No one can deny Donald Trump’s political genius. His career refutes absolutely the absurd criticism on the left that he’s somehow unintelligent or doddery.
But his apparent plan to run for president in 2024 could well be a disaster for Republicans, delivering a repeat of 2020 and tearing the GOP apart to boot.
Amid the jubilation among Trump’s diehard fans this week, it can’t be forgotten even 79-year-old Joe Biden beat Trump in 2020 by more than seven million votes.
And that was before the ever-lengthening series of inquiries emerged, any one of which could land him in serious legal trouble before 2024.
New York State is pursuing him for corporate fraud, a Georgia grand jury is investigating whether he interfered with the 2020 election by asking officials to “find votes”, and the Department of Justice is investigating whether the former president wrongly took top secret documents. They are just the main ones, and none of them will fade away should he run for president.
Love and hate are equally powerful inducements to vote.
“There it is, Trump at 71 (per cent), Ron DeSanctimonious at 10 per cent,” Trump gloated to an adoring crowd of supporters at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday night, referring to the Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, for now his most likely competitor for the future Republican nomination.
But other polls show a much closer race in a hypothetical match up, and what should matter for the Republican Party is winning the White House, not the presidential nomination.
Unlike the Democrats, Republicans have a remarkably talented bench of future presidential candidates, a generation or more younger than Trump, who would be 78 at the beginning of a potential second term.
On top of the capable DeSantis, there is former US envoy to the UN Nikki Haley, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, Texas’s Greg Abbott, who despite being unable to walk nevertheless became governor of the second most important state in the union, and perhaps even Kari Lake, who is running for Arizona governor on Wednesday AEDT, none of whom carry Trump’s sizeable political baggage.
The former president’s roughly 90-minute speech on Saturday night was self-indulgent, suggesting a future tilt might be as much about personal vindication as making American great again.
Republican Senate candidate and TV doctor Mehmet Oz – the man whose election critically actually matters for Republicans – was in attendance for the whole time but spoke for less than six minutes.
Conservative opinion-makers outside the mainstream media are already upset with Trump’s childish dismissal of DeSantis, suggesting the former president can’t count on GOP obeisance.
“DeSantis is an extremely effective conservative governor who has had real policy wins and real cultural wins. Trump isn’t going to be able to take this one down with a dumb nickname. He better have more than that up his sleeve,” Matt Walsh, a conservative columnist with 1.1 million followers, said after Trump’s outburst as just one example.
In the evermore pressing strategic competition with China, the US is crying out for a unifying president, a centrist, a John F. Kennedy or Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a Dwight Eisenhower or a Ronald Reagan. For all his charisma, Trump is obviously not that man. One can admire and respect Trump’s achievements without hoping he runs for president a third time; he became, probably, one of the most famous people who ever lived, no small achievement.
Democrat ineptitude and economic happenstance may still propel Trump across the line in 2024, but it’s a great gamble the party doesn’t need to take. Obviously, Democrats will not run Vice-President Kamala Harris if they know she is going to lose.
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