The Donald and his ilk are a losing game for the GOP. Charles C.W. Cooke has an excellent short post at NRO on the problems of The Donald. We especially like it because Charlie points out the conundrum for conservatives and others if GOP is foolish enough to nominate The Donald:
And why would anyone choose to go through it all again? I comprehend the argument that, once Trump has been chosen as the nominee, voters have a binary choice.
It was true in 2016 and 2020. It will be true in 2024. The Donald’s supporters, as distinct from the people who voted for him, argue that the only problem you get with The Donald is mean tweets. Of course he is off Twitter so this is not exactly a tweet:
The Donald’s comments are both wrong and rude. Here is Charlie:
He’s lying: McConnell has not been “approving all of these Trillions of Dollars worth of Democrat sponsored Bills,” and nor does McConnell support the Green New Deal. These are claims that have lost all contact with reality. He’s attacking a guy on his own side — a guy without whom almost all of Trump’s achievements as president would have been impossible. And he’s not only attacking a woman based on her race, he’s attacking a woman who served in his own cabinet. We’re told that Trump “fights.” But what is he “fighting” here? What does this do for Republican voters?
You can read the rest of it but we have covered the gist of it. We have already commented on the opportunity of the GOP to beat Maggie Hasan in New Hampshire. It looks like the GOP primary voters have blown the opportunity as Jim Geraghty reports in the Morning Jolt (paragraph eliminated):
Probably the most interesting poll released yesterday was St. Anselm College’s survey of New Hampshire, which showed incumbent Democratic senator Maggie Hassan ahead of Republican challenger Don Bolduc, 49 percent to 43 percent. That doesn’t point to a Bolduc victory, and it’s a genuine disappointment, considering how Hassan won in 2016 by just five one-hundreths of one percentage point — or a bit more than a thousand votes. In this environment, Hassan should have been toast. Just 48 percent of respondents in the St. Anselm poll said they felt favorably toward her, just 44 percent said they felt favorably toward President Biden, 69 percent of respondents said they thought the country was on the wrong track, and the single biggest issue on respondents’ minds was the economy. And even with all of that, Bolduc is six points behind. New Hampshire Republicans just had to nominate the Trumpiest guy in the field, didn’t they? Great call, guys, great call. Heck of a job.
We used a long quote so we could give some press to our alma mater. And you should read the whole thing because we are going to use it on the next post on economics. The obvious point is that GOP primary voters should make it easy to vote for the GOP. Political parties exist to win elections and have an impact on policy. We put those reasons in order because if you don’t win elections you can’t have an impact on policy. We still hope Dan beats Maggie because it is a binary choice but we really hope that GOP primary voters get tired of losing … general elections.
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