In the natural world, a place where too many Americans feel their political leaders have been too long detached, both plants and animals find unique ways to adapt to their environments and circumstances.  This is simply evolution, a concept that has cycled around the world since Charles Darwin penned “On The Origin of Species” 161 years ago.  If you don’t adapt, you die.  That’s what the Republican Party needs to bear in mind, in light of Jon Bramnick’s announcement that he will not run for governor in the 2021 primary.

Again, in the natural world, some creatures such as frogs are “warning species” for others—ones which are particularly sensitive to changes that may not have yet affected the greater population.  You watch what they do carefully, because invariably they are the best barometers for what is coming.  Bramnick may be such a warning.  A moderate, no MAGA champion, Bramnick’s departure from the upcoming electoral scene may well be a wise act of self-preservation as the Republican Party decides what to do with the legacy of President Trump.  Ignore warning signs only at your own peril.

A recent column by Fred Snowflack had said that the president’s electoral defeat represented an opportunity.  2021 is a critical moment for the GOP to either evolve or stagnate and risk becoming a permanent opposition party such as in Massachusetts.  It will be seen whether or not the NJGOP sheds the shackles Donald Trump put on them in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by about a million.  It’s not impossible.  Republican Governor Chris Christie, a long-time Trump stalwart whose patience has sensibly run out, had won two terms in New Jersey.  With the right conditions and the right message, Republicans can indeed win in New Jersey.  But finding that is the key, and just as importantly, who will deliver that message?  Will that message have broad appeal?  Without some kind of moderation, some evolution to the changing New Jersey environment, the simple mathematics says defeat is inevitable.  Just as in nature.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result” is a line usually attributed to Einstein, an intelligent specimen of the human species for sure.  Whoever really said it, Einstein or not, wasn’t wrong.  Unless the Republican Party is, indeed, following the path of insanity, GOP Chairman Doug Steinhardt, former Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli, or Bob Hugin, and indeed any Republican gubernatorial hopeful who may enter the scene, will need to avoid falling into a deadly whirlpool of ever-denser, ever-narrower, ever-less-electable messaging in post-Trump New Jersey.

It is worth noting that Governor Phil Murphy and President Trump have a few very obvious things in common to the most basic voter: they’re both older, Caucasian, exceptionally wealthy men who have no problem financing an election.  “Who” they are, therefore, is less important than the message they deliver.  This should be good news for big-monied men like Bob Hugin, who dropped tens of millions to unsuccessfully displace Senator Bob Menendez at both the best and worst possible time to attempt: a scandal-wracked incumbent under investigation amid a national Blue Wave.  If Hugin were to run against Phil Murphy, the two would be on equal playing fields in terms of ability to campaign.  Ciattarelli, Singh, and Steinhardt (if indeed he’s not just clogging the lane for Hugin or another millionaire like him to later occupy that wing of the party establishment’s interests in a 2021 statewide campaign) will need to adapt and overcome on a broad-appealing message that doesn’t look as though it’s been crafted in a Trump Tower penthouse if they’re to run against Hugin’s money.  And so far there’s little evidence that the Republican hopefuls have coherently communicated such a message.  They may deride the governor as “King Philip” and slam his handling of COVID as rule-by-edict, but the governor still enjoys a majority of support in the polls.

Catching lightning in a bottle is neither impossible nor easy.  In the case of Donald Trump, he caught lightning in a bottle in 2016, albeit with no help from New Jersey.  In 2020, New Jersey voters once again turned away from Trump.  Many Republicans on the more local levels retained their seats and the re-election of Congressman Jeff Van Drew came as a shock and as much as a relief to many, as he rode off the implications of a party-switch, the howls of “traitor” from all halls of the Democratic Party, and defeated Amy Kennedy.  Conclusion—the Republican brand isn’t necessarily anathema to New Jerseyans.  It’s just that Donald Trump was.  As Steinhardt brands himself as a Trump-style candidate, and as Jack Ciattarelli seeks to capitalize on Trump-appeal within the party loyalists, they must realize that they themselves are not Donald Trump.  The outsider.  The not-a-politician.

In the 1930s, Dino Grandi, Italy’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, believed that the regime he served would be ephemeral and inevitably return to previous norms.  The leader was the key, perhaps representing a transformational moment, but ultimately unsustainable beyond the leader himself since all things revolved around the man rather than the brand.  When a movement is centered around a personality, is branded and built up around a figure, once the unifying element—the personality—is removed from the equation, what’s left?  A mixture of reformers and bitter-enders.

If Republicans think this is hyperbolic, they can very easily look to any hometown Trump parade or official rally.  How many elephants are on display versus how many flags and hats that simply have the candidate’s name?  How much party appeal was apparent versus celebrity?  Republicans could make the case that it is one in the same, but the New Jersey electoral turn-out demonstrates otherwise.

What name recognition can the New Jersey Republican hopefuls seek to help deliver their message when the party they serve venerated a man who has been in the limelight for decades comfortably outside the despised political sector and won by assailing the very political class he ended up mastering?  In movie terms, with very few exceptions, the sequel is seldom as good as the original.  The message needs to be distinct, clear, and original.

If one looks at Seth Grossman, a proud member of the Trump camp, he carried the Trump banner into battle.  He defeated Hirsh Singh in the CD-2 2018 primary. However, the MAGA message wasn’t enough to help him defeat then-Democrat Jeff Van Drew, who ironically became Trump’s shiny new object when he turned in his blue card for a red one.  Van Drew deflected and parried attacks from the Democrats thereafter and kept his seat.  The difference, of course, was that Van Drew was then an incumbent who had successfully built a base with his supporters that apparently carried more on Van Drew and less on his party affiliation.  In other words, Van Drew managed to sell Van Drew, not Trump.  He even (in)famously “back-tracked” when he said that Trump had his “undying support”.  And Van Drew won.

Republican aspirants need to learn from Van Drew if they want to continue and avoid becoming an institutional minority party in Trenton.  They must rediscover the New Jersey Republican brand and reinvent themselves with an organic message that has appealed to voters in the past.  To do otherwise is to shout into an echo chamber with increasingly fewer people interested in listening.  The expertise is out there and new leadership opportunities lay ahead with an upcoming generation of younger, more attuned Republican leaders.  The new GOP scene presents potential from ones who are old enough to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of the Republican image in a blue state, and young enough not to have been intellectually paralyzed by Donald Trump’s bull-in-a-china-shop approach to Republican politics which had known—and won—with the effective toughness of Christie synthesized with the polish and stewardship of Frelinghuysen.