The Odds Are Long
If they stole the election from him, he will have a hard time stopping it now with Christopher Wray, his appointee, still here and Joe Biden in the White House.
If they stole it, they’ll probably throw him in prison.
If, on the off chance, he can somehow win in 2024, he can’t defund the deep state. The Congress won’t let him. Everything he tries to do will be obstructed. He will be a lame duck from day one, limited to four years, and a lot of Democrats opposing him.
Trump filed 60 lawsuits to contest the election in 2020. He lost fifty-nine of them, many of them before his own appointed judges.
The odds are long that he can get elected and longer that he can govern effectively.
Sure, there’s a political agenda against him with these prosecutions, but also to help him secure the Republican nomination. The Democrats know for him to win, Republicans must spend money that could otherwise be spent to secure the Senate and save the House. The return on investment to get Trump across the finish line could be so high that we can’t take the Senate or hold the House. That, then, would cost us more.
Adding absurdity to absurdity, in the classified documents case, a political prosecution or not, Trump’s own antics have made the matter worse. His lack of impulse control has caused him to step on rakes repeatedly. He is his own worst enemy.
Meanwhile, in Normalsville, Nikki Haley’s husband is serving abroad in active duty and Ron DeSantis is playing baseball on the Field of Dreams with his kids.
Must we really go off a cliff?
I spent the Trump years arguing that the GOP was in need of reform and that there were legitimate grievances leading to the populist upsurge that got us Trump in 2016. I still agree with many of those points and think we need a candidate who can form a new fusion with the Reaganite and populist wings of the GOP but what we are seeing from the Trump wing of the party is the sort of blind fealty that you see in a cult of personality and unfortunately you will not be able to reason people out of it. The majority of Republicans will stick with Trump no matter what. Erick's reasoning here is undoubtedly sound and we have candidates who can fix our problems and actually have impulse control, but the Trump wing of the Republican Party wants four more years of spectacle because they think it accomplishes... something. Not institutional change but "winning" defined as sending a giant middle finger to the RINOs (defined as any Republican that Trump doesn't like) and Democrats. That's it. They would rather follow conmen like Trump and Ramaswamy than a candidate like DeSantis (who is actually changing things in Florida) or one like Haley (who can actually articulate GOP positions like an adult). I'm not giving up yet on this primary but if the Republicans not sucked into the Trump cult wants a different candidate to head their primary in 2024, they need to start consolidating behind someone and fast.
Unfortunately, it doesn't matter to a lot of people. They are out for spite. I don't know how we get through to them. Generally speaking, they are lower information voters that don't think through the consequences of their actions. They are willing to blow everything up because they haven't thought of the impact that would make.