Is there life after Donald Trump?

Midterms election didn’t go as well as Republicans hoped, gaining the House but missing the Senate win
Now, an internal discussion about Donald Trump’s behavior and his candidates’ debacles has become much more impellent
New and old figures, many once close to the tycoon, are now challengers for the 2024 Presidential run.

On the occasion of midterm elections, many researchers and institutes predicted the so-called red wave (a huge Republican win). In fact, the win for the GOP was very thin: they gained the House of Representatives, but Dems kept the Senate under control, and that’s fantastic news for Joe Biden, as the ruling party is traditionally disadvantaged at midterm and the 46th President has a historical low in approval rates. Anyway, Republicans assure the total majority in Congress, and the nomination of the next Congress Speaker: Nancy Pelosi (Dem-California) will be probably replaced by the former minority leader at the Chamber, Kevin McCarthy, even if he seems not to have the numbers to be elected. In Italy and many western countries, it would be quite awkward, to see a majority party not exploiting its advantage. However, US politics are quite strange.

The two-system party offers two defined macro-visions of American ideologies, beliefs, culture, and lifestyle, which cannot confuse the citizens, but these two poles have at their interior different (many times in radical ways) positions. The Democratic Party has a strong majority of long-time congressmen with moderate positions (Joe Biden, Joe Manchin, Michael Bloomberg, Hillary Clinton) and a small fringe of extreme left-wingers (Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and gen-Z idols like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar), which in the occasion of 2020 elections strongly supported Biden-Harris after the primaries. On the other hand, the Great Old Party, representing the majority of national traditional values, adapted to different contexts and situations, includes in consequence more different positions. Till 2015 the Republican Party was ruled by a small crew of historical figures such as the Bush family and the strategic diplomats who occupied glorious seats since the Reagan era (the so-called neocons, former Democrats who switched to the right and started a tout-court war against all enemies of America) such as Dick Cheney, John McCain, and Donald Rumsfeld. The only opponents of the hierarchy were the libertarian conservatives (Ron Paul) and the America First mob (Sarah Palin), but they were an absolute minority. During Obama’s double mandate, the differences became clear, as the neo-cons criticized the President through institutional ways (sometimes they agreed with him), but the minorities started a fierce opposition to Obama’s social policies, in particular, the Tea Party Movement (Taxed Enough Already) opposed his bills for government bailouts and the notorious Obamacare, accusing him to tread on taxpayers and to enforce socialism in America. On the occasion of the 2016 presidential elections primaries, the GOP institutional moderate figure Jeb Bush (son of the 41st and brother of the 43rd President) fought against young Tea Party stars such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, but the real surprise came out when a former Democrat voter, accused of sexism and not a real personification of family values entered the race: Donald J. Trump. Voters remained petrified in front of his dialectic, swagger, and violent humor, so the entire party progressively agreed on his figure. The NY tycoon won in 2016 against all odds, even if the traditional establishment of the Party never accepted him: George Bush Sr. and Jr., Dick Cheney, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Paul Ryan never endorsed him.

His sharp communication, his ridicule of opponents and media anchors, his regardless use of the social network, his controversial friendships inside America (such as the “father” of populism, Steve Bannon), and the Russiagate case (accusation of receiving Russian support) made him an idol for the fanbase, a target for his adversaries and an issue for the summit of the Party. After the Capitol Hill assault (in which Trump is accused of not having intervened to stop the protest) the party split into 2 extreme poles and a great mud in the middle. Many have maintained their rooted opposition, such as Mitt Romney, Adam Kinzinger, and Liz Cheney, and called for the removal of Trump. The Donald has kept a fringe of hardcore supporters, but the pyrrhic midterm victory was Trumpists’ fault: his front-runner lost crucial seats such as the doctor-star Mehmet Oz, defeated in Pennsylvania by the Dem candidate John Fetterman (huge win for the Senate run). Generally, Trump’s pupils were showmen who launched into politics and many times endorsed extreme conspiracy theories. The mud is composed of Congressmen who supported Trump during his office in an optic of collaboration and Party growth but weren’t personal admirers of Trump. Many have gone away after 1-6-2021, for example, the former VP Mike Pence and the same Kevin McCarthy, who called Trump enraged for the situation that he set up in Washington, and that’s the reason many tycoon’s loyalists are refusing McCarthy as Congress Speaker.

Frontpages of 11.9.2022 and 11.10.2022 of the New York Post commenting on Trump’s defeat at the midterm elections and Ron DeSantis’s victory (via Axios)

In 2023 the GOP primaries will start and many candidates seem ready to run: the Donald already presented his candidature (many scoops are naming the rapper and Trump’s friend Kanye West as VP) and think to have the total support of the Party and Americans, as he believes they want his return to restore a solid power after the weak period of “Sleepy Joe”. However, new candidates are supposed to come out. Many local moderate governors such as Glenn Youngkin (Virginia), Chris Sununu (New Hampshire), Nikki Haley (former governor of South Carolina, also former UN Ambassador), and Larry Hogan (Connecticut) and popular politicians like Ted Cruz and Mike Pompeo could take part in the GOP primaries. But two names are believed to be Donald Trump’s main challengers: the first is fomer Vice-President Mike Pence. Once a convinced member of the Trump administration, Pence became “Judas” as he recognized Joe Biden victory after the discussed 2020 electoral results and accepted the presidential transition. In his coming-soon memories book “So help me God” he’s expected to reveal new anecdotes about his VP office, his relationship with Trump, and his future. However, the real contender will be according to many sources Ronald “Ron” DeSantis.

