Advice for Ron DeSantis. Say:
"Trump broke laws? I don't care. I'll pardon him anyway. Let the Democrats seethe."He needs to read the room of the GOP primary voters. They don't care if Trump is a crook.
Ron DeSantis has the immediate task of winning the GOP nomination. Yesterday's post on Jason Aldean's music video notes the mood of energized and engaged GOP voters. They have doubled down on belligerence. Trump doesn't offer policy so much as tribal validation. Their tribe is under attack, as they see it, and they want a ruthless fighter, unbound by Mr. Nice Guy rules. Meanwhile DeSantis is trying to finesse the Trump crime problem by changing the subject. That is probably good enough to keep from angering the 50+% of die-hard Trump supporters in the party, but it isn't good enough to win the nomination. Let's look again at the question that is central to how GOP rivals handle Trump's lawbreaking. Jake Tapper asked it:
If Jack Smith has evidence of criminality, should Donald Trump be held accountable?
The honorable, law-abiding, patriotic answer would be to say: This is a country of laws and we swore an oath to uphold the law. Of course Trump should be held to account.
Republican voters don't want to hear that. Trump offered them a taste of swashbuckling rule-breaking and they like it. GOP elected officials go along. They don't want process or rule of law. They want a result: Winning, in a battle against the evil Democrat-allied enemies of legitimate Americans like themselves. Democrats are so evil, so dangerous, that rules don't apply. Anything goes. Anything. DeSantis' answer was a mere pivot. Like Trump, he attacked the justice system. That makes him me-too, second best, and weak.
DeSantis' best choice would be to double down. Again, read the room and address the reality that GOP voters know full well Trump broke laws. Trump is bad. Be more bad. The reality of Trump's crimes has drifted into the information silo. In the back of their minds, GOP voters know he sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll. They heard the Access Hollywood tape. They know it is the kind of thing Trump did or does. They don't care. GOP voters know full well Trump cheats on his taxes, stiffs vendors, and calls it smart. They don't care. GOP voters know full well he took documents from the White House, hid them at his homes, and lied to the FBI about it. They hear him brag that he did so. They don't care. They know full well he bullied election officials, got people to sign fake elector ballots, that he tried to get state legislatures to declare him the victor, and that he roused up a crowd to frighten Pence and Congress into overthrowing the 2020 election. They don't care. In fact, they are happy he did it. Victory would have been his if Pence had come through.
DeSantis has one big advantage over Trump. DeSantis isn't under indictment. He doesn't have Trump's political complications. A majority of Americans already know they dislike Trump, and strategic GOP voters realize that Democrats want the beatableTrump to be the face of the GOP. Trump acts punch drunk. He is no longer the best messenger of Trump-ism. A majority of Americans don't know enough about DeSantis to dislike him. My advice to DeSantis is to go all in. Be as cynical as the GOP voters. Say loudly and clearly that Trump broke laws. Say you don't care, and that you will pardon Trump in your first hour in office. Say what you do care about is stuffing it to those liberal, woke, nitpicking, communist prosecutors and fake-news-viewing Democrats who hate Trump. Say that Trump is just trying to bring sanity back to America and his heart was in the right place.
This is cynical. Saying you don't care if Trump is a crook is bad for America. But Trump sold the idea that rules and laws are meant to be broken, and a huge number of GOP voters bought it. That is your market -- the lawless authoritarian populist voter. Republican voters don't want rectitude. Liz Cheney's defeat taught us that. So do Pence's poll numbers. To win the nomination, DeSantis needs to out-Trump Trump.
In the general election campaign, say pardoning Trump is an effort to heal the nation. A lot of moderate voters want that. Then stop talking policy and talk only about how young you are and how old Biden is. It might work. It might not. But it has a better chance of working than what he is doing now.
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25 comments:
It's an interesting idea you posit here, but the main problem for Ron DeSantis pulling it off, or really any other strategy either, is that he's about as charismatic as a fresh cow pie. Detestable and awful as Trump is, and I loathe him more than most, even I have to admit Trump has a level of folksy charm and charisma that allows him to connect with his followers in a way that DeSantis will never matched.
At this point I'd honestly be surprised if the DeSantis campaign lasts until the first GOP primary. Unlike Trump, DeSantis isn't an idiot (he's just basically plain evil) and he'll realize that if he wants to have any kind of political future he needs to not continue to antagonize Trump and his supporters, and instead just wait till the big guy keels over.
