By Jim
Geraghty
Wednesday,
November 16, 2022
Donald
Trump came down the escalator in Trump Tower to announce he was running for
president 2,711 days ago. That’s seven years, five months, and one day. Other
than two-term presidents, rarely has one figure dominated American political
and public life for such a long stretch.
Everybody
already knows what they think of him. Very few Americans seem inclined to
change their minds about Trump. His agenda is the same as before: Build the
wall. Root out the “deep state.” He’s a victim. “Make America great and
glorious again.” It is that same old narcissistic view of the world through a
fisheye lens, where all good things come from him and his self-described “very
stable genius,” and all bad things are somebody else’s fault. On Election Night
last week, Trump summed up his worldview succinctly: “If they win, I should get all the
credit, and if they lose, I should not be blamed at all.”
If the Republicans
nominate someone else, such as Ron DeSantis, in 2024, at least the country will
be debating what policies to enact. If the Republicans nominate Trump, we’re in
for at least another two years of, “What do you think of the latest crazy thing
Trump said?” And conceivably, if Trump wins the 2024 presidential election, we
could be having those same arguments for another 2,258 days — or six years, two
months, and five days, until Inauguration Day, 2029.
Donald
Trump is 76 years old now, and he will be 77 when the GOP holds the first
primaries of 2024. If he wins the GOP nomination, he will turn 78 on June 14,
during the general election. If Trump wins the presidency and serves another
full term, he would be 82 years old in his final year in office. If elected,
Trump would be five months older than Joe Biden was when Biden took the oath of
office. If Trump fans think Joe Biden is too old to effectively serve as
president and it shows, they will need to come up with a good argument to
replace him with another soon-to-be octogenarian.
Dan McLaughlin
points out that
in every exit poll conducted in every state, more voters dislike Trump than
like him. He is “viewed unfavorably by a solid majority of the midterm voters
nationally (by a 19-point margin of 58 percent to 39 percent), and in every
state polled, even places such as Texas (52 percent disapproval to 45 percent
approval), Ohio (53 percent to 44 percent), and North Carolina (53 percent to
43 percent) that he won two years ago.”
Bernie Sanders
and Terry McAuliffe said they welcome Trump’s return as a presidential candidate, because
his presence in the public eye helps Democrats and hurts Republicans. GOP governors
reportedly applauded Chris
Christie’s recent call for the party to move on from Trump. Republicans who
actually have to run things are tired of cleaning up Trump’s messes, of
averting their eyes from his unhinged rants on social media, his tantrums, his
insufferable public self-pity, his glaring lack of interest in public policy
and the details of governing, the endless drama and constant circus surrounding
him.
Mark Wright
concludes that “Trump
looked tired, subdued, and low energy. The Mar-a-Lago crowd looked listless and
bored, too. They shuffled their feet and milled about. They slipped off to get
a drink or use the head mid-speech. . . . Trump is old. His jokes are dull. His
act is tired. There’s no excitement or sense of the mischievous unknown.”
Rich Lowry
observes that “it
won’t make much of a difference because larger forces are at play, but it was a
mistake to tease his announcement prior to the election, a mistake to go
through with it tonight, and a mistake to do it in an uninspiring venue in
front of an uninspired crowd.”
And
Isaac noticed that the Fox News
anchors talked over portions of Trump’s 63-minute speech.
The
editors of National Review, as a
whole, declared, “The answer to
Trump’s invitation to remain personally and politically beholden to him and his
cracked obsessions for at least another two years, with all the chaos that entails and the very
real possibility of another highly consequential defeat, should be a firm,
unmistakable, No.”
False
Alarm! Cancel the NATO–Russia War!
Yesterday,
after the first reports of a Russian missile landing in Poland and killing two
people emerged, I wrote that the
circumstances sounded like a time for NATO’s Article Four — meet and discuss the next
move, preparing to respond as an alliance if necessary — rather than NATO’s
Article Five, which means treating an attack on one member as an attack on all members.
Unsurprisingly, this led to people comparing me to Barack Obama ignoring a “red
line,” that I’m a “castrati,” that I want to give “the totalitarians the
Rhineland and the Sudetenland,” and so on.
The
day offered a good
lesson on why
no one should rush to judgment on matters of war and peace:
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday that the
explosions in Poland on Tuesday that claimed two lives were probably caused by
a Ukrainian missile defending against Russian strikes.
“This is not Ukraine’s fault; Russia bears the ultimate responsibility,”
Stoltenberg said of the Russian-made missile that hit Polish territory. Polish
President Andrzej Duda also said Wednesday that there was no indication that
the missile blast was an intentional attack.
I hope
people generally keep track of who’s always rushing to judgment and who’s
always flying off the handle. The social-media world incentivizes hot takes and
being the first to draw a sweeping conclusion. But that’s often a foolish,
reckless, and self-destructive way to go through life.
Should
Cocaine Mitch Stay or Go?
I think
Mitch McConnell has, by and large, been an effective leader of Senate
Republicans since he stepped into that role in 2007. One of the reasons I think
that is because being an effective leader for Senate Republicans is not just a
matter of going on television and saying things Republicans like to hear. It
means listening to your entire caucus, understanding what they want to do and
what they need to do, grasping the unique political dynamics of their states,
and being able to balance the needs of, say, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and
Susan Collins of Maine. The objective is to force the opposition to take as
many tough, internally divisive votes as possible and minimize the tough,
internally divisive votes for your own side. You have to figure out where you
can work with a Democratic president to get something done, and where you need
to draw the line and dig in your heels.
When
you’ve been around long enough, you recognize that grassroots conservatives are
almost always frustrated by whoever is leading Republicans in the Senate. A lot
of conservatives thought Bob Dole was a centrist sellout, and then they thought
Trent Lott was a centrist sellout, and then they thought Bill Frist was a
centrist sellout, and for the past decade and change, a lot of conservatives
thought McConnell is a centrist sellout.
But even
those of us who think McConnell has largely done a good job must recognize that
he is 80 years old, and it’s not unreasonable for Senate Republicans to wonder
if it’s time for some new blood. At minimum, it’s a good idea to have a clear
sense of McConnell’s successor if, God forbid, some future health issue impedes
McConnell’s ability to continue in that role.
Now,
there’s another option in the race: Senator Rick Scott of Florida, fresh off of
running the NRSC in a cycle where Republicans lost competitive Senate races in
Arizona, Nevada, and Pennsylvania — with Georgia yet to be resolved. Rick Scott
didn’t pick the candidates in those races, and he doesn’t have far-reaching
power to influence the outcome of those races.
But early in
2022, Scott proposed that “all Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the
game, even if a small amount. Currently over half of Americans pay no income
tax.” This allowed
Democrats to argue that
“Republicans want to raise taxes on working families.”
Scott
also proposed that “all federal legislation sunsets in 5 years. If a law is
worth keeping, Congress can pass it again.” From this, Democrats
argued — falsely — that Republicans wanted to end Social Security within five
years. Republican
senators may want to discuss whether Scott, with those two seemingly innocuous
reform proposals, inadvertently enabled a lot of Democratic demagoguery.
Senator
Ron Johnson of Wisconsin is already
endorsing Scott.
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