Anti-Trump PAC finds that “Teflon Don” still has powerful bond with Republican voters

Don­ald Trump has been out of the White House for more than half of a pres­i­den­tial term and is in greater legal per­il than he’s ever been at any point in his life, yet his bond with Repub­li­can vot­ers remains incred­i­bly strong, a right wing polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee named Win It Back has concluded.

The PAC — which The New York Times’ Jonathan Swan described as “a well fund­ed group of anti-Trump con­ser­v­a­tives” — has been fruit­less­ly search­ing for argu­ments against Trump’s 2024 can­di­da­cy that res­onate with Repub­li­can vot­ers, and it has come up com­plete­ly emp­ty, which won’t come as a sur­prise to many pro­gres­sive and Demo­c­ra­t­ic strate­gists who keep an eye on cur­rent dynamics.

A memo sent by Win It Back­’s top oper­a­tive David McIn­tosh, which the New York Times got a hold of and pub­lished, “acknowl­edges to donors that after exten­sive test­ing of more than 40 anti-Trump tele­vi­sion ads, ‘all attempts to under­mine his con­ser­v­a­tive cre­den­tials on spe­cif­ic issues were ineffective.’ ”

“Every tra­di­tion­al post-pro­duc­tion ad attack­ing Pres­i­dent Trump either back­fired or pro­duced no impact on his bal­lot sup­port and favor­a­bil­i­ty,” McIn­tosh wrote.

“This includes ads that pri­mar­i­ly fea­ture video of him say­ing lib­er­al or stu­pid com­ments from his own mouth. The best per­form­ing ads include non-script­ed Repub­li­cans shar­ing reser­va­tions in their own words that touch on the themes and broad­ly accept­able mes­sag­ing men­tioned above. Notably, when the same tes­ti­mo­ni­al-type of ad pro­vides com­men­tary on a spe­cif­ic issue in Pres­i­dent Trump’s record, they are large­ly inef­fec­tive,” McIn­tosh added.

Some ads were worse than inef­fec­tive — they actu­al­ly helped increase Trump’s sup­port, accord­ing to mes­sage test­ing con­duct­ed by Win It Back. Yes, you read that right: some of the group’s ads made the “Teflon Don” prob­lem worse!

You can read the memo your­self below:

“The memo will pro­vide lit­tle reas­sur­ance to the rest of the field of Mr. Trump’s Repub­li­can rivals that there is any elu­sive mes­sage out there that can work to deflate his sup­port,” Swan sug­gest­ed in his write­up for the New York Times.

Polling has, as many Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate read­ers are like­ly aware, sug­gest­ed for months that the 2024 Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion is Trump’s to lose.

But this memo is just strik­ing. It’s a real­ly impor­tant piece of evi­dence that backs up the body of avail­able polling. After pro­duc­ing more than forty tele­vi­sion ads test­ed in twelve in-per­son focus groups and four online ran­dom­ized con­trolled exper­i­ments, Win It Back has­n’t been able to find any real­ly potent argu­ments against Don­ald Trump with Repub­li­can vot­ers. It’s an omi­nous piece of news for the Repub­li­can field, includ­ing the sev­en can­di­dates who debat­ed last night.

“Can­di­dates on the debate stage should not be afraid to attack Don­ald Trump,” New Hamp­shire Gov­er­nor Chris Sununu argued just a few weeks ago in an August essay for The New York Times’ Opin­ion sec­tion. “While it’s true that Mr. Trump has an iron grip on more than thir­ty per­cent of the elec­torate, the oth­er six­ty per­cent or so is open to mov­ing for­ward with a new nominee.”

Last night, pret­ty much the whole field took Sununu’s advice. Even Ron DeSan­tis took swings at Don­ald Trump. But get­ting some­thing, any­thing, to stick — well, Win It Back­’s research sug­gests that is going to be real­ly, real­ly, real­ly difficult.

Even if the field were to shrink, leav­ing Repub­li­can vot­ers with just one major alter­na­tive to Trump, it’s hard to see that rival can­di­date get­ting traction.

Trump’s oper­a­tion is so con­fi­dent it’s got this that it has pub­licly sug­gest­ed the RNC quit hold­ing pres­i­den­tial debates because Trump’s nom­i­na­tion is inevitable.

“Chris LaCivi­ta, a senior advis­er to Trump’s cam­paign, called on the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee to scrap all future pri­ma­ry debates so that the par­ty and its can­di­dates can coa­lesce behind Trump and turn their focus to defeat­ing Pres­i­dent Joe Biden in 2024,” McClatchy report­ed in an arti­cle filed by Max Green­wood.

