Many GOP insiders fear that Teflon Don is back

NASHUA, N.H. — Republican Party insiders looking to move on from former President Donald Trump increasingly fear that Teflon Don is back.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ technology-challenged but donor-rich entry into the GOP presidential primary cemented his place in the early primary as the chief alternative to Trump.

But it will hardly clear the field. And with a growing cast of characters still waiting in the wings to announce their own campaigns, warning signs of a 2016 replay are once again flashing in the GOP. According to interviews with nearly a dozen GOP strategists, former candidates and party insiders, the intraparty dynamics now at play — and Trump’s own alchemical grip on the base — suggest a primary where a constellation of Republicans once again risk splitting the non-Trump vote in early nominating states.

“If those people are all still in the race when January comes around, it’s going to be 2016 all over again, and Trump will win,” said Jason Osborne, the New Hampshire House majority leader who has endorsed DeSantis in the primary, at a Rockingham GOP dinner this week where Nikki Haley served as the keynote speaker. “That’s just how it is.”

Even with DeSantis raising an eye-popping $8.2 million in his first 24 hours, the primary field is once again growing. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott entered the race last week. Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, former Vice President Mike Pence and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu are making noise of their own possible bids.

“It definitely looks like a repeat of 2016,” said Jason Roe, who was a senior adviser to Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign.

For Trump, the swelling field is just the latest dose of good luck for a politician who has for years played by rules afforded to no other candidate. He has seemingly become inoculated from blowback to scandals both major and minor that would threaten to fatally wound almost anyone else. The GOP graded his own pair of rambling and lackluster announcement speeches — both in 2016 and again in 2022 — on a curve that did not apply to DeSantis’ shambolic Twitter launch last week. While Trump skated, DeSantis’ launch threatened to become a metaphor for his campaign.

Before that, Trump fundraised off an indictment for paying hush money to a porn star, while DeSantis got lambasted for — glancingly and gingerly — critiquing Trump’s actions, saying he didn’t “know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair.”

While Trump gave Tucker Carlson a Russia-sympathetic answer on Ukraine, DeSantis caught unending flack for doing the same – for calling it a mere “territorial conflict.” Even this week, Trump golfed at his own club as part of a tournament there paid for by the Saudi-funded tour. He received no major criticism for doing so from any GOPers.

“Trump is a unique force in American politics, because people don't look at him as a typical politician,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist and former adviser to Marco Rubio’s 2016 and Tim Pawlenty’s 2012 presidential campaigns. “He seems to be held to different standards.”

He is also benefiting from the contours of the race — with a burgeoning field of competitors threatening to split the non-Trump vote.

“For those of us who view Donald Trump as an existential threat, we're kind of tearing our hair out over this idea of a crowded field and a repeat of the same dynamics in 2016,” said Sarah Longwell, the Republican political strategist, and publisher of the Bulwark, which is critical of Trump and the MAGA movement.

It’s not as though the candidates getting in, for the most part, are knocking Trump down, either. DeSantis barely mentioned Trump in his campaign rollout, but in recent days has drawn some distinctions with the former president. But instead of the field of combatants railing against Trump, most are barely touching him — and more often than not, have aimed their fire at DeSantis.

In the hours before DeSantis announced his campaign, Haley and her campaign doubled down on criticizing the Florida governor — first putting out a video dedicated to portraying DeSantis as someone who is emulating Trump, and Haley in an interview with Fox later that day making disparaging comments herself about DeSantis “copying Trump.”

Scott, in a sit-down with NBC after his campaign launch event, deflected when asked about Trump’s behavior on Jan. 6, 2021. Not so when questioned about DeSantis, with whom Scott sought to draw distinctions on attitude and messaging. Vivek Ramaswamy has gone even further, actively defending and praising Trump while attacking DeSantis, to the point where some operatives have questioned whether he is part of the former president’s operation — a theory Ramaswamy flatly denies. Only Pence challenged Trump this week on his proposed changes to social security, telling the Des Moines Register’s editorial bid that “my old running mate's policy is identical to Joe Biden’s.”

“Every person that gets into the race helps Donald Trump be the focal point of the race,” said Gregg Keller, a Missouri-based Republican strategist. “You would think it would muddy the water — in fact, it does the exact opposite. It focuses more and more attention on him, to the extent he’s beating these people, attacking these people, stealing the limelight in the way he wants to from these people.”

Trump will attempt to keep up with that show-stealing in Iowa this week, set to bracket DeSantis’ Iowa launch on Tuesday and events across the state the following day with his own visit to the Westside Conservative Club in Urbandale and a Fox News town hall.

Joe Walsh, the former Republican congressman from Illinois who unsuccessfully ran against Trump in the 2020 primary, remarked on how DeSantis’ tepid early performance on the national stage has opened the floodgates for Republicans competing to be the primary field’s new No. 2.

“He's been an unlikable son of a bitch. He's not wearing well,” Walsh said. “So whereas the field would have been Trump and DeSantis, really, four or five months ago, now you've got all these other people who are getting in or are going to get in purely because they've seen the same thing … They're all going to make the bet, well, ‘Fuck this. I'll be the Trump alternative.'”

It’s possible the size of the field will shrink before its size shapes the outcome. Ultimately, the race will come down to not how many are running now, said Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor who ran in the 2012 Republican presidential primary, but “the speed with which the field narrows.”

The risk for Trump-critical Republicans is if too many of them hang on for too long.

“The size of the field, if they're all on the ballot when the voting starts, is going to be problematic if you're someone who wants to pick a nominee other than Trump,” said Scott Jennings, a Republican strategist who worked on George W. Bush’s presidential campaigns. “Losing out 1 to 2 percent to 10 different people — it adds up.”

They have every incentive in the world to run, after all — and little reason not to, even if a large field, ultimately, hurts them all.

“You can have 15 or 20 guys, because there's no cost and no downside, right?” said Steve Bannon, the firebrand former Trump adviser. "It's only potential upside. If you catch your roll, you get seven or eight or nine percent [support] and all of a sudden, I get POLITICO doing exclusives with me. Look at Mike Pence, he has 5 percent support and he's got a town hall … Asa Hutchinson is at zero percent and every Sunday morning, on what used to be the sacred soil of broadcast media, the Sunday shows, he’s on a different Sunday show every week.”