Donald Trump will make next US politics grimly fascinating for next four years

Donald Trump’s speech to the CPAC conference shows he’s going to be a nightmare for the GOP in the months and years ahead.

Donald Trump’s speech to the Conservative Political Action Committee shows that he is going to be an absolute nightmare for the Republican Party in the months and years ahead.

It was an unattractive speech, thoroughly self obsessed, as though Trump’s personal interests and the interests of the United States of America, not to mention that mere bagatelle, the Republican Party, were identical.

Among its many dolorous consequences for Republicans is that it will tend to force them to take a position for or against Trump, whereas they would be best advised to concentrate on policies and issues which directly affect the lives of American voters.

Trump teased about whether he might run for president next time – 2024 – and “beat them for a third time”

Let’s be quite clear. Trump’s allegation that the election was stolen by him is a complete lie. There is no middle ground or uncertainty here. Joe Biden won 81 million votes and 306 Electoral College votes. Trump won 74 million votes and 232 in the Electoral College.

In a state like Georgia, which Trump lost narrowly and unexpectedly, every level of the state government, which oversaw the election and appointed all the relevant officials, were conservative Republicans who supported Trump.

Only a committed conspiracy theory nut could believe they all conspired to steal the vote. Similarly across Georgia in the other simultaneous elections mostly Republicans won, so if the election was stolen it would mean all these officials falsified votes for Biden but happily elected Republicans in the other contests.

It’s nuts. And it’s truly vile, for it undermines the basis of democracy. Similarly, no court, including courts where the majority of judges were Republicans or appointed by Republicans, upheld any Trump legal action because there was no evidence to establish a prima facie case.

That means if Trump is the Republican nominee in 2024 the party must officially and comprehensively endorse the conspiracy madness that this election just gone was stolen. That would be unprecedented and almost certainly lead to Republican defeat.

Similarly, in this speech Trump explicitly denounced the US Supreme Court, for allegedly not having the guts to do what needed to be done. Three of these justices, who agreed with the other justices that the Trump case had no merit to be heard, were nominated by Trump and, previously, he lavishly extolled their character and virtue. But for Trump, good character exclusively means supporting him.

However, this explicit attack on the Supreme Court is hugely important. It means that supporting Trump now means supporting explicit attacks on the most critically important and nationally esteemed institutions at the heart of the American constitution.

It may be that Republicans cannot win without the Trump base. It is also absolutely certain that the Trump base cannot win an election without a broader range of regular Republicans and independent voters.

Donald Trump addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida. Picture: AFP.

It was reasonable for Republicans to support the many good things that Trump did as president. But since losing the presidency Trump’s rhetoric, and the formal content of his positions, has become much more extreme.

Yet Trump has an undeniable genius for making himself the centre of attention.

Similarly, Trump attacked by name all those Republican Congressmen and senators who voted against him after the January 6 storming of the Capitol, which Trump’s extreme rhetoric had certainly encouraged.

He levelled a particularly savage attack against the Wyoming Congresswoman, Liz Cheney, and hoped that she would be gone at the next election.

Trump wants Republicans defeated unless they slavishly support him.

This in a sense is now the critical question. Trump will campaign against all those Republicans in their Republican primaries. If he is successful in getting some of them disendorsed, his power within the Republican Party will be ensured. He has a fair chance of achieving this because in party primaries it is mainly party activists who vote, rather than the electorate at large.

On the other hand, if these Republicans survive their primary challenges, Trump‘s influence will decline.

At the same time, Trump faces a host of legal challenges to his private and business affairs.

All of this is bad news for Republicans at a time when Democrats have moved left and the Biden administration is broadly moving against values and policies that Republicans traditionally hold dear.

American politics could be as grimly fascinating in the next four years as it was in the last.

Trump supporters celebrate the former US president’s return in Orlando, Florida. Picture: AFP