The top question the media are asking Republicans running for president is whether they would pardon Donald Trump.
The top question the candidates are asking themselves is whether Trump’s second indictment will give him a bump in the polls, as the first one did.
Their follow-up question is whether a possible third indictment, or even a fourth, would finally peel away enough Trump primary supporters to give other candidates a shot at the nomination.
Huge events are unfolding in the GOP primary race, and yet the proverb that “the more things change, the more they remain the same” fits like a glove.
Trump came into the season as the front-runner and despite facing two sets of criminal charges and being found liable in a civil sexual assault and defamation case, he still holds a commanding lead over the 2024 field.
With two more investigations that target him still underway, he could have as many as four indictments hanging over his head before the Iowa caucuses next January.
The fact that he has not paid a significant price among GOP voters is confounding his rivals and leading them and anti-Trump party leaders to fine-tune their arguments.
Even as they largely avoid criticizing him directly and say the cases show Democrats using law enforcement for political ends, they also now say the indictments make Trump a certain loser in a general election.
Ergo, nominating him means four more years of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
“I think the electability argument is going to become more salient with this event,” former House Speaker Paul Ryan said after Trump’s federal arraignment.
“He’s going to cost us the Senate again, he’s going to cost us House seats, and we want to win.”
GOP Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana are making the same argument, as are some Republican governors.
Rivals’ primary potential
Trump’s rivals and critics share the belief that as much as half of his primary support is soft and can be pulled away.
But polls taken since charges over his possession of classified documents were unsealed on June 9 don’t show a meaningful decline.
Of the six national polls taken completely or partly since then, the former president averages 51.5%, a 30-point margin over runner-up Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who averages just 21.5%.
In late May, Trump’s average lead over DeSantis in six recent national polls stood at 33 points.
As one supporter of the Florida governor jokingly put it, DeSantis is holding his position as the “leading non-indicted candidate.”
Although early state polls show swings, there aren’t enough of them to be a reliable trend. In the single recent survey in Iowa, Trump holds a 15-point lead over DeSantis, down from 42 points in a May survey by different pollsters.
Conversely, his lead in New Hampshire has grown to 32 points from 21 points in May, although those were also single polls from different pollsters.
The driving force in Trump’s staying power is the conviction among his supporters that they are the ultimate target of both the radical left and the corrupt deep state, and that the prosecutions are tantamount to persecutions of him and them.
Their latest outrage is the fact that Democrats brought the first two cases against a former president in American history and that both depart wildly from how similar cases have been treated in the past.
The first case, brought by far-left Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg over hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, used a novel legal theory to turn what would usually be misdemeanor bookkeeping charges against Trump’s businesses into felonies against him.
The federal charges over the documents were brought by President Biden’s Department of Justice and the indictment reflects huge discrepancies in that Biden himself is being treated far more leniently than Trump despite an FBI probe of his handling of secret documents.
And Hillary Clinton got off scot-free in 2016 despite using a private server to house thousands of secret documents.
The public reaction to the federal case against Trump is especially noteworthy.
An ABC News poll found that 47% of all respondents say the charges are politically motivated, while just 37% disagree.
The data divide
Republicans overwhelmingly believe the charges stem from politics, with 80% saying that, while just 16% believe the case is valid.
The two remaining cases are also being brought by Dems.
One is another Biden Justice Department probe related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and the second is a Georgia state investigation focused on the 2020 election aftermath.
The argument from inside the GOP that the cases will prevent Trump from winning a general election is based on the idea that charges, regardless of their perceived unfairness among Republicans, will turn off too many independent voters in swing states, meaning Trump will again come up short in the Electoral College.
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu is especially forceful on the point, telling CNN that “The math has shown Donald Trump has no chance of winning in November of ’24.
He won’t even win Georgia.
If you’re a Republican that can’t win Georgia in November of ’24, you have no shot.”
Trump’s troubled history in Georgia comes up repeatedly among GOP critics as a reason why he should not be nominated.
He narrowly lost the usually-reliable red state to Biden in 2020 and his candidates have lost three consecutive Senate races there, tipping the chamber to Democrats.
The DeSantis camp cites the Georgia example quietly, while a louder version is coming from a PAC supporting the Peach State’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp.
It released a poll showing Trump leading Biden by just one point in the state, while a generic Republican beats Biden by 10.
Kemp, who angered Trump by refusing to overturn the 2020 results, won a landslide victory over a primary opponent backed by Trump last year and some business leaders are urging him to get into the presidential primary.
NBC reported that last month, Kemp privately told donors that everything must be seen through the eyes of a general election “because we can’t score points if we don’t have the ball.”
Sununu also considered making a White House run before deciding against it.
Still, he is using the importance of New Hampshire’s primary, the first on the GOP calendar, to shape the field and the argument against Trump.
His endorsement could be pivotal.
“No one is undecided about the former president. He’s a known commodity,” Sununu said on CNN.
“If Republicans nominate him, then we’re saying a vote for him in the primary is effectively a vote for Joe Biden.”
It’s a strong argument — but probably premature.
Most polls still show a Trump-Biden race to be close and my guess is that Republicans who might abandon Trump will first need to see much more clear and convincing evidence he can’t beat Biden.
Until they do, they’re standing by their man.
