schema).

Mike_Warren: I’d submit three articles from my colleague John McCormack for us to answer this question.

First, Sen. Lindsey Graham is now a neo-Trumper.

Second, Sen. Marco Rubio is now a nationalist.

And in the recent Wisconsin GOP primary for Senate, the candidates were just trying to out-Trump each other and had no real policy differences.

It’s been a slow but steady march toward embracing Trump and, in some cases, Trumpism by electeds. There’s been more resistance in the Senate and much more resistance from governors. But politicians seem to be recognizing where their party is now, in ways that Trump had a better sense of in 2016 than they did.

David_Byler: That’s fair — a lot of primary candidates try to basically out-Trump each other.

With good links too - https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/does-the-republican-party-belong-to-trump/

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The top 5 Republicans who could challenge Trump in 2020


President Trump watches the U.S. Women's Open round two on July 14, 2017 at Trump National Golf Course in New Jersey.
(Elsa/Getty Images)

By Aaron Blake
October 27, 2017

[...]

Given all of that, we can say three things about the 2020 GOP presidential primary:

1. Trump is still in relatively little danger, BUT .?.?.

2. His grip on the party is weakening somewhat, and .?.?.

3. The likelihood that someone will run against him is rising.

[...]

5. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.):

[...]

4. Mitt Romney:

[...]

3. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.):

[...]

2. Ohio Gov. John Kasich:

[...]

1. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/10/27/the-top-5-republicans-who-could-challenge-trump-in-2020/?utm_term=.aa2c29b6ab09

And to all, have a good day.