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Trump vs. DeSantis

The New Neo Posted on by

A lot of people are blaming Trump for Tuesday’s extremely disappointing results. I haven’t done a systematic study of his “picks” and I’m not planning to do so, but of course a couple of high-profile ones didn’t win – I’m thinking of Dr. Oz. Another pick, Herschel Walker, will be in a Georgia runoff (deja vu, anyone?).

But I actually don’t blame Trump for this; at least not very much. He endorses people but it’s actually the voters in the primaries who make the final selection. A lot of Trump supporters may decide to vote for his choices because they trust him, but I don’t think he can be blamed for picking people he thinks have similar values or who might be people he trusts for some reason. After all, he doesn’t force anyone to choose them as the nominee. Voters do that themselves.

One of the things that happened in some states or districts was that Trump picks were the recipients of crossover Democrat votes in the primaries in an attempt to select the GOP candidates Democrats thought were least likely to win in the general. But that’s the problem with primaries, in particular when there’s no competition for a Democrat nominee (usually because of an incumbent) and Democrats therefore don’t mind taking part in the Republican primary instead. A person can switch parties for the primary; at least, I’m not aware of any state that forbids it, as long as the person changes his or her registration that year accordingly.

I think primaries are highly flawed instruments for choosing nominees anyway, perhaps even worse than the old smoke-filled rooms of my youth. The latter can result in nominees who are dull party apparatchiks taking their turn at bat. But the former can result in extremists who appeal to certain party voters but not to enough people in the state or district to actually get elected in the general. You have to know the territory, as it were, and a candidate who’s not a good fit for the area isn’t going to win. It’s not an easy task at all to choose a nominee, and even the pros are just guessing a lot of the time.

What arouses my ire at Trump are his attacks on DeSantis, which threaten to splinter the party in 2024. Of course, that splintering is somewhat of an old story – the GOP has long been separated into what in my youth was called the Rockefeller wing and the Goldwater wing (boy, am I showing my age), and later there was the RINO wing and the conservative wing.

But Trump versus DeSantis is one conservative against another, and it’s not based on policy disagreements, it’s based on personal rivalry and ambition. Trump sees DeSantis as a threat to Trump.

In the last two years or so, I’ve come to regard Trump as something of a tragic Shakespearean figure. His dimensions are, as he himself would say, huge. He has such great accomplishments and such great flaws. At the moment his flaws are overwhelming his accomplishments in many people’s eyes, and that even includes former supporters. His flaws always were overwhelming to a lot of other people, and the relentless attacks and defamation he’s endured have greatly augmented that effect.

One former supporter, Don Surber, writes this:

Dr. Oz showed how it went with Trump. That’s how poisonous he has become in purple America. We, his fans, see the good in him and the evil in his enemies. But the majority doesn’t and never will. It is a sale that cannot be made. There will be no second term from The Donald. It breaks my heart to see this. I wrote three books on the man. Looking for someone else — likely DeSantis — will cost me readers. As I said about the covid vaccine, you do you. But Trump failed. He cost America the red tsunami we need to rein in Democrats.

I agree with the first part of that paragraph. But I don’t believe that Trump “cost America the red tsunami.” Trump set the stage for successful politicians like DeSantis, people with fighting spirit who confront the press with vigor, aren’t afraid to be conservatives, but who are far more polished than Trump and nowhere near as offensive in demeanor (and yes, the left will attack DeSantis unmercifully too, but I think they’ll have more trouble making the demonizing stick with as many listeners). I think the red tsunami was defeated by Democrat lies and MSM propaganda finding their target audience, and the Gramscian march through our schools, entertainment, and churches, as well as the amplifying effect of social media.

The problem is far greater than Trump or anything Trump did.

I also think that Trump was persecuted and lied about, and attacked along with his family, so incessantly and terribly that even though he took it better than the vast majority of people ever could, it (as well as the manner of his 2020 loss) has driven him to lose some of his political judgment and to rage more than usual.

He’s getting into King Lear on the heath territory. He’s endured a great great deal. But King Lear is not a good look for a candidate.

What are the sorts of things he’s said that I’m talking about? Well, here’s what Trump said about DeSantis on Monday night right before Election Day – and remember that DeSantis was running for the Florida governorship this year [emphasis mine]:

“I don’t know if [DeSantis] is running [for president in 2024]. I think if he runs, he could hurt himself very badly. I really believe he could hurt himself badly,” Trump said. “I think he would be making a mistake, I think the base would not like it — I don’t think it would be good for the party.”

“Any of that stuff is not good — you have other people that possibly will run, I guess,” Trump added. “I don’t know if he runs. If he runs, he runs.”

Then Trump said that if DeSantis does decide to run, “I would tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering — I know more about him than anybody — other than, perhaps, his wife.”

And speaking of what’s “not good for the party” – I submit that Trump’s attempts to threaten DeSantis are absolutely not good for the party.

Here’s what Trump’s previous press secretary Kayleigh McEnany had to say yesterday:

“I know there’s a temptation to starting talking about 2024 — no, no, no, no, no,” McEnany said on Wednesday’s edition of “Outnumbered.”

“2022 is not over. Every Republican energy needs to go to grinding the Biden agenda to a halt, and that could go straight through the state of Georgia.”

When pushed by Harris if that included her former boss, Donald Trump, McEnany was emphatic in saying, “I think he needs to put it on pause, absolutely.”

She also added that DeSantis should campaign for Walker in the Georgia runoff, but said nothing about Trump needing to do the same. McEnany is a smart cookie and she served her former boss very well, but this is her advice at this point.

Oh, and speaking of Georgia, Governor Kemp was up for re-election last Tuesday as well. Trump has plenty of reason to dislike Kemp intensely; he thwarted Trump’s accusations of fraud in Georgia in 2020. But here’s what Trump said about Kemp in late September, only about 6 weeks prior to Kemp’s gubernatorial contest with Stacey Abrams:

The former President’s criticism of Kemp now includes hyping Democrat Stacey Abrams as a preferable alternative to the GOP governor, whose crime against Trump was staying out of his attempt to overturn the Georgia 2020 election returns.

“Having her, I think, might be better than having your existing governor, if you want to know what I think,” Trump said Saturday at his rally in Perry, adding later, “Stacey, would you like to take his place? It’s OK with me.”

Kemp won anyway – or maybe Trump’s remarks about Kemp even increased his margin, because they might have attracted people to Kemp who hate Trump. But I bet Trump’s remarks about Kemp and Abrams didn’t help Trump’s pick, Herschel Walker, or Republican turnout. No wonder McEnany seems to want Trump to stay away from Georgia during the leadup to the runoff.

Many people think Trump had sabotaged the two runoffs in Georgia in 2020 and was responsible for the Senate Democratic majority that resulted from that election. I think that’s giving Trump a bit too much credit/blame, but it’s certainly a possibility that he contributed to the GOP candidates’ defeat in those runoffs. Here’s what I’m talking about:

With control of the Senate at stake in the state’s two races, the president chose to spend weeks peddling baseless claims that Georgia’s electoral system was rigged, fueling an online movement to boycott Tuesday’s election. He demonized the state’s Republican leaders and fractured the local GOP. He ignored calls from his allies to rally in the state sooner. His support for Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue mainly came in the form of the occasional tweet and two rallies, including one on Monday…

“Trump is the cause of this, lock, stock and barrel,” said one Republican strategist. “But when you’re relying on someone to win you a Senate race that also lost statewide eight weeks prior, you’re not in a position of strength.”…

When asked why Republicans didn’t prevail on Tuesday, a senior Senate Republican aide simply said: “Donald J. Trump.”…

Even at a Monday rally designed to drum up voting for Loeffler and Perdue, the president obsessed over his own political grievances, swiping at lawmakers from his own party, including Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp…

“He is the Dems’ best base animator,” said one GOP strategist involved in the Georgia races.

That’s certainly the truth – Trump is the Democrats’ best base animator – and they used that strategy to their advantage this election cycle. It was no mystery why they kept talking about Trump, Trump, Trump. They know their audience.

Comments

Trump vs. DeSantis — 172 Comments

  1. Trump is the Democrats’ best base animator
    —————————-
    And who exactly motivates the Republican base?
    Who created it – who swung the wrecking ball that revealed the you-scratch-my-back bipartisan corruption of Washington, and created the new populist, patriotic, engaged Republican constituency?

    This article quotes RINOs and “moderate” Republicans who are allied with Democrats against this country – against “their own” constituency of MAGA “deplorables”. These never-Trumpers blame Trump for…. actually doing something! This is news?

    As I wrote in your thread about Bibi’s future – it has to be the Donald in 2024.
    The Left’s ability to cancel a conservative candidate IS THE ISSUE for many of the most motivated voters.

    On a practical level, no conservatives are winning anything without the strength in numbers of the MAGA constituency. Have you seen the rallies? Who else is going to bring these people out?

    It’s more logical to argue that large numbers of political neophytes and low info voters who get Trump’s message and connect with him didn’t come out to vote in an off-year for nobody Congressmen.

    It’s also sadly pollyannaish to assume that the corruption issue just went away… it’s no coincidence that Florida was the only state to enact real election reforms.

  2. Ben David:

    DeSantis would motivate the GOP base. And he’s not the only one. Trump only motivates his hard-core base at the moment.

  3. Ben David:

    Many states have secure elections already, and Florida was also not the only state that tightened the election rules.

    But I don’t think anyone here thinks corruption just went away.

  4. neo – Trump candidates weren’t just the recipients of crossover votes, they were the recipients of cross-over money. Lots of it. In Pennsylvania, Democrat Josh Shapiro spent more money on TV ads supporting Doug Mastriano in the Republican primary than Mastriano’s own campaign. That happened all over the country. And it worked. (It certainly didn’t help when Trump swooped in and endorsed Mastriano the weekend before the primary while the state Republican Party was scrambling to overcome all the Democrat money being spent on Mastriano’s behalf and get an electable candidate on the ticket.) The whole thing makes a mockery of Democrats’ “democracy is on the ballot” schtick, but who expects consistency from politicians.

    Also, unsurprisingly, I blame Trump more for his endorsements than you do. When one politician endorses another, there is an implicit assumption that the endorsee is the best candidate. Part of being the best candidate is being able to win. Here, we know that Trump picked his endorsees based on factors other than likelihood of winning. I’m not sure that Republican primary voters knew that. They do now.

  5. An astute summation, Neo.

    Last night on Laura Ingraham’s show, one of her guests mentioned that the under 35 voters turned out bigly and went mostly to the Democrats. The big issues for them? Abortion, and to a lesser extent, January 6th. This cohort is mostly made up of those who have been carefully groomed to believe progressive ideas. They form a powerful voting bloc. The GOP may have gained some blacks and Latinos in the last six years, but it didn’t seem to overcome the young “true believers.”

    I believe Trump’s greatest contribution could be to continue as an active speaker and purveyor of his old-time religion, and as an adviser to politicians on his philosophy, which even many of the best conservatives d don’t quite grasp. If he runs, he will probably get the nomination, but it will be hard for him to win – the baggage he carries has become enormous. All that said, if he wins the nomination, I will support him all the way. Flawed as he is, his policies make sense.

    Who would I like to see run, if not Trump? DeSantis, of course. DeSantis and Lake would make a formidable ticket, IMO.

  6. If we want to see a Democrat in the White House in 2025 we will nominate Trump. He is even more unpopular than Biden. The irony is that the Republicans have a very accomplished bench, particularly sitting and reelected Governors.

  7. According to the NYT’s Maggie Haberman (as always, consider the source), Trump is now blaming Melania, among others, for urging him to support Dr. Oz: Former President Donald Trump reportedly was “furious” Wednesday morning about Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz’s loss in the crucial Pennsylvania Senate race, and was blaming those in his circle — including wife Melania — for urging him to support the now-failed candidate. New York Times reporter and author Maggie Haberman tweeted the stunning claim, reporting that the 45th president had described his wife’s backing of Oz as “not her best decision.”

    https://nypost.com/2022/11/09/trump-furious-over-dr-oz-loss-blaming-wife-melania-report/

    I have my doubts about anything said by a Times reporter, but if there is any truth in Haberman’s assertion, Trump is indeed having anger management issues.

