We’re at an amusing juncture here in the first few weeks of 2023. In the not too distant future Joe Biden will announce he’s running for reelection.
You’ve already heard a number of canned campaign ads from Donald Trump.
And you saw Kevin McCarthy grovel after he finally got the gavel. It was all due to Trump, to hear him tell it, even though there were Republican lawmakers on the floor who were openly ignoring Trump’s admonition to vote for McCarthy, or defying him, as Lauren Boebert did. Boebert asked Trump to tell McCarthy to stand down.
Trump is still the kingmaker, but all the king’s men are jesters. pic.twitter.com/XIQjq0ZBVh
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) January 12, 2023
Intriguing that so much of the GOP is still hanging on Trump’s coattails. Didn’t we just have an election where a number of Senate, House and gubernatorial hopefuls found out that hanging onto Trump’s coattails is an exercise in futility?
Or, maybe what’s going on is that there’s such a vacuum of leadership in the GOP that even Trump is better than the appearance of nobody at all at the tiller, steering the ship. Maybe that’s it.
Here’s what James Carville said about Trump to the Bulwark. Carville thinks Trump is toast. I concur. But that does seem to be at odds with what we just heard McCarthy say in the LP clip.
He is done. After all this obsession, of all these years of him occupying the front part of your mind, when you think about it, you just wonder how fast it’s going to be before he goes to jail. He’s not going to be the Republican nominee at all. We saw what the post-Trump Republican Party looks like. Just go back and look at that Speaker’s race. This is not like, “Oh, thank God, Brent Scowcroft has walked back through the door and everything is going to be just like it was before.” No, it’s not. That’s not going to happen.
And my Democratic friends and press friends are in a panic. I said, “Don’t worry, you’ll probably get something crazy.” Because Trump was good for business. He kept everybody on cable TV, everybody had a column they could write, everybody could start an organization. And there’s a lot of interest in keeping Trump around, but I don’t think the voters want him around much more. And I think increasingly Republican voters would like to have somebody new and younger.
On handicapping the Republican primary field
CARVILLE: I’d say DeSantis would be slightly overestimated. Underestimated, I’d say Brian Kemp. Now, Cruz, Cotton, Josh Hawley, maybe. DeSantis, he’s out in front for a long time. And you know in politics, the longer that you’re hanging out there, people start to smell odors. And trust me, the Cruz, Hawley, Cotton tripartite pack, they don’t like DeSantis….and DeSantis, unlike a Bill Clinton or even a George W. Bush, he’s not a people person, and it’s well-documented. And that counts in politics, particularly if you’re going to be out there for a long time and you have a lot of party leaders and things that you need for these primaries. That’s a skill that he does not possess. You don’t have to be a hell of a fellow, a good old boy, to be effective at governance, but it does help. And he’s no such thing.
[Kemp] would be a little different in [having taken on Donald Trump]. And he’s got a pretty damn good story to tell in terms of Georgia and his conservative values and everything. I’m not saying that I think he’s going to be a nominee, but if you’re asking for the “underprice, I’m going in to win on an eight-to-one horse,” I’ll take this one at eight-to-one. That’s what it is. And he’s very presentable. I don’t know if that’s a Southern word. I’m sure it’s got some negative… Some college campus doesn’t like it, but he makes a good impression.
There’s a summation of the Republican field that Trump is purportedly still the kingmaker of.
All this is confusing as hell, isn’t it? Welcome to the Tower of Babel, 2023.
You’re on the right track here, Ursula. I’ve been saying there’s no leadership in the GOP left for months now so trotting Trump out like Weekend At Bernie’s makes too much sense. Also, 100% on what Carville said about Kemp. He’s another Youngkin, a guy who hides his freakier, uglier tendencies under a mask of “respectability”. Never fear the GQP chimps in the House as much as you should those guys. They’re the backbone of the forthcoming incarnation of the American conservative movement.
To paraphrase an old saying: the report of his demise is greatly exaggerated. He’s still the cult leader. That position lies outside the reach of the voting public, especially when more voted for him after years of atrocities in office. This will not end well.
But it WILL end and far sooner than you think.
I disagree. I thought it never should have been so it’s far far far past my deadline.
Makes me wonder what was in the hacked RNC files that were given to tfpresidunce?
I loved Presidunce😂😂😂
There’s still the culture of Trump. And right now I don’t see a replacement. Now it all depends on the many legal cases of Trump. He’s in deep legal trouble. I think the lady with the defamation suit will be instrumental in taking him down. He’s lost his mojo on her. That’s moving forward. Miedustouch did a reading of Trumps deposition and the lawyer led him around like she had him on a leash. She practically made him confess to the rape. And the two clowns he had for lawyers let him run his mouth on yes or no questions. Unless they get a scholarship to Harvard in the time until that goes to court. As Carville would say, Trump is toast. That’s I think what will take him down. Because if she wins, they will line up to file their cases. Probably starting with the two ladies from Georgia. I can’t remember the whole thing but it starts with A woman scorned. And that’s what Trump did to the lady.
“He’ll hath no fury like a woman scorned”, written by English playwright William Congreve in 1697.
Gotta love autocorrect on a tablet – I wanted to type *Hell* and it went in with an apostrophe…..