It’s admittedly a little early for a complete postmortem of the 2024 Republican party primary presidential race, but as soon as Nikki Haley emerged from her temporary hiding spot last week to officially leave the field to Donald Trump and Trump alone, recollections of what
had transpired over the previous months began to crop up.
One thing everyone seemed to agree upon was the nature of the 2024 GOP being fully under the control and guidance of Trump, the culmination of what looked to be an astonishing comeback from the depths of political purgatory about three years ago.
Some argued that Trump had never completely lost it. In an article titled “Trump Never Lost Control of GOP. He Only Tightened His Grasp”, the thoroughly reliable Philip Wegmann wrote at American Greatness:
“Former President Trump continued his romp through the Republican primary, easily winning all but one Super Tuesday contest and demonstrating a dominance so absolute that his stacked victories now seem nearly routine.
“’We want to have unity,’ Trump told a crowd gathered at Mar-a-Lago, ‘and we’re going to have unity, and it’s going to happen very quickly.’ On the eve of perhaps the greatest political comeback in modern American history, his remarks were relatively subdued by his standards. He never mentioned his former UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, almost as if the competition did not exist and a third nomination was guaranteed all along.
“His control of the GOP will soon be complete, a fact that allies and Trump confidants tell RealClearPolitics reflects an uncomfortable reality for whatever small pockets of resistance still exist on the right. Trump did not regain control, they insist. He only strengthened his grasp.”
Yes, it’s true. Trump’s command over the Republican party dipped and sagged in early 2021, but never completely broke. To those who may have forgotten, Trump all-but disappeared from view for a couple months after leaving the presidency, which many observers interpreted as his wishing to avoid further damaging the country – or digging the hole deeper – but now, in hindsight, Trump was adhering to the old adage, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder”.
Senile Joe Biden looked out of place in the White House from the first moment he assumed the big chair behind the Resolute desk, and his unabashed eagerness to trash everything Trump did – including policies that were working splendidly – was the beginning of a very long and slow journey to where the age-challenged dolt’s approval ratings are now.
The fact that Biden appeared gleeful, angry and vindictive while doing the damage enraged conservatives and Republicans who remained grateful to Trump for keeping his word on so many of his 2016 campaign promises. The only option for the unfairly displaced was to remain patient, keep up the vigilance and rest on the theory that what comes around goes around.
And, of course, it did. Trump, as he has since the beginning of his outsider political career, relied on his enemies and rivals to go to extremes to make himself appear more palatable. I’ve said it before, it’s not easy to turn Donald Trump into a victim, but somehow the individuals who despise him roundly always manage to do it.
Just like in any legal or criminal case, there are two sides to the story – a prosecution and a defense. Democrats and leftists took up the mantle of prosecutors, but they also figured they could just as easily serve as judge and jury in addition since, to them, they assumed they had right – and the law – on their side.
What the Trump-haters failed to account for was Trump’s ability to provide a defense to what he was being accused of, and in this effort, he was far from alone. He had truth on his side, and millions of powerful advocates who were willing to raise a certain finger to the ruling class and refuse to go along with the notion that Trump was a felon in waiting and that at least one of the 91 charges against him would be brought to full-term and he’d end up convicted and possibly frog-marched to the hoosegow in front of jeering onlookers.
This idea was not only an error in judgment, reality turned out to be just about the opposite when it came to public opinion. As soon as Trump provided his side of the story, people weighed what he was being charged with versus what the evidence appeared to show, and a collective “Wait a second!” was uttered by the American people.
A big help was the Democrats’ complete overreliance on January 6 to supply perpetual outrage against Trump. There were all those videos, right? Those images of MAGA-colors wearing, unshaven thugs – some with horns – who were affixed to metal bike racks and walking through the capital building unhindered by the authorities. The horrors! The vast, vast majority of Trump backers were there just “touring” the place, as astonished to be let in the doors as the viewers at home were to see “regular” people waltzing around where they probably shouldn’t have been.
