U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz in recent weeks has grabbed the limelight by spotlighting the Republican Party’s divide over it post-Trump future.
The Florida Republican accused some GOP leaders of thumbing their noses at former President Donald Trump, abandoning rank-and-file party members for corporate cash and applause from Beltway insiders.
Voters, he said, want “America First” candidates that Beltway elitists hoped to be rid of once Trump left office. “We’re gonna have to fight to define the Republican Party in the image of President Trump,” Gaetz recently told Fox Business host Lou Dobbs.
Gaetz has proven prophetic.
Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in an interview Wednesday that the party’s leadership would remain neutral if Trump opts for a comeback bid in 2024.
“The party has to stay neutral. I’m not telling anybody to run or not to run in 2024,” McDaniel told the Associated Press.
“That’s going to be up to those candidates going forward. What I really do want to see him do, though, is help us win back majorities in 2022.”
Sure. Make bank off the Trump brand, but dismiss the man himself.
On the other hand, Politico reported on Wednesday that 56 percent of Republicans think Trump should either “probably or definitely run for president again in 2024.”
Comparatively, just 36 percent believe he “probably or definitely” should take a hard pass.
Meanwhile, Trump’s coy suggestion that he might be open to creating his own party – the Patriot Party – is resonating with many of these same Republicans.
Politico: “Republicans and Republican-leaning independent voters are closely split between the Republican Party and the notional Patriot Party that Trump recently floated. A third (33 percent) said they are more interested in being a member of the Republican Party, and 30 percent said they would be more interested in being a member of the Patriot Party.”
Trump, the polling numbers suggest, could wreck the GOP if he goes a third-party route.
Yet while the Trump argument pulls at the Republican threads, what may stitch them together is the prospect of an ever leftward-drifting Democratic Party President Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer remaining in charge.
For the record, his spokesman, Jason Miller, said Trump, who recently opened the “Office of the Former President” in Palm Beach, has nothing “that’s actively being planned” insofar as his political future beyond trying to help Republicans regain control of Congress next year.