42 years old, father of 3, Ron has Italian origin and a successful course: in a few years, he got a Juris Bachelor at Harvard University, then left for Iraq, where he served in the 2003 US intervention as a Corvette Captain and in 2012 was elected as Congressmen for Florida, his state. In 2017, he started cooperating with Donald Trump, who brought him under his protection and supported his candidature as Florida Governor in 2018. In 2022 he regained office (defeating the Democrat Charlie Crist at 59% against 40%) thanks to brave and forward-looking decision. First, he enforced the cultural battle between conservatives and progressists, banning trans-women to compete in female sports, forbidding gender identity discussion in primary public schools (this proposal was called the “Don’t say gay” bill by the Dem and the LGBT organizations, and the same convinced Disney to take a position against the bill, but Ron DeSantis lifted the Disney’s fiscal advantages) and fighting against the introduction of the critical race theory in schools (a field of human science, which is trying to rewrite American history with the lens of inter-ethnical interaction, claiming racism is a key component of the structure and the organization’s praxis of whole America). At the same time, he tried to build a new resort for the traditional American society: Florida had one of the most permissive policies against Covid-19, refusing vax-passes and mask mandates and even many critics of DeSantis policies have been caught enjoying Miami’s sun, but it’s the new fiscal regime which attracts many wealthy people and corporations. Florida is lowering taxes on big businesses and is one of the few states that doesn’t have taxes on earned income. Many leading states such as New York and California have started social policies making enterprise always more difficult, so many corporations (Big Data in particular) are moving toward Florida and Texas.

Chart showing survey’s on the favorite Republican nominee for the 2024 presidential elections before and after the midterm elections (Morning Consult’s survey for Politico)

Donald Trump underlined how Florida Governor is a creature of him and he menaced him and other eventual contenders not to defy him, calling him “Ron DeSanctimonious” (“Ron the bigot”) and attacking other figures in the party such as the Senate Leader Mitch McConnell. Ron DeSantis is appreciated by both the Republican establishment and voters, as he stands for hardcore conservative battles, but at the same time doesn’t recur to the QAnon conspiracy arguments. Former candidate Jeb Bush declared openly “He would be a fantastic candidate”, while Mitt Romney allegorically refused another Trump experience exclaiming “When a pitcher misses for 3 times the hit (2018 midterms, 2020 presidential and 2022 midterms elections) must be subbed off”. According to many sources, from CPAC straw polls to Morning Consult surveys, Ron DeSantis caught in just 18 months the appreciation of 33% of Republicans, especially the ones who didn’t were huge MAGA supporters but also grabbed part of Trump’s consensus. Moreover, DeSantis supporters are on average wealthier and with higher degrees rather than Trump fanbase.

In the end, we must consider the media bias in this situation: the historical right-wing outlets of the Murdoch family (FoxNews and NYPost) and other Republican-leaning media such as National Review and Wall Street Journal have celebrated Florida’s success blaming Trump’s crew for the half-victory. The New York Post dedicated the 9th November front page to DeSantis, calling him “DeFuture”, while the successive day Trump was targeted as the main responsible for the missed success. The notorious entrepreneur Elon Musk already endorsed Ron. Is Ron DeSantis bluffing behaving as a false alternative or will be the main obstacle for 45’s comeback? The next episode will be in late 2023, as the first GOP castings for the 2024 presidential elections will be held. There, we will know if Don and Ron will be the two titans on the field or if there will be another “Trump” in 2024.

Sources:

https://www.bbc.com/news/election/2022/us/results

https://edition.cnn.com/polling/approval-rating-poll-of-polls

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/18/kevin-mccarthy-house-speaker-election/

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/4/13/21219537/biden-sanders-endorsement-2020-democratic-primary

https://web.archive.org/web/20100303203428/http://www.loccidentale.it/articolo/da+ron+paul+a+geert+wilders,+europa+e+america+riscoprono+l%E2%80%99isolazionismo.0086712

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/tea-party-taxpayer-march-on-washington-protest

https://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2016/09/09/foto/trump_e_clinton_nemici_amici_le_foto_inedite_di_bill_hillary_e_donald-147464680/1/

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/31/politics/cheney-kinzinger-trump-january-6/index.html

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/11/09/politics/trump-backed-candidates-key-toss-ups/index.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/12/top-10-republican-candidates-2024/

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/22/mike-pence-2024-staff-00070579