I don’t understand this question. Trump has the strong support of a substantial portion of Republican voters. This seems like a pretty darned good answer to me. Why would you ignore this in favor of very dubious speculation about blackmail?
You are right of course, I do want there to be a conspiracy and a cover-up. (Please remember, I was a Republican myself just a year or so ago.)
The reason why is actually two fold. Those voters are . . . not deep intellectuals. They have knee jerk reactions and have always counted upon Rush, or Glenn, or Tucker, or Laura, or Sean, ad nauseam to give them ideas why the deep, deep feeling they have is correct. They are emotional and easily lead to whatever conclusion you want them to have. The fact that he is believed to have this army of voters is a farce. Do you remember when they booed him and O’Reilly when they admitted they were vaccinated and boosted??? They remember and stick to his lies even if he doesn’t In short those Seventy-Five Million voters, despite believing themselves to be rugged individuals are really sheep following whatever shepherd appears on FOX News tonight.
The second reason is that the Republican Party knows –Knows For A Fact, that this Trump bullshit is unsustainable and overall very destructive. They call it riding the tiger or grabbing the tiger’s tail but they know damn well that the more they play along the more it costs them in the future. I can understand a few freshmen congress women (who have a huge voice right now- far beyond what their actual power and influence indicate they should have), or a soon to be indicted molester sucking up to the crowd and to Trump. But why oh why would long term senators and party leadership?? Cruz and Rubio and even newbie Hawley may be safe in statewide elections, but the more they associate themselves with “disgraced former President Donald Trump” the more they lose influence on the national stage. To use Trump for a very short-term goal I can understand; making an oath of fealty is beyond dumb as far as I can tell.
Trump is a loser and yesterday’s news. He can talk about 2024 all he wants but he already lost that fight as an incumbent- no way he repeats his magic trick. Too many loyal Republicans have learned their lesson- have seen him for who he truly is.
The road to success, long term success, is to dump Trump and his low information sycophants and give voters something else to be frighted about. But for reasons that elude me they stay with Trump or return to him when they shouldn’t I guess I am giving elected Republicans too much credit; by all means- tie your horses to that sinking wagon!
Why did Linus never get rid of his blanket?
Of course I do. And I think that if the 2012 election had been McCain vs Biden, Biden would have had his ass kicked by the not-too-distant-future President McCain.
McCain versus Kamala Harris involves moving timeframes around a lot more. But let’s just say that Kamala Harris is no Barack Obama.
The interesting thing about cults of personality is that they almost never have a second act. Maybe Stalin after Lenin, though you could argue that Stalin used fear rather than reverence.
There has been a long line of right-wing broadcasters with giant followings in recent times, but none have ever gone into politics. No good evidence exists that any will or could succeed if they do.Tucker Carlson’s face is too punchable.
Who else is out there? Who has a true following? Ron DeSantis is Trump light and is also hated by Trump. Ted Cruz is hated by everyone. MTG is a lunatic who gets views but not acolytes.
Trump will have to have a successor but unless they come out of nowhere again, they don’t exist today in the Republican Party.
Don’t forget how universally disparaging everyone was about Trump in 2015. I’ll carry that memory like a scar for the rest of my natural life, and maybe beyond.
It depends on how you mean it.
If you mean “replace him with someone else like him”, I hope we never do.
If you mean “replace him with an actual conservative”, that would be great. I’m a bit worried that he has done more harm to the Republican Party than anyone else in history could have dreamed of doing.
I just can’t parse the nagging feeling that I have that – if the Rs truly cannot adequately and successfully infiltrate the entire electoral process at the (swing, at least) state level – Trump has too much to lose (his brand, his ‘business empire’ (his only real legacy to his kids/grands)) to risk being a two-time loser.
This isn’t a prediction on my part. I just keep coming back to that.
He’s like a Willy Loman for a new generation – a generation that can’t master the Three R’s, imbibes too many energy drinks, and has a functional attention span best clocked in milliseconds.
But ratings and ‘winning’ are probably his only core beliefs.
I think he thought he had 2020 rigged, but it backfired on innumerable fronts. It’s hard to imagine him putting it all on the line again absent a mortal lock on the critical machinery of election politics.
Or … y’know … not 
I am going to derail this discussion for ONE POST ONLY!! by sharing with you my deeply held but never not disparaged conspiracy theories. McCain had locked up the GOP nomination months before the Dems got down to four people. (I was a die hard and dedicated Republican back then.) McCain had already pivoted to the general and the Democratic primaries were a slug fest that finally got down to Hilary and Obama. There was a last big push and then Clinton was all but mathematically eliminated from contention. The only way she could have obtained the nomination was through a brokered convention or the use of “super delegates” to fudge the results. Then for a full two weeks – nothing. She suspended her campaign but refused to drop out and endorse Obama.
In the mean while, things were going on in the McCain camp but everything was hush, hush and very tight lipped. The establishment Republicans wanted McCain to name a VP to appear more prepared, more dignified, more ready to lead while the Democrats still had a shit show going on.
And another week goes on. Nothing happens. McCain says he has a very short list, announcement is coming soon. Dems have Obama reaching out to Clinton and she can’t be found. Sorry, the runner up is too busy to talk with you now, we gave her the message.
More days trickle by Clinton is completely silent but has not let go of any staff and refuses to concede. McCain is very close - - announcement is imminent. Obama is confused and pissed and decides to shut up and not screw up a good position by being rash. . . . . . .
. . . … . . … And now McCain isn’t so cocky and smug. Obama and Clinton have met in secret and she is his nominee for Sec.of State and she concedes with a no McCain – Not now, not ever. I am saying no to a John McCain Presidency!!!
