WASHINGTON — Texas Sen. John Cornyn has joined the anyone-but-Trump caucus, becoming one of the most prominent Republican leaders to shun the former president’s 2024 comeback bid.
“We need to come up with an alternative,” he said Thursday. “I think President Trump’s time has passed him by and what’s the most important thing to me is we have a candidate who can actually win.”
Cornyn made the comment in a call with Texas reporters, when asked by The Dallas Morning News whether Trump’s performance on a prime time CNN town hall last week gave him pause about his efforts to return to the White House.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung shot back, calling the senator part of “the problem” and of the “deep state rotting through government.”
The former president is currently the prohibitive front-runner for the nomination, supported by 56% of Republican voters nationally in an average of recent polls. That’s almost triple the support for the runner-up, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who could formally join the race next week. Trump’s lead is commanding but smaller in New Hampshire, which hosts the first primary.
Eleven of 49 Republican senators have endorsed Trump. None have endorsed any of his rivals.
Few besides Cornyn, a top lieutenant and potential successor to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, have declared publicly that they don’t want Trump on the ticket.
That short list includes Indiana Sen. Todd Young. He came out against Trump last week, just after a New York jury found Trump liable for a sexual assault decades ago, and after the CNN town hall during which he vowed to pardon people involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, mob attack at the U.S. Capitol, some of whom were convicted of sedition.
Sen. Ted Cruz has remained neutral on the 2024 field. His own 2016 presidential campaign manager, Jeff Roe, is now chief strategist for the DeSantis political action committee.
“President Trump has fought against Democrats, the liberal media, and even the establishment forces in his own party,” said Cheung, the Trump spokesman. “But make no mistake, President Trump is the undisputed leader of the party and people like John Cornyn and Mitch McConnell are doing everything they can to cling on to power because they are the problem. They are the ones for endless wars, countless lives lost, selling out American workers to China, and part of the deep state rotting throughout government.”
Cornyn emphasized the difference between winning primaries and a general election.
“To me, this all boils down to electability. I’ve been through quite a few elections in my life. And there’s no prize for coming in second. In other words, losing,” Cornyn said. “Unless you can win an election, you don’t get to govern your priorities.”
Trump trailed President Joe Biden nationally by 7 million votes in 2020, out of 155 million. The party suffered major setbacks during the 2018 midterms with Trump in office. The 2022 midterms were also a bitter disappointment. With Trump casting a long shadow, Republicans failed to win the Senate and took the House by only a handful of votes.
“I don’t think President Trump understands that when you run in a general election, you have to appeal to voters beyond your base. There’s no question that President Trump has some enthusiastic supporters as part of his base. That works well for him in a Republican primary, but not well when you need to expand your appeal in a general election,” Cornyn said.
It’s a much firmer anti-Trump stance than Cornyn took last week after Trump’s town hall. Then, he told CNN that he’s concerned about Trump’s electability but was “happy to let the process play out” during the primaries.
“He’s got a unique ability to rally his base, but not to grow beyond his base, which is a problem,” Cornyn said last week.
Trump’s town hall was held one day after a New York City jury found him liable for sexually abusing former Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll decades ago, then defaming her, and ordered him to pay $5 million in damages. On CNN, he called her a “whack job” and reiterated his assertion that she fabricated the accusations – the stance the jury had deemed defamatory.
Among the many revelations that CNN’s Kaitlan Collins elicited: Trump continues to maintain that fraud and cheating cost him the election. He does not see victory by Ukraine over Russia as a goal, or describe Vladimir Putin as a war criminal.
Apart from Young and Cornyn, the short list of GOP senators who oppose Trump includes Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, who voted to convict Trump at two impeachment trials, and Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. Cassidy voted guilty at the second impeachment trial, on charges related to the Jan. 6 riot.
Young, the Indiana senator, cast his own opposition in terms similar to Cornyn’s: “As President Trump says, I prefer winners ... He consistently loses,” he told Huffpost. “I can’t think of someone worse-equipped to bring people together … and advance our collective values.”
Cornyn declined to pick a favorite among the other GOP contenders.
“I know several of them and they’re friends,” he said. “If they can win, I’ll be happy to support them.”
DeSantis, he said, has “been very successful in Florida,” which shows some ability to win crossover votes.
Cornyn and his wife, Sandy, attended a get-to-know-you event DeSantis hosted for members of Congress last month in Washington, emerging neutral.
More than a dozen Texas Republicans in the U.S. House back Trump, whose campaign listed most of them in March as part of his Texas elected leadership team.
Rep. Lance Gooden, R-Terrell, endorsed Trump shortly after attending the DeSantis event.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Austin, was an early DeSantis backer.
“DeSantis has shown he can” appeal beyond the base, Cornyn said Thursday, listing two other contenders with that knack: South Carolina’s former governor and one of it’s current senators. “Nikki Haley has shown that she can. Tim Scott has shown he can.”
“That’s an important lesson to learn from 2020, that you’ve got to do more than just turn out your enthusiastic base of support,” Cornyn said. “I just want to win and we need a candidate who can win.”
Asked about Will Hurd, the former San Antonio-area congressman, who has also been testing the waters, Cornyn said he’s “the right kind of person. Smart guy, good character. He would be in it for all the right reasons.”
Hurd, a former CIA officer, has cast himself as a thoughtful moderate who can work with anyone and lower the temperature in a bitterly partisan capital.
“He could do that someday,” Cornyn said of Hurd’s White House aspirations. “I’m not sure that he’s got the name ID and the visibility he would need in order to mount a race.”
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