By Serafin Gomez
As of Friday afternoon (at the time of writing), the Real Clear Politics average of polls shows that President Donald Trump remains in the lead for the GOP presidential nomination. Trump leads and current Real Clear Politics average with 37 percent, while the remaining Republican candidates collectively sit at 29 percent.
That’s a lot of noses — or barrels — to fill.
Whether Trump actually won’t win the nomination is dependent upon which polls you’re looking at. Some of the more reliable online poll averages in Real Clear Politics demonstrate a Trump decline in popularity—as recently as July.
Most recently, we’re seeing a Trump bounce since the mid-August intro of Brett Kavanaugh. Next week, Trump should be lapping the entire field.
While Trump remains in the lead by a narrow margin, it is likely not because he has more voters of this party yet, but because less party members remain undecided. As Trump’s approval rating falls, new members join the ballot. But who in the Republican Party of 2020 is going to fight for him?
U.S. Sen. John Thune (R-SD) said earlier this week that the “number of contenders has stabilized and that could result in the GOP field getting smaller.”
Nope, it’s going to get much bigger. And I’m hoping the “best” candidate gets the nomination.
Raul Labrador, a conservative Republican Congressman from Idaho, said this week that the GOP is not “very capable of winning the general election” without a viable Trump opponent. And now, we see a Donald Trump competitor every day. In fact, every single day.
White House legislative director Marc Short said that after the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation fight, many Senate Republicans are feeling desperate that another Trump opponent will not be announced before the GOP convention in late July.
Kavanaugh’s confirmation, essentially an endorsement of Trump, has been very successful, but what is to stop the president from being nominated again, and more importantly, from being nominated again for the next election cycle?
If so, one of the big, red-ribbon Republicans will have won six Senate races in three years and nominated candidates that could carry the Republican banner across a broad swath of states.
It makes perfect sense if you ask me. If not, please tell me how. If Trump goes down, the GOP is all over the map. We have it all.
We have Trump. We have the Republican Party. And in the fight for the nomination for the 2020 presidential election, we already have the Republican nominee. If you believe the likes of Thune, Labrador, Short, and other conservative Senators to be faithful to party principles, you are embracing democracy’s worst nightmare.
The biggest loser of all of this, for me and for most Republican candidates, is the Tea Party movement. They fought for principles and their way to a better place. They ultimately chose Trump and he will lead this party to the most promised conservative governance since the Reagan presidency.
If Trump were suddenly asked to leave the stage, the Tea Party would have no one to fill the spot—they simply could not sustain this loss.
The story of my life has been made to hear the voice of the conservative. As soon as I got into the Republican Party, my life started falling into place. And I am not alone in this. The men, and many women, who have fought for conservative principles in the Republican Party have had stories like mine since June of 2011.
It will take courage for the Republican National Committee to win back the hearts and minds of many disillusioned voters who have left the GOP and perhaps will never return to the fold. But that courage must begin now.
Serafin Gomez (pronounced: Sel-in) is a political strategist, contributor for Fox News Latino, and author of, “A True American Hero: The Life and Times of Dr. Al Cowlis, “Havoc in Little Rock,” a true tale of courage and heroism from the Civil Rights era of the 1960s that will never be forgotten.
