Senate GOP rallies behind Romney call for winnowing anti-Trump field

Senate Republicans are rallying behind Sen. Mitt Romney’s (R-Utah) call for Republican donors to refrain from giving money to long-shot presidential candidates once it becomes clear they can’t win the GOP nomination. 

GOP lawmakers who are deeply skeptical of former President Trump’s chances of beating President Biden in next year’s general election are worried that long-shot candidates will stay in the race too long and siphon support away from more viable candidates.  

They say the party needs to start winnowing the field earlier than it did in 2016 to help ensure the most electable nominee advances to the general election. 

“I think that’s a pretty practical recommendation,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said. “I think to have a large field is probably not going to help us win the White House back.” 

Cornyn told reporters in May that he didn’t think Trump could win the general election, adding “what’s the most important thing for me is that we have a candidate who can actually win.”  

Senate Republican Policy Committee Chairwoman Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who represents the state that will host the first contest of the 2024 primary, said “if we want to win elections, we need to look toward the general election and making sure our candidates are strong and ready to go.” 

“If people can start coalescing and getting the right candidate into place, that would be very helpful,” she said.  

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who has endorsed North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum’s (R) presidential bid, said he’s worried about fielding a competitive candidate in next year’s general election, reflecting the widespread view within the Senate GOP conference that Trump’s polarizing effect on voters is a potential political liability.   

Asked if Trump would be the strongest candidate in the general election, Cramer said “as a primary voter, personally, I prefer picking somebody who I agree with and can win.” 

“At the end of the day, there’s no point endorsing somebody who can’t win,” he said. “I wish we just move on to something normal and tap into the talent of 340 million Americans and see what else we can come up with.” 

Romney argues that anti-Trump voters and donors waited too long in 2016 to coalesce behind a single alternative to Trump, splitting their support among several candidates and letting Trump cruise to the nomination. 

He says next year fellow Republicans need to ramp up pressure on long-shot candidates to drop out if they fail to reach the front of the pack after the first primary contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.  

“Republican megadonors and influencers — large and small — are going to have to do something they didn’t do in 2016: get candidates they support to agree to withdraw if and when their paths to the nomination are effectively closed,” Romney wrote in the Wall Street Journal Monday.  

Romney told The Hill he targeted his op-ed at major Republican donors, who in the last competitive Republican presidential primary stuck with their favored candidates for too long, splitting up the support of GOP voters who didn’t initially favor Trump.  

“A number of folks have sent me texts or emails saying, ‘Hey, well done, I agree with you,’” he said. “That was really aimed at large donors and hopefully they take that into stride. 

“Donors feel the loyalty to the candidate and the candidates want to stay in. That’s the nature of a politician, which is, ‘I’m going to fight to the end. I’m not a quitter,’” he said.  

Instead, Romney says donors need to intervene for the good of the party, telling long-shot White House hopefuls: “No, no. Put that aside. What’s the right thing for the country, and your party?” 

Nonpartisan pollsters such as David Paleologos, the director of the political research center at Suffolk University, say the biggest challenge Republican rivals face in defeating Trump in next year’s primary is that they are splitting the anti-Trump vote a dozen ways.  

Polls show Trump has a solid share of what Paleologos calls “tier one” voters who know with confidence which candidate they will back next year.  

That means any candidate who would emerge as the leading alternative to Trump has to win over a large majority of “tier two” voters who are less certain about how they will vote in the primaries. The more candidates running, the tougher it would be for any one candidate to attract enough undecided voters to defeat Trump. 

Trump is leading the rest of the Republican field by more than 30 percentage points in an average of recent national polls.  

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has trended steadily downward in the polls since March 30 as others including entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) have gained more support. 

The field also includes Burgum, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), former Vice President Mike Pence, former Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas), and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R). 

Romney says GOP donors need to start pushing weak candidates out of the race if they fail to gain traction by Feb. 26, a week before Super Tuesday, when 15 states will cast ballots for president. 

The party nominating rules appear to favor Trump even more than 2016 because at least 17 states will allocate all of their delegates to the winner of its primary or caucus — giving a Trump a chance to rack up a huge lead in delegates even if he wins individual states with a plurality of the vote.  

Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) thinks the Republican presidential primary field will start narrowing on its own as donor support begins to dry up for struggling candidates. 

“I think by then the field’s going to naturally … narrow down. I think a lot of people are going to be out of money well before that date,” he said of the Feb. 26 target set by Romney. “In theory it would be nice if you could have some control about all that.” 

But Thune cautioned “it’s hard to tell somebody they have to end their campaign.” 

Thune said it was “a much bigger field” in 2016 and the “dynamics were different” because Republicans were running for an “open seat” after President Barack Obama’s two terms in office. 

But he acknowledged that “a lot of the people who are in” the 2024 presidential primary “are all folks who are wanting to be the anti-Trump.” 

“If they want somebody to be the anti-Trump, then they’re probably going to have get behind somebody, drop out of the race and get behind somebody who actually has a shot,” he said.