Until Trump dies there's an approximately 0% chance that anyone wrests control of the GOP from him. Cults are built around powerful personalities, and until the leader dies it's not really possible to get a new leader.
Here's the thing though. Nobody is going to replace Trump and take over the "maga" base. You are correct that they don't care, but it's only because of his celebrity, and no one can match that. But for them it's a show, and they are watching to see if Trump will fall, and when he does (it is now almost certain) they will reach out and change the channel and head into the kitchen for a snack.
What else is on?
You are also right in saying that a full on attack is the only strategy that could weaken his grip on the nomination. But it has to be everyone. If the other candidates realize that a unified condemnation just might marginalize Trump it could be the shift the party needs to reform itself, though it will still be pretty ugly.
I hope America cares about all that stuff.
The Republican Party has gone insane, and I mean that literally. How else to explain their idolization of a madman like Trump. DeSantis is a cheap imitation, so he’s their second favorite.
This has been building up for a long time as they erode the separation of church and state, rabidly oppose universal healthcare, regulate women’s health, deregulate guns, reverse Affirmative Action, scoff at climate change, reject election results they don’t like and now undermine the rule of law itself. They’re proof that crazy is contagious. No wonder QAnon finds the GOP so appealing.
Thanks, Michael. Loved the show hterview. Ve read, I guess every one of kingsolvers books but one. I’ve got Demon Copperhead on hold at library2go. Eight more bloody weeks, estimated.
I’m not thru with the podcast yet, but so far, she-among several other issues-seems mostly pissed off that people in her Appalachian region are mistreated and, especially, ignored by everyone else. Not sure is she’ll be speaking about trump or not. I’m about to run out of time,
Finished the podcast. Wonderful, but never heard her say anything about insane trump supporters. I now you’ve said you DON'Tsupport trump, but your comments sure seem like you do. You don’t SEEM to be insane, but maybe one can be insane in only part of his brain?
Thanks for the pod suggestion, sir.
I am always interested in trying to understand what it is about Trump that so many people find so appealing, but there’s nothing in that Ezra Klein interview that sheds any light on it.
Trump is belligerent, a scam artist, a rapist, a self-professed molester, a pathological liar and the unrepentant leader of a failed coup. No doubt historians and psychologists will be spending decades analyzing his attraction, but I was just following the principle of Occam’s Razor: He’s crazy, and those who are attracted to him are as crazy as he is.
Malcolm,
Here is the part of the transcript where she talks about why people support Trump. She doesn’t name him, she refers to him as “the person who comes along and says, look, I see you, and I’m going to blow up the system.” It’s obvious to me who she’s talking about.
Note that she doesn’t mention “racism” or “insanity.”
————————
But here we are, in the middle of it, with a lot of rock throwing in both directions. And it’s become devastating for American politics. Because rural people, who are less frequently called heartland as called flyover country, it’s a sort of a self-defense, saying, well, they hate us. We hate them back.
And let’s talk about who gets seen and who gets to tell the story in the U.S. I think that’s probably what’s most critical right now is that all of our entertainment, our news media, it’s all made in cities. And I think this has left rural people feeling so unseen and their problems so trivialized or ignored that they have gotten vulnerable to a damaged extent so that they’re ready to vote for the person who comes along and says, look, I see you, and I’m going to blow up the system.
OK, not the right answer, not the right guy, but I understand why so many people, for the first time, felt like — for the first time in many election cycles, somebody was paying attention. And now we’ve got a mess because that validated this urban notion that those people, they’re voting against their own interests. They’re not well-educated, so they can’t make good choices, so we don’t really need to listen to them, so we just hate them.
So it’s worse than it’s ever been in my life, this urban-rural antipathy, to the point where conversations are really difficult to have because we will only take information from people we trust. That’s just human. That’s the animal we are. We only listen to people that we feel like are on our side and going to look out for us.
Malcolm,
I definitely do not support Trump. He would destroy NATO, and right there that’s disqualifying for me.
But I get why people support him, and hopefully Barbara Kingsolver can help you see that too.
Mike,
Look at the excerpt of the transcript I just posted for Malcolm. See if you can try to read it with an open mind.
She is definitely shedding light, but you actually have to open your eyes.
Thank you, Michael. See if you can read this with an open mind:
Where I come from, the motto is "Duty, Honor, Country." Trump and his supporters betray all three. The system they want to blow up is the republic I love. No empathy here. I hope they blow themselves up.
