The GOP does not lack for better options. So why should we put ourselves through all that again?
‘Donald Trump hasn’t said for sure whether he will run in 2024,” reports NPR. “But he’s having a hell of a lot of fun teasing it.”
Donald Trump? In 2024? Why on earth would conservatives choose that guy?
I’m serious: Why? Why would we do that when we have a choice? The idea should be absurd, risible, farcical, outré. It should be a punchline, a mania, the preserve of the demented fringe. Politics matters. And because politics matters, it is a bad idea to allow politics to be held hostage by someone who, in his heart of hearts, doesn’t really care. Donald Trump is an extraordinarily selfish man, and he is only too happy to subordinate your interests to his own. Why let him? It is one thing to say, “Well, he may have been a fickle boor, but I liked some of what he did once he was in office”; it’s quite another to put yourself through four more years of the man when you don’t have to. Whatever justification there may have been for picking the “lesser of two evils” in the 2016 or 2020 general election — a justification that was a great deal stronger before Trump refused to accept, and then tried to overturn, the results of the latter — it cannot obtain in 2022.
Don’t tell me: Because I’m responding to Trump’s repeated hints, I must be “obsessed” or “deranged” or “jealous.” Or, perhaps, I “want Joe Biden to be president.” Well, no, actually, I don’t. But regardless, Biden is not going to be on the ballot in the next Republican presidential primaries, is he? General elections can be complicated because they require the public to decide whether it wants the Republican or the Democrat, both of whom have already been nominated by their respective parties. But primaries? Primaries are different. In the next Republican primary, the question will be, “Given a free choice, who do you want to run against Joe Biden?” My answer will be, “A Republican who is likely to win — and who, if he wins, will not be an insane mess.” Is that not yours?