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As big as the aftermath of Putin’s claim the Ukrainians tried to kill him is, as big as another day of zero progress on the fiscal deadlock in DC is, as big as the Celtics knotting their series with the Sixers at 1-1 is, as big as Kevin Costner’s divorce is, none of them in this news cycle is as big as what is going on with the Red Establishment and its attempts to stop Donald Trump from garnering the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.
I will say again:
1. I’m neither predicting nor rooting for Trump to succeed in 2024.
2. The Red Establishment has no discernible plan to stop the party’s frontrunner from galloping to the nomination.
3. Time grows short.
4. Trump and his posse are not the least bit complacent and have used their head start in entering the race last year and experience in how to play at the highest level of American politics to keep moving at 800mph.
5. There are many scenarios in which those in both parties who argue Trump can’t beat Biden in a general election could well turn out to be wrong.
6. In national polling, which is of course not determinative of how the Election College will go, Trump is already effectively even with Biden.
The polling collapse, delayed entry, Disney obsession, abortion law, and absence of warm/fuzzy of Ron DeSantis has raised serious doubts in many quarters about the Sunshine Topper being the one and only vehicle to stop Trump’s march to the nomination.
So let’s add a Point Number 7:
7. You can’t beat something (Trump) with nothing – as in, who is going to yank the nomination away from the frontrunner?
Not that long back, the only rational answer to that was DeSantis.
The Florida governor is still, by almost any metric, the most likely Stop Trumper, but his decline in the face of La Renaissance Trump is making the general prospect of derailment much less likely.
About a week ago, the New York Post’s Miranda Devine, as I wrote in this newsletter, went “all in against Trump and for DeSantis, proceeding as far as to laud the Sunshine State topper’s personality as Lincolnesque.”
Today, the same Devine has flipped, touting the prospects of Vivek Ramaswamy, who she suggests could rise from the ash-filled baren landscape in the aftermath of a King Kong versus Godzilla death match.
Devine’s teammate, Marc Thiessen, is not ready to give up on the Floridian, writing this:
Republican voters who are trying to figure out which candidate they will support as their next presidential nominee should consider the past six months.
Since winning reelection last November, Gov. Ron DeSantis has unleashed a tsunami of conservative reforms: The Florida Republican signed one of the most comprehensive school choice laws in the country and expanded the Second Amendment rights of Florida citizens with “constitutional-carry” legislation. He signed laws cracking down on frivolous lawsuits and protecting Floridians from left-wing “bail reform.” He enacted legislation reducing the number of jurors needed to impose capital punishment and making child rape eligible for the death penalty. He signed legislation barring ”environmental, social and governance” investing of state assets and enacted laws to prohibit abortion after a heartbeat is detectable and to expand support for pregnancy and parenting. And he acted to nullify Disney’s efforts to subvert his legislation taking on the company’s woke crony capitalism.
He also published a No. 1 New York Times bestseller on his Florida record; headlined record-breaking GOP fundraising dinners in New Hampshire and Alabama; and traveled to Japan, Israel and Britain to meet with world leaders.
What has Donald Trump done in this time? The former president accused DeSantis of turning Florida into a hellhole of “misery and despair,” mocked him as “pudding fingers” in a sophomoric new ad and parroted Democratic talking points charging him with wanting to cut Social Security and Medicare.
DeSantis is delivering victory after victory on issues conservatives care about. Trump is delivering name-calling.
What Thiessen doesn’t really grapple with is this: If DeSantis is so awesome and is on a solid run of awesomeness, why are his poll numbers going down?
One could argue this will all change when he becomes an official candidate.
But, one might argue instead that the Thiessen case is based on 0s and 1s and that the biggest problem with DeSantis (a problem that, if true, $300 million can’t solve) is that his human touch deficit will trump (pun so very much intended) what voters around the country have found appealing about his record as governor.
Karl Rove makes a different “stop the madness” argument. Pushing off of the reality that embattled incumbents Clinton, Bush, and Obama all won reelection by making their general election opponents unacceptable choices to enough voters, The Architect correctly points out that the current occupant of the Oval Office does not plan to run against the Almighty:
Team Biden seems to understand that it needs to focus the 2024 race similarly on savaging the GOP contender. They also obviously know that strategy depends in large part on how vulnerable a target Republicans nominate—hence their fixation on Mr. Trump.
