# How irreplaceable is Trump?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-irreplaceable-is-trump/959677
**Category:** Politics & Elections
**Created:** [February 17, 2022, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-irreplaceable-is-trump/959677 "2022-02-17T16:43:45Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Icarus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icarus)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2022, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-irreplaceable-is-trump/959677/21 "2022-02-17T19:09:23Z")
Take this question and turn it sideways: How irreplaceable is Reagan?
In his time, he had a similar cult-like following. Sure, many of the particulars were very different, but his support was rabid. Did anyone come along and take over his role as a God in the GOP? Not that I saw. Instead, we got the Bushes at the top. And then Trump appears, and all of the Reagan worship kinda evaporated.
So, IMHO, Trump is irreplaceable, and will be supplanted in due course by some other version of deity in the GOP. I don’t think it is useful to think it will be a similar con-man blowhard racist, just like it was not a sunny dolt that replaced Reagan.
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_Bravo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Bravo)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2022, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-irreplaceable-is-trump/959677/22 "2022-02-17T19:14:59Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#):
>
> . I don’t know if anyone else has the same combination of scumbaggery, raging id, coarseness, and carnival charisma.
This is a really great description of the man, but I think America has plenty more like him.
Nobody will knock Trump off his perch. But he’s like a glacier that has ripped across America’s political landscape. Once he’s gone, the other scumbags will find that they have an opportunity to fit into the wreckage that he left behind.
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### Author:  [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2022, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-irreplaceable-is-trump/959677/23 "2022-02-17T19:16:58Z")
> [@Johnny\_Bravo](#):
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> Once he’s gone, the other scumbags will find that they have an opportunity to fit into the wreckage that he left behind.
Like asshole Tetris, to coin a vivid phrase.
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### Author:  [@ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2022, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-irreplaceable-is-trump/959677/24 "2022-02-17T19:23:51Z")
> [@snowthx](#):
>
> > [@Procrustus](#):
> >
> > I heard a guy on the radio yesterday. He was trashing trump, called him a clown, incompetent, etc., but said he voted for him, and if the next election was Trump vs. Biden, he’d vote for Trump again. I think they don’t really think Trump is that bad, but they’re embarrassed to say so. So they go along with the trashing, but would vote for him over any conceivable opponent, including Jesus Christ.
>
> Yeah I hear and see this a lot, too. IMHO, it’s the whole voting straight ‘R’ down the ballot mentality, and the belief that Democrats are evul, racist commies wanting to turn this country into a stinking cesspool of socialism.
Yep. Think back to National Review’s 2004 endorsement of W. It was basically 3 pages of “Bush sux, he’s incompetent, Iraq was a stupid-ass clusterfuck we had no business starting, his first term has been terrible.” The conclusion? “But Kerry will be worse cause he’ll raise taxes, so vote for Bush.”
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### Author:  [@joebuck20](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joebuck20)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2022, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-irreplaceable-is-trump/959677/25 "2022-02-17T19:24:56Z")
> [@mjmartin](#):
>
> If Fox News, (along with all the other usual suspects), say today that a conservative must believe X, then those voters will believe X. If Fox says the next day a conservative can never believe X, those voters will vilify anyone who does. If anything, Trump has shown smarter people what they can get away with.
Exactly this. If Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson told people to take a dump on the American flag, you’d see conservatives across the country racing at warp speed to empty their bowels over the Stars and Stripes, and many of them doing so in public too, just to own the libs.
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### Author:  [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2022, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-irreplaceable-is-trump/959677/26 "2022-02-17T19:32:33Z")
I’d get owned to see that!
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### Author:  [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2022, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-irreplaceable-is-trump/959677/27 "2022-02-17T19:36:21Z")
I think the answer to the OP was answered in 2016. People wanted anyone other than Trump in the primaries and our choices were Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, et al and we all saw what happened. They couldn’t replace Trump then or now (and Cruz is trying so very hard to). In the last 6 years, has any dynamic Republican stepped up to make the Right exciting like a roller coaster ride? I heard an interview with Kristi Noem and she may be the best to replace Trump - think Sarah Palin with brains.
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### Author:  [@mjmartin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mjmartin)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2022, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-irreplaceable-is-trump/959677/28 "2022-02-17T19:47:55Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#):
>
> All of Trump’s worst qualities are features, not bugs, for his biggest supporters, and no one else has all those qualities together.
