Tim Miller hit the road in Iowa and has some interesting observations:
Convention Madness
As I was crisscrossing Iowa following the third indictment of Donald Trump, I caught wind of a fresh perspective regarding the right time to winnow the field.
The conventional wisdom has always been that Trump’s opponents need to consolidate around the strongest challenger as quickly as possible to avoid dividing the opposition votes. Mitt Romney argued that the drop-dead date should be February 26, in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed. (My view: Even that might be too late.)
But now at least one of Trump’s opponents is wondering if the frontrunner’s legal troubles could change the calculus and require candidates to stay in for the long haul in order to try and amass delegates in case there is a convention battle because the former president is . . . otherwise indisposed.
“This is about meeting the moment while also thinking long-term,” said a DeSantis super PAC staffer on the condition of anonymity pointing to their massive super PAC war chest.
The long-term game theory takes into consideration what might happen should the January 6th trial move fast enough to prevent Trump from accepting the GOP nomination (I’m lighting a Jack Smith votive candle as we speak). If the legal calendar presents that possibility, might his opponents have to consider earning as many delegates as they can ahead of a convention fight, rather than dropping out of the race once it’s clear they can’t win?
This possibility could be simply the case of consultants with a lot of super PAC dough trying to ride their moneymaker as long as possible. (Which is what one of DeSantis’s rival campaigns’ spokespeople suggested to me.)
But is it so crazy to think that these campaigns might be caught in a prisoner’s dilemma that disincentivizes them from getting out of the race—and thus helping Trump . . . again? Wasn’t that possibility the reason so many anti-Trump Republicans were warning about a big field to begin with?
A hypothetical: If the early contests offer a muddied result that doesn’t elevate a single challenger above the herd—but also Trump is staring down the barrel of spring court dates—it would not be illogical to assume that candidates would have incentive to stick around and try to earn delegates in the later states where they are allocated proportionally, just in case things get wild in Milwaukee.
This wishcasting candidacy would surely be met with some resistance and mockery, but that hasn’t stopped ambitious politicians before. And let’s be honest, after getting schlonged by a man under multiple federal indictments in the first few contests, the remaining candidates might figure there’s no point in getting out to preserve dignity that, by that point, would be long gone.
I don’t expect that we live in the beautiful timeline where Trump rots in jail while his sycophants fight on the convention floor. But it would be about par for the course for the sweet dream of this possibility to freeze a fragmented field—and help him coast to a third nomination.
If I recall correctly, that idea was bandied about in 2016 as well. At one point everyone thought that Trump would be forced to drop out at some point because he was so beyond the pale. There was even a tepid floor fight and Ted Cruz refused to endorse him.
Yeah. That’s how that went.
Ron DeSantis: Noble Warrior
I was chatting with two women in the cafe outside the livestock auction in Tama, Iowa, where DeSantis was about to hold a sparsely attended event when a field staffer from the Never Back Down Super PAC approached us with some commit-to-caucus cards.
Both women were undecided on whom to support at this stage and politely declined, so the young man went into his spiel.
He began by credentialing himself as a former Trump 2020 staffer before offering the case for his candidate. “We shouldn’t have to pick between policy and personality,” he said. (I presume the subtext here is that he thinks DeSantis has both?)
But then it got interesting. He said that Republicans deserve somebody who is “mobile.”
Well, at least, that’s what we heard.
The three of us at the table began laughing and I asked him for clarification. As it turns out this was not a dig at Biden and Trump’s advancing age. He clarified that he was saying that he thought the party deserves someone “noble.”
Now that is an interesting argument we haven’t heard much from Trump’s top-tier opponents! The staffer quickly pivoted to more anodyne talking points about the importance of winning the election because he’s worried his generation is succumbing to socialism. Then he moved on to the next table.
This suggestion that Trump might not be noble has not been something we had been hearing from DeSantis to date, but the candidate did get as close as he has come to making the moral case against his rival the previous day at a town hall in New Hampshire.
