Having lost a few (lots of) steak dinner bets on whether Trump would be the nominee (I said no), and nursing my bitter disappointment that it won't be Florida's miracle governor, Ron DeSantis, I asked one of the steak dinner champions his secret method.
Me: How did you know??? How could you possibly have imagined that GOP voters would be that stupid? They did the right thing in 2020 -- red wave everywhere, except the presidential election. They elected Reagan over Bush and Donald Trump over 17 open-borders Republicans in 2016. How can they have suddenly become retarded???
I won't be writing about the presidential election going forward, but do you think it would seem odd this week if I started writing cooking columns?
Him: The reason I knew is that I spent so much time mingling with the fringe in my youth. I can sense when the gangrene takes hold, when the loudest and craziest chase out the sanest while, at the same time, the "liddle peeple," pure of heart but (as you said) easily duped, decide to sell the cow for the magic beans. It's tragic; this whole year's gonna be tragic. Though, if you'll forgive the temerity, I'm not certain you'll be able to stick to "I won't be writing about the presidential election going forward." You're not gonna be able to suffer fools for 11 months.
Damn him, he's right about that, too.
First, what on Earth happened to DeSantis?
1. His 20-point victory in 2022, when Republicans were wiped out in the rest of the country, made DeSantis disinclined to consider the advice of people who were just trying to help him.
2. My case in chief: The six-week abortion limit, or as I call it, the "Republican Assisted Suicide Act." By then, voters in five states, including two Trump won (Kentucky and Kansas) and one state he almost won (Michigan), had already overwhelmingly rejected the tiniest restriction on abortion. But why should DeSantis listen to anyone else? Twenty points, baby!
3. The white boots.
4. "Mamas for DeSantis." Did anybody workshop that? In areas of Appalachia written about so eloquently by J.D. Vance, "mamas" would probably work. In the rest of the country, it's total cringe.
5. Jeff Roe. When megadonors say they'll never give a dime to any super PAC that employs "strategist" Roe, at least give it some thought. If your only reason for keeping him is that he won Iowa for Ted Cruz in 2016, it's important to remember Cruz lost the nomination that year.
6. The Children. I, too, like to generalize wildly from my own experience, but DeSantis was running as if the entire voting population consisted of people with kids under the age of 18. In fact, that's only about 20% of voters. (He also overestimates the intelligence of the average voter, but I'm not dinging him for that because I do, too -- obviously.)
I hate to kick a guy when he's down, especially when he gave such a terrific withdrawal speech, including this "endorsement" of Trump:
"Trump is superior to the current incumbent, Joe Biden. ... I signed a pledge to support the Republican nominee, and I will honor that pledge. ... We can't go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear -- a repackaged form of warmed-over corporatism -- that Nikki Haley represents."
Oh, this reminds me, there's also Point 7.
7. The god-awful phrase, No more pale pastels. We need bold colors. It sounds like Jeb-exclamation-point's "I'm a disruptor!" -- the sort of meaningless pablum that could be written only by a Republican political consultant.
But there it was, popping up in DeSantis' withdrawal speech like the shark in "Jaws." The consultant who wrote that "bold colors" idiocy should be fired immediately, rendered unemployable as a speechwriter ever again (unless any Democrats want him), and absolutely blacklisted from the 2028 DeSantis campaign.
And I hope there will be a 2028 campaign, which is why I'm providing these helpful pointers.
Second, a final note on Nikki Haley, since she's not dead yet -- not even deported.
A typical feminist, Haley demands to be treated like a disabled child whenever anyone criticizes her, while constantly boasting about how rough and tough she is.
She threw repeated tantrums at the GOP debates, one time calling Vivek Ramaswamy "scum" -- a first for a Republican presidential contest! -- and pouted her way through a debate with DeSantis, ending with her petulant refusal to face him ever again.
Another time, Haley acted as if it were rank sexism for Ramaswamy to call her "Dick Cheney in heels"?
Oh, please. That's a pretty common way to compare one person to another:
George Bush is Bluto with a rich father.
Jon Tester is Chuck Schumer with a buzz cut.
Joe Biden is a vegetable with hair transplants.
But apparently, the only person who can refer to Haley's heels is her -- when she's telling us what a badass she is. As she's said a million times: "I don't put up with bullies, and when you kick back, it hurts them more if you're wearing heels."
She seems to have kicked herself in the head one too many times with those heels. Here's Haley's explanation of Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel, delivered at a CNN townhall on Jan. 4, 2024:
"I told you about that brutality on Oct. 7 in Israel. Right? Oct. 7 is Putin's birthday. Who is the happiest man in the world right now? Putin."
This is the pinhead the donors are trying to foist on us, showering Haley with campaign donations to keep her in the race against Trump. It's like choosing between water torture and the rack. Either way, Democrats got the Republican nominee they wanted.