With the midterm elections now just seven months away, some Republicans are taking a long look at the party and trying to figure out if failed, one-term former President Donald Trump still holds sway in the GOP.
The answer, it seems, is that Trump is seen by many in the know as being in the rearview mirror with his influence and importance dissipating by the day.
Eleanor Clift writes in The Daily Beast that well-known Republican pollster Frank Luntz is convinced Trump is history:
“They won’t say it [in public], but behind his back, they think he’s a child. They’re laughing at him.”
Luntz also explained that the vast majority of Republicans have no desire to relitigate the 2020 election and would rather drop the subject completely:
“Trump isn’t the same man he was a year ago. Even many Republicans are tired of going back and rehashing the 2020 election. Everybody else has moved on and in Washington everyone believes he lost the election.”
Clift warns that while Trump’s influence may be waning inside the GOP, that could change depending on how candidates he has endorsed do come November:
“Republicans may be laughing at Trump behind his back, as Luntz indicated, but making fun of the former president could backfire. When President Barack Obama ridiculed Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2011, the putdown was so stinging that some believe it prompted the real-estate tycoon’s 2016 bid for the presidency.
“This time around, we will learn when the votes are counted in the nearly 130 races where Trump has endorsed a candidate, testing his strength in the Republican Party to pick governors and senators and even state legislators—and testing the theories of those who say his best days are behind him, and the fortitude of those who mock him.”
