Donald Trump is crushing his opponents in polls of Republican voters, and will likely do the same as the caucuses and primaries begin this week. He’s running a backward-looking, grievance-driven, base-strategy campaign and the rest of the GOP is following him — full on in the House, with bogus investigations in fealty to MAGA, and more mutedly in the Senate and the ever-shrinking primary campaign for second place.
But that only gets Trump’s approval ratings into the low 40s, at best, and House Republicans’ budget-slashing campaign is even less popular. Trump will need to reach the high 40s to win the general election against Joe Biden. For that, he needs the help of reactionary centrist elites in the political establishment — meaning funders, establishment media and organizations like No Labels — to make him competitive. If Biden’s ill-conceived support for Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza should prove fatal, that, too, is partially due to reactionary centrist politics.
