“There’s a legitimate concern that the republic can’t withstand another four years of Trumpism,” Bill Straub wrote in the Northern Kentucky Tribune.
Even so, most Republicans evidently hope the Trumps get back in the White House.
“…A Morning Consult and Politico poll…shows that 59 percent of Republican voters wanted Trump to continue to have a major role in the Republican Party, with 54 percent maintaining they would vote for him if he seeks the presidency again in 2024,” added Straub, a veteran Frankfort and Washington journalist and member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame.
The New York Times’s Jamelle Bouie also crunched poll numbers and concluded, “The Republican Party belongs to Trump for as long as he wants it.”
Straub agrees. “White people see supporting Trump as the only way they can retain the authority they have enjoyed forever,” he recently told Forward Kentucky. Trump is “their guru” to maintain white dominance, according to Straub.
In his column, Straub also cited the “ongoing dispute” between the Trump insurgency and the GOP’s old guard plutocracy, the latter led by Mitch McConnell.
Straub quoted Abraham Lincoln’s famous 1858 warning that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” The future president meant a Union of free and slave states, the latter group including his native Kentucky.
Some pundits liken the GOP’s internecine strife to civil war. Bouie’s not buying it. He’s among pundits who think the McConnell wing has met its Appomattox.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Some pundits liken the GOP’s internecine strife to civil war. Bouie’s not buying it. He’s among pundits who think the McConnell wing has met its Appomattox.” quote=”Some pundits liken the GOP’s internecine strife to civil war. Bouie’s not buying it. He’s among pundits who think the McConnell wing has met its Appomattox.“]
“Outside of a rump faction of (occasional) dissidents, there is no truly meaningful anti-Trump opposition within the party,” Bouie added. “The civil war, such as it was, ended four-and-a-half years ago when Trump accepted the Republican nomination for president.”
Straub said McConnell, who spent four years toadying to Trump and pushing the president’s agenda, is not the best guy to lead an anti-MAGA movement in the party because “he basically made the Trump creature.”
Straub reminded his readers that “Trump is the man who fomented an insurrection against the United States government after failing to win a second term when he fell 7 million votes short to President Joe Biden, the Democrat. His mob gathered in Washington on Jan. 6 to convince members of Congress to reject the results of the Electoral College establishing Biden as the winner, stormed the Capitol, ransacked the joint resulting in five deaths, including a Capitol policeman, and threatened to execute lawmakers.”
Straub proposed that “only a miracle, and the general stupidity of the marauders, kept a greater tragedy from occurring.”
Straub also quoted the famous French philosopher Voltaire: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
[click_to_tweet tweet=’Voltaire on Trump: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” -and- “The more often a stupidity is repeated, the more it gets the appearance of wisdom.”‘ quote=”Voltaire on Trump: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” -and- ‘The more often a stupidity is repeated, the more it gets the appearance of wisdom.’”]
Voltaire also said “the more often a stupidity is repeated, the more it gets the appearance of wisdom.” That’s the essence of Adolf Hitler’s Big Lie theory, which is in Mein Kampf, Hitler’s rabidly nationalist and anti-Semitic screed:
In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility. … It would never come into [people’s]…heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.
– Adolf Hitler
Trump is the Big Liar among U.S. presidents. According to the Washington Post, Trump lied or distorted the truth 30,573 times. Of course, his most egregious falsehood was his claim that massive voter fraud stayed him from a second term.
“When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross,” is an evidently apocryphal Sinclair Lewis quote from the 1930’s when Hitler was on the rise in Germany. The famous writer evidently didn’t use those exact words, but the sentiment was his.
Straub declined to predict if truth-twisting Trumpism, largely rooted in white nationalism and authoritarianism and marked by a deadly, Trump-incited putsch, will morph into a stateside version of European Fascism.
But, Straub said he suspects the 2022 midterm congressional elections will “give us a picture of how far the Trump lunacy is going to go. A lot of establishment Republicans will be challenged in primaries by Trump-supported people.”
Straub said a divided GOP bodes well for the Democrats, who seem to be united behind President Biden. So far, he seems to be faring well with the public. A recent Quinnipiac University poll had 52 percent of registered voters liking the job he is doing as opposed to 38 percent who don’t. Biden’s numbers are “nearly the inverse of former President Trump’s negative 38 – 55 percent job approval rating at roughly the same period during his presidency in a February 22, 2017 poll.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s been hinting that he might start a third party. Straub said he “wouldn’t put it past” Trump to start a third party, but doubts he will. “That would take a lot more effort than” Trump is apt to expend “and cost a lot more money than he has.”
Hence, Straub figures that Trump will likely try to keep the GOP on course as the MAGA party.
But while the Senate refused to find the doubly impeached Trump guilty and remove him, Straub said he could wind up in court for a variety of alleged crimes, ranging from his pre-presidency financial transactions to his post-election attempt at strong-arming Georgia officials into flipping the Peach State election in his favor.
“…It’s hard to seek the presidency from Leavenworth,” Straub noted in his column.
Bouie didn’t address the tantalizing prospect of Trump making license plates in stir. “… The outcome we’re most likely to see is the one we already experienced: a Republican Party with Trump at its head, committed to nothing but his insatiable ego,” he concluded.
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