  8. PA Cat:

    I wouldn’t credit that Times report.

    I do think Trump is having issues, though, as I’ve already indicated.

  9. 56% of respondents to this CNN exit poll had an “Unfavorable” view of Joe Biden. But 58% also had an “Unfavorable” view of Donald Trump. Maybe it’s nonsense (I’m mean, it’s from CNN after all, and exit polls aren’t always the best gage), but after Tuesday it seems a little more difficult to just dismiss it out of hand.

    But if so many voters really dislike Donald Trump that much, and dislike him even more than they dislike the unmitigated disaster that is Joe Biden, could Trump really still win in 2024? Is it still really possible to persuade that many people that Trump is a better choice than even somebody like Joe Biden? We’ve seen that people will vote for literally brain damaged candidates without shame. Yes, the Democrat Media machine has endlessly churned out outright lies about Trump. But do you believe that, at this late point, those lies can be corrected in the minds of all those white middleclass suburban women in swing districts who really just find the guy unappealing personally?

    We should try to look at the way the world is, not they way we wish it to be.

  10. oh good grief, maggie haberman, how many times does that finger get pulled,

    Trump is a blunt instruments sometimes needed, sometimes excessive, I thought the grandstanding at the matriano rally was stupid and I said as much,

    desantis is smoother, stiletto rather than hacksaw, he doesn’t have many confident that are willing to leak to the times or vanity, the likes of gabriel sherman who I loath for putting roger ailes down, for the purposes of lachlan’s brats, I do know there is a certain cohort that hate both, for that we have the hounds,

  11. Bauxite:

    Yes, money from Democrats, too.

    I actually think that Trump thought they were winning candidates. He has tremendous confidence in himself and he likes winning. I just don’t think he’s a good judge of that on a more local level, across the entire US. It’s an art.

  12. Neo– I don’t credit Haberman either, but the Times has its share of “yellow dog” readers, doesn’t it? And they will eat up anything Haberman says.

  13. I would have preferred bernard over both mccormick and oz, mccormick was a big time banker and swamp player, it would have been easy for the democrats to attack him as well,

    of course he’s frustrated, some gangsters broke into his house two months ago, and the courts told to fark off, he spent a lot of time, pushing those he thought could further his vision, I don’t think the money from dems made that much of difference in the primaries, he sees how this country is near collapse, and now there is less time to save it,

  15. “I blame Trump more for his endorsements than you do. When one politician endorses another, there is an implicit assumption that the endorsee is the best candidate. Part of being the best candidate is being able to win. Here, we know that Trump picked his endorsees based on factors other than likelihood of winning. I’m not sure that Republican primary voters knew that. They do now.” – Bauxite

    Trump was trying to get congresspeople that support the MAGA movement elected. We know there is a significant number in congress that actively worked against those policies. If the MAGA/America First movement is to become a significant force in American politics, it needs to be a larger coalition in Congress. Think Tea Party.

    Trump endorsed candidates did quite well. Whether or not Trump is the candidate in 2024, it’s likely these congresspeople will be working to legislate MAGA/America First policies.

    From a MarketWatch article:

    “On the House side, Trump-endorsed candidates broadly performed well: 141 of the 162 endorsed candidates had been deemed election winners by AP as of Wednesday afternoon.

    Nine candidates backed by Trump have lost their elections; seven of those were running in competitive districts as determined by CPR’s ratings. Among the races featuring Trump-backed candidates that have not yet been called by AP, those candidates lead in six and trail in seven.

    When it comes to general-election candidates endorsed by Trump, the former president’s win rate is relatively high: at least 68% on the Senate side, with four races yet to be decided, and at least 87% on the House side, with 12 outstanding races.

    Trump’s Senate win rate could go as high as 88% if all his remaining candidates win; if only the candidates who are currently leading win, his rate would be 76%. His House rate would tick up to 90% if the five candidates he endorsed who are currently leading win.“

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/here-s-how-candidates-endorsed-by-trump-performed-in-the-midterm-elections/ar-AA13VaPz

  16. neo,

    ‘I certainly don’t believe Trump can win another national election.’

    This has been my point for months. For awhile it seemed like it was physicsguy and me were the only ones here saying that but after the last week it should be obvious to everybody. Whether DeSantis or anybody else can win is debatable but the fact is Trump cannot win. Enough people HATE him to ensure defeat. Not as many people hate Biden. It’s just a fact.

  17. I’m hoping Trump’s family can persuade him it’s time to assume the role of kingmaker, not candidate. Wouldn’t know who among them can make it happen. For someone his age, he is phenomenally energetic.

    There’s a perhaps apocryphal story of how Richard Nixon was persuaded to resign. He polls his family at dinner and the last to speak is David Eisenhower, who mumbles, ‘think of yourself’.

  18. I can’t speak for other red or purple states but here in WA every Patty Murray ad against Tiffany Smiley was abortion, abortion, abortion Trump, Trump, Trump with a picture of Smiley with Trump mixed in with the odd ad about how Smiley wanted to get rid of social security or some damn thing.

    That was it.

  19. Think the vision of Trump as a Shakespearean tragic figure is correct these days. It is wildly unfair and wrong that he didn’t get a second term in office, but it is what it is. If he can’t look forward (and he isn’t) then he won’t win in 2024.

  20. well he was the kingmaker in his choice of candidates, you want them to be perfect that’s not happening, ‘we are fighting not only men, but powers and principalities of the air’

    and the dems laughed a rye chuckle about that, what clinton obama and now biden have wrought makes nixon seem like a parking ticket,

  21. Griffin:

    Yes, indeed. The pitch was that the GOP would ban abortion and end Social Security. And there were many more ads from the left than the right. I knew at the time that these ads would find a receptive audience. Big Lies repeated many times are very effective.

  22. Neo, “What arouses my ire at Trump are his attacks on DeSantis, which threaten to splinter the party in 2024.”

    Agree. And I’m sick of all the drama around Trump, his childish name calling, but most of all I’m convinced he absolutely can’t win a general election.

    In that regard, the Dems might do the GOP a favor by indicting him. I think the DOJ will indict and I also think he will be convicted by a DC jury.

    In Nebraska, we had a party split. Charles Herbster ran against Jim Pillen. (Disclosure. I campaigned for Pillen and consider him a friend.)

    Herbster spent $12-13 million of his own money. He was backed by Trump. His campaign manager was Kellyanne Conway. She made a fortune.

    In a Trump-like move, Herbster really did grab a young female GOP activist (and now a state Senator) by the pussy at a public event. With witnesses!

    Lawsuits filed and settled. I’m sure she got some big bucks.

    Herbster was very unimpressive. Pillen, on the other hand, is very impressive.

    The Herbster people somehow consider Pillen part of the GOPe because he didn’t have Trump’s endorsement. But Trump would have endorsed Pillen if Pillen had donated $1m to Trump’s campaign.

    The Herbster people took over the state GOP party. They are mad at Pillen and the current Governor, Pete Ricketts. I’m not really sure why other than the two of them are not Trump cultists.

    Pillen won is a landslide. I’m not sure if the Herbster-Trump people are still mad at him.

    FWIW, Sen. Ben Sasse is the new President at the University of FL. Pillen will probably pick Ricketts as the new Senator. Pete Ricketts is a very impressive guy. I told Pillen I wouldn’t take the Senate job.

    Pillen has a filibuster-proof majority in the Unicameral. I’m expecting great things from Governor Jim Pillen.

    FWIW, the Governor’s wife endorsed and gave money to a Dem who ran for the House. She lost. Not sure what’s going on there. Weird.

  23. jennifer lawrences’ pitiful exercise seem to have worked with the governors race, but not the senate, john james who was denied the senate, won a house seat in michigan

    desantis was bold in pushing a strong redistricting map, I think he lost one, to calvin frost, the new squadmate, but won three of them,

  24. Griffin:

    You were not the only one here saying it.

    I’ve been saying DeSantis is the better candidate for quite some time, as have many others. Since the 2020 election I haven’t thought Trump could win another unless something extremely unusual happened, and maybe not even then.

  25. “I certainly don’t believe Trump can win another national election. – Neo

    That’s my impression as well– at this moment. But circumstances can change. If President Trump shifts his message away from the stolen 2020 election– pointing out that his unrelenting focus produced changes in election integrity seen in the 2022 election, then get back to the core message of American First, he could change attitudes.

    But has a mass formation event occurred? In which case, Trump, as the devil– the personification of the enemy to Progress/Utopia has no chance of changing those minds. The effect of mobs is to influence those standing on the sidelines.

    “The Weaponization of Loneliness” by Stella Morabito
    Six Patterns of Totalitarian Behavior Conducive to Mob-Building
    1. alienation
    2. the cure: belonging
    3. the enemy
    4. ideology/utopia
    5. a sense of crisis
    6. monopolizing the media

    https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/22/mobs-and-the-weaponization-of-loneliness/

  26. Unless election fraud is ended in places like Philadelphia, I don’t believe anyone other than a deep state stooge will be “elected”.

  27. Brian E:

    I don’t think their minds can be changed, and I also don’t think he’ll be acting in a way that has even a chance of changing them.

  28. FWIW, the Governor’s wife endorsed and gave money to a Dem who ran for the House. She lost. Not sure what’s going on there. Weird.

    About 96% of the general public gets along quite well without coughing up campaign contributions to anyone.

    I was once noodling around the Federal Election Commission database. The $250 a member of my family put into Louise Slaughter’s campaign kitty in 2002 was in the database. I have a lawyer friend who was at one time chairman of the town Democratic committee in one of Rochester’s east side suburbs. He’d never given Louise a dime, nor had he contributed to any other federal candidate.

    If she were Jo Blo off the sidewalks of Grand Island, hardly anyone would care to whom she contributed or what she ‘endorsed’. The curio which attracts attention is that she’s governor’s wife. Which is to say she’s exploiting her prominence to help people antagonistic to her husband. Flipping your husband the bird in a public place is rather unsightly. She doesn’t appear to have gone full George Conway yet.

  29. FWIW, Sen. Ben Sasse is the new President at the University of FL.

    Rather more suitable position for him than was member of Congress.

  30. I think primaries are highly flawed instruments for choosing nominees anyway, perhaps even worse than the old smoke-filled rooms of my youth. The latter can result in nominees who are dull party apparatchiks taking their turn at bat. But the former can result in extremists who appeal to certain party voters but not to enough people in the state or district to actually get elected in the general. You have to know the territory, as it were, and a candidate who’s not a good fit for the area isn’t going to win. It’s not an easy task at all to choose a nominee, and even the pros are just guessing a lot of the time.

    Ideally, dues paying party members would meet in caucuses (and occasionally delegate conventions) to choose candidates in those constituencies which were classified as ‘competitive’ according to party registration balance. Losing candidates who obtain a certain threshhold of support would have an option to force a primary among party registrants. In constituencies classified as non competitive, all aspirants would circulate petitions in a particular body of registrants or they would place a security deposit with the board of elections; you’d then have a jungle contest among all such registrants. (Note, ranked choice voting is helpful in these circumstances).

  31. he caused some agita because despite being a never trumper, was decidely binary in his affectations,

  32. Neo: “I’ve been saying DeSantis is the better candidate for quite some time,”.

    Funny how amazingly fast opinion on this page has changed. “For quite sometime” seems to mean as far back as a week or two. I dont know for sure because Ive stayed away from this page for quite some time. In my mind, this page seemed to be the official Donald Trump fan page. People here defended Trump. Viciously. Ive been called a rino for pointing out his flaws. A cuck, a liberal, a (gasp), Romney voter. Belittled for not being as rich and successful as Trump, so what did I know? Its as if I were addressing Trump directly on this page. Ive said Trump was done as a politician for quite some time Neo, and you said I was being ridiculous.

