The path to Trump’s return could be paved by crowded GOP race

"While I think there's an appetite for something different, the alternative to Trump needs to coalesce around one candidate," said GOP strategist Alex Conant.

As Donald Trump considers another White House run, polls show he’s the most popular figure in the Republican Party. But it wasn’t always that way.

Competing at one point against a dozen rivals for the presidential nomination in 2016, Trump won only about one-third of the vote in key early states. He even lost in Iowa, which kicks off the nomination process.

But he prevailed because those in the party who opposed his brand of divisive politics were never able to coalesce around a single rival. That same dynamic could repeat itself as Trump mulls a new bid for the presidency as soon as this summer.

With a growing list of candidates gearing up to run, even a Trump diminished by two impeachments and mounting legal vulnerabilities could hold a commanding position in a fractured, multi-candidate primary.

“I fear it could end up the same way as 2016, which basically was everyone thought everyone else should get out,” said Republican strategist Mike DuHaime, who advised former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s campaign that year. “I think every major candidate realized that he or she would have a better shot against Trump one-on-one. But of course each person thought he or she should be the one to get that shot and nobody got out of the way. … And then it was too late.”

The anxiety is mounting as a growing list of potential rivals take increasingly brazen steps, delivering high-profile speeches, running ads, courting donors and making repeat visits to early voting states.

That group now includes upward of a dozen could-be-candidates, including Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence; his former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo; and Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Rick Scott of Florida and Tim Scott of South Carolina. All could run on the former president’s policies.

In the anti-Trump lane, politicians such as Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan are raising their profiles.