Hill GOP to Trump: Tamp down the talk of grudges and Jan. 6

Donald Trump’s bid to oust a Florida Republican who backed Ron DeSantis over him is reviving a long-running GOP anxiety: that he can't be dissuaded from the grudges and inflammatory rhetoric that plagued his party's lawmakers during his first term.

Trump's call for a challenger to Rep. Laurel Lee (R-Fla.), the only House Republican from DeSantis' state to endorse the Florida governor in the primary, reveals a campaign with little interest in courting his former rivals and their supporters. But as President Joe Biden makes a play for Nikki Haley voters who might be reluctant to back Trump, Republicans are starting to nudge the former president to at least try to tone it down.

They're concerned about a rerun of the hair-pulling past — where GOP candidates in battleground races are constantly challenged to answer for their presumptive nominee's more erratic and boisterous statements.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), another former DeSantis backer, told POLITICO that Trump's scorched-earth approach to Lee risks turning off some voters who might otherwise favor him.

“Gratuitous attacks like these won’t help him win the presidency, and are counterproductive to building a conservative Congress eager to advance his agenda when he’s elected,” Massie said. “Fortunately, Laurel Lee will win her reelection by a comfortable margin, but in the meantime, these kind of statements alienate some of Trump’s potential voters.”

Trump is unlikely to heed such warnings to pivot to a more consistent general election message. So far this month, he has said that Jewish Americans who vote for Democrats "hate" their religion and described some migrants as "not people."

But the fact that Hill Republicans are even attempting to refocus him, underscored by nearly 20 interviews with lawmakers and aides, illustrates their real worries about a 2024 cycle where their electoral fates are inescapably tied to the man at the top of the ticket.

The former president “needs to be sensitive to where he's strong and where he's weak in the electoral map,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.).

Tillis added a note of hope that Trump won't sink candidates in states where the GOP might otherwise compete, like Michigan, where his "crossover appeal" might not translate to congressional candidates. If Trump doesn't campaign strategically, Tillis said, "we could potentially lose the coin toss in an all-other-things-equal race” further down the ballot.

Atop of the list of topics some Republicans want Trump to avoid: his attempts to revise the violent history of the Capitol attack by his supporters and his description of people convicted of riot-related crimes as "patriots."

Many GOP senators are wincing as Trump homes in on Jan. 6, 2021, rather than attempting to capitalize on Biden’s vulnerabilities. Some national polls show Biden with a potential edge on the issue of democratic values, and the president made the violent attack an early and central fixture in his State of the Union address this month.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), said that praising Capitol rioters "definitely is not my thing," advising Trump to talk more about middle-class workers instead.

“I was there" on Jan. 6, said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D). "And the courts have clearly said that these individuals engaged in criminal activity. Not all of them, but a sizable number. And I'm most certainly not going to call them patriots.”

Still, Rounds made clear that he wants Biden out of office, launching into a fusillade of mainstream GOP criticisms of the president and congressional Democrats on inflation, energy and tax policy. Then, when asked if he agrees with Trump’s view of Jews who vote Democratic, he said bluntly: “No.”

Those sorts of questions are the stuff of nightmares for vulnerable House Republicans and Senate hopefuls looking to flip seats in battleground states. Trump’s confrontational style has never fully rubbed off on his party; Republicans often succeed in battleground states by running more conventional candidates — who still have to respond to nearly everything Trump does once they offer him their support.

“There's a lot of Republicans in tough seats that are just making the [Trump] endorsement and then moving on,” said one House Republican, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “If you endorse, immediately, anything that comes out of his mouth you have to answer for it. And that's something that a lot of folks are concerned about.”

Trump has argued that Haley donors wouldn’t be accepted by his supporters, writing on Truth Social in January that her backers “will be permanently barred from the MAGA camp.” Even after dropping out, though, she’s continuing to draw votes in the primary. Biden's latest ad buy is designed to welcome her voters to his side.

And those pockets of Haley voters could make the difference in crucial battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Adding to the competition: National polls that include third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggest that the race will be much tighter with him potentially pulling votes from either Trump or Biden.

While Trump focuses on his base — and Haley withholds her endorsement — other congressional Republicans want to see him use his running-mate pick and his Cabinet shortlist to make a statement about building a more inclusive GOP.

“His pick for vice president is important, any early suggestions for Cabinet officials I think is important," Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said. "Reaching out to people who are not yet on board is important.”

More traditional Republicans like Haley and former Vice President Mike Pence may represent the kind of voters Trump needs in his coalition to win the White House and a GOP Congress this fall. Pence, a stalwart social conservative, has come to speak more loudly for the Never Trump Republican, which is a dying breed in Congress although not entirely gone.

Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), for example, will not endorse Trump and said in a brief interview that he’s “done talking about things that are even resembling presidential campaign talk right now.”

His reply is no surprise, since refusing to back Trump is the fastest way to make life painful in the Republican Party. But while some polls show Trump leading Biden without having to court blocs of GOP voters who might identify more with the deal-making Young than with MAGA, some Republicans don’t want to take any chances.

“There's no reason that you wouldn't want to expand the opportunity to bring more people to your side, to be appealing to more voters,” said Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) “Polls, as we've seen particularly in recent years, are not predictive.”

Then there's the Hill's handful of DeSantis supporters; Lee isn’t the first of them to get targeted by Trump. He previously clashed with Massie, only to endorse the Kentuckian's 2022 reelection, and later voiced interest in finding a GOP challenger to run against Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), another early DeSantis endorser.

Trump's calls to unseat Roy, however, came after the Lone Star State’s filing deadline.

In a recent interview, Roy argued that Trump stands to gain from sticking to issues like border security and “draining the swamp."

But “if you're focusing on your opponents, you're focusing on whatever happened in 2020," Roy added of Trump, "well, that ain't gonna do it.”