Donald Trump’s job approval rating now stands at a paltry 39 percent, according to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, while his disapproval rating is 53 percent — a net decline of seven percentage points from last month when the government shutdown began.

No surprise there.

What’s surprising, and potentially more hope-inspiring, is that the president’s support from his base is also beginning to tumble, according to the same poll. It’s down since last month by a net of 10 points among Republicans, a net of 13 points among white evangelicals, and a net of 18 points among suburban men. Even white men without college degrees — the very core of his base — are turning on him, with 50 percent approving of his performance and 35 percent disapproving, down from 56 to 34.

All of which raises the question: Might the waters be getting a little warmer for a potential Republican primary challenge to Trump?

Larry Hogan, the recently re-elected centrist Republican governor of Maryland, isn’t about to announce — but neither will he rule out a run. “I’m very frustrated and concerned about the direction of the Republican Party and the country,” he tells me in a phone interview on Friday.

Later he adds: “There are an awful lot of people who are looking for a voice that represents the people who feel disaffected.” And: “I do want to be more of a voice of reason and moderation in the Republican Party.”

Hogan is attracting notice partly because he just romped to re-election over the progressive Democrat Ben Jealous — becoming the first G.O.P. governor to win re-election in Maryland since 1954 — and partly because he’s one of only three Republican governors in deep-blue states (Massachusetts’s Charlie Baker and Vermont’s Phil Scott are the other two). His approval rating is 68 percent in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2 to 1.

But mostly Hogan makes no secret of his disdain for the president, though he goes out of his way to avoid mentioning his name. In his second inaugural address this week (written with the help of Mark Salter, John McCain’s old wordsmith), he merely noted that his father, the late Congressman Lawrence Hogan, was “the first Republican to come out for the impeachment of President Richard Nixon.”

“Despite tremendous political pressure,” Hogan said of his dad, “he put aside partisanship and answered the demands of his conscience to do what he thought was the right thing for the nation that he loved.”

That doesn’t quite answer the question of whether Hogan would really contemplate a run — though he is traveling to Iowa in March, ostensibly in his role as vice chairman of the National Governors Association. The downside of any primary challenge is that it is guaranteed to be nasty: Nobody emerges from an encounter with Trump without feeling soiled. It’s also likely to be losing: With the qualified exception of Lyndon Johnson in 1968, no incumbent president who sought his party’s nomination has failed to win it since Chester A. Arthur in 1884.

Then again, there are upsides to a potential challenge. Three in particular.

First is the fact that Trump is losing his showdown over the shutdown. Having volunteered — on camera, no less — that he was “proud to shut down the government for border security,” he cannot disavow the consequences.

Instead of building a wall that Mexicans will pay for, Americans are going unpaid for a wall that’s not going to be built. For Trump, it can only end with a government in crisis, surrender to Nancy Pelosi, or the declaration of a bogus “national emergency” that sets a dangerous precedent and will alienate other Republicans. Either way, it will cost the president political support that a bold primary challenger could reap.

Second, it is no longer mere wishful thinking that Trump either won’t serve out his term or won’t be on the ballot next year. Thursday’s BuzzFeed bombshell that the president directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress may prove a dud, but there is no question the president's legal jeopardy is increasing. A Republican who challenges him early could reap benefits in fund-raising and visibility, not to mention personal honor.

Most important, though, is the future of the G.O.P. itself. Every democracy is bound to have a party that represents society’s conservative instincts. The question is: What kind of conservatism? As Jerry Taylor of the Niskanen Center puts it, “The party deserves a choice about whether it wants to continue down the path of Le Pen-style blood-and-soil nationalism or return to its noble origins as the party of Lincoln.”

Larry Hogan isn’t the only Republican who understands the need for that choice. But he is one of the few who can offer a serious and meaningful alternative to the corroded conservatism we have in Washington today. Stepping forward now would mean stepping fully into his father’s shoes.

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Bret L. Stephens has been an Opinion columnist with The Times since April 2017. He won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary at The Wall Street Journal in 2013 and was previously editor in chief of The Jerusalem Post. @BretStephensNYT • Facebook

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