Mellman: Attacking Trump turning out to be poor strategy for GOP

The TV pundits seem to have gotten it wrong.  

 For months they’ve been haranguing Republican presidential candidates for their collective failure to attack Donald Trump.  

 Their argument: To secure the Republicans nomination “you have to go through Trump, not around him.”  

 While I’m no expert in GOP primary politics, the data suggest that these pundits’ wishful thinking is leading them to offer terrible political advice.   

 The data are pretty clear. In nearly every poll — whether national or in an early state — the candidates who’ve been Trump’s fiercest critics are doing poorly.   

 Worse for their long-term prospects, Republican primary voters widely dislike Trump’s prime attackers.  

 Take Chris Christie, generally considered Trump’s harshest antagonist. On average he holds a miserable 6th place in national polls, picking up a mere 2.9 percent of the GOP vote.   

 In Iowa it’s even worse. The former New Jersey governor averages 2.2 percent of the vote, putting him in 7th place overall.   

 In fairness, Christie’s putting all his chips on New Hampshire, where the New York Times reports he’s holding 90 percent of his events, and where he fares a bit better, but still languishes in fourth place with an average of 9.8 percent of the vote.   

 Even more arresting than his meager vote totals, however, is the fact that vast numbers of Republican primary voters don’t like him.   

 In fact, the recent Saint Anselm College poll in New Hampshire pegged Christie as the most widely disliked candidate in the Republican field. Only 25 percent of GOP primary voters had a favorable view of Christie, while 71 percent harbored unfavorable feelings. 

 To put these numbers in perspective, 69 percent of Granite State GOP primary voters have a favorable view of Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.), with only 18 percent unfavorable, while former United Nation Ambassador Nikki Haley is seen favorably by 65 percent with 28 percent unfavorable.   

 Even the eminently dislikeable entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy is at 58 percent favorable to 33 percent unfavorable, while Trump himself sits at 66 percent to 34 percent.  

In short, the most aggressive anti-Trumper in the field is the most unpopular candidate.  

Spurious correlation, you reply.   

 Christie’s unpopular for a host of reasons having little or nothing to do with his attacks on Trump. He’s mean, vindictive, brash and hypocritical with respect to Trump. These, you argue, are the causes of his problems, not his antipathy to the former president.   

Of course, Christie was the same guy in 2016 when his favorables were much higher and unfavorables vastly lower.  

 Moreover, consider Asa Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor who in many respects is the opposite of his New Jersey counterpart. Calm, polite, easy going and from a more rural state, Hutchinson too is following the pundits’ advice and taking on Trump — and doing terribly.  

 He didn’t make the most recent debate stage, scoring less than 1 percent on average nationally and in both Iowa and New Hampshire.   

 But he’s unknown, you say. Again, nothing to do with his posture toward Trump.  

He is certainly less well-known, but he’s somehow managed to alienate significant numbers of New Hampshire Republican primary voters, only 12 percent of whom have a favorable impression of him, but 34 percent of whom hold unfavorable views.  

Then there’s Mike Pence, a Midwesterner who loyally served Trump as vice president only to find that Trump agreed with the insurrectionists who wanted Pence hung. Pence’s fealty to the Constitution earned him Trump’s undying enmity, and Pence has had some critical things to say about his former boss of late.   

 What does being hated by Trump get you? The former vice president is in 5th place nationally with an average of 4.2 percent of the vote, in 6th in Iowa with 3.4 percent and in lowly 8th place in New Hampshire with just 1.5 percent.  

 He is almost as widely disliked as Christie, with only 25 percent expressing favorable views and 69 percent holding unfavorable impressions.   

 It’s not a controlled experiment or even a carefully plotted time series. It could all be coincidence.  

 But it’s probably not.   

 Those who followed the advice of the punditocracy to go after Trump are faring very poorly in the GOP nominating process.  

Mellman is president of The Mellman Group and has helped elect 30 U.S. senators, 12 governors and dozens of House members. Mellman served as pollster to Senate Democratic leaders for over 20 years.