There’s not a lot of mystery here. At this point, every indication is that former President Donald Trump will announce his third presidential bid as soon as it makes sense from a campaign finance perspective to do so. When this happens, like it or not, most political analysts think he will win the 2024 GOP nomination similarly to how he won in 2016, not by having a majority from the get-go, but by consistently maintaining a larger and more dedicated base than his opponents.
Sure, some current polling indicates Trump’s support among the GOP dropping as increasingly more would like to see “someone other than Trump” be the nominee, but that won’t matter in a Republican primary. What WILL matter is that 30 percent - or whatever makes up Trump’s core GOP base come election time - is always going to be more than the 10-15 percent that could be garnered by any one of the 10-15 other possible candidates, and that’ll be more than enough to carry him across the finish line. In other words, get ready for another Donald J. Trump GOP nomination, a general election season of massive campaign rallies full of excitement and promise... followed by another devastating general election loss.
Now, even if you haven’t stopped reading in disgust at this point, many of you will probably still be angry with me, maybe even enough to call me a - gasp - *NeverTrumper* in the comments below. Fine, whatever. You’d be wrong about that though, just as you’d be wrong to think Donald Trump has a snowball’s chance in hell of defeating Weekend at Bernie’s, President Momala, or whatever other piece of Marxist/Leninist garbage the left trots out in 2024. I was among the staunchest anti-NeverTrumper conservative columnists writing in 2015 and 2016, and when Trump wins the nomination in 2024 I’ll support him, vote for him, and pray hard that he wins - knowing full well that nothing short of a divine miracle far surpassing 2016 would garner a victory.
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Are miracles possible? Sure, but they’re also exceedingly rare. Whatever happened in 2020, I think we can all agree that a miracle for conservatives wasn’t among them. What did happen, as you’ll recall, was a combination of individual voter fraud abetted by massive unsolicited mail-in balloting and officials driven to count them all with few if any checks or questions (to what extent, we’ll never know) AND the then-president of the United States driving record turnout ON BOTH SIDES, all resulting in an overwhelmingly damaging general election defeat.
Then, to make matters worse, instead of acting like a statesman and living to fight another day, like Nixon did in 1960, Donald Trump instead acted like a petulant child in an insane, two-month saga that ended with the January 6 Capitol riot, an unforced error and a dream-scenario for leftists looking for some false equivalence to ignore what they sanctioned all summer and paint conservatives as the ‘real insurrectionists.’ No, it wasn’t an insurrection, and yes, it’s been vastly overrated and overplayed by the left, but it also sealed off any chance of Trump avenging his loss in the minds of more than enough Americans to ensure the former president never sniffs elected office again.
Want to relive January 6 on your TV screen every single day of a campaign season four years later? I’m telling you, they will beat us with that dead horse until every suburban soccer mom in the country begs for mercy and posts a BLM banner on their social media profiles on the off chance that someone might think they are a dreaded ‘Trump insurrectionist.’ In truth, Democratic strategists would like nothing better than for Trump to run again. They are hoping for it, begging for it, and if they prayed, they’d be praying for it.
Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. I don’t like any of the above any more than you do, but what we’d like doesn’t change reality. You can dispute the favorability polls all you want, but NONE of them are good. Face it, short of maybe the collapse of the dollar and a complete Mad Max-style apocalyptic breakdown of the country under Biden/Harris, this political reality isn’t likely to change. (God forbid, it COULD happen, I suppose, considering the breakneck pace at which they’re screwing things up so far - but it would have to be REALLY bad to make a difference, bad enough that none of us would want it to happen.)
Acknowledging all this isn’t being a NeverTrumper. It’s being a realist. Fairly or unfairly, Donald Trump would bring far more negatives than positives to a 2024 presidential campaign. Will he recognize this and bow out in favor of a candidate with fewer negatives, perhaps playing the much more apropos role of kingmaker? Probably not, but I hope he does.
What many of us liked about Trump, after all, wasn’t so much the man himself, but the fact that despite his flaws he tried to keep his campaign promises and actually governed as a conservative. Instead of the former president marching to certain defeat and splitting the party in the process, causing a whole other wave of disaffected voters to abandon national elections altogether, imagine an energized Donald Trump on the campaign trail uniting conservatives and pitching for someone like Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Donald Trump won, and was by and large a successful president, because of his policies. In order to win in 2024, we not only need a candidate who believes in and will implement the policies brought forth so successfully by the former president, but also someone who can win a general election. Who might that be? So far, it’s looking like DeSantis fits the bill on all counts, but a lot can happen in two years.
Regardless, I’d have zero problem being wrong here, but the way I see it, Republicans have absolutely no chance at winning the presidency back in 2024 unless their nominee is someone not named Donald Trump. Which, in many ways, leaves the future of America up to the decision of one man. For the good of the country, the former president should do the right thing and pass the torch.
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