By Ramesh Ponnuru
Contributing columnist|
January 24, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EST
Among Republicans, the lie has won.
When Donald Trump insisted against all evidence that he had won the 2020 election in a “landslide,” it was not merely a psychological defense against the fact of his defeat. It was a canny, though reckless, political tactic. It preserved his political viability in the Republican Party and kept him from smelling like a loser. Republicans never had the normal discussion of what they, and their candidate, did wrong in their failed campaign: a discussion that would have had to dwell on Trump’s character flaws and the general public’s reaction to them.
You could see the results in New Hampshire on Tuesday. Voters in the GOP contest were split roughly evenly on whether President Biden had won legitimately last time. If the primary had been confined to Republicans, there would almost certainly have been a solid majority for the view that Trump had won and had been cheated. The elected Republicans who didn’t want Trump to be the nominee haveallowed his narrative about 2020 to go unchallenged for the past three years. Or they have abetted it, letting sane complaints about voting procedures and media coverage cover for Trump’s fantasies about Venezuelan interference with voting machines and the like.
ADVERTISING
Now those politicians get to run again with Trump and feign happiness about it on the record. Nikki Haley sounded defiant last night, but the Republican contest is over. She lost in a state, New Hampshire, that was tailor-made for her candidacy: full of secular voters, with independents eligible to vote in the primary, and with the support of the governor. Eight days earlier, Ron DeSantis had lost in Iowa, a state that seemed well-suited to him. The drumbeat is going to get ever louder that Haley should now follow DeSantis in exiting the race and endorsing Donald Trump.
The assumption behind that pressure is that the earlier the party unifies, the more likely it is that it will win in November. That logic is usually sound, but it is possible Trump will start to look weaker once a race between him and Biden begins in earnest.
The court cases against him are going to grind on. They helped him with Republican voters in the primaries. But in the exit polls, a significant percentage of voters — even his own voters — said criminal convictions would render him unfit for the presidency. Some of those voters may not be accurately forecasting their own behavior. But only a fraction of them would need to defect to sink Trump.
Trump has also benefited from receding a bit from the forefront of public consciousness. Normal people haven’t been reading his social media posts or even reading about them. That’s going to change, both because of the media and because of Democratic ads. The more voters see Trump, the more a lot of them will remember what they dislike about him.
There has been an anti-Trump majority in every national election since he announced his candidacy in 2015, and that majority had enough electoral strength to prevail in large part in 2018, 2020, and 2022. The one time he won, in 2016, it was arguably only because the majority didn’t believe he could win. That complacency won’t be present this November.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...c_magnet-op2024elections_inline_collection_19
And Trump has deteriorated as a candidate since his victory eight years ago. He has gotten millions of Americans to identify with his travails, even those he has done a lot to bring on himself. But he has had less and less to say about anything else.
What Trump has going for him is, of course, Biden, who is 3½ years older but seems even older than that and a Democratic Party that resists letting Biden accommodate public opinion on immigration and other issues.
Republican elites have been irresponsible in their cowardice toward Trump. Biden has been irresponsible in his assertion: He chose to run despite his age and his polls, having earlier chosen a vice president whom Democrats do not want to replace him.
The result: The primaries are effectively over, and the general election won’t be over fast enough.
Contributing columnist|
January 24, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EST
Among Republicans, the lie has won.
When Donald Trump insisted against all evidence that he had won the 2020 election in a “landslide,” it was not merely a psychological defense against the fact of his defeat. It was a canny, though reckless, political tactic. It preserved his political viability in the Republican Party and kept him from smelling like a loser. Republicans never had the normal discussion of what they, and their candidate, did wrong in their failed campaign: a discussion that would have had to dwell on Trump’s character flaws and the general public’s reaction to them.
You could see the results in New Hampshire on Tuesday. Voters in the GOP contest were split roughly evenly on whether President Biden had won legitimately last time. If the primary had been confined to Republicans, there would almost certainly have been a solid majority for the view that Trump had won and had been cheated. The elected Republicans who didn’t want Trump to be the nominee haveallowed his narrative about 2020 to go unchallenged for the past three years. Or they have abetted it, letting sane complaints about voting procedures and media coverage cover for Trump’s fantasies about Venezuelan interference with voting machines and the like.
ADVERTISING
Now those politicians get to run again with Trump and feign happiness about it on the record. Nikki Haley sounded defiant last night, but the Republican contest is over. She lost in a state, New Hampshire, that was tailor-made for her candidacy: full of secular voters, with independents eligible to vote in the primary, and with the support of the governor. Eight days earlier, Ron DeSantis had lost in Iowa, a state that seemed well-suited to him. The drumbeat is going to get ever louder that Haley should now follow DeSantis in exiting the race and endorsing Donald Trump.
The assumption behind that pressure is that the earlier the party unifies, the more likely it is that it will win in November. That logic is usually sound, but it is possible Trump will start to look weaker once a race between him and Biden begins in earnest.
The court cases against him are going to grind on. They helped him with Republican voters in the primaries. But in the exit polls, a significant percentage of voters — even his own voters — said criminal convictions would render him unfit for the presidency. Some of those voters may not be accurately forecasting their own behavior. But only a fraction of them would need to defect to sink Trump.
Trump has also benefited from receding a bit from the forefront of public consciousness. Normal people haven’t been reading his social media posts or even reading about them. That’s going to change, both because of the media and because of Democratic ads. The more voters see Trump, the more a lot of them will remember what they dislike about him.
There has been an anti-Trump majority in every national election since he announced his candidacy in 2015, and that majority had enough electoral strength to prevail in large part in 2018, 2020, and 2022. The one time he won, in 2016, it was arguably only because the majority didn’t believe he could win. That complacency won’t be present this November.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...c_magnet-op2024elections_inline_collection_19
And Trump has deteriorated as a candidate since his victory eight years ago. He has gotten millions of Americans to identify with his travails, even those he has done a lot to bring on himself. But he has had less and less to say about anything else.
What Trump has going for him is, of course, Biden, who is 3½ years older but seems even older than that and a Democratic Party that resists letting Biden accommodate public opinion on immigration and other issues.
Republican elites have been irresponsible in their cowardice toward Trump. Biden has been irresponsible in his assertion: He chose to run despite his age and his polls, having earlier chosen a vice president whom Democrats do not want to replace him.
The result: The primaries are effectively over, and the general election won’t be over fast enough.
