My work day is pretty full. So I don’t get a chance to listen to a lot of conservative media online. But when I can’t go to sleep I’ll look up the latest from Charlie Kirk, Michael Knowles, and Ben Shapiro. All three are edifying and entertaining.
I love the way Kirk lures college students onto flights of irrationality and then springs the trap on their necks. Knowles is amusing, has great delivery, and is uberarticulate. Shapiro is my favorite. Granted, he talks too fast thus stepping on some of his own best lines. But his logic is impeccable and his knowledge is superb.
As such, on a recent online offering he opined that former president Trump was popular with the Republican Party for two main reasons. The first is that he savagely fought the left.
The late liberal Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall once said that when he died he didn’t necessarily have to leave the high court. He preferred to be propped up in his chair and his votes could automatically be recorded against anything court conservatives backed. Trump had a similar idea.
While professing no coherent ideology of any sort, he was for almost anything the left was against. Not a bad political compass, actually. It made for amusement and some good policy. But it wasn’t his main job. Shapiro correctly assessed that Trump’s only real job was to win elections. Because nothing happens unless you can do that.
Well, Trump won convincingly in 2016. But he lost the House and Senate in 2018. He lost the presidency in 2020. His proxies lost in Georgia in 2021, delivering the Senate to the Dems. His proxies lost in 2022, again delivering the Senate to the Democrats. The man just can’t win anymore.
I can hear the lost cause violins. Spare me. If Trump had lost in the 2016 primary season, which as a Cruz backer I hoped he would, the blind loyalty of some of his followers would have been likely transferred to another politician. Trump would have been a historical footnote, a minor Ross Perot.
However, he won and the world was his oyster. Until he couldn’t keep his yap shut, posted bizarre tweets, and let Tony Fauci cripple the economy over a hyped up weekend flu. Then the losing began. As we saw in November, it hasn’t stopped.
To beat Joe Biden and the Democrats in 2024, to stop his reign of senile left wing incompetence, we need a presidential candidate who can win. Anybody can lose one here or there. But Trump is on a losing streak so deep he is damaged goods. We deserve a candidate who can decisively win the GOP primaries and go on to take the general election. Like Trump did, in 2016. It’s years later now, his track record says he’s incapable of doing it anymore.