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Republicans planning to back a DeSantis presidential run 'pumped the brakes' after Mar-a-Lago search [1]
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Date: 2022-08-18
The thing is, Trump has been better at defeating enemies than at raising up new candidates. Cheney lost by a huge margin, but no one thinks that was about her opponent, Republican nominee Harriet Hageman. It was pure spite against Cheney. In contrast, Trump was barely able to pull Mehmet Oz across the finish line in Pennsylvania’s Senate primary, while in Ohio, J.D. Vance had a slightly bigger but still underwhelming primary win despite Trump’s support.
So Cheney’s loss doesn’t say much about Trump’s personal power. Certainly it doesn’t say as much as it says about the Republican Party’s total embrace of anti-democratic tactics to attain and maintain power—a stance Republicans took to new heights under Trump’s leadership, but which now has a life of its own in the party separate from him. But that said, the immediate defense of Trump because he is suspected of some pretty serious crimes does look like a snapback to Trump himself, not just his ideas, being at the center of the Republican Party.
“Trump has an absolute viselike grip on the Republican electorate, and if he wants to be the Republican nominee in 2024, he will be,” Republican strategist John Thomas told The Washington Post. Thomas isn’t just saying he’s certain, either. He had been planning a political action committee to back DeSantis’ presidential bid (as long as Trump didn’t run), but now, it’s off.
“We definitely pumped the brakes” after the FBI search, because Trump was more certain to run for president again, and “at this point, it would be essentially a fool’s errand for DeSantis to attempt to run.” Being under investigation for crimes “turned Trump into a victim” in the eyes of Trump’s base, Thomas told the Post, turbocharging the “us-versus-them psychology” from which Trump derives so much of his power.
Can he maintain that until 2024? Who knows. But if Republican operatives are being scared away from building campaign infrastructure for alternative presidential candidates, it’s going to help him. Whether it helps weak Republican candidates like Oz or Vance, or the party as a whole, is another question. But they made that bed.
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/18/2117396/-Seeing-their-leader-investigated-for-crimes-spurs-Republicans-to-rally-around-him-even-more-strongly
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