Where Does The GOP Go If Trump Loses?

The different paths forward for the party if they lose their fourth election in five cycles.

As the 2024 general election campaign has begun, one of the most striking developments has been how the Republican Party at large has finally, fully merged with Donald Trump, the man. Even after a disastrous 2022, the former president still has full reign to choose each and every down ballot candidate the party runs. Republican congressional campaign organizations fundraise off of his legal struggles, not the politicians and races they supposedly exist to support. When they do make money off of this, they’re supposed to give Trump a cut of the earnings, mafia-style, for the benefit of using his likeness. It’s laughably cheap. But when their party’s national committee and PACs have been drained to the tune of tens of millions of dollars to pay for Trump’s legal fees, there’s no other choice but to comply.

His messages are their messages. His fights are their fights. How voters feel about him is how they feel about almost the entire party as a whole. There’s no possible way for Republicans to escape from him, assuming that they even want to. It’s never been more difficult to imagine a party without him, which is why I’ve recently become so intrigued by one question:

What happens to all of this if Donald Trump falls short to Joe Biden for a second time?

Scenario #1: Actually Existing Trumpism-Without-Trump

Credit: Gage Skidmore

For the purposes of this article, I’m assuming that Trump loses the election to Biden by a margin similar to his loss in 2020: not close enough that the race stays contested for weeks, but not large enough that American politics becomes fundamentally changed. The most that the GOP will be forced to reckon with is the simple fact that they have effectively lost every single national election since Trump won the presidency in 2016. They’ll have lost with a good economy. They’ll have lost during a year where every other incumbent on the planet won. They’ll have lost as an opposition party running against generationally high inflation, and they’ll just have lost against a historically unpopular 81-year-old. Is Trump’s hold on the party strong enough to survive even this?

The answer is very likely yes, at least as long as this strategy remains the consensus path for the future of the party among Republican elites. A defining example of the middle ground fallacy, Trumpism-without-Trump is exactly what it sounds like: the idea that, while Trump himself is uniquely personally unpopular, his agenda is not, so all Republicans need to do to succeed is to dump him and keep on keeping on with his “project.” That’s right: the sacrifices needed for victory are no sacrifices whatsoever. All that’s required for a new era of conservative dominance is for Republican politicians to take the path of least resistance ideologically and focus on advancing their own careers—surely something they never would have even considered without being forced to.

If this sounds far, far too good for Republicans to be true, well, it almost certainly is. As compelling as the idea may have sounded following Trump’s narrow loss in 2020, it has more than lost its luster since then as countless Republicans have tried, and failed, to put it into practice. Back in 2022, it was almost something of a rule that the more Republican candidates tried to lean into this theory, the worse they did. Their attempts to run on a platform of Trump’s own personal grievances and far-right culture warring while simultaneously play-acting as serious thinkers and statesmen turned off countless voters, including more than a few who voted for Trump in 2020. Even their one semi-compelling case study (Ron DeSantis in Florida) would turn out to be their most embarrassing flop when faced with the slightest bit of national scrutiny.

Would a second Trump loss be enough to finally teach this section of the party that their problems aren’t just confined to him—that they can’t have their cake and eat it, too? Very likely not. At this point, the idea that Trump himself is the only thing holding the right back isn’t just a bad bit of strategic analysis. The best way to understand it is as a coping mechanism from a new political class who legitimately believes in Trump’s shtick and want to find some way to balance it with winning. Eight years after Trump’s rise, we’ve passed the point where the GOP is composed almost entirely of politicians elected before him pretending to tolerate him for the good of their careers. There are a lot of true believers out there now, from those who were with him from day one and have come to power over the course of his term to career politicians who have Stockholm Syndrome’d themselves into loving a man who couldn’t care less about them. 

To put it another way, if Republicans winning the presidency with Trump in 2016 was the dog catching the car, their history since then can be best described as the dog driving the car. They don’t really know what’s going on, and it’s going to take a lot of effort to get them out of the driver's seat, assuming such a thing is even possible. And no, Kristi Noem is not going to stop the dog either.

So, who are the potential leaders of the GOP in a world where they kinda-sorta-but-not-really move on from the 45th President? Had he not run, Ron DeSantis would have undoubtedly been the runaway favorite to take up the mantle of leadership. Given the party’s continuous losses in essentially every semi-competitive state in the country, his status as one of very few hardline rightists in the country with a legitimately impressive electoral record would have catapulted him to the front of the post-Trump pack, much like it briefly did in the aftermath of the 2022 midterms.

Unfortunately for him, his decision to position himself as an opponent to Trump, coupled with the fact that he himself became one of the least popular politicians in the country over the course of his campaign, has greatly diminished his promise as both an electable politician and as a continuation of Trump. While he still stands as a possible contender even after his disastrous run off of the weakness of his competition (think Josh Hawley, J.D. Vance, or any of the party’s other pseudointellectual hacks) and a potential I-told-you-so argument, his position does not look durable. With an entire midterms cycle to be run before the start of the 2028 primary season, it would be shocking to see his wing of the GOP not find a new shiny object to begin fantasizing about.

That is, assuming that Trump goes anywhere at all. That is hardly a guarantee—which leads us to our next possibility.

Scenario #2: Direct Trump Rule From Prison