In less than two weeks since President Joe Biden exited the presidential race, the vibes of the 2024 election have definitively shifted. Democrats quickly rallied behind Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him, and a party that once looked to be sleepwalking toward a shellacking has experienced an electrifying revival.
That surprising turn of events has in turn spurred another unexpected development: Former President Donald Trump and his MAGA allies are backpedaling and publicly doubting themselves. For a movement that thrives off controversy and a never-apologize ethos, it’s unusual to see its members so visibly on their back foot. It doesn’t mean that Republicans are in danger of losing the elections. But it reflects how Republican confidence in their electoral prospects is declining, and could possibly cause some of them to rethink their approach to winning over voters.
This rare moment of GOP defensiveness may not last long. But for the time being, it suggests a hint of anxiety.
Trump has been scrambling to distance himself from Project 2025, the policy project organized by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, designed to help guide a future Trump presidency. Republicans appear to be letting accusations that Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, and other right-wingers are “weird” get under their skin. And some top Republicans are apprehensive about Trump’s and Vance’s bigoted attacks on Harris over her racial identity and gender.
The backpedaling started with Project 2025. This summer, Democrats successfully drummed up public interest in the radical ideas of Project 2025, which include proposals to fire civil servants en masse, abolishing the Education Department, outlawing pornography, restricting access to abortion nationally, and cutting taxes for corporations. Instead of standing his ground, Trump claimed multiple times in July that he knew nothing about Project 2025 and that he had no idea who was behind it. Those claims don’t stand up to scrutiny, given that, among other things, Trump has praised Heritage for laying out a road map for a future administration just as it began working on Project 2025. Even Trump’s attempts to create distance from the plan use language that sounds downright strange coming from his mouth: He called the project the creation of the “severe right” and labeled its ideas “seriously extreme.” And Trump’s claim is also difficult to reconcile with the fact that the group’s head is stepping down precisely because of his criticism.
More recently, many on the right also have been thoroughly rattled by Democrats’ new favorite label for them: “weird.” After some of Vance’s most vulgar past statements about Harris and “childless cat ladies” were unearthed and Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz famously painted Trump’s fixations as “weird,” the insult caught on fire as a meme among Democrats and liberals online. Unexpectedly, Republicans took the bait by engaging with it. Trump insisted that no, actually, Harris is the “weird person.” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., insisted Democrats are “weirder.” Former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy deemed the insult a “juvenile” distraction from policy and demanded Democrats “cut the crap.” Instead of ignoring the issue, Republicans have responded to “weird” with the kind of annoyance that one exhibits when sensing an accuser has tapped into something with a kernel of truth.
Lastly, some Republicans are expressing some hesitation over Trump and Vance leaning into reactionary and bigoted attacks on Harris’ identity, gender and family. The GOP squirming has been particularly pronounced after Trump questioned whether Harris is Black and Vance doubled down on comments criticizing her for not having children (Harris is a stepmother). According to Politico, House Speaker Mike Johnson has “cautioned conservatives against leveling attacks on Harris related to her race and gender.” and Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri told reporters that “Republicans should not mock women who choose not to have children.” And a number of Republican senators have had to awkwardly avoid either criticizing or endorsing Trump’s comments or spin them as not being bigoted.
This rare moment of GOP defensiveness may not last long. But for the time being, it suggests a hint of anxiety about how the party presents itself just a few months until Election Day. Ramaswamy even said on Fox News that he felt Republicans are in need of a “massive reset.” There is no evidence that the MAGA world is engaged in serious soul searching or introspection, but it is conceivable that messaging could shift against a Democratic candidate who has reset. Yet there’s less than 100 days to go. For Republicans hoping to find the right attacks against Harris, time is running out.