These insults are juvenile. That is not the way a great nation should be conducting itself. That’s not the way the president of the United States should be conducting himself. . . . I’m not going to insult somebody. Somebody’s looks or somebody’s dress or something like that. I wouldn’t teach my kids to treat people like that. We have a 6-, 5-, and 3-year-old, we teach our kids to treat people the way you would want to be treated yourself.
And here is the crux of the other DeSantis dilemma.
Everything the Florida governor said in that town hall in New Hampshire and that his super PAC staffer told us at the table in Tama is obviously true.
Trump has not acted with nobility. His insults are juvenile. No responsible parent would teach their kids to emulate him.
But making that argument now, after years of extolling Trump’s virtues, after running an ad where DeSantis read The Art of the Deal to his kids, makes DeSantis sound like he’s the disingenuous, ignoble heel, not Trump. In fact, it might even help Trump, further cementing his claim that DeSantis is a normie cuck in MAGA wolf’s clothing.
Which has been the foundational flaw of the deal Republican politicians made with the Orange Devil eight years ago. Once they submitted to his terms, there was no take-backsies. The time for Republicans to win the argument about nobility was August 2015, or at the latest February 2021. The hour now is far too late. That’s why they are stuck in a confidence game, trying to extend the clock as long as possible, hoping Jack Smith and a jury of their peers will finally set them free.
Not to mention the fact that DeSantis is a roaring asshole himself. He’s rude and mean and nasty and any parent who wanted to raise something other than a sociopath would never see this creep as any kind of role model. He is anything but noble.
Report from the Fantasy Primary
A couple weeks ago I wrote about how there are two primaries going on:
-a real one among the MAGA voters who like Trump and will determine the nominee; and
-a fantasy primary among Republican elites who secretly loathe Trump and are hoping that voters will soon come to their senses.
You can imagine my surprise when I learned that the fantasy primary is so ingrained in the old guard GOP mindset that it even extends to campaign events out in real ’Merica!
On Sunday, I attended Ashley’s BBQ Bash in Cedar Rapids, hosted by GOP Rep. Ashley Hinson. The event was a campaign cattle call featuring the local Iowa GOP politicians and many of the Republican candidates for president. But not Trump.
For the first hour of the event I sat in a daze as speaker after speaker came to the lectern without mentioning Trump’s name. What world are these people living in? It’s not as if there isn’t anything to say! He was the most recent Republican president, is currently winning the primary in a landslide, and just this week was indicted for the third time. You’d suspect leading members of his party would have some thoughts on that! Apparently not.
The only sign of the former president in the first half dozen speeches was a large man sitting in the front row holding an actual TRUMP sign right in front of DeSantis’s face as he was finishing speaking.
About halfway through tepid remarks from the next speaker, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, I went to the concessions for a water. In the back of the barn, I noticed two older women emblazoned with Trump flair sitting at the tables where people had been eating. I was curious if they had also noticed the lack of discussion about their candidate. And boy did I strike a nerve.
Paula said that “all the cool kids” are having their event and the “rest of us” who like Trump are being left out. “I just think that’s weird.”
Donna, who volunteered that she had taken a bus to the National Mall on January 6th and thought it was “awesome” getting to talk to Trump supporters from all over that day, said she was “shocked” by the lack of support for Trump from the event organizers.
“If Trump was here this place would be packed,” she said.
I’m sure Paula and Donna hold many views that I would find to be a bit out there—but on this score I gotta say it seems like they were the ones who were seeing things clearly.
Having a Republican party BBQ and pretending Trump doesn’t exist isn’t going to make it a reality, no matter how much the politicians in the fantasy primary wish it were so.
There’s big money in it apparently, DeSantis is blowing through it as fast as he can and vastly wealthy people who have more money than they know what to do with are writing numerous 8 figure checks to candidates who have no chance to win. Nice work if you can get it.
Miller is right. There is no real primary. There’s a death watch. If Trump drops dead on the gold course there will be someone left to pick up the pieces. That’s all there is.
