Wednesday, December 7, 2022

Is Trump Finished?

Did you hear the bell tolling for Donald Trump? Was that the conclusion that sensible Republicans will garner from Herschel Walker’s defeat in yesterday’s Georgia senate runoff? After all, a man who insisted correctly on the importance of winning and winning and winning, had backed a slew of losing candidates in the 2o22 elections. Considering how badly Joe Biden and Co. have performed, it took some decidedly mediocre candidates to lose elections to Democrats. Besides, the same thing happened in 2017, when Trump’s interventions in a pair of Georgia senate elections, produced a Democratic senate and an open road for the Biden agenda.

If you want to lead your party to victory you cannot keep losing.


And yet, Trump inspires a preternatural longing in his followers. They see him being abused and harassed, and conclude that they must follow him over the next cliff. Such are the ways of human empathy. I did not invent it.


Now, Republican politicians have always stepped gingerly through the Trump minefield. Not just because they are afraid of his followers, but because they are playing a very tricky game. They do not want to attack Trump. They do not want to mount a coup against  him-- especially when he holds no elective office. And yet, they wish most fervently that he go away.


Why? If you ask any one of them in the privacy of his own thoughts, he will tell you that Trump has become an albatross, and that he has been killing the Republican Party. Indications today suggest that he cannot even beat Joe Biden in another head-to-head matchup.


And then we have the unforced errors. Worse yet, the errors that compromise Trump’s great achievements. As any Israeli will tell you, Trump's Abraham Accords, which brought peace and good relations between Israel and her Arab neighbors were a monumental achievement. On the other hand, the Obama era Iran nuclear deal was very bad for Israel indeed.


So, in order to deflect media attention from his own achievements, Trump decides to have dinner with a deranged anti-Semite named Kanye West and a lunatic anti-Semite named Nick Fuentes. Even if Trump did not know who they were or what they had been saying, he is still responsible for a gesture that obscured his achievements and that gave his opponents anti-Semitism as an issue. Dumb and dumber.



To top it all off, and to send John Hinderaker, of the Powerline blog, (via Maggie's Farm) over the edge, we had Trump, the other day calling for a the “termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the constitution.” He wanted the nation to rise up and to annul the 2020 elections, the better to install him back in the presidency.


Hinderaker adds:


Trump is now operating at a Kanye West level of insanity. “Terminate” the Constitution’s rules and retrospectively declare him the winner of the 2020 presidential contest? Who, exactly, would do that? This is completely nuts. I am seriously beginning to wonder whether Trump is a paid operative of the Democratic Party. I don’t know how else to explain the profound damage he is inflicting on the conservative cause and the GOP.


One concludes that the question for Trump is not whether but when he retires from the political arena.


Do you agree? Feel free to express your views by donating to this blog, either via PayPal or directly to me to my name, at 310  East 46th St. 24 H; New York, NY 10017.


11 comments:

Ares Olympus said...

I by-in-large agree with this post's sentiments. I wish it was finally true. I feel frustrated sympathy for the Republicans, while knowing they did it to themselves, letting McCain's "He's firing up the crazies" run the show and the crazies are not going anywhere. We can only hope the Left's crazies are less popular, while offering little comfort.

This week I tried out the OpenAI ChatGPT which allows natural language requests, so I tried a request to honor this post. It did quite well. OpenAI was partially funded by Elon Musk, so now I know why Deep learning AI scares him. AI is being trained on the internet, so it may learn both our best wisdom and our worst insanity, and blindly if we let it run the show untended. Surely it'll be writing everyone's corporate and political propaganda by 2024.

--> Write a poem about Trump being a loser and harming Republicans success in Congress. Rhyme the last words in paired sentences.

Trump is a loser, that's quite clear
His leadership is bringing Republicans fear
He causes strife and discord, they can't ignore
And his divisive words are a raging bore

The way he's been acting's enough to make one cower
His antics have Republicans struggling to gain power
He damages the GOP brand, it's his own doing
It's a shame that he's leading, and their progress is strewing

He's driving their agenda to a grinding halt
The damage done to the party has been his own fault
Rift and enmity are what he's sowing
His actions are leading to Republicans' not knowing

He's damaging the party, it's clear to see
His message is muddled, and it just doesn't make sense to me
The party's in disarray, their platform in question
He's leading them to disaster, there's no way to digression

370H55V I/me/mine said...

Nick Fuentes, not Carlos.

Bizzy Brain said...

I'm a MAGA Populist and Trump supporter who appreciated energy independence, controlled immigration, low inflation, and support for Israel in the Middle East. Without Trump, we won't have any of that, which may be moot because there will never again be a Republican President due to mail-in balloting. So, go ahead, fools, get rid of Trump and run some faker like Ron DeSantis, adored by Wall Street fellators. The Dems will make mincemeat of him like they did McCain.

Stuart Schneiderman said...

Trouble is-- it looks very clear that Trump cannot win. Factor that into your calculus. And we saw what DeSantis did in his last election. Time for a reality check.

Ralph said...

What I want to happen and what is likely to happen are usually two different things. I know a few early Trump supporters that have said they won't vote for him and it is time for him to retire. The idea only 1 person can save us is actually scary, for Trump is going on 80 and if the hope is he has enough time to change the country, I think that may be low odds. He is and always has been his worse enemy. There are articulate young conservatives coming up. There is a time for everything according to the Bible, and the wise try to figure that time out.

Jane Kinkel said...

Indeed.

Jane Kinkel said...

So it was said in 2016. The world is a funny place.

Ares Olympus said...

Bizzy Brain said... The Dems will make mincemeat of [DeSantis] like they did McCain.

I appreciate this argument, but to me it is a sort of despair. It's saying Republicans can only win the presidency with a populist who will say anything to get elected.

Really McCain lost because we had 8 years of Bush with TWO unpopular wars, and an economy collapsing under bubble economics of low interest rates. Bush had to carry it, and McCain had that against him. And this is important also because Obama gambled on saving the economy by continuing and expanding Bush's bailouts. And we just doubled down on even lower interest rates, and we're sitting at $31 trillion debt now, and Fed is pretending it can slow inflation by removing low interest rates, but there's no evidence this will work.

Trump is right in his announce speech. It is extremely likely the economy will be an even bigger mess in 2024, and Biden will be even less coherent than ever approaching 82 years old. The only thing that might save Biden is running against a known clown like Trump.

I don't know if DeSantis has what it takes to run a national campaign. I don't know if he'd be good for America. I only know we're whistling past the graveyard of economic collapse while playing partisan games. America needs a serious candidate who doesn't use magical thinking. I'd say we need a president who tells us we need to tighten our belts and prepare for hardship, but as America ever accepted a message like that?

Trump's MAGA was similar to Reagan's Morning in America like a shadow is similar to the sun.

Anonymous said...

The difference between Trump and almost all other politicians is: "Make America Great Again" or "Make politicians richer".

Rick O'Shea said...

If Trump is finished, the Republican Party is finished.

Anonymous said...

"If Trump is finished, the Republican Party is finished."

Yes! Yes!! That was the goal all along. They have the judges, the congress, the president, the federal intelligence and law enforcement already. The last impediment was free elections and a two party system.