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“I’m a Never Trump Guy. I never liked him.” What happens to the people who once swore they’d never back Donald Trump in the wake of an attempt on the former president’s life? The answer for one, at least, is that he runs as Trump’s nominee for vice president.
J.D. Vance, a Republican senator from Ohio, compared Trump to Hitler in private, called him an idiot in public, and warned fellow Christians that “everyone is watching when we apologise for this man”.
But like many of those fellow Christians, Vance has found himself able, as it turns out, to embrace the man he once railed against. This is a familiar about-face.
During the 2016 Republican primaries, Trump drew fierce criticism from other candidates that went far beyond the usual jibes at a political competitor. Senator Ted Cruz called him “utterly amoral”. Senator Marco Rubio said, “Friends do not let friends vote for con artists.” And Senator Lindsey Graham warned that if Trump became the nominee, “we would get destroyed … and we would deserve it”.
Yet each one fell in line to become vocal supporters of the former president.
Why have so many prominent Republicans risked their own reputations to back Trump? One explanation is a justifiable fear that their reputations would suffer far worse damage at the hands of Trump’s bombast. Trump prizes loud expressions of fealty and deals out swift retribution for dissenters.
But perhaps more compelling is the argument that in Trump, the GOP found the catalyst to deliver a hardline, right-wing agenda. This was something so long sought after that everyone held their nose and wrapped their arms around the maverick real estate developer and reality TV star.
That tolerance was sorely tested by Trump’s time in office and in the years since. His behaviour as president, and subsequent catalogue of legal jeopardy (including an unprecedented felony conviction) would make him political poison almost anywhere else.
But Trump’s delivery of conservative supreme court justices, and state courts and the subsequent overturning of Roe v Wade, secured the big ticket items from their legislative shopping list.
So will they continue to fall in line, or is there dissent stirring in the GOP?
Anger, fear … and insecurity
Rank-and-file Republicans can offer clues to the mood within the party. My ongoing doctoral research, currently awaiting peer review, explores the impact on democratic health when political leaders lie to their citizens. I focus on the case of Trump’s “big lie”, his claim that the 2020 election result was stolen from him due to widespread electoral fraud.
Some Republican lawmakers have challenged that narrative, though largely publicly refrained from calling it a lie. The issue continues to divide elected Republicans and their voters alike.
I expected to find that the big lie exacerbated partisan polarisation – and it did. But I also identified a growing fracture within the Republican community.
In autumn 2023, I interviewed lawmakers in Georgia which revealed a deeply frustrated and angry cohort of Republicans who might once have looked the other way at Trump’s vulgarity, misogyny and the persistent reports of impropriety. They still find his behaviour repellent (although none found it disqualifying), but their primary concern was his reckless attitude towards the future of the GOP and its electoral chances.
They recalled bitter memories of Georgia’s Senate run-off losses, in which the one of the 2020 Senate races were too close to call and was re-run. They cast blame squarely with Trump’s sowing of distrust in electronic voting machines, and expressed real worry that his constant talk of electoral fraud and vote rigging will depress Republican turnout in the upcoming election.
With one eye always on a primary challenge from their right, the GOP state senators and representatives that I interviewed were frustrated to be spending so much of their time defending their own position on Trump to Republican constituents who were demanding full-throated support of the former president.
Interviewees were beginning to sound jaded, reporting being “exhausted with it all” – especially how “emotionally draining” navigating the fallout of the big lie had become. Many reported having lost friends and being distrustful of longstanding colleagues as a result of the tensions unleashed in the fallout from 2020.
This mood was reflected in a survey I conducted with 1,000 US citizens. Responses revealed considerable anger among Republicans that Trump continued to lie about the occurrence of widespread fraud in the 2024 election.
Within Republican participants’ responses, 42% of the mentions of Trump were negative or neutral – a stark departure from his approval ratings among Republicans while he was president that rarely dipped below 80% and were frequently as high as 95%. What then for those wavering voters in the coming election?
Never-Trumpers, and regretful once-Trumpers, had a chance to make their case one final time to prevent his nomination as the convention approached. Indeed on July 8, high-profile Trump antagonist and former chair of the House Republican Conference, Liz Cheney cautioned GOP colleagues against “defending the indefensible” – warning that “one day Trump will be gone, but your dishonour will remain”.
That chance was all but snuffed out by the shocking scenes in Pennsylvania just a week later. Indeed, the assassination attempt presents an opportunity, not unlike George W. Bush had in the aftermath of 9/11 to transform an unpopular and polarising candidate into a unifying leader of an America under attack.
Any Republicans who stand up against Trump now risk looking like (and being branded on social media) traitors to the party and to a leader under fire. Not many of them will find that an appealing prospect.
As November approaches, Republican campaigns will feature (once again) an element of being seen to proclaim loud fealty to Trump. Behind the scenes, tired of the spectacle, many rank-and-file Republicans may simply stop showing up, leaving plenty of space to be occupied by those who will gladly ride the Trump train.
Katie Pruszynski does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