Yet there was very little coming from it. The only ones who died were Trump supporters. (Don’t even get me started on Brian Sicknick). Very little property was destroyed. For the most part, the Trump crowd left the building as they found it, the proverbial sand bunker on a marble golf course that a real “player” wouldn’t dream of leaving in disheveled condition for the next participant.
These are facts, and as soon as the alternative narrative started coming out about what really transpired on January 6, Americans’ anger not only subsided, it started turning in the other direction. Trump was still out there maintaining that the election was rigged and stolen from him, but his reputation was slowly being rehabilitated by the falsity folks discovered (hat tip to brave conservatives such as Julie Kelly) as information was released.
The January 6 “commission” was completely over-the-top. Nancy Pelosi thought she was adding credibility to her caucus’s investigatory efforts/witch hunt by placing a couple RINO Republicans on the panel (and, of course, rejecting those put forth by the minority side) – Trump haters Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. Sooner rather than later Cheney’s dour and distasteful mug became the “face” of the inquisition, just as Adam Schiff’s bug-eyes were the symbol of the failed impeachment effort a year earlier.
Was the public really going to blindly accept Liz Cheney’s word over the ever-emerging facts and Trump’s mission to have the truth be told? Cheney was awful at public relations and her own people (the voters of Wyoming) couldn’t stand her. She was about as far from a “happy warrior” type as you could get, being more like an embittered elitest hag and daughter of the ruling class. She was America’s stereotypical mother-in-law sitting in judgment of the man she had a personal grudge against.
Meanwhile, all Trump had to do was sit back, gather his legal defense team and watch as his enemies advanced the best arguments for his comeback for him. Anyone who still harbored a smidgen of sympathy for the former president was becoming bolder and bolder in expressing their support for him. Against this backdrop, his Republican rivals never had a chance.
Why? Primarily because everything that Trump predicted would happen if senile Joe Biden got ahold of the controls of power came true. The federal government’s COVID policy became more and more restrictive, including extensions of lockdowns and mandates (both vaccine and masks). Senile Joe instituted an open borders policy on day one and not only welcomed the lawbreakers – his administration gave them free housing, food, medical care and transportation, too.
Biden turned the military into a “woke” joke, which has led to chronic underperformance in recruitment, numerous accidents and worse – erosion of respect from enemies. Russia invaded Ukraine. China threatens Taiwan. Islamic radicals attacked Israel. Iran took the cash it harvested from the reinstitution of the Obama/Iran deal and funded terrorism all over the globe.
In other words, senile Joe Biden’s presidency – and its overreach – helped create the conditions for Trump’s comeback. Biden’s Department of Justice pursued pro-life Christian protesters (and jailed some of them), January 6 defendants who didn’t do anything, searched Mar-a-Lago and recoiled from enforcing the law.
America’s inner cities have become virtual shooting galleries where criminals can assault and steal without being prosecuted. Biden censored opponents and looked to sanction “disinformation”. Senile Joe welcomed transgender freaks to the White House and permitted the flying of a rainbow flag on the building itself.
That’s not to mention the economic conditions Biden created which impacts the poor and middle class the most, all the while blaming Republicans for not going along with his green agenda.
Donald Trump is a talented, smart man with a good feel for the pulse of ordinary Americans, but he didn’t engineer his remarkable comeback all by himself. He had a lot of help from the Democrats who’ve proved so overzealous, corrupt and downright stupid that it would practically be impossible for whomever opposed them to look bad.
Trump Derangement Syndrome might not be an actual ailment, but those who despise Trump can’t seem to shake it nonetheless. Is it the man himself that they hate so much, or is it his policies that earn their ire? Trump is far from a perfect human being, but he isn’t complicated in one sense: he says he’ll do something, and then he does it.
It didn’t take victory in the 2024 Republican presidential race for political observers to conclude that it’s Trump’s GOP now. Trump captured the imaginations of 2016’s conservative voters and never really relinquished their loyalty. January 6, 2021 didn’t change everything. Time and events ever since have allowed for Trump’s reemergence. What will happen next?
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2024 presidential election