In return, there are signs that his voters’ anger over the 2020 election and their belief in the falsehood that his victory was stolen from him has only grown, even as some in the GOP have said they’d prefer to move on and focus on issues that may resonate with a wider swath of the electorate, like inflation.
“The country is adrift right now,” Melvin Everson, a former Republican state representative in Georgia, said in an interview at a Gwinnett County GOP breakfast. “The election is in the rearview mirror for some but is still at the forefront of the minds of a lot.”
That cuts to a central divide within the Republican Party — how much attention to pay to the last presidential election while seeking to win the next ones. Trump remains the undisputed leader of the GOP and the odds-on favorite to win the 2024 nomination should he run — and he wants 2020 to be front and center. Meanwhile, plenty of Trump-backing Republicans who would prefer to sharpen a forward-looking message have sought to thread the needle by promoting changes to the election process without dwelling on the 2020 results.
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