As Trump's various legal problems grow more dire, and the specter of indictments loom before him, the likelihood of his declaring his candidacy for 2024 ASAP increase. Not only is it a means to cut off his rivals, but he also seems to believe that declaring would help protect him from legal jeopardy. It would certainly add potency to his claims that his legal issues are a result of a deep-state government conspiracy against him, a political witch hunt designed to destroy him. The only con for him in declaring early is that the GOP will stop paying his huge legal bills.
I fear you are right. And it will provide the perfect cover for a certain type of right winger who will be able to say “I would have preferred DeSantis but we didn’t have the chance to vote for him” knowing full well they would have voted Trump over DeSantis. Mark my words, the evangelical right will be using that line as a polite prefatory clause to whatever horrible policy or action by Trump they’re trying to justify.
I read somewhere that the RNC said it wouldn't pay Trump's legal bills if he announced before the midterms. A quick Google search sent me to an ABC/Jon Karl story. If Karl is reporting it, I'd lean toward believing it...
Meanwhile, loved you, Damon, on the Know Your Enemy pod. I learned so much!
The RNC has said it will stop paying his legal bills. If the party is as feckless as many of you claim, do you think they'd hold to it? One Trump mailer to the base saying the RINOs are at it again and the GOP will likely buckle.
You forget, the only thing the base of the Republican Party hates more than the Democrats is their own elected leadership. Any adviser of the ilk of Stephen Miller or Steve Bannon will understand that, and capitalize on it.
I have a similar take as you, I think they’d pay in the end. Past is not always predictive of future, but we’d be crazy not to look at the pattern of behavior and then exclude the likelihood that Trump gets what he wants from the R party/RNC in the end, no matter what he does.
One respect in which the US political system is different from Israel's and Italy's is that in those countries it's reasonably easy for someone medium-high on the right (or, hypothetically, on the left, but the mainstream left parties don't for whatever reason do the cult of personality thing nearly as much) to challenge the leader by going off and starting another party, Naftali Bennett and Georgia Meloni being the most recent examples.
Part of that is structural (the absurdly fissiparous Knesset system at one extreme, the entrenched duopoly in the US on the other extremes), but some of it is norms and political culture: Italy's Mixed Member Proportional system is in theory structurally a bit less vulnerable to party splits than more pure PR systems, but Italy's history and the strong regionalism together make Italy more susceptible than other countries with open list pure PR like Japan or Poland.
As Trump's various legal problems grow more dire, and the specter of indictments loom before him, the likelihood of his declaring his candidacy for 2024 ASAP increase. Not only is it a means to cut off his rivals, but he also seems to believe that declaring would help protect him from legal jeopardy. It would certainly add potency to his claims that his legal issues are a result of a deep-state government conspiracy against him, a political witch hunt designed to destroy him. The only con for him in declaring early is that the GOP will stop paying his huge legal bills.
My money's on Trump declaring early.
I fear you are right. And it will provide the perfect cover for a certain type of right winger who will be able to say “I would have preferred DeSantis but we didn’t have the chance to vote for him” knowing full well they would have voted Trump over DeSantis. Mark my words, the evangelical right will be using that line as a polite prefatory clause to whatever horrible policy or action by Trump they’re trying to justify.
I read somewhere that the RNC said it wouldn't pay Trump's legal bills if he announced before the midterms. A quick Google search sent me to an ABC/Jon Karl story. If Karl is reporting it, I'd lean toward believing it...
Meanwhile, loved you, Damon, on the Know Your Enemy pod. I learned so much!
Thanks, Debbie!
The RNC has said it will stop paying his legal bills. If the party is as feckless as many of you claim, do you think they'd hold to it? One Trump mailer to the base saying the RINOs are at it again and the GOP will likely buckle.
You forget, the only thing the base of the Republican Party hates more than the Democrats is their own elected leadership. Any adviser of the ilk of Stephen Miller or Steve Bannon will understand that, and capitalize on it.
I have a similar take as you, I think they’d pay in the end. Past is not always predictive of future, but we’d be crazy not to look at the pattern of behavior and then exclude the likelihood that Trump gets what he wants from the R party/RNC in the end, no matter what he does.
One respect in which the US political system is different from Israel's and Italy's is that in those countries it's reasonably easy for someone medium-high on the right (or, hypothetically, on the left, but the mainstream left parties don't for whatever reason do the cult of personality thing nearly as much) to challenge the leader by going off and starting another party, Naftali Bennett and Georgia Meloni being the most recent examples.
Part of that is structural (the absurdly fissiparous Knesset system at one extreme, the entrenched duopoly in the US on the other extremes), but some of it is norms and political culture: Italy's Mixed Member Proportional system is in theory structurally a bit less vulnerable to party splits than more pure PR systems, but Italy's history and the strong regionalism together make Italy more susceptible than other countries with open list pure PR like Japan or Poland.