Politico’s deputy managing editor Sam Stein said Monday on MSNBC’s “Erin O’Hearn Reports” that the Republican Party is in a “bad place” because former president Donald Trump is the only candidate that turns out their voters.
Stein said, “Wes, I mean, we’re getting way down the rabbit hole, but, yeah, every historical indication is that if Trump were to lose somehow this primary, he would claim it was rigged. That’s his MO he did it, he’s done it repeatedly. We know that he did it in the last primary when Ted Cruz won Iowa. And so, you know, it is a bad place to be as a party where you’re solely dependent on one person to bring out such a huge amount of your voters.”
He continued, “And we’ve seen this in 2022, we saw it in 2023 and 2021, we had elections. Without Trump on the ballot, Republican candidates have really struggled. They’ve really struggled. These are even Trump-endorsed candidates, like Herschel Walker, for instance, or Dr. Oz, and it’s weird, because the parties have switched.”
Stein added, “The Republican Party is now very dependent on somewhat low-propensity voters who really have been drawn in the political process by Donald Trump. And when Trump is not there to vote for, they don’t turn out. This is part of the reason why you see Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis saying these things about pardoning Trump. They need to keep him within the so-called beehive so that they can benefit from having his voters there.”
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