    Im glad people are…woke…now. I would like us all to go back to being saner than the left and win elections again: Me and my “RINO”, “cuck”, “Romney loving” self.
    DeSantis 2024, (Which Ive been saying for quite some time), if you dont mind.

  33. The contra-point is that the Democrats will STILL be all Trump, Trump, Trump whether he’s the nominee or not. If DeSantis is the nominee he will be questioned and pestered and hammered over everything Trump did or does, said or says, whether it’s true or not.

    I don’t have a problem with not wanting Trump to run again or be the nominee. His age is a legitimate concern if nothing else. But two points to consider:

    1. When has giving into what the other side wants EVER worked out well for the Right? When has allowing other people to dictate what we can and cannot say or what candidates we can or cannot support EVER benefited conservatives?

    2. What about the legion of NeverTrump jagoffs still infesting the Right? When do they have to “step down”? I just interacted with one of these fools online. He posted a “Trump needs to go away” story and when I pointed out that he wanted Hillary to be elected in 2016, so his judgment isn’t to be trusted, he blocked me. If a DeSantis candidacy means these miserable narcissists are welcomed back, I will have nothing to do with that.

    Mike

  35. “Funny how amazingly fast opinion on this page has changed.”

    And this is the kind of narcissism I mean.

    Mike

  38. strike 2, you’re really no good at this,

    I know some people on other boards, who was rabidly anti desantis, and vice versa so I try to maintain a happy medium

  39. Harry – then why did you come back after being gone for some time, ‘cept perhaps to smugly gloat a bit.

  40. I saw how quickly the two minute hate arose against palin, that was record time, for things which we were tiny flaws compared with who has come later,

  41. Steph, smuggly gloating is a pretty good reason on its own, but Ive popped in every once in a while to get Neo’s take on an occasional issue. I mean, if thats OK with you.

  42. I would prefer DeSantis over Trump in 2024 but the assertion that Trump can’t win is simply a feeling and is not based on data. There are plenty of polls that show Trump beating Biden in 2024 (and other candidates as well). Of course polls aren’t perfect but an average of them usually provides a reasonably accurate picture. I know that these polls were done before the midterm results and the blame Trump has taken for the disappointing results may change some people’s minds. But a lot can happen in two years to change minds again.

    I think too many people underestimate the depth of support for Trump. The GOP base is fractured and winning an election without Trump supporters is not going to be easy.

  43. Harry Mallory:

    Care to place some dates on your absence? I’ve been reading neo’s blog and comments for a very long time and don’t recall anything you’ve ever written. Not saying, bullsh!t, but you never made an impression. So, whatever, dude.

    Romney is still a closeted Democrat BTW.

  46. om, That you cant recall me ever posting suggests Ive never posted here?
    Again, how did I become a Romney supporter?

  47. A dude makes a comment about Romney and then reacts to the statement that Romney is a closeted Democrat. May be two in that closet. TMI.

    Dude never said anything memorable before, and didn’t say how long he’s been gone or how long he’s been reading or lurking. Could just be bullsh!t. Not for me to prove.

  48. Gregory Harper:

    Obviously it’s just an opinion. But I feel strongly that he cannot win. It’s based on the fact that many of his previous supporters have been alienated by some of his recent statements attacking other Republicans and even supporting Democrats.

    I certainly haven’t seen any polls on it taken in the last week, and I doubt you have either. Some of his most offensive statements are very recent. Then of course there are the disappointing election results compared to DeSantis’ strong showing in Florida.

  49. Trump has been very good on getting rid of gop members of congress that voted to impeach him. Either retiring, or getting primaried.

    I agree Trump is entering King Lear territory, it’s sad. The lawfare against him is just wrong. Trump through his focus has moved the Overton Window on election fraud among voters. Too bad it’s still not an issue fir the eGOP,

  50. om, just out of curiosity, I dont recall you posting about the subject because I have no memory of it.; would you call yourself a strong Trump supporter, would you say; some one belonging to his base? Again, just curious.

  51. With great power comes great responsibility. Trump has great power so his anointing a candidate is enough to make him/her viable. To excuse his blunders by saying, it’s the voters, is to ignore his lack of responsibility in picking losers.

  52. ” If President Trump shifts his message away from the stolen 2020 election”
    Too late, I’m afraid. While the attacks on Trump have been unfair, his actions lend weight to the accusations. His tragedy is if he acted less impulsively, with less bombast and easily refuted exaggerations, he’d have been much more effective. But I don’t think there’s anyone who can talk to him honestly and give advise he’d consider.

  53. RDS gave a master class about how to deal with insults.

    Ignore them. By ignoring Trump’s gibe, he gave nothing for the media to feast on and to hype up.

    If the rest could learn that one simple trick…

  54. The contra-point is that the Democrats will STILL be all Trump, Trump, Trump whether he’s the nominee or not. If DeSantis is the nominee he will be questioned and pestered and hammered over everything Trump did or does, said or says, whether it’s true or not.

    Are you not aware of how successful DeSantis already has been in responding to the goons in the “gotcha” press? He has shown a gift for knowing what to say, and perhaps more importantly, when he’s said enough.

  55. Harry:

    I voted for Trump in 2020 but not in 2016.

    As regards 2024, DeSantis doesn’t have Trump’s negative personality traits, so he may be a better option. The Democrats and their media will do their worst nonetheless with any and all Republicans. We haven’t gotten results from Tuesday’s election, as planned by the Dems(?), so throwing brickbats just now is pretty lame.

  56. RDS gave a master class about how to deal with insults.

    Ignore them. By ignoring Trump’s gibe, he gave nothing for the media to feast on and to hype up.

    If the rest could learn that one simple trick…

    Good point, Darth.

    Another example, IIRC – When Florida Democrats attempted to attack him for not being present at an event or political rally, apparently ignorant of the fact that he had chosen to spend the day with his wife, who was undergoing another treatment that afternoon.

    He could have lashed out, and probably wanted to. But when the news broke from those in his campaign or from a few who were covering the campaign without having their heads up Biden or Crist’s asses, the rebuke against those who had taken the shot at him was brutal.

  57. Neo:

    You’re right I haven’t seen any poll since the election. The last one was during the end of October which showed a tie. Real Clear Politics has the average, which is currently Biden +0.2. I did admit that this may have changed after the election. But things can and do change. You can look at a long list of polls all showing a tight race for a long time. Trump’s latest comments are one event that may or may not be a deciding factor for some people. My point is simply that the evidence at this time does not lead to the conclusion that Trump has no chance of winning another election.

  58. For the record since I have been very critical of Trump like om above I voted for Trump in 2020 but not in 2016 (I skipped the presidential but voted R for the rest).

    I supported a lot of what he did as president and like most here was very angry at every thing his administration was put through but I was never a fanboy like so many are and frankly they really turn me off.

    Would I vote for him in ’24 if he were the nominee? Probably would do like I did in ’16 and of course like om being in WA it doesn’t really matter.

  59. Harry Mallory:

    If you don’t know because you haven’t been here for a while, why make such an accusation?

    And surely you’ve noticed that this blog has a handy search function.

    I’ve been praising DeSantis for ages and considering him a highly viable presidential candidate for 2024. See this early one, this, this, this, this, this, and this. Those are all easy to find in a search here.

    There are also these comments by me: this, this, this, this, this, and this.

    On January 6, 2022, I unequivocally stated that I would prefer DeSantis as the nominee rather than Trump. Perhaps that’s early enough for you?

    That’s as far back in the comments as I’m going at the moment (as the blogger, I have the capacity to search comments, although readers don’t have that capacity). I think the point has been sufficiently made.

  60. Harry Mallory, et al:

    And despite all that I will defend you as far as the length of your reading and writing here. As I said in my comment above, I have the ability to search comments in various ways. It happens that you are one of the earliest commenters here, having started in 2005, and commenting fairly regularly in the early years and then with a long pause till more recently.

  61. Trump has been very good on getting rid of gop members of congress that voted to impeach him. Either retiring, or getting primaried.

    The impeachments were humbug. Republican legislators who want to participate in the Democrats’ ludicrous and malicious publicity capers are asking for it. Some dissent on policy matters is permissible. Fragging your own is out of bounds.

  62. My god neo, it wasnt an indictment of you, nor was it meant to be, it was me being purposely over the top. It was me observing how fast many Trump supporters flipped. My comment was not meant to be taken as the literal truth.
    Jesus.

    Om: I voted for Trump twice. TWICE. (Romney not at all). I voted for Trump because he was the only better of much worse options. He’s nothing but an albatross for us now.

  63. The Conservative Inc concerted “dump Trump” psy-op is BY FAR the biggest GOP self inflicted wound of this election cycle, and probably the next one two.

    Donald Trump made two comments about DeSantis. That’s it. But miraculously, these two comments are being made out to be the BE-ALL, END-ALL.

    If you’re buying that, you’re just taking the bait the GOPe wants you to take.

  65. deadrody:

    Two stupid and destructive comments – one a nasty threat – towards a very popular and successful Republican rival. This caused a lot of previous consistent supporters of Trump to criticize him heavily.

    Also, saying people should vote for Abrams.

    Those actions of Trump are not the least bit trivial.

    And as long as I’ve been blogging – and that’s a long long time – I’ve watched this business of labeling people GOPe and trying to destroy them when sometimes it’s not true and sometimes (as with Susan Collins, for example) they are the only sort of Republican that could be elected in a state, and I’ve fought it for a long long time.

    This campaign against DeSantis and claims that he’s in league with the GOPe – which I first noticed a couple of months ago at Conservative Treehouse, the bloggers there and the majority of commenters – is an incredible self-inflicted wound.

    I call such people the OnlyTrumpers.

  66. Henry Mallory:

    Your tone didn’t make it clear at all.

    Of course, tone is notoriously difficult to convey sometimes online.

    At any rate, I guess I’ve certainly made the point that I said DeSantis would be a better candidate a long time ago.

  67. OMG, too much. I’m fine with DeSantis as the nominee in 2024. AFTER he wins a primary election, almost certainly against Trump. What I’m already SUPER tired of, in just two days, is the concerted effort to make the case that Trump shouldn’t participate. Maybe there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that happens. And if he made that decision on his own without being bombarded by GOPe NeverTrump opinions about it, ok, I guess. But this effort to make TWO COMMENTS by Trump about DeSantis into something real, let alone pretend that the population of people who even KNOW about it, let alone those who “changed their opinion” over it isn’t micro(nano)scopic is mindblowingly delusional

  68. Oh, people that are GOP establishment were being attached / destroyed ? Oh my God, now THAT is rich. The GOP establishment has been working with Democrats to try and Destroy Trump and his people for 7 years.

    Yes, those comments by Trump ARE trivial in the actual grand scheme of a country of some 250 million adults and elections with 120+ million votes that is 2 years away.

  69. Neo: “Of course, tone is notoriously difficult to convey sometimes online.”

    Yeah, and I could just be tone deaf in my delivery. If you knew me you would understand I wasnt trying to be derogatory towards you. As Ive said, Ive popped back in from time to time to see what your opinion on a certain subject is. Thats because I value your opinion.

  71. deadrody:

    Trump has been fading for a long time now. You are free to disagree, of course, but that is what I see before me.

  72. At some point people who comment on politically themed blogs ought to keep in mind just how far out on the bell curve they are in terms of being aware of what goes on in politics and how they feel about them. Literally 99.999% of the people in this country don’t know anything about what we’re talking about and if you filled them in, quickly, they would not care in the least.

    It is possible that Trump can’t win a national election with the corrupt media and Democrat sponsored fraud, combine with his personality. But it is equally as possible that Ron DeSantis, for example, can’t win in that very same environment.

