Trump and his MAGA political movement are done. Republicans need their version of Biden.

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If we’ve learned anything from the past three national elections it’s this: Donald Trump and his "MAGA movement” have nothing to sell but crazy, and Americans aren’t buying it.

The 2022 midterm elections should’ve been a Republican blowout. They weren’t – at all – and it’s clear voters cared little about bizarre 2020 presidential election conspiracies and wanted nothing to do with fearmongering over drag queen shows or whatever other weird nonsense the MAGA-dominated Republican Party was peddling.

Add to that the GOP failures in the 2018 midterms and in the 2020 presidential election and it’s safe to say anyone who thinks Trump carries a popular message is allergic to popularity.

Trump's MAGA movement failed, bigly

MAGA, as a winning political movement, is dead. And the results of an exclusive USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll show a growing number of Republicans see Trump as a dead candidate walking.

Less than half of Republicans – 47% – now want him to run again, down considerably from July, when 60% wanted Trump to take another shot at the White House.

Don't get your hopes up that GOP sanity will prevail

Before you spend a moment thinking the party faithful are breaking toward sanity, consider this from USA TODAY’s report on the same poll: “By 2-1, GOP and GOP-leaning voters now say they want Trump's policies but a different standard-bearer to carry them. While 31% want the former president to run, 61% prefer some other Republican nominee who would continue the policies Trump has pursued.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signs his "Stop Woke" bill in Hialeah Gardens on April 22, 2022.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signs his "Stop Woke" bill in Hialeah Gardens on April 22, 2022.

So rather than blame the message – which clearly doesn’t resonate with the masses – many Republican voters are blaming the messenger. And who is their next-in-line choice? Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a guy who, like Trump, has made snarling cruelty his brand by focusing on culture war issues like “critical race theory” and “wokeness,” all while scapegoating LGBTQ kids and painting school teachers as malevolent forces of liberal indoctrination.

No, no, no. Here's a tip, Republicans. You don't need a Trump-esque figure like DeSantis. You need your own version of Joe Biden.

Let me explain.

Cruelty just ain't the political calling card it was back when Trump won

DeSantis' war on "wokeness" and his faux-tough-guy stunt flying migrants to Martha’s Vineyard appeals to a narrow band of American voters, people who get a kick out of meanness and “owning the libs.”

That’s effectively what Trump did, and while he caught lightning in a bottle and won the 2016 presidential election, he and that whole jerk-ish attitude have been broadly rejected ever since:

People cheer as former President Donald Trump announces a third run for president as he speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2022.
People cheer as former President Donald Trump announces a third run for president as he speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2022.
  • Kari Lake tried it in the Arizona gubernatorial race. She lost.

  • Herschel Walker tried it in the Georgia U.S. Senate race. He lost.

  • Doug Mastriano tried it in the Pennsylvania gubernatorial race. He lost.

'We choose sanity over chaos'

Katie Hobbs, the Democrat who won the Arizona governor’s race, put it perfectly in this recent tweet: “In this election, we chose solving our problems over conspiracy theories. We chose sanity over chaos. We chose unity over division.”

A crowd of supporters of former president Donald Trump on Nov. 15, 2022, in West Palm Beach, Fla.
A crowd of supporters of former president Donald Trump on Nov. 15, 2022, in West Palm Beach, Fla.

Voters chose sanity, as they did in the previous two election cycles. The noise and rancor and outrage that nourishes the 24-hour conservative media ecosystem resonates only in that bubble. Elsewhere, people don’t want bullies and fabulists. They want reasonable people who might actually stand a chance of getting something done.

Biden wasn't many Democrats' first choice, but ...

In the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, liberal voters coalesced around Biden not because he was everyone’s favorite candidate but because he provided a sane counter to Trump. Democratic voters knew Biden would likely appeal to independents, who are often key to winning.

President Joe Biden speaks during a bill signing ceremony for the Respect for Marriage Act on Dec. 13, 2022.
President Joe Biden speaks during a bill signing ceremony for the Respect for Marriage Act on Dec. 13, 2022.

They were right. Biden won not by being some supercandidate or having a pop-culture-driven cult of personality. He ran by being the adult in the room.

Go on, Republicans! Go get yourself a RINO to return you to relevancy!

So if Republicans want a chance at appealing to a broader electorate, they need to find their own Biden. And it sure as heck isn’t an uncharismatic grump like DeSantis.

At the peak of Trump’s popularity with the Republican base, he would regularly lambaste members of his own party – like Rep. Liz Cheney and Sen. Mitt Romney – as RINOs, or Republicans In Name Only. It was stupid, of course – Cheney and Romney are closer to true conservatives than Trump could ever hope to be.

But if that’s how a RINO is defined by today’s Republican Party, then the party desperately needs to find itself a RINO to run for president.

R.I.P. MAGA. You will not be missed, not even a little.

Trumpism, the MAGA movement or whatever you want to call it has been thrice rejected. Younger voters in particular are repelled by culture-war fearmongering.

So Republicans need to offer more than bitterness toward liberals and performative acts of spite. Americans have clearly had it with pugilistic frauds.

The party that has developed an almost cult-like devotion to hating Biden and spinning him and his family into perverse conspiratorial narratives needs to recognize that nobody outside noisy social-media circles gives a hoot about Hunter Biden’s laptop.

In a fine bit of irony, the thing Republicans who loathe Joe Biden need right now, more than anything, is not Trump, not the MAGA movement and not Ron DeSantis.

It’s to find themselves a Joe Biden they can call their own.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: USA TODAY poll shows Trump's popularity in the GOP fading