Mr. Biden’s April 24 announcement video cleverly opened with clips of Mr. Trump’s supporters beating police during the riots on Jan. 6. Mr. Biden then denounced “MAGA extremists” as an image of Mr. Trump—pictured with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—flashed on screen. Expect to see similar barrages as the campaign wears on if Mr. Biden gets the opponent he so desperately desires.
Today, the GOP seems unfortunately inclined to nominate the only man Mr. Biden thinks he can beat. But that could well change. Ask Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich and Jeb Bush, early leaders in the 2008, 2012 and 2016 nomination campaigns, respectively. There’s time for Republicans to get this right. They’d better.
Rove doesn’t single out any of the other contenders for the nomination as the right one for his party’s voters to “better” pick to Stop Trump. Or confront the reality that Team Biden will demonize whichever candidate wins the GOP nomination.
Rove’s central point is that Trump would go into the general election pre-demonized with the suburban voters of Atlanta, Philly, Milwaukee, Charlotte, and Phoenix, voters who have the high honor and not-so-rare-anymore privilege of picking the next president.
But Team Trump is going to have a lot of paid and earned media opportunities to make the case implicitly and explicitly that the other Republicans are both less experienced at running for president and just as likely to struggle to be in favor with the suburbans as Trump would.
And the Dominant Media will, in fact, warm to that latter notion. Do you think the New York Times believes a man who supports a six-week abortion ban and book banning is going to be hugely popular in Buckhead?
Finally, another swirl from this news cycle that helps Trump.
The Biden “scandals” work in Trump’s favor, more than in that of DeSantis’ or Ramaswamy’s or Pence’s or Scott’s or Haley’s or anyone else.
All the Hunter Biden stuff and Biden Inc. stuff is tailormade for Trump to attack, in part because he is the master of going after anything connected to the corrupt swamp, but also because large numbers of Republican and independent voters emotionally share Trump’s analysis that the media in 2020 and to this day crookedly protected Joe and Hunter.
It is a mortal lock that before the election, Hunter is going to get indicted, get a plea deal, or avoid prosecution. Trump can and will make more hay out of any of those outcomes than any other Republican candidate.
And the New York Post will cover that, no matter how much they would like to move off of Trump.
Meanwhile, in this news cycle, the alleged whistleblower’s alleged charge of Joe Biden’s alleged involvement in an alleged scheme to sell alleged policy decisions for alleged cash is largely ignored by the Dominant Media, a purposeful oversight that is, at this moment (trust me) enraging tens of millions of votes who know how the Washington Post and other organs would cover such a charge against Trump (or any Republican).
Even the Associated Press, which did write about the development, covered it in a way that is infuriating to the Reds.
Here’s the AP headline: “GOP subpoenas FBI for Biden records; WH denounces ‘innuendo’”
Notice the explosive charge itself is not in the headline!
Same idea in the lead of their story, where the actual allegation waits for the third paragraph:
A top House Republican subpoenaed FBI Director Chris Wray on Wednesday for what he claimed are bureau records related to President Joe Biden and his family, basing the demand on newly surfaced allegations he said an unnamed whistleblower made to Congress.
The White House said it was the latest example in the yearslong series of “unfounded, unproven” political attacks against Biden by Republicans ”floating anonymous innuendo.”
Kentucky Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee and Accountability, is seeking a specific FBI form from June 2020 that is a report of conversations or interactions with a confidential source. Comer, in a letter to Wray with Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, said that “it has come to our attention” that the bureau has such a document that “describes an alleged criminal scheme” involving Biden and a foreign national “relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions” when Biden was vice president and includes “a precise description” about it.
All of which is to say that Trump-as-nominee is a body in motion, moving at 800mph, which will tend to stay in motion unless acted on by something that could stop him in the next few months.
Perhaps DeSantis, Ramaswamy, an Atlanta grand jury, cyborg prosecutor Jack Smith, or a pungent Marc Thiessen column will be the powerful outside force that halts Trump cold in his tracks.
Or maybe Trump will start making errors, like publicly mocking a war hero or an Hispanic judge or a female journalist or a man with a disability.
Something, as they say about Warriors-Lakers (game 2 tonight!), has got to give.
But if you think the Gang of 500 and the Republican Establishment is going to be what stops the Trump march to the nomination, I would suggest you buy a book called “The History of the Republican Party From the Tea Party to Donald Trump, Jr’s Podcast.”
If there is a solution out there, it is not currently visible to the naked eye.
To be continued….