Here we go again

It reached the point where Daina and I simply couldn't take it anymore.  There were actually pictures of Trump's plane in the air, then landing at National Airport (I refuse to call it Reagan), and then his motorcade taking him to the federal courthouse across from the Capitol, where his minions attempted insurrection two-and-a-half years ago.  You couldn't ask for better advertising as the whole world was focused on this moment in history when a former president was being arraigned for plotting to subvert the government.  We went out and scraped some more weeds from the driveway to get our minds off Trump.

However, there is no escaping him.  He is everywhere and as one of his supporters said to a DW reporter on the courthouse steps, he will probably get another 5-point jump in the polls.  They see this as an attempt by the Biden administration to stifle opposition, much like Putin does in Russia, by arresting his political opponents.

For whatever reason, Trump rests firmly atop a crowded field of Republican presidential nominees.  He is polling 54 percent.  So, even if his opponents all got together and rallied behind one of them, they would still lose if the primaries started this month.  Fortunately for them the primaries don't start until January, so maybe Trump will get hit by a meteor, as one CNN pundit put it.  Even then he would probably still win, even in death, as Republican candidates have been known to do in elections.  Conservatives of all stripes cling to him like no other candidate before him.

What kind of spell he holds over them god only knows.  As much as they try, no other candidate has been able to approach that aura of invincibility.  Governor Ron has tried with his "war on woke" but it is backfiring horribly.  He's lost the confidence of big money donors who would like anyone other Trump but so far no strong candidate has emerged.  Some are now banking on Tim Scott, who offers a sense of stability if nothing else, but he hasn't been able to strike a chord with voters.  So, once again the Republican Party is finding itself stuck with Trump.

The GOP had their chances to throw him to the wayside even while he was president, but they weren't brave enough to challenge him except for a select few.  Mitch literally looks like a dead man walking these days, refusing to take a position one way or the other on Trump, so we see Republican Senate firebrands like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz jumping to the embattled former president's defense, claiming the Biden administration has "weaponized" the Department of Justice.  Virtually all the Republicans in the House of Representatives have fallen behind Trump, with calls for Biden's impeachment in their elusive quest for juicy material on Hunter Biden's laptop.

Trump himself has said that if the House doesn't impeach Biden he will run candidates against these US representatives in the primaries.  They all know these candidates would win as Trump candidates do astonishingly well in the primaries.  Where they falter is in the general elections as we have seen each of the last three election cycles.  I doubt 2024 will be any different.  Biden may not be the most popular president but few actually want a return of Trump's America.  

This is what the Republican megadonors have been trying to tell their Congresspersons, but the dynamics of the once grand old party have shifted so far to the right that even money doesn't help at this point.  They have to find a way to break the grip Trump has over the religious conservatives in the party.

Needless to see this has been an odd marriage.  The very basis of Evangelism is that even the most vile person can find salvation as long as he repents his sins. Trump has never done so.  Despite the concerns raised by some of the leading figures in the Evangelical movement, Trump is still their man.  They see him as their "Moses," leading them out of a mythical wilderness of wokeness.

So, here we are less than six months out of the first primary in Iowa and a thrice-indicted former president still leads the pack with the first debate coming up later this month.  It will be sponsored by Fox News, which has fallen on Trump's bad side, so it is doubtful he will even attend.  He doesn't have to being this far ahead in the polls.  All these other guys and gals are running for second place, hoping to be paired with Trump on the ballot like some sort of prom date.

Let's just say he picks Nikki Haley or Tim Scott as his running mate.  Would that really help matters?  It might draw a little away from Biden and Harris' minority support, but mostly in the South where Trump would win anyway.  His image is so soiled at this point that he couldn't win beyond deeply conservative states.  What reasonable person wants a president who very well could be presiding over the office from a jail cell?  

There are enough charges leveled against him at this point that a conviction and some sort of jail time is virtually assured.  Even if federal prosecutors can't nail him for subverting the government, they will most certainly get him for having illegally detained classified information: 31 counts that each carry up to 4 years in prison.   We still haven't heard from Georgia, where he tried to strong arm the governor and secretary of state into overturning the 2020 election results.   A state conviction cannot be pardoned by the President.  Only that state's governor can do so and he is not on best of terms with Brian Kemp.

That's why I don't worry too much.  Even if the Republicans are foolish enough to nominate Trump a third time he will lose the general election regardless of who he picks as a running mate.  I got a huge laugh out of Steve Bannon suggesting RFK Jr. as if this would magically slice away one third of the Democratic vote from Biden.  The only way Trump wins is if a third party candidate runs that leans just enough to the center that he or she pulls away a big chunk of independent votes that would tilt just enough states toward Trump in the electoral college.  So far no such candidate has emerged.