Illinois’ Republican national committeeman urges GOP to bypass Trump and back DeSantis

In a major move by a top member of Illinois’ GOP leadership, the state’s Republican National Committeeman Richard Porter is urging party members to move past former President Donald Trump and instead pick Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as the party’s 2024 presidential nominee.

“Our nominee will either be Trump or someone better than Trump — someone with chutzpah, but savvier and more likely to succeed. I believe that after flirting with other attractive candidates, the Republican alternative who will emerge is Ron DeSantis,” Porter wrote Wednesday in a column on the website Real Clear Politics.

“Republicans will weigh our attractive alternatives in the debates, as we should,” he wrote. “But with Trump in a commanding lead and only one candidate within shouting distance, the choice seems stark: We can win with Ron or lose, and lose everything, with Don.”

Porter becomes the highest-ranking member of the Illinois GOP to announce a break with Trump. He has been the state’s committeeman to the Republican National Committee since 2014 and was an Illinois delegate pledged to Trump by party rules in the 2016 Republican National Convention and as one of three Illinois delegates to the pandemic-limited 2020 convention.

In his column, Porter said Trump has a “fatal flaw” of engaging in fights that show he is “more peevish than principled.”

“Democrats lay traps in plain sight, and the muscle head of U.S. politics walks right into them, time after time. True, he rallies his MAGA loyalists with each fight, no matter how ill-conceived. Most Republicans who are not Trump haters watch his travails with admiration and morbid fear: Can the old lion escape the jackals yet again?” Porter wrote.

But Porter noted the problems tied to Trump, most notably criminal investigations, indictments and possible trials during the upcoming presidential campaign involving the former president’s possession of confidential documents, as well as his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection and attempts to block the presidential transition to keep himself in office.

“Is Trump just a vain old guy who’s easily egged into pointless bar fights that end up undermining our ability to win the broader war for our nation’s future?” Porter asked.

“A solid majority of Americans have tired of Trump’s travails and will not vote to renew Trump for four more years. So, every Republican needs to decide for himself or herself: In the fight for freedom, what’s more important — the fight or freedom?” he wrote.

During his tenure as national committeeman, Porter has seen a regionalization of the state Republican Party and its base, evolving from a suburban moderation into a rural populist conservatism that was evident in the nomination of far-right downstate candidate Darren Bailey as the party’s unsuccessful candidate for governor against Democrat J.B. Pritzker last year.

But elements of that populist GOP base have criticized the Illinois party’s leadership as failing to work hard enough on behalf of its candidates in general elections, though the dissatisfied membership has not questioned the lack of electability of its nominees in a blue state.

Porter told the Tribune he tries “to use his perch to help promote ideas and candidates that I think will help us win elections” in Illinois.

In his column, saying there is a need to break the hold that Trump has over the Republican base, Porter noted “anyone who spends time among our grassroots voters knows that Republicans will choose our nominee viscerally.”

But he lauded DeSantis, currently trailing Trump in polling, as “the de facto leader of everyday Americans because of his willingness to forcefully reject the top-down cultural revolution, despite howls from the woke media and chiding from quisling CEOs.”

rap30@aol.com