One nice thing about watching cable news all day, you see and hear some interesting shit. And for the last couple of weeks, I’ve been hearing some interesting chatter about a subject near and dear to my heart, so I paid attention, and looked into it. But there’s just one problem with it.
It interests me because I’ve already been reporting on a portion of the story, which comes into conflict, while at the same time agreeing with the new theory. Let’s go through it, shall we?
I have written that while Trump still has a nipple clamp on the RNC and the GOP writ large, there are storm clouds on the horizon for the future. Because the RNC and the GOP are an organization, not a voting block. And Trump is having trouble with Republican voters. In a recent poll of registered GOP voters, only 41% of GOP voters want Trump to run again in 2024. Yes, they still love Trump and his audacity, but they’re sick of the attendant bullshit. Turns out Trump has a presidential shelf life, and it’s expired.
Which leads us to the new reporting. As polls show electoral slippage for Trump, and he remains largely radio silent in Mar-A-Lago, attention is turning to a possible 2024 GOP primary challenger. Who else but Florida Governor Ron Deathsantis. And even to my jaded eye, and cynical ear, they make a compelling case.
Pissantis has always had designs on the White House, but he also knew that he was like Saturday Night Live, Not ready for prime time. And so, like any other sycophantic leach, he latched on and went for the ride. Very few sitting US House members make the jump to the Governor’s mansion. But Pissantis had a plan. He tied himself around Trump’s neck like a cheap bead necklace. He was slavish, the ultimate toady. He basically humiliated his own wife and children with insipid love letter political ads for Trump when he ran for Governor. And with Trump’s blessing, he won.
But once Deathsantis got inaugurated, it turned into Trump with a twist. While he bent over backwards to enact every bit of populist Trump claptrap he could, he did it without spouting off the insane Trump bullshit. Instead he wrapped it in third rate political rhetoric. He fought vaccine mandates, mask mandates, even in schools, and started referring to it as the Free State of Florida.Â
Pissantis has been reading the tea leaves, along with polling and national trends, and he sees a lane for 2024 here. People still love Trump, but they’re sick of the sturm und drang, so Deathsantis gives them Trump’s policies with feather headed conservatism instead. Which gives him a potential lane as an acceptable alternative to Trump in 2024.
But here’s the problem. It. Will. Never. Happen. And that’s not some bold prediction, or fly by night theory, that’s a simple fact. And I know that it’s a fact because I have history on my side. And not ancient history either, but recent history.
In 2020, Trump had a hammerlock on the GOP, as well s the RNC. As an incumbent President, he was a shoo in, he could have phoned in the primaries. But there was a pesky mob of Never Trump Republicans out there, and there were enough of them to coalesce behind former Governor William Weld, and get him on the primary ballots. Look, in terms of pure political power, these guys weren’t even gnats buzzing around Trump’s ear. Personally I thought that Traitor Tot would relish the thought of broadcast debates where he could humiliate Weld.
But I was wrong. There is to be no disloyalty in Trumptopia. Trump laid down the law, and the word started coming back. GOP state after GOP state started announcing that there would be NO Presidential primary in 2020, Trump was the candidate by acclimation. And that was the end of that. In the handful of GOP states that actually held Presidential primaries, Weld actually garnered a decent share of the vote. Not enough to actually threaten, but more than enough to prick Trump’s delicate ego.
If Trump decides to run in 2024, welcome to the 2024 GOP Presidential primaries. Not only does Trump own the RNC, but he is an absolute dictator in the state GOP parties. And remember this. Primaries are not actually federal elections, they are state party functions. The state party writes its own rules. And if nothing happens over the next 16 months, Trump owns the GOP state committees. If he wants an open field, then he’ll get an open field.
Nice going Pissantis. You not only whored yourself, you whored your own family chasing a political dream. Only, from where I’m sitting, in the current world, it was a pipe dream. This is what happens when a video poker player takes a seat at a World Series Of Poker table. They go home broke. And it couldn’t happen to a nicer asshole.
Yeah & I hear the lawmakers in Florida are considering passing laws holding teachers accountable for their students’ comfort, etc. Watch as teachers run like cockroaches when the lights go on. Maybe he can get a job doing that since there will be thousands of openings. As for Mr evil dumpling…he’s the priciest shredder u can get, but at least he keeps the scraps in florida. Wonder if he owns stock in scotch tape?
WAY too early to even make this case, Murf. While it’s true there remains a lack of alternatives to Trump (and Deathsantis will have likely have killed his own career before 2024), we’ve barely started this year’s fun and games, which will do much to chip away at Trump. His legal troubles are just starting, his campaign funds will be used for other purposes and whatever spring was in his step got killed by the COVID. So let’s wait on predictions, as I am old enough to remember how Desert Storm was supposed to guarantee Old Man Bush’s reelection in 1992.