I am certain McCain offered her the VP slot but she didn’t want to run on the Republican ticket. I had forgotten to mention how often both of them mention during the campaigns how close friends they were, and how well they worked together in the Senate to bring bi-partisan . . . . . . .
Hilary Clinton was weighing that option for all that time. McCain – or more precisely McCain’s handlers would not offer her Sec of State, plus they wanted her on the ticket (which come on- would have been the largest electoral college landslide in modern history). Clinton wanted her own shop to run, McCain wanted a woman who could add cross over appeal . . . . . but Clinton took the offer to Obama and he cut the deal with her she wanted (since she couldn’t get the nomination that year).
As unlikely as it sounds- I am convinced McCain offered Hilary Clinton the VP slot on the Republican ticket. (I honestly believe his first choice was Joe Lieberman but NO WAY the party was going to let two old white haired guys run against a young, healthy black man – or a woman.) He wanted the cross over of Lieberman who was in caucus with the Dems and used to be one. The team said no - get more diversity so he chose a woman who was a Democrat. When that blew up he was pissed at the party wonks screwing up his “Mavericky” ideas and said piss on it. Find a photogenic woman and print up bumper stickers once you have chosen her.
Palin was an accident chosen by a party hack who probably chose her from looking at head shots. Or maybe because she could see Russia from her front porch.
While several members of my family were TOO Republican to vote for McCain after that campaign, I was a big supporter since I was a very young registered voter. After his presidential run, I had to remind them that McCain chaired important committees and his primary opponent would be the least significant member of the Senatorial Commission on paperclip acquisitions if elected. Some of them still voted for Shwi?? the opponent with the hard to spell name. (They further informed me that if McCain or his fellow RINO Jeff Flake were on fire in their driveway they wouldn’t piss on them to put them out, even if they had just drank a twelve pack!
I have voted for John McCain every time I could have during my whole life. (One year I resided out of state and could not vote in the AZ Senatorial race.)
Wouldn’t that tank her career ever after (assuming she lost)?
I remember a comment on this board after he did his first Thanksgiving turkey pardon that it was the first time they’d seen him genuinely enjoying himself.
Absolutely nothing is as unlikely as that sounds - except possibly Sarah Palin being asked to run for Vice President or Donald Trump winning the office.
When I said charisma, I meant it in the same way you might use “scent” to describe a festering dumpster in July. It’s definitely a strong scent, but not a pleasant or good one.
I think it’s not that people consider him “one of their own”, but rather that he speaks the same language and is belligerent toward the Washington establishment and Democrats, two things they hate, and feel that work against them. So Trump’s constant barrage of bullshit against his own government and against the Democrats works for him, since it validates these people’s feelings.
Trump was a one-trick pony and his time has passed. Once a political huckster like him falls, they don’t get back up.
Look at Joe McCarthy. He was a major political figure for a period of about four years. And then the public got tired of his bullshit. He kept some loyal followers but he was never a significant figure in American politics again.
Or it could be as simple as a videoed meeting like Germany had ‘The Wannsee Conference’ about the US - what do we do with those nasty brown folks wetbacking in, can we sell the kids to new proper parents, can we sell the adults to coffles of chain gangs, can we dump them in the desert to die/dump them in the ocean to die, what daddy Putin wants us to do … any number of heinous crap up to and including kid sex rings, turning the population into slaves for the 1%, screwing over the rest of hte world.
We’ve had this debate in other threads, and I will say that I’m coming a little bit off my position that the Republican nomination is inevitably Trump’s if he wants it. I think he’s still heavily favored, but George Conway has an interesting column in the Washington Post about how the New York investigation into this business dealings could end up undermining the most important pillar of his political image (and psychological self-image) – his status as a business mogul.
As a person and a politician, Trump is unique. American politicians who will try to emulate him will not have the same effect.
As an ingredients list, Trump could be replaced by 93 kg of water, 12 kg of carbon, 4 kg of silicon, 1 large lithium battery, four gallons of orange paint, a hot air generator, an Atari 400, an empty suit, one long tie, a scowl, one cauldron of elixir, one rag, one hundred bones and one large hank of hair.
Ah, but what shade? There’s the crucial question.
No, look at Richard “You won’t see Richard Nixon any more” Nixon after losing the California Governorship in 1962.
Little Nemo has been proclaiming the end of Trump for years now, in quite a few threads, as I recall, and the only way to prove him as wrong as I believe he is is for Trump to die and no one to reclaim his voters with the same bullshit. Until that day, I will continue to think that re-packaging his voters is a simple matter and loads of GOPers are grooming themselves as Trump 2.0.
In the past, hard-core Trump voters (overt racists, Nazis, Confederate symps, Christ-uber-alles types, explicitly anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic) were tolerated, sometimes winked at, by GOP candidates but not appealed to directly. Now that Trump has done so, they are no longer ignored by both major parties but implicitly wooed by one party, with nowhere to go that their presence is acknowledged–they are now openly the base of one party, and I don’t see what Trump has to do with keeping them as the GOP base. They’re here whatever the GOP does, and they’re not going away.
My hope is that DeSantis or Cruz or Cotton or whoever picks up the Trump 2.0 banner gets defeated in a general election so badly that the GOP reconsiders who they want to appeal to, but for now I don’t see a GOP that can afford to ignore the vocal racist etc. core of their voters.
The artist Yves Klein invented a shade of blue much loved by pretentious folks who could say that. But it is very pretty (they say the Infanta has eyes more blue and beautiful than the famous stone of Galveston - Baldrick, Blackadder). I am sure Trump equally merits his own unique shade of orange - a mixture more of self-righteous red than pusillanimous yellow, with hints of black darkness and an unsuccessful attempt to hide all that brown. What shade is blow hard?