As Republicans get ready for a second presidential debate, some of the party’s major donors are cringing at the size of the field likely to appear onstage and are increasingly fretting that former President Donald Trump’s lead in the polls is growing harder to overcome.
And while some view the September 27 debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, as a potential inflection point in the battle for the GOP nomination – with an opportunity for a candidate or two to still break away from the pack – some donors worry aloud that the window is narrowing for a Trump alternative to emerge.
Their public angst underscores the chasm between the populism animating the Republican base and what some longtime party donors say is their pragmatic view: that if Trump becomes the GOP nominee, he will fall again to President Joe Biden and potentially endanger the GOP’s narrow House majority.
“My basic pitch is we don’t have the luxury of time,” said Eric Levine, a New York lawyer and fundraiser who is backing South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and recently issued a call to arms to fellow Republicans to get off the sidelines.
“Asa Hutchinson has got to go away. Chris Christie has got to go away. Gov. (Doug) Burgum has to get off the stage,” he said. “They have no shot.”
Others are more fatalistic.
“I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to have an impact on this race,” said Frayda Levin, a Republican donor from New Jersey. “Every Republican’s dilemma right now is: Do we try and undermine and destroy Trump, only to have it come back and haunt us because he’s the candidate, and it’s Trump or Biden?”
Levin sits on the board of the influential conservative group Club for Growth, which has opposed Trump, but she said she was expressing her views on the 2024 contest as an…
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