Why are GOP Presidential candidates so afraid of attacking Trump?

[Anonymous]

How can any of them expect to win without doing this? So far, Christie is the only taking the gloves off...

[BCA6010]

Because they think clearing the field of each other and consolidating the anti-Trump vote is necessary before they can seriously compete. They're not entirely wrong in that regard, as that's how he gained his momentum in 2016, but it's not likely to work.

The field is currently dominated by Trump, Ramaswamy, and DeSantis. Of those three, they aren't all that different, but it's an objective fact that Trump is the most moderate between them. That effectively means that running to the left of Trump is a guaranteed failed campaign in terms of the Republican base, which is what matters for the primary. For some reason (probably the people funding and controlling him), DeSantis is failing to adequately run to the right of Trump and is instead straddling him and very conspicuously dodging questions regarding what to do about Ukraine and Taiwan, which is a major reason why Ramaswamy, who is almost too open, is overtaking him in polling. Between the three of these candidates though, it's pretty clear that the base doesn't want anything less than an ostensibly populist, America-first candidate.

Chris Christie stands no chance whatsoever in becoming the nominee, and he knows it. Straight out of the gate, he announced that his entire reason for running is to try and torpedo Trump "like he did to Rubio," which was a completely asinine statement to make since most voters disregard him as an unserious candidate, plus he has actually spent more time attacking DeSantis for some reason. (There may be a personal beef there because a lot of the staffers and big donors who backed Christie in past elections are now backing DeSantis).

Like it or not, Trump is going to be the nominee at this rate, unless he does something to remove himself from the running, or somehow gets clobbered on the debate stage.

[Soteris]

Well first of all, Republican politicians are usually spineless goons. They easily get whipped into following a stronger leader. Secondly, among those who are not spineless are those that remember what happened last time where whenever someone attacked Trump they got destroyed. You are probably going to see them dancing around attacking Trump for a very long time until someone takes the step to attacking him and achieve some sort of success.

Christie is a good example since he does not want to win, he just wants to be there to attack Trump and set a standard among the rest of the candidates.

[goaded]

They need Trump's voters, so they're hoping he'll be imprisoned and Republican primary voters will choose them instead if they blame the Democrats and promise to pardon him.

Have you heard a single Republican lawmaker say that Trump shouldn't have taken and retained the documents? Or say he was obviously responsible for Jan 6 (since, say, March 1 2021)?

[Anonymous]

Because they know they would alienate the majority of Americans who support him and they saw what happened in 2016 when they attacked him, he knocked them off one by one.

[Dargil]

They will lose support.