Time To Kick The Rubbish To The Curb

Posted on by under Election 2022, Election 2024, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary, voting rights

Will this year’s mid-term election finally break the grip the former guy has had on both the Republican Party and the media?  Somehow I doubt it, but time will tell, and for the record I certainly hope so.  Jamelle Bouie, writing for the New York Times has a few thoughts on the topic that I found interesting and share-worthy …

Republican Elites Might Be Done With Trump

By Jamelle Bouie

12 November 2022

After the results of Tuesday’s election, where Trump-inspired and Trump-backed candidates went down to defeat across the country, Republican elites are desperate to make Ron DeSantis happen. It makes sense. This right-wing, pugilistic governor of Florida won a smashing victory in his race for a second term, albeit against a lackluster opponent — the former governor and perennial candidate Charlie Crist — and a moribund, uninspired Florida Democratic Party. But a 20-point margin is still a 20-point margin, even if you run virtually unopposed.

DeSantis, for his part, has national ambitions. He wants to sell himself to voters as the nation’s foremost defender of freedom (terms and conditions apply). He wants to lead the Republican Party back to the White House. And many of the most influential conservatives are eager to hand him the reins. But first, they have to clear the field.

Which is why the morning after Election Day saw a full-scale assault on Donald Trump’s position as leader of the Republican Party. The Wall Street Journal, for example, ran an editorial blasting him as “the Republican Party’s biggest loser” and urging Republicans to move on from the former president.

“Trump is a bust for Republicans,” wrote Rich Lowry, editor in chief of National Review, for Politico magazine. “He picked the candidates who lost. He helped make himself an issue. He changed what should have been a pure referendum on Joe Biden into what was more of a choice between Biden and a Trumpified Republican Party that couldn’t make itself palatable enough to suburbanites and independents.”

Even Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, took a (veiled) shot. “Conservatives are elected when we deliver,” he said on Twitter. “Not when we just rail on social media.”

There is a good case to make that all of this will work. The chief problem for Republican elites in 2016 was that they could not coordinate around a single candidate for president. In the absence of a figure who could unite the entire party establishment, Trump steamrollered through the competition, even if he never claimed a majority of Republican primary voters.

A unified party establishment is a powerful thing, and there’s real reason to think that Republican elites could muscle Trump out of his position if they committed to the aggressive, scorched-earth tactics it would take.

But there’s an issue. The idea that Republican elites could simply swap Trump for another candidate without incurring any serious damage rests on two assumptions: First, that Trump’s supporters are more committed to the Republican Party than they are to him, and second, that Trump himself will give up the fight if he isn’t able to win the party’s nomination.

I think these assumptions show a fundamental misunderstanding of the world Republican elites brought into being when they finally bent the knee to Trump in the summer and fall of 2016. Trump isn’t simply a popular (with Republicans) politician with an unusually enthusiastic group of supporters. No, he leads a cult of personality, in which he is an almost messianic figure, practically sent by God himself to purge the United States of liberals (and other assorted enemies) and restore the nation to greatness. He is practically worshiped by a large and politically influential group of Americans, who describe him as “anointed.”

It is one thing for Republican elites to try to break a political fandom. It is another thing entirely to try to break the influence of a man whose strongest, most devoted supporters were willing to sack the Capitol or sacrifice their lives in an attack on an F.B.I. office. Some Trump supporters will leave the fold for an alternative like DeSantis, but there will be a hard-core group who came to the Republican Party for Trump, and won’t settle for another candidate.

This gets to the second assumption: the idea that Trump would go quietly if he lost the nomination to DeSantis or another rival. Donald Trump might have been a Republican president, but he isn’t really a Republican. What I mean is that he shows no particular commitment to the fortunes of the party as an institution. His relationship to the Republican Party is purely instrumental. He also cannot admit defeat, as you may have noticed.

There is a real chance that Trump, if he loses the nomination, decides to run for president anyway. And if he pulls any fraction of his supporters away from the Republican Party, he would play the spoiler, no matter who the party tried to elevate against him. Republican elites might be done with Trump, but Trump is not done with the Republican Party.

24 thoughts on “Time To Kick The Rubbish To The Curb”

  1. Trump will run. He is suppose to announce today. He will delay delay any indictment that will very unlikely happen. Did you see where the FBI said the classified documents he took were taken for his ego and not for nefarious reasons. Yeah right and Ive got some swamp land for sale. And it’s still a crime regardless of the motive. We’d be in jail.
    Various polls put DeSantis way ahead of trump and yes, I know polls aren’t accurate, but…..
    Pence doesn’t stand a chance..too holier than thou…
    I wish someone like Tim Ryan would run for the democrats, but Biden , Im afraid, has an ego too. We need younger.

    Bottom line, even though I don’t like or trust DeSantis, he’d be less likely to push the nuclear button than trump in a childish rage because someone said something against him.

    The fireworks among the republicans vying for top dog will be interesting to watch. Get the popcorn ready!

