Opinion: Republicans may be sleepwalking to disaster

Editor’s Note: W. James Antle III is the politics editor of the Washington Examiner and author of “Devouring Freedom: Can Government Ever Be Stopped?”

Ahead of the charges filed against him Monday night in Georgia, former President Donald Trump quipped that he was one indictment away from victory. The question is whether Republican primary voters want to make the same bet: that a nominee facing four separate indictments can win the general election.

Trump has only gained strength in the Republican primaries since the historic first indictment for alleged business fraud for hush money payments to an adult film actress. Trump was at 46.4% on March 1, a little over a month before his first indictment, among GOP primary voters in FiveThirtyEight’s polling average. He was polling at just under 53% on the eve of his fourth. His primary opponents, meanwhile, are all below 20%, with most in the single digits.

Trump has denied wrongdoing in all the cases, saying “the witch hunt continues” in response to the Georgia state court indictment on alleged interference in the 2020 election results. The other state court indictment concerns the business fraud allegations in New York. He also faces two federal cases, one concerning his handling of classified documents after leaving the White House, and the other about his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and the events leading up to the January 6 Capitol riot.

Trump has so far managed to turn these indictments, which generally lead candidates to at least rethink their campaigns, into a referendum on the justice system’s treatment of Republicans versus Democrats and the idea that Democratic prosecutors, including the Justice Department under the current administration, are out to get him.

This framing has forced his closest rivals for the Republican nomination to more or less defend him, while his popularity with the base has made directly challenging him a nonstarter for all but a handful of low-polling candidates.

But Trump and his supporters shouldn’t take climbing poll numbers as a sign of invincibility, no matter how much conventional wisdom presents these prosecutions as a boost for the former president. Nominating a candidate with so many pending criminal charges would be inherently risky. This is true purely as a practical matter, regardless of what Republicans or anyone else think of the merits of the legal cases against him.

For starters, Trump’s many legal defenses will be expensive. Trump’s political action committee has already spent tens of millions on legal bills. Money that could be spent trying to defeat President Joe Biden will be diverted toward legal costs, putting a strain on campaign coffers.

The indictments have, until now, been helping his fundraising, but if the money cannot be spent on the campaign and instead must be paid to lawyers, the political benefit of this is limited.

The multiple cases will also threaten Trump’s availability to campaign. He will need to appear in court, with one proposed trial date coming two weeks before the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 14. He will also need to participate in his legal defense at times when he would otherwise be preparing for debates or out on the campaign trail. One trial alone could put a damper on his ability to wage an effective national campaign. But four?

The indictments may also force the campaign to address topics that are less favorable for Republicans, such as the nature of the hush money payments to a porn star and the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

Trump will certainly take the opportunity to talk about a two-tiered system of justice that penalizes conservatives, and the weaponized Biden Justice Department they claim is selectively prosecuting the president’s political opponents. But it’s not clear that the broader electorate will be as receptive to these arguments as Republican primary voters.

According to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll, most Americans take the charges against Trump seriously and are more likely to view them as warranted than rank–and-file Republicans. Some of the indictments earn majority support in polls. This hasn’t had a big impact on Trump’s general election polling yet, but it is much earlier in that race than in the GOP nomination contest.

Republicans themselves would prefer the 2024 general election to be a referendum on Biden’s unpopular presidency. Nominating Trump under any set of circumstances complicates that. With criminal charges, it will make it almost impossible to make that the focal point.

While most of Trump’s primary opponents feel constrained from arguing that the indictments show Trump is unfit for office, the Democrats don’t. Biden may hesitate to talk about them because he won’t want to lend unwitting support to Trump’s contention that the criminal cases are political, but the incumbent president’s surrogates will likely have no such compunctions.

And that’s just while the cases are being litigated.

If convicted, the indictments could also affect Trump’s availability to govern — something that would likely weigh on voters. To avoid any convictions, he needs to pitch the legal equivalent of a shutout in multiple jurisdictions.

Paradoxically, the state cases could be an even bigger problem in this area than either of special counsel Jack Smith’s. If convicted of a state crime, Trump wouldn’t possess even the theoretical ability to pardon himself after the election. If state prosecutions are still ongoing, Trump couldn’t shut them down by retaking power federally.

Though Georgia is run by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, the state is one of only a handful in which the governor doesn’t have unilateral pardon power. That’s assuming Kemp would want to pardon Trump in the first place, since the two have feuded — including over the very 2020 election issues at play in the Fulton County case.

A pardon from New York’s Democratic governor also looks like a longshot, though many view the hush money case as the weakest of those being brought against Trump.

Admittedly, if anyone could run effectively for president while under multiple indictments, it is Trump. He has not only built a healthy lead in the Republican primaries under conditions that would end most campaigns but is surprisingly competitive in the general election, polling better than he did in 2020 and most of 2016.

Yet, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s prudent for Republicans to attempt this experiment in what otherwise looks like a winnable presidential election. Unless the reality of the political danger these indictments pose soon sets in, Republicans could be sleepwalking toward disaster in 2024.

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