Posted on 09/27/2021 4:03:26 AM PDT by Kaslin
The polls, which I trust as far as I can throw Michael Moore, are showing something interesting beyond the fact that crusty President Badfinger has fallen and can’t get up. According to Rasmussen, in a head-to-empty-head contest between President Trump and that desiccated old weirdo, Trump has a 10-point edge. He’s 12-points over Kamala, who will probably run in 2024 since * is likely to be sent off to a farm upstate with Major the Dog.
So, does this mean Trump will run in 2024?
Well, it sure as heck makes it more likely.
The stars are aligning for a potential comeback story for the ages. We have a barely conscious pseudo-president botching everything he touches, an inept, razor-thin Dem Congress engaged in public autophagy over how many trillions we don’t have we will squander, and a population getting sicker and sicker of being lied to, manipulated, bossed around, ripped off, and lorded over. The sight of the same jerks who insist that you have to gag your screaming toddler while partying down mask-free is galling. The vaxx mandates that the Kreepy Karen Korps is so proud of imposing are turning out to be aimed right at minority Americans who, understandably, are reluctant to trust government scientists bearing jabs. ID to vote – racist; ID and a passport to work or eat – great! And then there’s Afghanistan, the border, inflation, and CRT – it’s a veritable smorgasbord of disasters.
And where’s Trump? Off in the ether. He does some rallies once in a while, like the recent one in Georgia. Only aligned media covers them. He launches press releases, some of them silly, but no one cares. The geniuses of social media think they neutered Trump by banning him from their platforms. Nope, dopes. Trump is always his own worst enemy – you can both like the guy’s accomplishments and recognize his weaknesses – and these Silicon Valley goofs took that off the table.
There’s no a la carte Trump. He’s a prix fixe meal, not a buffet. You can’t pick and choose what you like about him – “Trump would be fine if he would only stop [insert something the speaker thinks Trump shouldn’t do here].” By deplatforming Trump, they managed to ensure that the guy hated for his mean tweets could not mean tweet anymore. Genius!
Absence makes the heart grow fonder; Trump’s exile lets people forget the things that irritated them. Of course, the minute he announces he pastes a big red bullseye on his back. And we’ll see how long the new-found goodwill lasts – whether social media insults again trump the devastation inflicted by his Democratic rivals.
Now, the word in the conservative circles around Trump’s potential 2024 gambit is mixed. You have guys who swear he’s running, and guys who doubt it. He’s holding his cards close, and why shouldn’t he? There’s no reason to make a decision now, or to announce one he has already made. If he is going to run, why become a big orange target? And if he’s not running, why give up the attention that comes from floating the tantalizing possibility that he’ll go full Grover Cleveland.
Trump did some amazing things in spite of the pinko headwinds, deep state conspiracies, and his own unforced errors. But 2024 is nine long years from his original escalator descent. Beyond whether he will run, should he run?
That’s not unanimous. The fact is that there are many prominent conservatives who deeply respect and appreciate what Trump managed to pull off against the odds yet who have grave doubts about whether he should be our candidate in 2024. This is not disloyalty – we owe no politician loyalty, including Trump. Gratitude for the abuse he took, certainly, but the loyalty must flow from politician to us, not vice versa. If Trump is not the very best candidate to both win and govern in 2024, then we must thank him and hand him a gold watch. And if he is the best, we must back him to the hilt.
We need to be ruthless and unsentimental in politics, like Trump was in business.
Here are the main concerns about Trump II: Revenge of the Orange Bad Man, and none are surprises.
The first is whether the Trump vibe will work in 2024. It worked in 2016, but a lot has changed. If Trump has not changed – and it’s unusual for people to change – then we need to assess whether America is ready for another all-consuming era of Trump.
Second, will this be about his justifiable anger over the last election or about future conservative victory? A lot of his press releases and statements relitigate 2020. I get that there were issues with the election – I worked in Nevada as a lawyer after the election and saw the corruption myself. The Arizona audit revealed shocking flaws - and that’s the most charitable characterization. Yes, Brian Kemp is an establishment hack, but on a 1 to 10 scale of importance to the big picture, Kemp is a -3. Right or wrong, fair or unfair, Trump lost, and I know that because he’s not president right now. We need to fix the election system, but 2024 is not about 2020. Making it so is to invite defeat.
Third, can he keep the establishment from taking him out? Now, he managed to defeat the deep state’s Russiagate gambit and the various impeachments and the non-stop media attacks (if Trump got only 10% of the toe-shrimping that President Asterisk receives, he’d be +75% in the polls), but they won’t stop. The media will back the Dem’s MUH INSURREKSHUN toobining to the hilt. He’ll likely be indicted by some lib state attorney general for something. It’ll be a lie and a scam, but do you think they would hesitate to frame him? They have already tried to. Remember, to them Trump’s literally Hitler, but then any Republican will be literally Hitler so maybe this doesn’t matter.
Fourth, has he figured out personnel? That was his greatest failure. He got a few right in the last year in office, but he hired a lot of hacks, failed to fire a lot of hacks, and generally got rolled by a lot of hacks. Remember, he hired Chris Wray and Mark Milley. It was well-known that loyal America First people regularly got sidelined in favor of cruise ship cons and establishment weenies. Will that happen again? Who is in his Rolodex this time around? We need to know.
