Will Trump Prove to be another Romney?

Barack Obama’s team blasted Mitt Romney well before he won the nomination. Here the candidates spar during the second debate in October 2012.

President Joe Biden’s team hopes the 2024 race will mirror the last one. It won’t, if Republicans are smart.

This time, there’s no pandemic to excuse Biden’s campaigning from his basement. His mental decline will be obvious, as will his turn to the left. He won’t be able to portray himself convincingly as a moderate unifier, as he did in 2020. No wonder Biden is losing independents – only 14 per cent said in the April 17 Associated Press/National Opinion Research Centre poll they’d like him to run for re-election.

And placating his party’s leftists hasn’t produced the sky-high approval he likely hoped for among more left-leaning groups critical to his re-election, such as young people, black Americans and progressives. Only 14 per cent of Democrats under 50 in the March 20 Monmouth University poll preferred Biden to run again, as did 27 per cent of black, Hispanic and Asian-American Democrats and 22 per cent of very liberal Democrats.

This notable lack of enthusiasm is due partially to the base’s unreasonable expectation of what Biden could have done with a 50-50 Senate and Democrat House of Representatives for his first two years and with a Republican-controlled House this year. But much of this diffidence likely comes from the widespread sense that Biden is a spent force. There’s a real fear the Democrat base might stay home if Biden runs.

The President’s brains trust believes this can all be remedied if it can replicate the structure of the 2020 contest: Make the election a choice between Biden and Donald Trump.

Trump’s standing has deteriorated since that election over his role in the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol and his unending, falsehood-filled grievances about what he claims was the “stolen” 2020 election. In the April 19 NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll, even 23 per cent of Republicans thought Trump should drop out of the 2024 race after the Manhattan District Attorney indicted him over allegedly hiding hush-money payments to a porn star by failing to mark it as a campaign expense, though the indictment was widely panned by legal experts on the right and left. Despite all that, Biden is so weak that he trails Trump by about half a percentage point in the RealClearPolitics average, 43.5 per cent to 43.9 per cent.

So expect Team Biden to reuse the 2012 Democrat playbook. Like Biden, Barack Obama was vulnerable heading into his re-election campaign. His stimulus bill and Affordable Care Act had provoked the populist tea-party revolt. His campaign needed to change the contest from a referendum on Obama’s performance to a choice between an imperfect incumbent and an unacceptable challenger.

The Obama high command quickly swung into action, blasting Mitt Romney well before he had won the long, contentious and costly nomination battle on April 24. Team Obama recognised that extolling Obama’s first-term record and outlining his vision for the future were insufficient.

So on April 11, it opened up on Romney with an advertising blast depicting the former Massachusetts governor as a heartless plutocrat. Democrats kept this up for nearly seven months, pounding Romney as filthy rich, out of touch and indifferent to people’s everyday struggles – even as mistreating his dog. It worked.

Team Biden seems to understand it needs to focus the 2024 race similarly on savaging the GOP contender. It also obviously knows that strategy depends in large part on how vulnerable a target Republicans nominate – hence the fixation on Trump.

Biden’s April 24 announcement video cleverly opened with clips of Trump’s supporters beating police during the riots on January 6. Biden then denounced “MAGA extremists” as an image of Trump – pictured with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis – flashed on screen. Expect to see similar barrages as the campaign wears on if Biden gets the opponent he so desperately desires.

Today, the GOP seems unfortunately inclined to nominate the only man Biden thinks he can beat. But that could well change. Ask Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich and Jeb Bush, early leaders in the 2008, 2012 and 2016 nomination campaigns, respectively. There’s time for Republicans to get this right. They’d better.

The Wall Street Journal

Karl Rove helped organise the political-action committee American Crossroads and is author of The Triumph of William McKinley (Simon & Schuster, 2015)