    But to be fanning the flames of a nascent intra-party feud over it at this point is colossally stupid in my opinion. Taking the bait from Conservative Inc in taking part is even more damning IMO. At least Conservative Inc is getting paid to do it.

  75. “Those actions of Trump are not the least bit trivial.”

    By that standard, Neo, virtually the entire GOP establishment, most of Fox News, and most of the rest of conservative media and pundits should just “go away” because they were guilty of far worse than that towards Trump both during the 2016 campaign, during his Presidency, and now when he’s still the clear front-runner for the 2024 nomination.

    Again, don’t have a problem with DeSantis running for 2024 or even beating Trump, as long as he does it on the merits. But the deification of DeSantis as the Lord and Savior of the GOP needs to stop. I think you’re old enough, Neo, to remember when a certain governor from Georgia named Jimmy Carter was considered to be a super-impressive political force himself. How did that work out?

    Mike

  76. The only way Ron DeSantis has a shot at winning a 2024 general election is if President Trump heartily endorses him and campaigns for him. Short of that Trump’s supporters will never get on board with DeSantis.

    Just look at the people commenting that didn’t vote for Trump in 2016. I know Neo was skeptical of Trump in 2016. Why would it suddenly be unfair if President Trump’s supporters decided to sit out 2024 if they feel their candidate was treated unfairly by the GOP. At this point, Trump is the only candidate that could get the nomination and possibly win.

    There is enough skepticism about DeSantis’ position on foreign policy/trade at this point. I’m not sure he is ready to face the onslaught 24/7 by the left.
    Trump’s ego acted as a buffer to the attacks. I don’t think most people could stand the abuse over the long term. At some point it drains you’re will.

    Another factor is DeSantis’ family. I’m not sure it’s fair to them. His time will be divided 99% running vs. 1% to steal a minute or two with his children.

    As to his mild insult of DeSantis (DeSanctimonious), really? That’s a love tap.

    Possibly a position as Secretary of State in a DeSantis administration might be a sufficient carrot.

    As to polls comparing candidates at this point, we’ve seen in the last couple of weeks how reliable they are.

  77. It would be fun for Trump to offer the GOP a pledge that he won’t run for office in 2024, if McConnell makes a pledge that he won’t for re-election and McCarthy makes a pledge to step down from his leadership role. The GOP likes their pledges when it is about controlling Trump. Turn the tables on them.

  78. Brian E:

    People who comment on blogs are not typical of the electorate as a whole, and I wouldn’t draw conclusions based on the commenters here or elsewhere.

    However, although the pre-2016-election breakdown of opinions here was about half pro-Trump and half not liking him, the vast majority did vote for him them and even more voted for him in 2020, by which time he had proven an effective conservative president who got good results. Very few people here didn’t vote for him in 2020.

    And yet most of them are not at all keen on him now and wish he would not run. Even someone like McEnany, who certainly was a strong supporter and helper, seems to want him to back off at least for the moment.

    You write, “Why would it suddenly be unfair if President Trump’s supporters decided to sit out 2024 if they feel their candidate was treated unfairly by the GOP”. For the obvious reason – they’d be shooting themselves, the right, the US, and the world in the foot. It’s the old “burn it down” ploy, which I have long detested.

    Plus, those who label DeSantis GOPe are falling into an old old trap, and some on the right are trying to stir them up and divide the right. I have written about this quite a bit, and some of the links are included in my comment to Mallory at 4:57 today.

    And as I pointed out, most people on the right who didn’t like Trump held their noses and voted for him in 2016 and voted for him without having to hold their noses as hard in 2020. They knew it was far better than voting for Biden or enabling Biden’s victory by not voting at all; that was obvious. I would expect the same of even diehard Trump supporters in 2024, and especially if DeSantis is the nominee.

    You also write: “At this point, Trump is the only candidate that could get the nomination and possibly win.” That’s just your opinion, and I could not disagree more strongly.

  79. Ace had a post today about McCarthy, the Freedom Caucus and eventually DeSantis that was really good.

    DeSantis was one of the founding members of the Freedom Caucus. This criticism of him as some kind RINO GOPe stooge is really strange.

  80. there’s no need to make a decision now, for legal reasons,

    other candidates for a host of reasons, might want to do it now,

  81. huxley:

    It is indeed really strange. But there’s nothing like ye olde Big Lie to get the juices flowing.

    I first noticed this “DeSantis is a RINO tool” a while back at Conservative Treehouse. Good for clicks, good for traffic? Who knows. Some people get off on purity tests, however counter-productive, however destructive. I’m watched it happen for as long as I’ve been writing about politics. It a specialty of the right in particular.

  82. So, what if Trump had not supported anybody and just kept his mouth shut and those that lost – like OZ – still lost??
    Who would be blamed then?

    Was reading online a NY Post article where folks who actually voted for Hochul are pleading with her to fix the crime problem in NYC.
    What does this tell you about how folks think???
    They voted for the candidate that said the crime wave in NYC was being exaggerated, that it was not that bad.
    Assuming these people are not just stupid morons – yep, I know, this is a very big assumption – it tells us that people fall into patterns that literally controls their lives and that there really is not anything at all that will cause these people to even contemplate looking outside what they have programmed themselves to do.

    These are the sorts of people who if they were victims of a vicious attack by a life long criminal who was repeatedly arrested for felonies and promptly let go, would blame climate change or Trump or Fox News.
    They simply do not want to question their deeply held, lifelong belief system. That would be much too painful. Better to keep your head deeply in the sand.

    Speaking of Fetterman; just goes to show that if the democrats had put up a chimpanzee to run against OZ, democrat voters would have voted for the monkey.

  83. miguel cervantes:

    I think all this talk is because Trump said he’d be making some big announcement next Tuesday. All the scuttlebutt is that he will announce a 2024 presidential candidacy.

    I think that there is about a 10% chance he will say he won’t run. That’s not a large number, but I may be the only one saying there’s any such chance at all.

  84. JohnTyler:

    If they could train the monkey to sign “aye” and “nay” at the proper times, it would be ok I guess.

  85. If you support a candidate once are you therefore required to support them in any future election forever?

  86. see katie kur, keefums girl, pushing fetterman, as future presential material

    chimps are at least two standard deviations above democrat candidates,

  88. Neo,
    Republicans in 2016 that wouldn’t vote for the candidate Trump were shooting themselves in the foot, had Trump lost.

    I agree that were DeSantis to win the nomination, it would be ill-advised for diehard Trump supporters to sit the election out, but I get the impression that many of those supporters aren’t necessarily Republicans. Many are apolitical or disaffected blue collar democrats. DeSantis would have to win them over. I don’t think the process would be automatic.

    I’ll try and be clearer. Until I’ve seen policy positions by candidate DeSantis, I have no idea what those position are. Based on what he’s done so far as governor he appears to be a good social conservative. When DeSantis becomes a candidate for the Republican nomination, I’ll evaluate his foreign policy/trade/immigration positions.

    As to McEnany’s suggestion that President Trump delay announcing his candidacy until after the Walker runoff, I was watching her, and I didn’t see any indication that suggestion had any larger implications toward his candidacy. The same with Jason Miller, a former advisor that also called for Trump to delay his announcement until after the Georgia election.

    President Trump will possibly be indicted on some trumped up J6/MAL. I still support his candidacy given what he has done for the country and what the political establishment has done to him.

  89. That Ace post I mentioned above is worth checking out because it was mainly about what rule changes the Freedom Caucus is trying to get from McCarthy in exchange for their support of him as speaker.

  90. I’ll support Trump over DeSantis in 2024 in the primary, so far. But Trump has made more mistakes recently than previously, and if he continues doing so, I’d be willing to support DeSantis.

    But I don’t think DeSantis, despite being a “likely better president”, were he elected, would win. Because the low-info ex-Dem working class workers who don’t care so much about politics, or voting, won’t vote for him enough – not like they like Trump.

    And the GOPe has mostly failed to stop election fraud, but perhaps worse has allowed those born after 1991 (end of USSR) to be indoctrinated with acceptance of discrimination against Republicans, and ever-stronger demonization.

    Trump recently tweeted (or TruthSocial cross posted?) that in 2020 he got some 5.7 million votes in Florida, while DeSantis was re-elected with some 4.6.

    Yes, presidential elections get more voters to vote — but Trump brought out more Rep voters in 2020, and would likely do so in 2024. But likely also more Trump-hating Dem voters … who are almost as hysterical anti-Republican as they are anti-Trump.

    It was Bush Derangement Syndrome in 2004. Later it could be called Palin Derangement Syndrome, or Kavanaugh Derangement Syndrome (not quite Romney DS, tho). I call it Dem Derangement Syndrome — but most college educated folk are indoctrinated into it.

    And teachers … who teach the teens that read, like those who read TeenVogue, which I looked at to maybe better understand the teens.
    https://www.teenvogue.com

    Abortion IS an issue, but mostly the Dem message is accepted by Gen Z.
    Makes me think things have to get worse, maybe a LOT worse, before they get better. Including Reps losing, again, in 2024 – tho I hope not.

    DeSantis 2028! so so so very far away…

  91. Trump had his shot and he failed. He should have been prepared for the demoncrat fraud machine and he wasn’t. His brand peaked 1/6/2021. It is time to move on. Also, there is no way in hell the deep state will allow that man to get revenge on them up to and including assassinating him.

  93. Tom Grey:

    There is very little question in my mind DeSantis would be a better choice in 2024 than Trump, period. Would he win? I’m not sure any Republican can win, but if anyone could I think he could. He’s not the only non-Trump possibility, though, although I think he’s far and away the frontrunner.

    It’s a given that any GOP nominee will be attacked with great viciousness and by a wide group of people.

    However, Trump’s statement “that in 2020 he got some 5.7 million votes in Florida, while DeSantis was re-elected with some 4.6” is an excellent example of the divisive and I think stupid narcissism he’s starting to display more and more lately. Attacking DeSantis repels a whole bunch of people who like DeSantis but also like Trump, and his figures convince no one to support him and reject Desantis unless they already are in that position anyway. He’s making a stupid point, also. In 2020 it was a presidential election year and 10,965,776 votes were cast in Florida. Trump got 51.22% and Biden got 47.86%. It’s a win, but hardly a very impressive one. In 2022 it was a midterm year and of course turnout is not as high. The total is 7,711,268 (assuming all the votes have been counted, which I believe they have in Florida). DeSantis got 59.4% to Christ’s 40%. It it a highly impressive margin, far better than Trump’s. Trump’s remark demonstrates once again some of his worst traits: bragging and distorting the truth (not exactly lying) in order to try to puff himself up, in a situation where he really hasn’t got much of a point to make, all in order to hurt someone he sees as a rival. In this case, the rival is an up-and-coming potential star in Trump’s own party. Makes Trump look small and catty. Should alpha males say things that sound catty? I don’t think so; it’s not an alpha move of Trump.

  94. If Trump would pivot to presenting a positive agenda for what he wants to do with a second term and leave behind the anger about 2020, he’d be a very formidable candidate, and I imagine most people who comment here would vote for him enthusiastically. I would; so far, he shows little sign of making such a pivot.

  95. actually he did make positive statements at that rally in ohio for vance, fwiw, of course the press didn’t cover them in much detail,

    what was the affirmative positions that mccarthy set up, it was no contract for america, then they went bipartisan with the gun grab and the crimean shuffle,
    that was more mcconnell but still it reflected on the bases willingness to turn out,

  96. Griffin:

    That Trump note – if authentic, and I’m going to assume it is – surprises me not at all. It is pretty much what I would expect. His tragic flaw, as I said. Lashing out, sounding childish, in a narcissistic rage. I’m sorry this is happening to him, but I think it’s not surprising considering what he’s endured. I have compassion for him, but I think he’s become more alienating and destructive.