    Liked by 2 people

    • Apparently he did a 63 minute rambling announcement tonight filled with more of his lies and exaggerations. I did not watch, nor will I watch him in any venue, for he sickens me — literally. However, if Merrick Garland and the DoJ do their jobs well, Trump’s name will NOT be on the ballot in two years, for he will not be eligible to run. There’s enough to worry about in the here and now without extrapolating what might or might not happen two years down the road. Heck, Trump might even, with a little bit of luck, be dead by then!

      Oh yes, it will be an interesting time — bring on the popcorn!!! 🍿🍿🍿

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  2. Pingback: Time To Kick The Rubbish To The Curb — Filosofa’s Word | Ned Hamson's Second Line View of the News

  3. Will Trump be allowed to run for president from jail? I only ask because I am constantly amazed and confounded at the way your political system works. It would likely be good as he will split the Republican party and the votes.

    Liked by 1 person

    • If he is charged and found guilty of sedition, then he will be ineligible to ever run for any public office again, so that is my biggest hope. I was discouraged today when I read that a substantial portion of voters would still vote for Trump against Biden … where are people’s brains??? Sigh.

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  5. Pingback: Time To Kick The Rubbish To The Curb. |jilldennison.com | Ramblings of an Occupy Liberal

  6. Ron DeSantis ain’t exactly great but an improvement over the craziness of Trump. Let’s hope there’s new leadership once the GOP primaries are done. The fight for the spot will be entertaining for sure.

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  7. Sometimes, voting became, the only way we the people have, of, objecting to the authoritarianism of the government and of the, party, it doesn’t do a thing, but, we tell ourselves, that, we voted, and, voiced our, upsets, of how displeased we had been, of the, government that’s, ruled over us, so, that counts for something, right???

    Liked by 2 people

    • Voting IS the only voice that We the People have in our government and it galls me that so many stay home on election day, thinking their voice doesn’t matter. Here in the U.S., we have just seen how much our voices can and do matter … we defeated a large number of authoritarian candidates who would have posed a great challenge to our democratic principles.

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  8. an interesting assessment. One of the big problems with trump, and there are many, is that, even when he was in office, though he said that he wanted to make America great again, what he really wanted was to make himself great. It was easy enough for me to ignore his “mean tweets”, i’m more interested in what a politician does rather than what he says or claims, as the two are often very different from each other. Trump is only interested in the praise from his supporters, which, in turn, supports his ever-growing ego and that’s all. I understand the populism though, especially when most republican and democrat politicians are really the same in a lot of ways. Most of you may disagree with that assessment but in some ways, i’m right, especially when it comes to economic and fiscal matters.
    Look how much each president has increased our national debt over the last 20 years, just as one example.
    i think that one of the reasons that a lot of people voted for him was that he said that he’d “Drain the swamp” “balance the budget” and so on and yet, none of that happened under his term.
    He had and has too much of an ego not to care about the chances of being elected rather than being a one-term president who would get done what he said he would do.
    This is why I am so disgusted with all of these politicians, they all say they’re going to do things in the interest of the people and nothing ever changes in washington, ever.
    By the way, some of trump’s backed candidates did okay but wait and see, they’ll get corrupted even more by the very same system they claim to oppose.

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    • What amazes me is Trump was a failed businessman, he was bankrupt 2 or 3 times I believe, however the idiots thought he could balance the books for a massive country that has a massive economy.

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  9. Jill, what is lost in the discussion is the former president may get convicted in several indictments – two for tax fraud by the Trump organization and one for election meddling in Georgia. That does not even count if he is charged with seditious actions with respect to the January 6 insurrection and taking of classified materials to a very unsecure site. So, all consideration of whether he should run should consider being president is the last place this deceitful acting person should be. It matters not what party he belongs to. Keith

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    • You are 100% right, Keith. He might … and should … be rendered ineligible to even be on the ballot in 2024 if the Department of Justice does its job. However, after Rudy Giuliani being let off the hook earlier today, I begin to wonder whether accountability is still even a word in our government today. No, Trump should not be eligible to run again, but … will that happen? I wish I felt more confident. And even if he isn’t on the ballot … do we really want DeSantis to replace him as the face of the Republican Party? WHERE are the moderate voices? Where are the politicians who are willing to compromise, to work across the aisle to get things done that benefit the people? Sigh.

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  10. I am so sick of hearing the word Trump, as if Trump trumps rational thought! I hope he runs, so his huge ego can get taken down another notch.
    Of course, he will not be able to run, will he? He will gave been found guilty of treason against the USA! And his cult members will have ko one to vote for, so they just will not vote for anyone! And that is the best thong that can happen in American politics today. Silence the MAGAts.
    Now, the DoJ just has to do its part… Find Trump giilty of Treason!

    Liked by 2 people

    • I’m sick of it, too. I’m sick of opening the WaPo or NYT app and seeing his ugly mug there! But, the reality is that he is unfortunately still relevant to our politics and is having an effect, so … we cannot simply ignore him. It may well be that his ‘role’ in the 2022 midterms will drop his relevance a lot, but he’ll remain news until … I don’t know, perhaps for the next 50 years! Like you, I hope the DoJ follows up on the evidence that we’ve all seen of his insurrection, thereby rendering him ineligible to be on the ballot in 2024, but that still won’t be the end of his voice. Even his death won’t be the end. Sigh.

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