I don’t disagree that Trump checked a lot of boxes for a particular crowd. I just think that it’s a crowd that can be told to change what boxes it wants checked. Before Trump, a conservative **had** to at least pretend to be religious, pro free-trade, and against spending and deficits. I doubt any Trump voters would now rank those issues in the top 10. I don’t think they changed because they came to a realization that they had bad policies. I think they changed because they were told to. Ask a conservative about the police and they get teary eyed and talk about what heroes the men in blue are. But when Fox tells them that the police that were injured and killed in the January 6 “tour of the Capitol Building” deserved what they got, the police became the bad guys.
The power of Fox has it’s limits. I don’t think a Mitt Romney type has any chance of making it in the new Republican Party, for example. I also don’t think that Trumpism would die with Trump either, it would just morph into a some new unholy ball of hatred.
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### Author:  [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2022, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-irreplaceable-is-trump/959677/29 "2022-02-17T20:13:55Z")
> [@Love\_Rhombus](#):
>
> “Euryhaline organisms are able to adapt to a wide range of salinities.”
This is the reason that I keep reading the Dope, despite how infuriating it so often is.
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### Author:  [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2022, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-irreplaceable-is-trump/959677/30 "2022-02-17T20:24:07Z")
Have to wait until Trump is dead and unable to defend himself. Then, like Regan, let the distortion begin: “I can succeed where Trump was only able to point the way!”
Santis/Rubio/Cruz are politicians and not WASPS. A billionaire with a retired general as a running mate is a more likely replacement.
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### Author:  [@Roger\_That](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roger_That)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2022, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-irreplaceable-is-trump/959677/31 "2022-02-17T20:52:57Z")
> [@mjmartin](#):
>
> f Trump were to die tomorrow, it would take all of 10 minutes for someone to step into the void. Probably someone even worse, no doubt.
I think we can count themselves as lucky that the racist demagogue who got himself elected this time was dumb as a box of dumb. What scares me is that someone who matches Trump for political toxicity will next time have a modicum of how to present himself to hide the toxicity better, be able to avoid alienating people who are useful to him, be a smoother operator where his sexual impulses are concerned, and perhaps like dogs a little bit. I know the GOP wanted a gigantic asshole to be POTUS, but I can easily imagine a gigantic asshole who was more attractive to even GOP voters.
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### Author:  [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2022, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-irreplaceable-is-trump/959677/32 "2022-02-17T20:55:17Z")
> [@Roger\_That](#):
>
> I know the GOP wanted a gigantic asshole to be POTUS, but I can easily imagine a gigantic asshole who was more attractive to even GOP voters.
Yeah, but it was Putin that wanted that more.
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### Author:  [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2022, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-irreplaceable-is-trump/959677/33 "2022-02-17T21:06:30Z")
But the toxicity is a feature, not a bug. So is the incoherence. Everything negative about Trump is a feature, not a bug, to his biggest supporters. Take that stuff away and his appeal is gone too.
At least that’s my theory.
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### Author:  [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2022, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-irreplaceable-is-trump/959677/34 "2022-02-17T21:28:26Z")
> [@Love\_Rhombus](#):
>
> If/when he leaves this mortal coil (since I don’t think he’ll being going to jail anytime soon) who will next sit the golden throne of Trumplandia?
No one. He’s like Reagan. Basically, he will die, people will still revere him (gods know why), people will still slam him, despise him, and everything else…but, politics in the US will move on to some other point where whatever relevance he had will be forgotten or subsumed in the new norm. No one will ever sit on his golden throne of Trumplandia…instead, we will fight about someone else for some other completely different reasons. Just like Reagan’s politics aren’t in the spotlight anymore, and Reagan himself would probably not have any chance of being elected by Republicans today. Or, to put it another way, just like JFK wouldn’t be elected by Democrats today.
Even on this message board, he will eventually fade into the background, just to be trotted out occasionally in some heated discussion about the new hotness…kind of like we don’t see a lot of threads these days about good old GW…
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### Author:  [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2022, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-irreplaceable-is-trump/959677/35 "2022-02-17T21:51:07Z")
> [@SpacemanSpiff\_II](#):
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> Combine that with brazen self-confidence, a bit of talent for pitter-patter and **sense of humor**
(bolding mine)
I generally agree with your analysis, only the bit with the sense of humor I don’t see. Has anybody ever see him laugh with delight? Not derisively or sardonically, but gleefully and with joy? Did he ever get a joke? I don’t think so.
