The future of the Republican Party hinges on how it handles the millions of voters who backed Donald Trump if he loses on Nov. 8., a key GOP operative said Friday.
Steve Law, president of the Senate Leadership Fund and a former top aide to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said a Trump loss means Republicans would face the question of “whether the party can find a way to appeal to” the significant faction of Trump supporters who gravitated to his populist message.
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It’s a group, Law acknowledged, that the Republican Party has “largely ignored” for years. And the GOP’s ability to build a bridge to the group could depend on what Trump says after a loss.
“Some of it will depend on what Trump himself does after the election,” Law said. “Does he go away? Does he go build his next building? Is he the wrecking ball to the Republican Party?”
Trump is trailing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by about five points according to the latest wave of polls, but the polls have been tightening and Trump maintains a narrow but plausible path to victory. Whether he wins or loses, Law said, the GOP must acknowledge his significant following.
Trump entered the race in June of 2015 as the GOP’s most unconventional candidate, and has run a populist campaign that defied long odds and earned him more than 14 million votes, nearly double his nearest competitor, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.
Trump’s polling numbers have hovered at about 40 percent, however, suggesting he has been unable to expand his appeal to more traditional Republicans and Independent voters who are traditionally critical to a general election victory.
“I think the Republican Party still is, probably two thirds of it, a mainstream conservative party,” Law said. “I think in the end, that’s where we are and where we end up.”
Law acknowledged that after years of nominating traditional GOP candidates for president, Trump has taken the party “in a completely different direction,” and party elders are not sure what it means for the GOP.
“Was he someone who was able to win the nomination because he was able to cobble together a small but secure part of the Republican base while other candidates who were running against him had to divide up the rest of the pie?” Law said. “Or, does he represent some sort of future, more populist direction of the party.”
Law said Trump’s followers are not necessarily Republican but are “available to the Republican party,” and were made “available” to the party by Trump.
The GOP, Law said, has been mostly tied to the mainstream and business constituency, and not the blue-collar voters from rust-belt states who are on the margins of the GOP.
“I think that the big question going forward is whether the party can find a way to appeal to them without necessarily engaging in the kind of rhetorical excess that we’ve seen from Donald Trump,” Law said.
The Senate Leaders Fund is a political action committee that raises and spends money on GOP Senate candidates.
