Trump and his ‘big lie’ are visiting NC. Republicans should move on.
It’s ironic that Donald Trump will hold his North Carolina rally at a venue known for hosting weddings. What Republicans and the former president should be headed toward is a divorce.
Trump likely will get an energetic welcome from his core followers, who will gather Saturday at The Farm at 95 in Selma to support the Senate candidacy of U.S. Rep. Ted Budd. But Trump’s rally crowd last month in Georgia was underwhelming and the approaching primaries may confirm that his hold on the Republican Party is loosening.
Even those candidates who win a nomination thanks to a Trump nod are likely to find his endorsement as much a hindrance as a help in the general election. While President Joe Biden’s favorable rating has fallen to dismal levels amid congressional gridlock and inflation, a recent NBC News poll found that he is still more popular than Trump is now. It also found voters were more likely to support a candidate endorsed by Biden than Trump.
Those numbers hardly dim the eagerness of some Republican office holders to seek Trump’s blessing. Among those scheduled to speak at Saturday’s rally are North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and four of the state’s congressional representatives: Budd, Madison Cawthorn, Dan Bishop and Greg Murphy.
That list of Trump’s suitors only adds to the sense that the GOP is becoming a party of extremists.
Robinson, a likely candidate for governor in 2024, has claimed teachers are indoctrinating children and has attacked transgender individuals and homosexuality as “filth.” Budd, a gun store owner who wears a sidearm in his ads, promises to be “a liberal agenda crusher.” Bishop, as a state senator, was the author of the notorious “bathroom bill” that targeted transgender people and made the state the subject of boycotts. Murphy has posted — and then deleted — racially charged tweets about then-Sen. Kamala Harris and Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. Cawthorn’s incendiary comments are becoming too numerous to mention and Republican congressional leaders are trying to distance themselves from him.
To win Trump’s endorsement, candidates must in turn endorse his false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. When Alabama Republican Senate candidate Mo Brooks, a stalwart Trump backer and election-result denier, said his party needs to move on from Trump’s obsession with the 2020 result, Trump took back his endorsement of Brooks.
Trump’s demand for loyalty to a lie is not only destructive to faith in democracy, but it’s also damaging to the Republican Party’s ability to nominate its strongest candidates. Saturday’s rally is a case in point. By supporting Budd, Trump is promoting a Republican less likely to win a general election than Budd’s top primary opponent, former Gov. Pat McCrory.
Most presidents see their approval ratings rise after they leave the glare and conflict of office, but Trump’s ratings have remained low as he continues to push the “Big Lie” about a stolen election. He hasn’t been helped by his appealing to Russian President Vladimir Putin for help with the investigation of business deals involving Biden’s son Hunter, or by a federal judge’s ruling that Trump likely committed a crime in his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Republicans are expected to do well in the midterm elections, as the party opposite the party occupying the White House often does. But if the GOP wants to win over moderate and unaffiliated voters for the long term, it will need to move away from the divisiveness that Trump stokes and the extremism of those Republican politicians who pander to him.
When Trump took hold of the Republican Party in 2016, it was the equivalent of a shotgun marriage. But that all went a little sour with Trump’s 2020 election loss and the assault on the Capitol that followed. Sensible and civil members of the Republican Party, at least what’s left of them, should skip Saturday’s lovefest for Trump and push for a divorce.
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This story was originally published April 7, 2022 at 2:27 PM with the headline "Trump and his ‘big lie’ are visiting NC. Republicans should move on.."