> [@Saint\_Cad](#):
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> Kristi Noem […] - think Sarah Palin with brains.
This _contradictio in adjecto_ makes my brain hurt.
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### Author:  [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2022, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-irreplaceable-is-trump/959677/36 "2022-02-17T22:14:45Z")
> [@not\_what\_you\_d\_expect](#):
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> Makes me glad I’m old, I tell ya.
This. Oh, so much this.
> [@kanicbird](#):
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> Trumps way was paved partly by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and the seeds of distrust he sowed over many decades on talk radio.
And the manure was spread on the fields where those seeds took root by that POS Newt Gingrich.
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### Author:  [@Temporary\_Name](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Temporary_Name)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2022, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-irreplaceable-is-trump/959677/37 "2022-02-17T23:10:07Z")
It has occurred to me that I often forget to name another potential asset that Trump has and in my opinion puts to very good use. I am sure that Trump has a trunk full of opposition research on every elected member of congress-- especially the ones with ‘R’ after their names.
I would bet that even back when Trump was just a corrupt businessman looking to influence government officials into looking the other way when he used illegal business tactics, he had a sizable amount of damnable evidence on some upper level Republicans. I am not sure Senators and House Leadership level types need the support of Trump as much as news reports suggest. I believe some of them have some small amount of shame or at least political savvy that tells them not to piss off the guy who will throw his own kids under a speeding bus if the need arises. If any of them have ever done one unwise thing ever in their lives, they need to assume Trump knows about it. Unless of course Trump has threatened them with it directly (“Are you sure you want to oppose me on this after what my detectives have uncovered about you?”)
He has partied with Epstein and every other morally questionable human in existence and when he was just a reality TV star it served him well to have influential friends in congress so he never used his powerful information except to get favorable treatment. Now however, he has other priorities and ruining a political rival while empowering himself must be more rewarding for him than a healthy bowel movement. I believe blackmail or the threat of blackmail might account for far more of the flip flopping back into his corner than is generally thought. The list is too long (Rubio, Cruz, Graham, McCarthy, McConnell, etc., etc.) for him to have a picture of ALL of them naked with a tethered goat, but all of them have something to hide and some of them might have very sensitive things to hide.
And one more item that contradicts the point I am making a case for above. I believe Graham decided to fall back in line with Trump during that airport experience where he realized Trump’s followers are rabid, unpredictable, violent, and not easily distracted once an idea has been placed in their heads. That looked like a very unstable situation and it also looked like he was trying desperately but could not get away from those people. I think he did- or nearly did shit his pants that day and retreated back to the bosom of the guy who could call off the crazies. (He may also have opposition research working against him, but for him fear of a violent mob might be the bigger motivation.)
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### Author:  [@Akaj](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Akaj)
#### Post date: [February 18, 2022, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-irreplaceable-is-trump/959677/38 "2022-02-18T02:11:03Z")
> [@Roger\_That](#):
>
> What scares me is that someone who matches Trump for political toxicity will next time have a modicum of how to present himself to hide the toxicity better, be able to avoid alienating people who are useful to him, be a smoother operator where his sexual impulses are concerned, and perhaps like dogs a little bit.
This, plus, instead of incoherently blustering at people who piss him off, he’ll have them arrested. Maybe shot. After what we’ve seen the last 18 months, do you really think anyone in the GOP would stop him?
(I say “him,” but a “her” might actually be able to get away with even more.)
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### Author:  [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)
#### Post date: [February 18, 2022, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-irreplaceable-is-trump/959677/39 "2022-02-18T02:32:32Z")
But as others have said, isn’t NOT “hiding the toxicity” a key point in Trump’s appeal?
Developing on that, I think it is possible to have someone else in exactly the same role Trump is, but I imagine this person to be even _more_ openly racist, ignorant, and hateful. They won’t be as effective in national politics because of that, but that’s what Trump’s base wants, and if the party keeps catering to that, that’s what they’ll get.
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### Author:  [@Superdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superdude)
#### Post date: [February 18, 2022, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-irreplaceable-is-trump/959677/40 "2022-02-18T04:02:10Z")
There’s an element of naïveté in Trump, as well. He’s been surrounded by “yes men” and people blowing smoke up his ass for so long that he legitimately believes he embodies what they say. That’s why he’s so easily manipulated by foreign leaders.
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