    I said Lear on the heath, and there’s some of that. I’m sorry to say it also reminds me somewhat of this.

  97. Remember 1948 when the Dixiecrats walked out of the Democratic Convention and nominated their own candidate for president. Harry Truman (the Democrat) still won.

    I don’t think we can say whether DeSantis or another Republican could win without Trump’s hearty endorsement. Trump definiately brings votes that the Republican isn’t going to get otherwise. He also drives votes away that would have otherwise been cast for the Republican candidate; and drives up turnout for Democrats.

    What is the net of (i) the votes that only come out if Trump endorses; (ii) the votes that a Trump endorsement drives away from Republicans; and (iii) the low propensity progressives who would only turn out to vote agianst Trump’s candidate? I don’t know, but it is not at all certain that the net favors Trump.

  99. It may be raining, but I’m not so sure that the 2024 sky has fallen, just not yet anyway.

    There is always time to panic; Castle Hyperbole wasn’t destroyed in a day.

    Call me old fashioned, but Ron DeSantis hasn’t claimed to be the Messiah, brickbats are low, you want to go lower? Bad on you.

  100. I realize most people have gotten something of Trump Fatigue, and I happily admit he has made that worse than it was already going to be due to his ego and temper, but I think many people fall into the same trap as the Left did in 2016 and personalize things too much. Ignoring that Trump was the Avatar and messenger, not the cause.

    Do I believe Trump “cost” is the Red Tsunami? No, not in the slightest. And neither do preliminary stats. ballotpedia puts his success rate in endorsements in the mid 70%s at the least. That is people who he endorses winning the General. That is not perfect but it never was going to be perfect, and it indicates a positive correlation. It also ignores many of his benefits and willingness to bury the hatchet (including some like with Kemp where I think it was undeserved and I personally would likely have been worse). He is not the silver bullet to our problems but he also is not the lodestone making us drown.

    Let’s also remember, as someone who has been around for a couple decades: there’s a pattern. If Trump was not on the table, they would go after whoever was. they likely would not attract the same level of flak or polarization as such, but they would likely not be anywhere near as effective. Anybody here remember BusHitler? Going after Maverick McCain and Palin? Romney’s binders? And now vilifying Cruz, DeSantis?

    This points to a much, MUCH more structural problem with our situation than personnel, and Trump is ultimately not the cause of that, or at least most of it. Which is why first priority needs to be quashing COVID lockdowns and cleaning up the voting system when and where we can. Nothing else matters half as much as that, and I really mean it. I have rightfully gotten a reputation as an anti-Putin Ukraine hawk, and that’s because I am, but the horrible truth is that I would willingly trade Ukraine to Putin and Strelkov’s Scum if I thought it would help us win our country back.

    (Spoiler Alert: it almost certainly would not and would most likely make our situation worse by further destabilizing the world and what remains of the West, including at here. While also giving the Left even more ammo to witch hunt us with the Putin Card).

    What is more, we know this can be done. It happened in Florida, and in direct response to some of this. We need to crank it up.

    Then we can focus on curtailing the Leftist dominance of the media. And all the while preparing for the worst.

  102. Funny how amazingly fast opinion on this page has changed.

    –Henry Mallory

    Perhaps I’m projecting my own position, but my impression is most participants have been supportive of Trump in the face of unfair attacks, but otherwise had various degrees of reservation, which have grown as Trump’s remarks have become less appealing and DeSantis has emerged as an increasingly viable alternative.

  103. Bauxite:

    Truman was already president at that time, heir to the popular FDR. Not only had Democrats controlled the presidency since 1932, but they had had overwhelming Democrat majorities in the House from 1933-1947 with a brief Republican majority during two early years of Truman’s first term, and then back to enormous Democrat majorities (with another brief switch in the 50s) from the late 1950s all the way to 1994. The Senate had a mostly similar pattern, with some slight differences.

    I see no analogy to Republican candidates today – any of them. Nor do I see an analogy to today’s evenly divided electorate, MSM completely in the tank for the Democrats, social media, methods of voting, and cultural breakdown.

  104. I’m hearing quite a lot of voices that tell me that they’d vote for Republicans were Trump to not be there (or not endorse them).
    It’s the same as 2 years ago, people voting for Biden because he wasn’t Trump who’d have voted for almost any other Republican candidate.

    The centrist base doesn’t like the radicals, and that goes for both parties. We’ve had people vote for Biden because he APPEARED less radical than did Trump. We now see people voting for Democrat candidates because the Republican one is endorsed by Trump when Biden’s a drooling corpse that’s not endorsed his party’s candidates.

  105. neo, in your article and many comments in the thread above, you have nailed it!!

    I have been an ever-Trumper since June 2016. At first because he was, and is, NOT Hillary. Then he was a fantastically good president, and that’s without even considering the degrees of difficulty viciously foisted on him by corrupt Democrats, CIA operatives, and FBI operatives.

    This morning a conservative friend emailed me to ask my feelings in response to Trump’s latest attack upon DeSantis. He said the thought Trump’s attack was plain awful. I first confirmed that the attack was real. Then I responded. Here is the response I sent to him and others that my friend had cc’ed:

    I think you’re being to kind, my friend.

    Trump is now breaking the 11th Commandment too frequently, extensively, and viciously. Even if everything Trump stated were absolutely completely true and devoid of both overstatement and understatement, it’s a statement that should not have been communicated to anyone.

    And, of course, DeSantis has been both a wonderful governor and a great campaigner – for himself and others.

    I’m not sure that Trump hasn’t now gone too far for me. He probably has. Trump had been inspirational. Now, what had been merely rough has devolved into something very, very sad.

    [Here I included a meme depicting a seated Trump with the words “They’re Not After Me, They’re After You. I’m Just In The Way.”]

    Trump had been a godsend, among other things being the vehicle that exposed the utter corruption of even previously trusted and admired federal departments. Maybe he can have an epiphany. Maybe . . . .

    I hope I’m not being too coy in expressing my extreme disappointment.

  106. Ira Siegel:

    Yes, that’s why I say that what is happening is tragic. I mean that in the classic sense.

  108. Turtler:

    I am in agreement with you. As I wrote: “I don’t believe that Trump ‘cost America the red tsunami.’” Would the reasons for Tuesday’s results were that simple, but it’s not even close to being that simple. It’s much much worse, and I also agree that the voting rule changes are a big part of it.

    I’ve been thinking about the election rules problems and writing about the subject since before the 2020 election. Trouble is – and I plan to write a big long post or maybe series about it in the not-too-distant future – it is almost impossible to change the system in the places that matter because they are not under the control of the right, and the left is determined not to change them. Without going into too much detail in this comment, I’ll add that to make the changes you need four elements in the practical sense: a Republican legislature to pass laws, a Republican governor to sign the bill and not veto it (Democrats will veto) or a veto-proof Republican majority in the legislature, an appeals court that is also conservative so they won’t strike it down because it’s supposedly discriminatory, and a Republican secretary of state. The states that need reform don’t have that, as far as I can tell, and therefore it will not happen. It happened in Florida because, as far as I know, all of those elements finally fell in place. If the right loses power there, the Democrats will reverse those gains.

    Swing states are key, but swing states rarely have all those elements in place. In Pennsylvania, if I recall 2020 correctly, GOP efforts to tighten things up were stopped by a very liberal appeals court. And because voting rules are determined by the states, I’m pretty sure (I would have to look it up to be sure; I’m doing this from memory at the moment) that SCOTUS doesn’t involve itself and a state appeals court is therefore the court of last resort.

    As far as whether the Republicans could pass a national law mandating these rules on a national basis if they ever got control of the legislature and the presidency, I don’t think it would fly for the same reason: the power is reserved to the states. They could try, but I think even the conservative judges would nix it for that reason. And remember HR1 that the Democrats tried to pass and couldn’t, because Sinema and Manchin wouldn’t nix the filibuster? If the Democrats ever get a slightly bigger majority and can bypass those one or two Democrats that might object, they will pass HR1 and mandate loose and fraud-friendly voting laws for the entire nation. That was the subject matter of HR1. You might say that the same conservative SCOTUS justices who would have said that Republican efforts to pass more restrictive laws on a federal level were an unconstitutional usurpation of the states’ power would strike down HR1 for the same reason, and I believe they would. But all the Democrats have to do is be a little patient and get more leftist judges in there, and I believe that then SCOTUS would allow a bill like HR1 to become law.

    I’m sorry to be so pessimistic. I’d love to have someone show me that I’m wrong about all of this. But that’s the way I’ve seen it for quite some time now. I am puzzled by people all over the right saying some version of “Republicans have to fix this! They haven’t even tried” when for the most part they have tried but can’t do the impossible.

    Just to take one example of a post I wrote about this sort of thing in the past, please see this. It goes into the importance of the secretary of state position and the judiciary, among other things. In some cases, even having Republicans in there isn’t enough; they must be conservatives and unafraid of accusations that they are racists who are suppressing minority votes.

  109. neo – I’m not saying that 2024 is like 1948, just citing 1948 to show that even a formal split of one of the major parties doesn’t preclude it from winning. I think your distinctions are correct.

    For 2024, though, I think there’s a plausible argument that Trump would not sink the Republican nominee. For one, we’ve more or less seen that movie already with Kemp and Raffensberger in Georgia. Trump’s base turned out for both of them. For another, I don’t think that Trump has shown the discipline to act strategically. For example, I think that Trump began going after DeSantis way too early. DeSantis is going to just ignore Trump for the next six or eight months until DeStantis launches his own campaign (assuming that he runs). By the time that DeSantis formally joins the campaign and engages with Trump, I suspect that a lot of people will just tune out “DeSantcimonous” and whatever other juevenile taunts that Trump launches at DeSantis.

    2024 isn’t likely to be the same as 1948, but I think there is a reasonble argument that it could yield the same result, or at least that the Republican Party Nominee could plausibly win the 2024 election even if Trump tries to sabotage him or her.

  110. Griffin- Trump’s recent quote reminds me of Captain Queeg in The Caine Matinee, “ ahh, but the strawberries, that’s where I had them…”

    I had been one of Trump’s fans, but now I actually feel sorry for him and agree with Hinderacker-

    “This would be an embarrassment coming from a twelve-year-old. Time to get Trump off the stage before he does further damage to our party and our country.”

  112. The next 2 years will only be worse.

    And if Joe runs, he’ll win again. They voted for Fetterman.

    Weekend at Bernies Part 2

  115. @neo Well said, and indeed one reason I lurk here is because you are one of the more even keeled and astute commenters on this.

    Unfortunately, I think the main paths on offer for us are Federal, one being Legislative and the other being Judicial. The former would amount to getting some kind of binding law (I’d love a constitutional amendment, but in current year?!?) dictating the criteria for voting and what is and is not to be allowed, along with enforcement to do it. That’ll be hard but I think it could be doable; the issue is holding control against the tide of fraud and partisan swings until it becomes accepted.

    The other big issue I see is coming back to the lawsuit venue. Namely, hitting the sort of 2020 state right lawsuit again. I’m not a big fan of the National Divorce talk, and for similar but stronger reasons to why I oppose leaving the UN (which would deprive us of our ability to be in the tent and sabotage most attempts to screw us originating from it). However, I do think that this sort of issue is precisely the thing that would jeopardize the union of states as founded and that would give standing to the likes of Texas complaining about other polities rigging their elections or at least being depravedly indifferent.

    This is a hard sell though, given what happened in 2020 as well as how it wasn’t touched up as much back in the bad old days of things like Tammany Hall, as well as the fact that any alignment of states suing for this will instantly be branded as Neo-Confederates trying to put *insert token minorities* back in chains (nevermind whether or not they ever were in chains to begin with). But it is the main avenue I see from here, either in pushing back in a way that MIGHT get this fixed, or in at least outlining the reasons for such a National Divorce or future statehood breakaways from established states (such as say Cascadia or inland California going the way of West Virginia to the Left dominated littoral).

