The Orange Albatross
The election gambling markets, where people bet real money on political outcomes, currently show Donald Trump as the front-runner for both the 2024 GOP presidential nomination and the Presidency itself. Social media is littered with "told you so" posts and commentary regarding the last presidential election, with Trump fans making myriad assertions of how things would be had he won.
Some of these assertions hold up. Some misstate facts or history. Some are merely wishful thinking, granting superhero status to the Orange Man from Queens.
Most share a common theme beyond the look-back and retcon: they want Trump back in the White House in 2025.
While numerous social media acquaintances of a more "traditional" Republican stance assure me that Trump is losing market share in the GOP, it's hard to dismiss the conclusion that his base remains substantial, vocal, unapologetic, and ready to rock and roll should he throw his hat back in the ring.
Trump himself shows many signs of doing so. While he has not come close to formally declaring, he dominated this year's Conservative Political Action Conference, held last month, dominated the GOP nomination straw poll at 59% (up from 55%), and has been hinting time and again at running.
On March 12th, he offered:
I ran twice, I won twice. I did much better the second time than the first, getting 12,000,000 more votes — and now, we may have to run again!
Contained therein lies the problem.
Trump is not only insisting on that which he failed to prove in court or to the satisfaction of anyone who wasn't already all-in, he's increasingly taking a "with us or against us" stance regarding his assertion that he 'wuz robbed' in the 2020 election, demanding affirmation from politicians seeking his loyalists' vote. Against a Democratic party that has in just 14 months royally ****ed the country up, with much more of the same to come, this muleheaded stubbornness regarding this dud assertion may very well be the Democrats' lifeline. It'll provide them endless ammunition, it'll let them continue to make the January 6th riot the centerpiece of their anti-GOP campaigning, and it may very well help install whomever succeeds Biden (the gamblers' list offers: Harris, Buttigieg, Clinton, Warren, AOC, and Sanders as the Dems' bench) win an election the Dems have no business winning.
A big reason that Trump is front-running (and yes, it's *really* too early to say that, but nevertheless) is a notion that he's somehow unique, that he has certain traits that set him apart from other choices.
This is tosh, to put it in anglophilic terms.
Trump, from a policy perspective, is a mishmash of traditional Republicanism, nativism, protectionism, and red-white-and-blue rah-rah. Nothing magical therein, nothing outside the normal bounds of right-of-center policy, nothing that isn't on many others' platforms.
Trump distinguished himself from the crowded GOP primary field in 2016 with one issue: immigration. Today, the Democrats have arranged things so that *every* GOP candidate will have something to say about the southern border, taking that variable out of play.
He also distinguished himself with a character trait: pugnacity.
Immigration won him the nomination, his "punch-back" style won him the adulation.
I've heard it *so* many times:
>I like Trump because he hits back.
A sentiment that others either share or have learned. Rich Lowry recently codified something I've believed for a while: there are, for what of a better word, "Trump-like" personalities out there who aren't Trump.
At the top of that list is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has no qualms about barking back at the press when they deserve it, and hasn't shown the "trot out the apologia" backpedal that a bevy of 'affable' politicians have across recent years.
He's not alone. Nikki Haley, another gamblers' pick, has shown the same sort of backbone. There are others and, with two years left before we get into primary season, there'll be even more who figure out that the style is a winning one.
And none of them will be Donald J. Trump.
They won't have anywhere near the visceral hatred that the Left carries for Trump driving extraordinary turnout for the Dems.
They won't have his bad policy decisions and missteps on their resume.
They won't have his awful debate performances in the fall of 2020 to vid-cap and advertise.
They won't have thousands of ugly public statements on the record.
They won't have proximate connection to the January 6 riot.
They won't have NeverTrumpers on the Right staying home.
Most of all, they won't have the maddening "I won 2020" sore-loser insistence turning off both swing voters and Republican traditionalists.
There are several viable candidates for the White House who'd bring Trump policies (hopefully, the good ones more than the bad ones) to the White House, and advance them with pugnacity and "counter-punch."
None of them would be an albatross around the GOP's neck the way Trump would, either in the election or in governance. The gambling markets may have Trump in the front on the primaries and election, but they put DeSantis (and Pence, for that matter) well ahead on "electability."
The country needs to move on from Trump. Trump fans, it's time to let him go. You can get all the MAGA and Trump policies you want without him.
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Peter
Great write-up as usual. I do not claim affiliation to any party, other than Libertarian which doesn't have the juice to make an impact in an election. So I'm left with the lesser of two evils, i.e. the Republican party. I voted for Trump twice, and I thought he did as well as he could despite 99% of the Democrats and MSM, and 50+% of the Republican party working 24/7 against him, tweets and vendettas aside. But I think the best path forward is sans Trump. To put it simply, he just needs to go away and give the GOP a chance to regain the White House.
As an aside, I live in Georgia and I think Trump's meddling in the Governor election. He goaded Perdue into a primary battle with Gov. Kemp, who has a good record on which to run. Now there will be an unnecessary nasty GOP primary battle that may very well result in Stacey Abrams sliding into the position, which would be disastrous for GA. Same sentiment for pushing Herschel Walker into the Senate race. Love Herschel as a GA icon but he's not Senate material.
Great take, my two cents: This is just a gut feeling: too many people are keeping Trump in their back pocket. This is to say that there are a lot of people being very open in their Trump opposition now, becuase it is free (we are all just chumps on social media) but the second he gets momentum or a tantalizing poll showing him up in Biden by 20 points (that may be a bit much but you take my meaning) then the support will snap back, of course there will be the requisite gnashing of teeth but then the plea of "what choice do we have!?" and, to be fair, if you do view elections as binary or buy into "vote your interests!" it does make Trump an acceptable choice simply becuase he is not Biden (much like Biden was not Trump). If Trump is to be a non-factor moving foward folks like DeSantis need to get people excited, we saw Youngkin do it in VA so there is something of a blueprint out there. The tl;dr here is, Trump being some folks first choice isn't the problem it is the people that have him on the list of acceptable candidates at all.