Babyfaces, Heels, and the Republican Party's Alignment Problem
Donald Trump has cast most Republicans as heels. They need a babyface turn to win in 2024.
Politics resembles the theatrics of professional wrestling far more than most people feel comfortable admitting. The psychology of the two trades is almost identical. There are storylines and people playing characters who try to “get over” enough in their roles to bring audiences into the immersive theater. To maintain the illusion, these characters may act differently on camera than they do behind the scenes and often maintain backstage friendships with their on-screen rivals. The difference is that in politics, both sides try to cast themselves in the babyface (good guy) role and their opponents in the heel (villain) role. To a large extent, this casting depends on how one side interacts with its opponents and what voters in the middle think about such interactions. Unfortunately for Republicans, their party leader, Donald Trump, is firmly ensconced in the role of heel among centrists, moderates, and independents. This casting alignment stopped what should have been a red wave in 2022 and presents a difficult psychological needle for the party to thread should it hope to win in 2024.
The needle: Republicans, led by the nominee, will need to make an anti-Trump babyface turn for independent and centrist voters, while not turning heel in the eyes of the party’s base.
The peculiar, even amusing, crux of an alignment turn is that it is simple to execute. The most important thing is to make a sudden statement that takes the side of one party or another that the audience has already assigned a babyface or heel alignment to. By taking a side, that person, too, will be cast in a heroic or villainous role. The best example to use would be Hulk Hogan’s iconic 1996 heel turn. Hogan had been the All-American hero for over a decade in the wrestling business, but by suddenly joining the Outsiders, who had cast and successfully sold themselves as heels, he, too, became a villain - the most despicable kind of villain.
Similar examples litter the political world and have magnified during the Trump era. Mike Pence is the most prominent and he illustrates the dilemma of any Republican candidate looking to displace the former President as the party’s ruling power. As Donald Trump’s longtime loyal Vice President, Pence had babyface status among the Republican base, but independents and moderates perceived him as a villain. Yet, Pence refused to play a part in his boss’ stolen election storyline (or “angle” in professional wrestling terminology). As a result, Pence made a babyface turn for many of the independent voters that Republicans need to win, but became a heel to vast swathes of the party’s base, which is why he has no chance of winning the 2024 nomination despite his otherwise exalted status as a former Vice President.
Mike Pence serves as an example of why so many Republicans felt the need to butter Trump up during the 2022 midterm cycle, regardless of what they may have thought and felt privately. These Republicans did not want to risk a heel turn among their base by crossing the former President. Instead, they hoped that disatisfaction with Biden would create a red wave which would carry them to victory regardless of Trump. This hope proved to be the miscalculation that everyone - Republicans and Democrats alike - would make.
With his historically low popularity, one would be forgiven for thinking that by playing off Biden, Republican candidates would get cast in the role of babyface. We now know that scenario did not pan out. President Biden has high negatives among independents, who are disatisfied with his job performance and his broken promise of restoring normalcy to the country. However, he does not elicit hatred to the extent of President Trump (or indeed, Obama, Bush, or Clinton before him).
Essentially, President Biden occupies the role of a babyface that failed to get over. The audience does not want to cheer for him, but nevertheless will prefer him as champion to a character they view as a genuine heel, no matter how much they are not enamored with his title reign.
Adam Laxalt in Nevada highlights this dynamic. He was the most normal and generic among the Republicans’ 2022 battleground Senate candidates. Yet, he played a role in President Trump’s “stolen 2020” angle. Independent voters in Nevada remembered, saw Laxalt as a heel because of it, and just enough of them voted against him to cost him the election, in spite of Biden’s being even more unpopular in Nevada than he is nationally.
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp went through a different experience. He did not participate in the “stolen 2020” angle. His refusal to do so turned him heel with President Trump’s base, but earned him babyface status with independent voters. Kemp, however, racked up enough conservative wins in Georgia to make his heel status with the broader Republican base tenuous. His signature on a bill meant to clean up Georgia’s election laws helped him shake that role. Finally, his willingness to fight Major League Baseball, even though it removed the 2021 All Star Game from Atlanta to Denver, solidified his babyface status with the Republican base, which hates such woke corporate acts. Kemp had successfully threaded the needle. The rewards were considerable, as he easily defeated Trump-backed David Perdue in his primary contest and then Stacey Abrams in their general election rematch, outperforming Trump-backed Herschel Walker by about five points. Other Republicans who managed to thread the needle, like Joe Lombardo in Nevada, Mike DeWine in Ohio, Kim Reynolds in Iowa, and of course, Florida’s Ron DeSantis, were rewarded, as were Republican House candidates who successfully balanced the alignment act.
The implications for 2024 are clear. Although unpopular, President Biden currently occupies the role of failed babyface more than outright heel. Independent audiences are looking for a better alternative, but will not get behind a challenger they view as a heel. The Republican challenger must instead make the babyface turn for independents by breaking with Trump. He must then present a sharp contrast to Biden, one that puts the President’s unpopularity front and center, so that swing voters start to mentally assign the heel role to him.
This psychological dynamic is why it is necessary for the Republican nominee to defeat Donald Trump outright in the presidential primary. Independents and suburban voters would hail whoever defeated him as a hero for finally forcing Trump out of public life, while taking heart that Republican voters themselves rejected their former leader. In this regard, the party should view President Trump’s third campaign as an opportunity.
However, defeating Trump while maintaining babyface status among the Republican base is itself a hard psychological needle to thread, one which will require a masterful political operator. Biden’s heel status in this corner of society will help here, as the successful challenger will need to convince the base that defeating him is the highest priority and that Trump cannot do it. The successful challenger will also need to have credibility with the Republican base and convince it that he will be a champion it can trust to carry forward its priorities. At the same time, he must weather Trump’s attacks and not insult him or his voters.
Such is the dilemma that Trump’s presence poses to the Republican Party and it will not have long to solve it. If the party leadership cannot figure out who can thread the alignment needle and how, four more years of President Biden or some other Democrat await.