Michael Tomasky at the New Republic on the GOP and Trump today:
Still think the Republican base is done with Donald Trump? Take a look at what happened in Michigan over the weekend. The state GOP chose as its new chair one Kristina Karamo, an extremist election denier who refused to concede a defeat in last year’s secretary of state race—even though she lost by 14 points.
Yes, Trump endorsed a different candidate in the 10-person field to run Michigan’s GOP. But that doesn’t really matter. What matters, along with Karamo’s Trumpy election denialism, is the fact that all 10 candidates hugged Trump. One of them told The Washington Post that Trump’s endorsement was resented because “he don’t live here,” but this person still said, “We love Donald Trump.”
Remember: This is a state where the Democrats have literally taken over just about everything. All four statewide elected officials are Democrats, starting with Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Democrats control both chambers of the state legislature. This happened in no small part because Republicans have nominated unapologetic extremists for so many offices. It’s also a state that, as it happens, is reeling this week from another hideous mass shooting, and where Republicans have blocked gun reform laws that enjoy overwhelming support.
And what do Michigan Republicans do? Go even more extreme. If anything, Karamo was to the right of Trump’s candidate. A far-right religious zealot, she talked in her speech about, wait for it, demons (“and so if we’re not operating as though the spirit realities of the world exist, we’re going to fail every time”).
That’s only the latest evidence that Trumpism still rules the GOP.
Take a look at the recent polls asking about the 2024 Republican presidential primary. The media tends to hype the polls showing Ron DeSantis ahead of or close to Trump, because that’s bigger news. But I’m sitting here looking over the 10 most recent multicandidate GOP primary polls at FiveThirtyEight that feature Trump, DeSantis, and others. Want to hazard a guess as to Trump’s lead over DeSantis (routinely second in these surveys)? It averages 16.4 points.
And finally, take a look at what DeSantis is doing, which can only be described as trying to out-Trump Trump. Last week came news that, in his ongoing war with the College Board’s A.P. classes and tests, he is directing officials to explore using an alternative to the standard SAT that emphasizes the “great classical and Christian tradition.”
Trump is running what we could politely call a laconic campaign. Do a Google News search for “Trump campaign.” You won’t find that he’s doing much of anything. The top stories returned are those noting the sentencing to an 18-month prison term for Jesse Benton, an operative who concealed the Russian nationality of a large donor to Trump’s 2016 campaign (in its statement, the Justice Department said the Trump campaign was unaware of the donor’s true nationality).
He’s also getting hammered in the news every day. Special prosecutor Jack Smith has issued subpoena after subpoena of people in Trump’s inner circle. In Atlanta, District Attorney Fani Willis is still moving forward, as are cases in New York. With each passing week, the sense grows that sooner or later, some arm of the law or another is likely to catch up with him; that he may finally have tempted fate one time too many, and that even the protective carapace of the presidency can’t shield him. In fact, that it is precisely because he became president that the system finally is rising up to hold him to some kind of account (we hope).
And yet, none of it matters. Cable news spends hours wondering about this, but it’s pretty obvious why. Trump has energized a neofascist, white ethnonationalist segment of the population that will stay with him through virtually anything because he has identified and given voice to their resentments.
He offers three possibilities that could theoretically change this dynamic: the Christian Right rallies around an alternative (DeSantis’ ploy), all the other candidates get together and decide to back one of them, an indictment that freaks out the Trumpers. These are all possible, but as Tomasky acknowledges, unlikely:
[T]hese people aren’t leaders, they’re followers. They’re afraid of Trump’s voters, and they’re afraid of Trump himself—of the chaos he could create either with a third-party candidacy or just by attacking the GOP nominee and the whole nominating process as corrupt.
And I can’t imagine any indictment that wouldn’t rally the MAGAs behind him. Like Tomasky, I suspect Trump will lose in a general election. But as he points out:
[I]t’s sobering to know that he remains so popular—that this neofascist strain in our political life, awakened by Trump, is here for a good long while at least. We’re locked in a fight that I can’t see ending in my lifetime.
And it’s getting weirder every day.