McConnell watched Republicans leave the party in 2018 and continue to leave the party and join the Democrats in countering Trump's erratic behavior with foreign leaders and in deregulating the federal government which oversees issues with clean air and water. Let's say, McConnell, is willing to admit he is happy with Kavanaugh and would like to repeat it. McConnell doesn't want to lose the US Senate in 2020. He knows in order to win back the Republicans he lost in 2018, he needs a different presidential candidate. How exactly does he go about doing that? If Trump is willing to self-destruct as he is doing now, McConnell has his answer.
January 8, 2019
By Perry Bacon, Jr.
...The most obvious path (click here) that could lead to a strong Trump challenger would be paved by some new development. For example, Trump could take a policy step that deeply offends a core part of the GOP base. If he picked a pro-abortion-rights nominee for the Supreme Court, for instance, he could alienate evangelical Christian conservatives, a huge bloc within the Republican Party and one that currently strongly supports Trump.
By Perry Bacon, Jr.
...The most obvious path (click here) that could lead to a strong Trump challenger would be paved by some new development. For example, Trump could take a policy step that deeply offends a core part of the GOP base. If he picked a pro-abortion-rights nominee for the Supreme Court, for instance, he could alienate evangelical Christian conservatives, a huge bloc within the Republican Party and one that currently strongly supports Trump.
I don’t expect Trump to do this — he has largely stuck to conservative orthodoxy in his first two years in office. I do not consider removing troops from Syria or even Afghanistan (as the president is considering doing) to be moves that would cause an impasse between the GOP base and Trump. There is little evidence that GOP voters (as opposed to congressional Republicans) are bothered by those moves.
But although he has largely embraced mainstream Republican policies, Trump remains unpredictable, and for that reason I think it is possible, if very unlikely, that Trump could end up taking a step that annoys rank-and-file GOP voters....
