By Matthew
Continetti
Saturday,
January 28, 2023
Donald
Trump spent the final months of 2022 reeling from electoral setbacks and
media disasters. Many of his high-profile endorsements in the midterm
elections flopped. His attacks on popular GOP governors in Florida, Virginia,
Ohio, and Georgia did little damage to their reputations. His 2024 campaign
launch was a snooze. His infamous and inexcusable dinner at
Mar-a-Lago with high-profile antisemites put him on the political fringe. By
the end of last year, Trump appeared to be fading from the national
conversation. His chances of winning the Republican nomination seemed to dim.
Now
those chances are brightening. Trump continues to dominate in polls of
Republicans. He’s drawn even with President Biden in head-to-head matchups. He
lobbied successfully for Representative Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) to become
speaker of the House of Representatives. His loyalists on the House Judiciary,
Oversight, and Weaponization of the Federal Government committees will be sure
to advance his interests. He’s plotting his return to Facebook, Instagram, and
possibly Twitter, and his connection with the Republican base remains strong.
Most
important of all, Trump’s rivals in both the Democratic and Republican parties
are repeating the mistakes they made in the run-up to the 2016 election. The
Democrats assume that there is no way for Trump to become president, while
Republicans believe he will fade from the scene. Their failure to learn from
history has made it possible not only for Trump to win the GOP nomination for
the third straight time, but to pull another inside straight in the Electoral
College and return to the White House. For decades, Trump has said that the
political class is corrupt, insular, and incompetent, and that Republican
leaders lack guts. Washington is doing its best to prove him right.
Trump’s
recovery began on January 9, when news broke that classified documents had been
found months earlier at a D.C. office President Biden used from 2017 to 2019.
Biden, who had called Trump irresponsible and worse when the FBI recovered
classified material from Mar-a-Lago last summer, was exposed as a hypocrite.
Attorney General Merrick Garland came under intense pressure to appoint a
special counsel for Biden, since he already had appointed one to investigate
Trump for mishandling classified information and for subverting the last
presidential election.
Garland
relented on January 12 and tapped U.S. Attorney Robert Hur to lead the inquiry.
On January 20, the FBI searched Biden’s Wilmington, Del., residence (though not
his home in Rehoboth Beach) and unearthed more secret papers. A few days later,
former vice president Mike Pence disclosed that classified documents had been
found at his house, too.
This
chaotic and ridiculous situation is a boon for Trump. Politically, there is no
way Garland can indict the sole declared candidate for the presidency in 2024
while exonerating Biden, who’s expected to announce his own reelection campaign
soon. If Garland were to do so, Trump would portray himself, reasonably, as the
victim of a double standard. Biden’s boneheaded handling of the documents also
reinforces one of Trump’s core beliefs: Everyone in politics behaves corruptly,
but he alone does so without pretense.
Trump
still must worry about separate inquiries, in D.C. and Atlanta, into his
conduct after losing the 2020 election. The fight with the National Archives
over his papers is a sideshow. If anything, it’s Biden who ought to be
concerned. The president’s changing statements on the subject, and the
drip-drip-drip of stories about the material in his possession, raise
additional doubts about his honesty and competence.
House
Republicans plan to scrutinize the Biden family’s influence-peddling business.
They are desperate to find a connection between Hunter Biden’s laptop from hell
and the government intelligence in Joe Biden’s garage. Democrats with long
memories remember how Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information
dogged her in 2016. They don’t want to go through that mess again.
They may
not have a choice. Whether it’s the document drama or the looming presidential
campaign, history seems to be following a path it traveled once before. Not
only has Trump frozen the GOP field, with potential challengers not expected to
announce their candidacies for months, if ever. Trump also benefits from the
same dynamics that helped him in 2016: His opponents think he will just
disappear, a multi-candidate primary gives him an edge, and no Republican wants
to attack him directly.
Recently,
a few high-profile Republicans have predicted that Trump won’t be the GOP
nominee. These prognosticators share certain traits: None of them thought Trump
would win in 2016, they said Republicans would win big in 2022 (yes, I did
too), and they no longer hold elected office precisely because of the changes
Trump made to their party. Trump inspires a form of wishful thinking among
certain groups of people, a collective illusion that, despite all evidence to
the contrary, someday his behavior will change, and he will be content playing
golf. Well, it won’t, and he’s not. The way to thwart Trump is for voters to
choose someone else.
That
outcome is less likely in a multi-candidate race. In 2016, the non-Trump vote
divided three ways among Senators Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Marco Rubio (R.,
Fla.) and then-governor John Kasich (R., Ohio). The fracture allowed Trump to
capitalize on the winner-take-all structure of GOP primaries and win significant contests, and eventually the nomination, with a plurality of votes. The
same thing is happening in polls today. As Nathaniel Rakich observes at FiveThirtyEight,
when pollsters offer Republicans several choices, Trump wins by a huge margin.
But, in head-to-head matchups with Florida governor Ron DeSantis, Trump tends
to lose.
At this
writing, DeSantis presents the biggest obstacle for Trump. He sits atop the
field in state-level polls of New Hampshire and South Carolina. He’s a proven winner and
fundraiser who knows when to pick high-profile cultural battles that endear him
to conservatives and the MAGA crew. His crusade against wokeness is a way to
unify the party behind a tough and competent executive who hasn’t alienated
suburban independents in his home state. If nominated, he’d represent a rising
generation for change against an 81-year-old incumbent who has been in politics
for half a century.
Naturally,
other Republicans have begun to attack DeSantis. That’s to be expected. No one is
entitled to a party’s nomination, politics ain’t beanbag, and running for
president ought to be, and is, an arduous task. Potential GOP candidates are
probing for weaknesses in DeSantis’s stance on abortion, his hardball tactics
with big business, his national appeal, and his personal demeanor. Notice,
though, whom these Republicans are not criticizing. His initials are DJT.
As
happened seven years ago, Republicans are avoiding Trump either because they
believe he will pack up and go home or because they are afraid of incurring his
wrath and the animosity of his most devoted supporters. They are falling back
into formation as a circular firing squad that hurts everybody but the former
president.
The
presidential campaign is just beginning. No one knows what lies ahead. The
Trump rebound may soon pass and not come again. There’s a sleeper candidate or
two out there who will make this race interesting.
For now,
though, Democrats and Republicans are gambling that they can behave in 2024
just like they did in 2016, but produce a different result.
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