Don Surber: “Life After Trump”
There is no one who has been more supportive of Trump than Don Surber. Yet he says it’s time to move on: “We, his fans, see the good in him and the evil in his enemies. But the majority doesn’t and never will. It is a sale that cannot be made…. Other bloggers will tell you what you want to hear. I will tell you what you need to know.”
Donald Trump plans to announce on Tuesday, November 15, that he is running for president, despite urging from many supporters, including key confidant Jason Miller, to delay until after the Georgia runoffs on December 6.
Jason Miller, a senior adviser to former President Trump, says he’s encouraging Trump to delay an announcement about a possible 2024 White House bid until after the Senate runoff election in Georgia next month.
“Of course, President Trump had said he’d be making an announcement on Nov. 15, next Tuesday. I’m advising the president to hold off until after the Georgia race,” Miller, who worked on Trump’s 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, said on Newsmax.
“Priorities A, B and C need to be about Herschel [Walker] right now,” Miller added. “This is bigger than anything else in the country. We’ve got to show the focus is on Georgia.”
Against this backdrop, it’s worth noting that support for Trump appears to be slipping among Republicans.
A new national poll gives Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis a 7-point edge over former President Donald Trump in a potential presidential primary battle, the first survey of the 2024 cycle to do so — and the first poll since February 2016 to point to a weakening of Trump’s GOP dominance.
The YouGov poll, released Friday, found that 42% of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents prefer DeSantis over Trump as the party’s 2024 standard-bearer, while 35% of those surveyed remain in the 45th president’s corner.
The results were a reversal of the numbers that YouGov found in October, three weeks before the midterm elections.
There is an emerging split among Republican voters over Trump, as evidenced in the comment sections of these recent Legal Insurrection posts:
- 2022 Midterms: Not A Tsunami, But Some Real Republican Gains
- Trump Launches Lengthy Attack On Ron DeSantis, Who Is Busy Helping Florida Prepare For Hurricane
- Manipulation: Legacy Media and Lincoln Project Now Bashing DeSantis, Promoting Trump
You can read one of my comments here, regarding the conspiracy theories being pushed about DeSantis.
The dispute is not, as some portray it, as being “pro” or “anti” Trump, or being “establishment” or whatever. There are a lot of people, including I suspect most Legal Insurrection readers, who are “pro” Trump, and who feel he was an excellent president who was miserably undermined like no other president before him, with the full force of a corrupt media and Big Tech married with the FBI, DOJ and intelligence community to bring him down. All of that is true.
But for many people who otherwise support Trump, the issue is whether we are going to fight the last war, or the next one. As unfair and unjust as it might be to an individual politician, it is critical to win. And there are doubts that Trump is the one this time around.
One staunch Trump supporter who recently joined the chorus of people saying it’s time to move on is Don Surber. I’ve interacted with Don occasionally since the early days of Legal Insurrection, though I don’t think I’ve ever met or spoken with him.
Don is as pro-Trump as they come. He’s written books favorable to Trump, including Trump the Press: Don Surber’s take on how the pundits blew the 2016 Republican race and Trump the Establishment: The Elitists Never Learned in 2016.
If you are pro-Trump and you think there is some cabal of big business establishment GOPe globalists conspiring to take down Trump and install supposed puppet Ron DeSantis (which is what is being pushed by certain conspiracy websites and pundits), you need to read what Don Surber says in his blog post, Life After Trump.
Here is an excerpt:
“I was in a bubble this year. Tuesday’s election busted it.
Hope is the thing with feathers. We were plucked.
We can talk about cheating and the fix being in and mail-in votes. We can go on and on about the deep state and the media. We can spend months in denial but the fact is, Americans do not want Donald John Trump to be their president.
He did not save the Republican Party. He spent it….
The truth is not a warm puppy. It often is a snowman standing on a glacier. This is one of those times.
Governors Kemp, Sununu and DeSantis showed how Tuesday would have gone for Republicans without Trump. Republicans needed to gain 5 House seats. DeSantis delivered 4.
Dr. Oz showed how it went with Trump. That’s how poisonous he has become in purple America. We, his fans, see the good in him and the evil in his enemies. But the majority doesn’t and never will. It is a sale that cannot be made. There will be no second term from The Donald.
It breaks my heart to see this. I wrote three books on the man. Looking for someone else — likely DeSantis — will cost me readers. As I said about the covid vaccine, you do you.
But Trump failed. He cost America the red tsunami we need to rein in Democrats….
That is evil. That is unfair. That is the world we live in, for like Sarah Palin, our enemies turned Trump into an albatross. He came so close to bringing Washington down that they now will destroy him, ruin his children and salt his fields because he threatened them. He came ever so close….
You learn from history. United we stand. Divided we wind up with a Democrat president and Congress.
Everyone makes mistakes. I made one this year. You can either learn from your mistakes or you can keep making the same mistake over and over again.
Other bloggers will tell you what you want to hear. I will tell you what you need to know. I was disappointed last night and thought it was a cheat. I woke up this morning and realized I was wrong.
Wake up.
The good news is Trump softened the field.
The better news is Florida is now redder than any state, including West Virginia.”
Surber still likes and supports Trump. He wrote a follow up post, Thank You, Donald Trump:
“Trump like Palin fought. Unlike Palin, he won. He killed Roe v. Wade through the Trump Triplets he put on the Supreme Court. They will also give Justice Clarence Thomas the votes he needs to strike down the insult to the Constitution we call affirmative action.
The embassy in Jerusalem is magnificent. His Abraham Accords brought peace and the formal recognition of Israel by five Muslim nations.
He kept us out of war. He tried to negotiate peace with Kim Jong Un. He kept us out of the Paris accord and TPP. He woke the world up to the threat of Red China.
But above all, President Trump took one for the team — Team MAGA. And by one I mean hundreds. The daily harassment, legal threats and flat-out lies would have broken a lesser man.
Critics say he has a large ego. Well, you need something to serve as a buffer from the constant attacks. Given that he helped save New York, built a billion-dollar empire, wrote best-sellers, had a top-ranked TV show and won the presidency on his first try for public office, I would say he earned bragging rights on many, many fronts.
Donald Trump indeed brought us to the dance.
But if you think it is easy for me to say Change Partners, you don’t know me very well.”
It’s hard for a lot of people. As Surber says, Trump went through attacks the likes of which no other politician has gone through, and serves as a proxy for the brutalization anyone who vocally opposes the regime goes through. It was “cancel culture” on steroids. I don’t know if any other Republican candidate could withstand it.
But that’s not the issue, as Surber notes. The issue is not the last war. At least in Surber’s estimation, and I think in the estimation eventually of the majority of Republicans, Trump is not the general for the next war.
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Trump aside, here’s the other part of the equation: the Democrats are now stuck with Biden. What’s more, at the rate he’s declining, he’ll face one or more tough challengers in the ’24 primaries. And, to my knowledge, no incumbent president who’s been primaried has ever been reelected in the last 70 years.
Biden/Fetterman 2024
It’s a no brainer.
And I spilled my tea! Holy crap that’s funny.
I think it’s sad.
When it’s laugh or cry years of frustration I now choose laughter. I used to choose anger but that didn’t help and learning to laugh made me a better person.
CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAP!
But you ain’t wrong.
So good.
After the ‘election’ of Biden and Fetterman, there is no way the democrat/GOPe swamp will ever lose another presidential election.
If you don’t get that by now, you don’t get that we no longer live in free country.
Democrats count ballots. Republicans count votes. There is NO WAY it should take days if not weeks to decide the winner. Cameras during the count process went dark in NV. A UHaul van again pulled up in Detroit at 3 am. The Democrats have mastered the art of the steal.
As long as we adhere to current procedures, Republicans will never win control Congress or the Presidency again. Let that sink in.
Here is the definitive analysis of what happened on Tuesday by Mark Levin last night:
https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1591984110632779776
Thank God for Levin!!! I think a lot of people hear need to take a look in the mirror and ask yourselves whose side are you on. LI has suddenly turned into another establishment echo chamber. Where is the “thoughtfulness” and concern for “precision of thought” and “waiting for the facts to come out”?
Between the John Solomon link which I provide further down below and Mark Levin’s “Life, Liberty and Levin” monologue last night, we should all agree on what just happened. That we don’t should give us pause as to why so many of you are so easily swayed (again) by the establishment bullshit.
I am on the side of liberty, and using whatever politician achieves that. Trump is a man, and damaged goods. Time to use other politicians. This is tough for many because they seem to worship the man. Worship no man, worship God.
Yeah, it’s about worshiping Trump. Levin worships Trump. Why don’t you watch the video and argue the merits rather than stooping ton attribute my opinions to being an idol worshiper. What an oaf.
I read the transcript. Stop conflating DeSantis with the establishment.
@ NotCoach:
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2022/11/14/schumer-im-meeting-with-mcconnell-to-push-for-ditching-maga-republicans/
McConnell and Schumer joining forces against MAGA Republicans. How can DeSantis now run against the Father of the MAGA movement and not be part of the Uniparty establishment with that billionaire war chest? Stop being so obtuse. Why don’t you watch the Levin video. I know scary. You would be risking being educated and we can’t have that can we?
And while you McConnell airheads are fighting MAGA using the establishment bullshit, Trump is out there working the phones and hustings for Walker in GA and Keri Lake is out there calling bullshit on McConnell stealing the election again in AZ
https://www.redvoicemedia.com/2022/11/kari-lake-issues-a-stern-warning-if-you-think-you-can-steal-this-election-youre-gonna-get-caught/
But you are too smart to fall for that ruse. As George Soros keeps telling his GOPe acolytes as they crawl away from another winnable fight, ‘Move on!”
Well said. Politicians work for US, and when they stop fulfilling their duties for any reason, they have to be replaced with others who can do the job. Or at least GET to the job. Trump is unelectable, and we, unlike the Democrats in 2016, have the evidence over the last few cycles to know it.
Benny Johnson is a hack and Trump-dependent grifter. I stopped listening to Levin after a couple minutes of him making lame excuses. A lot of people who voted for Trump were saying, if not online than privately in person, that they are ready to move on from Trump always named DeSantis as the way forward… well before the election.
We aren’t seeing a sudden rush to judgement, but a recognition that it’s OK to say publicly what they’ve already felt for some time now.
Here are only the sub headings of Trump’s accomplishments in a mere four years and this with the opposition party swiping at him continuously like no other president. Here’s the link:. https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/trump-administration-accomplishments/
Unprecedented Economic Boom
Before the China Virus invaded our shores, we built the world’s most prosperous economy. 8 points of info:
America gained 7 million new jobs – more than three times government experts’ projections.
Middle-Class family income increased nearly $6,000 – more than five times the gains during the entire previous administration.
The unemployment rate reached 3.5 percent, the lowest in a half-century.
Achieved 40 months in a row with more job openings than job-hirings.
More Americans reported being employed than ever before – nearly 160 million.
Jobless claims hit a nearly 50-year low.
The number of people claiming unemployment insurance as a share of the population hit its lowest on record.
Incomes rose in every single metro area in the United States for the first time in nearly 3 decades.
