Fair warning, this is going to be a 2024 GOP presidential politics blog post. The Republican primary race still hosts a sizable field of contenders and since modern American politics runs on polling (a spin-driven business fueled by politicos and media in America), former president, Donald Trump has carried a wide lead all along.
I didn’t vote for Trump or Hillary in 2016, but in 2020 I was so alarmed by the bizarre from-the-basement Biden COVID Preacher campaign, that I did vote for Trump. The Jan.6th craziness and that entire “Stop the Steal” sore loser escapade made me regret that vote, even though the Biden years have been worse than I expected. In 2024, I won’t vote for Biden or Trump. I firmly believe it’s going to take a dramatic cultural shift, outside of our corrupted political system, to both Make American Great Again and “protect our democracy” that both parties keep yammering about.
My blog is filled with loads of posts about my belief that Trump’s a total fraud – Clinton friend and Howard Stern best bud turned into the GOP Savior was (and still is) too much for me to swallow, but millions of Americans got on the MAGA circus train and are still riding it. I understand why when I look across at the Democrats and liberal media chokehold on traditional American viewpoints and values. Now here’s where I see the GOP primary race.
The only two other GOP candidates with a shot, in my view, are DeSantis and Haley, who have tried various shifting messaging and staking of policy positions to gain some traction and momentum.
Haley has carefully avoided attacking Trump, while trying to don the cloak of foreign policy experience diva, of a former US ambassador to the UN… in the Trump administration. She’s largely pitched her messaging toward the NeverTrump and Trump-weary corner of the GOP and Independents.
On foreign policy, Haley puts forth many traditional Republican positions, that seem more in tune with pre-9/11 America. I understand Haley’s foreign policy positions, because they’re based on geopolitical reality, not populist pipedreams. Those positions are at odds with where Trump’s populist MAGA foreign policy circle seems to be at. Trump’s the GOP pied piper, who still merrily leads his followers along playing tunes of, not only MAGA and taking back our country, but he even offers foreign policy medleys to Putin’s a victim and NATO is our enemy too. Trump’s continuing his pattern of staking out wildly volatile policy positions. He often would announce policies that were at odds with his own administration policies, then he’d flounder around to talk his way around to his administration policies. Haley has gained a bit of traction and a bit of momentum, but she’s not making inroads into winning over MAGA Republicans, who still reportedly make up the majority of the party.
Haley likes to play the feminist card, selling a softer GOP feminist brand, which also includes playing the victim card, just like liberal feminists. With culture war issues, she often initially buys into the liberal media narratives, comes under attack from the right, then she backtracks and tries to find a position more in line with the MAGA part of the GOP. It’s doubtful she would take the fight to the liberals on most culture war issues.
Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, still sounds great on policy in interviews, but his campaign hasn’t been able to gain traction against the massive and relentless Trump and liberal media/Dem efforts to spin him into the dirt. DeSantis began trying to run on “fighting Woke” everywhere, from the schools, to the boardrooms, to the oceans white with foam… His campaign kicked off with a glitch-ridden digital launch on X/formerly Twitter, probably in hopes of trying to stake out territory owned by Trump.
Trump “owned the libs” on Twitter and used his personal Twitter account to demolish both Dem and the liberal media spin attacks throughout the 2016 campaign and his entire presidency. However, while Trump’s Twitter battles were important in the media spin war, his movement was born on the ground. His 2016 secret sauce, since the vast majority of Americans weren’t even on Twitter, was his big rally shows and that travelling political circus, which was a Hollywood-type production, selling populist snake oil along with red hats emblazoned with a new right-wing movement, MAGA. Make America Great Again rallies are where the MAGA movement really galvanized, not on Twitter. Twitter was where Trump learned to fight out spin battles against the liberal media/Dem pundit class and win.
DeSantis is great at interviews and discussing policy, but he’s awkward at the retail politics. The DeSantis X campaign fielded a constantly online cadre of personalities, many former Trump Twitter spin commandos, who tried and have failed to win over Trump supporters. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign launched non-stop personal attacks against DeSantis, his wife, his height, and even his boots. The Trump campaign attacks and the liberal media attacks against DeSantis have been largely identical – trying to mock and marginalize DeSantis and they’ve been successful.
The Desantis Iowa strong campaign, hyping visiting all 99 counties, in hopes of using an Iowa primary win to fuel support in other early primary states hasn’t budged the national polling. Beyond the initial interest in his Iowa campaign, there are so many other things going on in America (and beyond) for there to be much national interest in rather low-key campaign events in rural Iowa counties. Currently, the DeSantis campaign reportedly is under another reorganization shuffle and defections from his campaign to the the Trump campaign will likely intensify, unless there’s some dramatic change.
The biggest miscalculation seems to have been DeSantis’ decision to try to out-MAGA Trump and win over loyal Trump supporters by attacking Trump. There’s a glaring double standard when you listen to many Trump supporters – none of the rules of behavior they hold for everyone else ever apply to Trump. Trump even has taken to spewing lines about how he’s shouldering all these politically-motivated lawsuits for his followers – he’s your savior, doing it all for you.
Meanwhile, DeSantis promises to slay all of MAGA world’s enemies that Trump failed to do. While he has been a very successful governor, tackling the federal bureaucracy isn’t FL. Trump is light on details and big on vaguely defined promises, but DeSantis buries his own broader message in so many policy plans and promises, that it just sounds like too much noise at this point. DeSantis demolished CA governor, Gavin Newsom in a Hannity debate last week, but here again, in the bigger picture, I doubt that will result in a boost in his poll numbers.
Most of MAGA world still seems to live where hazy memories of 2016 euphoria linger, 2020 “stolen election” anger still burns, but most of all the wreckage of Biden policies hits them in the face at the gas pump, in the grocery store, when they wonder about their next electric bill… or WWIII erupting. Yet the Biden administration keeps selling Bidenomics and telling Americans the economy’s doing great. And along with all the economic disasters, remnants of the destructive “Defund the Police” policies continue to erode public safety in cities all across America, our borders are not secure, and the multitude of liberal culture war battles from transgender issues, guns, to free speech controversies still burn hot. The Biden presidency poll numbers are consistently bleak.
President Biden has worse poll numbers than Trump and the other Republican candidates. Despite all the difficulties in Dems trying to switch to another candidate, somehow, some way, I won’t be surprised if Biden isn’t the 2024 Democratic nominee.
Barring some major upheaval, Trump is on the path to the 2024 GOP nomination.
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