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In a simpler time, a presidential candidate getting hit with a damning, 37-count federal criminal indictment would be enough to torpedo his campaign. But because we continue to inhabit the magical, zero accountability world created by former President Donald Trump's personality cult, the conventional wisdom is that the man facing prison time for allegedly filching national security secrets and then trying to hide them like a teenager waving doobie smoke out the window is in a stronger position than ever to capture his party's nomination. But Trump's accelerating legal woes could actually be a major vulnerability this time around—if his hapless rivals could only figure out how to press the advantage.
Of course, there's good reason to think that Trump remains in the catbird seat. He has already consolidated the support he lost after the GOP's unexpectedly poor midterm election performance. He enjoys commanding leads in most surveys, both nationally and of individual states. But his numbers are much worse than those of an incumbent president facing a primary challenger, with close to half of Republican primary voters already looking for someone else to claim the nomination. According to FiveThirtyEight, an average of just 53.4 percent of Republican primary voters currently support Trump in polls.
That's in part because no major party nominee who lost the general election has sought the office again during the current primary era that began in 1972. But Trump and his bottomless ego will be there, whether he chooses to join the GOP debates or not. And his opponents need to internalize one simple lesson—you cannot vow to carry on someone's legacy when that person is standing next to you on stage. You have to come at him directly, as former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie did last week when he lit into the corruption of Trump and his family.
Curiously though, none of the major contenders (a category that does not include Christie) has so far been willing to use Trump's galloping legal jeopardy against him. Instead, they have chosen to echo his petulant caterwauling about the "weaponization" of the federal government, as if this is a viable strategy to distinguish themselves from the former president. Of course, all of these contenders either worked for or supported Trump during this term in office, making it infinitely harder to wash their hands of him.
In the aftermath of last Thursday's indictments, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott said on Fox News that "as president, I will purge all the injustices in our system so every American is seen by the Lady of Justice with a blindfold on." He then acknowledged the seriousness of the charges but added that "You can't protect Democrats while targeting and hunting Republicans."
DeSantis argued that "the weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society." Earlier this week he said that while he "would have been court-martialed in a New York minute" had he walked off with classified material as a naval officer, he also promised to "clean house at the Department of Justice."
Mike Pence, the former vice president who was nearly murdered by a mob incited by Trump himself, said he was "deeply troubled to see this indictment move forward." While he later told CNBC that he "cannot defend what is alleged" he felt obliged to add the caveat that "tens of millions of Americans have a sense of a two-tiered system of justice."
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley claimed that Americans "are exhausted by the prosecutorial overreach, double standards, and vendetta politics." Even as she called Trump's actions "reckless" on a conservative radio show, she said that "I would be inclined in favor of a pardon," echoing the promise of pharma gadfly turned GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy's promise to pardon Trump on Day 1 of his presidency.
These hedged-to-the-hilt messages, seemingly poll-tested to avoid antagonizing Trump die-hards, aren't going to get it done. MAGA cultists will treat even modest criticism as heresy. And movable voters still need a reason to choose someone other than a former president who won 92 percent of self-identified Republican voters in the 2020 election.
There are enough persuadable GOP primary voters to put together a winning anti-Trump coalition with the right message. But right now, Trump's rivals are flailing and once again allowing him to set the narrative and the terms of debate. With his indictments more or less off the table as a legitimate avenue of attack, where does that leave them? Trying to make a big deal out of minor early-COVID policy differences like DeSantis? Making Trump-lite attacks on trans teenagers like Nikki Haley? Please.
I'm no highly paid political strategist but let me take a stab. How about: "Donald Trump lied to you. He lied about the 2020 election. He lied about his past sexual misconduct. He lied about the highly classified national security information he illegally hid at Mar-a-Lago. And he's lying to you now about whether he can win the 2024 election. He can't. But I can."
I know, I know, no one is going to do that because they are too terrified of the brainwashed Republican base. But if they can't bring themselves to take the side of the people against a disgraced, twice-impeached scoundrel who tried to overthrow the American system of constitutional government, they could at least make a pragmatic argument against Trump. "My friends, you don't have to agree with the Justice Department to see that Donald Trump will be too distracted by his indictments to run a viable campaign." Or "Donald Trump was a great president, but he cannot beat Joe Biden from a courtroom or a prison cell."
Look, I wish them all the worst and they can do whatever they want. But if what they want is to be the nominee, the only way out of Trump is through him.
David Faris is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Roosevelt University and the author of It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. His writing has appeared in The Week, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Washington Monthly and more. You can find him on Twitter @davidmfaris.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