The rest are listed with just the headings and the number next to each list will h
Delivered a future of greater promise and opportunity for citizens of all backgrounds. 8 points
Brought jobs, factories, and industries back to the USA. 3 points
Hit record stock market numbers and record 401ks. 2 points
Rebuilding and investing in rural America. 2 points
Achieved a record-setting economic comeback by rejecting blanket lockdowns. 16 points
Tax Relief for the Middle Class
Passed $3.2 trillion in historic tax relief and reformed the tax code. 13 points
Jobs and investments are pouring into Opportunity Zones. 5 points
Massive Deregulation
Ended the regulatory assault on American Businesses and Workers. 18 points
Successfully rolled back burdensome regulatory overreach. 4 points
Americans now have more money in their pockets. 6 points
Fair and Reciprocal Trade
Secured historic trade deals to defend American workers. 18 points
Took strong actions to confront unfair trade practices and put America First. 7 points
Historic support for American farmers. 14 points
American Energy Independence
Unleashed America’s oil and natural gas potential. 26 points
Increased access to our country’s abundant natural resources in order to achieve energy independence. 11 points
Investing in America’s Workers and Families
Affordable and high-quality Child Care for American workers and their families. 7 points
Advanced apprenticeship career pathways to good-paying jobs. 4 points
Advanced women’s economic empowerment. 8 points
Ensured American leadership in technology and innovation. 15 points
Preserved American jobs for American workers and rejected the importation of cheap foreign labor. 2 points
Life-Saving Response to the China Virus
Restricted travel to the United States from infected regions of the world. 8 points
Acted early to combat the China Virus in the United States. 9 points
Re-purposed domestic manufacturing facilities to ensure frontline workers had critical supplies. 17 points
Massive Deregulation
Ended the regulatory assault on American Businesses and Workers. 18 points
Successfully rolled back burdensome regulatory overreach. 4 points
Americans now have more money in their pockets. 6 points
Fair and Reciprocal Trade
Secured historic trade deals to defend American workers. 18 points
Took strong actions to confront unfair trade practices and put America First. 7 points
Historic support for American farmers. 14 points
American Energy Independence
Unleashed America’s oil and natural gas potential. 26 points
Increased access to our country’s abundant natural resources in order to achieve energy independence. 11 points
Investing in America’s Workers and Families
Affordable and high-quality Child Care for American workers and their families. 7 points
Advanced apprenticeship career pathways to good-paying jobs. 4 points
Advanced women’s economic empowerment. 8 points
Ensured American leadership in technology and innovation. 15 points
Preserved American jobs for American workers and rejected the importation of cheap foreign labor. 2 points
Life-Saving Response to the China Virus
Restricted travel to the United States from infected regions of the world. 8 points
Acted early to combat the China Virus in the United States. 9 points
Re-purposed domestic manufacturing facilities to ensure frontline workers had critical supplies. 17 points
After more than 20 years of the Hill, I like what DeSantis has done in Florida, still, he is another smooth talking professional politician.
If the swamp is left intact, America and what it stood for is dead.
I do not see anyone besides Trump who has a prayer in hell of bringing down the swamp.
He has to get elected first, though. Can he be? Maybe, but the results of recent elections (pretty much every one since 2016 when he faced the single most despised politician in the country) seem to suggest otherwise.
According to others here, voting fraud is the only problem facing a Trump victory, then . . . um . . . why even bother supporting him? He’s already lost, the fix is in, there’s no way around it. I don’t get the fervent Trump support despite how much has clearly changed with this level of defeatism about elections. Vote for Trump! Not that it matters because he’ll lose due to fraud, ballot harvesting, shady machines, etc. Weird cognitive dissonance here.
Look, election fraud happens, mostly–though not exclusively–on the left, but it ALWAYS has. Going back centuries. I remember being surprised to learn that one of the suspicions about Edgar Allen Poe’s death was that he was dragged into some Democrat scheme to pull drunks in to vote over and over. That was in 1849.
That’s why the GOP and its pundits including Rush Limbaugh said we have to turn out to beat the margin of cheating. If Trump’s 10 million vote gain in 2020, when he was far more popular across the right, wasn’t enough to beat it, what makes you think he’ll get even more in 2024?
While I wouldn’t be quick to grant the absurdity of these new baseless fraud conspiracy theories (you have to have hard evidence first if you want to levy that kind of thing in a way that will move the needle for independents), I think you are bringing way too much logic for these cultists to handle.
Look, I was with you on the problems with the 2020 election. I wasn’t with you on Jan 6th because that was a nutter’s farce, but I saw real issues with 2020. You undermine any chance of legitimately criticizing election issues when you cry “steal”, “fraud”, and “conspiracy” every time a candidate backed by your guy doesn’t win. It’s only marginalizing your position further to the fringe of the unelectable nuttery.
What does this mean: “I wasn’t with you on Jan 6th because that was a nutter’s farce”? And when did I cry any of that? Is this comment even directed at me? Very confusing.
After I posted it, I realized that I didn’t do what I meant to do, which was indicate that the 2nd paragraph was directed towards said Trump clingers.
Ah, good. No worries 🙂
This really was the most important election in post-Civil War history. We are never coming back from its consequences.
Secession is the only way out.
No. It was the GA senate in Jan 2021 and your boy destroyed any hope we had of getting one of those seats.
Everything else. The horror of the last 2 years, this past election all flows from his actions in Dec and early Jan.
Actually, no. This is winnable. I linked to last night’s monologue by Mark Levin. Make sure to watch it. The Senate was a lost cause since the Dems have far fewer seats up than the GOP and McConnell made sure to lose the Trump-endorsed races.
In 2024, it will be the reverse. The Dems will be very exposed in the Senate and IF the House led by Republicans, however narrowly, fight off the Biden/McConnell/WEF agenda, Trump can bring his coat tails to bear and sweep out the old Uniparty regime. After that, it’s a matter of whether Trump wants to serve out his entire term. And with DeSantis self-destructing at the worst possible time, we need to find a replacement. For now, I like Lake, Vance (maybe… we’ll see) or a couple of others who fought major MAGA campaigns.
On the other hand, if DeSantis and the others who vowed to leave it to Trump to decide if he wants to run honor their pledges, like right now, the next 2 years can still be salvaged. Waging a hand grenade battle in our own foxhole on our way to 2024 is stupid beyond belief. But that’s what the Stupid Party is known for.
No, the Senate wasn’t a lost cause. The Republicans only needed to pick up one seat. Just one. If the Pennsylvania Senate seat wasn’t open or if Oz had lost the primary, the Republicans would have likely retained it. If Walker wasn’t the nominee for the Senate Seat in Georgia, the Republicans would have had someone similar to the rest of their statewide nominees who cruised to a clear outright majority. If Arizona Republicans had nominated someone like Brnovich who had already shown to win statewide (and not be off-putting), they would have picked up that seat. Nevada already showed with its pick-up of the Governor’s race and other statewide pick-ups that they could have won that if they had a Senate candidate not associated with the loony toons “stolen election” lawsuit, they would have won that race rather than lose it by <1%. Even if NH, CO, and WA were out of reach, they only need to net one seat. In a midterm with an unpopular President and decades high inflation, it ought to have been more than doable.
The Georgia Senate seat was particularly winnable for the GOP if they had someone running that appealed to Georgia. Kemp won outright on Election Night, but his coattails weren’t enough to get beyond the dug-in loathing many Peach State centrists have for Trump. And with two more years to bash Trump and for Trump to keep running his mouth, those dug-in loathers are going to grow their numbers exponentially. Ditto Nevada. They elected a GOP governor, so they were willing to vote GOP, just not anything having to do with Trump. He’s done, guys, sorry, I wish it were it different, but it is what it is.
@Political Hat: The Democrats had few Senate seats at risk while the Republicans had to defend 3 times as many. So they hold their own seats and have to fight McConnell who had gaslighted us that the Senate looked unlikely before kneecapping 3-4 of them himself and then blaming Sen Scott and Trump. Hello? Only the Stupid Party does that and yet the Stupid Party voters defend it. Hello? Are you a bot?
@ Fuzzy: please watch the Levin link I’ve provided here several times. And don’t tell me you watched in can still talk about GA being Trump’s fault when Alaska, NH, AZ, NV and a couple of others were not only abandoned by McConnell but targeted to lose. Geez. Watch the video already!
No, the Democrats holding more seats does not mean that it was an uphill challenge to pick up winnable seats. If Toomey had run for re-election, he would have won. Even in Wisconsin, it was a GOP retention. All the GOP had to do was run Senate nominees in Nevada and/or Georgia who were similar to the the victorious Republican governors. But they blew it be listening to bad advise in the primaries.
It really doesn’t matter if it is just the voters hate his guts.
He has just lost an election that was ideal circumstances for a red wave. He lost the 2020 election. He lost the 2018 election. He deliberately turned over the senate to Democrats in 2021.
He is unpopular and is getting more unpopular by the day.
His presidential achievements are irrelevant he can’t win. I am glad his 2016 opponent didn’t think Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania was in play. Unfortunately the Democrats will never ever make that mistake again, I am glad Hillary didn’t win. I am not glad to give Joe Biden an extra 4 years; I am downright furious at him for the self sabotage of what should have been an easy red wave and I do not owe him giving Biden an extra term.
In a Republic the side that can’t be elected is irrelevant.
Always nice to get input from an unbiased source. They missed a couple, though:
Letting Fauci and Birx set COVID policy.
Pushing the pharma industry to come out with a “cure” for a relatively (for the vast majority of the populace) innocuous cold virus.
Pushing “treatments” that cost the lives of thousands of elderly.
Pushing virtually untested, experimental “vaccines” on the general populace, which have resulted in the disabling and deaths of tens of thousands of people who were in the first place in no particular danger from the virus. In fact, last I heard, even with all the evidence that these experimental drugs are not only worthless, but deadly, he’s STILL pushing them.
If I recall correctly, Trump was talking about treatments, and not just a vaccine. He talked about HCQ until Fauci and the CDC stepped all over that. While I haven’t heard much about it, I’ve read elsewhere it was VP Pence who was suppose to be in charge of the Covid response. Much like how VP Biden handled the swine flu. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong,
But, but, mean tweets!!! (insert tear here)
Consider this and then consider all the blatantly false accusations that were thrown at him, willingly supported by the leftist media and tech overlords.
Compare this list to Biden’s “accomplishments.” Compare economies. Compare border control etc., etc., etc. The story about the boy who cried wolf (or Trump, in this case) demands attention.
All this petulant whining about President Trump, from both sides, is getting a little pathetic. Nobody is marrying him, so stop kvetching.
If it must be DeSantis, I have no problem with that whatsoever, but I am not going to “dump Trump” on the say so of biased media, hostile Dems, traitorous RINOs, and pearl clutching snowflakes.
I agree that Pres. Trump should do nothing until the Georgia runoff is complete, unless it is to distract his enemies.
Let’s spend some time getting the voter rolls cleaned up and the clearly illegal or fraudulent mail in ballot scheme crushed. Just applying the law will get a lot of things fixed. A Republican Congress, assuming they will actually do something, could get the ball rolling at several levels.
Biden and his cronies now have to own the results of their fossil fuel manipulations, which will get much worse very quickly, since it will be a long, cold winter.
Have faith.
>But, but, mean tweets!!! (insert tear here)
Spoiler: The moderate swing voters in swing districts and states darned well did care about that, especially when they see it spread to a plethora of candidates associated with him
Those moderate swing-voters don’t vote strictly along the lines of candidate promises or slavishly to a partisan party line. They actually care about the quality of the candidate they are voting for. They can forgive a lot of personal problems, but Trump is beyond the pale for a majority of voters more now than they ever were.
Trump was so dangerous, the FBI, DOJ and IRS began coordinated attacks before he even took office.
DeSantis would make a fine President. He just won’t dismember the FBI and decapitate the Administrative State.
He won’t save the Republic.
And the GOP did fuckall to help.
