Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Thursday, December 15, 2022

Is Trump Done?

 Josh Marshall looks at the latest spasmodic grift from Trumpistan and wonders if maybe Trump has finally lost his grip on the Trumpenproletariat. My skepticism is based on the following:

- Establishment GOP leaders want Trump gone, so they will conduct push poll after push poll to convince people that Trump is a loser and DeSantis is a winner. We know Trump voters don't answer polls, so any softness in his poll numbers feels suspect to me.

- The stink of losing certainly does hold to Trump, but Cult 45 doesn't believe he lost. Evangelicals - almost by definition - are impervious to reason and facts. They have faith and faith alone, and right now that faith is invested in Trump. If the GOP forces him aside against his wishes, he will burn the place down.

So maybe DeSantis gets a clean kill shot and eliminates Hair Furor. More likely we get a series of primary wins and losses and a brutal, drawn out bloodbath. Or - if DeSantis gets his kill shot - Trump bolts the party and forms his own, based on the sort of grift that Marshall notes and Paul Campos laments.

The single best thing for America is a massive schism on the right in 2024. Two rightist parties fighting it out for every House and Senate seat and the White House itself. Dark Brandon wins 45 states if that happens.

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