It’s less stressful to just imagine he’ll be dead then.
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That said, a high percentage of MAGAts would vote a write-in for dead T**** rather than vote for a woman.
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Given observations about his cognitive trajectory, he’ll be like a real-life Wilbur Cobb (if he’s not already there yet).
Might not be as high as you think if you take into account all those who believe they’re voting for a still-alive-but-in-hiding T**** thanks to the all-but-guaranteed conspiracy theories about his death.
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I’m still baffled. Yes, he’s offering what they want. But he has yet to deliver. At some point, somebody in the leadership of that party is going to have to acknowledge that. Or, as you said, the party will split or die. And yes, that would be an acceptable result to me.
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Agreed. I wonder if they’re overlooking a key factor in Trump’s success. Though only heaven knows why, Trump has a charismatic appeal that has elevated him to God status among his worshipers. I think Haley and other RWNJ Republicans may believe that the MAGA rabble are voting for Trumpism as opposed to Trump. With all the think tanks and reactionary organizations they’re founding pushing Trumpist ideals they may figure that once Trump is off their hands MAGA voters will continue to vote fascist with the same zeal as before. I don’t know if they’re right.
It makes one wonder what would have happened if the prewar Mussolini or Hitler had kicked the bucket at the height of their popularity. Would their parties have successfully carried on their programs under some second banana’s leadership, or would they have descended into chaos as warring factions fought for their share of the scraps?
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That might be the problem. They’ve been selecting for narcissism and cowardice, not leadership, for 50 years. The closest people they have to “leaders” are Romney and Liz Cheney, and they couldn’t get arrested at a Republican convention.
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I mean, there’s a >0% chance that Trump keels over from a coronary embolism in the next few months and she can step in this year. There’s absolutely no leadership in the Republican party behind Trump, so she might as well keep her face out there as long as possible.
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Yeah, that’s a good point…I can only imagine that they’ve followed him this far, and if they let go, they’ll not be able to get what they want, so they have to push on with their support. If they get off now, they’ll have nothing, and they can’t admit that they backed a fascist…
His “success” is in activating the worst aspects of movement conservativism and just laying bare what they have really always wanted.
They will, but they will line up behind different figures and then descend into chaos.
That.
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I think that’s only a real issue if you’re looking at his candidacies through a transactional politics angle. He has routinely promised things that he can’t deliver, either because the promise isn’t based in any sense of reality, or because he’s been too incompetent to pull it off. But his politics, like his businesses, are built on fabulist lies, so the actual lack of delivery will always be framed as someone else’s fault. The other important thing is that as long as he can actively keep everyone else from getting something done, he can just normalize the dysfunction.
Honestly, from the view I’ve got in the rural-ish Midwest US, some of his outsized influence is going to stick around due to the extreme amount of gerrymandered districts. Sure, there are Trumpists in the Senate, sure, but the House? Hooboy. If you’re running every two years and only need to fend off a primary challenger from the right, having that endorsement is going to keep being a big deal.
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Haley may or may not feel humiliated, I guess we’d have to ask her. But Trump’s win was in no way as dominating as the media is hyping it to be. He only pulled 60% as the GQP incumbent and party leader. That’s pretty weak.
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The conventional GoP needs to realize that it made a (second*) deal with the devil to get, and now it’s the party of Trump.
The slim margin they sold their souls for represent the worst in us, and it’s no longer even TRYING to say the horrible stuff quiet.
Someone a few years ago wrote about how democracy is the cruible to refine dictatorships. I just didn’t anticipate it would happen so quickly.
*Barry Goldwater saw the first wave coming " “Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.”
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Reminds me a lot of this quote from C.S. Lewis:
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
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The point is that want that dysfunction, too.
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FWIW, I asked an election lawyer friend of mine and there’s no place with the FEC where you file some paperwork to end (v. merely suspend) a campaign – so the distinction is purely rhetorical, albeit understandably so.
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“Suspending” your presidential candidate campaign is more like “suspending” your life support than failing to renew your monthly season ticket for a few months. If Trump kicked it, Haley would be seen as the one who outlasted everyone else.
Whether she should or could win the real election against Biden is another thing, but in my view, Trump’s relatively weak showing against her shows that he’ll have trouble. A lot of Republicans actually are fed up of Trump and want him out. They are just outvoted and outshouted by the majority of their party colleagues. If they really want shot of Trump, let him lose again and he’ll be gone. They’ll have to bear 4 years of Biden but unless you’re rad right, he actually isn’t so bad.
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Prison would not disqualify him from candidacy. Felony convictions might result in him not being allowed to vote, but can’t prevent him from being elected.
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He’s gonna rise again, right? And be immortal?
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Unfortunately there’s one promise that he did manage to deliver on, and it’s a big one: he appointed three awful members to the Supreme Court, as well as hundreds of other Federal judges in other parts of the Judiciary who now have lifetime appointments. He was happy to give the Federalist Society everything they wanted in that area, and we’re all going to be suffering the consequences for many years to come. 
Obviously the end of Roe vs. Wade is part of the fallout from this. That was literally the top priority for decades for a large slice of the GOP electorate, and they’re giving Trump credit for it. And things can certainly get worse if he gets back in office:
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Depends whether someone has a cricket bat handy…
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