The mes­sage to the RNC is clear: Trump is your mas­ter. Bow down and accord Don­ald the def­er­ence he would get if he were the incumbent. 

Although it has­n’t changed its name, the Repub­li­can Par­ty no longer looks or func­tions like a major polit­i­cal par­ty any­more, let alone one com­mit­ted to repub­li­can­ism and democ­ra­cy. It has instead become a dan­ger­ous cult that wor­ships a wannabe auto­crat — Don­ald Trump. It mat­ters not that Trump’s pres­i­den­cy was a dis­as­ter, that he tried to over­throw the gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States by incit­ing an insur­rec­tion, or that he’s at risk of los­ing key sym­bol­ic assets like Trump Tow­er due to his fraud­u­lent busi­ness prac­tices.

It also does­n’t mat­ter that Trump is a patho­log­i­cal liar and nar­cis­sist who manip­u­lates peo­ple and push­es their but­tons to get what he wants. Repub­li­can vot­ers seem ready to for­give any trans­gres­sion and dis­miss any evi­dence that Trump does­n’t actu­al­ly care about what they care about, or share their values.

Win It Back con­clud­ed that the only mes­sen­gers many Repub­li­cans will take seri­ous­ly are vot­ers who pro­fess to have pre­vi­ous­ly sup­port­ed Don­ald Trump.

“It is essen­tial to dis­arm the view­er at the open­ing of the ad by estab­lish­ing that the per­son being inter­viewed on cam­era is a Repub­li­can who pre­vi­ous­ly sup­port­ed Pres­i­dent Trump; oth­er­wise, the view­er will auto­mat­i­cal­ly put their guard up, assum­ing the mes­sen­ger is just anoth­er Trump-hater whose opin­ion should be sum­mar­i­ly dis­missed,” McIn­tosh explained in a sec­tion titled “key learnings.”

Win It Back is hop­ing to have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to “max­i­mize an alter­na­tive can­di­date’s bal­lot share when the field begins to consolidate.”

But that con­sol­i­da­tion may not hap­pen until Trump has the 2024 nom­i­na­tion all locked up. Unlike the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, which con­sis­tent­ly uses pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion, many Repub­li­can Par­ty nom­i­nat­ing events are win­ner-take-all, espe­cial­ly after the ear­ly states have gone, which makes it much eas­i­er for a fron­trun­ner to sew up the del­e­gates they need to get the nom­i­na­tion.

Trump owes his remark­able resilien­cy in large part to his eli­gi­bil­i­ty for the pres­i­den­cy in 2024. Repub­li­cans in Con­gress, and specif­i­cal­ly in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate, had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to seri­ous­ly weak­en Trump by con­vict­ing him of incit­ing an insur­rec­tion and then vot­ing to bar him from hold­ing office again.

This could have hap­pened in ear­ly 2021, after Trump had left office, at the con­clu­sion of Trump’s sec­ond impeach­ment tri­al.

Had Mitch McConnell cho­sen to pro­vide the Repub­li­can votes nec­es­sary to con­vict Trump, Trump could have been boot­ed from the 2024 are­na with the adop­tion of a motion in the Sen­ate to dis­qual­i­fy him as a future can­di­date for fed­er­al office. This would have paved the way for some­one like Ron DeSan­tis, Nik­ki Haley, or Vivek Ramaswamy to win the 2024 Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nomination.

Instead, like Kevin McCarthy, who had made a pil­grim­age to Mar-a-Lago to get back into Trump’s good graces, McConnell sided with Trump.

Sev­en Repub­li­cans, of their own voli­tion, vot­ed to con­vict Trump back in Feb­ru­ary of 2021. (Pre­sum­ably, they also would have vot­ed to bar Trump from run­ning again.) All it would have tak­en to get the job done would have been ten more Repub­li­can votes: McConnell and nine oth­er Repub­li­can oth­er sen­a­tors. That would have yield­ed six­ty-sev­en votes to con­vict, meet­ing the two-thirds threshold.

McConnel­l’s feck­less­ness then is cer­tain­ly hav­ing pow­er­ful reper­cus­sions now. Despite access to ample resources, anti-Trump forces aren’t find­ing any­thing that can real­ly stick to “Teflon Don,” as McIn­tosh con­ced­ed. 2015–2016 may not be exact­ly repeat­ing itself, but it’s rhyming, as the pop­u­lar say­ing goes. As in life, noth­ing is cer­tain in pol­i­tics, but if there is a path to the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion for any­one oth­er than Don­ald Trump, it’s not one that we can see right now.