If you don’t support Trump you get primaried from the right and probably lose your seat. This is unthinkable to a modern Congress where the vast majority of seats are safe. The deal is supposed to be that once you’re in, you’re in for as long as you want the job.
Supposedly Trump threatened to form a third party if the GOP turned against him following January 6th. This would have hurt the Republicans deeply and the likes of McConnell, Graham, and McCarthy decided it was better to put the health of the party ahead of the wellbeing of the nation.
They should have called his bluff. He might have been able to siphon off millions of voters for president, but the idea that he could form any sort of organization for downballot or state races is ludicrous. Even if he and his people had that ability – which they don’t – his ego wouldn’t have allowed any resources to be spent on anyone but himself.
You have the crazies in the House and a few in the Senate (Tuberville, etc.), but outside the House, most are not true believers and are acting out of, as you indicate above, self-interest.
I never suggest anywhere that the MAGA base will ever turn against him (although small dollar donations to Trump are way down, per my kos cite above). He’s going to get the vote of the fascist morons no matter what.
It’s kinda both at the same time. E.g., Kevin McCarthy gets thrown out as speaker–but he was the GOPs biggest money-maker. A purge only works if it gives you more power and money, not less. And many are disgruntled but silent.
It’s a performance that is a “lousy idea in the runup to November.”
Yep. Nor without independents (depends on the district/state, however).
Owning the RNC would be a bigger deal if it weren’t broke itself. Every day brings more balls-out Trump craziness. I think it’s a very unstable situation, to say the least.
Well now MTG has filed a motion to vacate the Speaker’s chair so we will get to see what happens with that. It’s a really dumb move at this point and won’t do anything to help DJT.
LMFAO, oh my my!
Looks to be a performative move, per @flurb :
While Trump still looks plenty secure as the Republican nominee, this is the kind of thing that can chip away a crucial half-percent of his vote total — perhaps even in the right states:
Yeah, his support is currently at its max. Nobody is going to get excited about Trump between now and the election who isn’t already there, but shit like this will chip away at his support.
That doesn’t mean Democrats automatically win. Further, we don’t just want to squeak by–we want to crush these dumb mutherfuckers so that they can’t rise and do more damage in the near term. We want to crush all the way up and down the ballot. So it will be GOTV and fight like hell all the way to Judgment Day.
Remember when Nixon was said to have lost a debate because he looked sweaty on television?
donald is going to continue to degenerate into a feeble mess. But the republicans have hitched their wagon to this ass, and will go exactly as far as he takes them.
I expect it to be glorious.
Whether I end up being correct in terms of OP, it’s gonna one of the greatest political crash ‘n’ burns in the history of the planet!
Either for the party or the country or both.
Apparently, the Trump campaign has not contacted some Haley backers and bundlers. He did say he’d cut them out, but it seems like a dumb move. Or stupid like a fox (that’s eaten lead paint)? It can’t be a large number, but even 20% of Haley voters refusing Trump would be helpful (that’s just a number I’ve heard, not in this article).
Trump’s 2024 campaign is starting to feel like Hillary’s 2016. There’s an air of “we’re up in the polls; we’ve got this”. But then failing at getting their message out to the people who really need to hear it. The election will be too close, but in retrospect the seeds of failure were planted early.
The root causes of the failures are completely different, of course. Hillary was campaigning the right way, but the media’s fascination of Trump sucked away all attention. Trump is campaigning the wrong way, but the media’s fascination is ignoring the problems. (The horse race is more important than the issues.)
Trump seems to be deliberately driving people away from his party. He went out of his way to tell Nikki Haley donors they weren’t welcome in his camp and he’s continued to insult Haley and DeSantis even after they dropped from the race which can’t endear him to their supporters. If I didn’t know better, I’d ask if he even wanted to win.
My personal opinion is that the White House is essentially a jail for Trump. He did not seem to enjoy being President, got betrayed by almost everyone around him and ended up facing criminal charges and civil cases when he left office. He didn’t make any friends, didn’t make any money and didn’t make any positive changes for himself or for the country. I don’t think he wants to win either. But he needs to win if he wants to stay out of (real) jail for a while longer.
I agree. I think, on the whole, the whole gig was not his cup of tea. If he didn’t need another term to stay out of jail, he’d have come up with some “patriotic” excuse for why he wasn’t running again. Imagine having to live for four more years in a place you considered a dump?
Also, he can’t stand the idea that he lost to anyone, so he’s driven to beat them this time around. (Not unlike how he appeals whenever he loses in court and thinks the appeal gives him a do-over.) The fact that he actually hated the job is overridden by his phobia of being a loser.
In the spirit of some of your recent posts:
Personally, I think the stink of failure has been on it from the start, and the only thing he’s had going for him is the bogus polls. Once the polls turn the other way (from Biden finally overcoming their bias, i.e., being in a position to totally destroy in the election), they will never go back, since Trump has nothing new to offer. What, more slurred, aphasia-ridden invective? More legal problems?
I think Trump liked–LOVED–the attention the presidency offered him, but he disliked the work, being cooped up behind security all of the time, etc. He is running again for the reasons that everyone has accurately delineated above.
While I otherwise agree with your post, I’m not so sure about this part.