2022 election: It is time for Republicans to dump Trump!
2022 election: It is time for Republicans to dump Trump!
Donald Trump is thin skinned, petty, vindictive, childish, unprofessional and brittle. Republicans need to kick him to the curb.
Candidate quality matters, the 2020 election is over, supporting Donald Trump is not enough, and Trump himself remains an extremely selfish person who has proven that the only thing he cares about is himself. These are the lessons of the 2022 election, and Republicans had better learn them before 2024.
This should have been a huge wave election for Republicans. The fact that it was a red trickle instead of a red wave shows the Republican Party needs to change course right now. We have to stop nominating candidates just because they praise Donald Trump or base their campaign on denying that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Hershel Walker was a deeply personally flawed candidate, endorsed by Trump because Walker praised Trump. Mehmet Oz was an advocate of transgender "care" for small children, and was always a fake conservative. But he praised Trump, so that was good enough. That has to stop being good enough.
Republicans have to do a better job picking candidates in the primary. We have to stop making "supporting Trump" the main qualification. Governing experience, actual conservative principles and personal character actually do matter.
The fact that Donald Trump actually celebrated Republicans losing a winnable senate seat in Colorado proves that his demands for "loyalty" are nothing but hypocrisy. If Trump was loyal to his alleged principles or the political party he wants to lead, he would have urged people to support Joe O'Dea. But Trump is so thin-skinned that the fact that O'Dea said some "mean" things about Trump was enough to disqualify him in the mind of the very brittle former President. Trump sabotaged chances of Republicans solidifying a razor-thin majority in the U.S. Senate because his precious little feelings got hurt. Had O'Dea won, control of the Senate would not hinge on the runoff in Georgia.
Republicans need to realize the 2020 election is over. Trump lost the election, and it will not be overturned. Most voters do not care about the 2020 election any more, and Republicans are hurting themselves by obsessing about it - or at least pretending to obsess about it because they are terrified of Trump. The people who care about 2020 are going to vote for you anyway, so you need to expand your support to marginal Republicans and to persuadable independents. Actual conservative policy is what matters, not bowing to Trump's pathetic, needy demands that candidates confirm he "won" that election. He did not. He lost. Move on.
Trump's attack on DeSantis the day of the election proves his selfishness and lack of loyalty. When DeSantis did not commit on running or not running in 2024, Trump whined "in terms of loyalty and class, that’s really not the right answer." No, Trump does not have a divine right to the Republican Party's nomination. Trump won a surprise victory in 2016, and then proceeded to lose the House and Senate in a 2018 backlash against his toxic personality. Trump was one of only four of the last thirteen Presidents to lose re-election, and one of those (Ford) should not be counted in that list because he was never elected. Trump joins Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush as the only three elected Presidents who were not re-elected in the last 80 years.
The most frustrating thing about Trump has always been his deeply flawed personal character. He has no discipline, no loyalty, and he cannot resist trolling and personal attacks when professionalism would serve him far better. What makes it so frustrating is Trump delivered massive policy wins: Tax cuts, deregulation, religious freedom, unprecedented Middle East peace deals and - most importantly - three solid Supreme Court justices. If Trump could grow up, he would have been and would be much more effective. As long as he is thin-skinned, brittle, selfish and vindictive, he does not deserve to be re-elected as President and certainly does not deserve to be the 2024 Republican nominee.
As usual, your comments are spot on. As a reminder, Trump was a pro-choice Democrat for most of his life so his “conversion” to the Republican Party was fairly recent.
I couldn’t bring myself to vote for him in the 2016 general election and knew he didn’t need my vote to win Indiana. I did vote for him in 2020 because I supported most of his policies and I wasn’t sure about the results in my new home state of Missouri.
Over the past couple of months I’ve wondered why Biden kept railing against “extreme MAGA Republicans”. Now I realize that was code speak for Trump supporting election deniers. Overall the Republicans underestimated the issues of Trump hatred and abortion in motivating the Democratic base and many independents.
If Trump truly loved the country more than himself, he’d go quietly into retirement. Unfortunately I believe he sees his reelection as confirmation of his status as the “greatest president of all time” (his words, not mine). Trump will always be supported by his cult-like devotees. I hope the Republican Party has enough clear-minded members to reject him in the primary and, as you say, “kick him to the curb”.