Voices: Trump saddles GOP with all of his baggage and none of his benefits

Former president Donald Trump’s call to terminate the US Constitution as a means to reinstate himself as president naturally led to many Republicans being frustrated that they have to talk about him once again.

But perhaps the most telling quote came when your dispatcher asked Senator Roger Marshall from Kansas what he thought about Mr Trump’s remarks.

“I would say that I just finished 105 town halls, spent a weekend in Kansas and nobody’s talking about this. We should be talking about the price of gas, the price of groceries, we should be talking about border security,” he said.

“That’s what Americans are concerned about back home, not, not these tweets that are coming out. So I’m not going to waste my time on trying to dissect when he said this and how we said that. We should be focused on the problems that matter to Americans back home.”

Mr Marshall is no moderate – he was one of the handful of Republican senators who voted to object to the 2020 presidential election results. But Mr Marshall’s words illustrate a predicament for Republican elected officials: As President Joe Biden enters the second half of his term, Republicans would like to keep the focus on the incumbent. But Mr Trump’s antics make it all the more difficult for them to turn up the heat before Mr Biden makes an announcement as to whether he will seek a second term.

While Mr Trump offered many problems for Republicans, from the moment he announced his run for president in 2015 to the moment he exited the White House, he also offered some benefits. Namely, no incumbent Republicans lost their Senate races in states he won in 2016. The same happened in 2020 and to boot, Senator Susan Collins won her race despite the fact she voted to confirm two of Mr Trump’s Supreme Court nominees – Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

Furthermore, he brought in voters who otherwise wouldn’t vote for Republicans, such as non-college educated people of color. He also passed Republicans’ massive tax cuts in 2017 and gave them the 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court that realized the 49-year dream of overturning Roe v Wade. Republicans also enjoyed a net gain of two Senate seats in 2018, even as they lost two Senate races in Arizona and Nevada.

Those victories numbed the sting of declining support among suburban women and college-educated voters, losing the House of Representatives in 2018, then the White House and Senate in 2020. His lack of political discipline prevented them from repealing Obamacare in 2017 when his nemesis John McCain delivered a thumbs-down vote.

But now, even as he is no longer in the White House, Mr Trump remains the de facto leader of the Republican Party, meaning its elected officials must answer for every egregious statement or call to subvert the law he makes. The difference is that now, after two impeachments and suffering a crushing loss in 2020, he no longer offers them many benefits. Rather, every utterance he makes reminds voters why they don’t vote for Republicans.

Nowhere is this clearer than in Georgia’s Senate runoff. Mr Trump suggested Herschel Walker run against Senator Raphael Warnock last year due to their decades-long friendship that dates back to when Mr Trump owned the New Jersey Generals, the US Football League team for which Mr Walker played. That call virtually cleared the field and meant that any potential Republican challenger would have to contend with the fact the former president endorsed Mr Walker. This came despite the fact that his continued airing of grievances after the 2020 election likely caused Mr Warnock to win the runoff in 2021.

Similarly, Mr Trump promoted Mr Walker despite the fact that he likely did not consider that the former University of Georgia running back’s past – from allegations of domestic abuse to accusations he paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion – would be dredged up.

All of the allegations have significantly weakened Mr Walker as he heads into the runoff against Mr Warnock on Tuesday. But Republicans are stuck with him. Furthermore, Mr Trump remains incredibly unpopular. That means that even as Mr Warnock can have Barack Obama campaign for him, Mr Walker wants Mr Trump to not get too close to him.

Furthermore, Mr Trump will likely remain a relevant figure for at least the next year unless a potential challenger emerges and beats him in polling and in actual primary contests. Until then, they will be stuck answering for him in the halls of the Senate and on the campaign trail.