Groundhog Day

UPDATED: “toaster in the oven” 🙄. Fixed. “toaster in the bathtub.”

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In 2012, Mitt Romney lost the presidency with 47.2% of the popular vote. In 2016, Donald Trump won the Electoral College, but lost the popular vote, getting a lower percentage than Romney at 46.1%. Trump lost the Electoral College and popular vote in 2020, with just 46.8% of the popular vote.

It is notable that Romney won a higher share of the popular vote than Trump did in either of his runs; Romney only losing because of the Electoral College math. It is also notable that the media has never fully, honestly, reflected on what a trash candidate Hillary Clinton was in 2016. They embraced blaming both James Comey and the Russians so they could fail to grapple with it.

But also, because Republicans won in 2016, they have never really had to assess that Trump’s share of the popular vote was less than Romney’s and Trump won the Republican nomination receiving fewer votes in the primaries than any other Republican since the advent of the modern nominating process. On top of that, Trump suffered the blowouts of 2018, 2020, and the majority of his candidates in swing races losing in 2022. Yes, he padded his margins with endorsements in races where turd sandwiches could win running as a Republican, but in the swing races, his endorsements ensured nominations of candidates who’d lose in the general election. Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, New Hampshire, etc. all mattered. In swing states where Trump candidates won, they underperformed non-Trump candidates from Wisconsin to Ohio to North Carolina to Georgia.

Trump cost the GOP the Senate in 2022. The jury is still out on Herschel Walker, but things look grim there. His endorsement in Alaska lost during the holiday period.

Also during the holiday period, Trump met with anti-Semites, one of whom is as close to being a Neo-Nazi as one can get these days without shaving his head.

That Trump decided to entertain Kanye West has its own issues. West is out blaming the Jews for pretty much everything and it is nuts that Trump’s gatekeepers let West through the gates of Mar-a-Lago.

West, however, brought Nick Fuentes with him. Fuentes is an actual white supremacist who wants a white nationalist party to take on the GOP. Fuentes has said, for example, that American culture had declined because of a “bastardized Jewish subversion of the American creed. The Founders never intended for America to be a refugee camp for nonwhite people.”

Fuentes has compared the Nazis incinerating Jews in ovens to cookies being baked. He also rejects the idea of Jews being part of the Western world and longs to be able to openly speak of Jewish control of things. On top of that, Fuentes has some serious sexuality issues he seems to be dealing with, claiming, “If we’re really being honest, never having a girlfriend, never having sex with a woman really makes you more heterosexual, because honestly, dating women is gay, having sex with women is gay. And having sex with men is gay. Really it’s all gay.”

“The only really straight heterosexual position is to be an asexual incel,” he claimed. That’s in addition to the rather deviant stuff he was caught viewing on his phone that I will not even link to.

I think we should all take Donald Trump’s word at face value that he had no idea who Nick Fuentes is. Why would he? Trump claims West brought Fuentes with him. That appears to be so.

But here’s the thing — it’s bad enough he was fine hanging out with Kanye, in the middle of Kanye’s anti-Semitic mental health breakdown that’s been fully documented in the press. How the hell did Trump’s staff not keep Fuentes out of the room?!

The point here is very basic — we are 708 days from a presidential election and we’re already having this much drama from both Trump personally and the inept and incompetent staff around him who should be preventing this stuff from happening. Either Trump knew Fuentes or he didn’t. That the staff let the guy in the room is the problem and Trump is ultimately responsible for his staff.

Given three straight Trump related election losses and all the extra soap opera drama, Republicans, do you really want to put up with this crap and hope he eeks out a win in 2024, or do you maybe want to consider someone fresh and new who has a history already of beating back a hostile press and the left? Such people do exist.

I’d personally like to try winning again with someone who has a better win/loss record, less drama, and a staff that does not let white supremacists in the room. At some point, the GOP needs to stop throwing the toaster in the bathtub and waking up to repeat the past.