The Republican race takes shape as candidates emerge and take aim at the former President, albeit not very effectively in my opinion. The government, however, also has its sights set on Trump with fresh indictments at the Federal level that might upend the Presidency entirely.
The big news today is former President Trump’s second round of indictments, this time by the Federal government over his handling of classified documents after departing the White House. The arraignment is set for next Tuesday, and we will know the details then. As of now, the charges appear to be a mix of mishandling documents and process crimes related to the investigation. The former President, of course, maintains his innocence and we can expect a lengthy legal battle that will stretch through next year. In the meantime, the race for the Republican nomination continues apace with a new candidate seemingly announcing every day, though many of these announcements are accompanied by questioning whether or not so and so is running in the first place. Is the country really desperate for a President Doug Burgum, the previously unheard of Governor of North Dakota? I follow politics with a nearly obsessive fervor and yet I had no idea who he was, for better or worse. The “bigger” candidates to announce this week – in a sense literally as well as figuratively – were former Vice President Mike Pence and former NJ Governor Chris Christie. Both chose to take immediate aim at what one might reasonably call the elephant in the room, former President Donald Trump, who continues to lead the field by margins more suited to an incumbent. The strategy is sound in principle. There is no chance of victory unless President Trump’s fortunes wane. The attacks themselves, however, are a case study in what not to do and as a result, their only hope might well be the indictments.
Governor Christie takes the lead by calling the former President a “baby.” “When a spoiled baby misbehaves, you send them to their room, not the White House. At his advanced age, it is time to give up hope that Trump will ever grow up. We need a leader, not a child,” he posted on Twitter and said much the same in other interviews on CNN and Fox News. The problem here is simple: There is no Republican voter (or general election voter for that matter) on the planet who believes Trump is a mature statesman or ever will be. Almost eight years after his famous (or infamous if you prefer), glide down the Trump Tower escalator, his antics are legendary, whether you love him or hate him. This is a man who regularly taunted his opponents with nicknames – Lyin’ Ted, Little Marco, and more – frequently bragged that he was richer than his critics and held the Presidency besides – literally saying, “I’m President, and they’re not.” Of course, who could forget the size of his nuclear button? More recently, he held a CNN Town Hall where he claimed the woman who sued him, partially successfully, for rape and defamation had a “cat named vagina,” over pronouncing “vagina” like an eighth grade student in health class who’d just learned a naughty word. I do not mention these things to comment on their appropriateness, but merely to point out that Governor Christie is telling people something they already know and have long since either chosen to accept in their preferred candidate or reject. In politics, you rarely succeed by telling people what is already apparent about a candidate or office-holder. President Bill Clinton is a perfect example: Republicans seemed to believe his philandering and history of torturing the truth were winning issues in 1996, only to go down in abject defeat. Despite his flaws, President Clinton remained a hugely popular figure in Democrat circles for decades. It is also worth mentioning that maturity in a Chief Executive has not always been a top priority for voters. Teddy Roosevelt was frequently referred to by friends, family, and adversaries as an overgrown child and yet his face is carved into Mount Rushmore.
The Governor’s second line of attack concerning President Trump’s character is not likely to be anymore effective. Here, he took to Twitter to note, “Breaking news… I have struggled with my weight for 20 years. What I haven’t struggled with is my character. I’ll put that up against Donald Trump’s any day. If that’s the best he’s got, then he’s lost his fastball.” Once again, the former President has been accused of everything from the truly heinous such as treason and espionage to the banal like eating two scoops of icecream when everyone else only has one. He’s been impeached twice – including once for attempting to overthrow the US government – and indicted twice as well, for both an extramarital affair and now apparently conspiracy to obstruct. To say these topics have been covered exhaustively, is a candidate for understatement of the century. There have been hundreds and thousands of articles on Trump’s supposed crimes and character flaws for the past eight years. Voters both for and against have long internalized this phenomenon and barring some sudden change – such as the former President actually in prison or at least convicted – pointing it out isn’t going to advance Governor Christie’s case, especially in a tit for tat. If anything, the tweet suggests Trump hit a nerve by mentioning his weight, and the Governor is playing defense by talking about his struggles. It should also be noted that comments like this leave Governor Christie open for a devastating counterpunch: He might think he has great character, but the Bridgegate scandal (which I don’t think was necessarily fair) accused him of playing vindictive politics with people’s lives and the infamous pictures of him sunning his rotund form on an empty beach suggest sloth more than anything else. Ironically, the former President himself is overweight. In my opinion, the Governor would have been much better off taking the low road and saying it takes a fat bastard to know one, go eat a cheeseburger and do something productive.