No Bareshark, I respectfully disagree. Because Trump owns the party organ lock stock and barrel…If he’s not under indictment, and decides to run, he will use every trick to smooth his path…Tempus Fugit
Your regular reminder on how big an “if” that is you’re throwing out there, Murf. It’s a theory that keeps assuming the same level of mental competence that he no longer possesses… or that we’re going to get the Nixon rerun that Comey is throwing out there… or that Liz Cheney is going to just let her father’s party die. Again, the only reason he owns it NOW is because there are no alternatives. Later is always a different story.
I don’t recall Desert Storm being hailed as giving Bush the Elder a lock on re-election in 1992. He had a better than even chance but most pundits felt he blew it by not going after Saddam and toppling him. Most of our Arab allies in Desert Storm (and through the region in general) wouldn’t have batted an eye if the US had toppled Saddam because they were all pretty much pissed at the invasion of Kuwait. But Bush decided to stop short (against some of his military advisors’ own judgment) and trust that Saddam would accept defeat and respect the Allies’ “no-fly-zones” and leave the Kurds and the “Marsh Arabs” in the South in peace. (The only real “ally” that Saddam had at the time was Jordan’s King Hussein but even that was more talk than anything else. True, the Jordanian port of Aqaba was open for Saddam to use but the Saudis and the Egyptians could easily close the Gulf of Aqaba to keep supplies from going to Iraq and prevent exports from Iraq. Even Syria’s Assad was willing to let Saddam twist in the wind since the two were frenemies with an emphasis on the enemies bit.)
My memory of all that is different. I agree completely with your assessment that it seemed to put Bush 41 in the driver’s seat regarding re-election but there were rumblings (economic issues) that prevented it from being a lock, or even overwhelming odds in his favor. I also agree there was strong sentiment with some that he should have tasked our troops with going all the way to Baghdad and deposing Saddam. However, as I recall that was more public sentiment in favor of that than our military’s leaders, his other advisors, Congress and even many pundits who in those days had more people in their ranks that actually knew shit. There was also a split within conservatives over that issue.
Again, our memories are different and yours may well more accurately describe things. However, I recall measured pushback against the “we should taken out Saddam” which of course would mean us taking over Iraq for a time and my own memory was that while a few countries in the region liked that idea most did not. The same is true of that coalition the elder Bush assembled. Like most of his own advisors they foresaw chaos and instability in the entire region if the Iraqi government was taken out. The bulk of Arab country’s support for driving Saddam’s forces out of Kuwait and doing a number on the Iraqi army & Iraq’s blossoming WMD capability didn’t extend to the U.S. becoming an occupying force. They might not have shouted their conditional support of our mission from the rooftops but the information was out there and reported if one paid attention.
As for here at home, Bush’s right hand man James Baker was a master with press relations and he made sure all those who covered the WH knew about the problems we’d face with an occupation of Iraq.
But for an accident of timing and a helluva fight with my ex (long story) I would have been over there with a Marine Reserve unit. Like many I’d have loved to have seen Saddam and his henchmen kicked out on their asses and handed over to the Iraqi people for some swift justice. However, that was tempered by the knowledge that the (relatively) straightforward and swift mission of kicking the Iraqis out of Kuwait and cutting their armed forces down to size (so they couldn’t threaten other countries in the region) was the smartest option. As the administration explained both privately and even in some public comments deposing Saddam would come with long-term and huge costs and consequences.
You are correct that some conservatives including Bush’s own son believed otherwise. That the Iraqi people and other countries in the region would have welcomed a U.S. takeover and administration of that country for an undetermined period of years. When Bush Sr. and his pal Baker got the younger Bush the Presidency they tried to rein him him with some realities about what would happen if he did what everyone knew he was itching to do – avenge his father’s defeat that he mistakenly attributed to not taking out Saddam (Clinton’s “It’s the Economy Stupid” was spot on and why Bush lost, at least when coupled with conservative’s fury over his breaking his infamous “No new taxes” promise) but Bush Jr. & the neocons ignored their elder’s advice.
Things unfolded just like the elder Bush, Baker and most (Cheney being the exception – he was blinded by greed and all he saw was money from controlling all that oil) said it would. A brief (oh so brief – attacks against our forces started up within a couple of weeks and steadily grew) period of euphoria and gratitude to ever growing resentment, and a quite justified belief that Bush didn’t give two shits about their freedom but was interested in their oil. I for one wasn’t the least bit surprised things turned out to be every bit as bad as Bush Sr. and his team predicted (and made known) it would be at the time of Desert Storm.
Yes, plenty of people didn’t want to listen to the measured analysis back then including some of the pundit class. And again, while admitting you might better remember the prevailing coverage better than I my own perception then was that for all the vengeful satisfaction I might have wanted to experience at the fall of Saddam and his regime, and as much as I hated the idea of Iraqis having to continue to suffer under his rule our own interests were best served by limiting our actions to kicking him out of Kuwait, gutting his ability to produce (and threaten others with) WMD and degrading his army to the point where it could maintain the ability to check Iran but nothing more was in both our own and our allies bests interests. And that Arab countries, Saudi Arabia in particular were in full agreement.
Rons problem is he killed off so many people in floridumb that i bet a survivor bumps him off first.
It’s said the good die young…he’s not in that group.