Trump’s CPAC “Coming Out Party” Ended Up Feeling More Like A Retirement Send Off

Carefree highway, glad to see you my old friend. Carefree highway, you’ve seen better days   Gordon Lightfoot   Carefree Highway

Well, apparently that didn’t come quite as planned. This was supposed to be Napoleon’s Triumphal return to Paris from Elba. Ali Vitali of MSNBC reported from Orlando that locally, they had been referring to CPAC as TPAC for Trump PAC. With purely loyal attendees, it should have been like the annual Trombie family reunion and riot.

But it doesn’t seem to have gone off all that well. According to both Vitali, as well as former GOP congressman Carlos Curbelo, Trump seemed almost muted. This is strange, since after more than two months of wearing a social media ball gag, one would have expected The Mango Messiah to come out with all guns blazing. And it seems that this had an effect on the crowd, because as his blatherfest went on, their responses became more muted as well.

It would have been bad enough if that was all it was, but there was worse. In a straw poll conducted at the conference yesterday, Trump led the field, but with only 58%. The final straw poll taken after Trump’s speech showed him at 55%. FL Governor Ron Pissantis was at 21%, and everybody else was in low single digits.

But here comes the shiv in the back. In a separate poll at the conference, while 95% of responders said that the GOP needed to continue to follow and espouse Trump’s philosophy and agenda, only 68% wanted Trump himself to be the party’s standard bearer in the 2024 Presidential election. There is no way that Trump has dictatorial control over the GOP when only 68% of the party want him to run again in 2024.

This is terrible news for Trump for two reasons. First, in the near future, Trump and his golden name are about to become intimately intertwined with words that most voters don’t think of when they think of Presidential qualities. Words like insurance fraud, bank fraud, tax fraud, and money laundering. This will only get worse when you combine it with his second problem.

Trump has no way to fight the negative press and imaging. Trump’s social media bans are for the most part, lifetime bans. There is no way for him to get out in a mass media environment and try to play the victim card to offset the damage being done to his name. Also this. With the exception of FOX News, none of the other news networks I scanned through carried a word of his CPAC speech live. Trump is no longer legitimate news. As time goes by, likely candidates like Cruz, Hawley, Pompeo and Haley will be able to blanket the airwaves and social media with their message. They don’t need to minimize Trump, social media and the news media are doing that for them. 68% may well be the best Trump ever sees again.

And one more thing to consider. As Trump made clear in his speech today, he is still the same nasty, petty, vindictive little prick he’s always been. He has $200 million in a C-PAC, and he’s promising to use it. Right now, both McConnell and McCarthy are at least making moo-moo noises about retaking the House and the Senate in 2022. If Trump jumps in with both feet, spewing bile and settling personal petty scores, and ends up costing the GOP seats in the House and the Senate, everybody with a “R” after their name is going to feel emboldened to dump all of that shit right over trump’s head.

One week before the election, a poll of registered GOP voters showed Trump with 83% support among voters. In less than 4 months time, Trump has lost 15% of that support in quest of a 2024 run, and 28% when you put him in a head to head match up. And as Trump’s problems worsen, and his grip weakens, potential opponents will only move in for the kill. Personally, I hope he does run again in 2024, since it will turn the primaries into a mosh pit that will make 2016 look like a precision military drill team.

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