Vice President Pence was more circumspect in his comments, but not likely anymore effective even as he seems closer to the target. At a CNN Town Hall on Wednesday evening, he questioned the former President’s commitment to the Constitution. “I said today that I felt that he was asking me to choose between him and the Constitution,” he said of his former boss. “I chose the Constitution, and I always will.” This is a reasonable point when many conservatives and Republican voters revere the Constitution and would like to return to an era where adherence to it was held in higher regard, but in my opinion at least, it misreads two things. First, the majority of Republican voters still believe the 2020 election was rigged against President Trump, rightly or wrongly. Highlighting the point that he could have held up the certification of the results – even on legal grounds I agree are specious and would not ultimately stand – is not likely to endear Vice President Pence to these voters, many of whom see continued attacks on the Constitution from the progressive left and believe it is time to fight fire with fire. President Trump himself embodies that dynamic, and contrasting himself on this particular incarnation of the issue only showcases that fact. At the same time, this line of attack might be closer to the target if Vice President Pence can better personalize the situation, and blame President Trump for placing him there. It was after all President Trump who failed to embrace vote harvesting schemes and discouraged his voters from casting early ballots. It was also the President who failed to fight effective legal challenges before and after the election, and to rally state Republican parties and officials to put a stop to what Time Magazine described as a cabal and a conspiracy. Blaming Vice President Pence for not embracing a half-baked, last-ditch, ultimately losing effort could be seen as a bridge too far if the argument is framed differently. I would recommend something much sharper, such as “I stood shoulder to shoulder with President Trump through four tumultuous years and an unending stream of controversies. He could not possibly ask anything more of me, but when he failed to do what needed to be done in 2020, suddenly he turned around and blamed me for the loss. 2020 was his to win, but he lost it, not me. If we want to win in 2024, we need someone who can do things differently with a much steadier hand. Trump tried and failed. I will not.”
Winning, of course, is likely to be a major issue in the campaign, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has attempted to get out in front by describing himself as a winner and Trump as a loser, complete with a campaign slogan “The Strength to Win.” Speaking to Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade, he summed up the state of the race this way, “I think that there’s a lot of voters who just aren’t going to vote for him, who don’t like Biden. And you realize the country is going in the wrong direction, but they’re not going to go there. And I think that in 2016, the voters that disliked both Trump and Hillary, they sided with Trump. I think in 2020 and ‘24. It will be that they dislike both, but they would probably default to Biden. So I think that they want a vehicle to go forward.” In contrast to the former President, “I think we have a great track record in Florida of reaching voters who had traditionally not voted Republican. I mean, when we’re winning over 60% of Hispanics, when we’re winning independents by 18 percentage points, and we’re winning Miami-Dade County by double digits, that shows that strong leadership can attract people. And at the end of the day, we’ve had three substandard election cycles in a row as Republicans. I think it’s right for us to bring new people into the party. But you’ve got to have that vision, and you got to convert on it. We’ve shown an ability to do that in Florida like few others have.” Putting this another way, Trump is a loser while Governor DeSantis is a winner, and voters should back the winner. This is an interesting way to frame the race, and one that strikes me as having some potential, but it will ultimately run into the same challenge as Vice President Pence when most of the Republican electorate believes Trump won and does not blame him for the other losses. In order to succeed, Governor DeSantis will have to be both more pointed – as in convincing people that the loss is Trump’s fault and Trump’s alone – and more personal – as in Trump lost because of a defect in his personality. This will not be an easy sell by any means, but a candidate that can successfully blame the former President for electoral defeat and tie a future defeat to those same characteristics could have a potent line of argument. Sadly for Governor DeSantis, it seems to me that he simply doesn’t have the charisma to manage that trick.
Charisma, of course, is President Trump’s secret weapon. Rarely is it framed this way given that many people love him and just as many hate him, but he continues to be a captivating figure, and because of that he can get away with what would end most politician’s careers. At the risk of repeating myself, Teddy Roosevelt had a similar quality. The same rambunctious, pugnacious traits that endeared him to some voters, repelled others, and both were long lasting. I do not envy the other Republican candidates. It is difficult to deal with someone who can seemingly say or do anything without consequence, including making pointed personal attacks and deflecting all incoming fire. To win, someone needs to find a way to upend that dynamic, either by visibly getting under Trump’s skin and causing him to display real anger instead of his normal almost comedic presence, or demonstrating that this unique ability of his is a negative not a positive. Of course, the other elephant in the room is the impact of the indictments. If past is prologue, Republican voters will rally around the former President and the other candidates will be in the awkward position of having to defend him, but it’s not clear that lasts throughout the campaign, especially once the real legal wrangling begins. Many conservative sites are already suggesting President Trump cannot campaign effectively in the middle of multiple trials, and it might well be that he is effectively removed from the board, forcing voters to consider other candidates. This is a reasonable argument, but as President Trump has shown repeatedly, conventional wisdom is hard to apply to an unconventional man. At this point, nothing would surprise me up to and including Trump being elected while in prison. I’d like to say stranger things have happened, but in the US at least, we are in completely uncharted territory and no one knows where this leads.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 