The 2024 Republican primary has begun — and the opening clash is over whether to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s election win.
While Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz are setting themselves up as the chief spokesmen for challenging certification of the Electoral College vote, aligning themselves with President Donald Trump, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse are staking out the opposite turf. Other Republicans, like Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and Vice President Mike Pence, are playing it safe and saying little.
The debate underscores how fealty to Trump — who might run again himself in 2024 — has emerged as the defining battle line in the fight over the Republican Party’s future. While past primaries have revolved around hot-button issues like health care or immigration, the forthcoming contest is being propelled, so far, by a single question: How loyal should one be to Trump?
“It very much does look like the opening salvo of a Republican presidential primary campaign, at least a very early litmus test of where potential candidates are on a very important question to Republican voters as we sit here today,” said Lanhee Chen, a top adviser on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign.
Cotton’s late Sunday announcement that he wouldn’t be objecting to the Electoral College came as a surprise to many in the party. The Arkansas senator has established himself as a staunch Trump ally, speaking at his convention and even running TV ads this past year bolstering the president. But Cotton argued in his statement that “the Founders entrusted our elections chiefly to the states — not Congress.”
Hawley, meanwhile, was the first senator out of the gate to announce that he’d oppose the Electoral College certification. In doing so, he got ahead of Cruz, who declared his plans a few days later. The high-profile legislative maneuver, some Republicans note, bears some resemblance to Cruz’s 2013 push to “defund Obamacare,” which forced a government shutdown (and failed to end Obamacare) but helped Cruz position himself as a staunch opponent of the health care law ahead of the 2016 GOP primary contest.
Senior Republicans say either approach presents risks.
The risk for Cotton is alienating the president’s legions of supporters, many of whom remain convinced the election was stolen. Trump advisers privately said they were miffed by Cotton’s move, and Trump retaliated with a Monday tweet warning the senator that Republicans “NEVER FORGET!”
“Primary voters are always looking for fighters. And they have long felt that there was voter fraud in elections,” said former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who faced off against Trump in the 2016 GOP nomination contest. “So I do think that it will have an impact in future primaries.”
Hawley, meanwhile, has antagonized Republican leaders who pleaded with senators not to take the inevitably doomed step of trying to subvert the election. Republicans were rankled last week when Hawley skipped out on a Senate GOP conference call, which Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had attempted to use to get Hawley to explain his plans.
Former Sen. John Danforth, a Missouri political fixture who helped Hawley secure the Republican nomination in the 2018 Senate race, delivered a stinging rebuke of his protege on Monday. “Lending credence to Trump’s false claim that the election was stolen is a highly destructive attack on our constitutional government,” Danforth declared in a statement.
But some Republicans see a potential upside for Hawley as he positions himself for a future primary. The Missourian is defining himself as an anti-establishment figure, which could pay dividends with grassroots conservative activists and small donors. Should he run for president in 2024, Hawley would likely face competition from similarly positioned candidates like Cruz or Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.
Hawley’s maneuver could also keep him in Trump’s good graces. The soon-to-be-former president is widely expected to take on a powerbroker-type role once he leaves the White House.
Pence’s office released a statement over the weekend saying he “welcomes the efforts of members of the House and Senate to use the authority they have under the law to raise objections and bring forward evidence before the Congress and the American people on Jan. 6th.”
The statement, however, did not specify whether Pence supports overturning the election.
Some argue that Wednesday’s vote may have little bearing on 2024. While Trump remains in control of the party now, they contend, he may not in four years. And while Trump’s supporters are exercised over the Electoral College fight today, the memory may have long faded by the time the next presidential primary begins in earnest.
Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio, who worked on both of Trump’s presidential campaigns, predicted that even assuming Trump doesn’t mount his own 2024 comeback bid, it’s likely that “some of today’s perceived frontrunners won’t ultimately get out of the gate.”
“I think four years is an eternity in politics — especially presidential politics,” Fabrizio added. “If I had told you on January 4, 2013 that Donald Trump and Ted Cruz would be the top two contenders for the nomination in 2016 and that Trump would win the nomination, you would have thought I was dropping acid.”