Jonathan Martin, Politico’s answer to Maureen Dowd (when she was a snotty reporter) says that the GOP is starting to come to terms with the fact that they are stuck with Trump for another round. I have always thought so (barring some intervening event like Trump dropping dead on the golf course.) He addresses the biggest problem they face — the fact that Trump will never concede gracefully if he loses:
Just as progressives privately worried that Hillary Clinton and her party’s moderates would never truly embrace Bernie Sanders if he prevailed, many pessimistic Republicans wonder the same about Trump next year.
That ridiculous. The test was in 2008 when the delegate count in the primary was super, super close and yet Clinton endorsed Obama at the convention (saying “were you in it for me or were you in it for the country” to her disappointed followers) worked to get him elected and was then brought into the cabinet as Secretary of State. Both of the primaries in 2008 and 2016 were very tough (I hope to never relive them) but to assume that Clinton would never have “truly embraced” Sanders is typical. She would have been a good soldier as always and her followers would have come around. (I omitted his reference to Trump being the Hillary Clinton of 2024 because it’s stupid. )
Anyway:
It’s preposterous to imagine him, arms held aloft with DeSantis or whoever beats him, at a Unity Breakfast the morning after the nomination is decided. At best, Trump will be an irritant to who defeats him.
So why not, as Christie alluded to last week, stop fighting political gravity, submit to Trump and then, if he again loses, begin the Republican reformation in 2025. After all, it took Democrats three consecutive losses in the 1980s for the Democratic Leadership Council to finally gain traction and elevate one of their own in 1992.
Republicans would only have to suffer two White House defeats to finally move on from Trump and, in the meantime, there’s that Supreme Court majority he helped deliver as the political backstop.
As a shrewd Republican strategist, and no NeverTrumper, put it to me recently: “We’re just going to have to go into the basement, ride out the tornado and come back up when it’s over to rebuild the neighborhood.”
This Republican, as with a number of his like, has been hoping for a strong Trump alternative to emerge but has grown more pessimistic, DeSantis’ early stumbles confirming his doubts about the Florida governor. Moreover, there’s the matter of Roe being overturned and the political vise the party is caught in between its unyielding anti-abortion activists and a broader electorate that supports legal abortion. “We’re the dog that caught the car on Trump and abortion.”
So, yes, there are some doubts in GOP ranks about 2024. And not just from the self-hating type.
I would hope so. Trump has turned the GOP into a toxic waste dump and there’s no cleaning it up until he’s gone. And frankly, like all toxic waste dumps, it’s going to take years or perhaps it should be completely condemned.