The last thing I’d criticize him for is COVID closures. Florida got over that nonsense faster than everyone else, including my own state, Texas, which didn’t do too badly outside the “blueberries in the tomato soup.”

mccain had not impressed me in the 2008 primaries, romney gave off a bad odor, Thompson seemed promising of course he was considered too soporific, from the people who would swoon on Obama of course Rudy had the worst crew since the Andrea Dorea, Mccain had decided to tank the election, see the jones memo, whose implementation had been handed to schmidt and wallace, some people saw what was at stake, of course you know how she was regarded,

Trump is a loser—2018, 2020, 2021, and 2022. Now he is spoiling it for everyone.

“That’s how we got” …..

The Spanish Inquisition.

Once again your analysis of recent (40+ years) US history is unique in your own special way.

I agree with both sides of the argument.
In the primary, candidates should bring up any valid question about their opponents’ qualifications and past records, preferably respectfully, and announcing beforehand that regardless of any considerations presented, all of the GOP field is superior to all of the Democrat field.

However, Trump is gonna Trump, and pot-boiling is his game, and if the rest of the candidates can’t stand the heat they should get out of the kitchen.
Their test is to point our why they would be a better President that The Donald without dissing his core supporters.

@ Brian E > “There may be a bigger reason Trump needs to be the nominee– to stave off an indictment/trial by the Biden/Obama cabal. Sending Trump to jail as a private citizen is one thing, jailing the opposition party Presidential candidate might be too much, even for the corrupt, evil jackals in Washington.”

A number of pundits have made that observation, and I agree with it.
However, I’m not putting any money on how low the Left will take the corruption bar.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with Trump campaigning vigorously for the election, because every natural-born American citizen over the age of 35 has that right.

Also, Trump really, really wants to win back his rightful second term.
Also, he likes pulling the media’s chain.
Also, he keeps the Democrats’ liabilities in the news.
Also, he points out problems with the other candidates that need to be addressed before they (possibly) become the nominee (note that this is a subject the Democrats need to work on).
Also, he gets a real kick out of the positive vibes at his rallies, so why not let the rock star do what all the other superannuated rock stars do?

And that’s what got us George W. Bush and Presidential candidates like John McCain and Mitt Romney. If Republicans want to be the majority party in the country, they’ve got to act like it. Brainless rubberstamping and following the leader is how the Democrats ended up with Biden and Kamala. And yeah, they won an election…but do you think it is ultimately going to work out well for them?

Don’t think it’ll come to that since they’ve refined their “methodology”, as shown in 2022, to flooding the zone with mail-in ballots, and if that’s not sufficient, then canceling significant numbers of GOP ballots—nipping them in the bud, as it were—as was recently demonstrated so successfully in AZ.

(We still can’t be exactly sure what happened in Georgia, but we CAN have a pretty good idea….)

‘Shutdown Don’ would be far more accurate if we are going to play these childish games.

“Since November, despite the criticism he faced at the time, Mr. Trump has periodically hit out at his potential rival, albeit to a relatively small audience. He posted his most recent innuendo about the governor on Truth Social, where he has just under five million followers. And he has insulted Mr. DeSantis in casual conversations, describing him as “Meatball Ron,” an apparent dig at his appearance, or “Shutdown Ron,” a reference to restrictions the governor put in place at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.”

Why should anyone believe the NY Times? Trump responded to this by posting on TruthSocial that he would never call DeSantis “Meatball Ron”, which the NY Post reported. It did allow Trump to call DeSantis “Meatball Ron” while denying he would ever call him “Meatball Ron”, so there is that.

And if he did call DeSantis “Meatball” in private– by an unnamed source (and the story doesn’t even claim that) “Meatball Ron” would most likely be an allusion to “Meatball” from All in the Family, not a dig on his appearance.

This is the fake news after all. I learned early on to ignore any media report about what Trump did or said. Invariably it turned out to be completely false, or distorted beyond recognition.