Pollster Never-Trumper says more Republicans are poised to turn their backs on the ex-president during Jan. 6 hearings

SSarah Longwell didn’t even try to pretend to like it for a moment donald trump.

A longtime GOP activist and political strategist, she opposed his nomination republican Presidential candidate in 2016, arguing that Trump and the things he advocates are bad for her and bad for her party. For many years she has proudly carried the label “Never Trumper”.

Against the background of Jan 6 Committee hearings, Longwell, who is in her forties, claims an increasing number of republican are now poised to “move on” from the former president and put their support behind another candidate.

And she says she has the data in the form of focus group meetings republican which she has directed for years.

She says although few ordinary members of the public have sat and listened to the hearings, they suggest the former president made extraordinary, even breathtaking, efforts to hold on to the Oval Office after losing to Joe Biden, the noise and Controversy has “taken to the airwaves”.

“It is absolutely not like Trump voters are going to sit down and listen to these hearings and be persuaded that Trump is bad. That’s not what’s happening,” says Longwell The Independent.

“The January 6 hearings create a lot of ambient noise about all the things Trump has people defend who they don’t like. Now you want to talk about why Biden is doing so badly, about inflation. They want to talk about why the world is doing so badly because of the “socialist democrats”. That’s what Trump voters want to talk about. And Trump wants to keep renegotiating the 2020 election.”

Whether it highlights the way Trump called officials in Georgia and asked them to “find” 11,000 additional votes, he thought Mike Pence Crowds who demanded his death, or who tried to grab the wheel of his SUV to join his supporters marching on the Capitol, the hearings created a noisy backdrop “about this thing your team did, which they… do not do. t like that they are not proud”.

She says it’s not like Trump supporters sit down and think he’s suddenly bad or that they don’t believe he was a good president anymore.

“A key component of that is that there are people that they want to switch to, that they’re passionate about — Ron DeSantisMike Pompeo or these people you see on Fox News Kristi Noem,” she says. “And they’re like, ‘Look at all these other superstars we can have.’ They’re not turning their backs on Trump.”

The insights from Longwell’s focus groups, no matter how limited, may be some of the clearest clues to the impact the Jan. 6 committee hearings are having on the former president’s supporters.

Often dramatically produced and presented more like television drama than the usual Capitol Hill hearing, committee co-chair Republican Liz Cheney has frequently used the latter parts to make headline-grabbing revelations, such as the fact that Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows was among those seeking a clemency, or the committee had referred allegations to the Justice Department that the former president attempted to contact a witness before they gave their testimony.

“The January 6 committee was so effective that some Republicans who want to counter-program felt they needed to talk about it,” Longwell adds.

“If you look at the beginning, the original message was, ‘Nobody cares’ or ‘I don’t look at this junk.’ The problem is that they were so effective that everyone had to get involved, even Fox News,” she says.

“They scoff at that, and a lot of these voters scoff at that. But it still breaks through. And that’s the thing, it’s still on the air in a way that it wasn’t before the hearings.”

Longwell’s findings are supported by other data, most recently a survey commissioned by the New York Times that about half were Republicans ready to vote for anyone other than Trump.

While Trump still enjoys high approval ratings among Republicans, he would be the first choice of 49 percent of respondents to become the party’s presidential nominee in 2024, ahead of Ron DeSantis on 25 points. ted cruz to 7 points, Mike Pence to 6 points and Nikki Haley also on the 6th

The poll found Trump maintained his primacy, but perhaps wasn’t as sure as he seemed just a few months ago.

The waning of his support and the growth in DeSantis’ stature have been cited as one of the reasons Trump may announce his intention to make a third bid for the White House before the November midterm elections.

A recent report in the Washington Post said that the former president’s closest confidants had advised him a year or more to wait until the fall of the midterms had a chance to settle before making the announcement – advice that went against Trump’s thinking.

Now more and more agreed with him. “A growing number of allies are urging him to follow his instincts to boost his standing in the party and increase voter turnout to help the GOP take over the House and Senate next year,” it said the article.

It cited two sources as saying Trump now intends to make an announcement in September.

What is certainly true is that Trump – still off Twitter and Facebook – has been following the hearings closely and what is being said about them on TV.

When Cassidy Hutchinsona 26-year-old former executive assistant, testified under oath that Trump knew some of his supporters were armed on January 6 and angrily threw his lunch against the wall, he promptly responded and denounced them more than once.

“So Cassidy Hutchinson was ready to go to Florida with the Trump team long after January 6,” he wrote on his own social media page.

“She knew I didn’t do anything wrong. She was a huge Trump fan — but my people didn’t want her. What happened? Why has she changed so dramatically? All lies. I guess even she didn’t believe her own Taurus.”

Longwell included the audio of several of Trump’s supporters — either those who voted for him in both 2016 and 2020 or just in the last election — into one of hers youngest podcast, The focus group.

“Nothing has changed. He still alienates people every day. And that was my big problem with him in 2016,” said one woman.

Another said: “I think the other thing that has been overshadowed a bit is that they keep talking about the results of the election. And I feel like even when he’s on his roadshow, he keeps bringing it up like it’s, you know, a grudge.

One man said, “I think there are other better candidates in the Republican Party who should run. And I feel like if Trump ran it would just water it down and put a bad taste in people’s mouths.”

Todd Belt, a political scientist at George Washington University, says one reason the hearings are having an impact is that the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives decided not to attend. As a result, with only Trump critics Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger the only Republicans, there is little opposition or scrutiny of witnesses whose testimony harms Trump.

Belt says Trump’s most staunch supporters are largely not following the hearings.

For more moderate Republicans, the hearings provide “a lot of food for thought about whether or not donald trump should be her party’s next candidate.”

Still, many votes aren’t quick to write off the 76-year-old Trump should he decide to run again, especially given Biden’s historically low approval rating, 79, who would be 86 if he served two full terms. (If Trump runs for office in two years and wins, he would be 82 on January 20, 2029.)

University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato says Trump is “still the nominal front-runner, and if or when he runs, he could very well still be nominated.”

He adds: “But the January 6 hearings hurt him. Democrats and most independents already loathe him, but incredibly, at this late date, many Republicans have just discovered that he’s not very admirable and could very well lose in November if he’s the GOP nominee.

What does Longwell think of the suggestion that the Jan. 6 hearings will hurt Democrats who believe they stand a better chance of beating Trump since they could face him a criminal indictment?

“That’s not a framing thing I’m thinking about,” she says, “The question is, I don’t know anything about the Democrats, but Donald Trump is a unique threat to democracy. I don’t like Ron DeSantis. I don’t think he would be a good president based on what I’ve seen of him, but he and Trump are not the same.”

She adds, “I think if Republican voters decide to move on to someone other than Trump, it’s for the good of all of us and for the good of democracy and, more importantly, Trump should be held accountable in some way.” “