President hard for Republican to beat (5)
I believe the answer is:
thump
'to beat' is the definition.
(synonyms)
'president hard for republican' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'president' could be 'p' (common abbreviation eg in VP) and 'p' is present in the answer.
'hard' could be 'h' (abbreviation used in pencil classifications) and 'h' is present in the answer.
The remaining letters 'tum' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't understand.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for thump that I've seen before include "Hit (with fist)" , "Common feature of Boxing" , "Heavy blow with the hand" , "Dull heavy sound" , "Hit hard" .)