I’ve got to tell you that the recent Washington Post/ABC poll showing Donald Trump about 10 points ahead of Joe Biden, and thereby challenging the notion that Trump is almost sure to lose in the general election, has me puzzled. Why would anyone believe any mainstream media poll? These are the same guys who said Biden was ahead 17 points in Wisconsin in 2020 and ended up winning by one. That was a classic sucker’s poll designed to suppress turnout. What’s this one? It’s clear that the Democrats want to run against Donald Trump. They think he’s got too much baggage to win, even against Zombie/Kamala. But why are they putting Trump 10 points ahead? Maybe they want to sucker the Republicans into nominating him, but they look like they’re on their way to doing that anyway. Or maybe they want to activate their own party? Or maybe these are the poll numbers they came up with, and they’re not trying to do anything at all.
I don’t know which it is, but I do know that I’m not going to believe anything that the regime media wants to tell me, even if it’s something I want to hear. Now, I’ve been pretty clear that I support Ron DeSantis in the primary, and I’ll support whoever wins in the general, so does this count as something I want to hear? Hell yes. I’m willing to take success however it comes. If Donald Trump wins the general election, I win, and you win, and the Republican party wins. Is the guy perfect? No. Is the guy an utter disaster like any Democrat would be? No. I think you’ve got your answer.
So, like Special Agent Muller, I want to believe. I want to believe that the American people look at that desiccated old pervert masquerading as our president and say, “No more, we’re not doing this. Take your Bidenomics, open borders, teen mutilation, and endless money for endless wars, and stuff it up, your Fetterman. Give me those good old-fashioned MAGAnomics and two-dollar gas.”
So, should we just call the GOP primary race now? No. We need to have a primary season, not a coronation, and this week at the second debate, we’re going to see the other candidates jockeying for second. Vivek had his rise, and he’s kind of fading away. Pretty soon, he’s going to be selling Bitcoin seminars. Now it’s Nikki Haley’s turn to get some heat, but the more GOP voters look at her, the more they’re going to realize that she is a human Wayback Machine trying to return us to the managed mediocrity of the Bush years and nobody wants that. This is the lady who can’t tell the wokes to shut up and who can’t give enough to Ukraine, and when GOP voters figure that out, she’s just done.
Ron DeSantis remains the only viable alternative and is far behind. It doesn’t make me happy to say that, but that’s what the consensus of the polling seems to say. Of course, there is something that the Trump campaign has to contend with, and that’s events. We don’t know what’s going to happen in the next four months before Iowa, or the ten months until November after that, for that matter. You could have another indictment that isn’t manifest garbage. You could have some other new scandal that gains traction. You could have Donald Trump have a physical problem – the guy is nearly 80. Nobody knows, and even if you buy the idea that this nomination race is over, why the hell should the Republicans be working without a net?
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I hear a lot of criticism of the DeSantis campaign, and it is true that he has not overtaken the President. Maybe it was never meant to be. He was facing a huge problem. The people in the party really like Donald Trump. That’s not a reflection of DeSantis. Most of the people who like Donald Trump, except for the gibbering lunatics who have emotionally invested themselves in a politician for reasons that I can’t even imagine, like Ron DeSantis. Eventually, Trump will age out, and then RDS will be there in 2026 or 2032 if 2024 does not work out. I mainly get a kick out of the nobodies who presumed to tell those of us who are not on the Trump Train in the primaries that we have no future in the Republican Party – the same Republican Party they absolutely hate, yet imagine they have some influence over. It’s like a guy who didn’t get an invitation to a party, thinking he gets to write the guest list.
Now, as far as criticizing how Ron DeSantis has run his campaign, no campaign is perfect, but in this situation, is there another way to run it? You have some people thinking that he should attack Donald Trump more directly. What is that going to accomplish? RDS’s reason for running is electability. You’re going to get acceptable policies out of Trump and out of DeSantis, though I think DeSantis will be more systematic and ruthless about enforcing them. A Trump victory is still a victory. No, the question is electability. Are the majority of Republican voters going to decide that 1) Donald Trump is less likely to be elected than Ron DeSantis and 2) they choose to vote accordingly? Well, those are two decisions, and according to the current polls, the Republican voters have not said yes to both of them.
Republican big donors are notoriously stupid, weak, and fickle. Many of them are panicking because Ron DeSantis hasn’t done something to upend the dynamic during the summer doldrums when dynamics cannot be upended. But there’s not going to be one seminal event where a bunch of Republicans decide they don’t want Trump anymore and that they’re going to switch overnight to DeSantis. DeSantis only wins if people come around to him over time, and that’s what has happened with most people who support him. They came over to RDS over time.
But they’re also people going back to Trump because of various factors, especially the unjust and disgusting criminal prosecutions against him. Ron DeSantis’s best course of action is to keep plugging away, to be there as the alternative that people can come to when they’ve finally decided that Donald Trump is not the best vehicle for winning in 2024. They may very well not make that decision. Still, there’s no big power move, or modification of DeSantis’s campaign style, or a new haircut, or special ad, or anything else it’s going to change that until Iowa. People have to change their minds themselves.
And that’s not bad. For so long, the Republican voters have been told what to do and what to think, and they’re tired of it. Ron DeSantis doesn’t need to tell them what to do because they’ll just tell him to pound sand. Instead, he needs to make the best case for himself and his electability. Will that work? I don’t know. I hope so. He’s got to hang in there, and he’s got to build an organization in Iowa to win there. Winning primaries and caucuses are actual things that he can do to change the whole calculus.
In the meantime, obviously, he’s got to do well in the debates, and I think he probably will. But his strategy is essentially going to be to keep doing what he’s doing now, which is being there as the alternative for when people are ready to move to it.
Will they do it? Who knows? A lot of Monday morning quarterbacks who love Trump are huffing and puffing that DeSantis never should’ve gotten the race on at all. That’s ridiculous. This was his time and his best chance. If it doesn’t work out for him, that’s on him. A candidate has to win his office. Nobody can do it for him. Ron DeSantis faces a lot of challenges. I think he’s doing the best anyone could under the weird circumstances of a second Grover Cleveland, who also happens to be the great American political outlier.
There is one thing I do know, and that’s not going to change. I will vote for who I think is the best candidate in the primary general I will and then in vote for whoever the GOP voters pick. Because there’s only one thing that matters to me. It’s not the feelings, ambitions, or dreams of any politician. It’s not even being proven right on who I bet on in a horse race, as if I have anything to do with the outcome. It’s that I want my party to win in 2024 and save this country.
Follow Kurt on Twitter @KurtSchlichter. Get his non-fiction book We’ll Be Back: The Fall and Rise of America and Inferno, the seventh book in the Kelly Turnbull People's Republic series of conservative action novels set in America after a notional national divorce. Novel number eight, Overlord, drops on October 1st!
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