Some of us claiming to be Republicans are as dense as Fetterman.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/11/trump-rips-mitch-mcconnell-funding-rino-caving-dems-worst/
After reading your comments for too long, I have to agree. You are.
Did you re-read your first sentence before typing your second one?
Not sure I understand the logic that Trump will take care of things this time around, when it went so well for him the first time that they’re still trying to throw him in jail.
Go back and read the first sentence. The Deep State caught Trump off guard the first time around because none of us realized the government was a crime syndicate.
You notice the people telling us to move on from Trump are the ones telling us to move on from the election fraud of 2020.
I agree. But I also believe we’re going to see the Union split.
Dude, everyone in DC is a politician, a wannabe politician, a power driven bureaucrat or married to one of those. They exist to enrich themselves at the expense of others, usually hardworking taxpayers. Many of them would shank you or me and skip over our corpse if the odds were right and the payoff enough, some would do it for free.
They accept speaking fees and book deals, get their Spouse, siblings, cousins jobs with folks who want something in return. They get their friend and families onto boards or into no work jobs. They pull stings and call in favors to get their kids into elite schools and into well paid landing spots post graduation.
Better late than never and I am happy you got your eyes open but this ain’t a new phenomenon.
I knew about Obama’s IRS and NSA (thanks, W’s Patriot Act!) and Clinton’s ATF and machine gunning INS. Heck, just the Clintons, period? Harry “Romney Didn’t Win, Did He?” Reid? Black Panthers in 2008? Al Gore in 2000? Trump was the most naïve politician in America when he took office. I remember Rush criticizing him for this.
I don’t doubt that the man has learned some lessons but how does Trump reform the system, when the opposition against him has not receded but increased? He’s losing allies and voters, not gaining them. November 2022 has proven this.
I have also wondered about the same issue. I’ve also wondered if Trump not being a professional politician does not grasp the concept that successful politicians use the principles of addition and multiplication, not division and subtraction. The other concept I wonder if he understands is that litmus tests never make for successful candidates.
A lot of Trump’s successes in office were due to good competent people getting things done. Those people or people like them won’t be in a second hypothetical Trump administration, which will be even more thick with syncophants and grifters.
Amen!!
If your plan to save the republic revolves around electing one man, then your plan is already doomed.
DeSantis has gone after the Democrats’ power Florida. He’s pushed through election reform, hit Disney hard, fired rogue prosecutors, and won victory after victory… and you somehow assume he wouldn’t do the same as president? Why?
Trump was the president, and he didn’t do either of the things you say. He did chip away at the administrative state, but only that. He didn’t “decapitate” it, and in fact allowed it to run roughshod over the United States by not firing Fauci. He didn’t decapitate the FBI even though they’d already gone after him.
Why would I assume that Trump would do anything different if elected again? The man doesn’t seem to learn from his mistakes.
DeSantis would be a W lite
George W. Bush managed to get re-elected, and with a majority of the popular vote as well.
Agreed. Trump has an axe to grind, but by 2024, DeSantis may have his own.
Every politician has priorities to grind. These are people who seek out power. Sometimes they use most of it on behalf of others and sometimes less. All of them use a portion to boost their personal agenda which isn’t our own.
This precedes my first comment:
SO many people are ready to give up on this Magnificent Man. If I’d written out every accomplishment, it would have filled the entire thread.. Take a look at what President Donald Trump accomplished, and never forget that without him, we would ALL be in full blown Communism!
That Trump accomplished a lot is indisputable. No one (here, at least) is saying otherwise. He was a very conservative president and did good things for our country and economy.
Here’s the thing, though. [from my comment in another thread] If the red tsunami had materialized, if the projections were accurate, Trump would be sitting pretty right now. He would be boasting, quite rightly, that he made the difference, that the success of his hand-picked candidates proves he’s a power-broker and deserves to continue to lead the GOP. Everyone here, including you and me, would be cheering that and agreeing with it 100%.
The problem, of course, is that didn’t happen.
Then top it off with Trump’s intemperate and out-of-touch attacks on DeSantis prior to the midterms, his subsequent post-midterms rambling rants on both DeSantis AND Youngkin, and it’s all just too much. Trump would have deserved much of the credit had things gone as we all thought they would. But they didn’t. Not even close. So yes, Trump deserves much of the blame. And he’s only making things worse with his crazy attacks on fellow Republicans when literally no one, not even him, has even declared a run for TWO YEARS from now.
If Trump really wants to force his supporters to choose between him and DeSantis (or Youngkin or any of the other candidates who are now looking at all this and rethinking their chances), then he’s in for a very unpleasant surprise. And it has nothing to do with the GOPe or brainwashing by globalists or mass hypnosis or secret cabals drinking baby blood while they stick pins in Trump dolls. This is down to what actually happened and Trump’s unhinged response to his losses (and he knows they are his, that’s why he’s lashing out and trying to drag other people down. That’s what people do when they are shocked, upset, jealous, emotionally immature, and undisciplined.).
Way, way, too early to do Rupert Murdock, McConnell and Schumer’s bidding by getting Trump out of the race.
As you read this, the machine is being started to “Trump” Ron DeSantis.
Most all of you have seen the movie, “On The Waterfront”. How many have learned the lesson?
Brando is Trump and all of us:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWn4QwDHa4s
I am not sure you are getting the whole idea about convincing voters who have pulled the lever twice for DJT to do so again.
Creating this false choice of supporting DJT otherwise you are a bad person because reasons isn’t a sound sales strategy. Not that there has been much attempt to sell, more like commands.
I expect you will find most people, thus worth having around anyway, are going to be very resistant to being told what they must do or should do. The mindless drones are mostly on the d/prog team so neither selling nor attempts to issue commands will be successful with them.
Today is November 12. By November 13, things are going to be different, and whoever is rushing into the Rupert Murdock/McConnell/Xi/Democrat/GOPe trap of the ‘dump Trump’ movement may see things differently.
I predict an explosion of disconnent in this county as great as there was pre-Civil war. No way this country remains 50 states – and at this point, that’s a good thing if you want to recapture your way of life.
You sorta skipped ahead past convincing or attempting commands to …what exactly?
You weren’t very specific but it sounds ominous and frankly like a horrible idea whose day has not come and isn’t likely to for some time, hopefully not in my lifetime. The consequences are too severe to make a parlor game of it.
No one should want or hope for what it sounds like you are promising. Not even on the worst day. What you seem to be describing isn’t a joke and I sincerely hope you are blowing off steam and nothing more.
Thank you for calling this stupidity out for what it is.
Hoping for secession? What a nutjob idea! We aren’t the America of the Civil war era anymore…and more importantly the rest of the world is not in that era, either.
If we even attempted a 1 month skirmish for secession with any traction, the world powers would pick us apart like vultures at a ripe corpse. Your little basement fantasy game is not what you think it is.
Seek help[.
Trump cannot stop Dem cheating, which was his undoing in 2020 and in ’22
Shouldn’t it have been the States responsibility to stop the cheating. The States run the elections not the Feds. That of course is still true unless Biden achieves his goal of turning elections over to the Feds.
I think you make very valid points. I would like to add that we need more focus on those people in leadership positions who presided over this epic failure. In sports and business when the people who sit in the big chair produce the kind of failures we’ve seen over the last two election cycles they all are shown the door. We should, of course, fire Mushmouth, Ronna McDaniel for starters. I give Mushmouth most of the credit for the Senate results. Pulling support from New Hampshire and Arizona to send to Alaska, for example. There are others who should resign or be fired. Trump is a private citizen. He’s the titular head of the party, but that’s not an official leadership position. He screwed up royally here in Alabama and other states, but that’s over and done with. Let’s keep climbing the mountain.
fuzzy, watch Mark Levin’s monologue from last night. It “trumps” all of you arguments. I’ve post 2-3 times already on this thread and it sure doesn’t look like anyone read it. You really, really, really have to watch it and think about it. Tuesday was never going to be a big red tsunami and McConnell made damn sure of it.
And why aren’t you commenting about AZ, NV, and now apparently NH having been stolen?
You DeSantis cultists, (hey, if everyone is going to dismiss us Trump supporters as cultists,…) need to take a deep breath and consider the possibility that you got swept in to the Uniparty plan. Your logic is straight out what Rove himself has been saying.
I’ve never listened to Levin beyond what we post here at LI, so why would I start now? He can’t say anything to change what actually happened on the ground this midterm nor can he say anything that will erase Trump’s bizarre attacks on two of the most popular governors in the entire country. Governors in his own party, no less.
I have written in comments about AZ and NV (not NH), but not about their being “stolen” because that’s not what happened.
I’m a huge DeSantis fan, but I really want him to stay here in Florida for his full term. I don’t want him to run until ’28, and I honestly don’t think he had any intention of doing so. But this midterm has been a disaster for the party that Trump leads, so the door is open for any number of better Republican choices for ’24. Including DeSantis (alas, I want him HERE, keeping Florida free and safe).
When Trump is threatening to release damaging information on the most conservative and effective governor in the state it’s HE who has given up. He’s reverted (assuming he changed even a little) to the vicious campaigner of 2016… and we can’t afford that anymore.
And cut the “magnificent man” crap. Trump, like everyone we elect, is HIRED HELP. To be watched constantly, never trusted.
Yep. Politicians, all of them, must never be fully trusted. While they don’t exactly bear the mark of Cain they are the people who seek power. Everyone who seeks power needs to be constantly observed.
So let me see if I understand this advice. Democrats infuse the electoral process with multiple frauds facilitated by mail-in ballots, unmonitored drop boxes, ballot harvesting and who knows what else, and rather then trying to correct these frauds, the recommended Republican solution is to rid themselves of one of the most popular candidates in the history of America? Yeah, brilliant.
Democrats gain power by winning. Once they’ve won control over a state they change the rules for their benefit.
Michigan just became Michifornia. Voter ID is gone, ballot harvesting is legal and mail in voting will become the norm. Dems own the house, senate, governor, sec of state and atty general.
Tell us how you’d be able to prove fraud?
Don’t know. Maybe Congress could legislate a solution under Art. 1, sec. 4 or the 14th amendment? Maybe it’s too late or not realistic to expect anything. Whatever the case, if it’s uncorrectable, then I can’t see that getting rid of Trump is not going to do anything for Republican prospects.
ugh…typo…ignore the “not” Why can’t comments be edited?
They can be. What do you think the “Preview” button is for???
Hard pass. More like hell no. Do not invite the Congress to ‘fix’ election laws. Some States have been able to fight off the switch from an election day and in person voting to an election season with mailed out ballots. Those of us in States like Alabama who flight off the insanity will not go along with inviting the federal govt to fix elections in the States. Our elections are run just fine now.
In those jurisdictions where the voters allowed it happen …I can’t imagine how frustrating it is and how much you dislike it but y’all are gonna have to sweep your own porch and clean your own garages out.
Or hire John Merrill to fix their problem.
The 14th amendment offers no opportunity for such legislation. Article 1 section 4 works for congressional elections, but not for presidential ones.
This is why I am deserting Michigan.
You prove it the same way Pelosi and her friends ‘proved’ charges against January 6 protesters who are jailed and were never near the Capital.
I doubt fraud would be difficult to prove, the problem is getting anybody in the legal system to care. Judges won’t let you gather evidence or dismiss whatever evidence you have, prosecutors treat vote fraud cases as if the perpetrators always act alone, and secretaries of state never order new elections.
Fraud is already extremely difficult to prove. These changes would make it nearly impossible.
here’s an easy case for you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDAJL7_brjg
They did it. Without our help. Way way too many of us just don’t get it
Fuzzy, you make good points, but the really major point of the Red Tsunami not taking place goes back to one basic issue: The massive cheating the democrats have gotten away with for far too long and they’ve made it into a fine art form.
