Just recently, Americans for Prosperity, the network established by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch, signaled that it would not support Donald Trump in the 2024 GOP presidential primaries, saying it plans to back a candidate “who can lead our country forward, and who can win.” Now another GOP big name has followed suit. In an interview with Politico, Republican fundraiser Eric Levine left no doubt about his feelings and indeed, didn’t mince any words when describing his feelings about Trump’s impact on the GOP.
“He is a metastasizing cancer who, if he is not stopped, is going to destroy the party,” he said. “Donald Trump is a loser. He is the first president since Hoover to lose the House, the Senate and the presidency in a single term. Because of him Chuck Schumer is the Leader Schumer, and the progressive agenda is threatening to take over the country. And he is probably the only Republican in the country, if not the only person in the country, who can’t beat Joe Biden.”
Levine has been calling on the party to move on from Trump ever since the January 6th Capitol riots, so his distaste for Trump isn’t a surprise.
Americans For Prosperity said in a memo to staff and activists released on Sunday that to get leaders who can overcome the “broken politics” in Washington — and to get better candidates than Republicans have been nominating — the group must get involved in elections earlier, starting with the primaries.
“To write a new chapter for our country, we need to turn the page on the past,” Emily Seidel, the chief executive officer of AFP and a senior adviser for its affiliated super political action committee, said in the memo. “So the best thing for the country would be to have a president in 2025 who represents a new chapter.” While not naming any names, the memo made it absolutely clear that the past means leaving Trump in the rearview mirror.
“The American people have shown that they’re ready to move on, and so AFP will help them do that,” she said.
Seidel’s memo didn’t say how much the group plans to spend on the 2024 GOP presidential race, but they are the big gorilla of fundraising.
Trump is making his third White House bid with a potential rematch with President Joe Biden. But some polls show a majority of GOP voters are looking for an alternative — like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who support Trump’s policies but don’t have his political baggage.
Another article on February 9 went even further: “The GOP Is Starting to Plot Against Donald Trump” and quoted a “Republican donor and bundler, a Wall Street financier who regularly hobnobs with senior Republican officials,” as having expressed that the prospect of Trump gaining the nomination in a splintered field, for 2024 was “A five-alarm fire. And there is nobody coming to put it out.”
If we are to believe what so many of the insiders are saying, then reputedly dozens of Republican party members, donors, strategists and grassroots leaders, are having a private conversation about “how to make sure that Trump doesn’t once again take advantage of a split field and walk away with the Republican nomination, costing the party not just the presidency but a chance to retake the Senate and hold on to the House.”
However, it is worth remembering that even in 2016 Republicans worried that putting Trump on top of the ticket would spell certain doom. “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed,” none other than Lindsey Graham, later to become his chief defender and champion, notoriously tweeted. “And we will deserve it.”
And yet despite the alarms raised and all the hand wringing by the GOP bigwigs, judging by the number of people already jumping into the ring: Pence, De Santis, Hailey, Pompeo, Youngkin and more, this may still turn out to be a replay of 2016.
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