Hard to know what someone is secretly praying for. The only thing I can really say is that if they’re hoping for the courts (or cholesterol) to take care of the problem, their position doesn’t matter to me.
Maybe a more informative question would be which Republicans benefit if Trump can’t run? I’m sure in every contested Republican primary there’s a candidate whose career prospects would improve dramatically if some big event took the wind out of MAGA’s sails. But that would be moderated by the risk of appearing to dance on Trump’s grave (metaphorically speaking, but the man’s neither young nor in great condition).
Nope. That will only make his stock in the Republican sphere soar. He will then be more of a martyr than they see him as one now. The Supreme Court, stacked as it is now, will certainly declare that states rights don’t actually extend to the states getting to choose who is on their ballots for federal office. And then every republican office holder and every republican candidate for any office will be 100% pro-trump.
Tan the Conman will not be disqualified and will be on the ballot for every state and for DC.
But, the SCOTUS will decide that states cannot keep him off the ballot based upon him not being convicted of crimes. I can see that happening. The crimes that would then disqualify him are going to go to trial.
Once he is convicted in DC and/or Georgia it will go back to them. Then the very thing they are going to claim was needed would have been satisfied.
My argument is that criminal convictions involving election fraud and/or insurrection are key to getting him disqualified by SCOTUS.
And even if he’s convicted in DC, there’s another potential loophole argument that the specific charges Smith brought don’t constitute a conviction for insurrection.
If the last few years have proved anything, it’s that there’s no shadow council within the Republican party that can swing primary elections to avoid bad candidates. If there were, Trump wouldn’t have won in 2016 when he was considered a sure loser. Hershel Walker, Dr. Oz, Blake Masters, Doug Mastriano and Keri Lake wouldn’t have been nominated for Senate/Governor in 2022. Ron DeSantis would not have flailed so badly in his primary challenge.
If anything, the primaries are more likely to be “rigged” in Trump’s favor. That’s because each state’s Presidential nomination is organized, staffed and overseen by state parties that have been completely taken over by MAGA enthusiasts. You can see this already with Republican state parties in Idaho, Nevada and Missouri canceling primary elections in favor of caucuses – specifically to advantage Trump.
Why would Trump have been considered a sure loser in 2016? That was the year he got elected (for certain values of elected). It was 2020 when Trump showed that he couldn’t get re-elected due to his terrible record in office.
I suppose if there were really a “Deep RNC” Ruling Cabal back in 2015 they would have intercepted Trump during the Primary season as the verbal-flub-spewing RINO he was.
But the RNC mostly had and has a function of coordinating fundraising and messaging. It cannot command the state parties to exclude a candidate. Hell, it may be illegal for them to even try.
Instead at the time everyone was happy to let him go around spewing BS awaiting his “inevitable” dropout to then harvest his voters. By the time anyone tried to really oppose it was too late.
Today as mentioned, State Republican Machines in Red America have been mostly taken over by MAGA types, either Trumpist or pseudo-Trumpist a-la-DeSantis.
I’m not going to go back and look up all the articles, polls, and quotes from terrified Republican politicians that thought Trump was a terrible general election candidate who was all but certain to cost them the election. But the Republican establishment clearly regarded his potential nomination as a threat, and proved powerless to prevent it.
“Trump isn’t really seriously running-Don’t worry about it.”
“Trump won’t qualify in enough states to matter-Don’t worry about it.”
“Trump won’t be enough of a contender to qualify for the Republican Debates-Don’t worry about it.”
“Trump will crash and burn during the Republican Debates-Don’t worry about it.”
The Republicans will shut him out-Don’t worry about it."
“Trump can’t be elected-Don’t worry about it.”
“That is definitely the final nail in his coffin-Don’t worry about it.”…X 100
“Now that he is out, we don’t have to worry about it”
“Trump is going to be in jail long before we will have to worry about it.”
You forgot the old favorite “he’ll soon keel over from one too many hamberders”.
But that last one, yeah, that was one thing about that first-term endgame – I kept hearing about how he’d soon be in jail or sued into real penury by his creditors. I couldn’t help but in the back of my mind have that gnawing feeling, of, “have these people ever noticed how many years it takes this sort of case to go through?”.
In any case depending on some sort of external power or event to deus-ex-machina them from Trump is a sign of weakness and fear among the R’s.
I don’t feel there was that kind of opposition to Trump within the Republican party in 2016. Sure they probably thought he was a goofball who might fall in the primaries. But if he held on and won the nomination, fine.
It’s not like Republican leaders expected Trump to participate in running the party. He would just be a useful figurehead that would get the sheep roused up and voting. Trump had no political experience; so he would make the speeches and watch the parades (which is what he wanted anyway) and the real politicians would quietly run things.
The problem was when Trump got elected and then did such a terrible job that he roused up the opposition. Sure, some people were fired up to vote for Trump - but more people were fired up to vote against him. Trump was so bad that he got people to vote against the Republican party. And that, to the leaders of the Republican party, is the unpardonable sin.
Like I said in an earlier post, there’s no loyalty involved. The second the Republican party stopped benefitting from being associated with Trump, they turned on him.
They do tend to get caught up in the Just World Hypothesis.
And they stayed turned… about two weeks? Just long enough to go to their home districts on the first recess and get a hateful earful from their primary voters as to how they’re toast if they don’t stand by him.
Hench secretly hoping the Supreme Court will come to the rescue. Unlike other legal proceedings, the legality of states excluding Trump from the ballot has to be ruled on in a timely manner for it to not be moot. And I don’t buy the argument that the conservative majority justices feel they owe Trump anything. SCOTUS justices are notorious for not meeting the expectations of the presidents who nominated them.
Yeah but that’s really a *&^%# Hail Mary play and I can perfectly see SCOTUS saying “yes, have a uniform rule for determining he’s excluded” … and it being based on his being convicted .
I really, really hope this is true. Like, if someone from the future came back with a time machine and showed all three Trump justices that without him, they’d be begging on the excrement-covered streets of San Francisco, they would still choose to rule against him now because he doesn’t own them and they do not own him a goddamn thing.
As I have said before, if they put him back in power they are surrendering theirs by letting the whole world know that there is no such thing as a law that applies to Donald Trump. So they either have the choice of stopping him now or never being able to stop him later.
