And To Her Voters That's A Reasonable Position
Many people are wondering whatever happened to the House Republican Trump fan-girls’— like Marjorie Traitor Greene and Elise Stefanik— plan to expunge Trump’s two impeachments. Now that he’s been indicted on more criminal counts that anyone can remember, Jamie Raskin has asked when the House Republicans will move to erase his record: “They could pass expungements, reversals, nullifications, apologies, pardons and valentines to Donald Trump, but it makes no difference… Whatever they want to accomplish on the floor will have no bearing in any way on what takes place in court. And it should not. We have an independent judiciary. And the legal process operates quite apart from whatever legislators say and do.”
The National Review’s Noah Rothman noted yesterday that “When it comes to analysis of Donald Trump’s growing legal liabilities, the conservative press has succumbed to something resembling a state of denial.” Yesterday another Republican source, the CATO Institute, went even further, telling their readers that Trump is “toast” and explaining why. Clark Neily wrote that the “bombshell” Georgia RICO indictment “sealed Trump’s fate, and it is now all but certain that he will be convicted of multiple felonies in one or more of the four pending cases against him… There is nothing subtle or nuanced about this indictment—in effect, it accuses Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark, Sidney Powell, and a dozen others of staging an unsuccessful coup. If the case goes to trial, which seems likely, the jury will either believe that characterization or they will not. I think they will, for three reasons.”
1- Trump’s disdain for truth- “America has seen its fair share of lying politicians, but Donald Trump is in a class of his own. He appears to view literally any interaction with another human being as an opportunity to be exploited and a game to be won. In Trump’s world, rules are for chumps, norms are for losers, and the truth is whatever you can get another person to believe— nothing more… [N]ot only will those antics not work in a courtroom, they will backfire. Given the nature of the allegations against him, Trump will have to take the stand even though he has a right not to, and given his nature, he will lie to the jury just like he has lied to everyone else his entire life.”
2- Trump’s disdain for process- “Trump doesn’t see the world the way normal people do. Instead of institutions to be respected and rules to be followed, he sees marks to be gulled and systems to be gamed— emphatically including elections and trials. Trump’s complete disdain for fair procedures— and for people who meekly accept the results of those procedures when they lose— will be on full display throughout every stage of all four of the criminal cases against him… Trump will not be able to resist the temptation to manipulate the process by threatening or cajoling witnesses, insulting prosecutors, and slagging judges who rule against him.”
3- Complexity- “Litigation complexity is hard enough to manage with a client who plays it straight, both with the court and with their own counsel. But Trump doesn’t play it straight— he never has, and it appears he’s constitutionally incapable of doing so. So he will lie: in court, in public, on social media and— fatally— to his own lawyers. Simply put, Trump’s defense teams will not be able to keep track of all the different positions their client has taken (or directed his various lawyers to take in different proceedings), and eventually things will come completely unraveled. Judges will become increasingly disgusted by the shenanigans and stop giving Trump any benefit of the doubt; there will also be internecine squabbling among members of his defense teams, and some will likely quit when they refuse to execute some of their client’s more unethical demands or realize that he has no qualms about taking them down with him when the time comes.”
“Hours after being indicted for his attempts to overturn the election results in Georgia,” reported Natalie Allison, “Trump signaled that he is going to re-litigate the matter once more… part of his campaign to win the presidency… [I]t quickly transported the Republican Party right back to a conversation it studiously has tried to avoid for nearly three years.” Trump’s GOP rivals are being forced to answer questions about his indictments. Most of them are afraid to criticize them. While Marjorie Traitor Greene asserts she could be in his Cabinet or even his running mate, we see that just 35% of Americans have a favorable opinion of Trump, that “Americans say that Trump’s actions after the 2020 presidential election did more to threaten democracy than to defend it, 54% to 19%” and that “Americans largely [70%] disagree with Trump’s contention that the 2020 election was stolen from him.” As for the alternatives to Trump, Republican Party strategist Alex Castellanos told Slate reporter Ben Mathis-Lilley that he would “advise Ron DeSantis to thank voters for their consideration and remove himself from the race. There is no good way for DeSantis to attack Trump about Jan. 6 or anything else. There is no point in chaining a goat to a stake in front of a T. Rex, then asking the goat to assault the T. Rex. It has not worked out well for other goats, many stronger and smarter than this one. So, no. I would not advise the candidate who lost to the Mouseketeers to attack the T. Rex.”
Back with Politico, Allison reported that “With Trump doubling down on his stolen-election rhetoric— and his decision to schedule a media event about it two days before the first Republican debate— the consensus [among GOP operatives] was he is all but guaranteeing his GOP rivals would be forced to spend time on stage next week talking about an issue that continues to divide the party… For Trump’s rivals in the primary, there’s no avoiding the question now… Trump’s opponents have every reason to be wary of the issue. Though election denialism may be fraught terrain for the party in a general election, in recent Republican primaries, the electorate has most often rewarded those who side with Trump on it. After Trump’s defeat in November 2020, majorities of Republicans told pollsters they agreed with his claims that the election was stolen. And more recently, a New York Times/Siena College poll last month found three-in-four GOP primary voters said they thought Trump’s actions only reflected ‘his right to contest the election.’”
In other words, the Republican Party base’s grievance-driven mass delusion is dragging the Trump-led party down the toilet with him. “The fallout from Trump recentering his message on an allegedly stolen 2020 election,” wrote Allison, “is already expanding beyond the presidential primary field, touching all corners of the GOP. Running in Senate primaries ahead of what are forecasted to be difficult races against Democratic incumbents in Montana, Ohio and West Virginia, GOP candidates Tim Sheehy, Bernie Moreno and Jim Justice quickly rushed to Trump’s defense on Monday and Tuesday… In Georgia, in particular, the issue remains fiercely divisive in the Republican Party. Former chair David Shafer— one of the 19 who was indicted Monday— declined to run again. But other new leaders elected during the state GOP’s June convention are vocal defenders of Trump’s stolen election claims. On the other side of the schism, Gov. Brian Kemp won his primary in a landslide over Trump-backed challenger David Perdue last year despite firmly rejecting Trump’s claims of a stolen election. On Tuesday, he hit back at the former president’s latest claims of a rigged contest in Georgia… Few states have felt the consequences of Trump’s election fraud grievances more acutely than Georgia. Republicans there lost two Senate seats in a January 2021 runoff as Trump and his allies cast doubt on the legitimacy of the state’s election systems. And a third Republican running for Senate, Trump-endorsed Herschel Walker, lost his race in November 2022, even as Kemp and down-ballot GOP candidates cruised to victory. ‘It’s not a winning message,’ said Jason Shepherd, the former chair of the Cobb County, Ga., Republican Party. ‘It’s been shown to be a losing message.’”