'Trump is in the past': Mounting losses show limits of power

But voters are increasingly vocal in saying that the party’s future is about more than Trump.“I like Trump a lot, but Trump is in the past,” said David Butler of Woodstock, Georgia, who voted for Gov. Brian Kemp on Tuesday and said Trump’s endorsements had “no” impact “whatsoever” on his thinking.It was the same for Will Parbhoo, a 22-year-old dental assistant who also voted for Kemp.“I’m not really a Trumper,” he said after voting. Republicans such as the conspiracy-embracing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who won her party’s nomination for reelection Tuesday, have taken up his mantle in Washington.Meanwhile, potential presidential rivals to Trump are waiting in the wings for 2024.Former Vice President Mike Pence, who has been distancing himself from Trump, rallied with Kemp in suburban Atlanta on Monday evening and told the crowd that “elections are about the future” — an implicit knock on his former boss.Trump has also spawned a new generation of candidates who have channeled his “MAGA” brand, but who have done so independent of his support and see themselves as its next iteration.“MAGA doesn’t belong to him,” Kathy Barnette, the Pennsylvania Senate candidate whose late-stage surge stunned party insiders, said in an interview. They worry Trump has elevated some candidates who may prove unelectable in the November general election and has exacerbated divisions.“There’s no question unnecessary fights with kind of the extremes of the party, of Trump’s grievance party, have made it more difficult for us to win in November,” said Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a potential 2024 presidential candidate who has been working to protect incumbent governors.Hogan, a Trump critic, said that, so far, the races have “been a bit of a mixed bag,”“We’re in the middle of a battle for the soul of the Republican Party and quite frankly the battle’s not over yet,” he said.