Remember when Herman Cain led the polls for the Republican presidential nomination in 2011? That moment ended only when several women accused him of sexual harassment, a revelation that may have come to light earlier if he had made credible runs for office before.
BREAKING THE OLD RULES COST CANDIDATES
The truer, more complicated story doesn’t make Trump look any better. His success in 2016 encouraged the assumption that the usual laws of political gravity no longer applied. Outrageous statements and scandals, a lack of what had previously been considered qualifications for office, even unpopularity: None of this mattered any more.
The seeming overthrow of the old rules encouraged runs by candidates who would not have attempted them before, and encouraged primary voters to support them.
As it turned out, however, breaking the old rules still cost candidates votes in general elections. Trump won in 2016 even though he was the least popular major-party nominee in US history only because his opponent, Hillary Clinton, was the second-least-popular.
Nominating a slate of candidates who had never run for lower offices, who took positions far from the median voter, and whose resumes included multiple scandals didn’t pay off for Republicans in 2022.
Neither did selecting candidates based on their willingness to indulge Trump’s lies about how the 2020 election was stolen from him by fraud. Most voters don’t believe this bit of Trump mythology, and Republicans who have won statewide in politically competitive states – people such as Governor Doug Ducey of Arizona and Governor Chris Sununu of New Hampshire – were not willing to endorse it.
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