For years, Republican voters accepted Donald Trump’s chaos as the price of a strong economy. But that bargain is beginning to collapse. Now, former Republican strategist and publisher of The Bulwark, Sarah Longwell, is warning that Trump may bring the GOP down with him as he goes.
Speaking to "Morning Joe" on Tuesday, Longwell said that many Republicans have made a kind of "Faustian bargain about Trump. They said, look, this guy's a businessman. I liked his first-term economy, and therefore I'll just take a flier on him, even though I know he's not a very good person."
Folks, she said, were willing to do it for a good economy. Now that the economy has faltered, things have changed dramatically.
"They were willing to do it for the good of the economy. Man, I'll tell you, voters will tolerate a lot if they have a good economy. But if they don't, and you're focused on all of these other things, they are out on you," Longwell explained. "And so Donald Trump is really down to his hardcore base. And the problem for Republicans is that a lot of those people are Trump voters. They're people who will turn out in droves when he is actually on the ballot. But they might stay home when he's not, and it's not about him."
Former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough cited GOP strategist Karl Rove, who told Fox News last week that he expects the Dallas convention to be a disaster filled with a rambling Trump talking about his ballroom over people's rent or his Reflecting Pool project over the cost of fuel.
He has become the "albatross around their neck," Longwell said. "And you actually hit on something. You know, normally voters wouldn't pick up on a story like the ballroom or like the Reflecting Pool or the arch."
She explained that voters she speaks with in focus groups frequently ask, "Why does he keep talking about his ballroom when things are so bad? When there's a war in Iran, he can't get out of? And so voters are really aware that Donald Trump is distracted from the things that he said he was going to do."
Speaking about her new book, How to Eat an Elephant, Longwell further explained that the one thing that became clear to her from the focus groups is that Trump is a stand-alone figure in U.S politics.
"There's not a lot of people who can come along and do what he's done," she said. Meanwhile, "he has hollowed out the Republican Party to such a degree that in a post-Donald Trump world, this party has no idea how to function. And my pitch to people is to say, America is not lost. And in fact, we have a generational opportunity to take MAGA and, sort of, bury it in the ash heap of history where it belongs."
That will require Democrats to figure out how to go on the offense, she said, while also reaching out to working-class voters again that they lost while also rebuilding a multiracial society.
"Like, one of the things that I hear from voters all the time is enormous frustration with Republicans. And yet they don't want to vote for Democrats. So why is that? And I have a lot of theories in the book, a lot of things I've heard from Democrats, Republicans, swing voters about how you go on offense and ultimately seize this generational opportunity to take this whole movement and push back on it," she said.