Why Trump Is the Clear Republican Frontrunner

For almost seven years, Donald Trump has dwelled on a plane so far beyond the political norms that it’s almost impossible to analyze him through the traditional frames of reference. But if we can put aside the sheer otherworldliness of his conduct — John Kelly, his former chief of staff, called him “the most flawed individual I have ever met” — there’s an aspect of Trump’s candidacy that would be eye-opening all by itself. Trump is the first ex-president in more than 130 years who is seeking a rematch against his victorious rival.

There are plenty of nations where combatants go up against each other again and again. In France, Emmanuel Macron and Marine LePen were electoral foes last year, five years after their first encounter, with similar results; such rematches are commonplace in parliamentary systems. But here?

The great populist William Jennings Bryan faced off against President William McKinley in 1896 and 1900 and lost both times; the next rematch was Dwight Eisenhower vs. Adlai Stevenson; Ike was victorious in 1952 and 1956. Not since Grover Cleveland took the White House back from Benjamin Harrison in 1892 has a defeated president sought to oust the president who ousted him. (When Theodore Roosevelt ran against William Howard Taft in 1912, that was an intraparty battle between former allies. In 1940, Herbert Hoover tried to mount a comeback against FDR that was met with less than enthusiastic support among Republicans and he didn’t win the nomination). The prospect of an ex-president actively campaigning for the White House is something no one alive today has ever seen.

What makes this even more unprecedented is the way Republicans regard the 45th president. In modern times before the 2020 election, every defeated incumbent but one (Gerald Ford) lost the White House decisively. Taft in 1912 finished third behind Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt, winning a grand total of eight electoral votes. Hoover in 1932 won only six states, losing by 18 points in the popular vote. Jimmy Carter lost the electoral vote 489-89, winning only six states. With these results, defeated presidents would have faced a steep climb in trying to convince their party to give them another chance. They were, as Trump might put it, losers.

Trump’s standing with Republicans is very different. Sure, Trump lost the 2020 popular vote by seven million votes, but Republicans can look at the razor-thin margins in the (also decisive) Electoral College count; a shift of 44,000 votes in three states — Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona — would have meant a 269-269 tie, throwing the election into the House of Representatives, where a majority of delegations would likely have given Trump the presidency.

That’s only part of the picture; by a nearly two-to-one margin, Republicans believe that the election was stolen — that Trump is in fact the rightful president. Even as his approval ratings sink below 30 percent among all voters, his favorability rating among Republicans remains at or near 80 percent.

In a sense, then, the Republican base sees Trump less as a candidate for president than as the real president, deprived of office by fraud. That’s despite the clear lack of evidence of fraud in the election, a fact that even many Fox commentators acknowledged privately despite what they told their viewers, as the Dominion lawsuit made clear.

Moreover, history shows that political parties simply do not jettison their presidents, even when their prospects for victory are slim. The last time the country’s chief executive was denied renomination was Chester Arthur in 1884 (Ronald Reagan came close to unseating Ford in 1976; Ford, like Arthur, was an unelected president). Given the Bizarro World quality of the Trump era, it almost seems normal for Republicans to be standing behind their “president,” who they regard as the candidate who really won last time out.

All that said, is it really necessary to note this does not qualify as a prediction for who will win the GOP nomination? It’s entirely possible that one or two or three indictments — about matters more serious than hush money to a porn star — might change Republican minds. Perhaps so would a widespread campaign among GOP officials that a Trump nomination would doom the party to November defeat (though this would require Trump’s foes actually having the fortitude to mention his name when they are making that case).

For now, however, many Republicans appear to see Donald Trump as not simply their voice or their champion, but their president as well.