If we don’t handle the next election with more ideas and actions, we’ll never again get enough power to really bring back freedom and vanquish those evil commies.
Can you please lay out the cheating by typing and location?
If you mean some States where the legislature changed that State’s election laws to allow mailing out ballots to all registered voters or to voters with no traditional reason for an absentee ballot, allowed ballot harvesting and has weak or no voter ID that isn’t cheating or fraud in and of itself. The party in power in the legislature changed the laws by exercising the power the voters handed them.
Here’s the cheating: elect corrupt secretary of states, create chaos in the balloting, and take weeks to determine the winners. During that time, while all American sheep’s eyes are on ‘the counting’, the fix is coming in through the back door. Then utilze the rats of the GOPe and the democrat and GOPe/Murdock media support the fraud.
It’s that simple.
So not actual fraud but rather the people in some States electing d/prog and then not keeping an eye on them whole those d/prog in office used the power they have to rewrite the election laws to benefit the d/prog by changing the mechanics of an election from earning votes to collecting ballots and all with little to no ballot security?
Then why only Red areas of Maricopa county had computer glitches that stalled voting. Again… prove to me that the straw didn’t break the camel’s back. Preventing the timely opportunity to vote is needful neglect. OK… all go to mail in voting…. but we have seen chain of custody broken…. but everyone is trustworthy so no problem.
We have LBJ and JFK and now pure Dem vote drops that are statistically impossible (2020). I want democracy…not their “precious democracy” in voting. I also think that many voters do not know what is coming down the pike, all amplified or created by this admin.. I was in Costco today buying two large bags of rice… the guy behind me was asking why i was buying so much rice…. I said to have in case a bad earthquake happens…. his response… “You have earthquake insurance don’t you”?
Alaskabob,
No one is arguing that the changes to the election laws and mechanics don’t present greater opportunities for fraud. They do.
What I am saying is don’t make accusations that you can’t prove. Conduct an audit of the process. When questionable ballots or violations are identified make the claim with evidence to back that claim. I have no doubt an audit will find some instances but to claim today, without that evidence, that ‘cheating’ is why r lost is not helpful.
The leaders of the GOP in and out of office didn’t deliver in the midterms. Handing them an excuse of ‘cheating’ helps them avoid accountability. That seems like a bad idea.
Surber is great and everyone should follow him. As shown in the above posts he’s not afraid to say he was wrong. Something rarely seen in America anymore.
Been reading Don for years, good solid man. He just doesn’t want to work for someone else.
I love Surber. But he’s too quick on the draw in this one.
Trump needs to show, to me at least, that he understands what went wrong in his first term, why, and what he will do differently this time around. I half expect he won’t. You don’t get a lot of mea culpas from the guy nor should you expect any, after he stood up to the howling mob in the Access Hollywood tape episode, which would have instantly ended anyone else’s campaign. And career.
So we’re stuck in a real conundrum. I’ll probably vote for the guy no matter what, but still…. don’t want a straight-up repeat of last time.
Our ‘conundrum’ is this: the left/GOPe axis has everything fixed and we don’t act like we know this. Our conundrum is how do we get our sides’ heads out of their asses.
I believe this addresses what Trump will do: https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2022/07/22/axios-report-on-trump-second-term-n2610663
It’s not so much what went wrong in his first term, but what he did wrong since the 2020 election. The harm he’s done the party since then.
Of course there were mistakes in the first term, but they were outweighed by the successes. But since he lost the election he’s gone increasingly toxic and it’s just getting worse.
Toxic? Look at all of the attacks against him…. targeting by Dem admins. I would question what has the party done to shore him up as the Dems do theirs. This is a party that lets political prisoners languish in D.C. jail cared for less than Gitmo jihadists. Yes… the 1/6 group is a third rail for many … avoided/ignored for the election. Did the assassin who attempted to kill Harry Truman and killed a cop spend two years like the 1/6 guys? Did the Puerto Rican separatists that shot up Congress suffer the same fate as the 1/6 guys. Did the Weatherman?
Toxic…. whose really toxic and who are they trying to crush?
Agreed. The toxicity is generated of whole cloth by the Dems with their interminable hoax investigations and fauxpeachments, and magnified by the complicit media.
If you compared, pretty much 1:1, the things Biden has said and done to what President Trump has said and done, Mssr. Trump does not look bad at all.
The real “Big Lie” is that Pres. Trump is “dangerous,” “in collusion with our enemies,” “(insert preferred group here)phobic with little to back it.
Last minute, desperate repeating of “save our democracy” was akin to pantifa saying they are “antifascist.” It should have been “save the Democrats.”
Biden and his clown show are driving this country into the ground, and taking the rest of the western world with it, likely by design.
You want some indication of voting fraud by the Dems? Any “lost” or “found” ballots always aid them.
If 70+% of the country said we are on the wrong track, why would they vote for the engineers derailing the train?
A lot of people thought that Jan. 6 and Dobbs were non-issues this Fall. The Democrats ran nothing but ads tying candidates to the post-Jan.6th Trump and no-exceptions abortion bans. Turned out they went for the marginal moderate swing-voters, and did so successfully.
Predictions:
1-We will see martial law in this country before Biden is out of office
2-a secession movement will start developing – and rightfullly so
Even if there were some mechanism to declare nationwide martial law (and there’s not), red state governors would not stand for it.
Hence the potential secession thing. Not say anytime soon but at some point in the next 25 years or so? Who knows?
Death by a thousand cuts, Fuzzy. It’s death by a thousand cuts. But it is still death.
How in denial is everyone here all of a sudden??
Biden Extends the National Emergency through February 2023:
https://padmin.com/blog/president-biden-extends-the-national-emergency-through-february-2023/
What are you talking about? I’m relatively confident that no one here supports Biden or his divisive, destructive America Last agenda.
There is a mechanism, though un-Constitutional, the Executive Order. If all Executive agencies go along, an EO’s legality does not matter and the Executive Branch is fully controlled by Democrat Apparatchiks so the question is answered.
No, there is no such mechanism. The courts will not allow it.
Whose courts? Please…not the Roberts lecture that the courts are neutral…. When the law eventually fails for you… it will be a Bonhoeffer moment..sad to say.
I have to say that my faith in the courts, loaded with political judges, is stretched mighty thin.
Lol
They have bent the knee for a lot,
And probably padded their checkbooks
10 years ago I would have said paranoid and crazy. Now, I would say maybe.
Again:
Biden Extends the National Emergency through February 2023:
https://padmin.com/blog/president-biden-extends-the-national-emergency-through-february-2023/
So bloody what? The emergency does not give him any more powers than he has without it. It certainly doesn’t allow him to “declare martial law”, as if that were an actual thing.
Martial law is something that can only exist when the civilian courts are unable to function. So long as there is a courthouse that can open for business, martial law simply cannot exist in that place.
you make the silly assumption that Biden et al, give a crap about the law or court decisions
He does seem to be pretty good at ignoring the law up to this point. And the Dems have plausible deniability: Biden is lacking mental facilities. We are helping with that. Nevermind (pun intended) that they thought he was an acceptable candidate (much like Fetterdouche) despite his obvious cognitive difficulties, ones they imagined in Pres. Trump, but are completely blind to the very real dementia in Biden.
I don’t know the time table, but my greatest fear is that there is no peaceful solution. If it isn’t for me, then my young daughters or their future children will have to fight to freely exist.
Better get them ready, because that’s their future. It’s our collective fault, too. When bullets are flying past them in trenches, and they wonder why you continued to elect the likes of Mcconnell, Romney, McCain, McCarthy, Rona Romney McCarthy, etc, be ready to tell them.
Ok, this is foolishness. Seriously does anyone even know if DeSantis even wants to run. His wife just finished up with cancer and he has young children.
Dear Ron,
We the mob will elect you whether you want it or not. We have decided that the orange Q-Tip is no longer to our tastes. You seem like a nice guy and we want to make sure that we destroy you if you don’t comply with our demands.
Sincerly your loving supporters.
Jumping from a known entity to an unknown entity asking them to save us from the big bad Donkey is the realm of children.
Have we lost our damn minds. Bringing this up over and over sows division and choas. This is why the people that declare themselves Republican jump off the cliff at the slightest wiff of victory.
I can’t abide it.
It’s worse than losing one’s minds: it’s sheepish behavior of the most pathetic sort.
It’s pathetic behavior when the few of you don’t have the courage and adaptability to move past an obsolete strategy and a one man meltdown that began in 2020
1. Not an unknown entity
2. What this article is telling you is that Trump WON’T win again. It’s right BTW. He’s done. The exact replacement is not known.
Even if it’s not DeSantis, you better hope someone that can get your side of zealots united under the same banner as the rest of the base comes along because otherwise, this is over before it began.
Okay, run DeSantis, and as a diversion, make Pres. Trump Speaker of the House.
That will be better than the goriest splatter flick!
Why not? But we might run out of duct tape for all the leftists’ exploding heads.
Of course not, he just raised $250 million of campaign money which some of us are jumping the gun to assume he is running for something other than governor. Another pig-in-a-poke. Jeb was a good governor for FL too but we saw through him. Ted Cruz turned out to be a pig-in-a-poke too. That’s Republicans do. Even a gnat has a longer memory span.
Donors regularly pump money into candidate coffers in the hopes that they will run for higher office. There is nothing strange or odd or suspicious about this. It happens every single cycle and in both parties. Trump was the beneficiary of billionaires pumping money into his campaign, too. But that’s somehow okay with you. It was definitely okay with me. But then, so is the same thing happening to other Republicans. I have no fear or loathing of rich people putting their money where their mouth is or where their political dreams are.
If anything, Trump’s support and donors behind DeSantis in 2018 was not just a returned favor for DeSantis backing Trump and calling on the GOP to unite around Trump in 2016, but it’s also evidence that DeSantis actually can’t be “bought.” He’s his own man or Trump wouldn’t be calling him “disloyal” now, right? Until that proves wrong (and it might, all politicians are potential scum), that’s just the truth.
A few comments on the above posts:
– Trump did not drain the Swamp the first time around and, in fact, made it worse with his appointments, especially to DOJ and FBI – really why he was not re-elected.
– Talking about the damage from mail-in ballots and harvesting is true but garbage. You run a campaign based on the facts on the ground, not by last century practice. Republicans had plenty of warning in 2020 and did nothing to match in 2022. I believe Fetterman had more than 500K more mail-in ballots than Oz.
– Trump cost us 2 GA Senate seats in 2020 in the runoff and all of the Biden legislative garbage. If he announces on 11/15 he will cost Herschel Walker any chance he has. Even losing Senate control again, as we will, every seat matters, for next time around.
– IMO, as I posted elsewhere on LI, it is 50/50 whether we win or lose the House. If we lose, after experiencing the worst administration in modern history, every single Republican leader from the very top on down should be replaced. We need to win, not follow Don Quixote. The one plus here is that this appears to stick the Dems with Biden/Harris, when I have said since 2020 that 2024 had to be the best of the next generation. We need to put forth such a person.
It’s amazing how the entire media apparatus has almost simultaneously latched on to pushing the “abandon Trump” narrative. This strongly suggests that Democrat strategists believe that Trump is the more dangerous candidate.
Or it’s just moving on to winnable fronts.
Not everything is a big conspiracy or mind game….your side uses poor, tortured logic twisted in knots just to re-center everything around Trump. It’s very old to the rest of us that are ready to move on.
It sounds like a breakup to me. Good luck with that.
