ARE GOP VOTERS RECONSIDERING A CORE PRINCIPLE OF REPUBLICANISM?

Sarah Longwell is a prominent anti-Trump Republican who publishes The Bulwark and does focus-group research. Writing for The Atlantic, she tells us that Republican voters in her focus groups are rethinking their support for Donald Trump in response to the January 6 committee hearings:

I conducted dozens of focus groups of Trump 2020 voters in the 17 months between the storming of the Capitol on January 6 and when the hearings began in June. One measure was consistent: At least half of the respondents in each group wanted Trump to run again in 2024. The prevailing belief was that the 2020 election was stolen—or at least unfair in some way—and Trump should get another shot.

But since June, I’ve observed a shift. I’ve conducted nine focus groups during this period, and found that only 14 percent of Trump 2020 voters wanted him to run in 2024, with a few others on the fence. In four of the groups, zero people wanted Trump to run again. Their reasoning is clear: They’re now uncertain that Trump can win again.

“He’s just too divisive and controversial,” a participant in Washington State said about Trump. “There are good candidates out there waiting to shine.”

A participant in Wyoming said, “I feel like there’s too many people against him right now. He’s never gonna make it ... So I feel like somebody else needs to step in that has similar views, but not as big of an ego—who people like, I guess.”

Are these people actually arguing that Trump is not someone "people like"? If so, this is breathtaking -- these Republicans are acknowledging that Trump could lose the 2024 election legitimately, because most voters will vote against him. Whether they realize it or not, they appear to be rejecting a core principle of Republicanism: that Democrats can't win competitive elections without cheating, because if only legitimate votes are counted, Republicans always win.

I may be misinterpreting this. They could be saying that Democrats will cheat harder if Trump is the nominee. And a mamber of one group seems to assume that of course Trump would win in 2024, but then he'd be unpopular:

In a focus group with Ohio voters, one participant said, “I do not want four more years of ‘orange man bad’ and everybody screaming about every time he tweets—and believe me, he did some really bad tweets. I don’t want four more years of that.”

They're so close to understanding the outcome of the 2020 election. Will they ever make the final leap and acknowledge that Joe Biden really did get 81 million legitimate votes, for the simple reason that Trump disgusts us?

Probably not, but they're inching closer.