  116. Turtler:

    I think it would require an amendment, because any federal bill would be declared unconstitutional (at least, that’s my suspicion). And I don’t think there’s enough broad support to pass an amendment, although I’d love for it to be tried.

    There was a lawsuit from Texas back in 2020 that went like this:

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton today filed a lawsuit against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in the United States Supreme Court. The four states exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to justify ignoring federal and state election laws and unlawfully enacting last-minute changes, thus skewing the results of the 2020 General Election. The battleground states flooded their people with unlawful ballot applications and ballots while ignoring statutory requirements as to how they were received, evaluated and counted.

    “Trust in the integrity of our election processes is sacrosanct and binds our citizenry and the States in this Union together. Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin destroyed that trust and compromised the security and integrity of the 2020 election. The states violated statutes enacted by their duly elected legislatures, thereby violating the Constitution. By ignoring both state and federal law, these states have not only tainted the integrity of their own citizens’ vote, but of Texas and every other state that held lawful elections,” said Attorney General Paxton. “Their failure to abide by the rule of law casts a dark shadow of doubt over the outcome of the entire election. We now ask that the Supreme Court step in to correct this egregious error.”

    Elections for federal office must comport with federal constitutional standards. For presidential elections, each state must appoint its electors to the electoral college in a manner that complies with the Constitution. The Electors Clause requirement that only state legislatures may set the rules governing the appointment of electors and elections and cannot be delegated to local officials. The majority of the rushed decisions, made by local officials, were not approved by the state legislatures, thereby circumventing the Constitution.

    The lawsuit was thrown out by SCOTUS for lack of standing:

    “Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections,” the court wrote in an unsigned ruling Friday evening.

    I think SCOTUS didn’t take the case because they were afraid it opened the door to endless challenges to election integrity.

    Legal experts warned that if Texas succeeded, the case would set a dangerous precedent of allowing states to intervene in one another’s affairs — and allowing courts to overturn settled, certified election results.

  117. Neo- actually I did see your comment at 7:46 but didn’t click on the link- what a great scene! I loved at the end when Bogart suddenly stops in the middle of his rant and seems to understand how crazy he sounds. I wonder if that could happen to Trump?

  118. This is a psych op. Trump attacked Desantis because he sees all the reports. Unfortunately Trump is under constant attack and pressure.

    I’m tired of the GOP blaming their failed get out the vote on Trump. The party leadership managed the elections and the funding. They didn’t tighten up or figure out how to deal with mail in ballots.

    Trump is declaring his run. What type of blood bath does the GOP want? The Dems are going to make it harder and harder for any accountability while their cities are swamped in crime and homelessness.

    Let’s face facts, violence against the dissents or republicans while increase. The IRS is coming after the middle class and republicans. Too many people think the genetic therapy abstainers shouldn’t receive medical care and desire violence.

  119. I’ve been saying this for over a decade…almost two decades now.

    The US is done. I’m not saying that it’s all going to come crashing down tomorrow. The death throes will take awhile before the beast finally stops breathing, but we’re definitely over the tipping point.

    We’ve had 3 or 4 generations now educated in a system that doesn’t teach them the history, accomplishments and functioning of our society, it teaches them that our society is corrupt, horrible and needs to fall. Heck, the democrats say “the Republicans are a threat to our democracy” and the majority of Americans buy it because they don’t understand that our government isn’t a democracy and never was. In fact, the founding fathers argued vehemently against and fought very hard to prevent us from instituting a democracy. For good reason.

    The majority of Americans these days live in cities or their suburbs. Urbanites are inherently dependent. They learn dependency from birth. They cannot grow their own food, pump their own water, burn their own trash. They have to ask permission to do anything on their own property. Heck, if they live in an HOA, they can’t even choose the color of their own house. That’s slowly creeping into the rural areas with the wetlands and environmental and waterways regulations, but in the cities, you can’t sneeze without getting a half dozen permits, hiring licensed contractors and paying to have the kleenex inspected after you’re done.

    Most urban dwellers wouldn’t know how to even begin to do things for themselves even if they wanted to. And they like it that way; it’s much easier than doing for themselves. Being an adult and accepting responsibility for the well being of oneself and one’s family is hard. It’s much easier to farm out all the hard stuff…then you can blame someone else when it all goes wrong.

    Anyway, this is already long enough and the problems are way deeper than can be explored in a blog post comment, but the point is, none of it matters at this point. We’re past the tipping point and it’s just a matter of time. Trump was a delaying action but the endgame is inevitable at this point. We’re outnumbered and becoming moreso every day.

  120. I’m sorry folks, I don’t buy the explanation that Trump’s attacks on DeSantis indicate that Trump has somehow changed or cracked under pressure. This is who he’s always been. Trump is a one-trick pony. He attacks, mostly with crude, juvenile taunts. That’s what he did to Jeb!, that’s what he did to Cruz and Rubio, that’s what he did to McCain, that’s what he does to McConnell, that’s what he did to Hillary, to Pelosi, to Schiff, and so on.

    I think some of us on the right focus on more than we should on whether we like the targets or think that the targets deserve it. (Some of them do!) But Trump has never discriminated based on ideology or party. He just hits people who get in his way. Was there any ideological or party-based justification for Trump to demean Ted Cruz’s wife or question the honor of Cruz’s father? No, Cruz was just in Trump’s way. Now DeSantis is in Trump’s way. Trump hasn’t changed. Not one bit. This is what he is. This is what he does.

    Trump’s interests aligned with those of the political right for a time. He undeniably won great victories for the right, both in terms of policy and in demonstrating that the right need not cower before the left. That time is over.

  121. My greatest fear in all this is that people learn the wrong lessons from this single point in time … and that, as a result of rejecting Trump, the party hacks, donors. and conslutants will again be able to sway those like DeSantis who appear to “get it” … to turn away from confronting the dishonest, go back to tickling ears to “win”, and end up impotent with respect to interdicting the Left’s threats to liberty and life.

    That is basically what happened to my first choice in 2016, Scott Walker.

    The real problem is not Trump, though he has his human faults. Neither is it fraud, though it should never be ignored.

    The real problem is the presence of millions of citizens who have been led to sell their common sense short and instead submit their lives to the lies of social technocracy and the elites who dominate it.

    It will take confrontation to break that.

  122. On the subject of crude attacks. I think Kari Lake is an undeniable talent based on the way that she handled the left and the press (but I repeat myself). Unfortunately, she’s wasted all that by emulating Trump. She said a few days before the election that she didn’t want any McCain Republicans to vote for her. She was running in Arizona for pity’s sake! A few thousand of those McCain Republicans would have put her over the top. Instead, her political career is likely over now before it even began.

  123. Jester Naybor – I share your concern, but don’t downplay the need to win. We can be an ideologically pure, out-of-power minority in a country hurdling further and faster to the progressive left. Or we can play a long game and deal with political reality. I prefer the latter.

  124. One last thought on Jester Naybor’s point – the Tuesday election also shows that serious conservatives can govern from the right and still win – see Kemp, DeSantis and even (to a lesser extent) DeWine. If we associate conservative governance with competance and successful policy, we’ll do fine. If we associate conservative governance with bad flashbacks to junior high school bullies, we won’t.

  125. Bauxite, a concerned conservative, now turns to Kari Lake. Will Kristi Noem be next? We need polite politicians, not someone objectionable, who will stir things up.

  126. That’s all republicans need; to engage in another gunfight at the OK corral; Trump vs DeSantis with the townsfolk ( demokrats ) enjoying a front row seat.
    You can bet that each / every comment flung at the other will be recorded and re-played a billion times during the actual dem vs repub campaign for president.

    Speaking of DeSantis – whom I really like – a few NY residents I know consider DeSantis is a right wing extremist .
    This is the message the propaganda arm of the demokrat party has been giving for the last several years.
    Nothing new about that.
    And nothing new about the fact that about 50% of all voters believe EVERYTHING the media says; they question nothing.

    (If you really really want to see brainwashed people, chat it up with a regular TV news watcher who also reads the NY Times.
    And what do I mean by brainwashed??
    Ask them which of Trump’s policies they found most disagreeable; their answer will be Russia Russia, his hair, his mouth, his abrasive personality or his lies.
    Then ask them to provide an example of a lie. Their response, ” I can’t think of any right now.” )

    If one is to cast blame because election results were disappointing, it is the voters who must be blamed.
    I do not know how this can be fixed.

  128. Sarah Hoyt nails it.

    “you’re treating the results as though they were perfectly legit. Has everyone gone insane?”

    Those who seize on fraudulent results to jump on their favorite hobby horse and ride have completely wrecked their own credibility. When you embrace fraud as if it were fact, you expose yourself as a fool. When you assess blame that isn’t deserved, you expose yourself as a mean-spirited liar and slanderer.

    Trump is the ultimate Goldstein. Democrats smeared him relentlessly. Now small, ugly liars from the right insist on joining in flogging him for election results they don’t like. It’s disgusting.

    Trump is flawed. I don’t want him to run in 2024. I prefer DeSantis. Have for a long time. A preference for DeSantis or a distaste for Trump’s personality is not an excuse to seize on fraud and lies to cast blame. Lying and slandering are ugly. Let the Democrats have a monopoly on it.

  129. ” We now see people voting for Democrat candidates because the Republican one is endorsed by Trump when Biden’s a drooling corpse that’s not endorsed his party’s candidates.”

    I’m sure that for many such voters, they would have some other rationalization for not voting Republican – but many Reps easily accept “it’s Trump’s fault”, so the Dem voters use it, and might even believe it of themselves, falsely. See Daniel Williams on rationalization:
    https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2022/09/05/the-focus-on-misinformation-leads-to-a-profound-misunderstanding-of-why-people-believe-and-act-on-bad-information/
    “We are desperate to view the world in ways that reflect favourably on our communities and that protect our reputation and status within them.

    When this happens, the result is almost always an emergent marketplace of rationalisations. Ambitious individuals and firms compete to produce intellectual ammunition for society’s political and cultural factions. In return for their often-intense cognitive labour, the winners of such competition receive attention, status, and financial rewards.”

    The media assists in this rationalization process; highlights the failed Trump endorsees, and underplays his successes. The GOP is becoming a Party of Trump policies. While each election seems “the most important, ever”, the long game involves the non-college educated workers voting Rep for normal policies.

    There is little to no evidence that a non-Oz GOPe rich white guy Rep would have beaten a Dem in a state where a Dem who’s been dead for weeks wins.

    Where was the non-Trump endorsed Red wave?

    It’s too soon for me to exclude Trump, but his insults of DeSantis, who did NOT insult Trump first and in fact did well for Reps, are very much, as Neo noted, NOT alpha-male. Much more post-alpha — where in 2016 his insulting other Reps seemed much better targeted.

    It’s important to track the mistakes of those one supports, and support them less, until one stops supporting them.
    In theory. In practice it’s more 1 or 0 binary for most folks.

  130. Brian E at 6:37 makes an excellent point about all the Trump supporters who aren’t necessarily Republicans.

    One of the biggest logic fails by the Trump bashers is that they blithely assume that all Trump voters will continue to vote for the GOP. The bashers hate him so much that they are unwilling to give him any credit for the extraordinary, unprecedented successes that he is responsible for.

    The best path for us going forward would be for Trump to work to bring his voters to the GOP. Beating the hell out of him with lies and slanders seems rather unlikely to help that happen.

  131. om – Kari Lake, running in Arizona, disclaimed the voters of a man from her party who won six statewide elections in Arizona, including as recently as 2016. A significant portion of the Republican electorate in Arizona are, quite literally, McCain Republicans.

    Lake’s error wasn’t a lack of manners, it was a lack of basic political sense.