I’m happily married, thanks. You can always check Christian mingle, though, if you need a little help.
I think you have described precisely what the left has done: make everything about Pres. Trump, to the point of fabricating it.
It stops being a conspiracy theory when the message is so blatantly coordinated.
Well, the pro-Trump message sounds exactly the same from everyone; are you guys all “coordinating”?
The Blame Trump movement is so contrived. I’ll consider Youngkin or DeSantis for National office after they finish their current jobs as Governor.
you might as well consider a Bush or a Pence
Contrived how? Are you suggesting that Professor Jacobson is acting on some kind of orders or says a single thing he doesn’t truly believe? If so, you’re on the wrong site.
Perhaps try “coordinated.” The message is so “eerily” similar from all the alleged pundits and media, that it implies a coordinated effort to knock out President Trump. He may be inadvertently aiding that goal, but, as noted above, his accomplishment were legion, and the public needs to be reminded, since the media is burying it.
Convince him to be the behind the scenes kingmaker if he will. Speaker of the House (way more than a “two-fer.”) After what the left and RINOs have done to him, they should be deathly afraid of a second Trump presidency.
There is no need to agree with them, even if only to keep their eye on him and little else.
Many of us see the same problem and the same solution set. That’s not collusion it’s independent recognition and analysis.
If you honestly believe Professor Jacobson takes his marching orders from anyone anywhere, you haven’t been paying attention. He’s the real deal.
Did it ever occur to you that message is similar because it’s based on the same data? Trump has dragged down the GOP in every election since he won against the (then) most-despised politician in the country (arguably she no longer is), that’s just fact.
As I’ve stated elsewhere, if the midterms had gone as we all expected, everyone would be singing Trump’s praises and looking forward to his (mostly) uncontested run for the 2024 GOP nomination. I honestly wish that were the case, and while I can’t speak for Professor Jacobson, I suspect that he does, too. But it did not happen. That’s not a conspiracy to ditch Trump, it’s just the unhappy truth.
Trump once said that we would get tired of winning. Well, I’m tired of losing. Very very tired of it.
2024 is a long way off. There is plenty of time to decide the Trump/DeSantis debate. The fight at hand right now is if we are going to replace McConnell who decided to mismanage money this election cycle in an effort to deny America First candidates a seat at the table.
McConnell, McCarthy, and McDaniel are all McFailures and they need to be replaced anything else right now is a distraction.
Instead of following Surber’s game plan of surrendering to the Uniparty and throwing away the biggest asset the Republicans have, John Solomon who I have much more respect for than Don Surber, has a much better string of reasoning:
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/gipper-strategy-six-bold-ideas-trump-republicans-rebound-2022-midterms
Instead of asking Trump to throw himself on his sword and fragmenting the party just when it is poised to win (for the benefit of the party of course), why not do what I have been advocating for ages now, unite as an unstoppable force. We need ALL HANDS ON DECK! Go with what has got us where we are now. The superstar who got us where we are is Trump. The people who built on MAGA are now a force that can be united to wipe out the Big Reset very soon.
There is no need for anyone to throw themselves on their sword. Just for someone to curb his ego and resist the siren’s call to see himself as the solution. It just is not DeSantis’ time. With the MAGA team united, Republicans can coast to victory in 2024 and win everything.
Please stop looking for Uniparty solutions Professor. The Trump path is much easier to navigate and we start from a much more solid base to build on, a base that would carry DeSantis to the White House soon enough. But the Trump base will fragment if DeSantis believes he is saving the country with his dirty billionaire financing while going against Trump and his widespread small donor financing.
We don’t have two years to work on a plan B. We need to follow through on what go us back into the game. We are about to chop off the heads of the GOPe which will represent a signal victory for Trump and those who fought the fight hanging on to his coattails. It will be a bitter lesson learn after having made the wrong decision by choosing an alternative leader who has no coattails. The GOPe wins back control of the party but having thrown away the YUGE Trump voter base WE lose the war when DeSantis loses for having fragmented the base. Believe me, I will NOT vote for DeSantis if he is that stupid. The days of nose holding ended decades ago for me and I am sure plenty of us Tea Party diehards feel the same way.
The failed leadership of the GOP is wounded and weak. We have a midterm run off in GA that is now for a 50/50 Senate.
How about DJT spends time and money fighting for Walker in GA and then to purge the failed leadership after the GA results are in? Stop taking pot shots at successful r Gov for a few months and do some heavy lifting v the establishment.
Do that, actually notch a victory in GA, then a few more in driving the failed grifter leadership out of power and DJT could turn around the growing perception that his day has passed.
Many of us would be all in on those actions and he could absolutely earn our support in 2024 by doing so. If DJT chooses to display true leadership and a sense of selfless service to do what probably only he can in the near term he would immediately vault back into Alpha dog status.
I have my doubts that he can bring himself to do that.
This is exactly what I said privately before reading your “Post of the day”: “If I were advising Trump, I would tell him to delay announcing and campaign like crazy in GA for Walker. If Walker then wins by 5 points, the setup is perfect to announce then. If Walker then loses by 5 points in a state like Georgia, then retire and become the elder statesman.”
Trump IS spending his time helping Walker. I get his requests for money everyday and he is out there campaigning. You would think all of us precise, fact-based, fair-minded and balanced people would know that already.
Anyone reporting the truth about Trump as it happens is a very rare commodity these days. It really sucks being a Republican. That’s why I a die-hard unaffiliated independent. I refuse to wear anyone’s uniform.
Great so you’re telling us DJT is going to do the wise thing, subordinate his ego and refrain from attacking other r until the midterms are done. That’s good news and I hope it’s true.
commo: If everyone else agrees to not only stop attacking him, but to step up and defend him against all of the fraudulent hoaxes launched against him and the “journalists” of all stripes agree to do their jobs and report THE FACTS, Trump wouldn’t have to be his only choice for defending himself. Capiche?
And drop the ego crap. Are you that naive? Absolutely no one even gets into politics no less run for president unless they have a very large ego. If you are looking for a humble president, you are a fool.
Not naive at all. Certainly not naive enough to observe elections results since 2016 and see that the swing voters in the middle by and large vote against v for DJT and his candidates.
I think it’s crazy for them to worry about style over substance. They do it anyway. They did it in 2018, 2020 and 2022. They will keep doing it.
Even if it’s a 51/49 split of these voters against us that means it doesn’t matter how many of these new 49% of fired up pro DJT voters turn up. The negatives outweigh the positive.
DJT would almost certainly be more effective in a second term. He must win first and he must have a working majority in the Senate. We don’t seem to have a r POTUS nor a r Senate despite the efforts of DJT in 2020 and 2022.
I wish things had worked out differently but they didn’t.
He’s been sending requests for money to back “his” candidates all year. How much did he actually spend on supporting them?
> But the Trump base will fragment if DeSantis believes he is saving the country with his dirty billionaire financing while going against Trump and his widespread small donor financing.
Yes, indeed. Trump has a near-unique ability to turn out irregular voters. If he gets dumped, 20-30 percent of his voters will simply stay home (and the minute that happens, I will start making six-figure bets for a Democrat win for the 2024 Presidential election). Two years represents forever in politics, but as of today, I just don’t see anyone else who can win over those voters.
I say this facetiously, but only somewhat so. The Republicans should cancel every one of their 2024 primaries, except for Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. No other state matters (whoever wins those four states in 2024, wins the election, and any Republican will carry Alabama, Indiana, Utah, and similar).
Without Kemp at the top of the ticket to boost him, Walker loses the Georgia runoff by four points, no matter what Republicans do (they simply don’t have the time to establish a successful early voting operation).
So you want to entrust the r presidential nomination to four States whose voters just elected or worse reelected d/prog Gov?
Ignore the r voters in ‘safe’ States like Alabama? How do think Alabama and the other States like it got to be ‘safe’? The everyday Citizens got involved and worked for decades to throw out the previously entrenched d/prog.
It seems like you are rewarding failure and punishing success with this idea. I realize you were only half serious but still.
If the voters DJT awakened to the issues in 2016 decide to go home if DJT isn’t on the ballot then tell us more about how they stick around in 2028 and 2032 and beyond.
If these voters want to simply give up and hand the d/prog political power we can’t stop them. If you believe we have to let them hold the rest of us hostage to their zealotry for fear of them quitting I believe you and they will be surprised to discover how few true zealots there are.
> So you want to entrust the r presidential nomination to four States whose voters just elected or worse reelected d/prog Gov?
Do I want to entrust them? No, but Republicans can’t get to 270 electoral votes without (most likely) winning at least three of them.
> Ignore the r voters in ‘safe’ States like Alabama?
Politics depends on pretending to care. Winning elections means turning out marginal voters.
> If the voters DJT awakened to the issues in 2016 decide to go home if DJT isn’t on the ballot then tell us more about how they stick around in 2028 and 2032 and beyond.
First of all, after 2024, Trump won’t appear on the ballot, so they won’t feel discarded, and someone else may have an opportunity to pick them up. Second, six years (from now) allows enough time for Republicans to continue to pick up minority voters.
> If you believe we have to let them hold the rest of us hostage to their zealotry for fear of them quitting I believe you and they will be surprised to discover how few true zealots there are.
I believe it will surprise you (and others) how many people don’t consider politics important to their lives. Look at the low turnout in this election during a time of extremely high levels of dissatisfaction among the public.
If you want to argue that dumping Trump right now represents the best long-term outcome (perhaps winning back Congress and doing better in certain state elections), I can’t disagree with that, but I will continue to claim that a successful primary challenge against Trump locks in a loss for the 2024 Presidential election.
Maybe I’m wrong and despite the electoral outcomes in those States in 2020 and the 2022 midterms for Statewide races the DJT magic will suddenly deliver 3/4 of them in 2024. It would be nice see positive results v excuses and happy talk about ‘we’ll get em next time’ because reasons.
Irregular voters are fickle. We already see the ‘summer soldier and the sunshine patriot’ beginning to threaten to depart our ranks and go home if DJT doesn’t get his way. I think they and you overestimate their import.
Had they been the decisive factor they claim then wouldn’t the results be different?
You’re not wrong.
So now you are attacking voters too. It’s about winning the WAR. We need everyone we can get. But you “reasonable” people can only handle one superstar in your party and so must destroy the ones you don’t approve of. You aren’t even willing to fight the pivotal battles along the way which is how the Stupid Party always finds itself having to either surrender or compromise. It is NEVER EVER the right time to do the right thing. It’s always about later. There is no hill important for you to die on is there?
Trump is no longer a superstar in the party. He cost us the last few cycles, and he–and his remaining supporters–are the only ones who can’t handle more than one star in the party. The true stars in the party actually hold office. Trump does not. And he is unlikely to ever do so again.
Phil,
I’ve fought in actual battles on three continents so I know a bit about war. Give the rhetoric a rest.
If the new voters who showed up only due to DJT exit with him I will be surprised. So will you when they don’t. Not en masse anyway. Many of them came to realize that the R party ideals and ideology best serve them and their future.
Many more will stick around and continue. The weak, sensitive types who become overwhelmed with disappointment in ‘their’ potential nominee not being selected will take their ball home. It happens every election.
That’s how a political party functions. The members of the party choose the nominee. The folks who aren’t registered r don’t get a real say in whom is chosen. They sit next next to the agitated Karens and sky scream.