No, I can never understand how any reasonable person could support trump. His good traits to bad (HORRIBLE, in his case) traits ratio is barely above zero. If he would NOT destroy NATO, would you support him? Please tell me “NO”!
Trump is fundamentally irresponsible and unpredictable. I would not want to see him in charge of anything to do with national security, or any other important policy.
I had hoped during his first presidency that “the Mandarins“ would keep him in check by ignoring and refusing to implement his crazier ideas, like the Mandarins in China used to do with the latest conquering emperor. But that effect, somewhat true at the beginning, deteriorated over time and I no longer have a lot of faith in it.
If I were in a swing state, I might have to hold my nose and vote for Biden. But I am in the very blue state of Oregon, so I am free to vote whatever protest might become available to me.
If I were in a swing state, and the choice was Trump versus a left-wing nut like AOC/Ilhan Omar/Pramila Jayapal, then I might actually have to hold my nose and vote for Trump. Here’s hoping it never comes to that.
Mike,
Reading you does not require an open mind, since there is no attempt to communicate on your part; you just fire your usual rhetorical weapons, regardless of whether they are relevant to the topic being discussed. There’s nothing there but predictable reflexes.
I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Ronald Reagan:
There you go again…
Michael -
Once again you're projecting - a common right wing personality disorder. But what a great way to pretend what I said is irrelevant. The fact that you say it is makes me doubt if you could read anything with an open mind. I wonder if you even know what Duty, Honor, Country stands for.
Mike,
All you ever do is denounce Trump’s supporters. Barbara Kingsolver offered a different perspective, and you slapped it away so fast that I doubt you even took the time to try to understand it.
I am trying to forestall a civil war and open up communications. That requires each side to see the other as human, and to attempt to understand what they are up to from their point of view. It requires some empathy, and a willingness to discuss things honestly. It requires listening carefully, and responding to what people actually say, instead of immediately twisting their words into the most evil possible meaning of them (like what is currently going on with the Florida curriculum document).
Sure, I understand duty, honor, and country. You would probably doubt me when I say I try to live up to them.
I approach things from a different angle than you do. That doesn’t make either of us evil, or either of us wrong. I am capable of fighting a rhetorical war, and sometimes I even enjoy it. But wouldn’t communication be better?
Michael -
It's too bad you probably can't appreciate the irony of being lectured to about empathy by someone who denounces Affirmative Action. Understanding the other side is something I can do with political opponents, but back when Gingrich put out his contract on America, Republicans started considering their opponents as enemies. It's progressed to the point that they won't even accept election results, unless they win. You can't reason with crazy people.
Don't worry about civil war. I know how right-wing gun nuts like to shoot off their mouths, but if they start shooting the political opponents they perceive as enemies, they won't last long. It also could improve the nation's IQ. And by the way, if you don't think the military will follow orders, you obviously haven't spent any time in it.
PS: Duty, Honor, Country is the West Point motto. Most of them take it seriously.
Well, that’s what I get for trying. It’s what I figured I would get, but I would’ve been happy to be wrong.
"I am trying to forestall a civil war and open up communications."
The only person on this blog who has brought up civil war is you. We aren't the ones threatening it. Go reason with the ones who are, the White-wing whackos in their MAGA hats, and let us know how that works for you.
“The only person on this blog who has brought up civil war is you.”
… says our local source of the kind of foaming at the mouth hatred that could lead to one.
Yes, Michael, we all know you disagree with me. But instead of just projecting your own faults onto me, you might try pointing out something I said that isn't true.
It’s not the truth or the falsity. It’s the toxic tone of blatant hatred. It’s the invective and the insults. It’s the spewing foam.
It's true that I sometimes refer to the far-White hatemongers as wackos, but you probably wouldn't get so upset over it if the shoe didn't fit so well. But keep it up. It's always good for a chuckle to be called stupid names by someone who subscribes to "race science" (aka, "scientific racism") and claims that Whites are the ones being discriminated against.
Mike now moves from passive-aggressive, “subtle” accusations of racism almost all the way into plain old, straightforward, active aggression. (He claims he knows my shoe size.) That’s progress.
Mike is like the old-time McCarthyites; he sees a racist under every bed. He is so tuned in, that is all he can see. His mind is so “open“ in that direction that it is closed in every other direction.
I could ask Mike, “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
But I already know the answer.
Poor Michael. You post a comment about Trump and his supporters wanting to “blow up the system,” then claim my response to it is irrelevant and post gratuitous personal attacks. As I said, you can’t reason with crazy people. Thanks for proving my point.
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