  132. I live in Colorado. Add to that what he said about Joe O’dea losing. How can he be so stupid as to be glad that Bennet won. And I think Trump was the best president in my lifetime. That includes Reagan. But I am now coming to the conclusion that he has lost it. Most of the problem stems from the success of the media portraying him as corrupt. but some of things he says help that portrayal. It is sad.

    But if we blame the losses on him, we will miss the reality fo what happened. Also I don’t believe the comment that we had bad candidates. I think Neo is right that the chickens (education) are coming home to roost.

  133. McCain the Maverick? And how would you actually know how McCain is viewed in 2022, which is not 2016? Channeling Nostradamus or just throwing orange paint around?

  134. There is a Psyop to blame Trump for the Red Puddle by the eGOP.

    The 11th commandment of Gop to not attack each other is something Trump should do more. DeSantis was weak in his response to the raid on Trump. There is a lot of never Trump support for DeSantis.

    I’m noticing a lack of ownership by the Gop party Ronda McDaniel (Romney), McConnell, and McCarthy for this debacle.

    Gut Feeling – overall Trumps support helped the GOP more this cycle, than hurt it.

    Funding Gaps I blame on the GOP Party:

    Warnock’s campaign has spent $135.8 million, while Walker’s campaign has spent $32.4 million, according to data from the Federal Election Commission.

    https://news.yahoo.com/runoff-election-georgia-may-decide-141409864.html

    And in NY Hochul spent 7X her opponent.

    Oz is super pro Vax, that may have also impacted gop turnout.

    Another Gut Feeling – if electronic voting machines are ended, there would be a noticeable swing in the GOP vote. It’s very suspicious the large lack of interest by the gop leadership in this.

  135. “the Gramscian march through our schools, entertainment, and churches, as well as the amplifying effect of social media.”

    This has produced results that may be impossible to remedy.

  137. Oh good grief Ray SoCal. It doesn’t take a heck of a lot to jump to the front of the parade in, say the Alabama Senate race (although Trump managed to botch that the first time around too).

    How many seriously contested races did his endorsees win? Not 93%. Not even 50%. Not even close.

  138. Bauxite, if I was a purist I wouldn’t have voted for Trump in 2016.

    Don’t downplay the fact that Leftists are intellectually-dishonest moral relativists and passive-aggressive, ready to turn any extension of civility on our part against us to justify and impose their One True Way upon all.

    When they talk about “our democracy” so nobly, their definition of the term requires SUBMISSION to the Pedestaled Elite whose position on those pedestals is “the will of the majority” … whether they are right or wrong when it comes to you and me.

    We have tried civility – they run right over top of us with a smile.

    The conslutants who counsel civility and “statesmanship” for candidates are paid to win elections. But they are not accountable for the quality of governance BETWEEN elections. We cannot tolerate a return to their counsel.

  139. I’ll admit I find it amusing to make a cat chase a laser pointer, but I don’t find it amusing at all when people do it to humans, or when humans fall for it.

    This Trump/DeSantis thing is that. What miniscule fraction of the voting public follows TruthSocial? None of us would even know about this if the media–who, I hope we haven’t forgotten, is working for the Democrats–and Establishment voices like National Review didn’t gin it up.

    Trump is not my first choice, but as I’ve said repeatedly the actual 2024 candidate is really low down on what the 2024 priorities need to be if there’s to be any hope of any kind of gain. All this distraction is very useful to our enemies. The media is orchestrating and feeding this conversation and it’s dumb to go along.

  140. It appears the battle lines in the Republican party are being drawn. It was inevitable, as President Trump refuses to fade away. I would suggest we get through this election before starting on the next one.

    Don’t lose sight of this. Do we want the Republican party to be an America First party or a Wall Street First party? President Trump has been working for the last two years to make it an America First party. Once the dust settles, Kevin McCarthy might not be Speaker.

    “When it comes to general-election candidates endorsed by Trump, the former president’s win rate is relatively high: at least 68% on the Senate side, with four races yet to be decided, and at least 87% on the House side, with 12 outstanding races.

    Trump’s Senate win rate could go as high as 88% if all his remaining candidates win; if only the candidates who are currently leading win, his rate would be 76%. His House rate would tick up to 90% if the five candidates he endorsed who are currently leading win.“

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/here-s-how-candidates-endorsed-by-trump-performed-in-the-midterm-elections/ar-AA13VaPz

    President Trump’s endorsements have done well, despite Mitch McConnell actively working against some of them.

    Before we start the blame game, let’s spend some time analyzing what actually happened.

  142. @TJ: I was going to mention that.

    On prime time they just aired a drama in which DeSantis is accused of raping a male staffer. Now according to the show, he didn’t actually do it.

    But they are already creating an association in the mind of the public between DeSantis and homosexual rape. It was just a TV show, and it was also just a TV show that Sarah Palin “could see Russia from my house”.

    Way more people watched that show than follow Trump on TruthSocial. And here we are arguing about which candidate we prefer to see tagged as a homosexual rapist that will maximize our chances in 2024!

    We’ve got much more, and harder, work to do.

  143. The same episode had a law firm attacked by white supremacist snipers. As one critic put it, “When someone in the future wonders what it was like to be alive right now, The Good Fight has to be one of the first pieces of entertainment you’d show them.”

    Yeah, this the reality our enemies are creating, and we’re arguing about which Republican Emmanuel Goldstein we plan to cast into their drama.

  144. I can’t believe this smear – wow.

    DeSantis should weaponize the accusation and use it to hurt Paramount and all the associated big time, and make them radioactive. Make them pay. Trump would be smart if he supports DeSantis in this.

    Dumb advice – usual eGOP playbook, we should not hit back, since that’s uncouth…
    “DeSantis would be best left to ignore this attempt to smear him.” – Ed Driscoll

  145. When people say, “Trump cost us the Red Tsunami” they ought to clarify whether they mean that anything Trump actually did cost Republicans votes or whether Trump is just the bloody shirt the Democrats wave to rally voters and bring them to the polls even if Trump had said nothing and done nothing this year. They should also be more specific in general about which Trump-supported candidates and which Trump actions they believe cost Republicans votes.

    Republican candidates (and Republican voters) haven’t yet learned how to hitch two horses to their wagon — MAGA and not so MAGA — and steer the thing. Of course, the Democrats and the media were doing their best to force candidates to choose one or the other (and the Democrats were even supporting Trump Republicans in the primaries who were unlikely to win in the general). Of course, it’s not necessarily a bad thing that Republicans allow more freedom of opinion within the party than Democrats do. But until Republicans figure out a way to work together, they will continue to disappoint.

    Yes it looks like Trump is self-destructing, and yes, he always had this petty streak in him. But I’m not that impressed with non-Trump or anti-Trump conservatism, and apparently voters may not be either. MAGA candidates could come across as eccentric and crazy, but conventionally conservative candidates were often uninspiring and had problems of their own.

  146. TJ:

    If you think the “Trumping” of DeSantis just began, you’re way behind the times. It’s been going on for ages now. Too tedious to list all the things they’ve said about him, but one example – when he flew illegal immigrants out of Florida and to other places – was that he was a kidnapper and seriously should be charged with kidnapping.

  147. Brian E; Ray SoCa:

    Were the majority of those Senate seats that were won by Trump picks in seats that were threatened? I don’t think so; most were pretty safe. It’s the potential pickup swing states seats that mattered: Pennsylvania in particular, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, NH, etc..

  148. Frederick:

    Our enemies may love it, but it’s not been started by them. I first noticed it at certain conservative websites quite a while before the midterms – the attempt by very strong Trump supporters to destroy DeSantis. I wrote about it here at the time. What’s more, it follows the pattern of similar civil wars on the right, which is an old story. The right is very susceptible to that. It’s something I’ve fought against for a long time, but here it is again, and Trump is definitely helping it along.

  149. Abraxas, I think it’s more along the lines of, as you say, Trump is the bloody shirt the left waves to turn out its voters. It’s not fair, but it’s what they do, and will do.

    But Trump’s post-election attacks on DeSantis and now Youngkin are all self-inflicted wounds.

  150. @neo:it’s not been started by them

    They amplify it and keep it going. Giving it our time and attention serves their purposes.

    The right is very susceptible to that.

    It’s not a law of human nature that it should be so, any more than it is written into the rules of basketball that the Globetrotters always beat the Generals. It is so because it serves the interests of those who have until now dominated the institutions of the Right that it should be so and because Republican voters allow it to work.

    Trump scared the bejeezus out of these people and what is worse, threatened their livelihoods. Hence, they prefer to burn down the Republican elections in 2022 and 2024 rather than see the Republican voters elect people who will change things.

    It will continue to work until Republican voters clean house and rebuild their institutions with people who want to change things instead of grift.

    There is an equivalent dynamic on the Left, but because their fraction of the Uniparty has the governing majority, the Left gets its way a lot more often.

  151. yes the golem, the preacher who is a slum lord, the chinese finger puppet who would be a guest villain on law and order (mark kelley didn’t have a heads up about the the tucson shooters?) they are stealing arizona and nevada as we speak,

    mcconnell deprived blake masters of funds, thiel had to chip in, he gave money to murkowski, he blanket derided the whole slate in the fall, how is he not responsible as he was in 2010, and 2012

  152. Frederick:

    Of course it’s amplified by the left. The love it, and why shouldn’t they?

    Nor did I say that these civil wars on the right are some sort of inevitability based on human nature, although of course they are consistent with human nature. What I have said for as long as I’ve been blogging (over 15 years) is that they are constant on the right and go way way back. This is an observation and not an explanation.

    The “burn it down” folks exist in both wings of the civil war on the right. I have observed this for as long as I’ve been blogging, too. They have different motives and different methods, though.

  153. were down to a trickle of seats, because the census undercounted the red districts by a factor of 20 only desantis really challenged this garbage maps,

  154. with the right it’s metaphorical, with the left it’s literal, now the percentage of youts voting democrats is actually down 1% from 2020, to 11%, so the deprogramming will still be necessary

  155. neo, I usually agree with most of what you say, but I think there is something big you are missing, and that is that virtually everything you see in media or online is marketing. I don’t know when that started being true, maybe when I was growing up in the 1980s it was only 10% true but nowadays it’s more like 90%.

    So what you’re seeing, what you’re reading, it’s not there because it’s important or true or newsworthy. It’s there because it influences you to do something or believe something that benefits the person who put it there. It may or may not be true; that doesn’t matter. It’s there to influence you.

    Whether it’s straight news or editorials or TV shows doesn’t matter. They are not trying to give the audience what it wants in order to earn advertiser dollars. That was the 1950s model. Nowadays, they ARE advertisers, all the time, spending their own dollars to influence the public. They are giving the audience what they WANT the audience to want. (This explains the mystery of woke media companies deliberately making woke crap even when the core audience gets mad. They can’t hemorrhage money forever, obviously, but the point of marketing is to get attention, and bad attention can also be effective.)

    And to the extent we don’t see it for what it is, to that extent they are succeeding. This Trump spat is a perfect example. No one would ever have heard about it if it were not the desire of the Uniparty that we spend our time talking about this now.

  156. walker was outspent 5/1, on top of the media armada against him, why a hamas loving militant gets this type of resources,well it says something about their psychology,

    we saw their feral nature in 2000, in portland and minneapolis and well I don’t need to elaborate, they mean to destroy this country, like xi’s proxy army would do,

  157. Neo,
    My comment was responding to Bauxite.

    But to your question:

    “On the Senate side, three of the eight candidates Trump endorsed in competitive races have been declared winners by AP: Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, J.D. Vance in Ohio and Ted Budd in North Carolina. Given Mehmet Oz’s loss in Pennsylvania and the three outstanding Senate races, the former president’s endorsement-to-win rate could at best be 87.5%, but if only the currently leading candidates win, it would be 50%.”