> John Solomon who I have much more respect for than Don Surber, has a much better string of reasoning:
> https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/gipper-strategy-six-bold-ideas-trump-republicans-rebound-2022-midterms
Any supposedly knowledgeable person writing about politics who says “form a Trump-DeSantis super ticket,” or in any way suggests that they run together has completely lost all my respect. It can not happen. The Constitution prohibits the President and Vice-President coming from the same state, so either Trump moves back to New York (state income taxes and much more vulnerability regarding investigations), or the Governor of Florida moves out of Florida!
Had DeSantis not raised that provocative $250 million campaign chest, I would have been enthusiastic for such a ticket. We don’t need another sneaky, backstabbing Pence for VP.
Are you just mad that DeSantis’ war chest is twice the size of Trump’s?
Trump picked Pence, no?
Well, they could get around that, the Bush-Cheney ticket did. But I would lose all respect for DeSantis if he thought about this “super ticket” for more than two seconds.
Maybe there’s life after Don Suber.
That is nothing more than the stale old nonsense the increasingly more and more people are scoffing at.
It is the people themselves who are against Trump. Rearraigning deck chairs on this Titanic ain’t gonna to squat.
Paul Ryan, The Lincoln Project, Fox News…all the “right” people want DeSantis now. The current GOPe blows a lay up election with the end goal to blame the losses on Trump. It’s a strategy that’s seems to be working. The GOPe would rather lose to democrats than their base voters. I for one don’t intend to reward their treachery.
Lincoln Project just bashed DeSantis and talked up Trump. Perhaps you missed that.
It was a fake
Ah yes, the attitude that the alleged “GOPe” is the great enemy and must be taken out even at the cost of giving the Democrats absolute power (for a third time in a row).
Spoiler: Donald Trump IS the GOP establishment,
I know a lot can change in 2 years; but, as of right now, IMO the dems have a lock on 260 electoral votes. They would just need 1 or 2 “toss-ups” – GA? VA? NC? WI? NH? and it’s game over. So I say let Trump run – he’ll lose – as would probably any other R. Keep DeSantis here in FL where he can do the most good. Same for Youngkin.
I want to keep DeSantis here in Florida, too. The irony here is that I don’t think he had any intention at all of running this time. He was going to wait until 2028; that’s my sense anyway.
But the midterm disaster (with plenty of blame to go around, but some absolutely belonging to Trump) plus Trump’s attacks on very popular governors have changed the landscape a great deal. I don’t want to lose him, but he’s got an opening now, broken through by Trump the Kool-aid man wall-smashing pitcher. Ugh. I wish we had won, that Trump was right now gloating about his great successes (as he could have done . . had there been any), and everyone was looking forward to Trump romping to the nomination.
That’s not going to happen now. No romp. There will be tough primaries, and everyone will come out bruised and battered. And if Trump wins the primary, he’ll lose the general. We know that right now based on this midterms. It’s an absolute disaster for his party, the one he LEADS. And really, the only way out now is to move on from Trump. He’s failed to win a single election since 2016 when he beat the single-most despised living politician. But every election since then has been a bust for his party. It can no longer be his party.
If he wants to wander off with his die-hard MAGA peeps, then he can do that, form a third party, go for it. But this Trump as leader of the GOP thing is over.
Agreed 100%
The angry Trump crowd on here think we are somehow loving that Trump is going down in a ball of fire. We hate it….we don’t care if he gloats or not at the end of the day if the conservative movement carries on. We just see the reality of this cycle and are ready to cut our losses while some have too much emotional attachment to this guy.
It’s truly ironic when I see someone saying DeSantis hasn’t proven enough yet. What had Trump proven in 2016???
Just a few things!!!!
Barry | November 13, 2022 at 11:19 pm
The 2020 election was stolen. Trump won that election in a landslide so large the normal cheating they had planned wasn’t enough. So they had to stop counting in the 6 places until they could cart in enough ballots to overturn the extraordinary margin of victory that Trump was achieving.
The 2022 election has been stolen.
And you are all trying to blame it on the one person that has worked for the American people and never for himself. He didn’t take his salary, he didn’t leave office richer than when he entered, and the list below has nothing that was beneficial for Trump personally.
This country is done, and it’s done for two reasons primarily:
1) The republican party is as corrupt as the democrats. They did nothing about the stolen 2020 election and openly allowed the 2022 theft to occur.
2) The American citizens have become sheep and will do nothing to stop the steal of America. You get what you deserve.
A partial list of what Trump accomplished on his own, and Mr Surber has done NOTHING to help accomplish any of these items. He’ll do nothing to save our republic.
1) stopped ISIS cold
2) EO stopping the drug companies from charging medicare more than what they charged foreign countries
3) EO forcing hospitals to disclose their prices
4) Move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem
5) ENERGY INDEPENDENCE for the first time in my lifetime of 70 years, and record low energy prices
6) Started no new wars
7) Elimination of regulations, required to eliminate 8 to add a new one
8) Cut Taxes across the board
9) Increased the individual tax credit eliminating the need to file more complicated returns
10) Started the space force, sorely needed today
11) Replaced NAFTA with an agreement better for American workers
12) Put tariffs on china, starting the process of moving American production out of the enemy’s land
13) Brought back massive amounts of money saved in foreign countries
14) Withdrew from the farce know as the Paris Climate Accords
15) Withdrew from the Iran deal
16) Increased the $$$ of the average family by over 5K IIRC
17) Started the process of fixing the VA
18) Increased the spending by other NATO countries
19) Killed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)
20) Created several million jobs, actual creation not bafflegab bullshit
21) Economic growth rates were going up, somewhere around 4% before the marxist killed the economy with the scam chinaVirus
22) Lowest rate of unemployment ever, across the board for blacks, hispanics, asians, veterans, etc.
23) Opened ANWAR and had the Keystone pipeline being constructed
There is much more of course.
Despite which DJT was inaugurated after the 2020 election in which effective control of the Senate was lost to the d/prog. Then in the 2022 midterms the d/prog carried the swing states and purple States by defeating the DJT endorsed candidates for Senate. Vance and Johnson being the exception.
The truth is the nation is not 50/50 it is about 45/45 with 10% up for grabs. The voters in the up for grabs 10% keep rejecting DJT and his endorsed candidates by a wider margin than they support DJT.
You don’t need to convince me, I have and would pull the lever for DJT again. You gotta go and convince the folks who don’t like DJT to vote for him instead of against him. So far no sale.
Don’t forget 2018’s blue wave.
Then he needs to say that soon and rebuke those who told lies about Trump on his behalf. He also needs to explain why he chose to first take billionaires’ money without appealing to the base.
If you think the division and anger is too much here at LI, it is worse when you get out there are talk to people who are watching the McConnell wing of the Uniparty steal another key election in AZ, OF COURSE he skipped messing up FL! They need a superstar to go after Trump! And with Keri Lake looking like a sure thing, they couldn’t risk her taking his place.
Trump IS going to win this. And when he does, your precious GOPe will finally be destroyed. Unless, of course, you switch “sides” and keep being tools for the Uniparty.
The time to save the day is NOW. DeSantis has to come clean and tell us if he was just lying to us while he was riding Trump’s coat tails. This changes everything for people who moved to Florida for MAGA only to see him stab Trump in the back.
You’re assuming that a Republican loss in 2024 won’t lock in a permanent one-party surveillance state, with bureaucrats calling all the shots. That is, after all, what “d/prog” are aiming at.
Then let’s win it!!! And you win by backing the strongest candidate who has proved that he FIGHTS!!! That is Trump! DeSantis won with MAGA while seeking out Trump’s endorsement and riding his coattails to becoming a successful governor. He sure was mediocre in the House before he met Trump and latched on to MAGA. The logic around here seems to be that this makes him a stronger candidate than the guy who made him and put him in play in the first place.
Which might make sense to some degree if DeSantis hadn’t grown past that and into his role as chief executive. He did that on his own, and every single DeSantis win in Florida is his alone.
In fact, he ignored Trump when Trump was in the WH telling him (and Kemp in Georgia) to stay locked down, do the mask thing, etc. DeSantis made the right call, Trump did not. Trump should have “opened by Easter” as was his first inclination, but he was talked out of it, bucked his own instinct, and we see what happened as a direct result. All the covid-related voting measures are, really, on Trump. On his taking a knee to the legacy media, to Fauci and Birx.
Yep. No amnesty for Rona lockdowns. DJT for all the good he did also chose to enable the Fauchi Fascists instead of telling them to pound sand. Pivotal mistake.
Trump did a lot of good, but I think his time has passed. And, unfair as it may be, the power of our leftist media and pop culture has made him radioactive. Trump’s latest intemperate digs at Youngkin and DeSantis are ridiculous own goals.
But I think more important than the question of Trump vs. DeSantis is dismantling the ballot harvesting/early voting/ubiquitous absentee voting, etc., that is a huge advantage for Democrats. Covid is over. There is no reason for them to exist any longer. They should be discarded along with masks. I don’t think people who otherwise would not take the simple time and energy to go and vote should be voting. And those that can’t be bothered to vote unless it’s made insanely easy for them to do so will overwhelmingly vote Democratic. And the fact that early voting is baked in the results when later revelations will no doubt appear before “election day” (something that now seems quaint and anachronistic) like Fetterman’s true condition, for example, means our voting system is increasingly dysfunctional, more open to corruption, and sows distrust among the electorate regardless of whether substantive cheating exists or not.
I love that , “ his time
Has passed”
How ridiculous.
Exactly like what President Trump did not get done during his term; exactly like his non-reelection, exactly like the relentless, withering, entangling and knee-capping attacks, The Orange Crush did his part to muck up this election, AND he had help.
Success has a thousand fathers while failure is an orphan. The fact is often the other way around: “success” takes just one, or nearly none, doing something different, while failure comes from a vast confluence of, um — rhymes with “duck-buttery.”
A sniping candidate has to be in synch with the zeitgeist.
The party has to act like a party.
Once the nominee is chosen, the game is to get them in.
Shoot outside the tent. Circular firing-squads end up bad for everyone involved.
Battlespace prep is a thing.
If any of this seems duplicative or out of the flow, my apologies. I made quite a few revisions before trying to post, then was forced to log out and log back in:
The preponderance of what you’re saying [you being William A. Jacobson] makes sense.
Most notably, I’ve yet to see a smidgen of evidence that evil billionaires out of Davos are pulling Ron De Santis’s strings. Nor do I see any rationale for DeSantis owing Trump a damn thing. Any debts once incurred have been repaid.
But do you need to keep insisting that Donald Trump sabotaged the Georgia runoffs in January 2021? That’s a flawed theory in its own right, straight off the WSJ editorial page—and about as reliable as a lot of stuff from the less gifted writers for the WSJ editorial page.
If no Zuckerbucks had been spent on those runoffs in Georgia, you might have a point. Zuckerbucks were being spent between November 2020 and January 2021. Every other device in the bag of tricks was also being employed. Vote dumps were shifted out of Fulton County into a couple of neighboring counties. (Not to mention that the full bag of tricks had already been used to push Perdue below 50% in November 2020; otherwise there would have been one runoff, not two.)
And Kemp became interested in preventing the employment of the various tricks only after the runoff was over. (Kemp eventually quit making concessions to Abrams, Elias, et al.; Raffensperger never did, whether it was out of embarrassment over the screwed-up primary voting in 2020 or out of motives even more craven.)
Please note all the ways I am on board with you: I wholeheartedly agree with Trump should not be making any announcements in the next few weeks. His time may well have gone; if it hasn’t, he can afford to wait well into in the next calendar year.
Still, 2022 is not a replay of 2020, if only because Zuckerbucks are no longer allowed in Georgia. I believe you’ve made your point that Trump won’t help Herschel Walker by making an announcement before the runoff. I will travel so far with you as to urge Trump not to campaign for Walker. Others can be more helpful in that role.
