Another problem for Trump: A 2020 primary challenge is growing more likely

There’s option A: an all-out NeverTrump-style protest campaign against the president that would challenge him directly. While that would almost certainly fall far short, it would serve to prove to anti-Trump conservatives that the Republican Party is not yet fully unified behind the president — potentially weakening him, or exposing his weaknesses, enough to ensure a Democrat’s election. “It’s important for there to be an alternative” candidate to Trump, said veteran GOP operative Stuart Stevens, Romney’s chief strategist in 2012 and one of the president’s most outspoken critics on the right. “But I can’t tell you who that alternative would be.” Such a challenge might essentially echo the experience of 1976, when Ronald Reagan took on President Gerald Ford, only to see Jimmy Carter take the White House; of 1980, when Ted Kennedy’s challenge of Carter kicked off a year that saw Carter hand the presidency to Reagan; or of 1992, when a relatively weak campaign run by TV pundit Pat Buchanan still spooked President George H.W. Bush, who went on to lose to Bill Clinton.

Or, B, perhaps the likelier option: a wait-and-see campaign that doesn’t really go anywhere, unless Trump implodes and the alternative candidate is ready to swoop in and save the GOP’s day. To be successful, even this type of candidate would likely already need to be laying quiet, just-in-case groundwork in order to rise above the inevitable free-for-all that would result in Trump’s hypothetical implosion — donors ready to donate, organizers ready to organize, activists ready to activate.