Even as they defend Trump, Republicans know he’s an albatross around their necks

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On Tuesday, all eyes will be on Manhattan when former president Donald Trump is finally arraigned in Manhattan after flying into New York on Monday. With that, Republicans will have to grapple with the fact that the activists and voters that make up the party still very much like him but he serves as an albatross for them with a general electorate.

A new Yahoo! News/YouGov poll perfectly exhibits this predicament for Republican leaders: Mr Trump now leads Florida Governor Ron DeSantis 57 per cent to 31 per cent in a one-on-one contest against the man whom the donor class and conservative leaders consider the Republican golden boy. In addition, 54 per cent of Republicans and people who lean Republican now say they want Mr Trump to be the GOP nominee.

All of this seems to indicate Mr Trump has a red carpet to the GOP nomination in 2024. The problem for Republicans? The same survey showed that 52 per cent of US adults don’t think he should be allowed to serve a second term if he is “convicted of a crime in this case,” and only 31 per cent of adults think he should while 17 per cent are unsure.

To be clear, there are some holes in the survey, as Yahoo! News and YouGov only conducted it in the 24 hours after the news of the indictment broke and only 34 per cent of those polled said they had heard “a lot” about “Donald Trump being indicted on Thursday in Manhattan.” That number will likely change and people will form more opinions after Mr Trump is arraigned and in the ensuing legal proceedings.

The indictment also remains under seal so nobody knows the nature of the charges supposedly related to Mr Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen paying adult film actress Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about a sexual liaison, which the former president has denied vehemently.

Nevertheless, the GOP feels compelled to rush to Mr Trump’s defence. Right-wing extremist Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene will reportedly be in New York to support Mr Trump as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has gotten behind the former president. This will inevitably serve as a distraction from where Mr McCarthy would ideally like to keep the focus: President Joe Biden as he tries to gain the upper hand in negotiations surrounding the debt limit.

During an interview with conservative commentator Dave Rubin, Mr McCarthy said he thought that 2024 would be about “All the things that Biden has done, that somebody else can do better” but added that “whoever the front runner is today is not the nominee.” But this seems like wishful thinking given that an ex-president hasn’t sought the White House since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. And Mr Trump’s propensity to make everything about him further means that the focus won’t be on policy.

And, of course, this is not the only investigation Mr Trump faces: Fulton County, Georgia’s district attorney’s investigation into his actions in the 2020 presidential election has yet to file charges, and Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed by the Justice Department, is still looking into his handling of documents Mr Trump took to Mar-a-Lago and his actions trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election including his actions on January 6.

It should be noted that Republican leaders had the chance to dispose of Mr Trump on multiple occasions, but most prominently during his impeachment trial after the riot at the US Capitol. While seven Republican Senators voted to convict Mr Trump, that was 10 fewer than the requisite 67 that the Senate needed to convict him and ensure he would never stand as a presidential candidate again.

Doing so would have allowed them to no longer have to defend his every action, keep the focus on the Biden administration. They could have actively opposed candidates he endorsed and supported more electable candidates in the 2022 midterm election where he supported clunkers and election deniers. Any amount of political pain or blowback they suffered would prove infinitesimal to the benefits of dumping him.

Instead, they are stuck answering for Mr Trump and have to defer to him on any particular whim without any clear political benefit.

Tellingly, Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, released a cautious statement, saying she was “monitoring Donald Trump’s legal situation as it unfolds. No one is above the law in this country, but everyone deserves a fair legal process.”

Ms Murkowski, who just won re-election in a state with ranked-choice voting where she doesn’t have to face a contentious primary, voted to convict Mr Trump.