But while all of the latest crap is playing out, we won’t know for quite some time what threw the polls off, or who threw them off, in August or in October; what tricks were being played during this cycle in NV, AZ, MI, PA, WI, OR, WA; what DePape’s assault on Paul Pelosi was really about and what effect its employment by the media ended up having; or about a variety of other factors, some nationwide and some local.
In the interim, we can acknowledge that Trump has ways of making himself a liability without falling into assertions that are kind of wild in their own right.
Is anyone ready to make the case that Donald Trump, and Donald Trump alone, got Tony Evers reelected in Wisconsin, or Gretchen Whitmer re-elected in Michigan?
There was no Senate race in MI.
In PA, the one-factor explanation is that Trump guaranteed a win for Shapiro and a win for Fetterman.
But then comes WI: If Trump sank Michels against Evers, how did Trump fail to sink Johnson against Barnes?
And NV: If Trump sank Laxalt against Cortez Masto, how did the torpedo miss Lombardo against Sisolak?
We’re still not sure about AZ: If Trump unfailingly killed Masters’ chances, why hasn’t Lake’s race been called against her yet?
The patterns look way too messy to fit any one-factor explanation. Including: Too many people, across the country, hate Trump without fail and will hate Trump without fail; Trump endorsed a bunch of candidates in the midterms; therefore, Trump largely ruined Republican chances in the midterms; therefore, Trump is nothing but toxic going forward.
I ain’t buying it and I voted against Trump twice in 2016: primary and general. (Voted Libertarian in the general, even though I didn’t think much of their their candidate.) To put it mildly, I didn’t like Trump as a person and didn’t care for a lot of his rhetoric or for a lot more of his supporters’ rhetoric. What changed my mind about Trump was twofold: (1) a great many things (not everything) he did while in office; (2) the unending campaign by the Deep State, Democrats, and the media to run him out of office. He really was a threat to the administrative state. Not to mention that Mike Pence most likely worked against him (has anyone asked Pence whether Deborah Birx’s statements about him are true?). Not to mention that at some point before the Senate trial on the first impeachment, Bill Barr began working against him.
So I voted for Trump in 2020.
Obviously, he doesn’t own my vote and I was never under the illusion that he is indispensable. I doubt this makes me different from a lot of people who voted for Trump in the past.
OK, back to people who favor one-factor explanations: Trump worshipers, you gotta get real.
You think only Donald J. can defeat the administrative state. No one else will ever be capable.
Just follow your own logic: If you’re right, how will we escape permanent subjection to the administrative state? You know, a surveillance state with the unelected in firm and unending control, so there will be no more elections in the USA, or the winners of any elections still allowed to proceed will be known in advance. Something on the model of China.
The simple truth is that Donald J. Trump is not a god. He is mortal and he isn’t guaranteed to remain in great health past age 80. If “only I can solve this,” no one’s going to solve it.
So I would say there’s more than one rabbit hole to fall down into. We’re best off keeping our eyes on the broken ground ahead. There are other rabbit holes in it, some well concealed.
This is a little long but well-thought post.
I agree with you on A LOT of the stuff in here.
I also think that you are running into some issues in your cross-state comparisons because of the one factor as you suggest. However, if you look at overall trends dating back to 2020 and adding in now, an ugly picture does unfold.
Of course, there are multiple possibilities: Trump picked bad candidates, Trump was toxic, some kind of alleged steal was in (less than one factor of hard evidence on that one), Trump and his endorsements were sabotaged (some scant evidence for this and some counter-evidence as well).
When looking at the totality, it’s reasonable to recognize that Trump has some benefits and some problems associated with his name. Many of us here have come to the conclusion that the problems outweigh those benefits and that scale has been tipping as such since 2020.
Recognize also that this GA election did NOT have all of those 2020 influences and the state shored up its election laws…..still Warnock remains on the cusp of re-election and the final nail for Trump could very well be that outcome. Regardless, at least one seat (Warnock’s) that was ahead prior to the runoff in the last cycle is now dead-locked and Trump/Walker is centered on that transition between 2020 to 2022. If it were all Abrams and her group, they certainly would have pulled her fat ass over the finish line of the gubernatorial race.
My goodness, Griffin himself
Came out after giving millions to DeSantis andTold us that he expects DeSantis to dance to the globalist tune
That’s not evidence?
250,000,000 not evidence from
Wall Street, Paul Freaken Ryan, Jeb bush, all the usual rats?
Griffin has said he expects results in keeping wokeness out of public schools.
How dare you someone who has done nothing whatever go after someone who is working hard on a real issue.
How dare you demonize the people pushing our values how dare you.
When you have billions and are spending it promoting our values and clearing public schools of woke indoctrination get back to me in the meantime how dare you insult Ken Griffin like that how dare.
Ken Griffin is helping make America great; you are in cultlike worship of a prince.
I pick Ken Griffin its not even close.
Link please to Griffin stating this. You can’t just toss something out like that and expect anyone here to believe it (well, anyone who thinks sourcing, the facts, and evidence matter, anyway).
And please, let us know where you think Trump’s 2020 war chest came from (hint: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2021/02/19/here-are-the-billionaires-who-donated-to-donald-trumps-2020-presidential-campaign/?sh=5e1d602e4667).
Now that I’ve caught up with this thread, I’m surprised nobody mentioned Lindsey Graham.
As in Graham’s proposed Federal legislation to restrict abortion.
I’d thought Republicans would all be for leaving the matter to the states after the Supreme Court decision. Especially when Democrats were accusing them of planning to ban abortion nationwide. Nope.
Graham’s move was so boneheaded (more boneheaded, if that’s possible, than his public call for someone to whack Vladimir Putin) you’d be pardoned for thinking he was trying to tank the midterms. (Hmm, Kevin McCarthy’s made vaguer noises about Federal abortion legislation.)
Turnout for a constitutional amendment in Michigan (to keep abortion where it had been post Roe and Casey) didn’t hurt Gretchen Whitmer’s re-election chances. She could be the Democrats’ nominee in 2024.
Lindsey Graham is a serious problem. Only a powerful challenge in the South Carolina primary will get him out of the Senate. Otherwise, he’s likely to die in office after causing a lot more damage between now and then.
Your statement is the quintessence of what is wrong with American political analysis. It’s not a football game.
Indeed. It is chess, played over generations.
I think Graham really dropped the ball with his move, to the point that he should be out of the political picture.
He did it on purpose, nothing these fools do is an “accident “
Did I say it was a football game?
Metaphor. Look it up.
I figured it was a metaphor.
That doesn’t help me understand M Poppins’ point, if M Poppins has one.
Your observation re abortion is IMO correct. Several of us have pointed that out. The article/thread above this one has some back and forth from a few of us.
It was McCarthy and Graham FWIW. IMO that proposal to use federal legislation to override the States was political malpractice. It fired up the blue and purple State single issue abortion voters and got them to vote.
Even if we minimize the impact below the reported 25% of exit poll participants who put abortion above economy/inflation it likely shifted the close races. A 1% difference in many races and the result is far different.
Yep, there should be no federal legislation on abortion at this point in time. None. It must be left to the states, where it always belonged, anyway.
The point is what Graham did. He did it to try an influence the election – against republican candidates, against any red wave. How much it mattered I don’t know, but Graham knew damn well what he was doing and it wasn’t his concern about babies in the womb.
I don’t think that was what he thought he was doing. Graham is old school, he probably believed that his abortion stance would sell with the base. It didn’t. Out of touch, definitely, out to get Trump (whose butt has never had a more-present nose than Lindsey’s), no way.
I’m not sure what “old school” Lindsey Graham belongs to. For long stretches of his time in the Senate, he’s been busy trimming and cutting deals with Democrats. (Anyone remember cap and trade in 2009?)
Tim Scott is noticeably more popular in South Carolina than Graham is. But Graham has known how to steer away potential primary opponents, so he’s still in office.
Let’s please not rewrite history here. Graham is no friend of Trump. Graham ran for president in 2016 and discovered that nobody, nowhere, no way, was longing for President Lindsey Graham. That was sufficient reason to loathe the eventual nominee—assuming Graham didn’t hate Trump already.
Let’s not forget how Graham wanted to protect Jeff Sessions, in case Trump wanted to fire him. Let’s not forget how Graham wanted to protect Bob Mueller, in case Trump was minded to get rid of him. Or how Graham would then go on certain TV shows (Maria Bartiromo comes to mind) and say he wanted to get to the bottom of the coup attempt by the Fibbies and the spooks. Naturally he never did a damn thing about any of it.
Graham spent Trump’s term in office intermittently trying to undermine him. Even when he made a phone call or two to officials in Georgia a while back, I doubt he was doing it in good faith.
I’m fairly sure Lindsey Graham doesn’t confide in anyone who hangs out at LI. So we can only guess what motivated his boneheaded move on abortion. Maybe he did think he could prove to conservative Republicans whom he had alienated that he really totally was with the cause after all.
All the same, the effect was to hurt Republicans in the midterms. Lindsey Graham is smart enough to realize what the effect would be. Do you think he has the slightest regret?
This is the same guy (a former military lawyer!) who declared out loud that it would be great if someone would promptly whack Vladimir Putin. If he thought that one would reassure Republicans he was down with the cause, Graham hasn’t moved permanently to Washington DC. He’s bought a one-way ticket to a different planet.
It is hard to square that, we could say, indiscreet remark with any notion of Graham faithfully serving Donald Trump. Trying to prove you’re more warlike about Ukraine than Joseph R. Biden Jr. isn’t how you signal your allegiance to Trump. The Donald didn’t want any “nuclear exchanges” with Russia.
The 2020 election was stolen. Trump won that election in a landslide so large the normal cheating they had planned wasn’t enough. So they had to stop counting in the 6 places until they could cart in enough ballots to overturn the extraordinary margin of victory that Trump was achieving.
The 2022 election has been stolen.
And you are all trying to blame it on the one person that has worked for the American people and never for himself. He didn’t take his salary, he didn’t leave office richer than when he entered, and the list below has nothing that was beneficial for Trump personally.
This country is done, and it’s done for two reasons primarily:
1) The republican party is as corrupt as the democrats. They did nothing about the stolen 2020 election and openly allowed the 2022 theft to occur.
2) The American citizens have become sheep and will do nothing to stop the steal of America. You get what you deserve.
A partial list of what Trump accomplished on his own, and Mr Surber has done NOTHING to help accomplish any of these items. He’ll do nothing to save our republic.
1) stopped ISIS cold
2) EO stopping the drug companies from charging medicare more than what they charged foreign countries
3) EO forcing hospitals to disclose their prices
4) Move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem
5) ENERGY INDEPENDENCE for the first time in my lifetime of 70 years, and record low energy prices
6) Started no new wars
7) Elimination of regulations, required to eliminate 8 to add a new one
8) Cut Taxes across the board
9) Increased the individual tax credit eliminating the need to file more complicated returns
10) Started the space force, sorely needed today
11) Replaced NAFTA with an agreement better for American workers
12) Put tariffs on china, starting the process of moving American production out of the enemy’s land
13) Brought back massive amounts of money saved in foreign countries
14) Withdrew from the farce know as the Paris Climate Accords
15) Withdrew from the Iran deal
16) Increased the $$$ of the average family by over 5K IIRC
17) Started the process of fixing the VA
18) Increased the spending by other NATO countries
19) Killed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)
20) Created several million jobs, actual creation not bafflegab bullshit
21) Economic growth rates were going up, somewhere around 4% before the marxist killed the economy with the scam chinaVirus
22) Lowest rate of unemployment ever, across the board for blacks, hispanics, asians, veterans, etc.
