Wednesday, August 16, 2023

Cult of personality

For every criminal indictment levied this year against former President Donald Trump, I feel the need to trot out a certain F. Scott Fitzgerald quote: 

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."


Sure, you can make a solid case that all the indictments are politically motivated while at the same time acknowledging that most of them are not completely without merit. 


Unfortunately, the Trump cultists will not acquiesce to any resolution short of the other GOP presidential candidates dropping their 2024 aspirations and coalescing behind Trump. Since that's not going to happen (nor should it), the cultists will most assuredly take their proverbial ball and go home if their guy isn't the nominee. 


To those who are "Trump or bust," Dan McLaughlin lays out the harsh reality


Nominating Trump again would be a disaster for Republicans.

The criminal charges are one of the biggest reasons why. Even if you think that’s unfair, it’s reality.

Criminal defendants make bad candidates.

As the old saying goes, politics ain’t beanbag. People lose elections for unfair reasons all the time.

If you want to win, you don’t just ignore problems you think are unfair.

Trump still has his strengths as a politician: He’s universally famous, he’s funny, he has devoted fans, he can run on memories of a better economy before 2020, and he’s not afraid to be unfair himself.

But even before the criminal charges, he was deeply hated by half the country and disliked by a lot more than half. He already lost to Biden once, and that was before January 6.

Opinion polls continue to show large majorities of Americans want nothing to do with what happened that day.

He’s also 77 years old, which makes it hard for him to make a case against the 80-year-old Biden’s age.

Now, on top of all that, he’s an accused felon and could be a convicted one by Election Day. He’ll be in and out of courtrooms for months, instead of campaigning.

He’s spending, by some accounts, as much as half the money he raises on legal defenses instead of on running campaign ads or getting the vote out.

That will get worse: Trials are really expensive, and Trump has at least five of them coming (if you include the New York attorney general’s civil-fraud suit).

Because Trump’s campaign is spending more than it takes in, he’d need a bailout from the Republican National Committee so his campaign doesn’t go broke.

That’s more donor money wasted, and it will hurt Republicans running for every other office.


The sad truth? The cultists literally don't care about any of that. They would rather go down in flames with their folk hero than put forth a respectable GOP candidate that could defeat Biden as well as provide a boost for the Republicans to re-take the U.S. Senate. 


In the end, the whole chant of "Make America Great Again!!!!" was only conditional upon one person being in the big chair if America were to "return to greatness." Sorry, but that's more a cult than a political movement.


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