Opinion I testified in the Georgia probe. I hope Trump’s indictment is a pivot point.
For the Republican Party, and myself, the playbook was familiar. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, I earned Trump’s wrath for refusing to go along with his cockamamie schemes to overturn the election he lost because of his own lack of effort. Most of the GOP in my home state of Georgia went along for Trump’s now potentially felonious ride.
Now, that bill is coming due — not just for Trump and the 18 others who received indictments Monday night, but for Republicans everywhere.
Under Trump’s self-centered stewardship, we squandered control of the House in 2018, the White House in 2020 and the Senate in 2021. The loss of the Senate was especially galling, as it involved a pair of easily winnable runoffs in Georgia, where former senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue grounded their candidacies in Trump’s election lies.
Once the bedrock of winning GOP coalitions, suburban voters abandoned our party. In 2020, Democratic candidate Joe Biden improved by 9 percentage points over Hillary Clinton’s 45 percent vote share four years earlier.
Count me skeptical that 91 felony charges are going to win those voters back. Yet Trump enjoys a nearly 40-point lead over the Republican primary field, according to the RealClearPolitics average.
Republicans face the real possibility of losing another election to President Biden. With Trump atop the ticket, it won’t matter that 68 percent of voters think Biden is too old for another term. The swirling cloud of controversy around Hunter Biden won’t do enough to muddy the legal waters. Neither will criticism about the president’s extended beach vacation while Maui, Hawaii, burned.
The Fulton County charges are poised to land with a louder thud than the previous three indictments. This case has always been viewed as the most serious of the bunch for multiple reasons. For one, it is the first time that senior members of Trump’s inner circle will face criminal charges beside him. For another, with the prospect of real prison time, the odds of cooperating witnesses that are no longer infatuated with being in the cool kids’ club increase.
The court proceedings could also be televised. With explosive allegations involving false claims about ballot stuffing, these charges involve the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, more commonly known as RICO. This term is more often associated with crime shows such as “The Sopranos” than presidential politics. Indeed, RICO was originally aimed at breaking up organized crime groups. It allows prosecutors to target anyone suspected of participating in a “criminal enterprise” by committing at least two underlying crimes.
In the aftermath of the late-night indictments, some of the GOP reaction was predictable but still disappointing. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) called it a “desperate sham.” Before the charges were unveiled, presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy dismissed them as “another disastrous Trump indictment.”
There were glimmers of hope and change. Chris Sununu, New Hampshire’s popular Republican governor, has agreed to hit the trail alongside any candidate running on an anti-Trump message in his state. Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who has hammered Trump relentlessly, has pulled into second place in New Hampshire. Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson again called on Trump to drop out. More should follow suit.
To be sure, these candidates are still long shots, but these are bad omens for Trump. A recent Reuters-Ipsos poll showed nearly half of Republicans unwilling to vote for Trump if he were convicted of a felony. While that number should be higher, the wheels of progress can turn slowly before building momentum.
Wherever one falls on the ideological spectrum, it is sad to see the presidency of the United States reduced to such a circus. Rather than history repeating itself on an endless loop, I am hopeful that this latest chapter can be a pivot point for the Republican Party. If it’s not, we only have ourselves to blame for our electoral losses.
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