Fifth, he needs to show he’s gotten woke to the fact that the establishment media is his enemy. He’s apparently given interviews to the NYT and Woodward and other people who hate him – and us. Where’s the love for the media people who actually support him? We need to see that he’s given up any idea of being accepted by the ruling caste. His regard for them was a constant obstacle to doing what needed to be done.
Sixth, what’s his plan? This is no time for playing it by ear. He needs a comprehensive strategy to undo the pinko paradigm. It’s starts with Inauguration Day also being Big Day O’ Firing. And Trump also needs to mend fences with Mitch McConnell and that wing of the party. Yeah, the Murder Turtle is a swamp creature who whined like a girl about January 6th, but he’s also the very best parliamentary strategist in Senate history. Can Trump forgo his vengeance in order to advance our interests?
These are tough questions, but Trump is a tough guy and he can take it. Furthermore, he owes us answers. He would be applying for a job and he needs to earn our votes. That’s not being anti-Trump – it’s always amusing when a guy who literally wrote a pro-Trump book gets called a “Never Trumper” because I expect high standards from him. It’s being realistic. If Trump is not the best, he needs to bow out. Here’s your watch, thanks for the memories.
And while Trump appears to be the 900-pound orange gorilla in the room, he will not just get handed the nomination. He will get primaried. It’s not clear by who, but it will be a real challenge, not merely a Beltway Cowgirl vanity run by Liz Cheney or some other loathsome member of the Ahoy crew. There are too many potential candidates who realize that it’s 2024 or never, and they may as well roll the dice. Conservatives, while they like Trump, are willing to consider alternatives if those alternatives look more likely to prevail.
Will Trump run? I don’t know. I kind of doubt it; that’s just a gut feeling and may well be totally wrong. But if he does run, it will be because he thinks he can win. And if he does run, and he does win, it will be glorious to surf the ocean of liberal tears when Trump goes Full Grover.
And Jeff Sessions. And Reince Preibus. And James Mattis. And Tom Price, Ryan Zinke, Elaine Chao, William Barr, Rex Tillerson, and on, and on. I agree with Schlichter that Trump's choice of team members was terrible more often than not. Second term has to be better.
And Trump also needs to mend fences with Mitch McConnell and that wing of the party.
Not going to happen. The rift between the two is way too deep to be patched, even temporarily.
2024 seems so far off with the current monkey playing with his ass in the white house.
Very good analysis of the problems, particularly Trump’s lousy staff picks and his tendency to let personal grudges (for someone not having been sufficiently adoring) get in the way of his agenda.
I think his biggest strength was that, when he wasn’t doing “mean tweets,” he was very positive and happy. He had a plan for the future, and surprisingly he actually managed to get a lot of things done (much of it thanks to McConnell, like him or not). And he had a couple of great people, particularly Pompeo, so not all of his picks were bad.
Also, the author is right: he shouldn’t focus on 2020. That’s over and done. Focus on cleaning up voter laws and getting more honest procedures in place, which certainly nobody could object to, but don’t go back to replaying 2020 all the time.
A lot has changed in the world since then. Whoever is thinking about running has to realize that the true challenge is going to be rebuilding the US economy and society after the devastation wrought by Fed and state government Covid policies. Being happy and positive is a good model, but there need to be proposals for doing this and also proposals for rolling back the insane levels of government interference and control in the lives of citizens…in other words, freedom.
For the most part, government bureaucrats are not really good at their jobs. Not all that smart, not all that hard-working. Think of John Kerry or AOC. You can be in charge of “big things” but that doesn’t mean you are competent.
So, when it comes time to choose people to be AG, or head the FBI, or whatever, why bother to choose an experienced person, a government insider with 30-years experience, who is now “on our side”? I say that’s going to turn out badly 100% of the time.
Instead, a Republican president should hire plumbers from Indiana who have loyalty to the Constitution and a working BS detector. That’s all you need to be a government bighsot, IMO.
Trump should run... and all of us should work to get him elected. He’s the best person to clean out the deadwood in Washington DC
Schlichter writes the most clear-minded sober article about Trump. He writes exactly how it should be. I like Trump and would back him again if no better entered the race, but this is about saving the country and not about allegiance to a single person.
I’ve got my eye on DeSantis.
So do I.
We all need DeSantis right here in Fla for the time being.
No Republican will win the general as of right now. Why? Because. Irving has been done nation-wide about this voter fraud. AND. Mail-in ballots, no ID required will continue to push left wingers over the finish line.
pong
This is true. I hate it, but it's true.
Sorry....as much as I would LOVE to see this happen, I have absolutely no trust in our election system anymore.
The left is so fully entrenched. They’ll never let this happen. They have three more years to make sure of that.
Is he president? I’ve not seen him give any official White House speech at all in 9 months.
I didn’t see it mentioned, but I put his #1 or #2 mistakes as the Pence-Fauci show. By not nipping that in the bud he enabled a bioweapon to thrive.
At every team press conferences you could see in his eyes and body language he wanted to pull the plug, but he never did.
Trump did not lose the election. It was stolen from him and us in a 2nd silent Coup.
I did not say he was the President.
The battle is not yet over on the election fraud.
I didn’t but will look for it.
And I agree with Kurt. There’s too much at stake in both 2022 and 2024 for Trump to repeat the mistakes he made. And he did make mistakes, some of them very, very serious mistakes.
If he does run again, and I hope he does, I will vote for him again, that’s a given.
L
Plummers from Indiana might be fine.
I don’t want another plummer from Oklahoma.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.