    We tend to focus on the horserace aspect though, and not the strategy. President Trump’s strategy to endorse candidates that supported America First policies is more important than the actual number of wins, in my estimation.

    Trump didn’t endorse Bolduc until after he had won the primary. The headwinds Oz faced would likely have affected McCormack. Laxalt is likely to win, Masters may win, and Walker has an uphill battle, but if McConnell and Kemp get seriously behind him can win.

    Everyone send him money.

  158. Brian E:

    I think that winning is more important, actually. One has to be strategic and not endorse candidates that don’t match what the state is willing to vote for.

    But Trump didn’t lose NH. John Sununu lost NH by not running. All the other candidates were not going to win. Bolduc was an especially poor fit – and I believe his primary win was helped along by Democrats changing registration temporarily and voting for him, knowing that he was a poor candidate. But Bolduc didn’t really matter; both of the leading GOP contenders were just terrible candidates. I wrote about it at the time.

  159. Frederick:

    No, I’m not naive about that.

    My point is that the attacks on DeSantis from the right began not in the regular media but on some blogs on the right – particularly Conservative Treehouse – that have a wide readership. It was prior to the election. What was their motive – clicks, perhaps. But it was not some MSM thing, and Trump is certainly playing a huge role now, too, and maybe even back then. Now he put out his anti-DeSantis statement to enormous numbers of supporters. The MSM didn’t cause the word to get out; he did. Trump knew it would get to a lot of people and he wanted it to.

  160. neo, I assume you remember the shark summer in 2001. Sharks had been attacking people in the same way they had always done, EXTREMELY rarely, but the media decided they wanted to blow that up (and then we had 9/11 and everyone forgot about sharks). It sounds like you’re saying “but the sharks started it, and sharks really do sometimes attack people”. They did and do, but that’s not why it got blown up at that time. It got blown up at that time to serve the media’s purposes, not the sharks’, and the timing had nothing to do with anything the sharks were doing.

    I see what you’re saying about where it began, but very very few people ever are talking about anything said on Conservative Treehouse or on TruthSocial. “Wide” readership, in blog terms, is incredibly niche in real terms. (FWIW I think CT’s motives are pretty much sincere, as I think yours are, I don’t think they push clickbait any more than I think you do.)

    Your post included links from CNN. CNN is not normally writing up what they see on Conservative Treehouse. They saw something in the wild that they could use, and are blowing it up. And so you’re seeing it talked about among the big media players, because it’s useful for what they want to do. They are not generally talking about the stuff CT talks about on a weekly basis and this is just the latest thing, right? And National Review is not talking about it because they are avid followers of Conservative Treehouse and every week they talk about what they see there, right?

  161. A quick bio:
    “Was born on September 14, 1978, in Jacksonville, Florida.

    [1] He is of Italian descent.

    [2] His family moved to Orlando, Florida, before relocating to Dunedin, Florida, when he was six years old.

    [3] In 1991, he was a member of the Little League team from Dunedin National that made it to the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

    (4] After graduating from Dunedin High School in 1997, he attended Yale University. He was Captain of Yale’s varsity baseball team and joined the Delta Kappa Epsilon Fraternity.

    [5] On the Yale baseball team, he was an outfielder; as a senior in 2001, he had the team’s best batting average at .336.

    [6] He graduated from Yale in 2001 with a B.A. Magna Cum Laude in History.

    [7] He then spent a year as a History Teacher at the Darlington School.

    [8] He attended Harvard Law School, graduating in 2005 with a Juris Doctor Cum Laude.

    [9] He received his Reserve Naval Officer’s commission and assignment to the Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAG) in 2004 at the U.S. Naval Reserve Center in Dallas, Texas, while still a student at Harvard Law School.

    [10] He completed Naval Justice School in 2005.

    [11] Later that year, he received orders to the JAG Trial Service Office Command South East at Naval Station Mayport, Florida, as a Prosecutor.

    [12] In 2006, he was promoted from Lieutenant, Junior Grade to Lieutenant. He worked for the Commander of Joint Task Force-Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO), working directly with detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Joint Detention Facility.

    13] In 2007, he reported to the Naval Special Warfare Command Group in Coronado, California, where he was assigned to SEAL Team One and deployed to Iraq with the Troop surge as the Legal Advisor to the SEAL Commander, Special Operations Task Force-West in Fallujah.

    [14] He returned to the U.S. in April 2008, at which time he was reassigned to the Naval Region Southeast Legal Service.

    [15] The U.S. Department of Justice appointed him to serve as an Assistant U.S. Attorney at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Middle District of Florida.

    [16] He was assigned as a Trial Defense Counsel until his honorable discharge from active duty in February 2010.

    [17] He concurrently accepted a reserve commission as a Lieutenant Commander in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps of the US Navy Reserve.

    [18] He was awarded the Bronze Star Medal, the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, and the Iraq Campaign Medal.

    [19 He represented Florida’s 6th Congressional District in the US House of Representatives from 2013 to 2018.

    The former Navy Lt. is Ron DeSantis, Gov. of Florida.”

    Quite a resume. Color me impressed.

  162. Neo – I’m not sure an establishment candidate would have done better in the states you mentioned.

    Maga / Trump and the eGOP should have worked together. Instead, it seems you have to pick one for support.

    Sens. Martha McSally of Arizona and Kelly Loeffler of Georgia were both establishment candidates, that got trounced. Plus the Co Gop Senate candidate.

    Oz was a flawed candidate. Jab waffler and carpetbagger. Plus a gop candidate for Governor that was unelectable, and won the primary with Democratic help. Plus the early voting / fraud issue.

    Nevada I’m suspicious of fraud, since 2020 had a lot of issues.

    NH – I have no idea.

    Az – we will see. Voting is suspicious, and eGOP support / funding was lacking.

    Ga – Democratic Senator had 3X the campaign money. Again, a lack of eGOP support.

    I’m still not understanding the hatred of Trump by the GOP Establishment. They seem to hate him more than the Democrats. My guess is they hate him, because he showed they are a bunch of empty shirts more focused on pleasing their large donors, than their voters.

    And of course the Democrats hate Trump.

    And no, I don’t like Trumps attacks on DeSantis and the Va Governor.

    Of course the only coverage of Trump allowed, is when he does something negative.

  164. Ray SoCa … I’m still not understanding the hatred of Trump by the GOP Establishment.

    This graphic explains one reason why:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/32a98764493db6641fca61edd3c1c888607e447fe0f99a6ac63ec8917cbf51fd.png

    Another reason: their attitude is that winning is all that counts – not the quality of governance between elections. Trump showed that the quality of governance can be elevated without the pandering they rely upon to win.

  165. JJ, what I’m not seeing in your biography of Governor DeSantis is any mention of experience meeting a payroll, surviving a recession, taking a risk expanding a business.
    If my company had a softball team, I would definitely want him on the team.
    Ok, OK, that was uncalled for.

    But the experience President Trump has had makes him uniquely qualified as President.

    Don Surber, after the kerfuffle over DeSanctimonious posted this, from a reader:

    “Thank you, Donald Trump”

    “…He wrote, “Trump gave us a conservative majority SCOTUS….tax cuts…..lowest unemployment in recorded history, especially for POC….Started no new military ‘conflicts’….Jerusalem embassy….world respect…USA out of climate accords….tough on China…. need I go on? Continue to Refresh the memory? Remind who brought us to the dance?
    “Ungrateful bastards. ?Fetterman’s got a legit reason for memory loss.??.”

    No presidential candidate was more hated, despised and ridiculed by the media. Lincoln comes closest but at least a few major newspapers had his back. Trump had no one. Not even Fox. Remember those dreadful Fox All-Star panels? Charles Krauthammer and Jonah Goldberg battled over who could smear him the best. It was the Fox version of The View with three men and a dame.”

    There are two years before the next election. There’s a year before campaigns begin in earnest. That’s a lifetime in politics.

    At this point, I’ll cut President Trump some slack.

    https://donsurber.blogspot.com/2022/11/thank-you-donald-trump.html#more

  166. Brian E:

    What do you think governors do? Take a look at DeSantis’ economic record as governor in tough times.

    Oh, and by the way, do you know how old DeSantis is? He recently turned 44. With all those other accomplishments, when would he have had time to also run a business? He’s too busy running the state of Florida and doing other impressive things.

  167. Frederick:

    Once Conservative Treehouse started talking about it, I suddenly saw it all over the comments sections of blogs on the right. Here, there, and everywhere. So it was the scuttlebutt among activists on the right spreading the word, and as far as I know it started at Conservative Treehouse on the right. I have little doubt it was amplified on Twitter and Facebook as well, although I don’t go much to those venues.

    It was big on the right if you pay attention. And I pay attention.

    Also, see things like this from back in September. Of course this is news that is going to be picked up:

    Former President Donald Trump has asked several of his donors to refrain from boosting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — who has emerged as one of the former president’s most formidable potential rivals in a GOP presidential primary matchup — according to The Washington Post…

    Per the newspaper’s report, the former president has tracked appearances made by DeSantis, while also monitoring the governor’s poll numbers.

    Trump has also taken the step of informing several donors who have also contributed to DeSantis to cease their support of the governor, telling them that the Florida Republican could be a potential 2024 rival, according to an individual tied to the donor world who spoke with The Post.

    Apparently the news got leaked that Trump was doing this and of course it got reported. Just about everything Trump does gets reported, and he knows that.

    By the way, if you want to read some previous discussions here on the anti-DeSantis campaign from the right, see this and the comments that follow, from mid-August. That seems to have been when it began. They were trying to sabotage DeSantis by labeling him a GOPe tool who would betray the right. Why? It’s interesting that this all happened around the same time that Trump was mad at his donors because they were contributing to DeSantis. And this was in the buildup to the 2022 election, in which DeSantis was running. You can find more discussion in parts of this thread from mid-September.

  168. Brian E:

    Mitt Romney is our man! But not Jeb! Nor was Dwight Eisenhower. Any other softball wisdom?

    Brandon has been running a family business (off the books) for quite some time, does that qualify? Jimmy Carter ran his family peanut farm, he was and is great, isn’t he?

  169. Neo,
    A degree in HISTORY? Well, at least it wasn’t PoliSci! Just kidding. Understanding history is crucial for a President.
    He did the minimum time in the Navy. There must be a story how a JAG lawyer received a Bronze Star for one tour in Iraq. That would be interesting.
    Served three terms in the House.
    One term as governor.
    Very ambitious. Like he’s checking off the boxes. Maybe he should serve a second term as Governor. Get some more experience. He’d still only be 48.
    I don’t think he’ll run in ’24 if Trump announces.

    So much for my critique of his resume.

    I do think the job of governor does translate to the presidency.

    But I do think having a career as politician doesn’t compare to owning and operating a business.

    I do look forward to reading Governor DeSantis’ platform should he decide to run.

  171. Brian E:

    Being a governor, and a successful one fiscally as well as otherwise, is experience that’s even more analogous to being a president than running a business.

    Did Churchill run a business? If so, I missed it. And no, I’m not saying that DeSantis is Churchill. Did Reagan run a business? If so, I missed it. (And no, DeSantis isn’t Reagan, yada yada yada.)

    You know which of the presidents in my lifetime had run a business prior to Trump? Why, Jimmy Carter! Fat lot of good it did HIM. And then there was George W. Bush as well as his father George H.W., and another favorite (no doubt) who didn’t become president, George’s brother Jeb. All ran businesses at some point prior to becoming presidents and governors.

    Business experience in and of itself doesn’t mean a whole lot, although combined with other qualities it can be a plus. But I submit that it’s a plus because it’s executive experience. The governorship is also executive experience, and it’s of a type that’s more easily transferable to the presidency. I would never consider running a business a prerequisite for the presidency, but I do look for successful executive experience and I think governorships are especially relevant forms of executive experience.

  172. Brian E:

    And by the way, there are far easier ways to “check off the boxes” than the path DeSantis took.

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