23) Opened ANWAR and had the Keystone pipeline being constructed
There is much more of course.
2022 and 2020 were not stolen there was no voter fraud of sufficient size to flip any state evidence for it doesn’t exist and you are just a cultist here to make sure Joe Biden inaugurates a one party state without a constitution.
Nobody should care about Trump’s presidency because he can’t win; and some of the things on your list are things literally every Republican would do.
Excellent, just excellent
Perhaps Mr. Surber could enlighten me on how DeSantis or anyone else for that matter would fare better than Trump? At least Trump had vast financial resources to defend himself. The Democrats have found a winning recipe for taking down an elected president. Why would they fail to use it again, and again. As Lincoln said of Grant, “He fights”.
DeSantis can get the rural and blue collar voters Trump did, perhaps even moreso with demonstrated effective governing on issues that directly affect them; DeSantis can also do better with various Hispanic demographics. DeSantis can also do vastly better with college educated White suburban voters. DeSantis is all the pluses without any of the minuses Trump brings.
You may believe that, but there is not a shred of proof any of your conjecture is reality.
The real problem for DeSantis/others is this – Any, and I mean ANY evidence that the republican party tries to steal the nomination from Trump by any means whatsoever and the election is over for whoever the R’s nominate. The people that voted for Trump did not vote for for a personality in spite of what the neverTrump cult tries to push. No, they voted for Trump because they believed he would represent them, not wall street, not the left, and not the corporations. That is what they believed and Trump proved them right. Trump did everything for Americans first, clear as daylight. Those Trump voters will not accept the GOPe status quo.
This would play much better if the midterms had been the red tsunami everyone–including Trump–thought they’d be. They weren’t. And this devastating loss on top of all the other Trump losses since 2016 (again, he ran against the most hated pol in recent history) suggests that he’s not good at politics.
He’s not good at picking winners.
But didn’t we already know that with his picks for everything from his “generals” (who all turned on him) to his FBI director, who is still in place, hunting down Trump supporters as enemies of the state? Sorry, Trump is a loser, racking up losses like nobodies business. Tired of winning? LMAO. I’m tired of losing.
Define winning.
Winning is what Trump brought to the presidency every day. He had to do it on his own. He was opposed by both the D’s and R’s. The senate never went out of session for fear Trump would make a recess appointment. All those “losses” you speak of were manufactured by the republican party. Every one. I’ll believe you have a clue when you make a list of people that Trump or any other R president can get past the senate and the list is not uniparty squish.
You can’ and won’t. I know and deep down you know it.
Trump is not perfect and if someone can do a better job or the equal I’m all for it. But Trump is unique given he owes no one and that is a quality that means a great deal when your desire is to represent the American people rather than the $$$ men.
You only get one more chance at this.
The next man up can be there in 4 years.
If Trump asked me for advice I’d tell him to forget it. There are not enough Americans left to appreciate what you tried to do. Go buy a nice island, fortify it, and love your family. What’s left here will be a bloodbath.
Winning is not what Trump brought, though, not by a loooong shot. How many seats did he lose in ’18? What role did he play (for personal vendetta reasons) on the Georgia Senate races that gave the Dems control?
Look, you “uniparty” people might think there’s no difference, but normal thinking people reject that as completely crazy.
Trump has built in never votes. He will lose. Maybe that’s what it will take for your people to get a clue?
“I’m tired of losing.”
Say’s it all.
The greatest economy in my lifetime, now approaching 70 years and you think that is losing. It’s sad, and it’s why we are going to lose.
What is Trump’s path to a 2024 victory? Seriously, what is it? I voted for him twice, I am not an anti-Trumper, but I am sick of losing. Show me how he wins.
Wow, do you hear yourself?
Donald Trump IS the “GOPe”. And no, the nomination isn’t something he owns. He’s no longer the incumbent President. He’ll have to earn it just like any other candidates.
I despise the phrase “move on” and anyone who uses it. It represents the worst of America’s superficiality and disposable mentality.
And short attention spans.
Mark “Slash” Levin nails it again.
https://choiceclips.whatfinger.com/2022/11/14/mark-levins-most-important-monologue-yet-points-finger-right-at-corporate-gop-hacks-for-midterms-disaster/
Nothing to see here. It’s all Trump’s fault. We sure be dumb.
He wouldn’t have any incentive to create mischief and sow discord would he? It’s not like he needs to drive ratings for his radio and TV broadcasting nor does he have books to sell….
Maybe he is the only honest man. Diogenes had a hard time finding them and so do we.
>It’s not like he needs to drive ratings for his radio and TV broadcasting nor does he have books to sell….
Getting clicks from die-hard Trump fans is far more easy and far more lucrative for them than any alternative.
This article by Surber is complete BS. Surber has sold out to the deep state for whatever pieces of silver. Have you watched a Trump rally? Hundreds of endorsed wins to nine losses this cycle. President Trump is now and may always be the ONE elected office holder who kept his promises and worked tirelessly for America. President Trump would wax DeSantis in an election by a huge amount. Say what you will about the things Trump does that you do not like in yourself but the fact remains that he is the one.
Every word you just wrote is grade A B.S. and is exactly the grade A B.S. that cost us the red wave and turned it into a catastrophe.
Please tell us about his statewide candidates in PA, AZ, MI, MN, NV and WI. So far only two R won; the incumbent R Senator Johnson and the well known Lombardo. Lake may still eek out a win.
The gerrymandered HoR where the CD are solidly partisan + for each party don’t mean squat. What was the result for his candidates in toss up districts that are basically evenly divided among r/d?
Seriously please look into this yourself. Don’t take my word for it. Dig into those races and you will see a way different picture in terms of success. Claiming the easy races is like bragging your P5 college football team beat their D2 homecoming opponent. The tough competitive races are where it counts, not the gimmies.
Well, if Kari Lake does eke out a win, I’m sure she’ll say “eek.”
Nice catch.
Nevada is indeed a telling example. There were six statewide non-Federal races. The Republicans won half of those seats.
The Republican who did the best was the Controller candidate who had a single term in the state Assembly and had the second most conservative vote record in the entire legislature. Unlike many other Republicans in Nevada, he was never a “populist” or a “fighter”, but rather an established policy wonk on economic issues who came across as a regular guy.
The Republican who next did well as a three-term Las Vegas city councilman who had a reputation for dealing with practical concerns and as a former LVMPD cop, had that “law and order” cred. He also comes across as a regular guy.
Lombardo was elected as Clark County Sheriff (~75% of the state’s population) which is a non-partisan office. He concentrated on competence and law and order issues. He didn’t so as well as the two above because of the constant dishonest attacks on him.
Of the losers, we had the Sec. of State nominee who was tied up with the sad pathetic joke of a lawsuit to overturn the election in Nevada, a Treasurer nominee who has said that she’d have fired on Federal law enforcement on the Bundy Ranch if the shooting started, and an Attorney General candidate who came across as very Trumpy with only “I’m the Jew who saved Christmas” as a reason for moderates to vote for her.
Lombardo was the only Republican to flip form the Dems any Governor’s seat, and barring the Georgia run-off, so far the only Republican to pick-up any of any state’s top races from the Democrats. And Lombardo did this despite the Trumpier-than-Trump Nevada Republican Party literally booing him at their endorsement convention this past year.
It always amazes me how many of the Only Trump folks want to put all their eggs not just in the basket of the Presidency but in one and only one potential candidate. It’s as if everything else is gonna work itself out. Trump for POTUS or bust.
Maybe it’s because that’s a whole lot easier than getting involved in local precinct and County party activities. Finding quality local candidates, helping them elected, working to get them moved up from County Commission to the Legislature to Congress or to Gov.
Beating your drum every four years is whole lot easier than the week in, week out grind of showing up to party meetings, working the phones, raising funding and otherwise rolling up their sleeves and doing the heavy lifting under the radar that is often unappreciated and always unglamorous.
I agree 100% that the goal for conservatives is to win and not replay or seek revenge for 2020 Trump got us this far but cannot go further De Santis can mobilize the same coalition and we can retake school boards state governments Congress and the White House
After the midterms I could not watch any more post mortems so I binged on Yellowstone Kevin Kostner as a Trump like governor of Montana is amazing and the scenery is awesome This show has great writing and characters and was worth the binge !
Yet the lead actor is as left winged as they come!
I could care less about his vews on politics-Marlon Brando in Godfather I and George C Scott in Patton were two of the best of their time and their politics were decidedly of the left wing variety
As much as it greaves some of you. Until you pick another Republican for president Trump is still in control.
It’s a mind trap. And we’ll fall into it if we think replacing Trump will solve our problems. What the Left has done to Trump, it will do 2x to the next guy.
Instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, GOP should be focusing on (1) optimizing its own election machinery (early voting, ballot harvesting, etc.), (2) social/culture engineering to restore the values around which conservative policies are built (work ethic, private property, patriotism, entrepreneurship, etc.) and (3) depoliticizing education, K-12 and above.
Agreed. Throwing out President Trump is doing the socialist’s work for them.
It is not a trap and yes we will improve dramatically everywhere with Trump gone.
Trump is the bathwater he cost us the red wave.
The left gives exactly the same treatment to every Republican; not every Republican reacts in ways that makes him less popular.
Ron DeSantis improved over 2018 year of a blue wave.
Glenn Youngkin won a blue state based on education.
They will absolutely do the same thing no matter the Republican. I’ve been saying that for years. That’s why they were lambasting DeSantis as “worse than Trump”; that’s going to be their attack on ANY Republican “worse than Trump.” You know why? Because they have been successful in making Trump toxic.
He starts with six years of this deficit, no other Republican will. And trying to make other Republicans seem as bad as, or worse than, Trump will fall flat. They’ll try, they did it to Reagan. But all America has to see is a normal, competent, humorous, quick on his (or her) feet candidate, and they will vote (as they did for Reagan after his amazing debates).
Trump hate is baked in where it counts, in the middle. The middle decides our elections, and we know this because of simple math. The left is about 25%, the right about 30%, and everyone else is in the middle. Throwing red meat at the base turns them out to vote, but balancing that with not turning off the center is an art. One that Trump has proven over several cycles he lacks now.
Due, yes, to unfair everything (media, impeachments, Russia, Russia, Russia, etc.), but you know, life is unfair. And we just pick up and carry on, we don’t double down on whatever we did to bring about an unfair outcome in the first place and expect different results. That is the definition of insanity.
“…we don’t double down on whatever we did to bring about an unfair outcome…”
And this is why you will continue to lose. You will not fight back. You accept the result, you “move on” to the next “great man”. You see a stolen election and you accept it.
It’s possible I missed it, but where is your concern about this election or the 2020 election? I looked through the LI headlines and I see nothing.
I hear you, but the fact is that 2020 is over. It’s done. Biden is the sitting president. Nothing will undo that, nothing will provide reparations for that. Stick to that, and you lose. It’s fine with me if you want to run on the revenge ticket, but I’m pretty sure that ticket loses. Historically.
No.No.No
There is no other, DeSantis is bought,
Your living in fairy land
Now dust off the fairy dust on your big boy pants and start fighting
gonzotx definition of bought
A billionaire who agrees with us has declared war on wokeness in public schools and has contributed to the DeSantis campaign.
The bottom ;line is whether Republicans want to win or replay the bad movie called 2020.
And one week later, Don Surber apologizes and hooks a U-turn
https://donsurber.blogspot.com/2022/11/trump-2024.html