In evaluating the endgame of this turbulent 2024 presidential election, one of the large and unavoidable variables is whether the GOP will fight to overturn a Donald Trump defeat and, if so, to what lengths the party will go. Trump has made it redundantly clear he won’t accept any result if the election is not “fair,” and he has already deemed it unfair — even “rigged” on multiple, still-escalating grounds. We know from what happened four years ago that he will drag the country to the bottom of hell or to the brink of civil war if he thinks it might help him regain the presidency. And his personal stakes in victory are much higher now than they were then: His defeat will, by his own admission, end his political career and very possibly lead to his incarceration and/or financial ruin through the many criminal and civil charges still pending against him, which he could surely quash as president.
In 2020, of course, Trump’s efforts to steal the election were inhibited by quite a few Republican officials who certified Biden wins, by Republican-appointed judges who rejected the Trump campaign’s phony-baloney voter-fraud lawsuits, and ultimately by Trump’s own Republican vice-president, who refused to blow up the confirmation of the results in Congress. Would that happen again if Trump goes for broke this year?
Perhaps, and there are indeed some new guardrails against a postelection coup created by the Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022, which many Republicans supported, notably Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Yet it’s possible Trump would have more help from his fellow Republicans than he secured four years ago. After all, they are just about as desperate for victory as he is.
There’s no question that, with very few exceptions, GOP elected officials and party leaders are even more bought into Trump’s candidacy and the MAGA movement than they were in 2020 and far, far more than they were in 2016. His efficient romp through a large 2024 primary field and his ability to dictate to Republicans in Congress (viz the infamous bipartisan border-security legislation he shut down with a snap of his fingers) showed that. Mike Johnson, the man who led the long-shot effort to deny Biden the presidency after the Mike Pence ploy failed, is now Speaker of the House and an especially craven Trump toady. McConnell, an occasional Trump obstacle, is stepping down as Senate leader, and his successor is sure to be more in line with the view from Mar-a-Lago. The 45th president’s judicial nominees are now all settled in, and the Supreme Court in particular is increasingly willing to do him a solid.
Above and beyond their loyalty to the GOP’s three-time presidential nominee and the belief they share with virtually every political observer that 2024 is a big fork in the road for the country, Republicans have to consider their own party’s fate if Trump fails. They are long past the point of just dismissing Trump’s reshaping of their party in his malevolent image as a temporary phenomenon that can be discarded like suddenly unfashionable clothes. There is no waiting-in-the-wings heir who can step in and pick up the baton from him. Yes, J.D. Vance had a good debate performance against Tim Walz and perhaps with four years’ worth of seasoning as vice-president he might be a suitable successor, but if he and Trump lose, he’ll return to being a freshman senator with the addition of a big L on his résumé and poor favorability numbers. More likely than an orderly transition from one regime to another is the scorpions-in-a-bottle scenario laid out by Jonah Goldberg:
One analogue for this is the tea party movement. The groups that marched under that banner had no formal leadership or organization, so after President Obama was reelected in 2012, they splintered into grifting factions. I’d expect the same to happen to MAGA world, leaving a host of demagogues to scrap over a shrinking supply of marks.
Just as important, the ideological and constituency-group powers sidelined or co-opted by Trump can be expected to stake claims to the post-Trump GOP. The anti-abortion movement and the less freebooting elements of the Christian right would definitely make a move, as would the chamber-of-commerce types privately horrified by MAGA protectionism, the conservative hawks eager to rebuild an American military colossus, and the hardcore fiscal-austerity lobby frantic to “reform” entitlements. There is, after all, a reason Never Trump Republicans such Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney, and Geoff Duncan haven’t left their party. They think they might get it back.
Yes, as Goldberg points out, post-Trump Republicans could achieve tactical unity in opposition to a Harris administration, particularly if they manage to flip the Senate. But as a party that lost back-to-back presidential elections and underperformed in back-to-back midterms, they would be overdue for a thorough and painful autopsy over what went wrong. And it’s not as though Trump would just go away, either; even if he’s a defeated shell of a man, the trials a defeat would unleash would keep him in the news and give his MAGA followers fresh grievances to nurse.
From the perspective of most Republicans, it would be vastly preferable for Trump to win, for them to enjoy the spoils of victory and the agony of the hated Democrats’ defeat, and then to begin maneuvering for the next stage of the GOP with (many hope) the 47th president staying out of the way on grounds that no one can truly replace him. Will they be willing to go to considerable lengths to help Trump overturn a defeat, particularly if it doesn’t involve the attempted sack of the Capitol? I’m afraid they will. We don’t know at this point exactly what strategy Team Trump will deploy to “stop the steal” it is already alleging. But if it seems feasible and doesn’t involve the complete suspension of the Constitution and the formal introduction of an authoritarian regime, a lot of ostensibly respectable elephants will join the stampede.
